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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Mubarak Says Iraq War Will Produce "100 bin Ladens"
commondreams.org (CAIRO Reuters) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Monday the U.S.-led war on Iraq would produce "one hundred new bin Ladens", driving more Muslims to anti-Western militancy.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 6:49 PM

 

Nuns' trial starts today: Peace activists face 30 year sentences
greeleytrib.com Colorado - Even after spending six months in jail, they are optimistic, focused and confident. The three nuns are calm as they prepare to fend off charges that could send them to jail for the next three decades. Sisters Carol Gilbert, Jackie Hudson and Ardeth Platte don’t deny they entered a Minuteman III missile site off Colo. 14 and Weld County Road 113 — about 10 miles west of New Raymer — on Oct. 6, 2002. But they say they had a duty to bring attention to first-strike weapons prohibited by international treaties.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 6:45 PM

 

US Army's Desert Filling Stations Add Fuel to Fire: US Army Names Iraq Camps After US Oil Companies
commondreams.org - In a war where public perceptions are arguably as important as the military strategy, the US army appears to have handed a huge public relations victory to those who believe the conflict in Iraq is all about oil. The 101st Airborne Division has chosen to name two of its main outposts in the desert Forward Operating Base Exxon and Forward Operating Base Shell.

When US troops seizing the port city of Umm Qasr raised the stars and stripes there last week, they were swiftly ordered to remove it for fear of giving the impression of being conquerors, not liberators.

But Forward Operating Base Shell has caught on so comprehensively that the Washington Post is now carrying it as the dateline in its news reports from the base.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 8:16 AM

 

US Forces' Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons is 'Illegal'
commondreams.org - BRITISH and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 8:12 AM

 

NBC Severs Ties With Journalist Arnett
Associated Press - NEW YORK - NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett on Monday, saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance. Arnett called the interview a "misjudgment" and apologized.

Arnett, on NBC's "Today" show on Monday, said he was sorry for his statement but added "I said over the weekend what we all know about the war."

"I want to apologize to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment," the New Zealand-born Arnett said. He said he would try to leave Baghdad now, joking "there's a small island in the South Pacific that I've inhabited that I'll try to swim to."

NBC defended him Sunday, saying he had given the interview as a professional courtesy and that his remarks were analytical in nature. But by Monday morning the network switched course and, after Arnett spoke with NBC News President Neal Shapiro, said it would no longer work with Arnett.

"It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war," NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said. "And it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview."

Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, gained much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) for CNN. One of the few American television reporters left in Baghdad, his reports were frequently aired on NBC and its cable sisters, MSNBC and CNBC.

Leaving a second network under a cloud may mark the end of his TV career. Arnett was the on-air reporter of the 1998 CNN report that accused American forces of using sarin nerve gas on a Laotian village in 1970 to kill U.S. defectors. Two CNN employees were sacked and Arnett was reprimanded over the report, which the station later retracted. Arnett left the network when his contract was not renewed.

In the Iraqi TV interview, broadcast Sunday by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 7:21 AM

 

Reporter Arnett: U.S. War Plan Has Failed
washingtonpost.com - Journalist Peter Arnett, covering the war from Baghdad, told state-run Iraqi TV in an interview aired Sunday that the American-led coalition's first war plan had failed because of Iraq's resistance and said strategists are "trying to write another war plan."

Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, garnered much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. He is reporting from the Iraqi capital now for NBC and its cable stations.

The interview could make Arnett a target of the war's supporters. The first Bush administration was unhappy with Arnett's reporting in 1991 for CNN, suggesting he had become a conveyor of propaganda.

He was denounced for his reporting about an allied bombing of a baby milk factory in Baghdad that the military said was a biological weapons plant. The American military responded vigorously to the suggestion it had targeted a civilian facility, but Arnett stood by his reporting that the plant's sole purpose was to make baby formula.

NBC, in a statement Sunday, praised Arnett's "outstanding" reporting from Iraq and said he was trying nothing more than to give an analytical response to an interviewer's questions.

In the interview, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing.

He said the United States is reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, "and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."

"Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces," Arnett said during the interview broadcast by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt.

Arnett said it is clear that within the United States there is growing opposition to the war and a growing challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct.

BLOGGER'S NOTE: Although initially praised by NBC for his accurate analysis, as of this morning, the network severed all ties with him for reporting the truth.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 7:17 AM

 

Syria's Assad: 'We will not wait' to be next U.S. target
worldtribune.com NICOSIA — Syria, alarmed by the impending collapse of its neighbor and ally, has called for suicide missions against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Syrian President Bashar Assad also called on Arab regimes to oppose the U.S.-led war against Iraq. He warned that Syria could be the next target of Washington.

Assad said in an interview with the Beirut-based A-Safir daily that Damascus would not wait until the United States attacks Syria, Middle East Newsline reported. He did not elaborate.

"We will not wait until we become the next target," Assad said.

The mufti of Syria, appointed by the regime, called on Muslims to launch suicide attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. The statement came amid concern expressed by the Syrian regime over the U.S. advance on Baghdad.

"I call on Muslims to use all means possible to thwart the aggression, including martyr operations against the hostile invaders," Sheik Ahmad Kaftaro, the mufti, said in a statement on Thursday. "This is the obligation of all Muslims."

. . . Read more!

posted by West 5:09 PM

 

'Bush has already lost the war'
Iraqi civilian deaths bring mounting pressure on US-led coalition

Friday March 28, 2003
The Guardian

South China Morning Post
Hong Kong, editorial, March 27
"Even before the dust cleared from the bloody scenes at a Baghdad market where at least 14 people were killed ... in a US-led air-strike, it was apparent that the Iraq war had taken a deeply disturbing turn. Coalition plans to advance on the capital are changing as US and British forces first deal with the resistance in the south ...

"Implicit in the change of strategy is the fact that casualties - soldiers and civilians - will rise significantly. The gloves are coming off; cities that just days ago were to be 'liberated' are suddenly 'military objectives', raising the prospect of artillery strikes and street fighting ... It raises questions of how large the death toll can get before the British and US publics cannot stomach any more."

Daily Mirror
Editorial, March 27
"The disaster at a Baghdad market [on Wednesday] was not just a catastrophe for those caught up in it but for the US and British war effort. Of course things go wrong in war time. Our own forces know that only too well - many have already lost their lives through accidents and friendly fire. But killing innocent civilians as they go about their daily lives gives the worst possible message to a sceptical world."

Jordan Times
Editorial, March 27
"President George Bush has already lost the war ... He lost it with the first civilian casualty, which reminded the world that innocent people die in every war ... He lost it again [on Wednesday], when it became even more apparent ... that 'surgical wars' don't exist, and that the US is now bombing apartment buildings and market places in a desperate attempt to take Baghdad ...

"Granted that things never go according to plan in any case, and especially in wars, it is still shocking how gross a miscalculation the Bush administration has made on the resistance that its troops would have encountered ... Now, tactical victories on the ground will come only at the prohibitive price of huge civilian casualties. It is a price that Washington cannot afford, but that it will have to pay."

George E Irani
Daily Star, Lebanon, March 27
"There are eerie parallels between the Israeli invasion of Lebanon [in 1982] and the current US-British invasion of Iraq. Both US-led and Israeli military operations were pre-emptive in nature ... The other similarity is the impact upon innocent civilians.

"In both Lebanon and Iraq the invading armies stated that their aim was not to harm the population. In the case of Lebanon more than 17,000 lost their lives. In Iraq ... it is hard to believe that human casualties will not be higher than those advertised by Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence. A few months ago, the UN estimated that as a result of war there could be more than 500,000 casualties in Iraq."

Washington Post Editorial, March 27
"Reports from Baghdad suggested that one or more US missiles might have struck a shopping street, killing a number of people ... Yet a full assessment of civilian suffering in the war's first week points in a different direction: Iraqis have endured far more injury from Saddam Hussein's forces - and those blows have been deliberate.

"A tour of the dictator's latest war crimes might start in Nasiriyah, where US Marines this week found Iraqi paramilitary fighters headquartered in a hospital ... From their hospital base - war crime No 1 - Iraqis disguised in civilian clothes or carrying white flags - war crime No 2 - attacked US positions. They forced Iraqi civilians to act as scouts and human shields - war crime No 3 - before inviting Arab television crews to film the resulting dead and wounded ...

"In Basra ... while British forces held their fire to spare the population, Iraqi soldiers mortared fellow Iraqis ... They gunned down fellow citizens who refused to fight allied troops."

