Iraqi council member 'critically' wounded
BBC News, September 20, 2003
One of the three woman on Iraq's Governing Council has been seriously wounded in a gun attack in western Baghdad.
Aqila al-Hashimi - the only council member to have served in the former government of Saddam Hussein - was leaving home by car when unidentified gunmen opened fire causing the vehicle to crash.
She was taken to Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, before being transferred to a US military hospital, where she is being treated for severe internal bleeding from abdominal wounds, doctors said. [complete article]
U.S. wants Israeli military's occupation training software
By Matthew Rosenberg, Associated Press (via San Diego Union-Tribune), September 18, 2003
In an apparent search for pointers on how to police a hostile population, the U.S. military that's trying to bring security to Iraq is showing interest in Israeli software instructing soldiers on how to behave in the West Bank and Gaza, an Israeli military official said Thursday. [complete article]
U.S. Rep. Rangel predicts wide support for Gen. Clark among blacks
By Devlin Barrett, Assoicate Press (via Newsday), September 19, 2003
U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, the most outspoken supporter of newly minted presidential candidate Wesley Clark, predicted Friday the retired general will get wide and enthusiastic support among blacks because of his opposition to the war in Iraq.
Rangel, D-N.Y., a ranking member of the House Ways and Means committee, said he is already pressing officials in his home district of Harlem, around his state, and in the Congressional Black Caucus to support Clark.
"Anybody that's against the war that can beat Bush is going to be overwhelmingly supported in the black community," Rangel said.
The congressman will meet Saturday morning with elected and religious leaders in his Harlem district to talk up Clark's candidacy.
"I'm going to share with them that this is the most emotional political decision of my life," he said. "I truly believe that my community would be better off in putting their money on this horse to win." [complete article]
Shia militia arrest top Ba'athist
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 20, 2003
They came after midnight for Karim Ghaith. Outside his two-storey sandstone house in the holy city of Najaf, they shouted out his name, then opened fire.
After a gun battle lasting most of the night, Mr Ghaith, a high-ranking member of the former Ba'ath party, was held and taken for questioning on his suspected involvement in attacks on US troops.
It looked like another of dozens of raids since the war to capture senior Ba'athists. But the men who detained him early this month were not American soldiers or Iraqi police. Witnesses say they were the Badr Brigade, armed wing of Iraq's biggest Shia Muslim party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).
The operation, denied by Sciri, is evidence of the frustration of Shia groups and the growing willingness to tackle the perceived security threat themselves. [complete article]
Israel fears growing terror threat by settlers
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, September 20, 2003
Even Israel's pervasive intelligence services are uncertain whether the Infants Underground and its allies are fringe groups of extremist settlers or the stirrings of a Jewish-style Hamas.
But the conviction on Wednesday of three settlers for trying to blow up a Palestinian girls' school in east Jerusalem last year reveals the lengths to which a marginalised, but apparently growing, band of militant settlers will go. [complete article]
Snapping to attention
By Bob Herbert, New York Times, September 19, 2003
Democrats wandering like outcasts in a desert of disillusion have spotted -- what?
Is that a four-star general out there? You say he's from the South? And he's a Democrat who wants to be president?
All right, all right, calm down! Yes, the original lineup of Democratic candidates -- Dean, Kerry, Lieberman, et al. -- was a caravan of disappointments. But some questions must be asked.
Is Wesley Clark -- first in his class at West Point, Rhodes scholar, former NATO supreme allied commander, holder of the Purple Heart and Silver Star — the real deal, or just a mirage? [complete article]
The U.N. Baghdad bombing: One month on
By Anita Sharma, Open Democracy, September 17, 2003
Nearly a month after the attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, humanitarian aid workers are in a state of flux. Mandatory staffing reductions have reduced UN international staff to mere placeholders in Iraq. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) still in Iraq operate with decreasing profiles and increasing trepidation. Those relocated to Jordan and Kuwait attempt to manage projects via “remote management” while theorising on re-entry strategies. All of this occurs amidst deteriorating security conditions, the uncertain possibility of broader international involvement and discussing the competing pressures of responsibility versus risk. [complete article]
Ariel Sharon and the geometry of occupation:
Strategic points, flexible lines, tense surfaces, political volumes
By Eyal Weizman, Open Democracy, September 9, 2003
Part one: Border versus frontier
The post-1967 transformation of the occupied territories is the story of how Israeli military and civilian planning became the executive arm of geopolitical strategy. The Suez Canal battles of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 were a national trauma that returned the 'frontier' to the Israeli public imagination. The figure of Ariel Sharon is central to this process.
