We Are Many Page #8

a people-powered campaigning movement.

That did come out of the experience,

I think, of feeling the failure.

I got the sense from the people on the podium

that they in a way felt the job was done,

that this was gonna change

the government's opinion.

Now, we will never know

what Tony Blair and his advisers

were thinking on the eve of that day.

I'm sure they gambled on us not coming back.

Now, I really believe that

if we'd have come back the next weekend,

they may not have changed then,

but they would have certainly been nervous.

But if we'd have come back

the weekend after that,

then you never know what would have happened.

And in that sense,

I feel very frustrated

and a deep sense of regret

about the fact

that we just didn't finish the job.

I did believe, I think as many of us

believed on that march,

that we could actually change something,

and the fact that we couldn't

has stuck in our craws ever since.

It was a huge missed opportunity

because I don't think the march

in itself would ever stop the war

because people go home

and the government can live with that.

What they can't live with

is serious organization,

and that's what we needed out of that.

You have a couple of days

of mass demonstrations

during a weekend in London.

What does that do to the powers that be?

Nothing, nothing.

You need to escalate.

We had this decision

that on the day of the attack,

on 1:
00pm, we're going to assemble

in Tahrir Square.

Once the strikes begin, we all go to Tahrir.

Once the war starts, at 12 noon,

everybody would go out

on the streets towards Tahrir.

So I went with my high heels,

thinking it was going to be

just an hour-Iong demonstration

and that the anti-riot police

are just going to break it,

and, you know, I had evening plans,

and, uh, I went home at midnight.

That's when hell broke loose in Egypt.

You had the biggest protests

that this capital had witnessed since 1977.

Young people, old people.

Poor people, rich people,

middle class people.

Men, women, students.

Everybody was there. Everybody was there.

I arrived on Tahrir Square with 15 people.

14 out of the 15

never demonstrated in their lives

before 20th March 2003.

It was like, for the first time,

we could see a popular movement.

From 30,000 to 40,000

or 50,000, even, protestors

were in run-in clashes in with the police.

Briefly taking over Tahrir.

That really was a turning point.

The protests here were huge

on the night of the Iraq invasion.

It was the first time I had ever seen

that protestors had overwhelmed

the security forces.

They withdrew,

and I remember a comrade, a friend,

said, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God."

For the first time, the really first time,

we are able to win this small victory.

The American occupation of Iraq

is the occupation of the entire Arab world,

including Egypt,

and therefore, the impotency

of our regime is very clear.

That's exactly when I was thinking,

and others,

that if we were triple that number,

or four times that number,

we could take down Mubarak.

Little did we know

that that was a rehearsal

for the 2011 revolution.

That spring of 2003

was really the beginning

of the democracy movement.

Iraq was torn to shreds.

It was a consequence of the invasion,

but it wasn't presented that way.

Like the Fallujah attack,

which was a major war crime.

For example, I haven't seen a word

in the United States,

in the mainstream, at least,

about the fact that the radiation levels

and effects of excessive radiation

in Fallujah

are apparently worse than Hiroshima.

We know exactly how many people were

killed on September 11th, exactly.

We have no idea how many civilians

were killed in Iraq.

Why is that?

Hey, back up! Back up!

Sure, Saddam Hussein was awful.

He was a murderer.

But when Saddam was harming

his own people, that was on him.

But the American invasion is on us,

and the people who are harmed

post-invasion is on us.

It's on our collective national conscience.

Every person is important,

and every person does matter,

and we should know exactly

how many people have died

as a result of this invasion.

This was a total failure.

Cost, most of all for the Iraqis,

lives and property

and now ten years near anarchy.

My father fled Iraq

when I was barely a year old.

I have all my life been an opposition

figure to the Baathist regime.

But as horrendous and as dark

and as bad and as miserable

as things got in Iraq under Saddam Hussein,

incredibly enough,

now they are far, far worse.

That's what we were there for

on 15th February 2003.

To stop this from happening.

My husband is going

to make a short statement.

He has felt extremely upset

of the injustice of the war,

and he remains very upset.

Professor Stephen Hawking.

The war was based on two lies.

The first was that we were in danger

from weapons of mass destruction.

The second was that Iraq

was somehow to blame for 9/11.

It has been a tragedy for all

the families that have lost members.

As many as 100,000 may have died,

half of them women and children.

If that is not a war crime, what is?

The deaths in Iraq mount daily,

but we haven't had a running total

or indeed an accurate body count.

Now we have a shocking figure.

American and Iraqi

public health experts calculate

that about 600,000 Iraqis have been

killed as a result of the invasion.

The number of orphans created

by the Iraq war, 1.25 million.

Iraqi children suffering from

chronic malnutrition, 28 percent.

The number of refugees created

by the Iraq war, four million.

So tonight I'm gonna do one of my slideshows.

These are actual unstaged photos

pulled from the files

of the White House photo office.

Those weapons of mass destruction

have got to be somewhere.

Nope. No weapons over there.

Maybe under here.

Yes, there are consequences of war.

People will die and some will be innocent,

and we must live with the consequences

of our actions,

even the unintended ones.

I wanted to ask him,

"Have you ever seen what happens

as somebody rolls a grenade into a tent?"

"Have you ever imagined what it would be like

to kneel down beside a soldier

you sent into battle

and tell him why he's dying?"

Well, I'd never say that the mass loss

of life of those in the conflict,

civilians, is worth intervention.

But I would say that,

were I in the same situation

with the same information

and the same perspective,

I would have done the same again.

I mean, now we know so much more.

I believed, and I believe,

that the decision was right.

The Secretary General of the United Nations,

a man who's always insisted

that America and Britain went to war

without the legally required authority

of the UN.

Well, Kofi Annan was asked

whether he thought that the action was legal.

I have stated clearly

that it was not in conformity

with the Security Council,

with the UN Charter.

And then the next question was,

"So you mean it was illegal?"

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