The Gaza or Grozny choice
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, April 1, 2003
There are two options for Washington to win this war: the Gaza option or the Grozny option.
The suicide bombing near Najaf is proof that the "Palestinization" of Iraq is in full swing. The repeated calls for jihad from Islamic scholars in al-Azhar in Cairo, the Grand Mufti of Syria and a powerful imam in Najaf show that the jihad in Mesopotamia is also in full swing. In mass protests from Rabat in Morocco to Peshawar in Pakistan, from Kolkata in India to Jakarta in Indonesia, the Arab - and Muslim - street continues to demonstrate its opposition to the events unfolding in Iraq.
And certainly the majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims - and seemingly most Iraqis themselves - don't believe that the coalition has marched on Iraq to liberate its people. The message of the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle - "When we leave, the oil will be left behind to the people of Iraq" - rings hollow in many a Middle Eastern ear.
And with every day that the war drags on, with mounting casualties on both sides, and especially civilian deaths, the crucial question remains: What price victory? By choosing the Gaza option - a war of attrition - Washington falls into Saddam Hussein's trap: it will serve him on a plate the explosive image he is seeking, that of an Israeli tank in the streets of Gaza juxtaposed with a US tank in the streets of Baghdad. By choosing the Grozny option - a scorched-earth policy - Washington will have to level Baghdad to win the war. [complete article]
In the line of fire: two holy cities that the US dares not desecrate
Justin Huggler and Paul Vallely, The Independent, April 1, 2003
American forces advancing on Baghdad were yesterday fighting on the outskirts of one of the holiest places in Shia Islam. The 101st Airborne Division surrounded the holy city of Najaf, and there was talk of it preparing for possible house-to-house fighting, a move that would run the risk of inflaming the Shia world.
The US military said it had killed 100 Iraqi paramilitaries around Najaf, and said more were lying in wait among the tombs of saints and martyrs in the great Wadi al-Salaam graveyard which encircles the city on three sides, one of the world's largest cemeteries.
Further north, US soldiers were fighting what was reported to be the most intense ground battle of the war so far, in Hindiyah. But on the road ahead of Hindiyah, between them and Baghdad, lies a Shia shrine of perhaps even greater symbolic potency, the holy city of Karbala. [...]
The fall of the two holy cities [Najaf and Karbala] would be a blow to President Saddam, but it would be a blow he would try to turn to his advantage. Any damage to the great gold-domed shrines of the two cities could turn the Iraqi Shias against the British and Americans, and cause fury across the Shia world.
More than that, the two cities are shrines to martyrs. The concept of martyrdom is at the heart of Shia Islam, and none is more laden with significance than the martyrdom of Hussein at Karbala. Any large-scale casualties in these holy cities would be charged with extraordinary symbolism. [the complete article]
The smell of war
Philip Caputo, Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2003
It is said that our most evocative sense is the sense of smell, and after the names of the villages and the numbers and the dates have grown dim in your memory, the thing you can never forget about a battlefield is the smell. [the complete article]
The battle for Shi'ite hearts and minds
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, March 29, 2003
Najaf and Karbala are the holiest sites of Shi'ite Islam. Najaf - where Ayatollah Khomeini lived before returning to lead the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 - is the site of Imam Ali's tomb, the Prophet Mohammed's cousin and revered 14th century founder of the Shi'ite branch of Islam. Karbala is the site of the famous 7th century battle where Imam Hussein was killed and subsequently buried.
To the utmost horror of Shi'ites everywhere - Arabs, Persians, South Asians - American tanks are now rumbling around Najaf and Karbala. If the conquest of Baghdad - the iconic seat of the Caliphate for 700 years - is bound to ignite fury in the Sunni Arab world, one shudders to imagine what would happen in the Shi'ite world if Najaf and Karbala are desecrated during the war or under American occupation. [the complete article]
US draws up secret plan to impose new regime on Iraq
Brian Whitaker and Luke Harding, The Guardian, April 1, 2003
A disagreement has broken out at a senior level within the Bush administration over a new government that the US is secretly planning in Kuwait to rule Iraq in the immediate period after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned.
The government will take over Iraq city by city. Areas declared "liberated" by General Tommy Franks will be transferred to the temporary government under the overall control of Jay Garner, the for mer US general appointed to head a military occupation of Iraq.
In anticipation of the Baghdad regime's fall, members of this interim government have begun arriving in Kuwait.
Decisions on the government's composition appear to be entirely in US hands, particularly those of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. [the complete article]
Shi'ite headache for the Americans
Gwynne Dyer, Straits Times, March 31, 2003
'Wimps go to Baghdad,' they say in neo-conservative circles in Washington. 'Real men go to Teheran.'
It sounds tough at dinner parties, and the macho intellectuals who talk like that never worry that genuinely hard men can overhear their silly chatter. But they can, and they are already taking measures to protect themselves. They live in Iran.
Iran's Islamist government is split between the moderate reformers around President Mohammad Khatami and the radical mullahs around Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but it is the mullahs who control the army and foreign policy.
They are terrified by the imminent arrival of the United States army on Iran's western frontier, only a couple of hours' drive from the country's biggest oil fields, especially as US President George W. Bush has put Iran on his 'axis of evil' hit-list. So the more trouble the US has in Iraq, the better. [the complete article]
Why is my country bombing these poor people?
James Doran, The Times, March 31, 2003
At the front of the 1375 [Greyhound bus] to Pittsburgh is Mary Singletary, 60, from Connecticut, who is off to visit her daughter in Newark, New Jersey. Like many Americans, she does not like the idea of flying during the war. Her son, Raymond, 38, is in the US Navy aboard the USS Constellation somewhere in the Gulf. She hears from him almost every day, but still worries constantly.
"I don't like war, period. That's it," she says, "but all you can do is keep on living. And hope that he does, too."
Hearing a discussion about the war, the dozen passengers aboard the stuffy bus look up from their newspapers or open dozing eyes, hopeful for a distraction from the stench of the chemical lavatory.
None of them likes the idea of war -- and none understands why the US is engaged in conflict in Iraq at all. [the complete article]
Refugees hurl abuse and stones at the British Desert Rats
Daniel McGrory, The Times, March 31, 2003
Shaking his fist at the British armoured column speeding past him, Abdiraza Jeri and his friends spat out a volley of insults as others in the weary trail of refugees threw stones at the Desert Rats.
The 42-year-old haulage contractor had been walking for three hours to escape the siege of Basra. He was intending to return with his fleet of lorries filled with water so that some of the city's 1.4 million parched residents had something to drink. But he and thousands more tramping along this main road could not understand yesterday why such a formidable array of British tanks was parked on the edge of his city while gangs of Saddam loyalists slowly strangled Basra. British soldiers sitting on their Warrior vehicle looked stunned when a couple of packets of sweets that they had thrown to children were hurled back by their fathers. [the complete article]
Post D-Day depression
Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange, March 27, 2003
Until two weeks ago, there was a clear alternative to war: the inspection process, which at minimum bought time, at best was a path out of an artificially induced, but nonetheless real, crisis. When that was lost, so too were many members of the new anti-war movement, because there was no "next step," no contingency plans in the peace movement's demands beyond lame and hypocritical calls to "support the troops." Possibilities abound, from a movement to have the U.N., rather than United States, take part or all of the post-invasion administration of Iraq, to a concerted push to unseat Bush in 2004. Yet at the moment more protesters are trying to impeach Bush (which is not, repeat not, repeat not going to happen) than to elect a Democratic president in less than 20 months. [the complete article]
THE PROPHETS OF WAR
Remembering what we were told to expect
Saddam's ultimate solution
An interview with Richard Perle
WNET, July 11, 2002
Richard Perle: Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder.
