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| 4/9/03 What happened in Baghdad in the Shu'ale market civilian killings: I first heard with the same skepticism you might, gentle reader, a Pentagon representative claiming it could have just as probably been caused by an antiquated Iraqi weapon, so I decided to keep following the story. When I read that on March 30, Robert Fisk reported in the London Independent that a missile fragment was found, and that it bore a visible serial number, which Fisk published, I remembered all the accuracy and fairness in 30 years of Fisk reporting and authorship on the region, quite a bit of which I have personally read. The numbers on the fragment, retrieved from the scene and not shown to the Iraqi authorities, read: "30003-704ASB7492". The letter "B" was partially obscured by scratches and may be an "H". It was followed by a second code: "MFR 96214 09." So far, according to a search of the Nexis database, no major U.S. news outlet has picked up this and other new information. |
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| 4/12/03 from VoteNoWar.org email: The war on Iraq does not prove the failure of the anti-war movement. If anything, the war on Iraq proves only that the economic, political and military authority in the United States is morally bankrupt.The unintended consequence of Bush's plans for "endless war" has been the galvanization of peoples worldwide who-- reaching across borders, races, religions and nationalities -- have stood together in mass expressions of hope and demands for justice. The Bush administration and the Pentagon are keenly aware of this other "superpower"-- the world-wide peace movement that poses the single biggest obstacle to their ongoing war drive. Enlisting the support of the corporate media, the government of the U.S. has consistently lied to the people of the U.S. about the reasons behind the war on Iraq, and now about the realities of the war, in the hope that it can subdue and paralyze the domestic peace movement. Having slaughtered and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqi people, the U.S./British invasion forces are celebrating the use of their massive, overwhelming and brutal military power. The images portrayed in the U.S. media conceal the truth of the devastation wrought on the Iraqis. While hospitals are overflowing with civilian casualties caused by the U.S., the streets of the country are littered with incinerated bodies, destroyed homes and families buried alive. See: "Amid Allied jubilation, a child lies in agony, clothes soaked in blood" |
| 4/16/03 Robert Fisk: "A statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down on Wednesday, in the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima": The world's media showed a joyous crowd battering the prone statue with shoes and cheering. The zoomed out version shows a crowd of maybe 150-200 people, many of them press and soldiers, and a few dozen Iraqis, surrounding the statue in an otherwise empty square whose entrances are all blocked by tanks. Another photo, this one much closer in, shows the face of one jubilant young man who, in another photo, appears to be the same person standing beside Ahmed Chalabi, the U.S.'s preferred new leader, among his group of exiles, trained and flown in. See The pulling down of the Statue was a staged media eventfor the enlarged actual original photos and video. What that means is that it was very much an invited audience, at an event played out right outside the journalist ghetto in the Palestine Hotel. Pre-war, whenever the Iraqi Ministry of Information wanted the international reporters to notice a demonstration they would thoughtfully arrange for it to take place right outside the Press Centre, just to save them a journey. Here we have the roving Ministry of Information bringing you the required Berlin Wall Moment on room service. No need to leave your balcony. What it means is that the Iraqi people have been cheated, yet again, by the U.S. and UK. That moment belonged to them, just as the chipping and hammering and climbing of the Berlin Wall, that mighty, inspiring, overwhelming night belonged to the divided Berliners. Instead it was stolen, cheapened, deflated, CNN-ised. A journalist reported seeing an Iraqi man go up to a U.S. soldier and say "I'm now going to exercise my right to free speech for the first time in 24 years. Go home." |
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| You are beautiful spirit of light number to visit this site. |
| 5/6/03 New book by American University Constitutional Law Scholar Jamin Raskin "Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People": This book is a current Washington Post best-seller that Barbara Ehrenreich calls "brilliantly argued and meticulously researched," Congressman John Conyers calls "groundbreaking," and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney calls "gripping" and "required reading for every citizen who cares about the fate of our democracy." I am enjoying it myself, gentle reader, to give a book review to BushWhackedUSA.com. Other informative books/authors: Greg Palast "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", Michael Parenti "America Besieged", Noam Chomsky "9-11", "Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda", William Rivers Pitt and Scott Ritter "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know", Zbigniew Brzezinski "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives", Robert Fisk, Edward Said, Arundhati Roy, Phyllis Bennis, Lorna Tychostup. |
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| 4/4/03 Geoff Hoon, Robert Fisk and reporting the truth: Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, is a smooth politician who relies on nuance to do his dirty work. He did not say, in plain terms, that he disbelieves The Independent's accounts of civilian casualties sustained in Iraq. He did not say that Robert Fisk, our award-winning reporter, is a willing dupe of Saddam Hussein's regime. He simply allowed those suggestions to hang, unspoken, in the House of Commons chamber yesterday. "A piece of a cruise missile was handed to the journalist," he said, to explain how we were able to publish the serial number of the missile likely to have been responsible for the second Baghdad marketplace explosion last Friday, which killed about 62 civilians. Robert Fisk has a proud record of reporting what he sees. He has travelled to dangerous places and described unflinchingly what is happening. He prefers to speak to the people caught up in conflicts rather than report what the generals, politicians and spokesmen are saying. Any careful reader of his reports from Iraq would know that he holds no brief for the Saddam regime. Indeed, he was among the first journalists to report Saddam's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. Anyone who read his reporting of the Kosovo war will remember that, when Nato headquarters denied that its aircraft had hit civilian convoys, he went to the spot on the ground where the missiles fell and found the markings on casings of US munitions. Nato spokesmen later admitted responsibility. Mr Hoon's handling of the news from this war has been characterised by exaggeration, half-truth and backtracking. It was Mr Hoon who claimed on BBC Radio that local people had "certainly" risen up in Basra. When asked how he knew, he blustered. It does not seem to have been wholly true. It was Mr Hoon who claimed that chemical suits found by advancing coalition troops showed "categorically" that Saddam was preparing to use chemical weapons, to be contradicted by Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff, who warned against jumping to conclusions. Last night, the MoD was forced to concede that an estimate of PoW numbers given only hours earlier by Mr Hoon was wildly inaccurate. Yesterday's innuendo against this newspaper and our correspondent was a miserable attempt to brush aside unwelcome truths. This is no way to reassure a doubtful British public that the Government genuinely wants to minimise civilian casualties, rather than simply the reporting of them. |
