The putrescent smell of empire

LIKE a putrescent odour, the rotting legacy of March 20, 2003 still courses through my brain's sensory pathways. Words such as "weapons of mass destruction", coalition of the willing", and axis of evil" created sufficient global madness to launch a million missiles onto Iraq. A gullible world believed America.

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It believed Colin Powell when he held up that tiny vial at the UN Security Council meeting on February 5, 2003 to show how much anthrax or other biological material could kill thousands of people.

Powell's presentation was meant to scare the world. It was meant to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capabilities. It was meant to scare the world into believing that Iraq might share these weapons with terrorists. It was meant to convince the UN that military action was necessary. Later, after somewhere between 500000 and one million Iraqis lay dead on the ground, it was disclosed that no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons were found, no active nuclear weapons program existed, and that most intelligence claims were false or exaggerated. Powell later said, "It was a blot on my record", and acknowledged that the evidence he presented was deeply flawed.

The US was wrong. But it took about one million dead Iraqis to expose America's lies.

Over the past 50 years, the US has been the primary destabilising force in Latin America. Its imperialist attitude in Latin America is well documented.

On September 11, 1973, it used Augusto Pinochet to lead a US-sponsored military coup against democratically elected Salvador Allende. Allende was killed, and the US installed Pinochet as president.

Pinochet led a brutal dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. Pinochet dissolved the Chilean Congress and suspended the constitution. Chile was ruled by decree for 17 years. More than 3000 were killed or "disappeared". Thousands more were tortured.

The US sent a group of its economists known as the "Chicago Boys" to design new economic policies for Chile. They privatised state industries and cut social spending. State-owned banks were sold to private investors.