Greg Sheridan Australian, March 27
"Coalition [forces have] operated with unprecedented concern to avoid civilian, and even military, casualties on the Iraqi side. This has undoubtedly led to greater coalition casualties than if a more conventional strategy of weeks of sustained bombing before the insertion of ground forces had taken place. The Americans won't get any credit for this because our adversarial culture means they get credit for nothing, but the coalition has acted with greater concern to avoid civilian casualties than any army in the history of warfare ... The contrast, the moral context, if you will, is evident in the attitude of both sides to civilians. Iraqi soldiers at all levels use civilians as human shields. The coalition sacrifices the lives of its soldiers to save the lives of civilians."

Peter Singer
Los Angeles Times, March 27
"If Saddam Hussein's regime is adopting tactics that deliberately put Iraqi civilians at risk, we cannot avoid responsibility for the casualties that result from the war we chose to fight. The Bush administration knew how little the Iraqi dictatorship cared for its people, so it must have anticipated these unscrupulous tactics and should have factored them into the decision to go to war. Any actions that show less respect for the lives of Iraqi civilians than the US military would show for the lives of Americans would not be ethically defensible."

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 10:45 AM

 

"Critical Supplies...Are Unaccounted For"
(Frederik Balfour, BusinessWeek Online, March 28, 2003)
Overoptimistic expectations give way to fatigue and paranoia, as one Infantry Division finds itself increasingly worried about food and water . . . Due to the fog of war and severe weather conditions," Lovett said, "critical supplies that should have arrived two, three, four days ago are unaccounted for." He was talking about the lifeblood of any military operation: food, water, fuel, ammunition. . . . Guerrilla harassment, too, was becoming an increasing worry. . . . Things began falling apart within half a day of crossing the Iraq-Kuwait border. Because the Army wasn't able to secure the highway, nearly 10,000 vehicles were forced to share secondary routes that were decidedly infantry-unfriendly. Tanks, flatbed trucks, Humvees, and rocket launchers snaked their way bumper to bumper through the desert in near-zero visibility. In no time, the route was littered with 45-foot trailers stuck in the sand, and the carefully orchestrated departure had deteriorated into chaos. . . . By the time we made it to the temporary camp, some 160 km south of Baghdad, nearly a third of the trucks in our convoy had fallen at least 12 hours behind and couldn't be contacted. Amid the mounting chaos, communications suffered; a major told me that 60 fuel tankers sat in al-Nasiriya for two days because no one issued the order to move forward. . . . It's sobering how quickly morale can slip. . . . I felt a lot better when I thought this was only going to take a matter of days," said First Lieutenant Sara Creely. "Soldiers at the perimeter are freaking out at everything, [even] when they see a dog or a camel." . . . Now, the 3ID's No. 3 commander was telling me that he hadn't expected such serious Iraqi resistance. It seemed churlish to remind him of his earlier boasts. Like all of us, the general had slept in his vehicle for three days straight, and clearly, he was exhausted.
Fresh-faced soldiers I'd met just two weeks before seem to have aged. Their weariness reflected more than lack of sleep: The strain of living with danger 24-7 was every bit as draining. The incessant wind and dust wear you down, making arduous even the simplest outdoor chores -- brushing your teeth, unpacking a bed roll, finding your way back from the field latrine. I can only imagine the hardship for soldiers trying to fight.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 10:41 AM

 

Robert Fisk: In Baghdad, blood and bandages for the innocent

(Robert Fisk, The Independent, 30 March 2003)
At least 62 civilians had died by yesterday afternoon, and the coding on that hunk of metal contains the identity of the culprit. The Americans and British were doing their best yesterday to suggest that an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile destroyed those dozens of lives, adding that they were "still investigating" the carnage. But the coding is in Western style, not in Arabic. And many of the survivors heard the plane. . . . This is a hospital without computers, with only the most primitive of X-ray machines. But the missile was guided by computers and that vital shard of fuselage was computer-coded. It can be easily verified and checked by the Americans – if they choose to do so. It reads: 30003-704ASB 7492. The letter "B" is scratched and could be an "H". This is believed to be the serial number. It is followed by a further code which arms manufacturers usually refer to as the weapon's "Lot" number. It reads: MFR 96214 09. . . . "We have never seen anything like these wounds before," Dr Ahmed, an anaesthetist at the Al-Noor hospital told me later. "These people have been punctured by dozens of bits of metal." He was right. One old man I visited in a hospital ward had 24 holes in the back of his legs and buttocks, some as big as pound coins. An X-ray photograph handed to me by one of his doctors clearly showed at least 35 slivers of metal still embedded in his body . . . "This is a crime," a woman muttered at me angrily. "Yes, I know they say they are targeting the military. But can you see soldiers here? Can you see missiles?" The answer has to be in the negative. . . . Last week's attack on the Sha'ab highway was carried out on a main road at midday during a sandstorm – when dozens of civilians are bound to be killed, whatever the pilot thought he was aiming at. "I had five sons and now I have only two – and how do I know that even they will survive?" a bespectacled middle-aged man said in the bare concrete back room of his home yesterday. "One of my boys was hit in the kidneys and heart. His chest was full of shrapnel; it came right through the windows. Now all I can say is that I am sad that I am alive." A neighbour interrupted to say that he saw the plane with his own eyes. "I saw the side of the aircraft and I noticed it changed course after it fired the missile." . . . A 20-year-old man was sitting up in the next bed, the blood-soaked stump of his left arm plastered over with bandages. Only 12 hours ago, he had a left arm, a left hand, fingers. Now he blankly recorded his memories. "I was in the market and I didn't feel anything," he told me. "The rocket came and I was to the right of it and then an ambulance took me to hospital."

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 10:28 AM

 

Rumors Sow Uncertainty in Ranks
(Matthew Green, Reuters, March 30, 2003)
Dashed expectations of a lightning victory have fueled uncertainty -- fertile soil for the grapevine to flourish. . . . Some say they pay no attention to rumors, but they can be hard to ignore. . . . In the military, information is passed on a need-to-know basis. It is impossible for the vast majority of troops to have a clear picture of what is happening beyond their little patch of desert. . . . Most know that capturing Baghdad is crucial, but when it comes to detail, they are in the dark. The lack of clarity can sap morale. . . . "They can be very damaging for morale, particularly if you're telling someone they're going home next week, and next week comes around and they don't go home," he said, his convoy of heavily-armed trucks parked by the roadside. . . . Not a single copy of the forces newspaper Stars and Stripes is in sight. There are certainly no televisions -- few U.S. troops in Iraq have seen images of dead civilians. . . . Radios are few and far between, although at sunrise Marines can be seen clustered around radios perched on their "Humvee" all-terrain vehicles, listening to crackling headlines. . . . For troops who are told one week that they will be racing to Baghdad, the next that they are in for a longer haul, a little more information from their superiors would be very welcome.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 10:20 AM

 

Scientists Warn on Bush Bioweapons Push
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A Bush administration program to add at least three bioweapons labs is troubling many scientists and arms control experts, who say it can't be good to train more microbiologists in the black art of bioterror.

The field is suddenly awash with billions of dollars to combat bioterrorism and much more is promised under President Bush's Project BioShield plan. The money will fund a building boom of at least three new airtight laboratories where scientists in space suits handle the world's deadliest diseases.

At least six universities and the New York State Department of Health are competing for contracts to build one or two labs, where scientists can infect research monkeys and other animals with such lethal agents as the Ebola, Marburg and Lassa viruses. Those African hemorrhagic diseases are often fatal and always painful, marked by severe bleeding.

They'll also likely create new classes of toxins - including genetically engineered ones - as part of the process of constructing weapons they want to defeat. Developing antidotes or vaccines for those toxins might take years.

"It's perversely increasing the risk of exposure," said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University chemistry professor and bioweapons expert who believes one additional lab is all that is needed.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 9:26 AM

 

Bloggers spearhead offscreen opposition: The net has given free rein to opinion not expressed in mainstream media coverage of the Gulf conflict, says John Naughton

osbserver.co.uk - A friend of mine has just returned from a week in New York, during which time she encountered nobody who was in favour of the war. Nobody. One day, her attempts to get across town by cab were blocked by an anti-war demonstration involving 300,000 people.

Did this remarkable event - in a nation which, remember, is officially at war - receive serious coverage on CNN? Do I need to ask?

One could watch the US television networks around the clock for a week and not realise the extent of public opposition and disquiet about Dubya's military adventure. Instead, viewers are fed a constant diet of football-type commentary about the campaign, complete with panels of experts and pundit-babble about 'results' and 'outcomes' and 'regime meltdown'.