| 3/18/03 from MoveOn.org email: We have joined together to articulate a vision of how the world should be -- of how nations should treat each other, of how we can collectively deal with threats to our security. One simple way to show your continued commitment to this vision is to put a light in your window. It could be a Christmas string or candle, a light bulb, or a lantern. It's an easy way to keep the light of reason and hope burning, to let others know that they are not alone, and to show the way home to the young men and women who are on their way to Iraq. |
| Feb 2003 MIT Professor Noam Chomsky: "The most powerful state in world history has proclaimed, loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force." 2/27/03 NEW YORK TIMES John Brady Kiesling's letter to Colin Powell: Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal. It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America�s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has �oderint dum metuant� really become our motto? I urge you to listen to America's friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership.When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry.And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet? Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have reserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far.We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America�s ability to defend its interests.I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share. |
| 1/15/03 peace rally at which I was so lucky to get to see author and Purple Heart veteran Ron Kovics give a talk. He is paralyzed from the chest down and so bravely spoke of sacrifice from his wheelchair. Quote from one of his talks: "We are well aware that this war can only cause us more sorrow, more suffering as a nation, as a people. We will go to the streets in great numbers in the coming weeks and months. And we will make history. Because we must make history. We must be willing to sacrifice. We must be willing to serve, as a people, as citizens, we must participate, we must have the courage, and find that courage if we don't have it, to step over the line, to say 'Enough', and to say 'This country is our country, we love this country, we are sick and tired of the way this country has been represented. We are sick and tired of the way other people view us as a people.' They have soiled our name. They have taken the good name of the people of this beautiful, beautiful country, they have taken the name of the people of this country, and they have run it through the mud. And we are going to take this country back, because it belongs to us. And we will create a beautiful country, a country we can be proud of, a country that the rest of the world will look upon and say 'They're a good people. They're a reasonable people, a kind people, a compassionate people.' Because we are a beautiful people. And we who sit here before you, we know that this is a great country, we know this is a beautiful country. We feel the potential of this country. You are going to see the potential of this country, on the streets of this country, on the streets of the cities of this country. You are going to see not only a great movement, but you are going to see a society change, and you are going to see history. This is the beginning." |
The Work: National Security Strategy of the United States of America Project for the New American Century (PNAC) USResolve.org |
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| 4/19/03 Peter Lackner: "As the war becomes less newsworthy for the corporate media, the real news of continued killing gets increasingly obscured. The warhawks are picking at their next target" ... "to justify an invasion on the momentum of their grand success, and won�t even think of first going to the UN for approval. And this same greedy gang is busily cementing the legal, administrative,and political venues to continue milking and deceiving the US populace for decades to come. But the pro-patriotic fervency of those hanging on to the American Dream is a symptom that doubts lie just beneath the surface. And we of the peace movement must now encourage them to dare to question what is behind the facades, become truly informed" ... "As things get even worse at home and abroad, we will be there to help develop the alternatives, until a true majority restores true democracy to our country." |
| 4/18/03 Raymond A. Schroth: The Independent�s Robert Fisk, speaking of his experiences in Belfast and Beirut, reminds us that all governments lie. Journalists must dig and dig to get the truth. American spokesmen refused to acknowledge that the missile that killed 62 Iraqis in the Baghdad marketplace was ours. Fisk went to the site, got a piece of the missile with the serial number 30003-704ASB7492 MFR 9621409, made by Raytheon in McKenney, Texas, which last year had a $16.8 billion contract with the Pentagon.If that story has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox, CNN or in any major American newspapers, I�ve missed it.�If ours is truly a democracy, the people should be told and shown -- even if they wish to turn their eyes away -- exactly what is being waged in their name.� |
| 4/20/03 "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" Michel Guerrin for Le Monde: Laurent Van der Stockt, a photographer working for the Gamma agency and under contract for the New York Times Magazine, followed the advance of the 3/4 Marines (3rd battalion, 4th regiment) for three weeks, up to the taking of Baghdad on April 9. This is (excerpted from) his eyewitness account of the Marines' march to Baghdad: "I've never seen a war with so few 'returns'. The Iraqi army was like a ghost. It barely existed. Over the three weeks, I only saw the adversary fire a few short-range rockets and a few shots. I saw deserted trenches, a dead Iraqi soldier lying next to a piece of bread and some old equipment. Nothing that really made you feel that there was a real confrontation going on, nothing comparable to the massiveness of the means at the Americans' disposal. The Marines were advancing and taking up position, hiding behind mounds of earth. They were still really tense. A small blue van was moving towards the convoy. Three not-very-accurate warning shots were fired. The shots were supposed to make the van stop. The van kept on driving, made a U-turn, took shelter and then returned slowly. The Marines opened fire. All hell broke loose. They were firing all over the place. You could hear 'Stop firing' being shouted. The silence that set in was overwhelming. Two men and a woman had just been riddled with bullets. So this was the enemy, the threat. A second vehicle drove up. The same scenario was repeated. Its passengers were killed on the spot. A grandfather was walking slowly with a cane on the sidewalk. They killed him too (SEE PHOTO IN LE MONDE). As with the old man, the Marines fired on an SUV driving along the river bank that was getting too close to them. Riddled with bullets, the vehicle rolled over. Two women and a child got out, miraculously still alive. They sought refuge in the wreckage. A few seconds later, it flew into bits as a tank lobbed a terse shot into it. Marines are conditioned to reach their target at any cost, by staying alive and facing any type of enemy. They abusively make use of disproportionate firepower. These hardened troops, followed by tons of equipment, supported by extraordinary artillery power, protected by fighter jets and cutting-edge helicopters, were shooting on local inhabitants who understood absolutely nothing of what was going on. With my own eyes I saw about fifteen civilians killed in two days." |
