WITHIN THE past few days I had the opportunity of viewing some very informative special televised documentaries and news coverage by the BBC, CNN and MSNBC marking the 10th anniversary of the United States-led war against Iraq on March 19, 2003 under the pretence of Saddam Hussein regime’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
The exposures of falsehoods by the Bush Administration – aided with support from then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair – despite independent denials offered by US and British intelligence – influenced my own recollections of the scary propaganda generated by another Republican President (Ronald Reagan) ahead of the US military invasion of Grenada, 20 years earlier – on October 25, 1983.
Notable archival resources in the US, Britain and elsewhere, as well as leading media enterprises, would be chockful of information mocking the claims of the then Reagan administration, with willing acquiescence by then governments in Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica and St Lucia in particular, about an “international communist plot” involving Cuba and the then Soviet Union to establish a beach-head in Grenada.
In sharp contrast to, for instance, the supporting roles played by the now late Dominica Prime Minister, Mary Eugenia Charles, who proudly shared televised coverage with President Reagan at The White House as he announced the timed US military invasion of Grenada, a fierce, passionate defender of Caribbean sovereignty like Barbados’ late Prime Minister, Errol Barrow, was to have his own warnings confirmed.
While the plotting and active arrangements for the invasion of Grenada were occurring, Barrow was publicly sharing in August of that year his knowledge, as reported by the media, that the administration of then Prime Minister
Tom Adams had been “stockpiling medical supplies for apparent war preparations”. Prime Minister Adams was to offer a sharp denial of such preparations or any involvement by his government.
However, with the invasion of Grenada a ‘fait accompli’, and governments of Barbados, Jamaica and OECS openly lined up with Washington’s military invasion of Grenada, Mr Barrow was to denounce to regional and international media, the “high-noon” jingoism of the former “Hollywood cowboy” actor Reagan for the “military war authorized by him against that small island state.
The tragic, painful relevance of the US military invasion of Iraq with that of Grenada’s 20 years earlier, is the comparison with the dangerous lies deliberately spawned by the US to justify both wars. It had no evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Neither has it ever produced evidence of any Soviet/Cuba plan to misuse Grenada as a beach-head for “international communism”.
• Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist. Email [email protected].