It's the same for US radio, dominated as it is by neo-Fascist 'talk jocks' mouthing hysterical, semi-racist, kick-ass jingoism. A visiting Martian who only had access to the US broadcast media might be forgiven for thinking that the Bush regime had perfected the art of mind-control.

Why is the unease and disaffection of the American public so invisible? The answer is that it's only invisible if you're looking for it in the mainstream media. It's there all right - but it's on the net. One detects it, for example, in the way Americans have taken to seeking news from foreign news sources - chief among them, if the server logs are accurate, the Guardian and BBC websites.

But visiting news sites is essentially a passive activity. Even more interesting is the astonishing proliferation of public discussion enabled by web-logging software. Until 9/11, this was pretty much a minority activity, but the terrorist attacks triggered an explosion of online expression channelled into net diaries of all descriptions.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 8:53 AM

 

SABCnews SA protesters condemn Iraq war
SABC News Cape Town, South Africa - More than 10 000 people marched on the US consulate in Cape Town today to protest the war in Iraq, and to call for the expulsion of America and Britain's ambassadors.

Protesters burned US flags and chanted anti-American slogans outside the building, in the city centre, under the watchful eye of a strong police presence.

The march, under the banner of the Anti-War Coalition, included representatives from the ANC, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), the Council of Churches and Muslim Judicial Council.

Pallo Jordan, the chairperson of Parliament's foreign affairs portfolio committee, said the US and British attack on Iraq had never been about weapons of mass destruction. "They have not uncovered any weapons of mass destruction, doesn't that make you think, comrades?

"What the war was about from the very beginning was to change the government of Iraq and to put their own government in there, so they can gain access to Iraqi oil," he said.

The Coalition has threatened "more drastic action" should the consulate not respond in writing by Thursday to a memorandum delivered today and another submitted during a protest in February.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 3:51 PM

 

WHO LIED TO WHOM? Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?
The New Yorker Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability. It was an important presentation for the Bush Administration. Some Democrats were publicly questioning the President’s claim that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate threat to the United States. Just the day before, former Vice-President Al Gore had sharply criticized the Administration’s advocacy of preëmptive war, calling it a doctrine that would replace “a world in which states consider themselves subject to law” with “the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.” A few Democrats were also considering putting an alternative resolution before Congress.

According to two of those present at the briefing, which was highly classified and took place in the committee’s secure hearing room, Tenet declared, as he had done before, that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes that was intercepted on its way to Iraq had been meant for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium. The suitability of the tubes for that purpose had been disputed, but this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy five hundred tons of uranium oxide from Niger, one of the world’s largest producers. The uranium, known as “yellow cake,” can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors; if processed differently, it can also be enriched to make weapons. Five tons can produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a bomb. (When the C.I.A. spokesman William Harlow was asked for comment, he denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger.)

On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country, “despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.” The allegation attracted immediate attention; a headline in the London Guardian declared, “african gangs offer route to uranium.”

Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq.

On December 19th, Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials, in a State Department position paper that rhetorically asked, “Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?” (The charge was denied by both Iraq and Niger.) A former high-level intelligence official told me that the information on Niger was judged serious enough to include in the President’s Daily Brief, known as the P.D.B., one of the most sensitive intelligence documents in the American system. Its information is supposed to be carefully analyzed, or “scrubbed.” Distribution of the two- or three-page early-morning report, which is prepared by the C.I.A., is limited to the President and a few other senior officials. The P.D.B. is not made available, for example, to any members of the Senate or House Intelligence Committees. “I don’t think anybody here sees that thing,” a State Department analyst told me. “You only know what’s in the P.D.B. because it echoes—people talk about it.”

President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” He commented, “Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.”

Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said.

. . . Read more!

posted by West 1:51 PM

 

Corporate America Divvies Up The Post-Saddam Spoils
arriannaonline.com - Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner in Iraq. Yes, I know that the first smart bomb has yet to be dropped on Baghdad. But that's just a formality. The war has already been won. The conquering heroes are not generals in fatigues but CEOs in suits, and the shock troops are not an advance guard of commandos but legions of lobbyists.

The Bush administration is currently in the process of doling out over $1.5 billion in government contracts to American companies lining up to cash in on the rebuilding of postwar Iraq. So bombs away! The more destruction the better -- at least for the lucky few in the rebuilding business.

The United Nations has traditionally overseen the reconstruction of war zones like Afghanistan or Kosovo. But in keeping with its unilateral, the-world-is-our-sandbox approach to this invasion, the White House has decided to nail a "Made in the USA" sign on this Iraqi fixer-upper. Postwar Iraq will be rebuilt using red, white, and blueprints.

Talk about advance planning: Even as the people of Iraq are girding themselves for the thousands of bombs expected to rain down on them during the first 24 hours of the attack, the administration is already picking and choosing who will be given the lucrative job of cleaning up the rubble. Postwar rebuilding is a solitary bright spot in our own carpet-bombed economy.

To further expedite matters, the war-powers-that-be invoked "urgent circumstances" clauses that allowed them to subvert the requisite competitive bidding process -- the free market be damned -- and invite a select group of companies to bid on the rebuilding projects. No British companies were included, which has left many of them seething and meeting with government officials in London to find out where they stand.

So just which companies were given first crack at the post-Saddam spoils?

Well, given Team Bush's track record, it will probably not fill you with "shock and awe" to learn that the common denominator among the chosen few is a proven willingness to make large campaign donations to the Grand Old Party. Between them, the bidders -- a quartet of well-connected corporate consortiums that includes Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp., and, of course, Vice President Cheney's old cronies at Halliburton -- have donated a combined $2.8 million over the past two election cycles, 68 percent of which went to Republicans.

The insider track given these fat cat donors proves afresh that splurging on a politician is one of the soundest and safest investments you can make. Where else will a $2.8 million ante offer you a one-in-four shot at raking in a $1.5 billion payoff?

. . . Read more!

posted by West 7:37 AM

 

We are all Iraqis now
(The Guardian, March 27, 2003)
The unexpectedly stiff resistance mounted by Iraqi troops has rolled back decades of Arab humiliation . . . On Thursday, day one of the invasion, thousands of protesters collected in Tahrir Square, in Cairo. "It's like Hyde Park," was the common refrain, expressed in exhilarated tones. . . . the Iraqis, devastated by wars and crippling sanctions, have been offering what appears to be stiff resistance to the invading force of the most powerful and deadly military machine in history. . . . as the days of invasion rolled, they were becoming increasingly struck by the rhetorical tone and prevarication of the statements of coalition military and civil officials, in contrast to the almost calm detachement and precision of the statements of the Iraqis . . . All are outraged and grief-stricken at the death and destruction being wreaked on the Iraqi people, and most people realise that much more lies ahead. Yet none can help but feel a certain pride, a sense of dignity restored. We are not, after all, mice. . . . Injured dignity lies at the heart of all rebellions. Throughout history human beings have revealed an enormous capacity to bear, and cope with the harshest forms of oppression and exploitation. It is only when they perceive these as "injustice", however; when the implicit or explicit compact between oppressor and oppressed appears to have been shattered and violated by the oppressors; when the exercise of power appears lawless and arbitrary - it is then that people rise up. . . . It remains to be seen whether the war in Iraq will put the Arab masses on a new trajectory, one in which they fight to win, rather than just to die while maintaining some sense of their basic human dignity. But whatever the course of the war in the coming days or weeks, for the moment the Arab masses have two things going for them: They are not mice, and they are not alone.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 12:49 PM

 

Cheney Daughter To Be Human Shield In Baghdad?
(Al Bawaba.com, 3-25-3)
The London based Arabic daily Al Quds Al Arabi reported on Tuesday, March 25 that the American vice president, Dick Cheney, would soon head to the Jordanian capital, Amman. . . . The newspaper claimed that the visit would be an attempt by Cheney to convince his daughter, who was in the Jordanian capital, to back down her decision to go to Baghdad within a group of volunteers who want to form human shields against the US led attacks on Iraq. . . . "News agencies cited sources as saying that Cheney will arrive in Amman next Friday. He will try to convince his daughter who is currently staying at a hotel in Amman not to go to Baghdad along with a group of volunteers who want to go to Iraq and form human shields against the Anglo American attacks," said the report. . . . it seems there are not just political but also financial reasons for Mr. Cheney's strong support for the raids on Iraq. When it comes to making money from a war in Iraq, few can match the firepower of the company once headed by Dick Cheney, Reuters reported. . . . And should the U.S. emerge victorious, Halliburton -- which develops oil fields and drills for oil all over the world -- has the connections and businesses to play a major role in "rebuilding" Iraq. . . . "They have the businesses. They have the government relationship already well-established, and, as we all know, Cheney was the CEO . . . For all these reasons, one should not be surprised that the American VP will hurry to Amman and try to bring his "rebellious" daughter back home.

