“Pinter promised he’d get a few things off his chest in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature this Saturday, and this preview provided by the Guardian shows him to be true to his word. He’s too frail to travel, but this is part of what he’ll say in his taped speech,” writes Dedalus at Blah3.com blog.
“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” he said.
“The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public … a formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
“We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people, and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.”
[…]
“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought,” he said.
“Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the international criminal court of justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the international criminal court of justice …
“But Tony Blair has ratified the court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the court have his address if they’re interested: it is Number 10, Downing Street, London.”
“It’s sad,” adds Dedalus, “to see an old writer’s imagination failing like that. Let Bush off the hook as being ‘clever’? Hell, Harold, haven’t you heard of a little thing called rendition?”
Update [2005-12-7 21:7:34 by susanhu]: OMG! Screw Nobel prizes! RITA COSBY is REPORTING FROM THE WAR ZONE! She’s in Bagram, Afghanistan! She’s come to see the “brave men and women” with the World Wrestling Federation! WOW! MSNBC must be so proud!