Now, it isn't going to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either. And if I had to guess I would guess that a strategy that combines effective collaboration with the opposition and a readiness to send in Americans if necessary is where we'll wind up.
[…] The evolution of American air power since the last war against Saddam Hussein has been phenomenal. We can now see what's going on on the ground, and from a safe distance. And what we can see we can destroy with great precision. Saddam has no notion of what's coming. But what's coming is the ability to target precisely everything of consequence in his military establishment.
James P. Rubin: […] Do you agree that we have to be ready for the worst scenario, namely that Saddam doesn't collapse in a matter of days?
Richard Perle: Yes, of course we have to be ready for the worst scenario. But a proper integration of the opposition in Iraq with American air power, backed up by American Special Forces, and ultimately a larger force if necessary should be sufficient. Both to assure that we won't have a debacle, we have to have an integrated approach. And that means the use of American air power to prevent Saddam from massing his forces to attack the opposition on a ...
James P. Rubin: And what about American ground forces?
Richard Perle: Well, we'll need some American forces.
James P. Rubin: So what would your guesstimate be of the level of effort that would be involved?
Richard Perle: Well, I would be surprised if we need anything like the 200,000 figure that is sometimes discussed in the press. A much smaller force, principally special operations forces, but backed up by some regular units, should be sufficient. Of the 400,000 in Saddam's army, I'll be surprised if ten percent are loyal to Saddam. And the other 90 percent won't be completely passive. Many of them will come over to the opposition.
[…]
James P. Rubin […] …you've been a strong advocate of taking action against Saddam Hussein. How quickly do you think we should act and what specifically do you think the United States should do militarily in this situation?
Richard Perle: This evidence is very powerful. There is collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, which means to destroy us. It entails chemical weapons, biological weapons, training in their application. And he's working on nuclear weapons. The message is very clear - we have no time to lose, Saddam must be removed from office. Every day that goes by is a day in which we are exposed to dangers on a far larger scale than the tragedy of September 11.
James P. Rubin: So what specific military plan would you put forward and discuss with your colleagues and friends in the government right now?
Richard Perle: There is an internal opposition to Saddam Hussein. The Kurds in the north, and we've seen what their motives are for his removal, the Shi'a in the south, who have risen up without support in the past, together with American air power, American special forces, and potentially American ground forces beyond special forces, we have the ability to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime. And it will be quicker and easier than many people think. He is far weaker than many people realize.
James P. Rubin: Top officials of the Pentagon, top Department of Defense officials, top military officials from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down appear to be telling members of Congress and the media that the only serious way to go about this problem is to deploy a large ground force that can deal with all unexpected contingencies. You've put forward an optimistic scenario, and it may be right, but don't you think it's the job of the administration to be prepared for the worst? And what is your reaction to the military's suggestion that you need 200,000-plus forces for this mission?
Richard Perle: The 200,000 number sounds large to me. But if we're going to err, we should err on the side of too many rather than too few. Provided that reaching for that large number doesn't make it impossible for us to establish the base and the infrastructure from which to operate. If it were self-defeating then it would be foolish. I think we discovered in 1991 that we really didn't need the very sizeable force that we sent in. It was over very quickly with little resistance. There were people surrendering to journalists after all.
You always want to err on the side of caution. But it's possible to be too cautious.
Offense and defense
The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, March 31, 2003
As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was anger in the Pentagon. Several senior war planners complained to me in interviews that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers, who had been chiefly responsible for persuading President Bush to lead the country into war, had insisted on micromanaging the war's operational details. Rumsfeld's team took over crucial aspects of the day-to-day logistical planning -- traditionally, an area in which the uniformed military excels -- and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "He thought he knew better," one senior planner said. "He was the decision-maker at every turn."
On at least six occasions, the planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans -- the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003 -- he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. Rumsfeld's faith in precision bombing and his insistence on streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. "They've got no resources," a former high-level intelligence official said. "He was so focussed on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart."
Horrific human suffering in this insane war
Brian Reade, The Mirror, March 31, 2003
She could be asleep. In her flannel pyjama bottoms and 101 Dalmatians top, her eyes gently closed, little Sarah looks like any other seven-year-old.
Except she is lying on a stainless steel mortuary tray, another victim of this bloody war.
She had just finished breakfast and was playing with her brother and sisters on Friday when her life was violently stolen.
Her mum Shafaa was washing the dishes, happy that her Baghdad home was ringing to the sound of children's laughter, until a huge explosion knocked her to the floor. After the shock had subsided, she saw "blood splattered against the walls" and her four babies lying silently in the rubble. [...]
As usual, the Iraqis blamed coalition bombs and our apologists said it may have been stray Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles. But Shafaa doesn't care. It was you and me who started this war and it us who stole away her flesh and blood.
British mothers who lose their children in this conflict get them back in coffins draped in Union Jacks as brass bands play them off the plane. Feted for their courage and honoured for their sacrifice.
But this is how we treat the Iraqi mothers who lose their children. With contempt, disdain and the cowardly, de-humanising epitaph: Collateral damage.
Speaking a different language - but we've got the Phrasealator
James Meek, The Guardian, March 31, 2003
The marines have brought the whole encyclopaedia of military technology with them to Iraq. From aircraft to x-ray machines, they have a myriad ways to kill, heal wounded, survey, spy, reconnoitre, communicate with each other, shell, defend, attack, enfilade. They have brought all the machines and all the skilled people trained to use them.
The equipment necessary to talk to Iraqis, understand their problems and respond to their needs, however, seems to have been left on the quayside in California.
Maj Cooper and his colleague, Major Mark Stainbrook, are part of a tiny number of civil affairs officers attached to the marines. Neither speaks Arabic, and their interpreter has poor English.
Even before Saturday's suicide bomb attack on US troops, the response of marines towards Iraqi civilians has been characterised by fear, suspicion and mistrust. While there is no sign of ill-treatment of civilians, there has been little attempt to actively make friends in Iraqi communities, to carry out foot patrols in villages to assure locals that the US is providing security, or to systemise the movement of Iraqi civilians across US-held territory.
Any fire on the marines has characteristically been met with overwhelming firepower in return, often involving artillery, air strikes by helicopters and the marines' own F-18 fighters. While there are genuine attacks by Iraqi irregulars on marines' convoys, it is impossible to verify whether all the "attacks" are genuine, and the light casualties and low loss of vehicles strongly suggest that some "ambushes" are simply civilians being shot at by jumpy marines.
America and the Shiites
Claude Salhani, UPI, March 28, 2003
While top brass military analysts in the Pentagon burn the midnight oil trying to figure out the reasons why their strategy may have not gone entirely according to plan, they might want to consider the fact that the Iraqi south is mostly populated by Shiite Muslims.