[Comment: It has been widely reported that Haliburton has already been awarded the first U.S. Government contract for work in Iraq's oil fields.]

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posted by LoZo 12:42 PM

 

Sydney authorities move to ban some peace rallies after violent protest
SYDNEY, Australia - Authorities in Sydney moved Thursday to ban some peace rallies a day after a protest erupted into a riot with students pelting police with tables and chairs from sidewalk cafes.

New South Wales state police said they would seek a Supreme Court injunction blocking a protest planned next week by the "Books not Bombs Coalition," which organized Wednesday's rally in downtown Sydney.

Police in riot gear arrested 33 people during the protest and charged 14 with a range of offenses, including assaulting police and violent disorder.

The state's political leader said he did not want another student rally taking place until organizers could control participants.

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posted by West 8:03 AM

 

Nobel Peace Winners Arrested at Protests
WASHINGTON - Two Nobel Peace Prize winners, two bishops and Vietnam War activist Daniel Ellsberg were among those arrested near the White House in antiwar protests Wednesday. More than 100 demonstrators in Florida denounced President Bush during his trip to the state.

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posted by West 7:58 AM

 

Six Days Of Shame, The Siege of Basra
(John Pilger, ZNet, March 26, 2003)
TODAY is a day of shame for the British military as it declares the Iraqi city of Basra, with a stricken population of 600,000, a "military target". . . . With Basra, shame is now our signature, forged by Blair and Bush. . . . Having destroyed its water and power supplies, cut off food supply routes and having failed to crack its human defences, they are now preparing to lay siege to Iraq's second city which is more than 40 per cent children. . . . What an ignominious moment in British history. Here is an impoverished country under attack by a superpower, the United States, which has unimaginable wealth and the world's most destructive weapons, and its "coalition" accomplice, Britain, which boasts one of the world's best "professional" armies. . . . The truth is that the Iraqis are fighting like lions to defend not a tyrant but their homeland. It is a truth the overwhelming majority of decent Britons will admire. . . . The historical comparison Tony Blair and his propagandists fear is that of the British defending themselves against invasion. That happened 60 years ago and now "we" are the rapacious invaders. . . . In fact, voluminous evidence, including that published by the United Nations Children's Fund, makes clear that the main reason these children have died is an enduring siege, a 12-year embargo driven by America and Britain. . . . And now Blair's troops are firing their wire-guided missiles to "soften up" Basra. . . . ONCE again, the Americans are deploying what Professor Doug Rokke, a former US Army physicist, calls "a form of nuclear weapon that contaminates everything and everyone". . . . Today, each round fired by US tanks contains 4,500 grams of solid uranium, whose particles, breathed or ingested, can cause cancer. . . . This, and the use by both the Allies of new kinds of cluster bombs, is being covered up. . . . Images of bandaged children in hospital wards are appearing on TV but you do not see the result of a Tornado's cluster bombing. . . . You are not being shown children scalped by shrapnel, with legs reduced to bloody pieces of string. . . . Such images are "not acceptable", because they will disturb viewers - and the authorities do not want that. These "unseen" images are the truth. Iraqi parents have to look at their mutilated children, so why shouldn't those of us, in whose name they were slaughtered, see what they see? . . . regardless of Blair's calls to "support our troops". There is only one way to support them - bring them home without delay. . . . The "new Iraq", as Blair calls it, will have many models, such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, all of them American conquests and American ruled until Washington allowed a vicious dictatorship to take over. . . . Saddam only came to power after the Americans helped install his Ba'ath Party in 1979. "That was my favourite coup," said the CIA officer in charge.

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posted by LoZo 12:36 PM

 

War Pictures Cause Yellowtimes.Org To Be Shut Down, Again
By Firas Al-Atraqchi - YellowTimes.org - 25 March 2003
Somebody doesn't like hearing the truth. Okay, for a second, lets scratch that and choose a slightly less politically charged term. Someone doesn't like to be disputed with alternative views, counterclaims, research and fact. Someone wants you, the reading public, to only gather one-sided, monotone, Orwellian dispatch. News the way they "fashion" it. Or as CNN will have you believe, the "most reliable source for news." And so, once again, the staff at YellowTimes.org was threatened with a shutdown: "We are sorry to notify you of suspending your account: Your account has been suspended because [of] inappropriate graphic material." Within hours, the site was shut down. What's next? Martial law? An e-mail hours later was more explanatory: "As 'NO' TV station in the US is allowing any dead US solders or POWs to be displyed (sic) and we will not ether (sic)." Of course, at the time of this e-mail, TV stations across the U.S. were allowing the images of U.S. POWs to be brought to the public's attention. These are most certainly difficult, perilous, and often confusing times. The world has been torn asunder by first the prospect of war, and now by the images of war fed live into our living rooms.

Today, Iraqi TV and Al-Jazeera, followed by Spanish National TV, Portugal's networks, and most European TV stations, aired footage of U.S. Marine fatalities in the southern town of Nasiriyah. A handful of terrified U.S. POWs were also shown. According to the Associated Press: "Anecita Hudson of Alamogordo said she saw her 23-year-old son, Army Spc. Joseph Hudson, who was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, interviewed in the Iraqi video, which was carried on a Filipino television station she subscribes to." There was public outrage in the U.S., citing the Geneva Convention on treatment of Prisoners of War, which forbids the broadcast of any footage or graphic depiction of POWs. True, the Geneva Convention does indeed include that provision. However, the outrage follows on the heels of extensive, and I repeat, extensive footage of Iraqi POWs, sometimes with cameras panning in for extreme close-ups of blank-staring Iraqi soldiers, dishevelled and fatigued as they were. CNN grilled an Al-Jazeera spokesperson on the (de)merits of airing such footage today. When asked by the Al-Jazeera spokesperson why it was allowed for U.S. stations to broadcast footage of Iraqi POWs, CNN's Aaron Brown said, "because their families wouldn't be watching". Not true. CNN is broadcast around the world and is available to Iraqis. There are millions of Iraqis living outside Iraq who may recognize an Iraqi POW as a family member. Not withstanding, to say "their families wouldn't be watching" is not an excuse. If it is a violation on the Iraqi side, then surely, it is as well on the U.S. side. (Monday's front page of the Washington Post has a picture of an Iraqi POW being handled by U.S. troops.) CNN, however, is accused of not airing any footage of Iraqi dead or Iraqi civilian casualties, although this is a necessary image of war. War is horrific and to portray it otherwise speaks of corporate agenda. Nevertheless, I was tongue-tied at the MSNBC broadcast of a mother of one of the U.S. POWs as she shed tears for her son. It gripped me and moved me and I wanted to cry with her. I also wanted to cry for the parents of the Iraqi civilian child, the top part of his skull torn off; an innocent child caught in a war he did not understand.

So, here we have it, war affects us all. It affects Americans and Iraqis, as well as the rest of the world. Here, at YellowTimes.org, we did not want these stories to go untold. We wanted to bring the horrors of war inflicted on all sides. We condemn killing, we condemn war, and we certainly condemn persecution and torture. We also condemn the intentional absence of truth. However, there are some who would prefer we did not publish and inform the public. Consequently, as of this afternoon, March 24, 2003, we were shut down. I do beg your pardon, no, we weren't shut down -- we were censored -- pure and simple.