Part two: Architecture as war by other means
How does Ariel Sharon imagine territory and practice space? The settlements, the 'battle for the hilltops', and now the security fence embody his long-term territorial ambition: to combine control of the West Bank with physical separation of its populations.
Part three: Temporary permanence
The 'barrier' exemplifies the dystopian logic of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, where a fragmented, borderless, always-provisional territory refuses accommodation with security ambitions that seek definitiveness. There is no spatial-technical design solution to the conflict: it can only be political. [complete article]
Terrorists...
By Riverbend, Baghdad Burning, September 19, 2003
Everyone is worried about raids lately. We hear about them from friends and relatives, we watch them on tv, outraged, and try to guess where the next set of raids are going to occur.
Anything can happen. Some raids are no more than seemingly standard weapons checks. Three or four troops knock on the door and march in. One of them keeps an eye of the 'family' while the rest take a look around the house. They check bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms and gardens. They look under beds, behind curtains, inside closets and cupboards. All you have to do is stifle your feelings of humiliation, anger and resentment at having foreign troops from an occupying army search your home.
Some raids are, quite simply, raids. The door is broken down in the middle of the night, troops swarm in by the dozens. Families are marched outside, hands behind their backs and bags upon their heads. Fathers and sons are pushed down on to the ground, a booted foot on their head or back.
Other raids go horribly wrong. We constantly hear about families who are raided in the small hours of the morning. The father, or son, picks up a weapon- thinking they are being attacked by looters- and all hell breaks loose. Family members are shot, others are detained and often women and children are left behind wailing. [complete article]
A confessed bomber's trail of terror
By Peter Baker, Washington Post, September 18, 2003
Karimov's story, as recounted in a prison interview as well as interviews with his family, his wife, relatives of his victims and the Uzbek and Kyrgyz investigators who captured him, offers a rare inside look at the life of a foot soldier on the other side of the war on terrorism -- from training camps in Chechnya and Afghanistan back to his impoverished and repressed homeland in Central Asia.
By his account, it is a tale of a listless teenager from a broken home sucked into the world of Islamic terrorism by choice and circumstance, less out of ideology than inertia, dominated by others with stronger wills, pressured by demands to repay loans and eventually trapped by his own delusion and remorselessness. [complete article]
U.S. troops fire at Italian diplomat's car in Iraq
Reuters, September 19, 2003
U.S. troops opened fire on a car carrying an Italian diplomat who holds a senior position in Iraq's U.S.-led administration, killing his Iraqi interpreter, American military sources said Friday.
Pietro Cordone, senior adviser on culture for the U.S.-led authority, was unhurt, Italian Foreign Ministry sources said. Cordone has been leading efforts to recover priceless antiquities looted from museums and archeological sites since the fall of Saddam Hussein. [complete article]
Can you hear me now, Mr. Bremer?
Our forces in Iraq can't even get decent cell phones
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 18, 2003
Not until July did the cellular network in Iraq start up, and it turned out to be less than occupation officials expected -- or needed. According to officials who were there at the time, they could use the phones (which cost a staggering $4,000 a piece) to talk only among themselves. The network did not extend, or link, to Iraqi telephones.
The U.S. reconstruction officials in Baghdad could not even talk with U.S. military officers down the street. The Army had, in June, contracted Motorola to create a separate network for security forces.
According to a Defense Department official, if someone working for the U.S. occupation authority needed to talk with a battalion commander, there was no way to make direct contact. He or she had to call a desk officer back in the Pentagon, who would jot down the message and call the commander himself. If the commander wanted to reply to the message, the same desk officer would jot down the response and call back the occupation authority. [complete article]
Give Iraq to the U.N. (sort of)
How to share power during the occupation
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 17, 2003
If President Bush doesn't play these next few weeks very carefully, he could wind up losing not just Iraq but Western Europe. On Saturday, the leaders of France, Germany, and Britain will meet in Berlin to discuss how to deal with the U.S. request for postwar assistance. This news flash bears repeating: Our key allies over the past half-century are meeting to form not a common Western position on how to deal with Iraq but a common Western European position on how to deal with us -- and in a form that does not include any Americans. Meanwhile, France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg are putting together a European defense force independent of NATO (i.e., free of U.S. control).