Although the Shiites that live in Basra and its surrounding areas have no love whatsoever for Saddam, his Republican Guards, Baath Party paramilitaries, or Fedayeen goons, they nevertheless have just as much distrust of America and its foreign policy.
Shiites and Americans have history in this region -- and none of it is really any good.
People have long memories in this part of the world. The Shiites recall, for instance, that when the Baath Party came to power in a bloody coop, it was with the help of the CIA. And they have suffered much since.
They recall the bloody eight-year war with Iran -- a nation of fellow Shiites -- during which the United States supported Saddam, providing him with weapons, even helping him get started on some of the chemical and biological warfare agents they now have come to collect.
And most of all, they recall the period after the first Gulf War in 1991, when they rose up in open revolt against Saddam. U.S.-led coalition forces -- having driven the Iraqi army from Kuwait -- were only a few miles away from the outskirts of Basra, but remained there, abandoning the Shiites at the last minute to the wrath of Saddam's thugs.
About 200,000 Iraqi Shiites were brutally slaughtered in the south by Saddam's forces after the failed uprising. This is not a typographical error. Read it again, two hundred thousand dead after the end of Desert Storm.
This fact alone explains why coalition troops fighting "to liberate" Iraqis have not yet been greeted with open arms.
Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare
Justin Huggler, The Independent, March 29, 2003
The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied.
If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.
Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighbourhood – home to 800 Palestinian families – reducing it to dust and rubble.
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.
Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli tactics in Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most useful weapons.
Defenders of the faith
Dan De Luce, The Guardian, March 29, 2003
The US has warned Iran to keep out of the war, but Iraqi Shia troops armed by Tehran may be difficult to sideline in war or peace.
Washington has long harboured suspicions about the Iranian-based Badr Corps due to their allegiance to Iran's conservative clerical leaders, who have funded and armed the group for the past two decades.
Composed of Iraqi refugees and those Iraqi prisoners of war who chose not to return home during the Iran-Iraq war, the Badr Corps portrays itself as the defenders of the Shia majority in Iraq. Apart from some 1,500 troops that were deployed into northern Iraq before the war, the Badr Corps has kept a low profile since the war started more than a week ago.
But threats from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday that the Badr Corps soldiers will be treated as "combatants" could aggravate tensions between coalition forces and the largest Shia opposition organisation.
See also Ayatollah al-Hakim warns US will repeat its errors
The good, the bad and the propaganda
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, March 30, 2003
It's hard to tell which propaganda is of inferior quality in this war, the American or the Iraqi.
Last Thursday, for example, U.S. General Vincent Brooks spoke with reporters at his headquarters in Qatar. He showed photographs of a U.S. Marines officer shaking hands with Iraqi children.
The children looked embarrassed, perhaps even stunned, and the handshakes looked constrained.
And what did the officer-propagandist say to the press? "We are looking at children who, for the first time in their lives, are getting a taste of freedom." No less: The taste of freedom is a handshake with an invader.
The next day, a similar photograph was published in Israel - an American soldier carrying a horrified Iraqi infant, who is naked from the waist down. "In good hands" was the caption the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth chose for this huge front-page picture. Good hands? And why is the child unclothed? What happened to its parents? Why is the child frightened?
So meager is the stock of genuine justification for the war in Iraq, that America has to resort to cheap propaganda like pictures of children in the arms of its soldiers.
In the eyes of the American propaganda machine, the U.S. occupation - which has so far killed at least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and 350 civilians - is the epitome of justice. America behaves like America and we [in Israel], unfortunately, follow its lead: This war, like all those before it, is waged between the forces of absolute good, i.e. the United States, and the forces of absolute evil, this time Iraq.
DREAMS OF LIBERATION
Leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (including Kanan Makiya, whose latest article in The Washington Post appears below) have long championed the idea that Iraqis in exile, under INC leadership, should play a crucial role in the liberation of Iraq. Richard Perle and James P. Woolsey have been among the INC's most vocal supporters. How the INC and other groups in exile might ever be capable of turning their dreams into reality remains far from clear.
Mobilization of Iraqi exiles falls short
Sonya Yee and Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2003
They're called the Free Iraqi Forces, and many of them sport paunches and gray-tinged mustaches. Their average age is 42.
The Iraqi exiles, trained by U.S. forces at this remote air base in southwestern Hungary, graduated Friday and will soon take up positions in Iraq as liaisons between the American military and the Iraqi population.
The trouble is, only 21 men were in Friday's graduating class. A meager total of 74 have been trained so far in the program, which U.S. officials say may be doomed to insignificance because Iraqi dissident groups have failed to provide enough candidates to undergo training.
The program was approved last year and launched in January with much fanfare, a congressional mandate and more than $90 million to train and equip as many as 3,000 Iraqis. So few have been trained that some U.S. officials have taken to calling it the "million-dollar-a-man army."
Iraqis must share in their liberation
Kanan Makiya, Washington Post, March 30, 2003
The United States is failing to make use of what should be its most valuable asset in this war: the many Iraqis who are willing to fight and die for their country's liberation.
Those who imply that a rising surge of "nationalism" is preventing Iraqis from greeting American and British troops with open arms are wrong. What is preventing Iraqis from taking over the streets of their cities is confusion about American intentions -- confusion created by the way this war has been conducted and by fear of the murderous brown-shirt thugs, otherwise known as Saddam's Fedayeen, a militia loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who control the streets of Iraqi cities and who are conducting the harassing attacks on American and British soldiers.
The coalition forces have not yet sent clear and unmistakable signals to the people of Iraq that, unlike in 1991, there will be no turning back before Hussein's regime has been overturned. In order to do this effectively they must count on the Iraqi opposition, which has so far been marginalized.
Winning Iraqi hearts and minds
Unless America wins support from the Iraqi people, a prolonged guerrilla war could result
Michael Hill, Baltimore Sun, March 30, 2003
As coalition forces continue the push into Iraq, it is important to realize that history is full of cautionary tales for great powers that assume overwhelming military superiority will bring easy victory over an outmatched opponent.
If the people of Iraq see these troops from the United States and Britain as forces freeing them from an oppressive dictator, then the war could be short and the transition to peace easy.
But if they instead view the troops as illegitimate invaders of their nation, then that could help form an indigenous opposition, leading to a lengthy struggle.
The important fight is for the hearts and minds of people on all sides of the military struggle.
THE PROPHETS OF WAR
Remembering what we were told to expect
First strike, then what?
Marian Wilkinson, The Age, September 28, 2002
General Joseph Hoar, who served as a senior American officer during the 1991 Gulf War, was clearly itching to take a swipe at the armchair generals in the Defence Department. Their most optimistic scenarios for war with Iraq suggest Saddam Hussein will be defeated within weeks of United States-led forces launching their attack.
Testifying to the US Senate this week, Hoar spoke cuttingly about "people in this city who believe the military campaign against Iraq will not be difficult". He hoped they were right, he said, but he wanted to put another scenario to them. This was that Saddam had learnt a bitter lesson in the last Gulf War and would not try to take on the US in the open desert.
"The nightmare scenario," said Hoar, "is that six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six heavy divisions, reinforced with several thousand anti-aircraft artillery pieces, defends the city of Baghdad. The result would be high casualties on both sides, as well as in the civilian community."
