IRAQ : Join the global protests - demonstrate 15 March (Invasion 5th Anniversary

Join the global protests - demonstrate 15 March

Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan
Don’t attack Iran
End the siege of Gaza

"I really hope that on 15 March people will join the demonstration in Trafalgar Square at 12. To march against the war and march against the continued occupation which has come from this war. It had a rotten basis and nothing good will come of it."
Nick Broomfield, Documentary film maker

On his recent trip to the Middle East, George Bush said: "Iraq is now a different place. Levels of violence are significantly reduced. Hope is returning to Baghdad."

Try telling that to residents of the southern outskirts of Baghdad, whose homes were flattened on January 10, when US bombers unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives in the biggest aerial attack since March 2003, killing or injuring dozens of civilians, many of them women, children and the elderly.

Try telling it to the thousands of Iraqis who were the victims of US bombing raids in 2007, which quadrupled compared to 2006, rising from four attacks a week to four attacks a day. It’s the same story in Afghanistan, where the Washington Post reported recently the number of air strikes doubled in 2007 to a staggering 3,572 — an average of close to 10 per day. In 2005, by comparison, there were around 200 air strikes.

These increasing levels of carnage come from the man who accuses Iran and Syria of "fomenting violence" in the region and whose main purpose in his visit to the Middle East was to set up arms deals with a number of countries, which will get weapons of mass violence at an estimated cost of 20 billion dollars.

These include Israel, visited by Bush at the very time that its siege of Gaza was facing worldwide condemnation (see below) for what United Nations representatives called "illegal measures and practices against the Palestinian civilian population". Bush’s gift to Israel in the cause of promoting peace in the region was to confirm that under a 100 million dollar arms package, Israel would get a new consignment of the very latest "smart" missiles, which it used to such horrific effect in its 2006 attack on Lebanon.

We keep marching and protesting because these policies of mass murder and devastation are opposed by the vast majority of people in this country, the USA and worldwide. It is why on Saturday 15 March, the Stop the War Coalition has joined with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British Muslim Initiative in calling a national demonstration in London, as part of the worldwide day of protest against George Bush’s wars on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, when there will be demonstrations from Washington to Beirut, from Sydney to Seoul.

The demo will assemble for a rally in Trafalgar Square, march down Whitehall, cross the river and return for final speeches in Parliament Square, so surrounding parliament.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=488&Itemid=1