Not since World War I has the Atlantic Ocean seemed so wide. [complete article]
A Shiite cleric's caution
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, September 19, 2003
The Bush administration hoped its invasion of Iraq would produce a shock wave of democracy in the Arab world. But when you look at what America has actually wrought, the real earthquake is the new power of Iraq's long-oppressed Shiite Muslim majority.
Shiites throughout the Arab world have been emboldened by the fact that their co-religionists control the transitional 25-person Governing Council in Iraq and are almost certain to win elections that are likely in 2004. Some analysts tout Iraq as the Shiites' biggest political victory in the 1,200 years since they split from the Sunni branch of Islam.
But a leading Lebanese Shiite religious leader, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, cautioned in an interview here this week that Iraqi Shiites should proceed cautiously and avoid any quick political transition that might exacerbate Sunni fears that they will be victimized in the new Iraq.
"My advice to Iraqis is to stay away from all who want to start making trouble between the Sunni and the Shia," Fadlallah said, speaking through a translator. "We call on Iraqis to solve problems in a peaceful way. Iraq is not a country of Shia alone or Sunni alone, it's a country for everyone. They have to cooperate to solve its problems."
Rather than transferring political power quickly to the Shiite-led Governing Council, Fadlallah said he favored a more gradual transition under the auspices of the United Nations. "Iraqis have nothing against the U.N.," he said. "If the U.N. receives international support, there won't be any problem. Iraqis will receive it in a good way." [complete article]
U.S. is working to isolate France in U.N. council on Iraq approach
By Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, September 19, 2003
The Bush administration, incensed by France's demands for greater United Nations oversight in Iraq, is working to isolate France and win a majority at the United Nations Security Council for the American approach, administration officials said today.
In an echo of a tactic the administration tried earlier this year, without notable success, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is stepping up his efforts to enlist the support of Russia, Germany and other nations for American control over the occupation and transition to self-rule in Iraq, even though many of them sided with France in opposing the war. [complete article]
Big lie on Iraq comes full circle
By Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 2003
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie. That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself.
The president has insisted that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, a continuation of the administration's effort to link Iraq to the attack on the World Trade Center. While almost three-quarters of the public believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attack, the polls after the president's recent speech show that less than half believe that Iraq is the ''central front'' of the war on terrorism. Moreover, the majority believe that the war has increased the risk of terrorism. A shift is occurring in the middle, which is neither clearly pro-Bush nor clearly anti-Bush. The big lie is coming apart. [complete article]
2 U.S. fronts: Quick wars, but bloody peace
By Amy Waldman, Dexter Filkins, New York Times, September 19, 2003
Not for a long time has the United States embarked on two such ambitious projects as the simultaneous pacification and rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq. The administration argues that progress has been significant in both countries — the removal of the Taliban and its ally Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Baathists in Iraq, the liberation of millions of people in each country from oppressive governments, the taking of the fight to terrorists on the soil where they found havens.
But even American officials in Afghanistan concede that the sense of alienation and disappointment may be helping to nourish the boldest regrouping yet by supporters of the Taliban, the regime the United States toppled in 2001. The Gardez base has been attacked twice this month; in the area, bands of Taliban are roaming, harassing local men who do not grow beards.
In Iraq, there are daily attacks on American soldiers, including one that killed three yesterday, and they may not be just the work of foreign fighters or Saddam Hussein loyalists. Defense Department officials warned this week that ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American occupation might soon constitute the most formidable foe.
In both countries, an apparently rapid military victory has been followed by a murkier, bloodier peace. Militant Islamic extremism, in its Afghan and Iraqi guises, is proving, for now, to be an ideology that can be contained but not defeated.
The Bush administration is now struggling to respond. Aid to Afghanistan is being doubled, and the cost of the occupation of both countries over the next year is now put at $87 billion. In neither country does any exit for American troops appear feasible in the foreseeable future. [complete article]
Clark comes out blazing at Bush's 'arrogance' on Iraq
By Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2003
Former Gen. Wesley Clark, in his first full day as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted President Bush for a "dogmatic" foreign policy and for putting "strong-arm tactics" on Congress to rush approval for the war in Iraq.