US forces would inevitably prevail, he said, "but at what cost, as the rest of the world watches while we bomb and have artillery rounds exploded in densely populated Iraqi neighbourhoods".
What would it look like? Senator Ted Kennedy asked.
"All our advantages of command and control, technology, mobility, all of those things are in part given up and you are working with corporals and sergeants and young men, fighting street-to-street. It looks like the last 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan", said the general. "That's what we are up against."
The Neocons' war
This is supposed to burnish our reputation?
Harold Meyerson, LA Weekly, March 28, 2003
When the histories of the U.S.-Iraqi war are written, someone is going to have to track down when exactly the neoconservatives sold the Brooklyn Bridge to our president.
I don't mean the idea of the war itself, though the neocons have been promoting it ever since Poppy Bush let Saddam off the hook in 1991. I have in mind, rather, the notion that the war would unleash the genie of democracy throughout the Middle East, that with our victory would come a quantum leap in America's prestige and reputation. Television would beam to all the world heartwarming images of U.S. troops being rapturously received as they speed across Iraq; and we would again become the liberators we were in 1944-5.
It was a lovely scenario, but to believe it, the neos had to willfully forget countless lessons of history, and at least one law of thermodynamics: That for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction. In the world according to the neos, world-shaking changes in U.S. policy -- arrogating to itself the right to wage preventive war, and plunging Iraq into that war -- might encounter some resistance along the way, but in the end lead to an outpouring of support.
Man who would be 'king' of Iraq
Oliver Morgan, The Observer, March 30, 2003
President, viceroy, governor, sheriff. It is difficult to know what to call Jay Garner, the retired US general who will run Iraq if and when Saddam Hussein is deposed.
The 'call me Jay' 64-year-old would prefer 'co-ordinator of civilian administration'. That's the bland description of his job heading the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the Pentagon agency preparing to govern Iraq's 23 million people in the aftermath of war, provide humanitarian support and administer the lucrative business of reconstruction.
Garners credentials are intriguing. He has a fine record in United Nations-backed humanitarian operations, playing a senior role in protecting the Kurds of northern Iraq from Saddam after the 1991 Gulf war in Operation Provide Comfort. Crucially he is now out of khaki, a vital counterpoint to General Tommy Franks, who is likely to act as a US military governor. On the other hand, he is closely linked with the group of hawks centred on US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who gave him his latest job), his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, who are as keen to bypass the UN in the aftermath of war as they were before it.
He appears to share their strong pro-Israeli views. He has been involved in formulating their more controversial defence policies, including the US national missile defence system that has done much to undermine the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. The company he now works for is a missile specialist and makes money from systems deployed in Israel and by coalition forces in Iraq.
Bloodied but still unbowed, Baghdad prepares to fight
Patrick Graham, The Observer, March 30, 2003
In an interview with The Observer almost a month ago, an adviser to Saddam Hussein laid out a battle plan that seems to be unfolding with surprising accuracy. It appears the Iraqis had thought through this war more thoroughly than their adversary.
The adviser described the war as '10 Vietnams' that would be waged long after the invading forces arrived. He also believed that images of the war, especially dead American soldiers and Iraqi casualties, would sway US domestic opinion and an international outcry would force the US to stop fighting. While President George W. Bush says the outcome is inevitable, earlier predictions about Iraq's capabilities have proved inaccurate.
The regime planned to make Baghdad and the Sunni heartland around it the final battle ground that would tie up foreign troops for months, perhaps years. The adviser dismissed the possibility that the Iraqi leadership could be hunted down.
As usual, it will be the civilians who are unable to hide. It appears now that the allies will either lay siege to the city, evoking connotations of the Serbs surrounding Sarajevo, or try to enter by force. The latter will require the kind of fight through neighbourhoods unsuited to the allies' technical superiority and sensitivity to images of civilian casualties.
Rumsfeld ignored Pentagon advice on Iraq
Reuters, March 29, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, New Yorker Magazine reported.
In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.
"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."
It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.
"They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.
A spokesman at the Pentagon declined to comment on the article.
U.S. hope of swaying Arab opinion fading
Sally Buzbee, Associated Press, March 29, 2003
One chief goal of the war in Iraq is to convince Arabs that America was on their side and that getting rid of Saddam Hussein will benefit them, too.
But as prospects rise for a longer war and more dead Iraqi civilians, U.S. hopes of quickly swinging Arab and European public opinion to its favor are starting to fade.
The problem was summed up last week, perhaps unintentionally, by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The anti-American feeling now evident across the globe is a "transient problem" that will go away once the world sees liberated Iraqis celebrating Saddam's end, Powell said.
"What we have to do is get this Iraq crisis behind us and show the better life that's waiting for the Iraqi people ... and this will turn," Powell said.
The problem is that no one knows what might happen if that transition period -- the fighting in Iraq -- goes on longer than expected, or if television screens across the Mideast continue to show dead Iraqi children, not cheering Iraqi crowds.
Iraq's guerrillas shock allied forces
Peter Spiegel, Financial Times, March 28, 2003
"I think the Iraqis have read the American defence literature over the last 12 years," says Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution, noting that the Iraqi army has all but abandoned attempting to fight set battles in the open desert. "They figured out they better not do that again, if they didn't figure it out at the time. Now they're in a much better position."
Instead of meeting US forces on the open battlefield, most of the engagements have seen the use of guerrilla tactics, with Iraqis switching into civilian clothes and driving pick-up trucks and sport utility vehicles into ambushes; hiding guns at pre-positioned points so they can pick them up and start firing; mounting hit-and-run raids on more vulnerable forces behind the main US and British lines; and sniping at patrols near cities from rooftops and windows.
In most of these engagements, Iraqi forces have come out on the losing side. Only about 50 US and UK soldiers have been killed in more than a week's fighting, while 300 Iraqi irregulars were killed in Tuesday's fight with the 7th Cavalry alone.
Still, the tenacity of the Iraqi resistance has caught many allied military leaders by surprise and forced them to rethink their own tactics to accommodate a different kind of battlefield.
Iraqi civilians feed hungry US marines
Agence France-Presse, March 29, 2003
Iraqi civilians fleeing heavy fighting have stunned and delighted hungry US marines in central Iraq by giving them food, as guerrilla attacks continue to disrupt coalition supply lines to the rear.
Sergeant Kenneth Wilson said Arabic-speaking US troops made contact with two busloads of Iraqis fleeing south along Route Seven towards Rafit, one of the first friendly meetings with local people for the marines around here.
"They had slaughtered lambs and chickens and boiled eggs and potatoes for their journey out of the frontlines," Wilson said.
At one camp, the buses stopped and women passed out food to the troops, who have had to ration their army-issue packets of ready-to-eat meals due to disruptions to supply lines by fierce fighting further south.
THE PROPHETS OF WAR
Remembering what we were told to expect
'The Iraqis will welcome the US forces with flowers and sweets when they come in.'
The following is an extract from an article in al-Mutamar, the weekly newspaper of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) of 24-30 January, in which Kan'an Makiya (Head of the Iraqi Documentation and Studies Center, Harvard University and Professor at Brandeis University in the US) related the conversation that took place at a meeting with President George W Bush three weeks earlier, attended by two other Iraqi opposition figures, Randa al-Rahim and Hatim Mukhlis.
