On September 11, the defense industry will be commemorating those who died in New York two years ago with a gala dinner in a central London hotel.
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Among the list of nations invited to attend DSEI 2003 are Saudi Arabia, where torture and political arrests remain rife; Kenya, where routine executions and torture take place; Colombia, where last year 4,000 civilians were killed for political motives; and Turkey, where torture in police custody remains widespread. Amnesty International says that the appalling human rights records of these nations "graphically illustrates why there must be end-use monitoring in arms sales, so that there can be real assurance that the UK is not inadvertently supporting internal repression, torture or police brutality overseas".
Also on the list of DSEI invites is Syria, the US-decreed "axis of evil" state supposed to be harboring chemical weapons. And China has been invited too, even though it is the subject of a partial arms embargo. Britain supplies 20% of the world market in arms, second only to the US.
During the 1990s alone, approximately 4 million people were killed in violent conflicts - and civilians made up 90% of these deaths. <snip>
To invoke the deaths of September 11 as the validation for bigger military budgets and the perpetual war on terror is a dishonor in the extreme. On September 11 this year, the most respectful commemoration of those 3,016 lives horribly wasted in that day's attacks would be to disarm the trade in death.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0908-04.htmI find this extremely disturbing. Where is the moral outrage, particularly given that civilians have made up 90% of the casualties?
Have you seen any statements from the Bush administration condemning the sale of weapons to Syria? More importantly, how does the Carlyle Group fit into all of this?
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