Saying the Bush White House used its executive authority "in ways that cut off debate," Clark said he would likely have voted to authorize the war because "the simple truth is that when the president of the United States lays the power of office" on the line, "the balance of judgment probably goes to the president."
"I was against the war," Clark said. "In retrospect, we should never have gone in there. We could have waited. We could have brought the allies in." [complete article]
An interview with Paul Krugman
By Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, September 19, 2003
Accustomed to the vigorous ivy league tradition of calling a stupid argument a stupid argument (and isolated, at home in New Jersey, from the Washington dinner-party circuit frequented by so many other political columnists) he has become pretty much the only voice in the mainstream US media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people: first to sell a calamitous tax cut, and then to sell a war. [complete article]
Clock ticking for U.S. to sway Iraqis
By Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, September 19, 2003
The voice of Saddam Hussein - or someone who sounds like him - echoed through the streets of Baghdad this week exhorting Iraqis to "wage holy war against the foolish invaders." The public reaction here to the former Iraqi leader's "return" via audiotape offers a window on how the US is doing in its battle for hearts and minds.
"I was a political prisoner, so I enjoy our freedom more than most people," says Furkhan Mohammed, who teaches his neighbors to use a computer from a cramped corner of his wife's dental office.
"But I have some advice for the Americans: If they can't provide basic services, they had better bring back Saddam." [complete article]
Eighth pillar of wisdom? Iraq is a deep morass
By Michael Keane, Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003
That Iraq would become a troublesome source of guerrilla tactics should come as no surprise to any student of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is considered by many strategists to be the father of guerrilla warfare. He articulated a powerful treatise on the topic in his classic book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom."
During World War I, Lawrence's guerrilla victories against the Turkish forces occupying the Arabian peninsula provided a stunning contrast to the simultaneous slaughter occurring in the trenches of Europe. Although Lawrence claimed that his vision of warfare came to him as he lay dazed in a feverish state, he was actually formalizing a form of war practiced by Arab tribes for centuries. [complete article]
Iraq effect shakes National Guard
By Seth Stern, Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 2003
When two soldiers in Sgt. Edward Rose's unit died in Iraq this month, he couldn't hug and personally comfort his wife, Jennifer, who knew both men and their wives. In fact, just that week, Mr. Rose learned their time apart would grow as his tour as a military policeman in Iraq was extended well into next year.
What Rose did promise his wife that he would quit the Rhode Island National Guard when his current enlistment ends. Instead of staying for a full 20 years as he'd always intended, Rose now plans to get out as soon as possible. His wife says he's unable to bear the thought of another long separation.
Around the country, other reservists, National Guard members, and their families are also rethinking their commitment to the military as their duties as "weekend warriors" have morphed into full-time jobs that have become increasingly risky. [complete article]
No proof connects Iraq to 9/11, Bush says
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan stressed Wednesday that Bush administration officials never claimed any Iraq-Sept. 11 link.
McClellan's assertion appears to be factually correct, but many administration critics, including some in the intelligence community, said it was also somewhat misleading.
A reading of the record shows that while senior administration officials stopped short of accusing Hussein of complicity in the attacks, they frequently alluded to the possibility of such a connection, and consistently cast the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda in stronger terms than many in the intelligence community seemed to endorse. [complete article]
Carrying the weight
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, September 17, 2003
There is a sobering fact that has been overlooked in the Bush administration's drive to win United Nations support for a new multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq: establishing that force may not ease the main danger for American forces and is unlikely to substantially limit the growing American casualty toll. [complete article]
Saudis consider nuclear bomb
By Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor, The Guardian, September 18, 2003
Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned.
This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran's alleged nuclear programme. [complete article]
The Turkish card
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, September 16, 2003
One hidden casualty of the Iraq war has been the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey. Like so many other things, it was a victim partly of the Bush administration's overconfidence and wishful thinking.
Now the two countries are near agreement on a plan to send up to 10,000 Turkish troops into the savage battleground northwest of Baghdad known as the Sunni triangle, where U.S. forces are facing almost daily attacks. It's a bold plan that could bolster the American occupation -- and also revive the battered Turkish-American relationship.