Prof Makiya said: "President Bush intimated that the coming war was inevitable and the Iraqi regime did not have long to go, whatever developments might occur at the UN or the Security Council. Mr Bush did not go into the details of the efforts of the UN, indicating that these were just a matter of routine."
Prof Makiya continued: "After this introduction, the president began to ask us about the Iraqis and Iraq. The first question was: 'What reaction do you expect from the Iraqis to the entry of US forces into their cities?'" Mr Makiya explained that "each of us agreed that all Iraqis of all sects would welcome these forces from the very first moment. I added: 'The Iraqis will welcome the US forces with flowers and sweets when they come in'."
President Bush then moved on to his second question: 'If the initial bombardment of Iraq is severe, will the reaction be the same? I mean, will they still welcome the US army?' Prof Makiya said he chose not to give a direct answer, but instead focused on the difference between the current situation and the way things were during the Gulf war of 1991, adding: "I spoke about the collapse of morale inside Iraq, the collapse of the military apparatus etc…I stressed to President Bush my personal opinion that 'the regime will be destroyed with the first blow', pointing out that 'the problem is no longer the resistance of the Iraqi army to the US forces because the situation has changed completely from 1991.'" Prof Makiya said he expected "no real fighting right from the start of the war," and concluded by expressing the view that there would be no need for the same level of bombardment as that of 1991.
Postwar democracy? Iraq is a hard place
David Corn, The Nation, March 26, 2003
The angry guy with the shoe.
Those who have been watching the war on television are familiar with the video footage: after the US military took control of Safwan, the southern Iraqi border town, this fellow was captured on film banging on a large, partially destroyed wall portrait of Saddam Hussein with his shoe. It was the closest the world has so far come to viewing joyous Iraqis dancing in the street before their American liberators. Such images may yet arrive, validating the assurances of American and British war advocates who maintained that this military action is indeed liberation, not conquest; that Iraqis would welcome such intervention; and that the invasion and occupation would place Iraq on the road to democracy. But if the dancing does not happen soon, the war planners can expect to have a tougher time securing Iraq and creating the environment necessary for reconstruction and democratization.
Consider the celebratory heel-banging in Safwan. A few days after the shoe-heard-around-the-world smacked against Hussein's forehead, ABC News reporter John Donvan and his crew--working unembeddedly--crossed the border into Kuwait and visited the town. They witnessed no rejoicing. Townspeople surrounded the journalists and passionately voiced their opinions of the US invasion. "We learned," Donvan reported, "that just because the townsfolk don't like Saddam, it doesn't mean they like the Americans trying to take him out....They were angry at America, and said US forces had shot at people in the town. They were also angry because they needed food, water and medicine and the aid promised by President Bush had not appeared....They asked us why the United States was taking over Iraq, and whether the Americans would stay in Iraq for ever. They saw the US-led invasion as a takeover, not liberation."
War in Iraq and Israeli occupation: A devastating resonance
Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish, The Electronic Intifada (and The Chicago Tribune), March 28, 2003
For all the physical devastation being produced by the war in Iraq, the political and diplomatic damage to the region and American foreign policy may be even more profound. Indeed, less serious attention seems to have been paid to the requirements of rebuilding political relations than repairing the infrastructure and society of Iraq.
This conflict is further poisoning the already noxious political atmosphere between Arabs and Americans. It has intensified dangerous feelings of humiliation and outrage among the Arab public, while paranoid rhetoric about Western attacks against Islam is spreading from the religious fringe to the mainstream.
Our government's failure to secure authorization for this war from the United Nations Security Council, largely dismissed as an unfortunate but minor detail here at home, has had a profound impact throughout the world. Almost no one in the Arab world accepts the administration's stated concerns about either Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or the brutality of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship. The consensus is that long-term American domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf region is the actual aim. As a result, while most Americans see ourselves as liberators, near-universal Arab perception is that ordinary Iraqis are fighting courageously against incredible odds to defend their homeland. The profound Arab sense of violation trumps particulars about who is in charge of Iraq, even the reviled Hussein.
Riding alone into the sunset
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, March 28, 2003
Last Friday the most prominent of Washington's neoconservative policy groups, the American Enterprise Institute, held what one witness, a Financial Times correspondent, described as a "victory celebration."
Richard Perle, corporate consultant and member of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Board, told the audience that the Iraq war was going well - that "there are more anti-war demonstrators in San Francisco than Iraqis willing to defend Saddam Hussein." He said that the pro-American coalition was growing, and Saddam Hussein's fall would be "an inspiration" to Iranians.
The members of the group, which is described as "the Bush administration ideological vanguard," discussed what to do about Iran, considered by them as even more dangerous than Iraq, in terms of its nuclear weapons program.
WHO MAKES THE RULES?
The bombing of marketplaces in Baghdad, twice this week, resulting in at least 70 deaths, has triggered renewed debate about war reporting and its impact on public perceptions. After the first market bombing, CNN delayed reporting this for several hours, one can only assume in order to give the Pentagon time to accompany the story with its own version on what may or may not have happened. While networks such as CNN took it upon themselves to shield their viewers and protect them from the risk of jumping to what might be false conclusions about the accuracy of coalition "smart" bombing, the rest of the world was being confronted with the carnage.
In response to this incident, as well as with the broadcast of images of POW's and dead coalition servicemen, frustration is now being expressed by many people in the United States, that foreign - and especially Arab - newscasters aren't playing by the rules. The deference to the Pentagon showed by a patriotic US media is contrasted against what is portrayed as irresponsible reporting by the likes of al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, little is being said about the fact that, like it or not, across the Middle East perception of the war is being shaped by and reflected in the Arabic media. Even if some Americans might feel like the United States is getting a bad rap, if US forces "prevail" in Iraq they will then have to deal with the consequences of having already lost the battle for hearts and minds. Whether the Bush administration manages to convince Americans that this is a war of liberation, it will count for nothing if the Iraqis now see this as a war of conquest and later see themselves as the victims of an occupation.
As Iraqis contemplate their future they must be acutely aware of the neighboring occupation in Palestine and the plight of its people who have for many years been treated with American indifference.
Vision and division
Mamoun Fandy, Washington Post, March 30, 2003
The recent airing of gruesome pictures of American casualties and POWs has again set the American media talking about the unbridled nature of Arab television, particularly the Qatar-owned al-Jazeera network. Indeed, the Arabs are watching a different war than we are here.
Their war is presented for television consumption using the templates of the recent past: the Palestinian intifada, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1956 Suez War. The imagery of the past infuses the interpretation of the current war with familiar meaning -- and makes coverage easy. [...]
Beneath the Arab modes of visual representation [in covering the war], the West is also present. Indeed, Arab coverage often copies the CNN and Fox News formats. Today, just like CNN, every one of the 10 Arab channels I watch, or appear on as a commentator, has a "war room" staffed with retired generals discussing the progress of the war and freely advising the Iraqis how to conduct it. In this way, these veterans of Arab wars are compensating for past defeat with on-air political speeches.
