Imperial America is about to strike
Patrick Seale, Daily Star, January 31, 2003
Washington is about to embark on an imperial adventure, not unlike that of London in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Britain was the dominant power in Egypt, Iraq, the Gulf, south Arabia and much of the rest of the Middle East. Bush appears to be convinced that seizing Baghdad, an ancient pole of Arab civilization, will provide a democratic model for other oppressed Arabs and “jump-start” the refashioning of the Middle East on pro-Western lines. He seems to believe that it will also deprive terrorist groups of sponsorship, making America safe from another attack, which could be even more deadly than Sept. 11, because next time weapons of mass destruction might be used. The lure of Iraqi oil must also have entered his calculations.
Nevertheless, there is a strong streak of naive idealism in Bush’s vision. It allays America’s fears of its new vulnerability to terror, while flattering its pretension that its power is being used for the benefit of humanity. Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, who in his eagerness to maintain the “special relationship” has allowed himself to be sucked into America’s war plans, is fond of saying, in the teeth of a great deal of contrary evidence, that America is a “force for good” in the world!
The truth is that Bush has been sold a load of dangerous rubbish. At the heart of the Washington decision-making process lies a cabal of Zionist extremists who have shaped America’s political and military agenda. These are the men who have set America on the path to war. To persuade the US to destroy Israel’s enemies, they have cloaked their war plans in the patriotic verbiage of America’s global destiny. Supported by friends and allies in right-wing think tanks, in the press, and in lobbying organizations, this small group of men has a narrow, Israel-centric vision. War against Iraq marks the triumph of this cabal and of its most prominent strategic thinker, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who has tirelessly campaigned for war against Iraq for five years and more.
Al-Qaida and Iraq: how strong is the evidence?
Julian Borger, Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael Howard, The Guardian, January 30, 2003
President Bush used his state of the union address to paint a terrifying picture for the American people of another attack like September 11 - but this time with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Tony Blair reinforced the message yesterday by telling the Commons: "We do know of links between al-Qaida and Iraq. We cannot be sure of the exact extent of those links."
However, a number of well-placed sources in Whitehall insisted there was no intelligence suggesting such a link. "While we have said there may possibly be individuals in the country [Iraq] we have never said anything to suggest specific links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein," said one.
Establishing the link is essential to persuading the public that Iraq represents an imminent threat, and President Bush insisted that hard evidence in the shape of "intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody" proved the connection was real.
But the intelligence analysts in the US and Britain on whose work the president's claim was supposedly based say the connections are tangential at best, and the available evidence falls far short of proving a secret relationship between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden. One intelligence source in Washington, who has seen CIA material on the link, described the case as "soft" and "squishy".
U.S., allies could be prosecuted for Iraq war - experts
Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, January 31, 2003
The United States and allies who attack Iraq without United Nations sanction could face international legal action, even though Washington has opted out of the new International Criminal Court (ICC), experts and peace activists said Thursday.
''For the first time since the end of the cold war, an act of deliberate aggression is being advanced under the pretext of legality by a major power,'' James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International, told IPS.
''The U.S. refusal to join the International Criminal Court will not permit its leaders to escape trial before a world court and other international tribunals on war crimes charges,'' he warned.
US feels heat in Pakistan's tribal hinterland
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, January 31, 2003
The bazaar at Miran Shah is crowded with turbaned Pashtuns, most armed with Kalashnikov rifles slung idly over their shoulders.
In this part of the North Waziristan tribal agency - as in the other six "federally administered areas" in Pakistan's semi-independent tribal belt - these men are beyond the reach of the law.
Pakistan's mountainous border, long a haven for gunrunners and smugglers, has become a vital base for fighters loyal to the Taliban and al-Qaida. It has rapidly become the most urgent and difficult target in US military operations around Afghanistan.
Polls show European public opposed to Iraq war
Reuters, January 30, 2003
While eight European leaders voice their support for Bush, polls show the European public remains opposed to war.
Iraqis want to be rid of Saddam
David Hirst, Daily Star, January 30, 2003
However valid the official or semi-official reasons for it, disarming Iraq, or the bringing about the "regime change" which is probably the only means of ensuring that on a permanent basis, it will still be seen as the supreme expression of those double standards which are the single-most important reason why Arab hostility to the US has reached the intensity it has. It will be wreaking punishment on an Arab country for its acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and its violations of UN resolutions even as the US continues to indulge an Israeli protege which has a far longer, no less deceitful, illegitimate and ultimately dangerous record of doing the same. In these conditions, the long-overdue enfranchisement of the Arab people which it might indeed unleash, be it in the form of a relatively orderly transition to democracy, or, more likely, in the chaotic overthrow of a rotten existing order, will not help America at all. Indeed, given its quasi-colonial, ever-more pro-Israeli agenda, it will turn the Arabs even more strenuously, and probably effectively, against them. The neoconservatives seem to realize this. In Commentary magazine last October, Norman Podhoretz, their veteran intellectual luminary, wrote that "regime change" should extend to no less than half-a-dozen Middle Eastern countries. However, he warned, the "alternative to (existing) regimes could easily turn out to be worse, even, or especially, if it comes into power through democratic elections;" in that case the US would have to summon up "the will to fight (a world war) against militant Islam to a successful conclusion." In other words, America's own policies will generate an ever-growing hostility which America will have to commit ever-growing materiel and human resources to combating. Where does such well-nigh megalomaniac, imperial logic end?
Nightmare in Baghdad
George Friedman, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2003
The U.S. Army has never captured a heavily defended and vast city the size of Baghdad, which has a population in the millions. The brutal battles for cities such as Berlin or Kharkov took enormous numbers of lives on all sides, and Americans still remember grim fighting for much smaller cities, such as Hue or Vicksburg.
In Baghdad's sprawl, with its densely packed low houses on narrow crooked lanes, maneuverability and communications are not critical. Runners can provide what little communication is needed. Every house is a mystery and a potential strong point.
Even with great technology, you cannot see a sniper inside a building from the air. Spotting snipers from the ground is possible, but they can spot you just as easily. High-tech solutions are not very effective in this case.
Tanks can be hit by antitank weapons in ambushes or they can be allowed to pass, with ambushes focusing on the thin-skinned fuel and supply vehicles coming behind them.
Using just one or two of his divisions to hold Baghdad, Hussein could turn the battle into a war of attrition if his troops put up a merely competent fight. In a worst-case scenario, this could lead to thousands of American casualties.
Sharon's Israel
Graham Usher, Al-Ahram, January 30, 2003
It was expected but it was still unprecedented. In the Israeli elections on Tuesday the Likud Party swept all before them, winning a colossal 37 seats in the 120- member Knesset in what was a popular endorsement, if not of his policies, then of the personality, methods and worldview of its leader and Israel's next prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
"We are all Iraqis"
Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram, January 30, 2003
Magdi El-Kurdy has signed himself up to go to Baghdad, but he will not be acting as a human shield. "Europeans who sympathise with the Iraqis could go as human shields," the 47-year-old entrepreneur told Al-Ahram Weekly. "But we Egyptians will go to Baghdad as fighters. We named the first battalion after President Gamal Abdel- Nasser."
El-Kurdy, who has a wife, two sons and a daughter, said on Sunday that his family understands why he needs to do this. Thousands of Egyptian volunteers have signed up to go to Iraq, El-Kurdy said, because they strongly believe that "in defending Iraq, they are defending Egypt"
Pump up the Pentagon, hawks tell Bush
Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 28, 2003
While public opinion polls show that most of the U.S. public is concerned about the economy, hawks in the Bush administration see another problem as more urgent: the Pentagon is poor. Last week a group of influential right-wing figures close to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney complained that the current military budget of almost $400 billion--already greater than the world's 15 next-biggest military establishments combined--is not enough to sustain U.S. strategy abroad.
In a letter to the president released on the eve of his State of the Union Address, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose alumni include both Rumsfeld and Cheney, as well as most of their top aides, called for increasing the defense budget by as much as $100 billion next year.
"Today's military is simply too small for the missions it must perform," said the letter whose signatories included mainly key neoconservatives, former Reagan administration officials, and a number of individuals close to big defense manufacturers like Lockheed Martin. "By every measure, current defense spending is inadequate for a military with global responsibilities."
See also PNAC's Open Letter to the President about the defense budget
U.S. renews claims of Hussein-Al Qaeda link
Greg Miller and Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2003
The Bush administration's renewed assertions of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda are based largely on the murky case of a one-legged Al Qaeda suspect who was treated in Baghdad after being wounded in the war in Afghanistan.
Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi is emerging as a possible linchpin in the White House's efforts to win support for confronting Iraq, a case Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is scheduled to press before the United Nations next week.
U.S. intelligence officials say Zarqawi, 36, is one of Al Qaeda's top leaders in Europe and is allegedly Osama bin Laden's chief of chemical weapons.
His travels to Iraq and his suspected ties to terrorist plots in Britain, France and Spain tantalize White House hawks eager to link two of America's declared enemies and win support from skeptical Europeans for a possible invasion of Iraq.
But even as Powell promised Wednesday to lay out new information on Iraq-Al Qaeda links, U.S. intelligence sources said the Zarqawi connection remained highly circumstantial. Indeed, several sources said there was no clear evidence that Zarqawi's ties to Baghdad were more than medical.
Morally Unserious
Michael Kinsley, Slate, Wednesday, January 29, 2003
The second half of President Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday night, about Iraq, was a model of moral seriousness, as it should be from a leader taking his nation into war. Bush was brutally eloquent about the cause and—special points for this—about the inevitable cost. It may seem petty to pick apart the text. But logical consistency and intellectual honesty are also tests of moral seriousness. It is not enough for the words to be eloquent or even deeply sincere. If they are just crafted for the moment and haven't been thought through, the pretense of moral seriousness becomes an insult.
An annotated overview of the foreign policy segments of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address
Stephen Zunes, Common Dreams, January 29, 2003
The attempt to put Baathist Iraq on par with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is ludicrous. Hitler’s Germany was the most powerful industrialized nation in the world when it began its conquests in the late 1930s and Soviet Russia at its height had the world’s largest armed forces and enough nuclear weapons to destroy humankind. Iraq, by contrast, is a poor Third World country that has been under the strictest military and economic embargo in world history for more than a dozen years after having much of its civilian and military infrastructure destroyed in the heaviest bombing in world history. Virtually all that remained of its offensive military capability was subsequently dismantled under the strictest unilateral disarmament initiative ever, an inspection and verification process that has been resumed under an even more rigorous mandate. By contrast, back in the 1980s, when Iraq really was a major regional power and had advanced programs in weapons of mass destruction, the United States did not consider Iraq a threat at all; in fact, the U.S. provided extensive military, economic and technological support to Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Blood on his hands
John Pilger, January 29, 2003
William Russell, the great correspondent who reported the carnage of imperial wars, may have first used the expression "blood on his hands" to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance, order the mass killing of ordinary people.
In my experience "on his hands" applies especially to those modern political leaders who have had no personal experience of war, like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony Blair.
There is about them the essential cowardice of the man who causes death and suffering not by his own hand but through a chain of command that affirms his "authority".
In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity.
The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the "highest authority".
EUROPE'S COALITION OF THE WILLING
Who says America can't fight two wars at once? Without a single shot being fired, the Bush administration, through the tireless efforts of its loyal emissary Tony Blair, has deftly made a divide-and-rule maneuver that undercuts France and Germany's opposition to war. What motivates the eight leaders who are choosing to stand tall along side GWB? Is it a commitment to defeating terrorism or thumbing their noses at the Franco-German bid for centralized European power? Probably a bit of both. But let's not forget that eight European leaders (not to be confused with the populaces they "represent") leaves the majority of the European Union and the majority of NATO that, as Rumsfeld would put it, are still choosing to remain on the sidelines. Among the eight countries backing Bush, so far, only two are providing troops. Britain is sending 30,000 (a per capita commitment that equals that of the US - drawn, moreover, from a populace overwhelmingly opposed to war) and the Czech Republic has 250 troops available in Kuwait (though the Czech defense minister told them last week that any of them who didn't feel like staying in the Gulf was welcome to go home).
So, does Bush now have the broad international support his war needs in order to quell the doubts of the average American? Sure - so long as they continue to just pay attention to headlines. As Voice of America says, European leaders declare solidarity with US on Iraq. The BBC follows suit with European leaders rally behind US. Did these European leaders mention going to war? No, but they did say that "Europe has no quarrel with the Iraqi people." As the bombs soon start raining down on Baghdad, we can only hope that the people of Iraq don't take it personally.
U.N. finds no proof of nuclear program
IAEA unable to verify U.S. claims
Colum Lynch, Washington Post, January 29, 2003
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today that two months of inspections in Iraq and interviews with Iraqi officials have yielded no evidence to support Bush administration claims that Iraq is secretly trying to revive its nuclear weapons program.
ElBaradei said in an interview that "systematic" inspections of eight facilities linked by U.S. and British authorities to a possible nuclear weapons program have turned up no proof to support the claims. "I think we have ruled out . . . the buildings," he said. ElBaradei also cast doubts on U.S. claims that Iraq has sought to import uranium and high-strength aluminum tubes destined for a nuclear weapons program.
Demonizing Saddam
Michael S. James, ABC News, January 29, 2003
...demonizing the enemy with names, ridicule and allegations — and making it stick — amounts to more than just schoolyard-style trash talk when selling a war. Such techniques are time-tested methods for governments to move the public to action with bloodthirsty war fever or bloodcurdling fear of the enemy threat.
"War propaganda in the 20th century is getting the consent of the population for going on with the killing, and muzzling the population that feels otherwise," says Jay Winter, a history professor at Yale University.
Dehumanization allows people psychologically to throw their support behind a fight, because it's easier to approve of squashing a spider or a monster than human beings, propaganda scholars say. In World Wars I and II, for example, the U.S. government and private groups put out posters showing the enemy as looming giants or vicious animals.
Effective demonizing is often not limited to government sources, but also comes from the private media — as during earlier wars when Hollywood churned out patriotic movies and cartoons that demonized the enemy, often in what would now be considered racist ways, or during the Gulf War when the news media fed the war frenzy.
Counting the dead
In the event of war, how many Iraqi civilians will die? And how many will starve, or be displaced?
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, January 29, 2003
With as much secrecy as the Pentagon, the United Nations has been busily counting the likely casualty toll of a war on Iraq. While the Pentagon focuses on its troops, the network of UN specialist agencies is trying to estimate what would happen to Iraqis.
The assessments are dramatic, though for reasons of internal diplomacy or because of American pressure the UN is unwilling to go public with the figures. But a newly leaked report from a special UN taskforce that summarises the assessments calculates that about 500,000 people could "require medical treatment to a greater or lesser degree as a result of direct or indirect injuries", according to the World Health Organisation.
WHO estimates that 100,000 Iraqi civilians could be wounded and another 400,000 hit by disease after the bombing of water and sewage facilities and the disruption of food supplies.
"The nutritional status of some 3.03 million people will be dire and they will require therapeutic feeding," says the UN children's fund. About four-fifths of these victims will be children under five. The rest will be pregnant and lactating women.
Pentagon's quietest calculation: the casualty count
Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor, January 29, 2003
Somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, war planners are searching for answers to the ultimate questions about armed conflict with Iraq: Will it be worth it? Even assuming Saddam Hussein is toppled, will the likely loss of US servicemen and women be "acceptable"?
Kennedy to seek new measure on war with Iraq
Jonathan Karl, CNN, January 29, 2003
Sen. Edward Kennedy will introduce a measure requiring President Bush to get new congressional approval before launching a military strike on Iraq, he announced Tuesday.
"Much has changed in the many months since Congress has debated war with Iraq," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement released after President Bush's State of the Union address, in which Bush tried to rally the American people to the need to disarm Iraq.
"U.N. inspectors are on the ground and making progress, and their work should continue," Kennedy said. "Osama bin Laden and the Korean nuclear crisis continue to pose far greater threats [than Iraq]."
41 American Nobel laureates sign against a war without international support
William J. Broad, New York Times, January 29, 2003
Forty-one American Nobel laureates in science and economics issued a declaration yesterday opposing a preventive war against Iraq without wide international support. The statement, four sentences long, argues that an American attack would ultimately hurt the security and standing of the United States, even if it succeeds.
The signers, all men, include a number who at one time or another have advised the federal government or played important roles in national security. Among them are Hans A. Bethe, an architect of the atom bomb; Walter Kohn, a former adviser to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon; Norman F. Ramsey, a Manhattan Project scientist who readied the Hiroshima bomb and later advised NATO; and Charles H. Townes, former research director of the Institute for Defense Analyses at the Pentagon and chairman of a federal panel that studied how to base the MX missile and its nuclear warheads.
In addition to winning Nobel prizes, 18 of the signers have received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest science honor.
A TIMELY REMINDER
As the flimsy equation that is supposed to link Saddam to al-Qaeda is once again being revived, it's worth re-reading these comments from the Center for Strategic and International Studies' senior fellow, Daniel Benjamin. As Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz promise that the removal of Saddam will represent a great advance in the war on terrorism, it may well turn out that they are about to hand al-Qaeda its greatest victory.
In the fog of war, a greater threat
Daniel Benjamin, Washington Post, October 31, 2002
...the greatest terrorist dangers will likely come not from Hussein's cooperation with al Qaeda before the United States topples him but from the fact that his removal would present jihadists with rich new opportunities. Even if Iraqis greet GIs as liberators -- and some would -- the lesson of the past decade is that important parts of the Islamic world will not see it that way. When the United States freed Kuwait and protected Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War, it stoked the radicals' belief that Washington was seeking to dominate the Arab world and destroy Islam. For al Qaeda, this was a catalytic event. [...]
Now, thousands of recruits later, al Qaeda and its affiliates would find American forces in a post-Hussein Iraq to be an irresistible target. Administration officials have been airing a plan for an occupation modeled on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's regency in postwar Japan, which, they contend, will plant liberal democracy in the Arab world. In the extraordinarily unlikely case that Iraq -- a country with deep divisions and nothing like the support for its leadership or wartime experience that Japan had -- is pacified, the country will still be a magnet for jihadists from all over the world. Those who today blow up French tankers off Yemen or bars in Bali will soon be picking off GIs in Basra. For the 100,000 troops trying to maintain order in a country the size of California, this will be life at "Threatcon Delta," with weapons perpetually loaded and locked.
Even more worrisome, a war to remove weapons of mass destruction from Hussein's hands could result in their falling into more lethal ones. Iraq's chemical and biological weapons are distributed around the country, in hundreds of military stockpiles and dual-use factories. As Kenneth M. Pollack points out in "The Threatening Storm," "Baghdad now has a number of mobile [biological weapons] labs that can move around the country as needed, leaving no trace and having virtually no signature that Western intelligence can detect." Iraq has hundreds of tons of chemical weapons and precursors and thousands of liters of biological agents. Throughout the 1990s, the United States was repeatedly surprised by discoveries in the course of inspections and defectors' accounts of the extent of these programs. On any given day, we could locate only a fraction of these weapons.
In the fog of war, much of this material would rapidly be "privatized" -- liberated by colonels, security service operatives and soon-to-be unemployed scientists. They know there is a market for unconventional weapons, and they will have no trouble finding buyers. The U.S. military has never faced a mission like collecting all these weapons. Even with U.S. special forces combing the country, the collapse of the Iraqi regime could prove to be the greatest proliferation disaster in history. The beneficiaries will be terrorists who have no interest in the weapons for their deterrent value; they will just want to use them.
Daniel Ellsberg critiques press coverage on Iraq
Editor & Publisher, January 28, 2003
What differences do you see between today's Iraqi crisis and Vietnam?
One difference with Vietnam in '64 is: we now know we are headed to a big war with a lot of troops. But, still, the public feels it will be short and cheap, like the Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. They expect that model. Why? Has the press failed to pursue other scenarios? The administration has mainly conveyed what its top civilian leaders seem to believe -- or want us to believe -- that this war can be as quick and cheap as those examples. There seems to be no military leader who has that same confidence.
It could go like that, but, as I saw in Vietnam, in war the uncertainties are extreme. To be confident of any outcome is naive or foolish. The press could step into this breach by aggressively probing for, and reporting, the views of dissenters who clearly abound in the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department.
Desert caution
Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, January 28, 2003
Norman Schwarzkopf wants to give peace a chance.
The general who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn't seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now. He thinks U.N. inspections are still the proper course to follow. He's worried about the cockiness of the U.S. war plan, and even more by the potential human and financial costs of occupying Iraq.
And don't get him started on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
In fact, the hero of the last Gulf War sounds surprisingly like the man on the street when he discusses his ambivalence about the Bush administration's hawkish stance on ousting Saddam Hussein. He worries about the Iraqi leader, but would like to see some persuasive evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons programs.
For Afghan rebuilding, a key year
Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 2003
In its second year of power, and its first real year of outright control, the government of Afghanistan has entered a crucial year that decides whether everything comes together - or falls apart.
If Kabul and other major cities are stable, donor money will flow, refugees will return, and roads will be rebuilt. If the nation remains unstable, aid resources will dry up, and Afghanistan could return to the 12th century conditions prevalent under the Taliban.
Antiwar movement swells, still searching for its voice
Kim Campbell, The Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 2003
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Bush will try to convince Americans that it's time for a war with Iraq. It's unclear exactly how many people he needs to win over, but he faces a narrowing gap of those who favor an attack.
Americans are split on the idea of going to war, with a slight majority still favoring military action. But polls show support for invasion at its lowest point since last summer. The public's wavering is also showing up in anecdotes from the antiwar movement, which is experiencing gradual growth in its size and breadth, even as activists struggle to find a unified message.
Why the US needs the UN
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, January 29, 2003
From a military point of view, the US does not need anything from the co-called "coalition of the willing", except the right to fly over a given country's airspace and the right to use a few airbases - which will be in Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey. Kuwait and Qatar are in the bag, but Turkey could be a very complicated matter. Washington so far has offered US$4 billion to Turkey, which is peanuts compared to the negative fallout of a possible war. Turkey estimates it may have lost as much as US$50 billion because of the 1991 Gulf War.