| 4/22/03 "Beware of Americans Bearing Gifts" Azizuddin El-Kaissouni: Human rights are ostensibly a major concern for the US. They�re a fundamental tenet of its foreign policy. That�s a comforting thought for many millions of Arab Muslims living under terrible dictatorships and tyrannical rulers. Has relief materialized for these people? No. The only Arab tyrant the US has exhibited any form of interest in is Saddam Hussein. And, unsurprisingly to many Arabs, Saddam�s human rights record only became an issue when he invaded Kuwait. Prior to that, mass gassings, executions, torture, disappearances, the war of aggression waged against Iran � all minor details when compared to Iraq�s extensive oil wealth, and it�s willingness to hold back the tides of Islamic militancy emanating from Khomeini�s Iran. And now that the first chapter of the war is ending, human rights seem to be a marginal issue to the US. As Robert Fisk noted, there is no evidence of any attempt to actually investigate the houses of horrors where Iraqi intelligence tortured, raped, maimed and killed. Nothing. As Fisk put it, referring to the ubiquitous torturers that Bush and Blair constantly reminded us of, "Were they monsters, these men? Yes. Are they sought by the Americans? No. Are they now working for the Americans? Yes, quite possibly � indeed some of them may well be in the long line of ex-security thugs who queue every morning outside the Palestine Hotel in the hope of being re-hired by the US Marines' Civil Affairs Unit. The names of the guards at the Qasimiyeh torture centre in Baghdad are in papers lying on the floor. They were Ahmed Hassan Alawi, Akil Shaheed, Noaman Abbas and Moham-med Fayad. But the Americans haven't bothered to find this out. So Messrs Alawi, Shaheed, Abbas and Fayad are welcome to apply to work for them." Let us add another question to the list so kindly provided by Mr. Fisk. Are Muslims and Arabs shocked and surprised? No. |
| 4/18/03 "'The Pianist' of Baghdad - Losing Music to the Ruins of War" Kathy Kelly: 'In the chaos of Baghdad, two Iraqi musicians struggle to preserve their music school. All that remains after looting is a song of peace. On a recent morning, as nurses dug graves in front of the Al Mansour Hospital, Baghdad University lay in ruins and the Red Cross warned that the city's medical system was collapsing, two musicians from this wounded city came. Majid Al-Ghazali and Hisham Sharaf hoped to call relatives outside Iraq. Hisham's home was badly damaged during the war. "One month ago, I was the director of the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra," Hisham said with an ironic smile. "Now what am I?" Majid had a particularly rough experience. During the first week of bombing, a neighbor called the secret police and turned him in for visiting with foreigners. He was jailed the next day. After the "fall" of Baghdad, the same neighbor claimed he was actually part of the secret police. Majid is terrified now. "I think they want my house," he said. "No place is safe." I first met Hisham at the Baghdad School of Folk Music and Ballet last year on one of my visits with Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end sanctions on Iraq and prevent further aggression against the Iraqi people. Hisham and Majid taught at the school during the day and rehearsed with the orchestra at night. As the war approached, I told Hisham how meaningful the song "O Finlandia" has been to many people in the United States. At least 150 families who lost loved ones on 9/11 had used this peace anthem as part of memorial services. Sibelius composed the melody in the late 19th century. Following World War I, lyrics were created emphasizing the common aspirations and dreams shared by all humanity. Hisham had chuckled then, and couldn't resist pointing out the irony that someone from the United States wanted to teach his students a peace song. "OK," he said, "Sing it for me. We can do this." Within two days, an entire class was singing an Arabic transliteration of the song. The next morning the two returned, shaken and distraught. They had approached U.S. soldiers the previous evening asking for help to protect their school. The soldiers said it was not their job and ordered Hisham and Majid to go away. They went to the entrance of the school hoping they could somehow protect it alone. Five armed men arrived. Majid, Hisham and Hisham's brother pled with them not to attack the school. The looters argued, "We are simple people. Poor people. Soon there will be no food, no money, and we have no jobs. You are rich people." "Please," Majid said, "we will give you the instruments, give you the furniture, but don't destroy the music, the records, the history." "No," the armed men said. "Baghdad is finished." They ransacked the school, broke many instruments, burnt the music and the records. Why do desperate people commit deplorable acts of mindless destruction? I don't know. But through decades of warfare and sanctions, powerful elites in Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom have ignored millions of Iraq's impoverished people, who have suffered tremendously. "Here," Hisham said, "listen to this. This is all we have left." He handed me headphones borrowed from a Norwegian television correspondent. The orchestra was playing "O Finlandia." Listening to the children craft their music, I softly sang the words: "This is my song, O God of all the nations. A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is. Here are my dreams, my hopes, my holy shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as deep and true as mine." I stopped. Hisham had begun to cry'. As Santa Barbara's Elly Nader, a founder of "Another Mother for Peace", said before she died, "If humanity loses music, then we turn into beasts". |
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| 4/23/03 Robert Fisk: "So what I've been writing about these past few days is simply the following. We claim that we want to preserve the national heritage of the Iraqi people, and yet my own count of government buildings burning in Baghdad before I left was 158, of which the only buildings protected by the United States army and the marines were the Ministry of Interior, which has the intelligence corp of Iraq and the Ministry of Oil, and I needn't say anything else about that. Every other ministry was burning. Even the Ministry of Higher Education/Computer Science was burning. And in some cases American marines were sitting on the wall next to the ministries watching them burn. So the Americans have allowed the entire core and infrastructure of the next government of Iraq to be destroyed, keeping only the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Oil. That tells it's own story. On top of that I was one of the first journalists to walk in to the National Archaeological Museum and the National Library of Archives with all the Ottoman and state archives and the Koranic Library of the Ministry of Religious Endowment and all were burned. Petrol was poured on these documents and they were all burned in 3000 degrees" "After the Koranic Library was set on fire I raced to the headquarters of the Third Marine Force Division in Baghdad and I said there is this massive Koranic Library on fire and I said what can you do? And under the Geneva Conventions the US Occupation Forces have a moral, whatever occupations forces there are, and they happen to be American, have a legal duty to protect documents and various embassies. There was a young officer who got on the radio and said 'there was some kind of Biblical library on fire,' biblical for heavens sake, and I gave him a map of the exact locations, the collaterals on the locations to the marines and nobody went there, and all the Korans were burned, Korans going back to the 16th Century totally burned. So, somebody has an interest in destroying the center of a new government and the cultural identity of Iraq." "Somebody or some institution or some organization today now is actively setting out to destroy the cultural identity of Iraq and the ministries that form the core of a new Iraq government. Who would be behind that and who would permit it to happen, and why is it that the US military, so famed for its ability to fight its way across the Tigris and the Euphrates river and come into Baghdad will not act under the Geneva Convention to