The tone of many reporters in Baghdad is much the same. The image drives the story. For example, an al-Jazeera reporter in the Iraqi capital falsely told his viewers on the first day of the air campaign, "Here in Baghdad, a city accused of hiding weapons of mass destruction is being hit by weapons of mass destruction." This kind of repetition is the stuff that has made Arabic poetry so justly admired. Here, the rhythm and sonority of the language act to encourage audience disregard for the true definitions of the words being used.
With few exceptions, ethical constraints are rarely discussed in the Arab media, where the notion of editorial judgment sounds to many like censorship. Several have said it reminds them of what they had to do while they were working for state-owned broadcasters. Reporters and producers know what their viewers want to see: images of empowerment and resistance because of past defeats. They also want to see what Hussein's information minister, Muhammed Said al-Sahaf, calls teaching the Americans a lesson. "We are no less than the Vietnamese. Just make it costly in body bags and the Americans will run," said a general who comments regularly on al-Jazeera. Some Arab journalists say they have little choice but to go along. "The cost of speaking out now -- even to simply say that Saddam is partially responsible for what is taking place -- is very high. It could cost you your job and could even cause you physical harm," said one.
Advisors of influence: Nine members of the Defense Policy Board have ties to defense contractors
Andre Verloy and Daniel Politi, Center for Public Integrity, March 28, 2003
Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors.
The board's chairman, Richard Perle, resigned yesterday, March 27, 2003, amid allegations of conflicts of interest for his representation of companies with business before the Defense Department, although he will remain a member of the board. Eight of Perle's colleagues on the board have ties to companies with significant contracts from the Pentagon.
Members of the board disclose their business interests annually to the Pentagon, but the disclosures are not available to the public. "The forms are filed with the Standards of Conduct Office which review the filings to make sure they are in compliance with government ethics," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Ted Wadsworth told the Center for Public Integrity.
The companies with ties to Defense Policy Board members include prominent firms like Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton and smaller players like Symantec Corp., Technology Strategies and Alliance Corp., and Polycom Inc.
FALSE EXPECTATIONS
War planners say "we overestimated the appeal of liberation." Perhaps it would be closer to the truth to say that Iraqis are not at all lacking in a desire for liberation. They simply doubt that that's what's on offer.
Plan's defect: No defectors
Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2003
A highly publicized U.S. campaign to persuade senior Iraqi military and civilian leaders to surrender has failed to produce any significant defections, and U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that those closest to President Saddam Hussein are unlikely to give up.
The effort now appears to be one of several miscalculations in a high-stakes U.S. strategy to use bombing, secret contacts and inducements -- including cash payments -- to key Iraqi leaders to quickly overthrow Hussein.
"We underestimated their capacity to put up resistance," said a Bush administration official who requested anonymity. "We underestimated the role of nationalism. And we overestimated the appeal of liberation."
Hussein hopes to draw U.S. into urban combat
Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2003
Saddam Hussein hopes to turn the battle for Baghdad into a Mesopotamian version of Stalingrad.
The Iraqi president is an admirer of Josef Stalin. He has modeled his ruthless rule and cult of personality on the Soviet leader. As the U.S.-led invasion force stretches its supply lines to reach Baghdad, military analysts and Iraq experts say Hussein's most loyal, best-equipped troops are digging in to try to inflict the kind of carnage that stopped Adolf Hitler at the Volga River in 1943.
A first and crucial test is likely to come near the cities of Karbala and Al Kut along a so-called "red line" that forms a ring south of Baghdad, where U.S. troops are massing now. If Hussein can avoid a military collapse there that would drag down his entire regime, analysts expect him to regroup his forces for street-to-street combat in the capital. And then, he appears to be counting on the modern weapons of media and world politics for his survival.
The Iraqi regime has spent years preparing for this showdown. Its strategists have researched U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Experts say videotapes of the movie "Black Hawk Down," which recounts the frenzied combat in Mogadishu in 1993, circulated among military men in Baghdad in recent months.
"People say to me you are not the Vietnamese, you have no jungles and swamps to hide in," said Tarik Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, in an interview published recently by the International Institute for Strategic Studies here. "I reply, 'Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings be our jungles.' "
In tactics, technology and firepower, the force closing in on Baghdad is far superior to the U.S. military that fought in Vietnam, or the German army that slowly froze, starved and ran out of ammunition in the snow and rubble of Stalingrad. But Hussein's strategy relies as much on psychology as it does on armament.
Conservatives tailor tone to fit course of the war
Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, March 28, 2003
During the months leading up to war, many conservative commentators and policy makers fanned out across the news media to support the president's case for a preventive strike against Iraq.
Many of those commentators who argued for the doctrine of a United States-enforced world order, including Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol and Andrew Sullivan, said Iraqis would welcome allied troops as liberators. Others predicted a swift victory against a grossly outmatched and disloyal Iraqi military.
Now, with televised images of Iraqis chanting anti-American slogans, and with Saddam Hussein's troops fighting back hard, the pundits have returned to the offensive, echoing President Bush's optimism and denouncing what they see as pessimism in the news media.
There is a range of views among the so-called hawks. Some simply urge patience. Some agree that they may have added to the perception that victory would come easily.
But there have been some unifying themes, most notably that allied progress has been swift and that the news media have been exaggerating the negative.
'We will turn Bush into a dog'
The Americans badly miscalculated by believing that the Iraqis would welcome them as liberators
Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, March 27, 2003
Dogs do not live happy lives in Iraq. Considered "unclean" by Muslims and rarely kept as pets, most of those that you see are feral curs slinking through the streets late at night.
It's normal practice for Iraqi soldiers to cull the packs with machine guns. But the commandos of Saddam's fedayeen, terrorist-shock troops organized in the mid-1990s, sometimes tear a dog limb from limb and sink their teeth in its flesh. Repulsive brutality, after all, is a badge of honor for these troops; this particular rite of passage was even captured on a government video.
"The fedayeen are animals!" says a young Iraqi woman who fled her country for Jordan a few months ago. "They are trained to be like animals! Everybody is frightened of them." And even though there are only an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 of these militia, inside Iraq it feels as if the fedayeen -- meaning "those who sacrifice" -- are everywhere. These days, Iraqis say, they are forcing others to put their lives on the line in the face of the American invasion. "Saddam has succeeded in establishing a strong structure that is loyal to him," says Issam Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil minister now in exile. "These fedayeen are not only fighting the Americans, they are mainly against those who want to surrender or refuse to fight."
And yet, neither the frightened young woman, nor Chalabi (who is no relation to a would-be exile leader with the same last name), nor any of the other Iraqis or Arabs I've talked to since the fighting began last week, believes that the Iraqis' resistance to the United States is solely a matter of intimidation and fear. That plays a part; the role of the fedayeen is important. But the resistance to the United States "is a matter of Iraqi patriotism," says Chalabi. "No one will accept the Americans' presence there. And if you say anything about me, say this: I am against the war. I am against the occupation."
American administration officials and sympathetic pundits fundamentally miscalculated by believing that, as some exiles told them, because the Iraqi people hate Saddam, they would love their American "liberators." "That's where you went wrong," a Lebanese friend tells me, summing up sentiments I've heard all over the Arab world, "The Iraqis do hate Saddam -- but they do not love you."
Practice to deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario -- it's their plan.
Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly, April, 2003
Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.
Israelis fear Blair's influence over Bush
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, March 28, 2003
Israel protested to Tony Blair yesterday at what it called his "worrying and outrageous" comments linking the war in Iraq to a settlement of the Palestinian conflict, and at Jack Straw's accusations of western double standards over the enforcement of UN resolutions on Israel.
But the vehemence and timing of the protest, as the British prime minister met President George Bush to discuss the war and reaffirm their commitment to the "road map" to Middle East peace, reflected a growing Israeli fear that Mr Blair now exercises more influence than Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, over White House policy on the Jewish state.
The Israelis are particularly unnerved at the prospect of Mr Blair stiffening American demands over illegal Jewish settlements and forcing the pace on the creation of an independent Palestinian state far beyond the emasculated dependency Mr Sharon has in mind.
The director general of Israel's foreign ministry, Yoav Biran, called in the British ambassador, Sherard Cowper-Coles, to lodge the protest.
"The ambassador was told that we find the latest British statements worrying and outrageous," said Jonathon Peled, a foreign ministry spokesman.
THE PROPHETS OF WAR
Remembering what we were told to expect
War in Iraq seen as quick win
Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, September 18, 2002
Senior Bush administration officials have concluded that the United States will quickly win a war against Iraq, based on superior American technology and a sharp deterioration of Saddam Hussein's armed forces since the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict.
Officials also believe a significant number of Saddam's army commanders and units will either refuse to fight or will assist allied troops in toppling the Baghdad regime.
Senior Pentagon policy-makers have come to that conclusion in recent weeks, and some officials are beginning to state it publicly.
"I don't think it would be that tough a fight," Vice President Richard B. Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "That is, I don't think there's any question that we would prevail and we would achieve our objective."
Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam War combat pilot and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, agrees.
"I am very certain that this military engagement will not be very difficult," Mr, McCain, Arizona Republican, said last week. "It may entail the risk of American lives and treasure, but Saddam Hussein is vastly weaker than he was in 1991."
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Buster Glosson, who designed the successful air war against Iraq in 1991, says victory can be achieved in weeks, not months, if the Pentagon exploits precision-guided munitions, special-operations troops and disloyalty within Iraq's military.
"If these basic steps are not violated and our war-fighting asymmetrical advantage is maximized, Saddam will not last 30 days," Gen. Glosson said in an interview.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, often reflects the thinking of other hard-liners in the department's policy shop. "I don't believe we have to defeat Saddam's army," he said in the winter. "I think Saddam's army will defeat Saddam."
Why the Iraqis are suspicious of their liberators
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, March 28, 2003
In 1915 a British army led by Major General Charles Townsend advanced north from Basra in what he hoped would be an easy campaign to capture Baghdad. After initial victories he was forced to retreat. After suffering heavy casualties in a battle outside Baghdad the army fell back to Kut, then as now an evil-smelling and tumbledown city on a bend in the Tigris.
After a siege the army surrendered and it was only in 1917 that Baghdad was captured; 40,000 British soldiers died and were buried in the plains of Iraq. I used to visit a sad little cemetery in Kut that had turned into a swamp. The names of the dead on the tombstones were only just visible above the slimy green water.
The analogy with the present war should not be pushed too far. General Townsend's army and the Anglo-American force now fighting south of Baghdad both suffered from overextended communications. But otherwise the military superiority enjoyed by the British and the Americans against Saddam Hussein is far greater than that of the British against the Turks in the First World War.
But there is another, precise parallel between what happened south of Baghdad in 1915 and in 2003. In both cases the invading army and its political masters were grossly overconfident that they would win an easy victory. So far, this has not happened, though the Iraqi army might cave in under the terrible battering from US air power. The difficulties facing London and Washington are not just important in the context of the present campaign, but they are an ominous foretaste of the dangers in establishing any post-war settlement.
Raw, devastating realities that expose the truth about Basra
RobertFisk, The Independent, March 28, 2003
Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl – victim of an Anglo American air strike – is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress.
An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape – filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad – is raw, painful, devastating.
It is also proof that Basra – reportedly "captured'' and "secured'' by British troops last week – is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as they are unloaded from a government truck.
Good morrrrrning, Iraq....
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, March 27, 2003
...it's taken less than a week for American reporters to begin to doubt Pentagon briefers (foreign reporters began in that mode) – a passage that took years in Vietnam – and for the briefers to begin to look like participants in the long ago Saigon press briefings that included the infamous "body counts," mockingly nicknamed by reporters "the Five O'clock Follies." In other words, a week into the war the first cracks in what may become a media "credibility gap" are already showing. As it turns out, Pentagon policies for controlling the media were quite brilliant, but also dependent on the delivery of the promised war – a brief "cakewalk" of liberation.
Thousands flee Basra in search of food and water
David Fox and Paul Harris, The Independent, March 28, 2003
Thousands of tired and thirsty civilians trudged out of the besieged southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday in a desperate search for food and water.
Families drove ramshackle vehicles or walked in single file down a rail track past British Army checkpoints on the western side of the city.
"It's been 'pow, pow, pow' all the time," said Maklim Mohammed as he crossed a main bridge leading south from the city, which stands at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. "I can't stand it. I'm nervous and I'm thirsty."
Basra's 1.5 million inhabitants have endured days without water. Red Cross engineers have managed amid the battles around the city partly to restore a water treatment centre that had been down since last Friday when cables carrying electricity to the plant were cut by Allied bombardment. But most homes still have no access to potable water. People have resorted to collecting water from rivers around the city, which are polluted with sewage, prompting warnings from the UN of a potential cholera epidemic. Children are at risk from diarrhoea, which is already a big killer of Iraqi children under five.
Most of those leaving yesterday were on foot without their belongings, apparently seeking shelter with friends or relatives at Zubayr, 12 miles to the south. Most were men who said they would try to return to Basra if they could find supplies.
"We are very thirsty. Our families are very thirsty," one of those leaving said. "Where can we find water? The British told us to go down the road [south]."
In Zubayr the position was only marginally better. British and American troops handed out bottled water to an agitated crowd who begged them for more. Many said they had not had water for almost 10 days.
France insists US should give way on rebuilding Iraq
Ian Black, The Guardian, March 28, 2003
The United Nations must play "the key role" in rebuilding Iraq after a crisis that has "shattered" the existing world order, the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, insisted yesterday.
Speaking on a brief visit to London, Mr de Villepin urged Europe and the US to work in concert to construct the peace and to heal the wounds caused by the furious diplomacy that preceded the outbreak of war. But he left no doubt about France's principled position.
"The UN must be at the heart of the reconstruction and administration of Iraq," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"The legitimacy of our action depends on it. We must come together to build peace together in a region rife with a sense of insecurity and deep faultlines."
Blair and Bush admit that war in Iraq could now last for months
Andrew Grice, The Independent, March 28, 2003
Tony Blair and George Bush braced the British and American public for a longer-than- expected war in Iraq yesterday amid growing concern that the campaign has stalled.
After eight hours of talks at President Bush's Camp David retreat in Maryland, the two leaders did not deny suggestions from US military sources that the war could take months. But they sought to allay fears that the campaign had been blown off course, with coalition troops encountering stiffer resistance than expected and the hoped-for uprising by Iraqis failing to materialise.