****This report has not been "sanitized."****

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posted by A Curmudgeon 7:55 AM

 

Robert Fisk: The clock said 7.55 – precisely the time the missile struck
(Robert Fisk, The Independent 24 March 2003)
In the smashed concrete and mud, there was a set of Batwoman comics. On page 17, where the dirt had splashed on to the paper, Batwoman was, oddly, rescuing Americans from a burning tower block. . . . Not far from the crater, I found a history book recording the fate of old King Faisal and the armed opposition to British rule in Iraq. The cruise missile had flipped this book open to a page honouring "the martyr Mahmoud Bajat". . . . Zukah is a slightly down-at-heel middle-class suburb with old orange trees and half-dead bougainvillaea and two-storey villas that need many coats of paint. There is a school at one end of the lane and, round the corner, a building site ­ but no obvious military target that I could see. . . . Amr Ahmed al-Dulaimi is a family man ­ 11 children and his wife were in number 10A when the missile crashed into the house of his neighbour, Abdul-Bari Samuriya, burying Mr Samuriya's wife and two children and punching a crater 20 feet into the ground. . . . So why the missile? Why should the Americans target with their supposedly precision ordnance this little middle-class ghetto? Mr Dulaimi runs a small engineering plant, Mr Samuriya is a businessman. Could it be that the black curtains of oil smoke shrouding Baghdad ­ the attempt to mislead the guidance system of missiles ­ had done its work all too well? . . . Down the road, another villa had been damaged, its walls cracked, its windows smashed. "This has always been a quiet district," its owner said to me. "Never ­ ever ­ have we experienced anything like this. Why, why, why?" How many times have I heard these words from the innocent? After every bombing, confronted by journalists, they say this to us. Always the same words. . . . "They are trying to assassinate President Hussein," Taha Yassin Ramadan said. "What kind of state tries to assassinate another country's leader then says it is fighting a war on terror?" . . . The inhabitants of this little laneway in Zukah are none too happy about the way they have been targeted and I wasn't so certain that they were as keen to be "liberated" as the Americans might like to think.

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posted by LoZo 12:01 PM

 

Television journalist and two colleagues apparently killed by coalition forces

(Matt Wells, The Guardian, March 24, 2003)
ITN suspended its independent reporting teams in southern Iraq yesterday on confirmation that the veteran ITV news reporter Terry Lloyd had been killed under fire near Basra. . . . Lloyd and his crew were working outside the supervision of the coalition forces and were apparently fired on by coalition tanks near Basra. . . . It was also confirmed that an Australian cameraman, Paul Moran, had been killed and two other journalists were injured by a car bomb in northern Iraq, feeding the debate about the risks of sending reporters into Iraq without the protection of military escorts. . . . "People who were embedded were not able to file any meaningful reports," he said. "The fact is in Gulf war one, the majority of detailed and accurate reports was done from people on their own.

[Comment: MID-EAST REALITIES - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 3/25/2003: For those who may not as yet have connected the dots, nine days before US forces killed ITN's Terry Lloyd, and now likely two others working with him, we reported the thinly-disguised threats by the Pentagon to do just that if journalists didn't follow orders. The MER headline on 13 March was "PENTAGON THREATENS TO KILL INDEPENDENT REPORTERS IN IRAQ" (see full story below). As a result, it will be much more difficult for independent reporters and TV crews to cover this war, especially in the upcoming historic 'Battle for Baghdad' -- just what the Pentagon wants of course.

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posted by LoZo 10:32 AM

 

Europeans flock to al-Jazeera
(Claire Cozens, The Guardian, March 25, 2003)
The Arabic-language TV network al-Jazeera has seen its European subscriber numbers double since the start of the war in Iraq amid huge demand for an alternative to western media coverage. . . . "We had 4 million subscribers in Europe and I would estimate we have added another 4 million over the last week," said Alan Marmion, al-Jazeera's media consultant. . . . "There are a lot of Arabic speakers in Europe - around 4 million in France alone. Canal Plus have even given us a transponder just so they could broadcast us. . . . "It's not just because of the war - we were already pushing out our distribution before the war began. But the fact that we provide alternative images means people are coming to us rather than us going to them." . . . Al-Jazeera has been given greater freedom than western broadcasters in Iraq, with as many as eight camera crews operating outside the confines of the military although it does also have some journalists embedded with the allied forces. . . . Although western TV crews remain in Baghdad, al-Jazeera has the only camera crew known to be operating in Basra, Iraq's second city which is still under attack. It also has crews in Baghdad and Mosul. . . . In the UK, where 87% of Arabic-speaking households have access to al-Jazeera, it is available on BSkyB's family package of channels, although it is also possible to pick up the French signal via satellite. . . . An English-language version of al-Jazeera is planned and could launch by the end of this year. . . . al-Jazeera On The Web . . . English Edition

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posted by LoZo 10:24 AM

 

War is the climax of U.S.-Israeli partnership
(Patrick Seale, 21-03-2003)
The United States has embarked on an imperial adventure in the Middle East. This is the true meaning of the war against Iraq. The war is not about the disarmament of Iraq. That was always a hollow and cynical pretext. . . . No one with any real knowledge of the situation believed that Iraq, on its knees from two disastrous wars and from 12 years of punitive sanctions, presented any sort of "imminent threat" to anyone. . . . Nor is the war only, or even primarily, about toppling Saddam Hussain. . . . The war has bigger aims: it is about the implementation of a vast - and probably demented - strategic plan. . . . Washington is intoxicated by the vision of imposing a Pax Americana on the Arab world on the model of the imperial "order" which Britain imposed on the entire region in an earlier age. . . . With bases across the region from Oman to Central Asia, America is now seeking to recreate the British Empire at its apogee. The occupation of Iraq, a major Arab country at the strategic heart of the region, will allow the United States to control the resources of the Middle East and reshape its geopolitics to its advantage - or so the Anglo-American strategists hope. . . . But if things go badly, history may well judge the war to be a criminal enterprise . . . The fatal flaw is that this is not a purely American project. Rather it must be seen as the culmination of America's strategic partnership with Israel . . . Much of the ideological justification and political pressure for war against Iraq has come from right-wing American Zionists, many of them Jews, closely allied to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and occupying influential positions both inside and outside the Bush administration. It is neither exaggeration, nor anti-Semitism, as they would have it, to say that this is a Bush-Sharon war against Iraq. . . . As is now widely understood, the genesis of the idea of occupying Iraq can be dated back to the mid-1990s. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board and often described as the intellectual driving force behind President Bush's world-view, has for years been pressing U.S. and Israeli leaders to go to war against Iraq. . . . On July 8, 1996, shortly after Benyamin Netanyahu's election victory over Shimon Peres, Perle handed Netanyahu a strategy paper entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It called for the removal of Saddam Hussain as a key Israeli objective and as a means of weakening Syria. . . . The call for an attack on Iraq was then taken up in 1997 by a right-wing American group called The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose members included Richard Perle; Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Eliot Abrams, Middle East director of Bush's National Security Council; Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq; and two influential conservative editors, William Kristol of the Weekly Standard and Norman Podhoretz of Commentary. . . . The terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 gave these advocates of American empire and of the U.S.-Israeli alliance their chance. They were able to make the inexperienced President George W. Bush, who came to power after a questionable election, the vehicle for their agenda. . . . The result is the war we are now witnessing. The ultimate objective is to change the map of the Middle East by destroying or intimidating all the enemies of the US and Israel. . . . Blair knows that Sharon, who has rubbished the Quartet's "road-map" and has devoted his life to the achievement of a "Greater Israel", has no intention of allowing the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. . . . On the contrary, he is using the crisis to continue his wholesale destruction of Palestinian society. . . . neither the White House nor the State Department has chosen to protest at the death of a young American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza this week as she tried to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home. . . . After the first flush of victory, will the occupying armies be harassed by hit-and-run guerrillas, as happened to Israel after its invasion of Lebanon in 1982? Will an Iraqi "Hezbollah" emerge on the model of the resistance movement which eventually drove Israel out of south Lebanon? . . . A non-state actor like Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida, drawing inspiration and recruits from the violent anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments now sweeping the Muslim world, might take up the challenge. Occupation breeds insurrection. This is an axiom of history.

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posted by LoZo 10:18 AM

 

Graphic Images of Bush's War on Iraq
PARENTAL WARNING: This link will take you to a Web page with VERY GRAPHIC images of the war.

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posted by LoZo 10:01 AM

 

The west has given Saddam the role he always longed for
(Said Aburish, The Guardian, March 24, 2003)
According to Opec, Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world. The scramble for Iraq's oil has already begun. American oil companies have been negotiating concessions with the Iraqi opposition in exile for months. The British are staking a claim based on their original pre-nationalisation control of the Iraqi Petroleum Company. The French believe that the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 gave them the rights to the oil-rich north of Iraq. Russia's claim is based on an agreement signed by Saddam Hussein. . . . The Iraqi opposition in exile is so divided even the Americans have stopped thinking of them as Saddam's replacement. To a US career diplomat who dealt with them for years, "they reek of corruption and talk nonsense". The Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella organisation that speaks on behalf of more than 80 political groupings, is unknown to the people of Iraq. . . . The deep divisions in the Arab world and the average Arab's bitterness towards its leaders means there is no way to express the pervasive anti-American feeling on street level except through Islamic fundamentalism. To many, Saddam was the best of a bad lot, the only secular counterweight to the Islamists. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and even Turkey are threatened by the Islamist tide gripping their countries. Fearful of alienating their people further, none of the leaders of these countries is now likely to obey the west as in the past. . . . Saddam's problems with America began after he triumphed over Khomeini, in 1989. The US had provided him with considerable logistical and financial support. But it dropped him the moment the war was over. . . . In essence Saddam achieved all the traditional ambitions of Iraq. He succeeded in nationalising the country's oil industry, managed to unify the country (albeit through police state methods) and stabilised relations with all of its covetous neighbours. In the process, for the first time he created an Iraqi identity. . . . The mayhem on the way will help Saddam realise his dream. While he didn't intend to become the leading martyr of our time, he has always been preoccupied with his place in modern Arab history. By allowing him to drag them into a regional war that recalls every bit of humiliation the Arabs have ever suffered at the hands of Britain and the US, George Bush and Tony Blair have elevated his status. Saddam's ambitious view of himself and how the Arab people are likely to regard him have suddenly become one and the same.