protect these institutions? That is the question. And I do not have the answer to it.""There was a website set up between American archaeologists and the Pentagon many weeks ago listing those areas of vital national heritage to Iraq which might be looted, damaged, stormed, burned. The museum was on that list. The museum, I have seem physically marked on the satellite pictures which the marines have to move around in Baghdad. They know it's there, they know what it is. Now, when I got to the museum, which is far more than a week ago, there were gun battles going on between rioters and looters, bullets skittering up the walls of apartment blocks outside. It was quite clear when I walked in that looting was quite clearly.... Someone has opened the doors, the huge safe doors of the storeroom of the museum with a key. The looting was on a most detailed, precise and coordinated scale. The people knew what the wanted to go for. Those Grecian statues they didn't want they decapitated and threw to the floor. Those earrings and gold ornaments and bullring gods that they wanted to take, they took. And within a few days those priceless heritage items of Iraq's history were on sale in Europe and in America. I don't believe that that happened by chance. Two of the interesting things: number one is the looters knew exactly what they wanted and they got it out of a country with a speed that we as journalists cannot get our stories out of the country. Secondly, a much more serious in the long term. The arsonists, the men who were going around burning, they must have had maps, they knew where to go, they knew what would not be defended by the Americans. In one case, you know this is a city without electricity, without water, I recognized one of the men who was burning things. He had a small beard, a goatee beard and he had a red t-shirt, and the second time I saw him, I looked at him and he pointed a Kalashnikov rifle at me, he realized I recognized him. They were coming to the scenes of arsonists in blue and white buses. God knows where these buses were from. They weren't city corporation buses, although city corporation buses were being used by looters. But the arsonists were an army. They were calculated and they knew where to go, they had maps, they were told where to go. Who told them where to go? Who told them where the Americans would not shoot at them or would not harm them? This is a very, very important question that still needs to be reconciled and answered. And I do not have an answer. And none of my colleagues unfortunately have asked the American military in Qatar, in Doha what the answer is. Somebody told these people where to go, they had the maps, they knew the places to go and burn, they knew the American military would not be there and they went there and they burned. Who gave them those instructions, I don't know the answer. I really don't know the answer, but there is an answer, and we should know this." |
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| 4/24/03 from Molly Ivins: Nomination for the "What Were They Thinking?" also known as "Is There Anybody Here With a Lick of Sense?" Contest. Donald Rumsfeld and the looting of Iraq's incomparable National Museum in Baghdad."My goodness, were there that many vases?" asked Rumsfeld of the looting of 7,000 years worth of archaeological treasure. "Is it possible there were that many vases in the whole country?" he asked sarcastically. Well, yes.Is this really the face of America we want to show the rest of the world? The Bush administration's granting contracts to rebuild Iraq to Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton and the Republican-connected Bechtel Group of San Francisco. Has no one in this administration any sense of public relations? Have they any idea how this looks to the rest of the world, which was largely convinced that we invaded Iraq for the oil to begin with? Halliburton and Bechtel? Have any of these people ever heard of the need to avoid the appearance of impropriety? Or are we just past that now, so cocky we don't even care? We knew going in this was going to be the peace from hell, and so far the administration has made every misstep possible. Did it occur to no one that Rumsfeld's chosen puppet, Ahmad Chalabi -- a convicted embezzler, sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison in Jordan -- might prove a bit sticky? Might even be perceived by the Arab world as a colossal insult? |
| 4/24/03 Military Victory But a Geopolitical Disaster By Captain Robert Lynn, Public Affairs Officer, 3rd Brigade, Florida Guard (and my cafe buddy): Despite stiff and unexpected Iraqi resistance, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein. But don�t be surprised if in the months ahead a political backlash against Operation Iraqi Freedom diminishes � if not destroys � the political effectiveness of President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Republican Party and American neoconservatives. Wars have unintended consequences as well as unexpected developments. The White House, the Pentagon, our troops and the public were all surprised that Saddam Hussein didn�t �collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder,� as former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, the principle architect of the war, had optimistically predicted. The promised �cakewalk� never materialized. The Pentagon was surprised at the spirited resistance to our vaunted invasion force by lightly-armed Iraqi irregular troops and tribesmen. U.S. reinforcements in the form of the Fourth Infantry Division (Mechanized) and the First Armored Division would arrive weeks later but until then, there was continued round-the-clock bombing of suspected Iraqi Army units. The number of casualties, both civilian and military, were unexpected prior to our anticipated �liberation� of Iraq. As serious as the above miscalculations were, other miscalculations may prove to be even more deadly. The U.S. invasion force has made a Muslim hero out of Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator who has spent his political life suppressing Islamic political parties. Even worse, the invasion has achieved the �Palestinization� of the Muslim world and has united Muslims against us. Many Muslims see the invasion of Iraq not as a liberation but as a conquest and re-colonization. Samir Ragab, the staid chairman of the hitherto moderate Egyptian Gazette, editorialized on March 27, 2003, �The U.S. and Israel are one and the same thing. Their common objective is to enfeeble Arabs and tear their nation to pieces.� �It is genocide to me,� says Cairo Times reporter Summer Said. Even Christian Arabs have turned against us. George Elnaber, a 36-year-old owner of an Amman supermarket said, �Bush is an occupier and terrorist. We hate Americans more than we hate Saddam now.� Similar sentiments are being expressed throughout the Middle East and Muslim Asia. They portend the overnight radicalization of the Muslim world that will have a profound effect on Mideast politics. On March 31, 2003, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said, �When it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences. Instead of having one bin Laden, we will have one hundred bin Ladens.� Secular Middle Eastern rulers, who themselves have suppressed Islamic political parties, are isolated from the populations that they govern. Islamic political movements were making headway, most notably in Pakistan and Turkey, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The invasion has energized centrist Islamic politicians. Leaders of the Mutahida Majlas-e-Aamal or MMA, a ruling religious party alliance in Northwest Pakistan, responded by demanding that Pakistan�s �coward leaders� be pushed aside so that Pakistan�s nuclear arms can be used �for the protection of the Muslim world.