But playing the Turkish card in Iraq is dangerous, too, for both the United States and Turkey. The widespread concern among Turkish analysts is that the two countries, in their rush to solve short-term problems, may be creating long-term ones that haunt them for years. [complete article]
Blix criticises U.K.'s Iraq dossier
BBC News, September 18, 2003
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accused the British Government of using spin in its controversial dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Dr Blix criticised the "culture of spin, of hyping" and told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he hoped governments would be more cautious in the future use of special intelligence.
He compared the way Britain and America were sure Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programmes to the way people in the Middle Ages were convinced witches existed and so found them when they looked. [complete article]
Our role in the terror
By Karen Armstrong, The Guardian, September 18, 2003
Since the second anniversary of September 11, we have had sober reminders that military force alone cannot eliminate the threat of religiously inspired terrorism. There has been the dramatic, if disputed, reappearance of Osama bin Laden; new reports that Islamist extremism is again gaining ground in Afghanistan; and in the wake of horrific attacks by Hamas, the Israeli right has called for the expulsion of Yasser Arafat - a move that would almost certainly provoke a new spate of suicide bombings.
How do we account for the rise of this religious violence in the post-Enlightenment world? Ever since 9/11, President Bush has repeatedly condemned Islamist terror as an atavistic rejection of American freedom, while Tony Blair recently called it a virus, as though, like Aids, its origins are inexplicable. They are wrong, on both counts. The terrorists' methods are appalling, but they regard themselves as freedom fighters, and there is nothing mysterious about the source of these extremist groups: to a significant degree, they are the result of our own policies. [complete article]
Not a lot like Chicago
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 17, 2003
It has become one of the most serious hurdles in America's project to reshape Iraq: how can a force that spent billions sending its troops to war still not manage to keep the lights on?
Restoring electrical power is the cornerstone of the west's reconstruction efforts. With electricity comes air-conditioning in the summer, heating in winter, water purification facilities, revived oil and gas production, functioning hospitals and industrial plants back on line. All this will do more than any number of troops to restore security and halt the frustration behind the continued wave of guerrilla attacks.
Given the scale of the task, the architects of America's war appear remarkably untroubled. "For a city that's not supposed to have power, there's lights all over the place. It's like Chicago," Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said earlier this month after a night-time Blackhawk helicopter tour over Baghdad. Unfortunately, Chicago it is not. [complete article]
Judith Miller takes a leak
By Jack Shafer, Slate, September 16, 2003
Suppose you had an advance copy of the testimony that Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton was scheduled to give to a House subcommittee today that details the dangers posed by Syria's unconventional weapons program. And let's suppose that you wanted to leak it to the reporter who would give it the most favorable bounce in today's papers. Would you give it to New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl, who followed a Knight Ridder story on July 18, 2003, with a critical account of how the CIA and other agencies blocked Bolton's July House appearance?
Or would you give it to Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has given sympathetic play time and again to leakers and defectors bearing information about weapons of mass destruction?
You needn't ask. [complete article]
Paths of glory lead to a soldier's doubt
By Tim Predmore, Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2003
For the last six months I have participated in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom. [complete article]
Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq.
Matchlessly wrong about everything
Behold, the head of a neo-con!
By Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, September 17, 2003
Since the breed is now being ripely abused as the sponsors of the US debacle in Iraq, we had better be clear about its political bloodlines. What exactly is a neo-con? The label was first stuck on those Democrats classed as liberals in the early 1970s who thought George McGovern, the anti-war Democratic nominee in 1972 crushed by Nixon, represented an unacceptable swerve to the left by their party, and who moved sharply to the right,advocating a tough coldwar posture, reassertion of imperial confidence after Vietnam, increased military spending and, above all, uncritical US backing for Israeli intransigeance. They flocked to Ronald Reagan. [complete article]
Cincinnatus for President
Listen up, Wesley Clark! Here's how generals get elected president
By David Greenberg, Slate, September 16, 2003
Slate's Michael Kinsley once described the early Al Gore as an old person's idea of a young person. Similarly, you might say that Gen. Wesley Clark is a peacenik's idea of a wartime candidate. It's easy to suspect that the groundswell of enthusiasm for his Democratic presidential campaign springs from the belief that he alone can risk a bold antiwar stand because his military stars would inoculate him from being Dukakis-ized. (In January, Slate's Chris Suellentrop assessed Clark.)
But to dismiss Clark's candidacy as a liberal delusion is to misread the appeal of generals as presidential candidates. The 10 generals (six of them notable) who have become president have typically won support by styling themselves not as candidates of war but as candidates of peace. [complete article]
Iraqis' bitterness is called bigger threat than terror
By Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger, New York Times, September 17, 2003
New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States' most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation, Defense Department officials said today.