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posted by LoZo 11:36 AM

 

This is not war as we knew it

(Peter Preston, The Guardian, March 24, 2003)
Is the battering of Baghdad quite the spectacle that Mr Rumsfeld and his oddly smiley boss assume? A wondrous show of technical wizardry and precise targeting that leaves only a relatively few of the undeserving dead? A demonstration of American might that makes bad men quail? That's the theory of the thing. Everybody hopes - the omnipresent "hope" word - for a speedy resolution here. Get the guy you hate on the ropes and keep on pounding. But, like the video of that awful 12th, there is no wonder, nor any awe. Just a hypnotised numbness, a queasy feeling of humanity betrayed. . . . Where are those fabled weapons of mass destruction? Not pulled from some deep Iraqi bunker yet, not used in the extremity of distress. The weapons that bring this particular mass destruction rain down from American-dominated skies. They show how puny the supposed threat can seem, how feeble strutting columns of third world soldiery can abruptly become. And that, I'm afraid, is a (literally) fatal difficulty. . . . We are supposed to support our boys at moments like this. We are not supposed to protest or raise our voices. This is war, from Iwo Jima to Kuwait. But such wars - even 12 years ago - had a human element to them. They were fought by men and women, not robots. . . . While the blasting goes on, though, so does the protesting: in London, New York, San Francisco and many more besides. Which surprises Downing Street. Nations are supposed to rally at times like this. . . . There's an emotional distancing here. Awe doesn't keep the home fires burning; on the contrary, it drains passion from the contest. . . . Why not protest? The Tomahawk cruises won't mind. The stealth bombers won't take their bats home. . . . And that, in turn, begins to produce a different political equation. Politicians and their pundits assume a coming together in national struggle - and a glowing award for valour once the enemy has vaporised. Cue cheering crowds, grateful Shia; cue stockpiles of anthrax discovered, a chastened Chirac - and triumphant elections. George Senior didn't "get Saddam" and lost his job. George Junior intends to get Saddam and keep his in 2004. . . . Gulf One didn't even help old President Bush in 1992. The economy sunk him, stupid. And, disconcertingly for the White House, America's failing economy is beginning to sink young George as well. One out of two big recent opinion polls shows him losing currently to "any Democrat". . . . Do we feel puffed and proud and Churchill-patriotic? Or is there a shuffling, sinking feeling that this isn't true war?

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posted by LoZo 11:31 AM

 

IRAQ BODY COUNT Database
This is a Human Security project to establish an independent and comprehensive public database of civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003. Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available on this page and on various IBC counters which may be freely displayed on any website, where they will be automatically updated without further intervention. Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication.

The project takes as its starting point and builds upon the earlier work of Professor Marc Herold who has produced the most comprehensive tabulation of civilian deaths in the war on Afghanistan from October 2001 to the present, and the methodology has been designed in close consultation with him.

Professor Herold commented: “I strongly support this initiative. The counting of civilian dead looms ever more importantly for at least two reasons: military sources and their corporate mainstream media backers seek to portray the advent of precision guided weaponry as inflicting at most, minor, incidental civilian casualties when, in truth, such is is not the case; and the major source of opposition to these modern ‘wars’ remains an informed, articulate general public which retains a commitment to the international humanitarian covenants of war at a time when most organized bodies and so-called ‘experts’ have walked away from them”.

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posted by LoZo 10:59 AM

 

Peaceniks lost the war but changed the shape of battle
(Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, March 22, 2003)
In ways that few could have predicted, the anti-war campaign has helped shape the way the war itself is being fought. . . . Start with the evidence that the peace camp is refusing to wave the white flag, in Britain and beyond. As promised, the first day of military action brought protesters on to the streets in every major city in the land. . . . No one expects the gargantuan figures achieved on February 15, but the commitment is still there. . . . As it is around the world. US embassies have been besieged with protesters from Quito to Bangkok, Buenos Aires to Cairo, with a candlelit vigil in Berlin and a general strike in Athens. The German protest was led by schoolchildren, a sign that the phenomenon of youth protest which has surprised so many here is not confined to Britain: if anything, this war seems to have politicised a whole new generation. Those kids who skipped school to protest against a faraway war, whether in Bristol or Berlin, will never forget the experience. . . . Peace activists outside the US have no reason to feel they "lost the debate". In many ways, they won it. Which brings us to the strange, unexpected influence the anti-war effort seems to have had on the first stages of the conflict. . . . the start … did not come as previously advertised. Instead, it seemed to have been devised with one eye on the concerns of the anti-war movement. . . . The campaign began not with "shock and awe" but a subtler knife, aimed at the surgical decapitation of Saddam Hussein and his regime. One night's bombing of Baghdad lasted no more than an hour. The terrifying spectaculars threatened by Rumsfeld and the boys, reminiscent of the fireworks of the first Gulf war, only materialised last night. . . . there may be another motive for the initial preference for short-and-sweet over shock-and-awe. The US might have wanted to avoid a wave of worldwide revulsion. . . . And perhaps the clearest proof of the anti-war camp's efforts came from our own prime minister: "I know this course of action has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country," he said, just seconds into his own TV message to the nation. No leader wants to go into a war admitting such a thing. But Blair had no choice. As with much else, the peace movement has changed the landscape for this conflict - and the men of war are having to deal with it.
[Comment: The following was sent to us by a close friend and major contributor to this Web site.]
I am proud to say my own 'children of the revolution' my two teenagers … have been out several times on protest marches and demonstrations, my son even defying his school Headmaster and walking out of lessons and having to climb over the school gates which had been locked to prevent them going, about 80 pupils, in his school did this, joining 3,000 other school kids, they went on and blocked streets in the centre of . . . .

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posted by LoZo 9:38 AM

 

U.S. Battles Calls for Emergency UN Session on Iraq
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has launched a worldwide diplomatic drive to head off the calling of an emergency session of the U.N. General Assembly to condemn the U.S.-led war on Iraq, diplomats said on Friday.

The group of nonaligned nations at the United Nations (news - web sites) met earlier this week to consider convening a special session of the 191-nation assembly to denounce the United States.

But the group of 166 countries, led currently by Malaysia, failed to agree on whether to go ahead after some argued action was premature as the war had not yet begun, diplomats said.

No new meeting of the group has been set since the invasion began on Wednesday. But "there are a lot of countries talking about that," said Syrian U.N. Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe.

Envoys attributed the disarray among the nonaligned to U.S. diplomatic muscle and said many countries feared offending Washington.

"The United States is putting pressure on many countries to resist," said General Assembly President Jan Kavan of the Czech Republic.

U.S. diplomats were opposing a special assembly session and -- if that failed -- to vote against a resolution condemning the United States, Kavan told reporters.

In Washington, a State Department official confirmed the United States was making its case that an emergency session "would not serve the interests of the United Nations."

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posted by West 9:57 AM

 

First contact disappoints some Marines
WITH THE 5TH MARINES, Iraq, March 21 (UPI) -- The aftermath of the first skirmishes with Iraqi troops has struck America's premier fighting force in different ways: feelings range from relief to frustration, even anger, that initial combat was less intense than the Marines had imagined.

"Cowards," muttered a forward air controller attached to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, one of the first units to enter southern Iraq from the Kuwaiti desert after a six-week wait.

"I should have shot him," said a corporal, describing how an Iraqi soldier in a trench brought up his rifle then dropped it at the last minute.

The bravado, however, was tempered Friday with other emotions. The corporal, who later missed stepping on a land mine by a few feet was visibly shaken, though he'd never admit it to his comrades.