� Not even our NATO ally Turkey would permit us to move troops across their territory. Deluded, perhaps, by the pro-war propaganda gushing from the U.S. news media and neoconservative magazines, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfield have foolishly further inflamed Muslim opinion by issuing �warnings� to Syria and Iran. The regimes neighboring Iraq regard such warnings as threats. In an interview with the Beirut daily newspaper A-Safir, Syrian President Bashar Assad responded to the threats: �We will not wait until we become the next target.� The U.S. has now backed off confronting Syria and instead Bush has instructed Powell to meet with Assad in the upcoming weeks. Clearly, U.S. policymakers lack understanding of the volatile region of the world in which they are now exercising a heavy hand. With amazing hubris, U.S. policymakers may have stirred up thousands of Islamic terrorists whose future victims could dwarf in number the deaths of Sept. 11, 2001 and the Iraqi War combined. These same policymakers have exacerbated distrust of the United States throughout the world. The Russian government has publicly announced that it fears the Americans � having so far failed to turn up Iraqi weapons of mass destruction � will actually plant WMD in Iraq in order to justify the excuse used to invade. The Russians said they will believe no such American claim without independent international inspection. Adding further fuel to the Russians� distrust, is that no evidence has yet been found linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein�s regime. What kind of cooperation can a country so distrusted expect in the future? While a rapid military victory, the U.S. invasion of Iraq constituted a strategic geopolitical blunder the costs of which will mount steeply over the next half century. If there is to be a silver lining to this military adventure, perhaps it will be the realization among the American public that the neoconservative agenda of conquest of the Muslim Middle East exceeds our available military strength. Ethnic rivalries, persistent militia, and hidden weapons in Iraq will greatly increase the burden on our postwar occupation. In fact, the Iraqi conflict has exposed a looming manpower problem: a full-blown peacekeeping operation would require as many as 500,000 troops.To avoid this pitfall, I suggest we extricate ourselves from Iraq in the following manner: * All U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq within thirty days and an interim government installed and elections held prior to the troop pullout. * As the U.S. troops withdraw, the Gulf Cooperation Council will put in its place an Arab peacekeeping force. * As this Arab peacekeeping force is placed throughout Iraq, U.N. personnel and former Iraqi officials will help to restore the infrastructure within Iraq. * No U.S. administrators will assume any positions in Iraq and U.S. companies and their subsidiaries will be forbidden to do business in Iraq. * The removal of all U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq immediately. * Following the above suggestions will divert America from a disastrous course which would consume our blood and treasure. |
| 3/19/03 from Sen. Robert Byrd: I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength. But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place. We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice. There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers fell because a world-wide terrorist group, Al Qaeda, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of this beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board. The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses. But, this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq. What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy? Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire? I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. |
| 4/29/03 Robert Fisk: Closing Down the Press: Did the US Murder Journalists? What is a journalist's life worth? I ask this question for a number of reasons, some of them--frankly--quite revolting. Two days ago, I went to visit one of my colleagues wounded in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain--a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed--after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week. Samia, a brave and honourable lady who has reported the cruelty of the Lebanese civil war at first hand for many years, was almost destroyed as a human being by that tank crew. At the time, General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division, told a lie: he said that sniper fire had been directed at the tank--on the Joumhouriyah Bridge over the Tigris river--and that the fire had ended "after the tank had fired" at the Palestine Hotel. I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired. There was no sniper fire--nor any rocket-propelled grenade fire, as the American officer claimed--at the time. French television footage of the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing. The soundtrack--until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the tank barrel--is silent. Samia Nakhoul wasn't the only one to be hit. Her Ukrainian cameraman, father of a small child, was killed. So was a Spanish cameraman on the floor above. And then yesterday I had to read, in the New York Times, that Colin Powell had justified the murder--yes, murder--of these two journalists. This former four-star general--I'm talking about Mr Powell, not the liar who runs the 3rd Infantry Division--actually said, and I quote: "According to a US military review of the incident, our forces responded to hostile fire appearing to come from a location later identified as the Palestine Hotel... Our review of the April 8th incident indicates that the use of force was justified." But it gets worse. A few hours before I visited Samia, I was in Beirut with Mohamed Jassem al-Ali, the managing director of the Qatar-based Arab al-Jazeera channel. On that same day--8 April--that the American tank fired at the Reuters office in Baghdad, an American aircraft fired a missile at the al-Jazeera office in Baghdad. Mr al-Ali has given me a copy of his letter to Victoria Clarke, the US Assistant Secretary of State of Defence for Public Affairs in Washington (and former general manager of Hill and Knowlton when they tricked the world into Gulf War I with their universally disproven lie of babies being thrown from incubators), sent on 24 February this year. In the letter, he gives the address and the map coordinates of the station's office in Baghdad--Lat: 33.19/29.08, Lon 44.24/03.63--adding that civilian journalists would be working in the building. The Americans were outraged at al-Jazeera's coverage of the civilian victims of US bombing raids. And on 8 April, less than three hours before the Reuters office was attacked, an American aircraft fired a single missile at the al-Jazeera office--at those precise map coordinates Mr al-Ali had sent to Ms Clarke--and killed the station's reporter Tareq Ayoub. "We find these events," Mr al-Ali wrote in his slightly inaccurate English, "unjustifiable, unacceptable, arousing all forms of anger and rejection and most of all need an explanation." And what did he get? Victoria Clarke wrote a letter that was as inappropriate as it was "economical with the truth". She offered her "condolences" to the family and colleagues of Mr Ayoub and then went on to write a preachy note to al-Jazeera. "Being close to the action means being close to danger," she wrote. "...we have gone to extraordinary lengths in Iraq to avoid civilian casualties. Unfortunately, even our best efforts will not prevent some innocents from getting caught in the crossfire [sic]... Sometimes this results in tragedy. War by its very nature is tragic and sad..." Pardon me? Al-Jazeera asks why its office was targeted and Ms Clarke tells the dead man's employer that war is "sad"? I don't believe this. General Blount lied about his tank crew on the Tigris river. "General" Powell went along with this lie. And now Ms Clarke--who clearly was told to write what she wrote since her letter is so trite--does not even attempt to explain why an American jet killed Al Jazeera's reporter (just like an American missile was fired at Al Jazeera's office in Kabul in 2001). A Ukrainian, a Spaniard, an Arab. They all died within hours of each other. I suspect they were killed because the US--someone in the Pentagon though not, I'm sure, Ms Clarke--decided to try to "close down" the press. Of course, American journalists are not investigating this. They should--because they will be next. As for Mohamed al-Ali, he has the painful experience of knowing that he gave the Pentagon the map coordinates to kill his own reporter. Who was the pilot of the American jet that fired that missile at al-Jazeera? Why did he fire? What were the coordinates? Who was the American tank officer who blasted a piece of metal into Samia's brain? A day after he fired, I climbed on his tank and asked the soldier on top if he was responsible. "I don't know anything about that, sir," he replied. And I believe him. Like I believe in Father Christmas and fairies at the bottom of my garden. |