That picture, shared with American military commanders in Iraq, is very different from the public view currently being presented by senior Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who once again today listed only "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs" as opponents of the American occupation.
The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were concerned about retribution for straying from the official line. They said it was a mistake for the administration to discount the role of ordinary Iraqis who have little in common with the groups Mr. Rumsfeld cited, but whose anger over the American presence appears to be kindling some sympathy for those attacking American forces.
Other United States government officials said some of the concerns had been prompted by recent polling in Iraq by the State Department's intelligence branch. The findings, which remain classified, include significant levels of hostility to the American presence. The officials said indications of that hostility extended well beyond the Sunni heartland of Iraq, which has been the main setting for attacks on American forces, to include the Shiite-dominated south, whose citizens have been more supportive of the American military presence but have also protested loudly about raids and other American actions. [complete article]
A chilling message to Muslims
By Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, September 16, 2003
When Sajidah Kutty called the Star on Friday, she seemed more bewildered than frightened.
Her family, frantic to find out what had happened to her father Ahmad, had finally received a phone call from him at 4:30 that morning.
I'm all right, he told them. The Americans were holding him and fellow Canadian citizen Abdool Hamid in a Fort Lauderdale jail. And no, he didn't know why.
"You hear of this kind of thing happening to Muslims just because they are Muslims," Sajidah told me. "But you never really expect it to happen to you or your family."
As it turned out, Kutty and Hamid were finally released and sent home after a bizarre 31-hour ordeal -- a post-9/11experience you might say -- that began when they landed in Florida last Thursday, climaxed with 16 hours of non-stop interrogation plus a night in jail, and ended with the two Canadians being escorted back to Fort Lauderdale's airport in handcuffs.
Ironically, the pair -- both of whom are imams in Toronto -- were on their way to a conference dealing with, among other things, the dangers of Islamic fanaticism. [complete article]
Democratic hawk urges firing of Bush Iraq aides
By David Firestone, New York Times, September 17, 2003
One of the strongest Democratic supporters of the invasion of Iraq joined the growing offensive against the administration's postwar planning today, demanding that President Bush fire his defense leadership team.
The Democrat, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said that he had been misled into voting for the war by incorrect information from top administration officials and that the president had also been misled.
"You can't fire the president unless you're in California," Mr. Murtha said. "But somebody recommended this policy to him, and he took the recommendation. Somebody has to be held responsible, and he's got to make the decision who it was."
Mr. Murtha was joined in his call for high-level resignations by Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader.
Democrats around Capitol Hill made it clear today that they intended to step up their aggressive criticism of Bush policies in Iraq. [complete article]
RUMSFELD, SADDAM, AND SEPTEMBER 11
On September 4, 2002, CBS News reported:
With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes [taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on September 11, 2001] quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.
Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.
"Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
Rumsfeld sees no link between Iraq, 9/11
Associated Press (via ABC News), September 16, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday he had no reason to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.
"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that," Rumsfeld said.
He added: "We know he was giving $25,000 a family for anyone who would go out and kill innocent men, women and children. And we know of various other activities. But on that specific one, no, not to my knowledge." [complete article]
An outcome too terrible to imagine
By Yigal Bronner, Haaretz, September 17, 2003
One of the most dramatic geo-political changes in the history of the region is taking place at record speed and without any public debate [in Israel]. Before it becomes too late, we must take time out to look through the veil of lies about the fence.
The first lie is in the title. The so-called separation fence promises the worn-out and worried public that the Palestinians, and all the troubles that contact with them entails, will be tucked safely behind the fence. We are on one side, they are on the other, and that's that. The alignment of the fence will, inreality, annex much of the West Bank to Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will still be living west of the fence, on the Israeli side. Thousands of settlers will be living east of it. Call it what you will - separation it ain't. [complete article]
Seoul may send 10,000 troops to Iraq
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2003
South Korea could send up to 10,000 combat troops to Iraq, among them highly trained special forces, in what would be the largest deployment by Seoul on behalf of the United States since the Vietnam War, according to sources here.
The United States has requested help in Iraq from other Asian allies as well, among them Japan, Pakistan and India. However, it is expected that South Korea, which has one of the largest and best-trained militaries of any U.S. ally, will contribute the largest number of troops.