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posted by West 7:44 AM

 

Yahoo! News - Gorbachev Says U.S. Attack Big Mistake, Unjustified
OTSU, Japan (Reuters) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who gave tacit approval for the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites), said on Thursday the U.S. attack on Iraq was a major mistake that would do huge damage to international relations and security.  

Gorbachev, who was president of the Soviet Union when the first Gulf War broke out in January 1991, told reporters at an international water conference in Japan that it seemed the United States was trying to make the world its own province.

"I believe not only that this war is unjustified, it is a major political mistake," Gorbachev said.

"It will do tremendous damage to international relations and to world security," he said.

"It is an attempt to teach a lesson to all other states and shows that the U.S. administration is trying to make the world its own province."

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posted by West 10:26 AM

 

Greenpeace protests U.S. military buildup in southern Turkish port
SKENDERUN, Turkey - Some two dozen Greenpeace activists chained themselves Friday to the wheels of a truck blocking an entrance to an eastern Turkish port, where U.S. forces are unloading equipment ahead of a possible Iraq war.

Police dragged away the demonstrators while dozens of Turkish soldiers holding assault rifles reinforced the entrance. U.S. tank carriers were seen behind the soldiers at a distance.

The protesters tied banners to both sides of the truck reading "No war, U.S. go home." Police could not immediately move the truck as the demonstrators had broken the hand brake.

"If the U.S. is so intent on disarmament, it should start at home," said Greenpeace activist Banu Dokmecibasi, in a written statement. "It is the United States that possesses the world's most sophisticated weaponry and it is the United States that holds the world's largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction."

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posted by West 10:11 AM

 

Top White House anti-terror boss resigns
WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- The top National Security Council official in the war on terror resigned this week for what a NSC spokesman said were personal reasons, but intelligence sources say the move reflects concern that the looming war with Iraq is hurting the fight against terrorism.

Rand Beers would not comment for this article, but he and several sources close to him are emphatic that the resignation was not a protest against an invasion of Iraq. But the same sources, and other current and former intelligence officials, described a broad consensus in the anti-terrorism and intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq would divert critical resources from the war on terror.

Beers has served as the NSC's senior director for counter-terrorism only since August. The White House said Wednesday that he officially remains on the job and has yet to set a departure date.

"Hardly a surprise," said one former intelligence official. "We have sacrificed a war on terror for a war with Iraq. I don't blame Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread thought that the war on terror is being set aside for the war with Iraq at the expense of our military and intel resources and the relationships with our allies."

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posted by West 9:44 AM

 

Another Gulf War, another al-Qaeda
It is a fact of history that the US decision to prosecute the Gulf War in 1991 spawned al-Qaeda. From the very beginning, Osama bin Laden's refrain has been that Western forces on Arab soil have compromised Arab sovereignty and polluted Islam's holy lands. Al-Qaeda played on these grievances to recruit radical young Arabs to its cause. By pointing out the pro-Israel bias in US foreign policy, bin Laden gave his message a grassroots appeal on the Arab street.

This war is likely to lead to a significant rise in anti-Americanism in the Arab world....The overwhelming majority of respondents -- men and women in five Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Saudi Arabia -- felt that war with Iraq would worsen the chances for peace in the Middle East. 91 percent of the respondents in Saudi Arabia concurred with the statement. When asked whether the war would lead to less terrorism, more than three-quarters of the respondents disagreed. 96 percent of the Saudis said that the war would lead to more terrorism. 75 percent of the Egyptians polled felt it would lead to more terrorism. When asked if the war would improve the chances for democracy in the region, respondents disagreed strongly, with 95 percent of Saudis leading the way but even in Jordan, 58 percent disagreed. The survey uncovered significant negative attitudes toward US foreign policy. Only 4 percent of the people in Saudi Arabia had a favorable opinion of US foreign policy, followed by 6 percent in Morocco and Jordan, 13 percent in Egypt and 32 percent in Lebanon.

The incoming prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Badawi, worries that "a war against Iraq would be seen in the Islamic world as unfair, and if it causes Muslims to join the extremists, then moderate Muslim governments would be threatened everywhere". There is a strong chance that the second Gulf War will succeed in accomplishing the very opposite of what Bush has sought to achieve.

The United States is making rapid strides against al-Qaeda. As a result of Pakistani cooperation, it has apprehended or killed many of its key leaders and appears to be rapidly closing in on the top two. With the capture of the third man, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the organization may have lost its operational capability to mount "spectacular" acts of terrorism. However, all of this will come to naught once the US invades Iraq.

It is likely that this war will add new credibility to grievances about loss of Arab sovereignty. It will complicate the resolution of the Palestinian problem, leading to a rise in anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim world. In a fulfillment of the law of unintended consequences, it may spawn a second generation of terrorists even more determined than al-Qaeda to evict US forces from the Middle East, thus defeating the very purposes for which it is about to be fought.

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posted by Hal 6:29 PM

 

Waiting for the storm
(The Guardian, March 19, 2003)
Aziza Housewife, Baghdad . . . We're scared to death. We used to laugh on the phone but now I am completely numb. We don't know what to do and we don't know what the future will be. It is as though we have all lost faith in reality. We have never been religious but now I hear myself saying after every other word, inshallah. We have nothing left but religion. I see it all around me. . . . I have been told to stay in my house and dig a trench for water in the back garden. We are not allowed to go out or make contact with other people. It is driving me mad already. People think that we are isolated. But we follow everything, just as if we were sitting in London or Washington. We follow every single development and we see how confused foreigners are about how the Iraqi people feel. We have been forced by Saddam Hussein to support him. He makes it look as though he is standing for our homeland and that we are right behind him. If we are attacked, of course we have to support our homeland, but that doesn't mean we are defending him. I'm afraid that our people will be forced to fight for Saddam Hussein now. They are going for every single male capable of carrying a gun, recruiting everyone. . . . There is no medicine in the house for my son's asthma. The government has been distributing food rations for the past two months but nobody knows how long they will last. I have no idea how long this war will go on. I think it is going to drag and drag. Saddam Hussein will jump from house to house in Baghdad. He will be hiding with ordinary families and they won't catch him easily. . . . Time and time again I think, enough. We've been punished so much more than we deserve. . . . The name of the writer has been changed for reasons of security.

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posted by LoZo 9:26 PM

 

Protesters promise civil disobedience
(Jeff Donn, The Associated Press, March 18, 2003)
They call it Day X, Trigger Day, The Day Of, or The Day After. Anti-war activists are using varying shorthand for an outbreak of war with Iraq — and they are designing a wide menu of protest strategies, from provocation to prayer. . . . They vow to block federal buildings, military compounds and streets in a rash of peaceful civil disobedience. They say they will walk out of college classes, picket outside city halls and state capitols and recite prayers of mourning at interfaith services. . . . Some plans for the first day or two of war are writ large, like paralyzing traffic with bicycles and cars and disrupting commerce in San Francisco's financial district. . . . Some are meant to be noisy, like a march in Portsmouth, N.H., with clanging pots and pans. Others will be quiet and solemn, like a vigil in Ann Arbor, Mich., with Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers. . . . In Columbia, S.C., activists hope to serve up satire, making fun of the government's anti-terrorism advice to homeowners. They want to plaster a federal building with duct tape and plastic sheeting. . . . acts of civil disobedience — with the risk of arrest — have been set up at more than 50 cities. "When you get to the point that the war actually begins, that's a point when many... feel they have to take the strongest action they can personally take," . . . "We went through phenomenal pain when our son Bob died at the World Trade Center, and now I'm so depressed that his death is being misused to justify this war," said Robert McIlvaine, 58, of Philadelphia. . . . San Francisco anti-war groups have laid out similar plans on a larger scale for the outbreak of war, including an effort to shut down the Pacific Stock Exchange and some high-profile commercial buildings. . . . "The bare bones of the plan is to basically shut down the financial district of San Francisco. The way we see it is that we basically unplug the system that creates war,"

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posted by LoZo 6:46 PM

 

Russia and France angered by end of diplomacy
(Gary Younge, Nick Paton Walsh, Jon Henley, and Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, March 18, 2003)
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, breaking weeks of silence, labelled military action without UN backing "a mistake", while his foreign minister called it "illegal." . . . Paris dismissed criticisms in public, but privately French officials were bitter at what they saw as a deliberate distortion of France's position in the search for a scapegoat. . . . In Moscow, Mr Putin said a war without UN approval "would be fraught with the gravest consequences, will result in casualties and destabilise the international situation in general ... We stand for resolving the problem exclusively through peaceful means. Any other option would be a mistake." . . . The Kremlin's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said: "The use of force against Iraq, especially with reference to previous resolutions of the UN security council, has no legal grounds." . . . Russia's parliamentary speaker, Gennady Seleznyov, said an attack would cause the world to consider that "the US is a terrorist state that can only be dealt with in the Hague tribunal". US officials said Moscow had declined a Pentagon offer to coordinate postwar issues such as humanitarian aid. . . . The Canadian prime minister, Jean Chretien, said his country's military would play no role in a war unsanctioned by the UN.