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| 4/24/03 from Annie Higgins: My Constitution, my neighborly culture, my conviction in the rightness of freedom of speech--these things define my country. These are not pushing invasion and occupation of another nation. Those making the decisions and taking the actions that shame us all are not of the American people, nor for us. A local commentator feels that a coup has changed the American government, although it has not been publicly announced or acknowledged. He does not specify whether this has taken place in the White House or the Pentagon. What this alleged American government, which is the military, is doing to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is no different than what they are doing to themselves, padding their ears so they do not hear, blindfolding their eyes so they do not see, tying their own arms so they cannot feel, and binding their legs so they cannot take steps toward any kind of progress. Americans may not have seen the images of the Guantanamo prisoners lately but the rest of the world has. Spanish television showed them on the heels of a clip where the Bush administration complains of violations of the Geneva Convention in al-Jazeera's broadcasts of pictures. "Do you regret being American?" Bush is appointing a Minister of Information in Iraq from among the seemingly omniscient JINSA group [Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs] who think they are remote-controlling the world. One more little surprise from Iraq that the coup-makers haven't taken into consideration is that Iraqis are sophisticated at sorting through the news that is handed out to them. They don't automatically accept what the little screen tells them. They have developed a healthy habit of questioning authority and media pronouncements. They are also aware of America's legal violations."Do you regret being American?" A special note to my countrymen and women who have silenced voices that tell of meeting military violence with non-violence: I don't want to prove you wrong in your silencing effective voices that bring a small measure of justice to the world through constructive engagement. I don't want you to apologize openly or feel ashamed inside. I just want you to learn to love even one glimmer of caring for your neighbor, so that you will seek that thread of light, pursue it, delight in it, let it reflect off of you as you stand in its path, and see that you can neither stop it from shining nor collect it in a box and shut it away. Who is your neighbor? I hope mine will include Samaritans, though I am not the expert on the issue. But what if you have a dangerous neighbor? What then? That is just what millions of people on the planet are saying now. And they are talking about you. "Do you regret being American?" After reading of the sacking of Baghdad's museums, I dreamed for two nights of pounding steady destruction. I awoke hoping the news was a part of my dream. The unspeakable loss made me so sick that I dreamed of vomiting the warm water of my empty stomach. Is it repellent to read that? The ash and desolation of historical and literary expressions are magnitudes more nauseating. In the wake of loss to plunder and flame, Donny George at the Iraqi Ministry of Antiquities said, "This is what the Americans wanted. They wanted Iraq to lose its history." [R Fisk, Independent, 16 April 2003] No, we didn't. I didn't, and I am one of the Americans. "Do you regret being American?" A Syrian friend is not surprised that they targeted cultural places: "A nation's culture is what holds its people together." What is holding my nation's people together? The mutual desire to ransack history? No, we are not together in this. At the end of the two-hour "Third View" talk show with A-Sharq al-Awsat's Cairo bureau chief, the Egyptian Ambassador cites Gore Vidal's vision of an America which has split into disunited states. Off-camera, he asks me if I felt this were possible. I have no talent for predictions, nonetheless it is clear that there are serious splits in perceptions of the invasion. But that is democracy, after all, a pluralistic approach to visions and analyses! Another night, a frantic email message from America implores me to be careful in the streets of Cairo rife with anti-American sentiment. So say the alarmist media reports across the ocean. Reality is just the opposite. Many people have told me that I was brave to carry a large sign declaring my nationality and my position, American Against the War, in the one and almost only demonstration in Cairo [20 March 03]. "It takes courage to speak up like that outside your own country." I receive news that organizers of Chicago's 63rd Street demonstration have cancelled the action due to "a pervasive atmosphere of fear and anxiety within the Arab community." People are also worried about joining the ranks of the disappeared who were taken in sweeps after 11th September, and have not been charged or heard from since."Do you regret being American?" In a humble but lively neighborhood where a home consists of a room just big enough for a small aisle between two beds, we exchange contact information. Conversation turns to money, and a man in the family indicates the desirability of the dollar over the Egyptian pound and other currencies. "No," says the young mother of my new four-year old sweetheart, Fuad. "The dollar...!" she exclaims, completing her sentence with a downward sweep of the hand. She predicts the effects of war budgets more clearly than many Americans with larger rooms in grander houses."Do you regret being American?" Another family scene I have only read of has a van full of people trying to follow the Army's orders to "Be safe" printed on leaflets dropped in Baghdad streets. They thought that these soldiers, like the first group they met, would wave them through the checkpoint in their hurried quest to reach safety. Instead, a hail of heavy gunfire left them beholding their two little daughters in their seats, decapitated. |
| Dedicated to my mother and father who now worry that speaking out may do me in. |
| for Jim Bement's Holistic Heart, Soul, Mind, and Collected Humanist Geopolitical Truth |
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| 4/24/03 from MoveOn.org email: The war in Iraq is over; the U.S. occupation of Iraq has now begun. In an unnecessary war, victory is never sweet: American soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and Iraqi soldiers lost their lives in a conflict that never should have happened. That's not victory, that's tragedy. The hawks in the Bush Administration see this as a vindication of their belligerent world view. Never mind that we haven't found any weapons of mass destruction; never mind that Iraqi democracy (or even security) is nowhere in sight. The hotter heads have prevailed: pre-emptive unilateralism is now the official policy of the U.S.. Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle are now thinking even bigger about the "projection of American power." In the chilling words of a senior official close to the Bush administration, "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran." Folks, we just have to stop this madness, and there's really only one way to do that: throw the bums out.The good news is that over the last few months, we've built a base that just may be large enough to succeed. MoveOn total membership is now over 1.3 million. |