"The logic is very simple. The United States sacrificed for us in the Korean War. We are allies and the U.S. strongly wants help in Iraq," said a South Korean official who asked not to be quoted by name.
The official said South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun was likely to support the deployment despite his often blunt criticism of the Iraq war. "He is very much a pragmatist," the official said. [complete article]
Bush's worst nightmare
By Stephen K. Medvic, Tom Paine.com, September 16, 2003
General Wesley Clark will soon officially announce his candidacy. Democratic rank-and-file know very little about Clark's positions, but if they're smart they'll quickly realize that he has one thing going for him that none of the other Democrats have -- he's George Bush's worst nightmare.
I can almost hear the Dean supporters expressing Dean-like righteous anger. Their guy, they'll claim, is the most electable Democrat. I've been amused by this argument since they started making it (though it's no more of a stretch than the argument that Dean most embodies true Democratic principles). Let's face facts -- Bush will skewer a candidate who has built an entire campaign around opposition to war, or who has at least allowed himself to be portrayed as such.
Sadly, elections aren't about who has the better argument -- they're about images created by the campaigns in a dynamic process of emphasizing issues and personality traits. [complete article]
U.S. confronts army overstretch
UPI (via Military.com), September 16, 2003
"Are we stretched too thin?" Time magazine thunderously asked on a recent front cover. "U.S. forces are straining to meet missions in Iraq, Pentagon officials tell Congress," according to a headline a few days later in The New York Times. Imperial overstretch is here.
It did not take long.
Only two years after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of Sept., 11, 2001, and less than half a year after the U.S. Army and Marines carried off a lightning three-week conquest of Iraq with virtually zero casualties, the U.S. global military deployment is stretched dangerously thin, with dire potential consequences if a second full-scale conflict with a rogue nation such as North Korea should erupt. [complete article]
Shades of Vietnam
By Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, September 16, 2003
President Bush's most egregious misstatement about the situation in Iraq is that he is asking Congress for $87 billion to stabilize it. That is baloney. He is in fact asking Congress for a second installment (the first in April was $79 billion) on a war that has no geographical, time, or force limitations beyond the capacity of the brains of the ideologues who are making up what some of them like to call World War IV as they go -- in secret, of course.
There will be another installment -- probably this winter -- and almost certainly another after that. The only real question is which will come first in 2005 -- a running total in excess of $300 billion or a different president who might start by telling the truth about what he is doing.
As befits a secretive and deceptive administration, the whole ($87 billion) is being emphasized at the expense of the parts and their true sum. Looking diligently at the parts would show that the whole has been misstated -- way on the low side. The "sticker shock" from $87 billion was bad enough, but administration officials were not going to let the figure of $100 billion get into the headlines and on TV.
This is where the real analogy with America's Vietnam disaster lies. The analogy is false on most fronts -- different war, different enemies, different part of the world. The analogy most popular at the Pentagon -- France's failed war with pro-independence revolutionaries in Algeria -- is probably just as false.
The real analogy is with the lengths to which the administration is willing to go to avoid telling the truth about the nature of its commitment, the true cost, and the lengths to which Congress is willing to go to accommodate it. [complete article]
Who's counting?
Last week U.S. officials announced that there are 116,000 U.S. troops in Iraq - 14,000 fewer than previously stated. Now they say they have 10,000 prisoners, 3,800 more than previously stated. Who's going to keep track of $87 billion?
Coalition reveals almost 4,000 extra "security detainees" in Iraq
Agence France-Presse, September 16, 2003
US officials said they were holding 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, double the number previously reported, and count among the security cases six inmates claiming to be Americans and two who say they are British.
"They didn't fit into any category," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said Tuesday of the 3,800 extra people who have now been classified as "security detainees."
"We got an order from the Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) to categorise them" about a month ago, she said, but gave few details about who these detainees were.
"We were securing them. We didn't want people to be confused" about their status, she said.
They were being held in the area of north-central Iraq controlled by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, said Karpinski, speaking at Abu Gharib prison, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Baghdad.
Asked if they had any rights or had access to their families or legal help while they were being "secured", she said: "It's not that they don't have rights ... they have fewer rights than EPWs (enemy prisoners of war)."
But she added that "they didn't ask for" any such privileges. [complete article]
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