As the world once again contemplates the spectacle of ultra-high-tech electronic jamming, the thousands of smart, or not so smart, bombs, and the likely thousands or dozens of thousands of collateral damage, Washington will definitely need the international community for the mopping-up business of post-Saddam. Powell himself put it succinctly; the US would like to internationalize the intervention as much as possible, because later "there will be too much work to do". This is a basic tenet of the Bush doctrine: America bombs, and the rest of the world picks up the pieces.
F.B.I. tells offices to count local Muslims and mosques
Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, January 28, 2003
The F.B.I. is ordering field supervisors to count the number of mosques and Muslims in their areas as part of the antiterrorism effort.
Civil rights advocates and Arab-American leaders denounced the survey as a form of racial profiling. Bureau officials said, however, that the results would not be used to establish quotas for investigations.
An engineered crisis
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, January 27, 2003
On the first day of war the United States will rain down 300-400 cruise missiles on Iraq, according to a report by CBS news. That averages out at one missile every four minutes around the clock, easily exceeding the total fired over six weeks in the 1991 Gulf war.
The aim, according to the Pentagon sources quoted, is to cause such "shock and awe" that Iraqi troops will lose their will to fight at the outset. Just in case they do not get the message immediately, the US plans do the same again on day two, CBS said.
Whether this is the actual plan or merely a strategically timed bit of disinformation intended to terrify Baghdad in advance, I have no idea, but anyone who has watched television over the last few days can be in little doubt as to the awesome array of weaponry that is now being assembled for the attack. To a world that remains mostly unconvinced of the need for it, there is something surreal and not quite believable about this. How has it come about? And why now?
Despair drives voters into arms of Sharon
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, January 27, 2003
"He promised peace and security. We don't have it today. The situation is getting worse," she said. "But, yes, I will vote for him. The prime minister hasn't done anything he promised at the beginning. I don't know if he can solve our problems but I trust him."
This is one of the paradoxes around Ariel Sharon as he heads for near-certain victory in tomorrow's election.
He came to power two years ago promising peace.
"If you counted the number of times the Sharon campaign mentioned peace in 2001, you would have thought he was a hippie about to burst into Give Peace a Chance," said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a political scientist at Hebrew University.
Yet his tenure as prime minister has been marked by more Israeli civilian deaths - close to 700 - than at any time since the struggle for independence in 1948. As Mr Sharon likes to point out, that is equivalent to 40,000 deaths in the US.
To compound the misery, the conflict has given the economy its worst battering in 50 years. Unemployment has surged above 10%, wages are falling and the once burgeoning IT sector which drove the boom of the late 90s is imploding.
Pollsters say they have never seen a sadder, more fatigued or frustrated electorate. Yet Mr Sharon retains the overwhelming confidence of the Jewish population.
US more isolated on Iraq after Blix report
Ian MacKenzie, Reuters, January 28, 2003
The United States appears further isolated in its attitude towards Baghdad, with most of the world saying UN arms inspectors need more time to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Even Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of staunch US ally Britain, while condemning Iraq's attitude to the inspectors as "a charade", said the continuation of the searches was up to the UN Security Council - not any one state.
A warm relationship
Natan Guttman, Ha'aretz, January 28, 2003
The announcement from National Security Council spokesman Sean MaCormack last Thursday concerning the positive manner in which the United States views Israel's request for special aid of $ 12 billion could not have come at a better time for the Likud.
Throughout the election campaign in Israel, the American administration made every effort not to create the impression that there might be a problem of any kind in Jerusalem-Washington relations, and the latest declaration makes it clear that not only is everything A-okay, but that the U.S. will now step forward to save Israel's economy.
A bad diagnosis for the state of our union
Drs. Jack L. Paradise and Richard H. Michaels, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 27, 2003
President Bush will deliver his State of the Union message tomorrow. As physicians concerned with health and with the preservation and protection of human life, we are deeply troubled by the union's current state. [...] In our view, United States is being led, in Einstein's words, to unparalleled catastrophe -- and on many fronts. We see the state of the union as perilous. We hope urgently that the American public will recognize the dangers and will act to protect all that we hold dear.
Why fight Iraq? For Dad, oil, Israel?
Ray McGovern, Miami Herald, January 27, 2003
My next-door neighbor, a staunch Republican, asked me recently: "What do you think of our cowboy president and Iraq? Is he crazy, or just dumb? I dont get it! Mind if we talk after work today?'"
It turned out that his questions are the same ones that countless Americans are asking.
America's dreams of empire
Pervez Hoodbhoy, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2003
Street opinion in Pakistan, and probably in most Muslim countries, holds that Islam is the true target of America's new wars. The fanatical hordes spilling out of Pakistan's madrasas are certain that a modern-day Richard the Lion-Hearted will soon bear down upon them. Swords in hand, they pray to Allah to grant war and send a modern Saladin, who can miraculously dodge cruise missiles and hurl them back to their launchers.
Even moderate Muslims are worried. They see indicators of religious war in such things as the profiling of Muslims by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the placing of Muslim states on the U.S. register of rogues and the blanket approval given to Israeli bulldozers as they level Palestinian neighborhoods.
But Muslims elevate their importance in the American cosmography. The U.S. has aspirations far beyond subjugating inconsequential Muslim states: It seeks to remake the world according to its needs, preference and convenience. The war on Iraq is but the first step.
AMERICAN POWER DEPENDS ON EUROPEAN WEAKNESS
US presses Europeans to weaken alliance
Judy Dempsey, Financial Times, January 27, 2003
US envoys in Europe are putting pressure on European Union countries to weaken the deepening Franco-German alliance, fearing it will lead to a more independent European defence and foreign policy.
Diplomats say the US envoys have raised their concerns in bilateral meetings with European officials, a move that reflects the ever-widening gap in the transatlantic relationship. France and Germany have set out proposals to give the EU greater political clout.
"US diplomats have suggested to us they do not like certain aspects of the Franco-German plan," a senior European diplomat said ahead of today's meeting of EU foreign ministers, at which Iraq will dominate the agenda.
"The Americans discreetly question how this reinvigorated alliance will change Europe in a way that could completely redefine transatlantic relations."
In Britain, war concern grows into resentment of U.S. power
Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, January 26, 2003
Prime Minister Tony Blair is the Bush administration's staunchest international ally in its campaign against Iraq and war on terrorism. But apart from Blair and his inner circle, there is growing unease and resentment here not just over Iraq but over U.S. power and foreign policy in general, according to political analysts, commentators and politicians.
There are fears that the United States is determined to act without heeding the concerns of its allies -- and fears that Britain will be dragged along in its wake. These fears have spread far beyond the traditionally anti-American hard left -- known here as "the usual suspects" -- to include moderates and conservatives as well.
"There's no question the anxiety is moving into the mainstream," said Raymond Seitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain who is vice chairman of Lehman Brothers Europe. The debate here, he said, has shifted. "It's not about how you deal with weapons of mass destruction or how you combat the threat of terrorism in the world, it's about how do you constrain the United States. How do you tie down Gulliver?"
World rebels against America
Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, January 26, 2003
Having positioned enough U.S. troops and equipment all around this Persian Gulf neighbourhood, George W. Bush can launch a war on Iraq any time, with or without United Nations' approval. But he has already lost the political war.
That came through loud and clear in my journey through Europe, the Middle East and Asia in the last three weeks. It should become evident to North Americans in the days ahead.
U.N. officials say intelligence to prove U.S. claims is lacking
Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Colum Lynch, Washington Post, January 27, 2003
In the most detailed description to date of U.S. intelligence-sharing with the inspectors, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said last week that the United States has identified the names of Iraqi scientists and sites associated with Iraq's weapons programs that U.S. officials believe could lead the inspectors to uncover evidence of on-going activity to develop banned arms.
"We have provided our analysis of Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs, and we have suggested an inspection strategy and tactics," Wolfowitz said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "We have provided counterintelligence support to improve the inspectors' ability to thwart Iraqi attempts to penetrate their organizations."
But the information has not always panned out. After almost two months of daily searches, the inspectors have been unable to confirm U.S. and British suspicions -- outlined last year in a CIA report and a British government dossier -- that a host of former weapons sites and industrial facilities have been rebuilt during the past four years to produce banned weapons.
On Afghan border, war drags on
Marc Kaufman, Washington Post, January 25, 2003
At a time when many U.S. officials in Washington and Afghanistan are eager to shift the focus of the U.S. military mission here from combat to the reconstruction of the country, soldiers at isolated U.S. fire bases like the one here at Shkin know firsthand why that has not yet happened. Fifteen months after the start of their campaign to topple the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda, they still face an invisible but determined enemy capable of slipping into Afghanistan from apparent havens in Pakistan to attack those they see as infidels and invaders.
America's crude tactics
Larry Elliott, The Guardian, January 27, 2003
Let's get one thing straight. George Bush's determination to topple Saddam Hussein has nothing to do with oil. Iraq may account for 11% of the world's oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia, but the military build-up in the Gulf is about making the world a safer and more humane place, not about allowing America's motorists to guzzle gas to their heart's content. So, lest you should be in any doubt, let me spell it out one more time. This. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. Oil. Got that?
Of course you haven't. Despite what Colin Powell might say, it takes a trusting, nay naive, soul to imagine that the White House would be making all this fuss were it not that Iraq has something the US needs. There are plenty of small, repressive states in the world - Zimbabwe for one - where the regimes are being allowed to quietly kill and torture their people. There are plenty of small, repressive states with weapons of mass destruction - North Korea, for example - which appear to pose a larger and more immediate threat to international security. But only with Iraq do you get a small, repressive country with weapons of mass destruction that also happens to be floating on oil.
Serving notice of a new U.S., poised to hit first and alone
Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 27, 2003
One year after President Bush declared Iraq to be part of an "axis of evil," the United States appears ready to carry out its new doctrine authorizing pre-emptive attacks on hostile states and terrorists who represent potential threats to the United States.
While the Bush administration would prefer to have the broad support of United Nations Security Council members before it invades Iraq, it put the world community on notice today that it is fully prepared to act on its own.
"Multilateralism cannot become an excuse for inaction," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today, referring to the uphill battle to achieve a consensus at the Security Council.
He later added, "We continue to reserve our sovereign right to take military action against Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing."
The United States has long reserved the right to strike first to defend American troops and territory against imminent threats. But experts say the pre-emption policy is remarkable for several reasons.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has turned pre-emption from an option into a cardinal principle of its foreign policy. The administration has also made the case for pre-empting threats that are not immediate, but merely prospective, as in the case of Iraq.
I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush
Terry Jones (Monty Python emeritus), The Observer, January 26, 2003
I'm really excited by George Bush's latest reason for bombing Iraq: he's running out of patience. And so am I!
For some time now I've been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I'm sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven't been able to discover what. I've been round to his place a few times to see what he's up to, but he's got everything well hidden. That's how devious he is.
As for Mr Patel, don't ask me how I know, I just know - from very good sources - that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that if we don't act first, he'll pick us off one by one.
Why does Britain pretend that it has the same interests as the US?
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Guardian, January 27, 2003
Next month, Lord Black of Crossharbour - Conrad Black, the owner of the Daily Telegraph - is giving a lecture in London entitled "Is it in Britain's national interest to be America's principal ally?" There may be no prizes for guessing his answer, but that is indeed a very interesting question, and has been for many years. The closer one looks at the relations between the two countries in terms of national interest, the more unequal they seem, though distorted by a misreading of history and a misunderstanding of motives.
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Wondering what George Bush will have to say to the American people on Tuesday evening? Frank Gaffney might have some idea. Gaffney is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He's also a protégé of Richard Perle (Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board) and a founding member of the Project for the New American Century. Would a private citizen be in a position to "draft" part of the State of the Union speech and also publish it in advance? Is Gaffney's "draft" just wishful thinking on his part, or does it reflect the unparalleled influence of a circle of neo-conservative hawks who gained ascendency inside and around the Bush administration on September 11, 2001?
Gaffney is so bold as to volunteer both themes and text for George Bush's speech. Some of Gaffney's predictions may seem somewhat fanciful - implicating Saddam in the Oklahoma bombing - but his general theme - war against Iraq is well-nigh unavoidable and is an inextricable part of the war on terrorism - sounds exactly as they would say in the White House, "on message." Here are Gaffney's suggestions as they appear in National Review:
"The most-memorable passages of President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address will deal with the global threat of terrorism and the other foreign-policy crises currently confronting the nation. He will, after all, be summoning the American people to war — a war they did not seek but now have no choice but to fight. The following are among the themes he should use to inform, inspire, and enlist them, and some suggested words:
— The next phase of the war on terror will involve the liberation of Iraq. It is an inextricable part of the worldwide campaign against the terrorists and their state sponsors. As many of you have read in press reports, there is some evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in not only the September 11th attacks but also in the bombing of the first World Trade Center in 1993 and the destruction of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. My administration is actively pursuing this evidence and we will be presenting our findings to the Congress and the public in due course. We will probably not know the full story until we have access to Saddam's bunkers and their secret files concerning terrorist operations. For the moment, it is enough to declare that Saddam Hussein has murderously attacked us in the past, but he has done so for the last time.
— The choice we face today is not between war and peace. Rather it is between war now — under circumstances and timing of our choosing — and war later, when conditions may be far more favorable to Saddam Hussein.
— Before this war on terror is over, we are likely to have to confront other adversaries, as well — certainly overseas and probably here at home. We will do so, wherever possible, with the help and support of our friends and allies. We will do so, however, alone if necessary. Our purpose will be not only to end a threat to ourselves but also to empower those who share our desire to live in peace and to enjoy the blessings of liberty that we Americans hold so dear."
Half a democracy
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, January 26, 2003
Once Israel became an occupying state, it ceased to be a democracy. There is no such thing: Israel's claims about its democratic character are empty boasts. Just as there is no such thing as a partial pregnancy, there is no such thing as a partial democracy, either.
No democracy exists only as far as a particular territorial line within the country, and no democracy is reserved exclusively for a particular religion or nationality. In a truly democratic regime, everyone enjoys his freedoms and rights in equal measure. That is not the case in Israel.
'Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?'
Robert Fisk, The Independent, January 26, 2003
On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind.
"Just for the record," the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see – the filth and obscenity of corpses – cannot be shown. First because it is not "appropriate" to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war.
US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis
Seizing reserves will be an allied priority if forces go in
Faisal Islam and Nick Paton Walsh, The Observer, January 26, 2003
Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help - Iraq.
Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.
After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve.
But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure.
Rumsfeld gibe widens gap with 'old' Europeans
Jody K. Biehl, San Francisco Chronicle, January 25, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal earlier this week of Germany and France as "old Europe" because they do not favor quick military action against Iraq only serves to further isolate America from continental Europe's two largest powers, political scientists say.
As the "motor" of the 15-nation European Union, France and Germany possess close to 50 percent of the EU's population and account for close to 42 percent of its combined gross domestic product.
To suggest, as Rumsfeld did, that the center of Europe is shifting eastward and that smaller countries, whose GDP may represent 5 to 10 percent of the total, are as important as the major players is folly, the experts said.
USA oui! Bush non!
Eric Alterman, The Nation, January 23, 2003
Twenty-four hours or so after landing in Paris for a five-city tour in search of the new European anti-Americanism, I found myself in one of the coolest places on the planet: a big old ugly hockey arena on the outskirts of town, surrounded by 15,000 people waiting for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to come onstage. The concert turned out to be a pretty standard Springsteen concert. But it's always interesting to see him play abroad, and Paris enjoys a special place in Springsteen lore. It was here, back in 1980, that Bruce first talked politics with his fans. Largely self-educated, Springsteen had been given a copy of Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager's A Short History of the United States. He read it and told the crowd that America "held out a promise and it was a promise that gets broken every day in the most violent way. But it's a promise that never, ever dies, and it's always inside of you."
You can tell a lot about a continent by the way it reacts to Bruce Springsteen. Tonight, at the Bercy Stadium, the typically multigenerational, sold-out Springsteen audience could be from Anytown, USA. Everybody knows all the lyrics, even to the new songs. Toward the end of the evening, Bruce announces, in French, "I wrote this song about the Vietnam War. I want to do it for you tonight for peace," and 15,000 Parisians, standing in the historic home of cultural anti-Americanism, scream out at the top of their collective lungs, "I was born in the USA," fists in the air.
You can't be anti-American if you love Bruce Springsteen. You can criticize America. You can march against America's actions in the world. You can take issue with the policies of its unelected, unusually aggressive and unthinking Administration, and you can even get annoyed with its ubiquitous cultural and commercial presence in your life. But you can't be anti-American.
Anti-Europeanism in America
Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003
Virtually everyone I spoke to on the East Coast agreed that there is a level of irritation with Europe and Europeans higher even than at the last memorable peak, in the early 1980s.
Pens are dipped in acid and lips curled to pillory "the Europeans," also known as "the Euros," "the Euroids," "the 'peens," or "the Euroweenies." Richard Perle, now chairman of the Defense Policy Board, says Europe has lost its "moral compass" and France its "moral fiber." This irritation extends to the highest levels of the Bush administration. In conversations with senior administration officials I found that the phrase "our friends in Europe" was rather closely followed by "a pain in the butt."
The current stereotype of Europeans is easily summarized. Europeans are wimps. They are weak, petulant, hypocritical, disunited, duplicitous, sometimes anti-Semitic and often anti-American appeasers. In a word: "Euroweenies." Their values and their spines have dissolved in a lukewarm bath of multilateral, transnational, secular, and postmodern fudge. They spend their euros on wine, holidays, and bloated welfare states instead of on defense. Then they jeer from the sidelines while the United States does the hard and dirty business of keeping the world safe for Europeans. Americans, by contrast, are strong, principled defenders of freedom, standing tall in the patriotic service of the world's last truly sovereign nation-state.
U.S. coalition for war has few partners, troop pledges
Glenn Kessler and Bradley Graham, Washington Post, January 25, 2003
The Bush administration has asked 53 countries to join the United States in a military campaign against Iraq, but so far the "coalition of the willing," in President Bush's phrase, consists of a handful of countries and even fewer commitments of troops, officials and diplomats said yesterday.
The United States would carry much of the burden of any war against Iraq, but diplomatically it is more important for the administration to claim a broad coalition if it fails to win United Nations backing for a military strike. For the moment, many countries publicly have said they will provide help only if the U.N. Security Council approves it. [...]
"The reality is that as of today, you are talking about two or three countries, plus the gulf neighbors," said Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who was a National Security Council staffer in the Clinton administration. "If that's the coalition of the willing, it's a remarkably thin coalition."
Daalder said that, in his view, it is not enough to define a member of the coalition as providing use of bases or permitting overflights, which he noted that even Germany, a fierce opponent of war, has agreed to provide. "A coalition of the willing means people who put forces on the ground or whose participation makes them a target of an attack," he said.
The nuclear option in Iraq
The U.S. has lowered the bar for using the ultimate weapon
William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2003
One year after President Bush labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," the United States is thinking about the unthinkable: It is preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq.
At the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in Omaha and inside planning cells of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, target lists are being scrutinized, options are being pondered and procedures are being tested to give nuclear armaments a role in the new U.S. doctrine of "preemption."
According to multiple sources close to the process, the current planning focuses on two possible roles for nuclear weapons:
attacking Iraqi facilities located so deep underground that they might be impervious to conventional explosives;
thwarting Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction.
Nuclear weapons have, since they were first created, been part of the arsenal discussed by war planners. But the Bush administration's decision to actively plan for possible preemptive use of such weapons, especially as so-called bunker busters, against Iraq represents a significant lowering of the nuclear threshold. It rewrites the ground rules of nuclear combat in the name of fighting terrorism.
Iraq: no nuclear evidence
Julian Borger, Brian Whitaker and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, January 25, 2003
The United Nations' nuclear inspectors will deliver a serious blow on Monday to Washington's case for going to war with Iraq, telling the world they have found nothing and giving Saddam Hussein good grades for cooperation.
Just as damaging to the US position will be the insistence to the UN security council by the chief nuclear inspector, Mohamed El Baradei, that his team needs several more months to complete its work and that some important testing equipment has only just arrived in the country.
US interrogators turn to 'torture lite'
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, January 25, 2003
The United States is condoning the torture and illegal interrogation of prisoners held in the wake of September 11, in defiance of international law and its own constitution, according to lawyers, former US intelligence officers and human rights groups.
They claim prisoners have been beaten, hooded and had painkillers withheld.
Some prisoners inside American penal institutions and detention camps have been subjected to interrogation techniques which do not leave injuries, but which lawyers consider to be abusive. Others have been sent to countries where electric shocks and more conventional forms of torture have been used, according to the claims.
ALL HAWKS NOW
Hawks and doves unite over Iraq
Toby Harnden, The Telegraph, January 25, 2003
The State Department and Pentagon, representing the rival poles in the Bush administration, came together this week to herald the end of the so-called "hawks-dove" split over war in Iraq.
Their uncompromising speeches appeared to be a prelude to President George W Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Senate rejects Total Information Awareness Program
Adam Clymer, New York Times, January 23, 2003
The Senate voted today to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad.
The curbs on the project, called the Total Information Awareness Program, were adopted without debate and by unanimous consent as part of a package of amendments to an omnibus spending bill. House leaders had no immediate comment on the surprise action, which will almost certainly go to a House-Senate conference. Neither did the White House or the Defense Department.
Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who proposed the amendment, said after the vote that it passed so easily because dismayed Republican senators had told him that "this is about the most far-reaching government surveillance proposal we have ever heard about." He said the amendment means "there will be concrete checks on the government's ability to snoop on law-abiding Americans."
Daniel Ellsberg answers questions on Iraq
Daniel Ellsberg, Ellsberg.net, January 23, 2003
What threat does Iraq now pose or could pose in the future to essential US objectives in the Middle East or globally?
No threat at all, so long as Saddam is not faced with overthrow or death by attack or invasion. Saddam has been weakened by a decade of sanctions, contained and deterred by the readiness and even strong desire of the US to attack Iraq on any excuse. Unattacked, he poses no threat at all to his neighbors or the US. To call him "the number one danger to US security and interests" is not just questionable, it's absurd. On any reasonable list of outstanding dangers, he isn't on the list.