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| This is my song, O God of all the nations. A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is. Here are my dreams, my hopes, my holy shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, With hopes and dreams as deep and true as mine. |
| 5/6/03 posted from 4/19/03 article: Journalist Peter Wilson watched April 10 as a Los Angeles Times reporter walked to the driver's window of a destroyed minibus on central Baghdad's Sinak Bridge. Inside the broken window was the carbonized corpse of the vehicle's driver, its charred arm resting on the window's ledge. Bidding a photographer standing nearby to take his photo, the reporter, Geoffrey Mohan, stood about a foot from the corpse and with his pen poised over his notebook asked: "Well sir, do you have any comment on what has happened to you here?" Thirty feet away, behind a cordon of barbed-wire stood about 20 Iraqis watching the American conduct a mock interview with the corpse of a man who probably had a family -- all for a photo opportunity. Mohan later ... described the account by Wilson and the two other eyewitnesses as part of an "agenda against embedded reporters". |
| 5/4/03 posted from 4/22/03 article: One radio chain, Cumulus Media, responded by arranging for a tractor to crush Dixie Chicks CDs, tapes and videos in an episode that carried uncomfortable echoes of historical book-burnings and other cultural purges. 5/4/03 from a 4/7/03 update to Michael Moore's site: "On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%." "'Stupid White Men' shot back to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at number one, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens. In the week after the Oscars, my website was getting 10-20 million hits A DAY (one day we even got more hits than the White House!). The mail has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive (and the hate mail has been hilarious!). In the two days following the Oscars, more people pre-ordered the video for "Bowling for Columbine" on Amazon.com than the video for the Oscar winner for Best Picture, 'Chicago.'" "I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is told to us all the time -- that, if you take a chance to speak out politically, you will live to regret it. It will hurt you in some way, usually financially. You could lose your job. Others may not hire you. You will lose friends. And on and on and on. Take the Dixie Chicks. I'm sure you've all heard by now that, because their lead singer mentioned how she was ashamed that Bush was from her home state of Texas, their record sales have 'plummeted' and country stations are boycotting their music. The truth is that their sales are NOT down. This week, after all the attacks, their album is still at #1 on the Billboard country charts" "Don't let the false patriots intimidate you by setting the agenda or the terms of the debate. Don't be defeated by polls that show 70% of the public in favor of the war. Everyone supports the troops returning home alive and all of us need to reach out and let their families know that. Unfortunately, Bush and Co. are not through yet. This invasion and conquest will encourage them to do it again elsewhere. The real purpose of this war was to say to the rest of the world, 'Don't Mess with Texas - If You Got What We Want, We're Coming to Get It!' This is not the time for the majority of us who believe in a peaceful America to be quiet. Make your voices heard. Despite what they have pulled off, it is still our country." 5/4/03 posted from 4/22/03 update to Bruce Springsteen web site (http://www.brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html): The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American. The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home. I don't know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support. - Bruce Springsteen |
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| COMPASSIONATE REPUBLICAN DEMOCRACY |
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| 5/6/03: I have added the logo links above, gentle reader, because of Adrienne Nicosia's "Promoting Alternative Media" strategy proposal to the National Network to End the War Against Iraq, one idea of which is to crosslink to alternative media sites, which is working very well. Also it looks snazzier than the plain text Pacifica link I used to have. |
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| THESE DOGS WON'T HUNT! |
| 5/6/03 passed on by Lorie Morris: We CAN buy gasoline that's not from Middle East! Just buy from gas companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis. Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil: Citgo.................0 barrels Sunoco................0 barrels Conoco................0 barrels Sinclair..............0 barrels BP/Phillips...........0 barrels Hess..................0 barrels I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00 - 8/31/01): Shell.................205,742,000 barrels Chevron/Texaco........144,332,000 barrels Exxon /Mobil..........130,082,000 barrels Marathon/Speedway.....117,740,000 barrels Amoco..................62,231,000 barrels All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing. They report on a monthly basis. Keep this list in your car;share it with friends. |
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| 5/4/03 Dick Polman. Neoconservatives, They emerged from behind the scenes politically to change American foreign policy. But they've always been there, and Iraq is only one of their goals: For seven long years, Bill Kristol agitated for a U.S. coup against Saddam Hussein, and argued that America should remake the world to serve its own interests. Few bothered to listen at the time. So how does he feel now? In his office the other day, he grinned without smirking. That's how most of the hawkish defense intellectuals - better known as neoconservatives - are behaving these days. Although they're sitting pretty in wartime Washington, they're trying not to preen. Kristol refuses to strut his stuff, because he knows how fast the high and mighty can be brought low in this town; after all, he was once Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff. And Iraq is just the beginning, as Kristol cheerily contended: "President Bush is committed, pretty far down the road. The logic of events says you can't go halfway. You can't liberate Iraq, then quit." The neocons care little about domestic policy; they think globally. They don't believe in peaceful coexistence with hostile, undemocratic states; rather, they want an "unapologetic, idealistic, assertive" America (in Kristol's words) that will foment pro-democratic revolutions around the world, if necessary at the point of a gun. The neocon assumption - that the American way is best for everybody, whether foreigners know it or not - is not shared by their numerous critics. Establishment Republicans, many of whom worked for Bush's father, worry that the fomenting of new "regime changes" will sow more global terrorism against Americans. Liberals simply say that the neocons have captured Bush's brain. Historian Allan Lichtman said that regardless of whether one agrees with the neocons, "they are historically important, because, in the post-Cold War world, they are providing an intellectual justification for the continuation of the national security state." Neocon Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser, was an institute scholar; so was John Bolton, who now has a key undersecretary post in the State Department. Today, the institute still has hawks who were hawks before the neocon label became hip; witness ex-Reagan Pentagon adviser Michael Ledeen, who, while puffing on a fat cigar the other day, said: "Americans believe that peace is normal, but that's not true. Life isn't like that. Peace is abnormal." |
