Malaysia's ex-leader assails U.S. and British role in Iraq
International Herald Tribune
September 9, 2005
The Associated Press, Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR American and British pilots whose bombs killed Iraqi civilians were murderers, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the two countries amounted to terrorism, Malaysia's former prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, said in a speech at a conference here Friday.
 
Mahathir regularly directed visceral attacks at the West and Israel while in power. Several British and European diplomats walked out in protest at the conference, sponsored by the government-backed National Human Rights Commission. The U.S. Embassy had decided earlier not to send anyone to the event.
 
Mahathir, who ruled the majority Muslim country for 22 years before retiring in 2003, also defended his human rights record in government. He was often criticized for detaining suspects without trial and for the imprisonment of a former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.
 
Mahathir compared American and British actions in Iraq with rocket attacks by Israel on Palestinians, referring to those countries as "these terrorist nations."
 
"The British and American bomber pilots came, unopposed, safe and cozy in their state-of-the-art aircraft, pressing buttons to drop bombs to kill and maim," Mahathir said of the Iraq invasion. "And these murderers, for that is what they are, would go back to celebrate 'mission accomplished.'
 
"Who are the terrorists," he asked, "the people below who were bombed or the bombers? Whose rights have been snatched away?"
 
Mahathir also charged that before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, UN economic sanctions had led to the death of about 500,000 infants there.
 
Mahathir said that while in power, he was a U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, although he opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He noted that Washington's reason for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
 
"As we all know," he said, "it was a lie."

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