Turkey strikes blow against Bush's war
Patrick Seale, Daily Star, January 24, 2003
Turkey wants to make Washington understand that the Middle East region is against war. But there should be no misunderstanding: there are limits to how far Turkey can go. It cannot afford to offend the United States or break its ties with Israel, however much it seeks friendship with the Arabs and feels sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Turkey's crisis-ridden economy is heavily dependent on aid from the International Monetary Fund. As a loyal NATO member, it has intimate and long-standing strategic relations with the United States. Since the mid-1990s, it has also developed close military and economic ties with Israel, earning it the valuable political support of the US Jewish Lobby. Its opposition to American (and Israeli) war plans and its opening to the Arab world are, therefore, all the more remarkable and praiseworthy.
How far has Turkey gone in voicing its opposition?
It has refused to sanction the opening of a "northern front" against Iraq from its territory. Some six weeks ago, a leading US hawk, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, visited Ankara to request the stationing of 80,000 US troops in Turkey. The Turks said no. They will not allow more than 10,000 to 20,000 US troops not enough to pose a serious threat to Iraq, but perhaps enough to keep the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan under control if the Iraqi state disintegrates. This is a serious blow to American war plans because, freed from a threat in the north, Saddam Hussein may concentrate the bulk of his forces in the south opposite Kuwait, posing a tougher problem for an American invasion force.
U.S. claim on Iraqi nuclear program is called into question
Joby Warrick, Washington Post, January 24, 2003
When President Bush traveled to the United Nations in September to make his case against Iraq, he brought along a rare piece of evidence for what he called Iraq's "continued appetite" for nuclear bombs. The finding: Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were "used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."
Bush cited the aluminum tubes in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly and in documents presented to U.N. leaders. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both repeated the claim, with Rice describing the tubes as "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."
It was by far the most prominent, detailed assertion by the White House of recent Iraqi efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. But according to government officials and weapons experts, the claim now appears to be seriously in doubt.
After weeks of investigation, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq are increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for enriching uranium, according to officials familiar with the inspection process. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.-chartered nuclear watchdog, reported in a Jan. 8 preliminary assessment that the tubes were "not directly suitable" for uranium enrichment but were "consistent" with making ordinary artillery rockets -- a finding that meshed with Iraq's official explanation for the tubes. New evidence supporting that conclusion has been gathered in recent weeks and will be presented to the U.N. Security Council in a report due to be released on Monday, the officials said.
Sen. Kerry blasts President's 'rush to war'
Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2003
In a sweeping critique of President Bush's foreign policy, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) on Thursday charged that the administration was moving too quickly toward war in Iraq and had not yet built sufficient support at home or abroad for military action.
"Mr. President, do not rush to war," said Kerry, whose speech marked him as the most skeptical about war of the top-tier contenders for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.[...]
Kerry now has moved closer to the war's critics, who maintain Bush is once again risking dangerous divisions with allies in repeatedly raising the prospect of invading Iraq, even without U.N. approval. Indeed, the heart of Kerry's speech was a charge that, across the board, Bush has pursued a "belligerent and myopic unilateralism" that has isolated the United States and increased threats to American security.
The U.S. is looking for an excuse to fight
Adam Hochschild, San Francisco Chronicle, January 19, 2003
As the American armada of ships, warplanes, tanks and other equipment pours into the region around Iraq, the only uncertainty about President Bush's misguided and dangerous war seems to be just when it will start. But there's something else we should watch for closely, for wars seldom start without one.
What will be the final pretext for opening fire? Most wars need such a fig leaf, and unpopular wars most of all. Seldom, if ever, has the United States prepared for war with so little support. The administration itself is divided. Major allies are balky. At home, there are peace marches but no war marches; abroad, opinion polls almost everywhere show angry, overwhelming opposition. All this makes President Bush, more than ever, need a plausible excuse to start his war.
THE NEO-CON PERSPECTIVE
No turning back now
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, January 24, 2003
The one advantage of Resolution 1441 was that it gave us a window of legitimacy during which to mobilize, position equipment, launch carriers, line up bases -- in short, create the infrastructure for disarming Hussein. However, now that the "world community" has shown that it never seriously intended to disarm Iraq, we are back on our own. This is the moment. There is no turning back.
Raid then aid
Nick Cater, The Guardian, January 24, 2003
The impending assault on Iraq leaves British aid agencies in a quandary as to how to prepare for a potential humanitarian crisis. Limited funding and inexperience in dealing with nuclear, biological or chemical warfare are some of the practical obstacles. The sheer uncertainty of how conflict might affect millions of civilians is another consideration.
The effects of a war on Iraq have been investigated. A leaked draft document from the United Nations, Likely Humanitarian Scenarios, envisages damage to all essential civilian supplies and facilities: water, sanitation, food, electricity, transport, fuel. It estimates that 500,000 people will be left injured or sick, 900,000 will be refugees, three million mothers and children will need food and two million will require help with shelter.
The message from the Bush camp: 'It's war within weeks'
Julian Borger, Ewen MacAskill and Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, January 24, 2003
Mr Bush wanted the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, to force the issue of military action by presenting evidence of Saddam Hussein's violations of UN resolutions immediately after weapons inspectors give their report to the UN on Monday. In Washington circles such an event is being referred to as the Adlai Stevenson moment.
The "Adlai Stevenson moment" has become Washington shorthand for the US presentation of its intelligence case. Stevenson was the US ambassador to the UN at the time of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, who dramatically confronted the Soviet envoy with vivid aerial photographs of nuclear missiles being unloaded in Cuba.
Downing Street was alarmed by the Bush administration's sudden haste in moving towards a climax. It was adamant that the decision to go to war should not be declared before Tony Blair flies to Camp David for talks with Mr Bush next Friday.
An informed source in Washington said: "Blair is a good guy. They won't want to do that to him. They want it to look like he played a part in the policy-making but the decision has been made."
A key moment will now be the state of the union address. According to a Washington source, the US administration remains divided along old fault lines about the precise timescale of war. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wants Mr Bush to set a clear and imminent deadline. But Mr Powell, is resisting, asking for a little more time for diplomatic coalition-building.
But both sides of the divide are making it increasingly clear that the end result will be military action, with or without UN backing.
In search of Iraqi credibility
Michael Jansen, Al-Ahram, January 23, 2003
The most important point about the discussions early this week between Iraq and the heads of the United Nations weapons inspectorate was made by Amir Saadi, the head of the Iraqi monitoring agency. He stated "when we talked, we forgot all about the threats of war." The discussions were "constructive and cordial" and dealt with "practical aspects" of Iraq's effort to "facilitate the work of the UN" in order to reach a "credible" conclusion to the inspection and monitoring effort. The operative word here is "credible".
Saadi's statement demonstrates that the confrontation between the Bush administration and Iraq has little to do with the efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The UN is pushing on an open door, while the United States continues to insist that the door is closed. Iraq is ready to cooperate and provide UN weapons inspectors with full access to places and people, but the inspectorate -- the inspectors on the job here and their bosses in New York and Vienna -- is under constant immense pressure from Washington to provide evidence that Iraq is in major "material breach" of Security Council Resolution 1441, thus giving the Bush administration the casus belli it so eagerly seeks.
U.S. in hot seat at World Economic Forum
Associated Press, January 23, 2003
The United States was in the hot seat at Thursday's gathering of the world's business and political leaders, criticized for a go-it-alone foreign policy that many fear will lead to war with Iraq and for a sluggish economy hampering a global revival.
The issue of growing U.S. threats against Iraq dominated early sessions and corridor conversations at the World Economic Forum, whose theme this year is "Building Trust."
Swiss President Pascal Couchepin was cheered during his opening speech, when he called for all peaceful means to be pursued to disarm Iraq and warned that "force must not be used before the matter has been brought before the U.N. Security Council." [...]
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, leader of a major Islamic nation, went further than Couchepin in his opening address and got an equally resounding reception from more than 800 invited guests.
"The forces against the 'axis of evil' are not going to win because the target is wrong. It will create more anger," he warned, referring to President Bush's denunciation a year ago of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
He also charged that Bush was trying to "out-terrorize the terrorists" with an ill-directed war on the al-Qaida network.
Beating around the Iraq Bush
Harold A. Gould, Daily Times, January 23, 2003
As mounting challenges to Bush's political credibility continue, war with Iraq is increasingly becoming a likelihood not for reasons of political morality but political expediency. War may now be the sole remaining avenue for saving an administration teetering on the brink of political oblivion. Victory over Hussein in a quick surgical operation could very well produce enough short-term public euphoria to hold at bay rising public restiveness over domestic conditions. Long enough, at least, to propel Bush across the finish line ahead of his Democratic challenger in 2004.
There are, therefore, compelling and growing motivations to short-circuit the cumbersome, UN-sponsored ransacking of Iraq's nuclear back alleys in search of smoking guns, and press ahead sooner rather than later with Gulf War II. Accusations that the control of Iraqi oil, or the achievement of overwhelming strategic dominance in West Asia, or aiding and abetting Israel's desperate attempts to subdue the Palestinians are not without merit. But they may have less to do with the rush to war than with the endlessly quoted Tip O'Neill mantra that, "All politics are local politics."
World opinion moves against Bush
Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, January 23, 2003
Those who are opposed to the George Bush administration's policy towards Iraq, and specifically its threat to launch an unprovoked invasion of the country, must surely be immensely heartened by the discernible shift in worldwide public opinion on the issue.
Last weekend's well-supported demonstrations in cities as diverse and far apart as Tokyo, Islamabad, Damascus, Moscow, Washington and San Francisco are indicative of the gathering power and reach of the anti-war movement.
For every person who took to the streets, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, who share their concerns. As the crisis appears to move towards some sort of denouement, the size and potency of this international resistance can be expected to grow.
It has been clear for some time that most people in the Arab world and Muslim countries worldwide would fiercely object to any US-led intervention in Iraq. Among the many reasons cited is the fear that war will increase regional instability and inflame the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The rising tide of anti-war sentiment has produced some remarkable recent poll findings in western Europe. Three out of four Germans, for example, say that they consider President Bush to be a greater danger than Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
U.S. increasingly isolated over Iraq
Russia, China join France, Germany in opposing war now
Reuters, January 23, 2003
The Bush administration faced new problems today in its confrontation with Iraq as China and Russia joined U.S. allies France and Germany in rejecting early military action.
The nations neighboring Iraq also convened a key meeting today in Turkey aimed at finding ways of averting a war.
The stand taken by Paris, Beijing and Moscow means a majority of the five veto-wielding permanent members on the U.N. Security Council are against rushing into war.
9/11 panel faces time, money pressure
Associated Press, January 22, 2003
An independent commission charged with investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is only beginning to confront a task complicated by a ticking clock, limited finances and the high expectations of those who lost loved ones.
The commission holds its first meeting in Washington on Monday, 16 months after the attacks. It will have just $3 million and little more than a year to explore the causes of the attacks, preparations for future terrorism and the response to the airline hijackings that killed more than 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in southwestern Pennsylvania.
By comparison, a federal commission created in 1996 got two years and $5 million to study legalized gambling.
Uniting America in common purpose:
Meeting America's real challenges at home and abroad
Senator Edward Kennedy, National Press Club, January 21, 2003
I continue to be convinced that this is the wrong war at the wrong time. The threat from Iraq is not imminent, and it will distract America from the two more immediate threats to our security – the clear and present danger of terrorism and the crisis with North Korea.
The far more likely reality is that an assault against Iraq – especially without broad international support – will not advance the defeat of Al Qaeda, but undermine it. It will antagonize critical allies and crack the global coalition that came together after September 11th. It will feed a rising tide of anti-Americanism overseas, and swell the ranks of Al Qaeda recruits and sympathizers. It will strain our diplomatic, military and intelligence resources and reduce our ability to root out terrorists abroad and at home. It could quickly spin out of control, and engulf other nations in the region too.
Don't waver, Bush warns France and Germany
David Rennie and Philip Delves Broughton, The Telegraph, January 23, 2003
President George W Bush made clear his growing exasperation with wavering allies last night, warning countries such as France and Germany that they would be "held to account" if they did not back tough action to disarm Saddam Hussein.
In his strongest language to date, he poured scorn on calls for United Nations inspections to be extended, saying the Iraqi leader merely wanted more time "so he can give the so-called inspectors more runaround".
Mr Bush said: "It's time for us to hold the world to account, and for Saddam to be held to account."
Time is running out - for George Bush
Editorial, The War in Context, January 23, 2003
During a week when the mantra of the Bush administration has been the relentless repetition of the words, time is running out, the emphatic message has been that neither UN weapons inspectors, nor European opposition, nor a burgeoning anti-war movement inside the United States, can prevent George Bush from demonstrating genuine leadership. It even looks like the axis of evil may soon be expanded to include France and Germany.
Events "on the ground" (at least in Iraq) could hardly be seen to warrant so many harbingers of war. The truth however, as everyone in the White House knows, is that time is running out for George Bush. If he's going to have his war, it's now or never.
The corner that the Bushies have driven themselves into is nothing more than the product of their own arrogance and dogmatic zeal. To change course now would be to court humiliation and let slip a huge measure of the power they worked so hard to secure.
Forget the contradictions between America threatening Saddam while coaxing Kim Jong-il. Forget that by time this is over, the damage to the UN may be irreparable. Forget that peace between Israelis and Palestinians has never seemed so distant. Forget that in the course of eighteen months, global sympathy for a wounded nation has turned into widespread fear and animosity. Forget that a "united we stand" flag-waving nation has sunk into economic stagnation and this time is less than eager to rally around the commander-in-chief as he leads his people once more to the breach.
The message to Saddam, to the Security Council, to the world, and to the American people is: we're in charge. And if you don't believe it, here's a war to prove we mean what we say, we know we're right, God's on our side, the world be damned!
A matter of life, death - and oil
Terry Macalister, Ewen MacAskill, Rory McCarthy and Nick Paton-Walsh, The Guardian, January 23, 2003
It is not just wild-eyed western peaceniks that believe oil is at the centre - or close to the centre - of the pending conflict. It is quite a commonly held view even in the conservative business world but few are willing to express such things publicly.
Fadel Gheit, a former Mobil chemical engineer and now an investment specialist with New York brokerage firm Fahnestock & Co, told 50 of the largest pension funds and financial investors in America before Christmas that the expected war was "all about oil" and that the global fight against terrorism was just "camouflage" to mask the real purpose.
Later he told the Guardian: "The Americans have nothing against the people of Iraq but our way of life is dependent on 20m barrels a day and half of it has to be imported. We are like a patient on oil dialysis. It's a matter of life and death. The smart people [in Washington] all know this but its not generally advertised on the kind of shows that most people watch: MTV and soap operas."
Mr Gheit said a strike against Iraq has become vital in the eyes of Washington because politicians and security chiefs fear that Saudi Arabia, the traditional provider of US oil, is a political "powder keg" that is going to explode from within. "Of the 22m people in Saudi Arabia, half are under the age of 25 and half of them have no jobs. Many want to see the end of the ruling royal family and whether it takes five months or five years, their days are numbered. If Saudi Arabia fell into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists and the exports were stopped, there is not enough spare oil anywhere else to make up the shortfall."
EU allies unite against Iraq war
BBC News, January 22, 2003
The leaders of France and Germany have pledged to intensify their co-operation against a US-led war against Iraq.
The decision was announced in Paris, at a joint news conference by President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the 40th anniversary of the two countries' post-war friendship treaty.
In an example of the Franco-German opposition, the Nato alliance was unable to approve a US request to advance military planning in the event of war.
Empty warheads are not the heart of the story
Zvi Bar'el, Ha'aretz, January 22, 2003
A review of the intelligence U.S. report prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency on the deployment of weapons of mass destruction and the British government's report on Iraq's non-conventional weapons capabilities, will make an impression primarily regarding the means Iraq possessed, but not about what it has today and what it may still develop. These reports rely due to the nature of the situation on many assessments and very little specific information. Even the intelligence the U.S. administration promised to relay to Hans Blix's delegation is moving too slowly and is coming in measured amounts. This method of relaying information prompts questions about the real information possessed by Western intelligence agencies. This matter has already prompted speculation that shortly before the war, America will disclose what it knows in order to justify the war, or alternately, the information will be divulged only after the war in order to justify it after the fact. [...]
The American dilemma is that if inspectors uncover new findings and destroy them, there will be no pretext for war, because that is, after all, the purpose of the inspection; and if no such findings are uncovered, then too the pretext for a war disappears.
Americans aren't consumers who have to be sold on war
Catherine Scott, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 22, 2003
As citizens, we should challenge the growing trend toward our government treating us as customers, clients and consumers. Indeed, there is evidence that U.S. citizens are thoughtfully questioning the wisdom of attacking Iraq. Polling evidence suggests that Americans favor disarming Iraq through U.N. inspections and perceive al-Qaida to be a more serious threat than Saddam Hussein.
The protests over the weekend in Washington, Portland and San Francisco, among other places, suggest that there are thousands of people who are not buying war with Iraq.
Support for a war with Iraq weakens
Dana Milbank and Richard Morin, Washington Post, January 22, 2003
Seven in 10 Americans would give U.N. weapons inspectors months more to pursue their arms search in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that found growing doubts about an attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
In addition to the public's skepticism about military action against Iraq, the poll found that a majority of Americans disapproved of President Bush's handling of the economy for the first time in his presidency. The number of Americans who regard the economy as healthy has not been lower in the past nine years, and fewer than half supported the tax cut plan Bush has proposed as a remedy.
The findings underscore twin challenges for Bush as he hits the midpoint of his term. In next week's State of the Union address, Bush will try to rally flagging support for a confrontation with Iraq and convince Americans that he can restore prosperity at home.
A war in Iraq could fray unity against Al Qaeda
Faye Bowers and Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 2003
Unilateral US action against Iraq might make the international community less willing to help out with other American geopolitical priorities - such as the overall war against terrorism.
That is the blunt warning France, Germany, and other US allies are delivering to American diplomats as the UN Security Council debate over Iraq heats up this week.
And the US badly needs the help of other nations as it pursues Al Qaeda remnants around the globe. Defeating Saddam Hussein's massed armies in combat is one thing. Cracking terrorist cells whose funds and people move freely across frontiers is another.
"If we thumb our nose at others, they will be less willing to cooperate ... and if you're looking at the war on terror, we can't do it alone," says Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
This dilemma reflects the temptations the United States faces as the world's sole superpower, says Mr. Nye.
The nation's overwhelming military and economic might convinces its leaders that they can accomplish important goals without allies, if need be.
But while that may be true for some issues, it is not true for all. And if the US acts as if it does not need friends, it won't have any.
War is not inevitable
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, January 22, 2003
The drums of war are getting louder. A total of 35,000 British troops are now heading to the Gulf, where they will join 125,000 US forces already gearing up for action. Together it's enough to start a decent-sized city, let alone crush the rag-tag army of Saddam Hussein. A colossal amount of kit - tanks, ships and planes - is on its way to the desert, too. A Bush-Blair council of war is planned for Camp David at the end of the month. The UN weapons inspectors' deadline will have passed a few days earlier. The orchestra has tuned up; the audience is hushed - all we are waiting for is the clamour to start.
In this atmosphere the chief question for the organisers of the February 15 anti-war demos around the world must be: will we be too late? Over the last few days a change has been in the air, as if the phoney war has ended and the bloody real thing is about to begin.
What should opponents of the war, and doubters, do now? They might be tempted to give up, as if the argument has already been lost. That would be premature. Even if Washington (and perhaps London) has made up its mind - George Bush was drumming his fingers on the desk yesterday, saying "time is running out" - the rest of the world has not. France, from its current perch in the chair at the UN security council, is promising to lead the coalition of the unwilling. "We are mobilised, we believe war can be avoided," said French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin yesterday, launching his bid to become the George Galloway of international diplomacy. Public opinion has hardly been lost either: on the contrary, as the Guardian's own poll laid bare yesterday, outright opposition to war all but commands a majority in Britain.
EUROPEAN POWER
While Tony Blair is clearly of the opinion that Britain's power depends on unswerving loyalty to the United States, history may tell that Blair's choice ensured that Britain would forever remain both on the physical and political margins of a new European power, dominated by France and Germany. A Franco-German "state", with a population of around 140 million, at the center of an EU that now numbers 380 million, may in the coming decades become the only global power that can hold America's hegemonic tendencies in check.
France and Germany talking dual citizenship
Kate Connolly, The Telegraph, January 23, 2003
If evidence was still needed that the revitalised Franco-German motor is roaring along once again, it emerged when a proposal for dual citizenship between the two powers was unveiled.
The revolutionary initiative - part of a program to intensify bilateral relations - would allow German and French citizens resident in each other's countries to hold the passports of both states.
The plan was to be officially declared yesterday when 577 French MPs and 603 German MPs came together in Versailles for their first joint session of parliament to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Franco-German co-operation.
Other items on the agenda included the appointment of representatives from each country to co-ordinate bilateral policy, moves to harmonise laws and a plan to hold joint cabinet meetings.
The purpose of the dual citizenship declaration - formulated by President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder - is to outline the countries' vision of close co-operation, which in the past month has accelerated at a speed that has startled much of the rest of Europe.
The proposal would allow French and German citizens to vote in each other's national elections and is being presented as a model and initial step towards the goal of future European citizenship.
Preventing war
Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange, January 21, 2003
The anti-war movement that has blossomed in the last four months, and that today continues to grow and spread, is essentially in uncharted waters. There is no unifying ideology, no single organization rallying the (anti-) troops. No major political leaders are voicing the opinions being mouthed by the protesters; while media treatment has been more respectful than in many past years, it has still been sparse and patronizing, treating the opposition as more of a political sideshow than a major factor in whether America will invade.
NEO-CONSERVATIVES RESPOND TO ANTI-WAR PROTESTS
Commentators seem conflicted on whether to keep pounding away at the charge that in a time of war, dissent is unpatriotic, or to patronize the movement by claiming it reflects public timidity that can only be dispelled by a display of strong leadership. In National Review, Daniel J. Flynn writes that a "truthful look at this weekend's protest confirms that the demonstrators should frighten people — even other opponents of a war in Iraq — here in America." Townhall.com's columnist, David Horowitz says that "the "peace" movement isn't about peace. It's about carrying on the left's war against America. When your country is attacked, when the enemy has targeted every American regardless of race, gender or age for death, there can be no "peace" movement. There can only be a movement that divides Americans and gives aid and comfort to our enemies." In the Washington Times, William R. Hawkins is of the opinion that "if the United States is to remain the world's leading power, the Bush administration cannot allow itself to be swayed by the present array of opponents. Indeed, even to look like it is hesitating will give critics a measure of credibility and authority they do not deserve."