| 5/2/03 H. Greenway: THE SORRY scrambling for influence, power, and ideological advantage between the Departments of Defense and State is an arrhythmia in the heart of the Bush presidency and is hindering the projection of a coherent foreign policy. The recent outburst Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, against what he claimed was ''a pattern of diplomatic failure'' was only the latest in a series of back-alley bureaucratic fights that President Bush should bring to an end. Gingrich is one of Donald Rumsfeld's civilian advisers, and Gingrich made a clear distinction between what he saw as the heroic successes of the Pentagon in contrast to the State Department's threatening to ''undo the effects of military victory.'' There have been serious interdepartmental struggles in other administrations. Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a constant burr under the saddle of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. And Henry Kissinger, in his NSC years, ate Secretary of State William Rogers alive. Caspar Weinberger at Defense and George Schultz at State often seemed at sword's point in the Reagan years. But seldom, if ever, has a Defense Department so actively challenged a secretary of state for control of foreign policy as is happening today. This is exacerbated by the office of Vice President Richard Cheney, with its own foreign policy team usually supporting the Pentagon. At bottom, the current fights are about whether the United States should try to work out diplomatic solutions to the world's problems, in conjunction with allies, as Colin Powell has argued, or use unilateral force to get its way. Do other nations have legitimate concerns or should all bend before the hurricane of American power? Click here for full text. |
| 5/6/03 Robert Fisk. So he thinks it's all over... George Bush has announced the end of the war. But try telling that to the Shias and the Badr Brigade: So, it's the end of the war in Iraq, is it? If anyone thinks George Bush Jnr could pass that one off aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln last week � "major combat operations have ended" was the expression he used on Thursday night � they should take a closer look at Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld's cosy, sinister little speech to US troops in Baghdad a day earlier. It was filled with all the usual myth-making: the "many" Iraqis who flocked to welcome the Americans on their "liberation" of Baghdad, the "fastest march on a capital in modern military history" (which the Israelis achieved in three days in 1982). But the key line was slipped in at the end. The Americans, he said, still had "to root out the terrorist networks operating in this country". What? What terrorist networks? And who, one may ask, are behind these mysterious terrorist networks "operating" in Iraq? I have a pretty good idea. They may not actually exist yet. But Donald Rumsfeld knows (and he has been told by US intelligence) that a growing resistance movement to America's occupation is gestating in Iraq. The Shia Muslim community, now supported by thousands of Badr Brigade Iraqis trained in Iran, believes the US is in Iraq for its oil. It is furious at America's treatment of Iraq's citizens; in three days last week at least 17 Sunni demonstrators were killed, two of them less than 11 years old. And it is not impressed by Washington's attempts to cobble together an "interim" pro-American government. Even during the war, you could hear the same sentiments. Yes, the Shias would tell us, the Americans can get rid of Saddam. No one doubted his viciousness. But, always, this sentiment was followed by a desire to see the back of the Americans. Most of the civilian victims of American and British bombs were Shias, especially around Nasiriyah and Hillah. Which is another reason why the Americans did not arrive in Baghdad � where a US armoured vehicle pulled down the famous statue of Saddam � to be greeted by flowers and music. When Iraqi civilians look into the faces of American troops, President Bush famously told the world on Thursday, "they see strength and kindness and goodwill". Untrue, Mr Bush. They see occupation. Click here for full text. |
| 5/4/03 Maureen Clare Murphy: U.S. soldiers stand guard at their post of the Ministry of Oil. In mid-April, looters systematically dismantled Iraq's National Museum as U.S. troops guarded Iraq's Ministry of Oil and Ministry of the Interior, failing to protect the Ministries of Culture, Education, Information, Planning, Industry, Trade, Foreign Affairs, and Irrigation. International art historians and archaeologists are mourning this devastating loss to world history. Among the artifacts feared stolen, estimated at 50,000 to 200,000 pieces, is a 5,000-year-old Uruk Vase illustrating a procession entering a temple, numerous recently excavated tablets, a solid gold harp from the Sumerian era, and the "White Lady," which The Washington Post described as "the stone face of a woman that looks as if it was carved during the Greek Classic period but is 5,500 years old, one of the earliest known examples of representational sculpture." However, it is speculated that not all art lovers are shaking their heads in grief. Scotland's The Sunday Herald reports, "It has emerged that a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with U.S. Defense and State Department officials prior to the start of military action to offer its assistance in preserving the country's invaluable archaeological collections." Because the ACCP had closed-door meetings with the Pentagon months before the bombing campaign began and the looting was systematic, some believe that it is more than coincidence. The Los Angeles Times reports, "A Northern California scholar and collector of Iraqi art, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was contacted surreptitiously before the war and told that Iraqi antiquities would soon become available. He speculated that the thieves acted in accordance with a plan, but no such design has been revealed." This news is troubling considering that those who initially looted the museum knew what they were doing. According to The New York Times, "Archaeological officials in Baghdad took reporters through the museum [April 16] and pointed to what they said was clear evidence of professionalism on the part of some looters: the use of glass cutters, the bypassing of reproductions in favor of valuable originals, and the carting off of major pieces weighing hundreds of pounds." Although the Los Angeles Times noted, "Reports from museum guards indicate that the looters simply grabbed whatever was available," others have speculated that the looting was done in two phases. The Independent reports that "[Museum] curators said the looters came in two categories - the angry and the poor, most of them Shias, who were bent largely on destruction and grabbing whatever they could to earn some money; and more discriminating, middle-class people who knew exactly what they were looking for." The Los Angeles Times also stated, "U.S. forces intervened only once, for half an hour, before leaving and allowing the looters to continue," suggesting that despite repeated calls from various U.S. archaeological associations to the Pentagon urging the military to protect the huge amount of history stored in the museum, pleas to exercise caution went unheeded. McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute told The Chronicle of Higher Education, "'I have been talking to the military since January 24th, and we supplied them with a list of more than 5,000 archaeological sites, which they've been putting on their maps. They know where those locations are.'" Click here for full text. See 4/22/03 Robert Fisk article below, gentle reader, describing evidence of well-organized, militarily supported looting and questioning why. |
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