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posted by LoZo 5:07 PM

 

Anti-war sentiment sweeps Europe
(The Age, 19 March 2003)
Protests against a looming war in Iraq flared across Europe as nations ordered their citizens out of the region and prepared for fallout from a military conflict. . . . In Italy, militants briefly took over the offices of the US Esso oil company and pacifists temporarily blocked an Esso fuel terminal, as activists vowed to launch crippling strikes if war starts. . . . "When war starts, the world will stop," organisers said in a statement. . . . In Belgium, seven Iraqi families filed a lawsuit against former US president George Bush, father of the current president, and three other leaders for alleged crimes committed during the first Gulf War in 1991. . . . In Britain, war opponents called for a national walkout in the country on the day a war is launched and in Germany peace groups mobilised activists for a massive demonstration on the so-called "X Day." . . . "There is no justification for a unilateral decision to resort to war," said French President Jacques Chirac as his prime minister tried to ease tensions, saying Paris and Washington remained allies. . . . A resigned German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said: "My question remains: Does the level of threat posed by the Iraqi dictator justify a war which will result in the certain death of thousands of innocent men, women and children? . . . "My answer remains, No." . . . The Vatican condemned the ultimatum, saying: "Whoever decides that all peaceful means under international law have been exhausted is assuming a grave responsibility before God, his conscience and before history."

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posted by LoZo 4:26 PM

 

Cook resigns and gets Commons ovation
(BBC News, 17 March 2003)
Robin Cook has told MPs the reason he resigned from the government was that he could not back a march towards a war with Iraq that did not have international and domestic support. . . . In a Commons statement that won him an unprecedented standing ovation, Mr Cook went on to warn that international alliances of all kinds were under threat now that the diplomatic route had been abandoned. . . . he added that he would vote against the government's stance on Tuesday. . . . "Neither the international community nor the British public are persuaded that there is an urgent and compelling reason for this action in Iraq," he said. . . . The resignation is seen as a blow to Mr Blair coming just hours before he is due to ask MPs to authorise the use of "all means necessary" to disarm Iraq. . . . He drew a comparison over the impatience shown with Iraq over its failure to comply with the will of the UN and the situation in Palestine. . . . "It is over 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories," he reflected. . . . The former foreign secretary went on to express alarm that the US administration seemed more interested in regime change that in Iraq's disarmament. . . . "What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected we would not now be about to commit British troops," he said.

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posted by LoZo 2:44 PM

 

Remember the Powell Doctrine? Colin...Read Your White Paper
Examine the Powell Doctrine and see how it applies to the invasion ("liberation") of Iraq. Powell said that six questions MUST be answered before US forces could be committed to combat abroad.
1) Is A Vital US Interest At Stake? No.
2) Will We Commit Sufficient Resources To Win? Yes...maybe.
3) Are Our Objectives Clearly Defined? Well, kinda sorta, maybe, but NO, not really.
4) Will We Sustain the Commitment? Hell no.
5) Is There A Reasonable Expectation that the Public and Congress Will Support the Operation? A resounding NO.
6) Have we exhausted our other options? Nope.

Mr. Powell seems to have misplaced his own Doctrine. Would somebody please give him a copy?

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posted by Hal 1:49 PM

 

The US propaganda machine has succeeded in shaping the views of many American citizens. The sad fact is that American citizens are mostly dupes.
Bring Back America (Before it becomes a Police State)

Many of the September 11 hijackers are thought to be Saudi nationals. One is thought to be Egyptian. About seven of them are of unknown nationality. However, in several polls (CNN-Time, CBS, and Knight-Ridder), many Americans think the terrorist hijackers were mostly Iraqis. DUPES!

When asked "Was Saddam Hussein personally involved in the September 11 attacks?" (Although it is a claim the Bush administration has never made and for which there is no evidence) -- 72 percent said it was either very or somewhat likely. In another poll: 45% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In another poll, "How many of the September 11th terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens," the answers were:
Most of them: 21%
Some of them: 23%
Just one: 6%
None 17%
Don't know 33%

Astounding!

You and I are fortunate that we weren't born and raised in Iraq — or Syria or Korea or Zimbabwe or Indonesia. Because we're Americans, we don't live in a police state, as so many billions of people in the world do. Of course, our own government has made it clear that it can — and will — monitor our emails, tap our phones, dig into our bank accounts, and imprison us indefinitely without trial or even access to an attorney. But then, unlike the police states, our government does these things only for good purposes — never to hide its mistakes, to intimidate dissenters, or to force us to trust its good intentions — as happens in police states. [ha!]

Because we are Americans, we have a free press — not the controlled press that exists in Iraq and other despotic countries. Of course, our President holds scripted news conferences — during which the questions and questioners have been chosen in advance. But that's merely because he has a penchant for organization, not to control what the press reports — the way it's done in despotic countries. [ha!]

The obsession with Saddam Hussein has become so pervasive that polls by CNN, CBS, and Knight-Ridder show that a majority of Americans assume the World Trade Center attackers were Iraqis. (I wonder how they got that idea.) I guess it's no surprise that a majority supports the President's desire to Iraq. After all, 3,000 Americans died on September 11. But this government propaganda has been disseminated as a replacement for the presentation of evidence that the President feels is too sensitive for us to see. So, unlike in Iraq, government brainwashing is done for our own security. [ha!]

In the guise of supposedly protecting our freedom, our government has already confiscated far too much of it.

Our government's attempts to fight communism or spread democracy around the world have caused millions of innocent people to die in Iran, Indonesia, Iraq, Panama, Guatemala, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Grenada, the Congo, Libya, the Sudan, Serbia, Cambodia, and other countries. All the good intentions in the world are of little comfort to the people buried prematurely all over the globe.

The US should: Quit pretending it knows what's best for other countries...quit inciting terrorists by backing coups and dictatorial regimes...quit generating hostility by bribing foreign governments to allow American troops to be stationed in over a hundred countries...quit giving our money to foreign countries — no matter whose side they're on (140 foreign governments received your taxes in 2000). As usual, the government steals our money through taxes, then uses it in ways that would horrify most citizens.

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posted by Hal 12:25 PM

 

The forgotten power of the General Assembly
(Robert Fisk, The Independent, 14 March 2003)
For 30 years, America's veto policy in the United Nations has been central to its foreign policy. More than 70 times the United States has shamelessly used its veto in the UN, most recently to crush a Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli killing of the British UN worker Iain Hook in Jenin last December. . . . Most of America's vetoes have been in support of its ally Israel. It has vetoed a resolution calling for the Israeli withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights (January, 1982), a resolution condemning the killing of 11 Muslims by Israeli soldiers near the al-Aqsa mosque (April, 1982), and a resolution condemning Israelis slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees at the UN camp at Qana (April, 1986). . . . And now we are told by George Bush Junior that the Security Council will become irrelevant if France, Germany and Russia use their veto? . . . UN resolution 377 allows the General Assembly to recommend collective action "if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security". . . . Duncan Currie, a lawyer working for Greenpeace, has set out a legal opinion, which points out that the phrase in 377 providing that in "any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression", the General Assembly "shall consider the matter immediately" means that – since "threat" and "breach" are mentioned separately – the Assembly can be called into session before hostilities start.

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posted by LoZo 2:12 PM

 

Come What May, Bush & Blair Are Bent on Destroying Iraq
(Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji, ArabNews.com, 13 March 2003)
The war-hungry United States has sent more than 250,000 soldiers to the Gulf with all their destructive weapons, including 300 fighter planes and bombers, to drop tons of bombs on the unarmed people of Iraq. . . . It has deployed five large warships in the Gulf waters to launch the latest missiles and destroy everything in Iraq. It has also brought armed carriers and tanks to raze Iraqi cities and towns. The Iraqi Army, which was once a formidable force in the Arab world, does not have nearly the same combat capability. Nearly a quarter of a century of wars have weakened not only the Iraqi people but also the Iraqi Army. . . . Is the war on Iraq part of a bigger plan to weaken Muslims and Arabs and make them subservient to the sole superpower? Is the war on Iraq a prelude t