While conservative critics of the protests may be divided on whether to vilify or patronize the opponents of war, they are united in their criticism of the protests' radical leaders. Months ago, commentators on the left such as David Corn and Todd Gitlin were arguing that A.N.S.W.E.R.'s political agenda would undermine the growth of a mainstream movement. Nevertheless, since most people marching against the war probably hadn't heard of A.N.S.W.E.R. before coming to Washington, the group deserves more praise for its organizing skills than criticism for its political affiliations. The mainstream credibility that the anti-war movement already deserves will, like it or not, only be widely acknowledged when a few congressional Democratic leaders climb out of their bunkers and risk taking a stand by publically opposing war and supporting the anti-war movement. How long do we have to wait?
'Axis of evil' rhetoric said to heighten dangers
Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2003
Even critics agree that the "axis of evil" was a clever piece of rhetoric in explaining the president's policies to the American people. But as foreign policy, there is wide consensus that it exacerbated the dangers it attempted to contain.
"It was a speechwriter's dream and a policy-maker's nightmare," said Warren Christopher, secretary of State under President Clinton.
The phrase caused immediate controversy. A year later, many experts say it's clear it also has caused real damage.
Tunneling toward disaster
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, January 21, 2003
One of the assessments of [North Korean president] Mr. Kim that rings most true to me comes from Cho Myung Chul, a defector who has known Mr. Kim since childhood. Mr. Cho describes the Great Leader as a fine pianist and Ping-Pong player, smart and outgoing but, alas, also an aggressive risk-taker.
Mr. Cho remembers attending a briefing after the gulf war, in which the North Korean army brass explained why Iraq had lost. "They said Iraq lost because it had been too defensive. `You've got to take the offensive,' they said. `Iraq didn't use all its weapons [presumably biological and chemical weapons]. If we're in a war, we'll use everything. And if there's a war, we should attack first, to take the initiative.' "
Mr. Cho estimates that there is an 80 percent chance that Mr. Kim would respond to a U.S. military strike on the Yongbyon nuclear facilities by launching a new Korean War.
Fighting terror and maintaining justice
Kofi Annan, Toronto Star, January 21, 2003
Even as many are rightly praising the unity and the resolve of the international community in this crucial struggle, important and urgent questions are being asked about what might be called the "collateral damage" of the war on terrorism — damage to the presumption of innocence, to precious human rights, to the rule of law, and to the very fabric of democratic governance.
Domestically, the danger is that in pursuit of security, we end up sacrificing crucial liberties, thereby weakening our common security, not strengthening it — and thereby corroding the vessel of democratic government from within. Whether the question involves the treatment of minorities, the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, the presumption of innocence or the right to due process under the law — vigilance must be exercised by all citizens to ensure that entire groups in our societies are not tarred with one broad brush and punished for the reprehensible behaviour of a few.
France says it may veto use of force in Iraq
Sonni Efron and Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2003
In a broad challenge to the Bush administration's foreign policy, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Monday that France would not yet approve the use of force against Iraq and cautioned that U.N. handling of Baghdad would set a precedent for North Korea and the Middle East.
De Villepin spoke moments after U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned the United Nations Security Council that it "cannot shrink" from action against Iraq and said the U.N. must enforce its will if it intends to "remain relevant."
"We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us," Powell said. He told the council that it must soon come to grips with a regime that he said has continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, threaten its neighbors and trample human rights at home. "However difficult the road ahead may be with respect to Iraq, we must not shrink from the need to travel down that road," Powell said.
But De Villepin countered that there is no current justification for military action and hinted strongly that France would veto a resolution proposing an invasion of Iraq if peaceful alternatives remained.
Frozen Out
The Kurds, Saddam, and Washington
Patrick Cockburn, Slate, January 17, 2003
Given the relentless media carpet-bombing of anything to do with Iraq, it is surprising that one significant act by Saddam Hussein earlier this week passed without notice abroad. Saddam sent a pointed warning to the Kurds of northern Iraq. He did so by the simple device of stopping the flow of heating oil to Kurdistan, the three Iraqi provinces that have enjoyed de facto independence for a decade. The Kurdish mountains are bitterly cold this time of year, and the price of heating oil immediately soared as people rushed through the snow to buy up remaining stocks.
Dominators rule
Michael Krepon, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January, 2003
The Cold War battles between hawks and doves are history. The new fault line in U.S. national security strategy is between "dominators" and "conciliators." Both groups can be easily caricatured.
Dominators believe in leading by example, not by consensus or building coalitions. They are unapologetic about the primacy of U.S. power and the ineffectuality of treaties. Conciliators are protective of treaties by nature. They seek to devalue weapons of mass destruction—by example, by multilateral diplomacy, and by strengthening arms control regimes. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer has described the differences between the two groups as those who believe in power pitted against those who believe in paper.
Thanks to Osama bin Laden, dominators now rule the roost in Washington. The terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wide latitude to implement their preferred remedies. Notwithstanding the close division on Capitol Hill between Republicans and Democrats, U.S. national security policy is now heavily lopsided toward power projection and away from treaty regimes and preventive diplomacy.
Letter from Iraq
Elizabeth Roberts, The Nation, January 16, 2003
Amal, an educated middle-class woman, lives near a bridge over the Tigris River. Her house was hit by a bomb in 1991. I asked if she had a bomb shelter. "No, bomb shelters are no good--we will just sit together in a room so if something happens we will all go together." Her daughter reminds me of the Aamayria air-raid shelter in Baghdad, which was hit by a US missile in the Gulf War, killing 415 mothers and young children. Now there is the general suspicion that the United States will deliberately target bomb shelters, so few people plan to use them.
A stirring in the nation
Editorial, New York Times, January 20, 2003
Mr. Bush and his war cabinet would be wise to see the demonstrators as a clear sign that noticeable numbers of Americans no longer feel obliged to salute the administration's plans because of the shock of Sept. 11 and that many harbor serious doubts about his march toward war. The protesters are raising some nuanced questions in the name of patriotism about the premises, cost and aftermath of the war the president is contemplating. Millions of Americans who did not march share the concerns and have yet to hear Mr. Bush make a persuasive case that combat operations are the only way to respond to Saddam Hussein.
US 'tough love' needed toward Israel
Edmund R. Hanauer, Boston Globe, January 20, 2003
While Bush denounces Palestinian terrorism and Saddam Hussein for violating the rights of Iraqis, his silence on Israeli violations of Palestinian rights is deafening. According to B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights group, Israel has violated 29 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its treatment of 3 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
The 200,000 Palestinian Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem suffer ''dispossession [and] systematic discrimination'' under Israeli rule, B'Tselem has reported.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, is violated by numerous Israeli policies: exile, torture and beatings, collective punishment, seizure of land and water resources, the settling of hundreds of thousands of Jews on confiscated land, the destruction of thousands of homes as well as olive and citrus trees, and denial of access to employment, medical care, education, water, and food. In December 2001, 114 signatories of the Geneva Convention, meeting in Geneva, reaffirmed that the convention applies to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, that Jewish settlements violate the convention, and that Israel should cease ''grave breaches'' of the convention, including ''willful killing, torture, collective penalties, and unlawful deportation'' (''grave breaches'' are defined as war crimes). Israel and the United States, both signatories, boycotted the meeting. Israel, alone, denies the applicability of the convention.
Unless pullout happens, bombings will continue
Hope Keller, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 20, 2003
Although polls show 60 to 70 percent of Israelis favor an immediate unilateral evacuation from most of the occupied territories and settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is expected to handily win the Jan. 28 election on a platform that could be characterized as "hammer the Palestinians until they give up."
Except they won't.
More than 35 years of Israeli occupation have bred a tenacious rage. No matter how long and high the Israeli security fence, no matter how many checkpoints, so long as Israel controls Palestinians' lives, Palestinians will kill Israelis.
The only way to break this numbing, idiotic cycle of violence is for Israel to get out of the West Bank and Gaza. It is pointless to wait for the Palestinians to stop terror attacks or for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to become a trustworthy negotiating partner.
This is not a recondite or radical notion in Israel. A pullout is routinely discussed in the Israeli media, military censor and all. The Labor Party candidate for prime minister, Amram Mitzna, seeks to convince Israelis that their security lies in disengagement from the territories and the return of settlers to Israel.
It is in the United States that proponents of an Israeli withdrawal are likely to be labeled anti-Semites, self-hating Jews or, at best, "beautiful dreamers."
Turkey torn by Iraq standoff
Public opposes a war, but power of U.S. casts long shadow
Stephan Faris, San Francisco Chronicle, January 20, 2003
A recent poll by the Ankara Social Research Center found that 87 percent of the Turkish public opposes a U.S.-led war against their neighbor.
As pressure mounts for the only Muslim member of NATO to announce what role, if any, it will play in the possible conflict, Turkey's newly elected government is finding itself squeezed from two sides. On one is its longtime ally, the United States, lobbying for permission to use Turkish bases to launch an attack. On the other, demanding exactly the opposite, is a populace horrified by the idea of war.
"It will collapse our economy," said Fatih Mehmet Ozkardesh, 28, a cashier in the capital's conservative neighborhood of Fatih. "We are Muslim, and we don't want to attack another Muslim country. It will affect our relationships with all our neighbors."
War would be insane
Noam Chomsky, BBC News, January 20, 2003
You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it. And the arguments that have been given for it are not convincing.
There is no debate about the importance of disarming Iraq and indeed other countries that have the capacity to use weapons of mass destruction. That is very important and everyone agrees on it.
The way to proceed with that is the way that has been done - with careful inspection procedures and efforts to ensure that the US and Britain and others will no longer carry out the policies of the past and provide Saddam with means for developing weapons of mass destruction.
The cold test
What the Bush Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear program
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, January 20, 2003
Last June, four months before the current crisis over North Korea became public, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a comprehensive analysis of North Korea's nuclear ambitions to President Bush and his top advisers. The document, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was classified as Top Secret S.C.I. (for "sensitive compartmented information"), and its distribution within the government was tightly restricted. The C.I.A. report made the case that North Korea had been violating international law—and agreements with South Korea and the United States—by secretly obtaining the means to produce weapons-grade uranium.
The document's most politically sensitive information, however, was about Pakistan. Since 1997, the C.I.A. said, Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with the Pyongyang regime. Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration's important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb.
Hegemon down
John Tirman, AlterNet, January 17, 2003
Among the many risks President Bush is taking in his relentless drive against Saddam Hussein is what theorists call "imperial overreach": the specter of draining American global power suddenly and irrevocably. A war that goes badly -- with high casualties, spiking oil prices, Arab and Muslim unrest, and so on -- would invite the view that Bush had miscalculated and that the shine was off the American apple.
US marchers take to streets in echo of 60s
As opposition grows, Bush's ratings slump
Matthew Engel, The Guardian, January 20, 2003
The spirit of the 60s returned to the streets of Washington at the weekend with a massive protest aimed at stopping the war in Iraq. The rally, the centrepiece of a day of worldwide demonstrations, was the most impressive show of opposition to President George Bush's policies in the 16 months of global crisis.
Mr Bush was at the presidential country retreat, Camp David, while the hordes trampled the National Mall close to the back garden of the White House. But the roars of the crowd will have reached him even there, not so much because of the numbers of the protesters, but because of a growing sense that public opinion in general may be shifting in their direction.
While the rally was taking place, a new Time-CNN poll was released, showing the president's approval rating down to 53%, its lowest in any survey since September 11 2001, with barely half supporting his foreign policy and only 27% believing the economy will improve in the next 12 months. Traditionally, national pessimism dethrones presidents.
Don't count on the UN to save us from going to war
Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, January 20, 2003
Within the cabinet, the Labour party and in the country at large, a touching faith is increasingly placed in the ability of the UN to extricate us from the Iraq mess. This sentiment, broadly shared across western Europe, was summed up last week by a British minister: "Stick to the UN and there will be infinitely less trouble and even no trouble at all."
Some people, including leftish MPs and bishops, seem to hope that, in effect, the UN will save us not from our avowed enemy, Iraq, but from our main ally, America. Many others, motivated by a wide range of different concerns, also focus on demands for a second UN security council debate and/or resolution that, unlike last autumn's resolution 1441, would specifically authorise, or block, military action.
Such hopes of salvation or absolution are woefully misplaced from almost every point of view. Those opposed to war have little reason to believe that the security council, having voted unanimously for 1441, will thwart the US now. Although the council's composition has changed since then, political considerations, rather than considerations of justice, remain uppermost for the four other permanent members.
On the Iraqi border, a life of struggle
Susan Taylor Martin, St. Petersburg Times, January 19, 2003
Who will control Iraq's oil after Saddam Hussein is gone?
Turkey fears that the rich fields of northern Iraq might end up with the Kurds, a Muslim minority that has created a semi-independent state in the north. After years of struggle with its own Kurdish population, Turkey worries that its Kurds will join those in Iraq in pushing for a separate nation.
Iraq: The ghost of Lebanon past
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, January 18, 2003
As pointed out recently by military analyst William Arkin in the Los Angeles Times, what happened in Lebanon 20 years ago may tell us a lot about the hopes, fears and delusions of US policymakers about what could happen in Iraq. Indeed, many of the people who applauded Israel's invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and deplored the Reagan administration's decision to withdraw US peacekeepers after a series of deadly terrorist attacks are now arguing for an invasion of Iraq, and for many of the same reasons.
Back to arms control
Editorial, New York Times, January 20, 2003
The Bush administration's radically different responses to weapons threats from Iraq and North Korea have confused the American people. Worse, they risk sending other rogue states the perverse message that the way to receive lenient treatment from Washington is to develop nuclear weapons. One reason Pyongyang's defiant provocations are met with diplomatic overtures while Baghdad's mix of cooperation and evasion elicits threats of force is the strong suspicion that Kim Jong Il already has nuclear weapons while Saddam Hussein does not.
The dangerous doctrine of preemption
Senator Robert C. Byrd, United States Senate, January 17, 2003
Rarely in recent memory has the United States faced more profoundly serious and complicated challenges to our global leadership. We are beginning our second year of war in Afghanistan – our second year of chasing after Osama bin Laden – and at the same time the Pentagon is feverishly mobilizing for possible war in Iraq. Meanwhile, North Korea is firing up its nuclear production facilities and warning of a "Third World War" in Asia if the U.S. interferes. Suddenly, large swaths of both the Middle East and Asia are on the brink of open warfare, and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy is facing enormous tests. Even our allies are questioning our real intentions and our ultimate ambitions.
This is certainly not the time for rash words or hasty actions, but it is most definitely the time to take a long and sober look at where the United States has been and where it may be headed. The Administration's doctrine of preemption and the testing of that doctrine in Iraq have thrust the United States into a new and unflattering posture on the world stage. In many corners of the world, America the peacemaker is now seen as the bully on the block.
I believe it is time for this Administration to review our national security strategy and its take-no-prisoners approach to international relations. In working through the complex process of developing strategies to protect the world from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, we must also work to restore the image of the United States to that of strong peacekeeper instead of belligerent bully. Terrorism is a global threat that demands a global response. We must seek cooperation, not confrontation.
The contrast between the Administration's handling of the crisis in Iraq and with its handling of the crisis in North Korea is a perfect illustration of why a doctrine that commits the United States to the use of preemptive force -- unilaterally if necessary -- to prevent unsavory regimes from acquiring weapons of mass destruction is a flawed instrument of foreign policy.
Nation rallies for peace
Tens of thousands in S.F. demand Bush abandon war plans
Suzanne Herel and Zachary Coile, San Francisco Chronicle, January 19, 2003
From San Francisco to Washington, D.C., from Paris to Tokyo, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the world's streets Saturday to protest potential military action against Iraq by the Bush administration and its allies.
In Washington, where temperatures hovered in the mid-20s, as many as 500,000 protesters rallied outside the Capitol, while in San Francisco tens of thousands of peace activists marched up Market Street from the Ferry Building to City Hall.
A world against the war
Andy McSmith, The Independent, 19 January, 2003
In the biggest day of protest the world has yet seen against a war in Iraq, from Washington to Tokyo, Liverpool to Damascus, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across four continents took to the streets yesterday.
The US was the scene of the biggest anti-war demonstration of George Bush's presidency, with tens of thousands of people braving freezing weather to join protests in Washington, San Francisco and other cities, despite the near-unanimous support for war on Capitol Hill and in the US media.
War or peace? Middle East enters the 'danger zone'
Patrick Seale, Daily Star, January 17, 2003
Diplomatic observers monitoring the Iraqi crisis in London, Washington and Paris agree on one thing: The next three or four weeks will be crucial. As one of them put it to me: "We are entering the danger zone. The issue of war and peace in the Middle East will be decided within the next 30 days." It is clear that Western leaders are coming under great stress. They are having to arbitrate fierce debates for and against the war inside their own cabinets, they are having to take note of the evolution of public opinion in their respective countries, and make lonely choices which could affect not only the region but the whole world.
Three events toward the end of this month will provide pointers to the difficult decisions that will soon have to be made.
- On Jan. 27, Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, is due to make his first detailed report to the UN Security Council on what his team has found or failed to find in Iraq;
- On Jan. 28, US President George W. Bush will deliver his State of the Union address, which will be closely studied for clues to the president's intentions.
- Also on Jan. 28, Israelis will vote in a general election which will affect their relations with the Palestinians and with their Arab neighbors for years to come but which will also determine the future of Ariel Sharon, Israel's hard-line leader.
These three events are closely connected, at least in the minds of the "war party" that is to say the small group of men in Washington and Tel Aviv who are pressing for war. The "hawks" know that, for their vast geopolitical ambitions to be realized, and for their own personal and political careers to flourish, the crisis must be resolved "their" way. The make-or-break point is approaching.
The coming war with Iraq: Deciphering the Bush administration's motives
Michael T. Klare, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 16, 2003
The United States is about to go to war with Iraq. As of this writing, there are 60,000 U.S. troops already deployed in the area around Iraq, and another 75,000 or so are on their way to the combat zone. Weapons inspectors have found a dozen warheads, designed to carry chemical weapons. Even before this discovery, senior U.S. officials were insisting that Saddam was not cooperating with the United Nations and had to be removed by force. Hence, there does not seem to be any way to stop this war, unless Saddam Hussein is overthrown by members of the Iraqi military or is persuaded to abdicate his position and flee the country.
It is impossible at this point to foresee the outcome of this war. Under the most optimistic scenarios--the ones advanced by proponents of the war--Iraqi forces will put up only token resistance and American forces will quickly capture Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from office (by killing him or placing him under arrest). This scenario further assumes that the Iraqis will decline to use their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or will be prevented from doing so by U.S. military action; that civilian casualties will be kept low and that most Iraqis will welcome their "liberation" from Saddam; that a new, pro-U.S. government will quickly and easily be put into place; that fighting between competing ethnic factions will be limited and easily brought under control; that anti-American protests in other Muslim countries will not get out of hand; and that American forces will be withdrawn after a relatively short occupation period of six months to a year.
An unacceptable helplessness
Edward Said, Al-Ahram, January 16, 2003
One opens The New York Times on a daily basis to read the most recent article about the preparations for war that are taking place in the United States. Another battalion, one more set of aircraft carriers and cruisers, an ever-increasing number of aircraft, new contingents of officers are being moved to the Persian Gulf area. 62,000 more soldiers were transferred to the Gulf last weekend. An enormous, deliberately intimidating force is being built up by America overseas, while inside the country, economic and social bad news multiply with a joint relentlessness. The huge capitalist machine seems to be faltering, even as it grinds down the vast majority of citizens. Nonetheless, George Bush proposes another large tax cut for the one per cent of the population that is comparatively rich. The public education system is in a major crisis, and health insurance for 50 million Americans simply does not exist. Israel asks for 15 billion dollars in additional loan guarantees and military aid. And the unemployment rates in the US mount inexorably, as more jobs are lost every day.
This looming war isn't about chemical warheads or human rights: it's about oil
Robert Fisk, The Independent, January 18, 2003
Once an American regime is installed in Baghdad, our oil companies will have access to 112 billion barrels of oil. With unproven reserves, we might actually end up controlling almost a quarter of the world's total reserves. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil?
The US Department of Energy announced at the beginning of this month that by 2025, US oil imports will account for perhaps 70 per cent of total US domestic demand. (It was 55 per cent two years ago.) As Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute put it bleakly this week, "US oil deposits are increasingly depleted, and many other non-Opec fields are beginning to run dry. The bulk of future supplies will have to come from the Gulf region." No wonder the whole Bush energy policy is based on the increasing consumption of oil. Some 70 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Middle East. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil?
Take a look at the statistics on the ratio of reserve to oil production – the number of years that reserves of oil will last at current production rates – compiled by Jeremy Rifkin in Hydrogen Economy. In the US, where more than 60 per cent of the recoverable oil has already been produced, the ratio is just 10 years, as it is in Norway. In Canada, it is 8:1. In Iran, it is 53:1, in Saudi Arabia 55:1, in the United Arab Emirates 75:1. In Kuwait, it's 116:1. But in Iraq, it's 526:1. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil?
Anti-war protests sweep the world
CNN, January 18, 2003
Thousands of protesters around the world are taking to the streets to demonstrate against a possible war in Iraq.
Some of the biggest demonstrations on Saturday are taking place in Germany, London, and the United States, protesting at the build-up of U.S. military hardware and personnel in the Gulf region.
In Paris, anti-war protesters shouted in English, "Stop Bush! Stop war!". The 6,000-strong march is the third nationwide demonstration since October, The Associated Press reported.
"You can see people are waking up (to the issue) when they see us marching," said Flore Boudet, a 21-year-old demonstrating with her classmates from the Sorbonne University.
In Moscow, Russians chanted "U.S., hands off Iraq!" and "Yankee, Go Home!" at a march outside the U.S. Embassy. One banner read: "U.S.A. is international terrorist No. 1."
Car wars
The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin - and Iraq will supply its next fix
Ian Roberts, The Guardian, January 18, 2003
War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. The architects of this war were not military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence.
The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic infrastructure is so highly car dependent that the US is pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions of barrels of precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal.
Military voices of dissent
Steve Schifferes, BBC News, January 17, 2003
Opposition to a possible war in Iraq has come from an unlikely source - the US military itself.
As anti-war forces are gathering for a major demonstration on Saturday in Washington, a group of parents of the soldiers currently being deployed in the Gulf have decided to speak out against the drive for war.
They have been joined by organisations representing Gulf War veterans, who are particularly concerned about the problem of chemical and biological warfare casualties among servicemen.
The anti-war former soldiers hope to replicate the success of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the l960s, who were a crucial part of the anti-war coalition that helped end US involvement in that war.
See also Veterans for Common Sense press statement
WWII generation asks what this war would be good for
Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2003
They survived the Depression and World War II, lived through Vietnam and Watergate, witnessed the Iranian hostage crisis, the Persian Gulf War and the Internet boom and bust. Shocked by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, they saw terror replayed in the assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
Now, members of the World War II generation are worried about a possible war in Iraq. Of all the generations studied by pollsters, these Americans -- now in their 70s, 80s and 90s -- are showing the most resistance to an invasion in Iraq in surveys of American opinion.
Members of the World War II generation interviewed for this story do not shrink from war. They almost universally supported the U.S. campaign to rout the Taliban from Afghanistan, and most would endorse further efforts to defend the United States against terrorism. Some wish the United States had been more aggressive earlier with North Korea, and one even suggested going to war against Saudi Arabia.
Instead, concerns center on the view of some that Washington has not made its case. Many are unconvinced that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is harnessing weapons of mass destruction, and they are dubious about invading his country before he has attacked the United States. Others are suspicious that President Bush and his war Cabinet are motivated by a desire to avenge the first President Bush's mistakes or to capture a ready supply of oil.
March - but bring your own sign
Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 2003
For many civil rights and peace activists, the march [tomorrow in Washington DC and San Francisco] also honors the last year of King's life, when he broke his silence and denounced the Vietnam War.
King rightly anticipated that all kinds of people would try to discredit him for his anti-war position. "I came to the conclusion," he told a stunned congregation at Riverside Church in New York City in 1967, "that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you."
There is never a good time to oppose your government, he told them. "On some positions, cowardice asks the question, 'is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."
Direct action may become a necessity
The UN is being used as a fig leaf for war in the face of world opinion
Seumas Milne, The Guardian, January 16, 2003
If anyone could sell George Bush's planned war of aggression against Iraq, surely it should be Tony Blair, a politician whose career has been built on his ability to smoothtalk his way out of a crisis. He has been straining every nerve to do just that for the past week. The latest sales drive began with the prime minister's attempt to link the alleged ricin find above a north London chemist's shop with "weapons of mass destruction". And it culminated on Monday with his imaginative effort to construct a link between "rogue states" such as Iraq and Islamist terrorism.
But all the signs are that his spin offensive simply isn't working. Such tales may find more of an echo in the United States, where half the population believes Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11 attacks, according to some polls. But in Britain - and even more so in the rest of the world - most people are now convinced that the opposite is the case: that the best way to boost support for al-Qaida and Islamist attacks on western targets is precisely to launch an Anglo-American crusade to invade and occupy Arab, Muslim Iraq.
Antiwar activists reaching past usual suspects
Kim Campbell, Christian Science Monitor, January 17, 2003
As the antiwar movement tries to gain momentum, it is gradually bringing with it more mainstream Americans, people who have never attended a rally or carried a sign. Joining them are seasoned protesters - lifelong activists or people who railed against the Vietnam War but haven't shaken their fist again until now.
Their convergence on Washington this weekend will offer more information to peace organizations and politicians about how strong the antiwar sentiment really is and who is embracing it.
US leaders 'among world's least trusted'
BBC News, January 15, 2003
US leaders are among the least trusted in the world, a survey identifying growing disquiet in global affairs has revealed.
Only a quarter of 15,000 citizens polled place faith in US chiefs, compared with 42% who trusted UN leaders.
Heads of charities and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were the most trusted.
And just one-in-five Argentines, and one-in-seven Germans and Italians, believes the world is becoming a better place.
The findings were revealed in a survey commissioned by the World Economic Forum (WEF) ahead of its annual summit, which starts next week.
See also World Economic Forum press release Declining public trust foremost a leadership problem
U.S. banks on Iraqi omissions
To justify a possible war if inspectors find nothing, Washington may focus on what Hussein left out of his weapons declaration
Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2003
As the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues, the United States has begun to map out a backup strategy to justify possible military intervention in Iraq if U.S. intelligence tips, U.N. inspections and Iraqi scientists fail to produce solid evidence of a forbidden arsenal, according to American officials.
The new strategy centers on a simple premise: Nothing is something.
If inspectors fail to uncover hard proof of covert Iraqi weapons programs, the U.S. hopes to convince the U.N. Security Council — or at least what President Bush has called a "coalition of the willing" — that what President Saddam Hussein left out of a declaration on his deadliest arms and Baghdad's subsequent actions are enough justification for war, administration officials say.
"The chances that the U.N. will find something are slim. The chances that the Iraqis will tell us anything are slim. So it's quite possible after three or four months of no real progress in inspections that President Bush will simply say: 'That's it. We're not satisfied, and the U.N. shouldn't be satisfied either,' " said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity.
Saudis push for Iraq coup
Scott MacLeod, Time, January 16, 2003
Convinced that President Bush is serious about invading Iraq, Arab leaders hope to avoid war by orchestrating a coup in Baghdad. Well-placed sources have told TIME that Saudi Arabia is vigorously pursuing a concrete plan to encourage Iraqi generals to overthrow Saddam and his clique. Western and Arab diplomats say the Saudi proposal requires a UN Security Council resolution declaring amnesty for the vast majority of Iraqi officials if they orchestrate a transition of power in Baghdad. Such an amnesty would extend to all but 100 to 120 of the most senior Baath Party officials, including Saddam, his sons, close relatives and others who have long formed part of the ruling circle. It would be offered immediately prior to the outbreak of war as a signal to Saddam's generals that the time had arrived to save their own skins with a U.N.-guaranteed amnesty. And, the Saudis believe, it could well bring the traditionally coup-proof dictator tumbling down.
"If there is amnesty for the rest of the government, Saddam will be checkmated," says one diplomat with knowledge of the initiative. To satisfy international demands for Iraq's disarmament, the proposed amnesty would be made conditional on full and active cooperation in implementing UN resolutions on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Although the Saudi proposal leaves open the possibility that Saddam could accept exile, Arab diplomats doubt that this is a realistic scenario. Instead they believe that Iraq's Republican Guards, the best-equipped and most loyal of Saddam's troops, will eventually switch allegiances and do him in.
Doctors without borders
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, January 17, 2003
After 36 years of Israeli occupation, in the territories there isn't a single medical center worthy of the name, and the road to medical treatment in Israel is now almost completely closed.
Post-Saddam energy visions
Michael Renner, International Herald Tribune, January 17, 2003
The Bush administration's Iraq policy aims to reinforce the world economy's reliance on oil and on an energy system whose guarantor is the United States.
America didn't seem to mind poison gas
Joost R. Hiltermann, International Herald Tribune, January 17, 2003
In calling for regime change in Iraq, George W. Bush has accused Saddam Hussein of being a man who gassed his own people. Bush is right, of course. The public record shows that Saddam's regime repeatedly spread poisonous gases on Kurdish villages in 1987 and 1988 in an attempt to put down a persistent rebellion.
The biggest such attack was against Halabja in March 1988. According to local organizations providing relief to the survivors, some 6,800 Kurds were killed, the vast majority of them civilians.
It is a good thing that Bush has highlighted these atrocities by a regime that is more brutal than most. Yet it is cynical to use them as a justification for American plans to terminate the regime. By any measure, the American record on Halabja is shameful.
Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show (1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and (2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center.
Protesters rally against war on Iraq
Calvin Woodward, Associated Press, January 16, 2003
Demonstrators are mobilizing in Washington and cities across the country for what they consider their last chance to speak as one great multitude against the gathering clouds of an Iraq war.
The weekend demonstrations coincide with America's military buildup overseas and a time of remembrance for the nonviolent struggle embodied by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Even as sailors ship out, protesters are packing Washington-bound buses and organizing local marches and vigils from Tampa, Fla., to San Francisco.
The rise of the fortress continent
Naomi Klein, The Nation, January 16, 2003
A fortress continent is a bloc of nations that joins forces to extract favorable trade terms from other countries--while patrolling their shared external borders to keep people from those countries out. But if a continent is serious about being a fortress, it also has to invite one or two poor countries within its walls, because somebody has to do the dirty work and heavy lifting.
It's a model being pioneered in Europe, where the European Union is currently expanding to include ten poor Eastern bloc countries at the same time that it uses increasingly aggressive security methods to deny entry to immigrants from even poorer countries, like Iraq and Nigeria.
It took the events of September 11 for North America to get serious about building a fortress continent of its own.
Over a barrel
John B. Judis, New Republic, January 9, 2003
...the neoconservatives inside and outside the administration take a radical, even revolutionary, view of what is possible and desirable in the region; they see turmoil as inevitable and desirable. Says one senior administration official, "Upheaval is on its way. We might as well get in front of it." They see Saddam's ouster not just as a means of preventing a future nuclear threat but of remaking the entire region along democratic, free-market lines. One senior official compares the region now to Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II and the post-Saddam Middle East to post-World War II Europe. "After World War II, we thought strategically about what were the key industrial areas of Europe that need to be under Western control to effect a strategic domination of Europe," this official says. "If you start thinking of the Middle East in the same way, Iraq jumps to the front, because it is that nexus of oil, education, geography."
The neoconservatives don't worry about offending potential critics in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Syria because they think of them as enemies who should eventually be swept aside by the installation of a democratic, free-market Iraq on their borders. They reject U.N. or multilateral participation in a post-Saddam transition. Says one senior official, "This is the moment where our ideas will be vindicated, or we can walk away. You can't count on the international community to establish a new democratic or political order. The way it would work is that the reigning power would distribute power and businesses, and which people it chooses to deal with are automatically made into kings. Do we want to be the kingmaker, or do we want to default that over to the U.N.?"
Troops pour in, scenarios narrow
Ann Scott Tyson, Christian Science Monitor, Janaury 15, 2003
America's rapidly expanding military presence in the Persian Gulf is raising a fundamental question: Is the buildup itself pushing the US toward war?
On one level, the troop presence is reinforcing US diplomatic efforts to try to resolve the crisis peacefully. It puts additional pressure on Saddam Hussein to be more forthcoming about what weapons he does have and to comply with UN demands.
At the same time, however, the presence of so many soldiers in the region will ultimately help force the decision of whether the US should go to war. The huge commitment of troops, tanks, and other gear - demanding complex logistics and timing - cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Smoking guns and the dogs of war
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, January 16, 2003
Everybody knew the feelings of the Arab street. Now it's official: the European street has pronounced itself - fully supported by Pope John Paul II. Almost 60 percent of British public opinion and 77 percent of French are against war on Iraq, with or without UN approval. And an overwhelming majority of Germans - the most anti-war of all European big powers - keep echoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has been promising since his electoral campaign not to be involved in an attack against Iraq.
It may be hard for some Americans to understand that public political debate in member countries of the European Union is much more nuanced than the daily avalanche of spinning coming from the White House and the Pentagon. Britain, France and Germany, for instance, are not convinced that Saddam Hussein is the ultimate evil. There has been no conclusive proof whatsoever that Saddam is involved with al-Qaeda. There has been no smoking or even non-smoking gun pointing to an Iraqi arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Military experts, many of them American, insist Saddam was "contained" long ago.
U.S. fights late March report on Iraq arms
Impact on plans feared; dispute at U.N. likely
Colum Lynch, Washington Post, January 16, 2003
The Bush administration is seeking to derail plans by the chief U.N. weapons inspector to issue another report on Iraqi disarmament to the Security Council in late March, fearing it could delay the U.S. timeline for forcing an early confrontation over Iraq's banned weapons programs.
In a move that diplomats predicted would touch off a potentially divisive battle in the Security Council, the administration plans to press the 15-nation body Thursday to suspend plans for the March 27 report by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix in which he was expected to present a list of disarmament obligations that Iraq must meet before U.N. sanctions can be suspended.
Blix told the council Tuesday that the March meeting is required under a 1999 resolution that created his inspection agency. But his plans have complicated the administration's diplomatic strategy in which it is pointing to the end of this month as the start of an endgame in the six-week-old U.N. weapons inspections program in Iraq.
U.S. resisting calls for a 2nd U.N. vote on a war with Iraq
Richard W. Stevenson and David E. Sanger, New York Times, January 16, 2003
The Bush administration resisted calls by other nations today that it secure the explicit blessing of the United Nations Security Council before going to war with Iraq. The White House further suggested that it could decide in favor of military action even if weapons inspectors do not turn up concrete new evidence against Saddam Hussein.
A day after President Bush warned that "time is running out" on Mr. Hussein, a senior administration official said the timetable for a decision about war would be "driven by events." Those include a report to be submitted by the United Nations weapons inspectors on Jan. 27 and evidence that Mr. Hussein is truly complying with the United Nations demand that he give up any weapons of mass destruction.
A US invasion of Iraq can be stopped
Stephen Zunes, Common Dreams, January 15, 2003
Despite increased preparation for war, there is a growing perception that a U.S. invasion of Iraq can be stopped.
There is little question that were it not for the anti-war movement, the United States would have gone to war against Iraq already. It was the strength of opposition to plans for a unilateral U.S. invasion that forced the Bush Administration to go to the UN in the first place. So far, Iraqi compliance with the United Nations weapons inspectors has made it extremely difficult for the administration to proceed with its war plans.
Questions about war that can't be ignored
Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times, January 15, 2003
In antiwar circles, Philip Gold was the man of the week: the military analyst, formerly of the Washington Times, splitting with conservatives over war with Iraq. This month, Gold severed formal ties with Seattle's Discovery Institute, where he had been a senior fellow in national-security affairs.
His allies on the Internet hailed him. One Web site called him "The Heroic Phil Gold."
He does not look the part. With his short stature, dark beard and soft voice, Gold looks more like a university professor than a U. S. Marine. Actually, he has been both, with no apologies. He is no pacifist.
Gold comes to his arguments loaded with historical facts. He asks: What was the last time U.S. forces took a major city that was seriously defended?
Manila, in 1944.
When was the last time the United States lost a major Navy ship?
World War II, 1945. "No American under the age of 60 has a memory of losing a warship," he says.
Gold has no doubt that America can beat Iraq. His question is whether it can do so with the minimal loss of U.S. lives (the only lives we count) that Americans have come to expect.
See also An anti-war movement of one
The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré, The Times, January 15, 2003
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
Bush says shift by North Korea could bring aid
David E. Sanger, New York Times, January 15, 2003
President Bush signaled a major shift in approach to North Korea today, saying for the first time that if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program he would consider offering a "bold initiative" that could bring aid, energy and eventually even diplomatic and security agreements to the politically and economically isolated country.
Invisible jihad
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Village Voice, January 8, 2003
When Osama bin Laden first wanted to get America's attention, he chose to attack a part of the world this country has learned to ignore—Africa. The now infamous 1998 bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya left 224 people dead and made bin Laden a fixture on CNN. In November, his Al Qaeda followers trained their sights on Africa again, sending suicide bombers barreling into a Kenyan resort hotel and narrowly missing an Israeli airliner with a shoulder-fired missile.
For advocates of Africa, terrorists' interest in the continent is alarming but not surprising. After all, bin Laden himself lived in the Sudan for five years after his native Saudi Arabia exiled him in 1991. Operations like his generally find haven amid misery and failed governance, conditions Africa had—and continues to have—in abundance. "The ingredients are just right for a terrorist group to lay roots," says Gregory Meeks, a Democratic congressman from New York and a member of the House Subcommittee on Africa. "You have areas where there is simply hopelessness, where no one is paying attention . . . places where we held up brutal dictators and did nothing to help. You have what could be a planting field for terror."
War on terror undermining U.S. credibility, says report
Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, January 14, 2003
In its most blistering attack on U.S. foreign policy since the 1980s, Human Rights Watch Tuesday accused the administration of President George W. Bush of ignoring human rights in pursuit of its ''war on terrorism'' and of driving the world toward a ''pre-modern Hobbesian order''.
In the 12-page introduction to its annual 'World Report', the New York-based group charged that Washington's tendency to see human rights ''mainly as an obstacle'' to the war on terrorism was both dangerous and counter-productive.
''The United States is far from the world's worst human rights abuser,'' said Kenneth Roth, HRW's executive director. ''But Washington has so much power today that when it flouts human rights standards, it damages the human rights cause worldwide.''
The unreality of imminent war
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, January 14, 2003
There is something very unreal about being in Washington at the present time.
On the one hand, there is a general assumption that the United States is going to invade Iraq - perhaps with UN Security Council approval, perhaps no later than mid to late-March, and possibly as early as next month.
On the other hand, there seems to be almost no effort to build already soft public support for war with Iraq. On the contrary, the ongoing and patently more dangerous crisis over North Korea's nuclear program has forced Iraq off the front pages, while a growing number of mainstream commentators and politicians - not to mention US allies - are asking why containing Iraq is not a better option than invading it.
ACLU calls for Congress to investigate Arab, Muslim detentions
Jim Lobe, OneWorld, January 13, 2003
The American Civil Liberties Union is calling for Congress to conduct a full investigation of the Justice Department's immigrant registration program that has resulted in hundreds of arrests of mainly Muslims and Arabs around the country on minor immigration infractions or following botched official procedures.
The ACLU and dozens of other civil liberties, church, human rights, immigration, and Muslim- and Arab-American groups have also called on President George W. Bush to immediately end the program, which they said runs counter to the basic principles on which the United States was founded.
"This registration program is an extended vacation from common sense," said Dalia Hashad, ACLU's Arab, Muslim and South Asian Advocate. "Not only does it undercut core American conceptions of law and basic decency - it reduces security by alienating the very communities whose cooperation is essential in the fight against terrorism."
Activists bring war protests to Baghdad
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, January 14, 2003
With tens of thousands of U.S. troops mobilizing for a possible invasion, waves of anti-war activists have descended on Baghdad in recent days to plead for a peaceful solution to the showdown between the Bush administration and President Saddam Hussein's government.
They include Italian legislators, South African Muslims, German musicians and a flurry of Americans, from church leaders and professors to four women who lost relatives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. They have reasoned that the backdrop of Baghdad, where scars are still visible from the 1991 confrontation with the United States, will give added currency to their appeals for peace.
Although most said they plan to leave by this weekend, others claiming to represent several hundred protesters from Europe, the United States and neighboring Arab nations said they intend to arrive later in the month to engage in a far riskier form of activism: They plan to act as human shields, hunkering down in hospitals, water-treatment plants and other civilian installations to dissuade U.S. commanders from targeting those facilities.
North Korean danger far outweighs Iraqi one: Albright
Palestine Chronicle, January 14, 2003
[In an interview in the French daily, Le Figaro, former Secretary of State] Albright ... lashed out at Bush’s hotchpotch foreign policy, describing him as a confused man.
Bush said his prime goal was to root out Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and now he made a surprising policy shift by making Iraq first, al-Qaeda second and North Korea third and I think he has no solutions to crises, Albright said.
British Muslims warn of 'conflict for generations'
Jeevan Vasagar, The Guardian, January 14, 2003
Britain's biggest Muslim organisation yesterday warned Tony Blair that war with Iraq would cause community relations to deteriorate and breed "bitterness and conflict for generations to come".
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, urged the prime minister to use his influence to "avert the destruction of an important Muslim country" and warned of deep cynicism among British Muslims about the motives for the war on terror.
In a letter to No 10, Mr Sacranie described the plans for war as a "colonial policy".
"It is generally believed the real American objective behind such an invasion is to change the political map of the Middle East, appropriate its oil wealth and appoint Israel as a regional superpower exercising total hegemony over the entire Middle East and beyond," he wrote.
A war would worsen relations between communities and faiths in Britain as well as causing "lasting damage" to relations between the Muslim world and the West, Mr Sacranie added.
The opposition of the MCB, a moderate organisation linked to dozens of community groups, highlights the failure of the US and Britain to convince Muslims in the West of the validity of the war on terrorism.
EU commissioner warns US over aid for Iraq
Ian Black, The Guardian, January 14, 2003
Europe will not willingly pay for the reconstruction of Iraq if the US does not obtain United Nations authority for war, Chris Patten, the EU external relations commissioner, has warned.
Signalling a slightly more confident tone over a crisis which has deeply divided the union, Mr Patten said it would be hard to persuade Europeans to pick up the tab if President George Bush acted unilaterally to disarm Saddam Hussein.
The EU, the world's biggest aid donor, is already paying billions of euros to help rebuild Afghanistan after the US-led campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Pope calls the potential war in Iraq 'a defeat for humanity'
Frank Bruni, New York Times, January 14, 2003
Pope John Paul II on Monday expressed his strongest opposition yet to a potential war in Iraq, describing it as a "defeat for humanity" and urging world leaders to try to resolve disputes with Iraq through diplomatic means.
"No to war!" the pope said during his annual address to scores of diplomatic emissaries to the Vatican, an exhortation that referred in part to Iraq, a country he mentioned twice.
"War is not always inevitable," the pope said. "It is always a defeat for humanity."
Iraq: the military response
Faleh A. Jabar, Le Monde Diplomatique, January, 2003
Now that the United States and Iraq seem set on a collision course, the fate of the Ba'athist regime will be determined by how well the Iraqi army performs. The conventional US wisdom is that Iraq's regular army will readily lay down its arms, but the Republican Guard may put up a fierce fight. US experts say the Guard is better motivated, equipped and paid than regular units, and so more loyal and willing to fight. But it is misleading to compare the elite Guard with the regular army; this reduces the causes of cohesion or disintegration to important, but too general, military factors. It ignores the complex nature of politics and war, especially of this next war.
Antiwar activists from across U.S. preparing for weekend of protests
Manny Fernandez, Washington Post, January 13, 2003
The ANSWER protest, which will have counterparts in San Francisco, Canada, Spain and elsewhere, organizers say, is one of several Washington antiwar rallies coinciding with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. ANSWER organizers also have planned a youth and student march at 11 a.m. Sunday from the Justice Department to the White House.
Also Sunday, two antiwar coalitions, D.C. Iraq Pledge of Resistance and United for Peace, plan an 11:30 a.m. rally at Farragut Square followed by a march to the White House, where organizers said at least 50 people will conduct civil disobedience, though details are being worked out. Activists said they wanted to link King's opposition to the Vietnam War to the current peace movement.
Monday, the holiday marking King's birthday, the national activist group Black Voices for Peace plans a rally to celebrate King's legacy and oppose war against Iraq. It is set for 3 p.m. at Plymouth Congregational Church in Northeast Washington.
About 220 organizing centers in 45 states are coordinating transportation and spreading the word about Saturday's ANSWER rally, 70 more than in October, said ANSWER organizer Sarah Sloan. Some groups that brought one busload to the rally in October said the response this time required them to have two or three buses, while others that were unable to attend the previous demonstration said they are now making the trek.
Lost credibility ties Bush's hands on nukes
Jonathan Power, Boston Globe, January 13, 2003
Washington and its closest allies - at least those who try to put themselves in Washington's shoes - now realize that they are beleaguered by the Pandora's Box of nuclear and missile proliferation and have no adequate policy to deal with them. Their moral authority is all but used up, just when they need it most, to deal with Iraq first and now North Korea.
See also Boeing, Hughes accused of illegally giving rocket data to China
An old-fashioned fight
Expecting a war in Iraq to feature mostly high-tech wizardry? Think again
William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2003
With all eyes on the cat-and-mouse game between Saddam Hussein and United Nations weapons inspectors, a marked shift in the U.S. war strategy for Iraq has been taking place outside of public view.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has approved a war plan for Iraq that owes more to D-day and World War II than to the 21st century vision of lightning-fast, flexible warfare that has become his hallmark.
For months, Rumsfeld prodded the U.S. Central Command to come up with a blueprint that reflected his demand for new tactics that combined the high-tech weaponry of modern air power with the stealth and agility of special operations. War plans were frequently returned to the Tampa, Fla.-based headquarters as not "imaginative" enough, according to senior officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Why, Rumsfeld kept asking, did Army Gen. Tommy Franks and his staff at Central Command doggedly insist on plans that entailed so much equipment, so many troops?
Last month, however, the Defense secretary surrendered to the traditionalists, secretly approving a blueprint for war in Iraq that has the American force relying heavily on tanks, artillery and heavy mechanized infantry.
The plan, reflected in deployment orders now cascading out of the Pentagon, does assign critical roles to air power, Special Forces and covert operators, according to Defense Department officials. They would attack the regime directly, destroy and capture weapons of mass destruction and foment rebellion.
But they would operate in subordination to the kind of ground assault the Army has trained and equipped itself to conduct in Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. If war comes, it will be no Afghanistan, no war of the future. After six or seven days of preparatory bombing, hundreds of tanks and a force of more than 200,000 soldiers and Marines would roll into Iraq from Kuwait.
Latest Al Qaeda recruits: Afghans seeking revenge
Scott Baldauf, Christian Science Monitor, January 13, 2003
Haji Din Mohammad's family has been marked by two tragic acts. The first was an American bombing raid in December 2001 that killed his nephew Zeni Khel in a local mosque. The second was the murder of an American CIA agent a month later by another nephew in an act of revenge.
It's this eye-for-an-eye code of Mr. Mohammad's Pashtun ethnic group that Al Qaeda and its allies are exploiting to create new suicide squads in Afghanistan, say Afghan intelligence officials. They are drawing recruits from families who have suffered losses in the past year of war. With motives and methods copied from Palestinian suicide bombers, the young men pose the newest, and perhaps gravest, threat to the young government, to American aid workers, and to US troops.
The perils of Pax Americana
Gabriel Kolko, The Australian, January 13, 2003
Policies virtually identical to President George W. Bush's national security strategy paper of last September, with its ambitious military, economic and political goals, have been produced since the late 1940s.
After all, the US has attempted to define the contours of politics in every part of the world for the past half-century. Its many alliances, from NATO to SEATO, were intended to consolidate its global hegemony. And Washington rationalised its hundreds of interventions – which have taken every form, from sending its fleet to show the flag, to the direct use of US soldiers – as forestalling the spread of communism. But that ogre has all but disappeared and US armed forces are more powerful and active than ever.
U.S. CARROT AND STICK APPROACH: CARROT FOR KIM JONG-IL AND STICK FOR SADDAM
U.S. hints at aid if N. Korea abandons arms
Barbara Demick, Paul Richter and John Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2003
Signaling a more conciliatory stance toward North Korea, a top U.S. diplomat said here that the United States might help the impoverished communist state with its chronic energy shortages if it renounces its nuclear ambitions.
After meeting this morning with South Korean officials, Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly hinted that the Bush administration would be willing to strike a deal, despite its previous position that the U.S. would provide no inducements to get Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
"We know there are energy problems in North Korea. Once we get beyond the nuclear problems, there may be an opportunity with the United States, with private investors, or with other countries to help North Korea in the energy area," Kelly said in response to a reporter's question at a news conference in Seoul.
Ellsberg interview
In these excerpts from Dorian Devins's December 16, 2002 interview with Daniel Ellsberg on WFMU New York City, Ellsberg discusses the risks and gambles with human life that Bush is taking in his decisionmaking on Iraq, and the enormous uncertainties surrounding the impending invasion.
It's impossible to find a single military man that I've heard of who is for this war. I haven't seen one quoted to that effect. It's all civilians. But the civilians include Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, all of whom were of age to be close to combat in Vietnam. To extend the range here a bit, I was 34 when I went over, and 36 when I came back. So if you really wanted to see war up close, rather than watch it from Washington, which is the way I did feel as a government official, you could do it. You didn't have to pull strings, and I did get to Vietnam. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney and Bush did not manage to do that. That may be related, or not, to the fact that they are all enthusiastic about this video game that they feel is about to be played, on the model of the way they see the Gulf War, or Afghanistan, or Kosovo, where nearly all the people who die are adversaries, and not Americans.
I don't know how much of a difference it makes. But it is there. General Zinni, a Marine general, who was Bush's representative to the Middle East did point to the fact that all the people who were enthusiastic about going into this war, without exception, did not manage to get close to what combat really looks like.
I don't think, by the way, it's a matter of courage. I don't really doubt the physical courage of any of these people at all. I don't think that's the issue. So what is the difference? Well, seeing it up close, you see two things very strikingly. One, the extreme uncertainties—almost hard to imagine, if your only contact with war has been through press reports or simulations or games of some sort or other. You just can't imagine how wrong things can go and how regularly. And the other part is, you do see, if you're anywhere near populated areas in the war you're in, you see the effect on humans of that war. Not only on soldiers, but of course, the women and children, and the impact on that.
I do think the one difference it made to me to be in Vietnam was that the people of Vietnam became more real to me than could ever have happened otherwise. There are plenty of places in the world where I read about suffering, but it remains, as you say, abstract—at most, it's a matter of pictures, perhaps very moving pictures. But in the case of Vietnam, I knew people, I know there names, or if I didn't know there names, which was usually the case, I knew what they looked like, up close. I saw what the meaning of war actually is, and the main impact is on civilians.
Even the megapower needs friends
Andrew Rawnlsey, The Guardian, January 12, 2003
In the history of our planet, never before has there been a power so apparently massive as the United States. Her stock market is worth more than the rest of the world's bourses put together. Her spending on military force is greater than the combined weight of the next nine largest powers put together.
Her language - or perhaps I should say her version of our language - is the nearest thing to a global tongue; the dollar is the nearest thing to a global currency. No previous imperium, from the Ancient Greeks to the nineteenth-century British, has been so dominant.
Whether you be a White House hawk who seeks to impose an American World Order on the planet, whether you be a hater of globalisation protesting against the beast, whether you be a British Prime Minister trying to ride the tiger, omnipotent America is the orthodox way of looking at the United States. That is why she inspires so much awe, envy and loathing among the non-American populations of the planet.
And yet it is possible and perhaps more accurate to look at the United States in an entirely different way. She is Gulliver bound by the Lilliputians. America is a rather feeble megapower.
Transfer by any other name
Graham Usher, Al-Ahram, January 9, 2003
On a square hosting a vast Jewish candelabra, decked with Israeli flags, two women chat in the wintry sunshine. They are among the 400 Jewish settlers in Hebron who live amid 130,000 Palestinians, guarded by 2,000 Israeli soldiers. During curfew, the settlers are free to walk the streets of Hebron's Old City. The Old City's 20,000 Palestinians are free to watch them from aerial domiciles while the ground is pulled from under their feet.
On 15 November three Palestinian guerrillas from Islamic Jihad killed nine soldiers and three Israeli security guards on a road that links the Old City to the Kiryat Arba settlement that lies on its outskirts. Speaking to army commanders the next day, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel would "take advantage of the opportunity" to "minimise the number of Palestinians living among the Jewish settlers" in Hebron.
In practical terms this meant authorisation for establishing a new territorial "corridor" joining Kiryat Arba to the Ibrahimi mosque. The new road will be 1.7 kilometres-long, off-limits to the Palestinians and fenced by two two-metre walls. The Palestinians say the corridor will entail the destruction of 20 historic buildings, some dating from the 15th century, and the expropriation of 61 parcels of Palestinian-owned land. The army says the "widened" road is needed for security and that in any case the buildings are uninhabited ruins.
The homes are certainly ancient. But they are not empty. If the destruction goes ahead, eight Palestinian families will lose their properties, rendering 110 people homeless.
White House split over North Korea
Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, January 13, 2003
For weeks, while North Korea has steadily escalated its actions and threats over its nuclear and military programs, Bush administration officials have been unsure whether the North would also send word that it might be willing to discuss steps to pull back from the crisis.
But now that the North Koreans have sent such a signal through an unexpected emissary, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, administration officials face a fresh dilemma. They have to decide whether to pick up on the overture or dismiss the "back channel" offer conveyed by a former Clinton administration envoy as a distraction or even a ruse.
Compounding the White House's problem is that the Bush administration is as conflicted about North Korea as it is about any foreign policy issue. The divisions, observers say, extend all the way through to the question of how to handle Richardson's diplomatic mission, even though President George W. Bush was said to have personally approved the talks.
"I have never seen a more divided group in my 30 years of involvement in foreign policy," said a veteran of the first Bush administration who is close to many members of the current Bush team.
Richardson urges nonaggression pact with N.Korea
Mark Egan, Reuters, January 12, 2003
The Bush administration should open talks with Pyongyang aimed at negotiating a nonaggression pact to defuse nuclear tension with the communist state, former U.N Ambassador Bill Richardson said on Sunday after three days of unofficial talks with North Korea.
Fresh from almost nine hours of talks with North Korean officials, Richardson said the United States should start talks through United Nations channels to end the crisis.
Atomic agency challenges Bush's key claim against Iraq
Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 10, 2003
The key piece of evidence that President Bush has cited as proof that Saddam Hussein has sought to revive his program to make nuclear weapons was challenged today by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Bush cited Iraq's attempts to buy special aluminum tubes as proof that Baghdad was seeking to construct a centrifuge network system to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs.
"Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon," Mr. Bush said.
But Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., offered a sharply different assessment in a report to the United Nations Security Council today.
North Korea is no Iraq:
Pyongyang's negotiating strategy
Leon V. Sigal, Arms Control Today, December, 2002
The revelation that North Korea is buying equipment useful for enriching uranium has led many in Washington to conclude that North Korea, like Iraq, is again making nuclear weapons and that the appropriate response is to punish it for brazenly breaking its commitments. Both the assessment and the policy that flows from it are wrong.
North Korea is no Iraq. It wants to improve relations with the United States and says it is ready to give up its nuclear, missile, and other weapons programs in return.
Pyongyang’s declared willingness to satisfy all U.S. security concerns is worth probing in direct talks. More coercive alternatives—economic sanctions and military force—are not viable without allied support. Yet, the Bush administration, long aware of North Korea’s ongoing nuclear and missile activities, has shown little interest in negotiating.
Recognizing that, both Japan and South Korea have refused to confront North Korea and instead have moved to engage it. Hard-line unilateralists in the Bush administration and Congress oppose such engagement. As they continue to get their way, they are putting the United States on a collision course with its allies, undermining political support for the alliance in South Korea and Japan and jeopardizing the U.S. troop presence in both countries.
North Korea pushes itself to center stage
Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 11, 2003
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, has often been depicted as an irrational despot. But there is a certain rationale to Pyongyang's moves. It was just a year ago that President Bush cast North Korea as a member of an "axis of evil," a collection of states with policies inimical to Washington and with ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction that needed to be neutralized.
The North Koreans have watched as the Bush administration has made military plans to invade Iraq, another charter member of the "axis of evil." The North Koreans are also well aware of the deep divisions within the Bush administration over the merits of working out a deal that would win the North Koreans the aid and above all the assurances of good will and diplomatic respect that they apparently seek from the world's superpower.
North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons serves two possible ends, which are not mutually exclusive. According to North Korea's calculation, the development of a nuclear arsenal may ensure that Washington is never tempted to launch a pre-emptive attack, as America is apparently moving to do in Iraq.
The North Koreans have also gained a stronger negotiating hand, in part because they acted at a time when leaders in Washington wanted to concentrate on Iraq. North Korea's decision to evict inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and to remove key monitoring equipment has already prompted the Bush administration to agree to direct talks, something the administration vowed not to do unless North Korea first dismantled its program to enrich uranium and froze its plutonium production capability.
Majority of South Korean students view North Koreans as friends, neighbors
Korea Times, January 10, 2003
Nine out of 10 South Korean college and high-school students would welcome North Koreans into their neighborhoods as friends and neighbors, according to a recent poll.
In a poll by the Unification Ministry's research institute of 1,125 students from six universities and eight high schools in the Seoul-Kyonggi Province area, the poll also revealed that 55 percent they would be willing to marry a North Korean.
The results were carried in the institute's report, which was published Friday.
Just under 90 percent of students said they would be willing to have North Koreans as "close friends," while those saying they would welcome North Koreans as next-door neighbors represented 93.9 percent of the total.
When asked to specify which foreigners they would like to befriend, North Koreans topped the list with 89.9 percent, followed by Americans with 84.9 percent, Chinese with 83.4 percent, Chinese with 83.4 percent, Russians with 81.9 percent and Japanese with 80.8 percent.
Poll: Majority oppose unilateral action against Iraq
Martin Merzer, Knight Ridder, January 12, 2003
With U.S. troops heading for the Persian Gulf, Americans say in overwhelming numbers that they oppose unilateral U.S. military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, according to a national Knight Ridder poll.
Nuclear mediators resort to political mind reading
David E. Sanger, New York Times, January 12, 2003
An Asian diplomat emerged from one of the many meetings on defusing the North Korean nuclear crisis saying that no one could know what Kim Jong Il wants: a nuclear arsenal or new relationship with the West.
But the real mystery, he said, is here in Washington. "I'd just like to get a handle on what President Bush has in mind," he said. This administration, he said, "sends as many conflicting signals as the North Koreans."
Iraqi oil and the global economy
James T. Bartis, RAND, January 6, 2003
If Saddam Hussein is ousted as leader of Iraq, the United States will face critical decisions about the future of the world's second-largest oil reserves. Should the United States support greatly increased Iraqi oil production? Or should America protect the status quo of artificially high oil prices?
The choice the United States makes will have profound repercussions far into the future, because Iraq holds 112 billion barrels of proven reserves of crude oil -- more than five times the size of U.S. reserves.
Challenge of America / Nukes are North Korea's hedge against U.S. attack
Takuji Kawata, Daily Yomiuri, January 11, 2003
If the United States moves to implement a containment policy, a source in Seoul said, "The measures will not only include searches of North Korean ships but also restrictions on trade with the North with Japan and South Korea."
"The North Korean economy can just about survive with money from Japan and South Korea. The trade restriction would stop the money flow and make the North economically barren, eventually forcing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program," the source said.
For that end, the United States needs Seoul to suspend all of its South-North projects, including tours to the Diamond Mountains and railway connections with the North.
However, [South Korean President-elect] Roh and the South Korean public are unlikely to accept the demand.
U.S. 'will attack even without UN backing'
Toby Harnden, The Telegraph, January 10, 2003
America will not delay a war with Iraq until the autumn and is prepared to launch military action against Saddam Hussain without any additional authorisation from the United Nations, a senior Bush administration adviser said on Thursday.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board and a hawk whose views carry considerable weight in the White House, rejected suggestions from British ministers and senior Foreign Office officials that plans for an early war should be put on hold.
Where are the hawks on North Korea?
Faced with a real crisis, Bush does nothing
Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, The American Prospect, February 1, 2003
Does George W. Bush actually believe his own foreign-policy pronouncements? A year ago he made North Korea a charter member of the "axis of evil" and vowed not to "permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." The National Security Strategy he issued last September warned that the United States would strike preemptively to make good on that pledge. Bush told Bob Woodward that he "loathed" Kim Jong Il, North Korea's "dear leader." On Jan. 3, Bush added that he had "no heart for somebody who starves his folks."
All this tough talk would make you think Bush would be putting Pyongyang in his gun sights after it decided last month to restart its production of plutonium. But he isn't. Instead, he and his advisers are counseling patience, dismissing preemption and trumpeting the virtues of working with North Korea's neighbors. "Don't be quite so breathless," Colin Powell said, dismissing an interviewer who wondered why the administration did no more than express "disappointment" at Pyongyang's decision to violate three major international agreements. "This is not a military showdown," Bush said, "this is a diplomatic showdown."
Madness in the making
Lead Editorial, The Guardian, January 11, 2003
The possibility that the US will resort to the use of nuclear weapons in a future conflict is greater now that at any time since the darkest days of the cold war. This growing danger does not principally arise from old fears about the threat from strategic nuclear missiles. Although the US, Russia, China, France and Britain retain such weapons, their overall numbers have been reduced. Rather, the 21st century's own looming nuclear nightmare has two other main causes. One is the US development of new generations of theatre or battlefield nuclear weapons and an increasing willingness by the Bush administration to use them pre-emptively. The other is the proliferation of nuclear weapons-related technology and the linked acquisition by "rogue states" and international terrorist groups of other relatively less potent weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological agents.
North Korea battles the big squeeze
Hamish McDonald, The Age, January 11, 2003
With yesterday's announcement by North Korea that it was withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the country's isolated communist regime has stepped up an increasingly strident effort to win security guarantees and economic openings from the United States and other Western-oriented countries.
Behind the implied nuclear threat is a regime facing a sharp increase in economic privation for its 23.5 million people in the coming months, as the US-led freeze on oil shipments last month takes effect and contributions to a United Nations food relief program fall short.
The North Koreans are also counting on the rising anti-American sentiment in South Korea, where the public is sceptical about the reality of the nuclear threat painted by Washington and irritated by the presence of 37,000 American troops.
Has the tide turned against another Gulf war?
Patrick Seale, Daily Star, January 10, 2003
It is time to put the question everyone is asking: Will the United States and Britain attack Iraq? Yes or no? No one not even the man in the White House can yet answer that question with total certainty, but several indications suggest that the tide may have turned against the war.
Two unforeseen factors outside the Middle East have worked in Iraq’s favor. First, the Washington hawks’ argument that Iraq must be disarmed by force has been punctured by the Bush administration’s mild, “diplomatic” response to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. If the acute danger from Pyongyang’s “real” weapons of mass destruction can be defused and neutralized by negotiations, surely the dubious threat from Baghdad’s “alleged” weapons can be dealt with in the same way. International public opinion, not least in the United States, is now reaching this conclusion, and this must certainly inhibit President George W. Bush from deciding to attack.
The crisis in Venezuela is the second factor no one foresaw. Venezuelan oil exports have been severely reduced by the six-week-long general strike which is threatening to bring down the regime of President Hugo Chavez. If a war were also to disrupt Iraq’s oil exports, the world oil market would lose a total from both producers of some 5 million barrels daily. Such a large amount could not be quickly made up by other producers, even if OPEC increases production. As a result, oil prices, already well over $30 a barrel, would soar still higher, dealing a severe blow to the already depressed American and world economies.
N Korea follows Bush's lead
Daniel Plesch, BBC News, January 10, 2003
North Korea has decided to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, invoking its legal right to do so.
The move increases international tension and the risk of Japan reconsidering its position on nuclear weapons.
But it is in line with the new approach to global security adopted by the Bush administration.
Sharon: He's gotta go
Yoel Marcus, Ha'aretz, January 10, 2003
In a normal country, the first thing expected of a prime minister suspected of bribe-taking, fraud and breach of trust, who is being questioned by the police, is to step aside, right then and there. Because someone who is suspected of such crimes - after taking an outrageously oversized loan (NIS 7 million, or NIS 14 million gross) at a totally ridiculous rate of interest, repaid with tricks and shticks, through phony companies and fishy financial channels that sent the money half around the world - can't simply wash his hands of the whole affair and blame it on the media.
It wasn't the media that produced the incriminating document, just as it wasn't the media that invented the corruption in the primaries. The allegations come from the law enforcement authorities of the state, following the discovery of an official receipt from a friend who loaned Ariel Sharon $1.5 million to repay his campaign debts from 1999. Sharon simply forgot to report the loan, as required by law.
Sharon's fingerprints on latest suicide bombing
Steve Niva, Counterpunch, January 9, 2003
It is difficult to imagine that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, with his much vaunted military and strategic acumen, did not understand the consequences of his policies over the past month.
Since the last suicide bombing on November 21, escalating Israeli military assaults have killed over sixty Palestinian civilians, culminating in the December 26 wave of killing and abductions, in which Israeli occupying forces killed at least nine Palestinians, injured more than 30 and abducted several others.
On that day alone, Israeli execution squads assassinated three prominent members from three different militant Palestinian groups: Hamza Abu el-Rab of Islamic Jihad, Ibrahim Hawash, of Hamas and Gamal Abu el-Nader of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades. All three groups vowed revenge.
As if on que, the horrific double suicide bombing near the old Tel Aviv bus station took place within two weeks of these assassinations and reports have now confirmed that the bombers were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades. Twenty two Israeli's and foreign workers were killed and a hundred more injured.
Plan: Tap Iraq’s oil
U.S. considers seizing revenues to pay for occupation, source says
Knut Royce, Newsday, January 10, 2003
Bush administration officials are seriously considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq's oil to help pay the cost of a military occupation, a move that likely would prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq.
Officially, the White House agrees that oil revenue would play an important role during an occupation period, but only for the benefit of Iraqis, according to a National Security Council spokesman.
Yet there are strong advocates inside the administration, including the White House, for appropriating the oil funds as "spoils of war,” according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the dialogue.
U.S. seeks to tone down drums of war
Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2003
The drumbeat of war may be slowing.
After weeks of mounting expectations that an invasion is imminent, the United States and many of the key players in the showdown with Iraq indicated Thursday that U.N. weapons inspections will run well beyond the Jan. 27 due date for the first formal report to the world body on Saddam Hussein's cooperation.
Barring solid discoveries or new evidence about Iraq's weapons programs, widespread assumptions about an American-led military operation beginning in early February may also be off, according to U.S., European and U.N. officials.
"It's wrong to assume anything has to happen in January or February. We're not in this to call a quick war, so don't assume any timetable," a senior State Department official said Thursday on condition of anonymity. "We have to exhaust the U.N. process to get people to come through with military and other support."
Bush sidelines his Cuban hardman
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, January 10, 2003
The Bush administration yesterday announced a new job - in effect a demotion - for Otto Reich, the controversial Cuban-American who has been responsible for policy in Latin America for the past year.
The decision is a climbdown which acknowledges that the Senate, even with its new Republican majority, will not confirm Mr Reich as assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere.
Mr Reich, a hardline anti-communist, has been accused of supporting terrorists in Central America and appearing to welcome a military coup in Venezuela. [...]
Last April Mr Reich came under scrutiny for apparently welcoming the military coup which led to the brief removal from office of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
More recently he angered the Venezuelan government by saying: "An election is not sufficient to call a country a democracy."
The Venezuelan vice-president, Jose Vicente Rangels, called him "a clown".
Ministers, speak now
Jackie Ashley, The Guardian, January 10, 2003
First the good news for Tony Blair: his cabinet is not split about Iraq. All this loose talk of divisions is so much journalistic hot air. Second, the not-so-good news for our prime minister: the cabinet is not split only because it is united in deep angst and worry about what he is up to.
In recent weeks, three cabinet ministers, two of whom you would classify as ultra loyal, have privately expressed to me grave doubts about the course apparently being pursued by Mr Blair. "This is not what we were elected for," said one. "This is madness," said another.
Allies in a spin over lack of evidence
US and UK blame inspectors' failure to find a smoking gun on Baghdad's 'passive' cooperation
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, January 10, 2003
Washington and London responded to the failure of the UN inspectors to find evidence of forbidden weapons in Iraq by telling Saddam Hussein yesterday that he had yet to demonstrate "proactive cooperation" with the inspections.
Hans Blix, the head of Unmovic, the chemical and biological team, told reporters in New York: "We have now been there for some two months and been covering the country in ever wider sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns."
DIRECT ACTION
Anti-war train drivers refuse to move arms freight
Kevin Maguire, The Guardian, January 9, 2003
Train drivers yesterday refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition believed to be destined for British forces being deployed in the Gulf.
Railway managers cancelled the Ministry of Defence service after the crewmen, described as "conscientious objectors" by a supporter, said they opposed Tony Blair's threat to attack Iraq.
The anti-war revolt is the first such industrial action by workers for decades.
Europeans seek to rein in American war machine
Hassan Hafidh, Reuters, January 10, 2003
Europe moved to stay America's hand over Iraq on Friday, as top officials spoke out against a rush to war on the basis of inconclusive weapons inspections.
"Without proof, it would be very difficult to start a war," the European Union's foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana told French newspaper Le Monde.
One of President Saddam Hussein's main Iraqi enemies also urged against an invasion and warned that the sort of occupying force Washington envisages would face broad, armed resistance.
"We reject the idea of an invasion and occupation of Iraqi territory," said Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
U.S. warned to tread lightly in Yemen
Jim Lobe, OneWorld, January 9, 2003
The United States should tread carefully in pursuing the "war on terrorism" in the key Arab state of Yemen, according to a new report released Wednesday by a major international think tank, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG).
Published in the wake of last month's murder of three U.S. missionaries at a hospital they helped run in the town of Jibla, the report, 'Yemen: Coping with Terrorism and Violence in a Fragile State,' warns against a narrow focus on terrorism and any effort to establish a large military presence there.
See also Yemen: Coping with terrorism and violence in a fragile state
Feeling isn't argument
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, January 9, 2003
President George W. Bush continues to repeat moral arguments for a U.S. attack on Iraq because his domestic political adviser, Karl Rove, has convinced him that the "moral clarity" of his declarations about the war against evil and the wickedness of Saddam Hussein have proved a decisive electoral asset.
However, his current difficulties in consolidating U.S. and international opinion behind an invasion of Iraq lie in the realms of reason and evidence. His speeches have, in those respects, offered nothing new to demonstrate that the United States should attack Iraq here and now, with or without a new United Nations mandate.
Europe and 'religious' US drifting apart
Judy Dempsey, Financial Times, January 8, 2003
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, says Europe and the US are growing further apart despite rhetoric about the values that bind both sides of the Atlantic.
The reason, he says, is a 'cultural phenomenon', one that goes beyond the pattern of US foreign policy swinging between unilateralism and multilateralism.
This time the unilateralist pendulum is different. It is, says Mr Solana, being swung by religion.
Poet laureate joins doubters over Iraq
Britain's poet laureate, appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, in his service to monarch and nation, offers these words about Britain and America's leading warmongers and their critics:
Causa belli by Andrew Motion
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.
Plenty of patriotism, but little citizenship
Diane E. Dees, Democratic Underground, January 8, 2003
What does it mean to "love America" and have little or no regard for its land and its inhabitants?
Citizenship is a forgotten concept, one that brings to mind images of elementary school children holding hands and learning about the pledge of allegiance and the importance of safety crossing guards. But citizenship is the expression of one's ability to live with others. Unlike patriotism, it is organic, it requires commitment. It is not a feeling, but a pattern of behavior that acknowledges that none of us can live without the cooperation of others, and that all of us need to behave with decency and compassion.
TV ads say S.U.V. owners support terrorists
Katherine Q. Steelye, New York Times, January 8, 2003
Ratcheting up the debate over sport utility vehicles, new television commercials suggest that people who buy the vehicles are supporting terrorists. The commercials are so provocative that some television stations are refusing to run them.
Patterned after the commercials that try to discourage drug use by suggesting that profits from illegal drugs go to terrorists, the new commercials say that money for gas needed for S.U.V.'s goes to terrorists.
"This is George," a girl's voice says of an oblivious man at a gas station. "This is the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The screen then shows a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The picture switches to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his S.U.V."
U.S. troops in South Korea encounter increased hostility
James Brooke, New York Times, January 8, 2003
Lt. Col. Steven Boylan's combat patch comes from flying helicopters in El Salvador, but his parents think his Purple Heart should come from walking the streets of Seoul.
That became clear one night last month when three Korean men cornered him in a tunnel on his way home. "They started cussing me in English, `G.I. get out, G.I. go home,' " the colonel, a 41-year-old Wisconsin native, recalled today. "They attacked me, and I made a defensive maneuver. It was only when I made it back to post that I saw I had been stabbed."
The world worries about whether North Korea is making nuclear weapons. Television correspondents do live stand-ups from the demilitarized zone, the "last cold war frontier." But to hear some G.I.'s tell it, the highest risk of violence is on the streets of South Korean cities, where political leaders have allowed anti-Americanism to run unchecked.
Swords, plowshares and 9/11 steel
Clyde Haberman, New York Times, January 7, 2003
Make no mistake, Rita Lasar said. She would have opposed this brewing war against Iraq even if her brother, Abraham Zelmanowitz, had not died at the World Trade Center. But he did die there, and that painful reality, she said, stoked an antiwar passion that might otherwise have stayed dormant.
"I don't want terror rained on other people to avenge my brother's death," Ms. Lasar said the other evening in her East Village apartment. "And I don't spend any time thinking about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and what I want to do to those people. It's irrelevant at this point. What's relevant is not having other innocent people die because my brother died."
Ms. Lasar, a 71-year-old widow, is well aware that her stance is a distinctly minority view, among Americans in general and, no doubt, among relatives of the Sept. 11 victims in particular. All the same, it is probably not a crime against democracy to note that, agree with them or not, some of the relatives feel that the country is on a misbegotten path toward war.
Court rules U.S. can hold citizens as 'enemy combatants'
Neil A. Lewis, New York Times, January 8, 2003
A federal appeals court handed the Bush administration a major victory today in ruling that a wartime president has the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny that person access to a lawyer. [...]
The Hamdi case appears to be the first in modern American legal history in which a citizen has been detained without being charged and without being given access to a lawyer. While Mr. Hamdi's lawyers are certain to seek a review from the Supreme Court, there is no guarantee the justices will take up the case.
Along with Mr. Hamdi, the only other American citizen being held without charges is Jose Padilla, an American accused of trying to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States. He is being held in a military brig in South Carolina.
Today's ruling may be the most far-reaching yet in a host of court cases brought on by the Bush administration's efforts in the war against terrorism.
Despite so many fans, war is no game
Americans see it as the dark twin of the Olympics
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2003
While the symbols of patriotism are everywhere -- from the ubiquitous military recruitment ads to the stars and stripes affixed to referee uniforms at the Orange Bowl -- television news anchors chirp about the latest troop movements and "incidents" in the "no-fly" zone. And for many Americans huddled around the tube in midwinter, knocking off Saddam Hussein is an easy sell, offering as it does a cheap thrill demanding less sacrifice than that needed to acquire playoff tickets -- and less angst over the outcome.
However, the viewing public doesn't seem to understand that what is being planned by our president is not Gulf War II -- a swift punch in the mouth to our old ally Hussein -- but rather a multiyear occupation by the U.S. of an independent, powerful and modern Muslim nation rife with ethnic tension.
The liar's club
David Hackworth, WorldNetDaily, January 7, 2003
Did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld misspeak last month when he said that the Pentagon could duke it out simultaneously with both North Korea and Iraq? Or did he join the SecDef Liar's Club?
Like most control freaks, Rummy picks his positions very carefully, and you better believe a whole lot of strategizing goes down before his carefully scripted weekly gig on national television.
In this case, he surely would've been aware that the U.S. forces earmarked for fires on the Korean peninsula are many of the same Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine units now moving at max speed toward Iraq. He also had to know that despite the almost $400 billion 2003 defense budget, there's no way the USA can handle two major scraps at the same time – not to mention the mother of all threats: al-Qaida – with forces at about half Desert Storm strength and stretched to the breaking point in more countries than there are flags.
North Korea adds fuel to nuclear crisis
Julian Borger, The Guardian, January 8, 2003
Could Kim Jong Il be receiving a retainer from Saddam Hussein? No doubt the "Dear Leader" needs the money and the oil, while his timing could not be better from the Iraqi despot's point of view.
The sudden escalation of the North Korean nuclear programme and Pyongyang's ejection of international inspectors has complicated the United States strategy both diplomatically and militarily. It is now much harder for the US to go to the security council to make the case for military action against Saddam Hussein, who might have nuclear weapons in a few years time, while pushing a diplomatic approach towards the quixotic North Korean government, which probably has a couple of crude plutonium weapons already.
North Korea forcing Bush to back off stated policy
'Pre-emption' turns out to mean U.S. only attacks weaker enemies
Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, January 6, 2003
Soon after rolling out a new post-Cold War foreign policy doctrine, the Bush administration is scrambling to explain why "pre-emption" may be appropriate for dealing with Iraq, but not such a good idea in defusing the threat from fellow "axis of evil" member North Korea.
A spate of nuclear brinkmanship from North Korea, which is threatening to push ahead with the production of fissile material for a series of nuclear bombs, has created an unexpected opening for Democrats and opponents of a looming war with Iraq.
The critics have seized on the North Korea crisis as an opportunity to attack the administration for apparent inconsistencies in a foreign policy strategy that stresses the need to move beyond the Cold War practices of containment and deterrence.
"What North Korea shows is that deterrence is working," said Joseph Nye, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, who served as a senior Pentagon official during the Clinton administration. "The only problem is that we are the ones who are being deterred."
U.S. shares blame for North Korea's bad behaviour
Gavan McCormack, The Age, January 8, 2003
The previous crisis, in 1994, went to the brink of war. It was settled by the Jimmy Carter mission and the subsequent agreement between the US and North Korea known as the Geneva Agreed Framework.
North Korea shelved its graphite nuclear reactor plans in return for an American proposal to construct light-water reactors to generate 2000 megawatts of electricity by a target date of 2003, and to supply 500,000 tonnes a year of heavy oil for energy generation in the interim.
Other clauses committed the two to move towards full normalisation of political and economic relations and the US to provide assurances to North Korea against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the US.
Nine years have passed. There are no light-water reactors, there is nothing much but a large hole in the ground and there is no prospect of any power generation until about the end of this decade. And, far from there being any progress towards normalising political and economic relations, President Bush, at the outset of his presidency, called North Korea part of the "axis of evil", and in place of formal assurances talked about pre-emptive attack and indicated a willingness to include nuclear weapons as part of it.
If Pyongyang has plainly departed from the Agreed Framework, therefore, it did so after the agreement had already been substantially voided by the US, in the reactor commitment, the failure to proceed with the promised normalisation, and the nuclear guarantee.
The 'virus' of terrorism
H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe, January 3, 2003
We need to work closely with other nations and friends where we can find them. We will seek to disrupt terrorists when we find them, and we will take losses again, as we did in September of the year before last. It will take years, but in the end it will be the openness of our society, the freedoms that attract even those who oppose our policies. The best thing we have going for us is tolerance.
Of all the graffiti that sprang up on walls and signs around ground zero in the weeks following 9/11, one caught my eye as summarizing all the sassy resilience that Americans need in these troubled times ahead. It read: ''Infidels welcome here.''
U.S. calls off search for 5 foreign men
Curt Anderson, Associated Press, January 7, 2003
The FBI has called off a nationwide search for five foreign-born men amid questions about the reliability of the tipster who told authorities the men were smuggled into the country last month.
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday, said the names of the men and their photos will be removed from an FBI Web site. A message to local police agencies around the country telling them the search was off was to be transmitted Tuesday, the official said.
See also The case of the five vanishing suspects and Pakistani says he's in FBI wanted photo
The disquieted Americans
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, January 7, 2003
After September 11, there was much nervousness in the worlds of film and television in LA about screening or embarking on any production that might appear to be in bad taste or deemed unpatriotic. Some of this was for understandable reasons of sensitivity but a timid self-censorship played its part, too.
Plans for a film about the Florida election fiasco of 2000 were dropped and anything that appeared to show the president or the US military in a poor light was reckoned to be unfeasible. A raft of television shows in which the CIA were shown in a flattering light appeared. But is the climate finally changing?
Bush the gunslinger
Arie Caspi, Ha'aretz, January 7, 2003
Since the attack on the World Trade Center, Americans, like Israelis, have blurred the distinctions between different kinds of terrorism. There are at least two kinds. Some terrorist actions are carried out by small, esoteric groups like the Red Brigades or the Baader-Meinhof gang. Then there are the terrorist actions of underground groups representing the oppressed dreams of their environment, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Qaida.
Esoteric gangs can be wiped out. The public within which they operate detests them. But waging war on organizations that enjoy popular support is an unholy mess. In most cases, what actually happens is the complete opposite of the surface outcome. The media coverage of the fight enhances national consciousness and adds new members to the groups under attack. When one group is eliminated, worse ones sprout up in its place. Bush's frontal assault on radical Islam has revived Islamic nationalism and made the fight against terror into a war of civilizations.
The United States is now much more hated in Muslim countries than it was before September 11. America-hatred runs deep even in such supposedly friendly countries as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Egypt is second only to Israel in the amount of foreign aid it receives from the United States. The Americans have pumped over $20 billion into the country in the last decade. But the Egyptian media does not give a hoot about the money. Most of them treat America as an enemy.
The case of the five vanishing suspects
Peter Cheney and Victor Malarek, The Globe and Mail, January 4, 2003
Like the posthumous Elvis Presley, Canada's five mysterious terror suspects seem to have popped up everywhere.
They were at Akswesasne, being smuggled into the United States by natives. They were at Toronto's Pearson Airport, where they slipped into Canada by claiming refugee status. One was seen on a bus entering the Lincoln Tunnel. Another was spotted on a West Coast ferry.
By the middle of this week, they had starred in hundreds of newspaper and television reports and had been on the lips of everyone from U.S. President George W. Bush to Senator Hilary Clinton, who announced at a press conference that they had entered the United States through Canada.
But yesterday, the FBI admitted that the most important ingredient in the story -- that is, the proof -- is nowhere to be found: "There is no border-crossing information that would say they're here," FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell said. "And to say they came in from Canada is pure speculation." [...]
"We don't know if they ever entered the U.S.," Mr. Cogswell said. "And in fact we've never linked these guys to terrorists. Most of what we have here is an unknown, and even with these individuals we don't know if they are true names with those photographs."
"We're chasing rumours," a senior RCMP officer said. "We don't know if these five men were ever in Canada and we certainly have no proof whatsoever that they crossed into the United States either legally or illegally."
Asked what might have triggered the initial FBI allegation about the five Middle Eastern men entering the U.S. from Canada, the Mountie replied caustically: "It was a slow week at the White House. They needed something to stir the pot because nothing was happening in Iraq."
Act now against war
George Monbiot, The Guardian, January 7, 2003
The rest of Europe must be wondering whether Britain has gone into hibernation. At the end of this month our prime minister is likely to announce the decision he made months ago, that Britain will follow the US into Iraq. If so, then two or three weeks later, the war will begin. Unless the UN inspectors find something before January 27, this will be a war without even the flimsiest of pretexts: an unprovoked attack whose purpose is to enhance the wealth and power of an American kleptocracy. Far from promoting peace, it could be the first in a series of imperial wars. The gravest global crisis since the end of the cold war is three weeks away, and most of us seem to be asking why someone else doesn't do something about it.
Axis praxis
Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, January 6, 2003
A not completely crazy case can be made that the most influential thinker in the foreign-policy apparatus of the Administration of George W. Bush during its first two years was not one of the familiar members of the gold-shielded Praetorian Guard—not Dick Cheney or Colin Powell, not Condi or Rummy, not Tenet or Wolfowitz—but, rather, a forty-two-year-old Canadian named David Frum. During Year I of Bush II, Frum was a White House speechwriter. Although he left the job only ten months ago, his memoir of those distant days has already been written, edited, and printed, and, as of this week, is in the stores. (The revolving door used to turn with stately languor. Now it comes equipped with a tachometer.) In the book, he writes that when drafting duties for last year's State of the Union Message were being doled out, his assignment was "to provide a justification for a war," specifically a war with Iraq. After much cogitation, he hit upon the idea of likening what the United States has been up against since September 11, 2001, to the villains of the Second World War. The phrase he came up with was "axis of hatred." Higher-ups changed this to "axis of evil," to make it sound more "theological." Although Frum initially intended his "strong language" to apply only to Iraq, Iran was quickly added. (You can't have a single-pointed axis.)
North Korea was an afterthought. It got stuck in at the last minute, but Frum doesn't quite explain how or why. Perhaps it was meant to echo the global span of the original (Baghdad-Tehran-Pyongyang equals Berlin-Rome-Tokyo). Perhaps it was an application of the rhetorical Rule of Three (our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor; of the people, by the people, for the people; blood, sweat, and tears). Perhaps it was the product of intoxication brought on by an excess of moral clarity. Most likely, it was simply oratorical affirmative action, bused in to lend diversity to what would otherwise have been an all-Muslim list. One thing it was not was the product of careful policy deliberation.
The suicide bombers
Professor Avishai Margalit (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), New York Review of Books, January 16, 2003
In this conflict practically every statement one makes is bound to be contested, including the description of the attackers as suicide bombers and the victims as civilians. Islamic law explicitly prohibits suicide and the killing of innocents. Muslims are consequently extremely reluctant to refer to the human bombers as suicide bombers. They refer to them instead as shuhada (in singular: shahid), or martyrs. Palestinians are also reluctant to use the expression "Israeli civilians," which implies that they are innocent victims. Even if they are Israeli dissidents they are not regarded as such. In a recent attack by Hamas at the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of the victims, Dafna Spruch, had been active in one of the most fearless peace protest groups in Israel, Women in Black. Hamas dealt with this simply by claiming that she belonged to Women in Green, a ferocious anti-Palestinian right-wing organization. As such, she was not innocent.
Spokesmen for Hamas justify the killing of civilians by saying it is a necessary act of defense—the only weapon they have to protect Palestinian women and children. "If we should not use" suicide bombing, the Hamas leaders announced this November, "we shall be back in the situation of the first week of the Intifada when the Israelis killed us with impunity."
A report by Amnesty International in July 2002 summarizes the arguments cited by the Palestinians as reasons for targeting civilians. The Palestinians claim that
they are engaged in a war against an occupying power and that religion and international law permit the use of any means in resistance to occupation; that they are retaliating against Israel killing members of armed groups and Palestinians generally; that striking at civilians is the only way they can make an impact upon a powerful adversary; that Israelis generally or settlers in particular are not civilians.
The report finds these reasons unacceptable. It considers Israeli violations of human rights so grave that many of them "meet the definition of crimes against humanity under international law." But it also concludes, "The deliberate killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed groups amounts to crimes against humanity."
Throughout the twentieth century the nineteenth-century taboo on targeting and killing civilians has been eroding. In World War I only 5 percent of the casualties were civilians. In World War II the figure went up to 50 percent and in the Vietnam War it was 90 percent. Amnesty International is making an admirable effort to restore the prohibition against targeting and killing civilians. Its report, rightly, does not make any moral distinction between those who kill themselves while killing civilians and those who spare themselves while killing.
My concern with the suicide bombers here is to understand what they do and why they do it and with what political consequences. To put the matter briefly, it is clear that there will be no peace between Israel and Palestine if suicide bombings continue. It is not clear that there will be peace if they stop, but there would at least be a chance for peace.
Kim Jong-il out-Saddams Saddam
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, January 7, 2003
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must be green with envy.
Not only has North Korean President Kim Jong-il eclipsed him in the US mass media, but his fellow evil-doer in the infamous "axis of evil" is also defying the world's dominant power on a daily basis, and getting away with it.
After all, dozens of United Nations weapons inspectors are crawling all over Iraq without the slightest hindrance, scouring the country for evidence of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Despite such cooperation, US President George W Bush threatens war to "liberate" Baghdad virtually every day.
How does this square with his kid-gloves treatment of Pyongyang, which Washington believes already has chemical, biological and as many as two nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them as far away as Japan and even Hawaii?
Alien nation
Alex Gourevitch, The American Prospect, January 13, 2003
In the midst of the Washington-area sniper attacks last fall, Montgomery County (Md.) Police Chief Charles Moose was forced to make an unusual televised appeal to immigrants. "Perhaps some of our immigrant community members feel like there would be some problem for them because of their status ... if they come forward," Moose said. "We hope that is not the case, but if that is the case, we want to stress that that is not our interest in this matter." He was responding to an incident the previous day in which two immigrants had been apprehended for questioning in the sniper case, cleared but then dumped in deportation proceedings. What was odd was that Moose had to make the appeal at all. It is a policy in local and state police departments across the country not to enforce civil-immigration law because they want immigrants to be forthcoming about crimes -- such as homicide. It is even the official legal opinion of the U.S. Department of Justice that local and state police do not have the inherent authority to enforce civil-immigration law. Or at least it was until Attorney General John Ashcroft started changing the law.
Dick Armey's warning
Nat Hentoff, Washington Times, January 6, 2003
In his December 6 farewell address at the National Press Club, the retiring Republican Majority Leader warned of the "awful, dangerous seduction" of sacrificing our freedoms for safety in our war to defeat "this insidious threat that comes right into our neighborhood."
Armey emphasized that "we the people, had better keep an eye on ... our government. Not out of contempt or lack of appreciation or disrespect, but out of a sense of guardianship.
"How do you use these tools we have given you to make us safe in such a manner that'll preserve our freedom? ... Freedom is no policy for the timid. And my plaintive plea to all my colleagues that remain in this government as I leave it is, for your sake, for my sake, for heaven's sake, don't give up on freedom!"
The lies we are told about Iraq
Pentagon propaganda got us into the first Gulf War. Will we be fooled a second time?
Victor Marshall, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2003
The Bush administration's confrontation with Iraq is as much a contest of credibility as it is of military force. Washington claims that Baghdad harbors ambitions of aggression, continues to develop and stockpile weapons of mass destruction and maintains ties to Al Qaeda. Lacking solid evidence, the public must weigh Saddam Hussein's penchant for lies against the administration's own record. Based on recent history, that's not an easy choice.
The first Bush administration, which featured Dick Cheney, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Colin L. Powell at the Pentagon, systematically misrepresented the cause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nature of Iraq's conduct in Kuwait and the cost of the Persian Gulf War. Like the second Bush administration, it cynically used the confrontation to justify a more expansive and militaristic foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era.
North Koreans blame U.S. for their nation's plight
Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2003
Kim In Joon, 60, a guard at a seaside overlook whose job is to prevent visitors from taking photographs that might reveal military installations, is one of the rare North Koreans who sometimes meet foreigners. He welcomes an American visitor walking through his park with a New Year's greeting and a broad smile, gold-capped teeth glinting in the sun.
Politely, Kim explains that he has nothing personal against the American people -- it's their government that is the bane of his existence. He can provide a long list of the perfidies he believes have been committed by the United States, ranging from the division of Korea after World War II to the Korean War. But his most immediate grievance -- more mundane than geopolitical -- is the shortage of electricity in his apartment.
Under a 1994 agreement, the United States was supposed to build the North Koreans two safe light-water nuclear reactors and supply fuel oil in return for North Korea's freezing its nuclear program. But the reactors are years behind schedule, and in November, the United States and its allies ordered that deliveries of fuel oil to the North be suspended after Pyongyang acknowledged having a secret uranium-enrichment program.
"It's because of the Americans that our electricity is so bad," said Kim, who lives in a first-floor apartment in the nearby port city of Kosung, which has at best a few hours of electricity each night. "We have a refrigerator, a television, a washing machine that we can't use because we don't have the electricity. When I see all those appliances that don't work, I get so mad I want to throw them at the Americans.
"How can we trust the Americans when they don't keep their promises? We have no choice but to prepare ourselves to fight," he continued, as he mimicked brandishing a bayonet.
Nuclear arming could snowball
Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2003
The vivid prospect of a North Korea with enough plutonium for six or eight bombs could prompt neighboring countries to consider building their own nuclear arsenals, security experts warn.
Moreover, it could mean that North Korea by mid-decade would begin exporting plutonium to an eager global black market, a threat that policy analysts say could not only destabilize East Asia but also encourage nuclear aspirants in the Middle East and other regions.
"We could be approaching a nuclear tipping point," said Mitchell Reiss, dean of international affairs at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
"What we're concerned about is whether it's going to start a nuclear chain reaction" in which previously nonnuclear countries "may start to reconsider their bargain and to hedge their bets," he said. "If you see North Korea acquire even a small nuclear arsenal, they may begin to wonder whether nonproliferation is a mug's game."
Post-Saddam Iraq:
Linchpin of a New Oil Order
Michael Renner, Foreign Policy in Focus, January, 2003
Only in the most direct sense is the Bush administration's Iraq policy directed against Saddam Hussein. In contrast to all the loud talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and human rights violations, very little is being said about oil. The administration has been tight-lipped about its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq and has repeatedly disavowed any interest in the country's oil resources. But press reports indicate that U.S. officials are considering a prolonged occupation of Iraq after their war to topple Saddam Hussein. It is likely that a U.S.-controlled Iraq will be the linchpin of a new order in the world oil industry. Indeed, a war against Iraq may well herald a major realignment of the Middle East power balance.
Wartime Iraq aid calamity feared
Relief agencies predict humanitarian disaster
Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle, January 5, 2003
Despite the near-constant talk of a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, aid officials here say there appears to be little preparation by the Bush administration, the United Nations or private foreign aid agencies to handle a potential humanitarian disaster.
Aid officials cite a litany of calamities in the making if war comes: the expected exodus of Iraqi refugees, either internally or across national borders, as well as potential interruptions in food distribution, electricity, water, fuel, waste disposal and public health services throughout the country.
Making matters worse, say these officials, is Iraq's already weakened condition -- a result of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 U.S.-led Persian Gulf War and 12 years of international economic sanctions that have ruined the economy of this once-flourishing nation.
The burden of empire
Michael Ignatieff, New York Times, January 5, 2003
At a time when an imperial peace in the Middle East requires diplomats, aid workers and civilians with all the skills in rebuilding shattered societies, American power projection in the area overwhelmingly wears a military uniform. ''Every great power, whatever its ideology,'' Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once wrote, ''has its warrior caste.'' Without realizing the consequences of what they were doing, successive American presidents have turned the projection of American power to the warrior caste, according to the findings of research by Robert J. Lieber of Georgetown University. In President Kennedy's time, Lieber has found, the United States spent 1 percent of its G.D.P. on the nonmilitary aspects of promoting its influence overseas -- State Department, foreign aid, the United Nations, information programs. Under Bush's presidency, the number has declined to just 0.2 percent.
Special Forces are more in evidence in the world's developing nations than Peace Corps volunteers and USAID food experts. As Dana Priest demonstrates in ''The Mission,'' a soon-to-be-published study of the American military, the Pentagon's regional commanders exercise more overseas diplomatic and political leverage than the State Department's ambassadors. Even if you accept that generals can make good diplomats and Special Forces captains can make friends for the United States, it still remains true that the American presence overseas is increasingly armed, in uniform and behind barbed wire and high walls. With every American Embassy now hardened against terrorist attack, the empire's overseas outposts look increasingly like Fort Apache. American power is visible to the world in carrier battle groups patrolling offshore and F-16's whistling overhead. In southern Afghanistan, it is the 82nd Airborne, bulked up in body armor, helmets and weapons, that Pashtun peasants see, not American aid workers and water engineers. Each month the United States spends an estimated $1 billion on military operations in Afghanistan and only $25 million on aid.
This sort of projection of power, hunkered down against attack, can earn the United States fear and respect, but not admiration and affection. America's very strength -- in military power -- cannot conceal its weakness in the areas that really matter: the elements of power that do not subdue by force of arms but inspire by force of example.
It's not yesterday's peace movement
Rene Ciria-Cruz, Pacific News Service, January 2, 2003
As war clouds gather, opposition to a U.S. first strike on Iraq grows in a new and different way than the Vietnam-era peace movement -- and faster. Unlike the l960s, today's movement is more diverse, with a clearer political agenda unblurred by counterculture messages.
You don't need a weatherman to see that grassroots opposition to a U.S. war with Iraq is gathering fast. Today's peace movement already draws big protest crowds even before the shooting has begun, and its ranks are more diverse than the 1960s movement, which took a few years to grow. Fueling dissent is the perception that Bush's call for a unilateral first strike against Iraq is arbitrary.
Peace activists using technology nonexistent in the '60s -- e-mail blasts, dedicated Web sites -- are preparing a march in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18-20, hoping for crowds even larger than October's demonstrations by tens of thousands in the nation's capital, San Francisco and other cities.
A lesson in U.S. propaganda
Mark Crispin Miller, AlterNet, January 3, 2003
The Gulf War was itself a propaganda masterpiece, which wowed the TV audience far more than it threatened the grotesque regime in Baghdad. And because the propaganda always blocked our view of things, it left us with important questions that remain unanswered to this day.
The double standards, dubious morality and duplicity of this fight against terror
Robert Fisk, The Independent, January 4, 2003
I think I'm getting the picture. North Korea breaks all its nuclear agreements with the United States, throws out UN inspectors and sets off to make a bomb a year, and President Bush says it's "a diplomatic issue". Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of its weapons production and allows UN inspectors to roam all over the country, and – after they've found not a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids – President Bush announces that Iraq is a threat to America, has not disarmed and may have to be invaded. So that's it, then.
How, readers keep asking me in the most eloquent of letters, does he get away with it?
Anxious ally sees Bush's hand behind the confrontation
Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, January 4, 2003
Not for the first time since George Bush became president the United States is finding it a lot harder to deal with its friends than its enemies. On this occasion the conundrum is in north-east Asia, where Washington's efforts to punish North Korea for its nuclear transgressions have so far served only to alienate one of its staunchest allies, South Korea.
It's the occupation, stupid!
Leah Harris, Counterpunch, December 28, 2002
The way I see it, this is not a war between the pro-Israeli perspective and the pro-Palestinian perspective. After all, one can easily be pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, and opposed to the Israeli occupation. Instead, today's war of ideas is being fought amongst those who support and those who oppose Israel's 35-year-old occupation of Palestinian lives and land.
North Korea has a point
David Kang, Financial Times, January 2, 2003
George W. Bush's administration is right to ease the pressure on the North Korean regime, since the events of the past month have threatened to spiral out of control. But the US still lacks a long-range strategy to resolve the peninsula's tensions.
In a nutshell, the problem is this: the US refuses to give security guarantees to North Korea until it proves it has dismantled its weapons programme. The North refuses to disarm without security guarantees from the US. Hence, stalemate. Without movement towards resolving the security fears of the North, resolution of the nuclear weapons issue will be limited.
Al Qaeda vs. the White House
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, December 28, 2002
Al Qaeda wants revolutionary change. Its attacks on America in September 2001 had the paradoxical effect of propelling the United States on to a policy course that may eventually prove more radically unsettling for world order than anything Islamic militants could ever have expected to do on their own. These are developments that will dominate international relations in 2003.
A split with Seoul complicates crisis over North Korea
Jay Solomon, Associated Press, January 2, 2003
In a New Year's message, North Korea's state news agency said Wednesday the communist country will create an army-based "powerful nation" to defy the growing pressure being applied by the U.S. It also urged South Korea to back it in its confrontation with the U.S., seeking to drive a wedge between South Korea and the U.S. at a time when thousands of South Koreans have participated in recent weeks in anti-American protests. "There is neither reason nor condition for the fellow countrymen to strain the situation and disturb peace ... as the North and the South are heading for reconciliation, unity and reunification," the agency said.
Relations are hardly that rosy between the neighboring countries, but the gap that North Korea is seeking to exploit has been on display for two years, since Mr. Clinton ran out of time and President George W. Bush launched the U.S. on a wholly different approach to North Korea. Indeed, in the opinion of many U.S. and Asian officials who have sought to address the Korean Peninsula problem in recent years, Mr. Bush's hard-line policy toward the North -- and his rebuff of the South's attempts at reconciliation -- helped sow the seeds for the current conflict.
Pakistani says he's in FBI wanted photo
Asif Shahzad, Associated Press, January 2, 2003
A Pakistani jeweler, who claims his photo was identified as one of five foreign-born men being sought by the FBI in the United States, said Thursday he wants to clear his name.
An AP photograph of Mohammed Asghar taken at his shop in Lahore was a near-perfect match for one included on an FBI list released Sunday under the name Mustafa Khan Owasi, down to the prominent mole on Asghar's left cheek under his eye.
The FBI is seeking the public's help in tracking down the five men, who it believes may have entered the United States illegally from Canada in a case that has heightened terrorism fears. [...]
"I was shocked when I saw my picture in the newspapers and on television channels with the name of Mustafa Khan Owasi," Asghar said.
With Asghar in the family jewelry shop on Thursday, his father, Haji Asmatullah, was sharply critical of the United States.
"I am hopeful God will help us," he said. "What credibility does the FBI, the U.S. government and the U.S. media have, running pictures without any verification?"
Nearby shopkeepers sympathized. "How can he be a terrorist?" said Mohammad Babar. "He's been here for the last 20 years. The American government and the FBI should apologize to him."
Another jeweler, Mohammad Aqeel, said the affair proved the ill-intent of Americans.
"The Americans and the FBI have just one agenda: to declare all Muslims terrorists," he said.
See also Fake-ID arrest led to FBI hunt
Call off the war
Lead Editorial, The Guardian, January 2, 2003
Mr Bush has a history of dithering. The "axis of angst" that may have disturbed his holiday break comprises Iraq, North Korea and Israel-Palestine. On the latter issue, the Bush administration has gone back and forth repeatedly but has little to show for its efforts. Two years on, its road map for peace is stuck in a layby and it stands accused of debilitating partiality towards Ariel Sharon's government. On North Korea, Mr Bush initially scorned the diplomatic engagement championed by South Korea's leader, Kim Dae-jung. Now, after provoking Pyongyang into dangerous nuclear brinkmanship, Mr Bush says diplomacy is the only way forward.
But it is Iraq that poses the biggest test of Mr Bush's personal mettle. He has failed to persuade Americans, let alone the wider world, that Iraq poses a significant military threat to the region or to the US. The UN inspections have not been impeded, as Mr Bush predicted they would be, and no evidence has yet been found that Iraq has lied about its weapons programmes. In short, Mr Bush lacks just cause. If he means what he says about peace, and if he wants to show brave and decisive leadership, he should persevere with the UN process and call off the war.
Half a million Afghan refugees left homeless and cold in cities
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, January 2, 2003
Half a million people — returning refugees who do not have a house to rebuild, those displaced by years of war and still unable to go home, and the urban poor made homeless by war and rising costs — have fallen through the aid net in the last year, and face the freezing winter with completely inadequate shelter in Afghanistan's cities.
For all the reconstruction efforts in the last 12 months, not a single house has been rebuilt with international assistance here in the capital, where a staggering 78,000 houses were destroyed over the years of fighting.
M.I.T. studies accusations of lies and cover-up of flaws in antimissile system
William J. Broad, New York Times, January 2, 2003
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is looking into accusations that its premier laboratory lied to cover up serious problems with the technology at the heart of the administration's proposed antimissile defense system.
The university was prodded to act by Theodore A. Postol, a tenured M.I.T. physicist in security studies and a prominent critic of the antimissile plan. In letters to Congress and elsewhere, Dr. Postol has said M.I.T. appeared to be hiding evidence of serious flaws in the nation's main antimissile weapon, a ground-based rocket meant to destroy incoming enemy warheads by impact. His accusations center on a 1998 study by Lincoln Laboratory, a federally financed M.I.T. research center, and have grown over the years to include the institute's provost, president and corporate chairman.
Dr. Postol became known as an antimissile critic after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when he argued that contrary to Pentagon assertions Patriot missiles had shot down few if any Iraqi Scud missiles. His contention, at first ridiculed, in time became accepted as truth.
South Korea, once a solid ally, now poses problems for the U.S.
Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, January 2, 2003
For half a century the United States has had no more stalwart ally in Asia than South Korea, where 37,000 American troops are stationed to protect against an invasion from the North, representing the unity of purpose between the two countries.
But now South Korea has become one of the Bush administration's biggest foreign policy problems. Years of resentments over a variety of issues are boiling over in Seoul in the form of demonstrations against the United States and pronouncements by the departing and arriving presidents challenging American policies on dealing with North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Liberty ebbs by degrees
Bush is twisting the Constitution into an obstacle to defense, and no one is speaking up
Jonathan Turley, Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2003
What would happen if you woke up living in a quasi-police state? It is a question that seems entirely academic -- if not absurd -- to Americans who pride themselves on being the leading voice of liberty in the world. This status, however, is less unquestionable as it is unquestioned. A review of administration policies at the beginning of 2003 raises serious questions about the character of the government formed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Some mideast realism, please
The war on terrorism hinges on renewing the peace process
John B. Judis, The American Prospect, January 13, 2003
As George Kennan observed 50 years ago in American Diplomacy, American foreign policy has been periodically affected by bouts of evangelical idealism, which date from the country's Puritan founding and which have led Americans to seek to transform the world in our image -- and to demonize any country or regime that stands in the way. Since September 11, a group of Washington neoconservatives, some of whom serve under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have attempted to define America's objectives in the Middle East and the war against terrorism in these evangelical terms.
The environment: Another casualty of war?
Planning for ecological recovery after Iraq
Jonathan Lash, TomPaine.com, December 27, 2002
Just over a decade ago, facing imminent defeat at the hands of western forces, Saddam Hussein gave the order to unleash an ecological disaster of terrible proportions. As Iraqi forces retreated, they set fire to some 600 oil wells across Kuwait and intentionally spilled another four million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf.
Amid what appear to be accelerating preparations for a new war, it is worth taking time to reflect on the environmental consequences of the 1991 Gulf War.
Dawn of imperial America
In the New World Order as seen through the eyes of George W. Bush, everyone has the right to be like Americans
Richard Gwyn, Toronto Star, January 1, 2003
Idealism vs. imperialism. Realpolitik vs. humanitarianism. Trying to make the whole world a better place or — as predicted long ago by George Kennan, the brilliant diplomat who authored the doctrine of "containing" the Soviet Union that determined U.S. policy throughout the Cold War — doing everything needed from kicking ass to spin-doctoring so that Americans can continue gorging themselves on the world's goodies.
'War' plays into terrorists' hands
William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2002
[The bombing of 241 US Marines in] Beirut happened two decades before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, brought the phrase "asymmetrical warfare" into the language. Yet much about it is painfully current: the tangled chains of command, the poor communications, the intelligence warnings that were discounted or ignored. Reagan was shown to be detached and ignorant of the complexity of foreign affairs. American policymakers were revealed as oblivious to the motivations of those they were confronting. Senior military leaders such as Powell saw their concerns brushed aside.
Inspectors 'have zilch' thus far
Sergei L. Loiko and Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2002
In their search for hidden Iraqi arms, U.N. inspectors have so far faced little conflict, have found little evidence and have received little outside intelligence to guide them, said one inspector. The teams have discovered two technical matters that could be considered violations of U.N. resolutions but have yet to find a smoking gun, a trace of radiation or a single germ spore.
"If our goal is to catch them with their pants down, we are definitely losing," the inspector said on condition he wouldn't be named. "We haven't found an iota of concealed material yet."
A citizen shorn of all rights
A case vital to future Americans, too
Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, December 27, 2002
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. James Madison, Federalist Papers, 47
Yaser Esam Hamdi's name has become familiar and troubling to constitutional lawyers, but it has little resonance yet to Americans at large. However, what happens to him in our system of justice will signal how far the courts—eventually the Supreme Court—will allow George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, and Donald Rumsfeld to create what Charles Lane, the Washington Post's Supreme Court reporter, accurately calls "a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects—U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike—may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, held and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system."
They choke on Coke, but savor Mecca-Cola
John Tagliabue, New York Times, December 31, 2002
A blurb on Mecca-Cola's label announces that 10 percent of the profit on every bottle is donated to a Palestinian children's fund; a further 10 percent goes to a local charity. Mr. Mathlouthi said South African officials had also contacted him, desirous of channeling the additional 10 percent to groups that work with AIDS-infected children.
But Mr. Mathlouthi has taken pains to produce a product that sells on its taste, rather than a customer's sense of solidarity with a political cause. The company worked with local food chemists in France to produce a formula remarkably similar to Coke's, though with less sugar. Consumers concur that it tastes exactly like Coke.
The case against war with Iraq
General (Ret) Peter Gration, The Age, January 2, 2003
The war would be the first practical implementation of recently announced changes in US national security policy. This has moved from containment and deterrence to an open-ended doctrine of the right to pre-emptive strike if the US perceives a threat developing to its global supremacy.
In my view, this is bad policy that strikes at the very heart of efforts to create a rules-based international order, and can only lead to a less stable security environment and a marginalised UN.
Outfoxed by North Korea
Leon Fuerth, New York Times, January 1, 2003
We're beginning the new year in a deep fix.
The Bush administration's decision to refer North Korea's revival of its nuclear-weapons program to the United Nations is a reasonable, but transparent effort to sidetrack the issue in hopes of avoiding another military crisis on the eve of war with Iraq. It is unlikely the United Nations will take meaningful action in this situation, since no power other than the United States possesses the means to back up words with action.
Even if the administration's strategy of isolating North Korea works, at best it would amount to a partial tightening of sanctions against a country whose economy is already moribund. The only additional threat available is the denial of food aid for the people of North Korea, an act that would take the United States into new moral territory.
Let's be sure before we go to war
Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) Donald L. Gilleland, Florida Today, December 31, 2002
It is not unpatriotic to question the wisdom of going to war, because wars always require sacrifice on the part of our citizens. They have a right to know why we engage in war, how long it will likely take, how many of us will be involved, how many casualties we can expect, what it will cost us in money and lives, what it will do to our economy and how it will affect each of us individually.
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