Despite minor successes yesterday, including the destruction of 14 Iraqi tanks by British forces, no sign of substantial progress was perceived in the battles for Basra and Baghdad. The US strategy of invading Iraq with relatively small, light mobile forces is coming under increasing criticism from within and outside the US military. Armoured reinforcements may take up to a month to assemble near Baghdad.
Pentagon sources said last night that the frontline US fighting force in the Gulf would be doubled to 200,000 by the end of April. The officials insisted that this was part of the original war plan – not a reaction to the set-backs of recent days.
THE PROPHETS OF WAR
Remembering what we were told to expect
Vice President Dick Cheney:
"I think it will go relatively quickly...Weeks rather than months."
"Face the Nation," CBS, March 16, 2003
No cakewalk
Robert Novak, CNN, March 26, 2003
"There were some who were supportive of going to war with Iraq who described it as a cakewalk," Tim Russert told Donald Rumsfeld on NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday.
The secretary of Defense seemed surprised. "I never did," he replied. "No one I know in the Pentagon ever did." While Rumsfeld spoke the literal truth, his response was still disingenuous.
Rumsfeld had been asked about the cakewalk description several times, rejecting it but still defending the premises for such a judgment. While its source was not technically a Pentagon official, it was a longtime Rumsfeld friend and lieutenant: Kenneth Adelman, appointed by the secretary to the Defense Policy Board (an outside advisory panel). In demanding military action against Saddam Hussein, Adelman has promised repeatedly there would be no military difficulty.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS RUNS FOR COVER
On March 24, The New York Times, in its lead editorial politely requested Richard Perle to resolve a conflict of interest between his role as Defense Policy Board chairman and his acting as a representative for the telecommunications company Global Crossing in its negotiations with the Defense Department. Perle protests that there is no conflict of interest, but he is resigning for the sake of avoiding creating a distraction during the war. As a "special government employee" who took pride in saying that he didn't work for the government, Perle's degree of influence in the Bush administration is hardly likely to be diminished by his departure from the Pentagon. His departure at this time may however be regarded as a matter of mutual convenience to both himself and Rumsfeld. The most troubling questions he could now face, but can now more easily avoid, relate not to his business transactions but to his advocacy for a war in which he claimed that Saddam Hussein could easily be ousted without the use of major US forces.
Richard Perle resigns as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board
Stephen Labaton and Thom Shanker, New York Times, March 27, 2003
Richard N. Perle has resigned as chairman of an influential Pentagon advisory board following disclosures of business dealings that included his meeting with a Saudi arms dealer and a contract with a bankrupt telecommunications company seeking Defense Department permission to be sold to Chinese investors.
Jubilation turns to hate as aid arrives
Burhan Wazir, The Guardian, March 27, 2003
The young man wearing the brown shawl summed it up succinctly: "We want you to go back home. We do not want your American and British aid," he said, his eyes flashing with anger.
If the British humanitarian taskforce had any doubts as to the legitimacy of his claims, the sudden burst of gunfire from a nearby building left no one in any doubt.
The first attempt to deliver aid to the Iraqi people was, in all respects, a practical and logistical disaster.
Anti-war Arabs decry 'slaughter' in Baghdad
Caroline Drees, Reuters, March 27, 2003
After only a week of war, Arabs are saying there's a new butcher of Baghdad.
Long an epithet for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the West, Arab newspapers and citizens said pictures of burned bodies and pools of blood in a busy Baghdad neighborhood proved the name was more suitable for the American government.
"Massacre in Baghdad" screamed a headline in Lebanon's daily as-Safir on Thursday after two explosions devastated a street in the Iraqi capital and killed as many as 15 people. Iraqis called it a U.S. attack, while the U.S. military suggested it might have been a stray Iraqi anti-aircraft missile or sabotage.
Egypt's al-Ahrar condemned the "American slaughter of civilians," while Morocco's L'Opinion called the blasts a "murderous raid," and Palestinian newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida mourned the "savage bombardment" of Baghdad.
"They call Saddam Hussein a butcher. Aren't the Americans butchers? They're worse. They're killing children who've done nothing wrong," said Iman, a 26-year-old woman working in a Cairo haberdashery shop
Throughout the Arab world, from long-time U.S. allies to states Washington accuses of sponsoring "terrorism," citizens were outraged by graphic media images of bodies charred beyond recognition in a war many believe is a sinister plot to subjugate Arabs and dominate the region.
All in the neocon family
Jim Lobe, AlterNet, March 26, 2003
What do William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, and Robert Kagan have in common? Yes, they are all die-hard hawks who have gained control of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks. But they are also part of one big neoconservative family -- an extended clan of spouses, children, and friends who have known each other for generations.
Who lied to whom?
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, March 24, 2003
Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability. It was an important presentation for the Bush Administration. Some Democrats were publicly questioning the President’s claim that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate threat to the United States. Just the day before, former Vice-President Al Gore had sharply criticized the Administration’s advocacy of preëmptive war, calling it a doctrine that would replace “a world in which states consider themselves subject to law” with “the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.” A few Democrats were also considering putting an alternative resolution before Congress.
According to two of those present at the briefing, which was highly classified and took place in the committee’s secure hearing room, Tenet declared, as he had done before, that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes that was intercepted on its way to Iraq had been meant for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium. The suitability of the tubes for that purpose had been disputed, but this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy five hundred tons of uranium oxide from Niger, one of the world’s largest producers. The uranium, known as “yellow cake,” can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors; if processed differently, it can also be enriched to make weapons. Five tons can produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a bomb. (When the C.I.A. spokesman William Harlow was asked for comment, he denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger.)
On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country, “despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.” The allegation attracted immediate attention; a headline in the London Guardian declared, “African gangs offer route to uranium.”
Two movements
The new alliance between antiwar protesters and foreign-policy realists
Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect, March 24, 2003
What does an antiwar movement do with a war likely to be over in a matter of weeks? Plenty, it turns out.
The antiwar movement is actually two rather different movements that partly overlap. One movement is in the streets and on the internet -- often led by radicals, sometimes joined uneasily by liberals. The other is pragmatic and mainstream. Both were nonplussed but only temporarily by the outbreak of war, and neither has gone away.
Springtime for the Muslim Brotherhood
Cam McGrath, Asia Times, March 28, 2003
"The present, never mind the future, is the enemy of the Brotherhood, which has not adapted to the modern age," said an article published recently in al-Hayat, a pan-Arab daily. "The Brotherhood does not possess the tools to understand modernity and doesn't dare contradict the ideologies and struggles of its great past, which it values at the expense of reality."
Yet despite this, the Muslim Brotherhood is witnessing a revival. President George W Bush administration's "war on terror" is alienating Arabs and Muslims, giving movements like the Brotherhood a newfound popularity. "We used to think of the Brotherhood as anachronistic," says civil servant Mahmoud Abdel Raouf. "Now people who were never religious are joining the Brotherhood. Bush is pushing us in this direction."
Images of war: The parallax view
Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, March 26, 2003
So far Operation Iraqi Freedom hasn't produced many images of liberation. No collapse of the corrupt house of cards, no joyful crowds, no tossing flowers at the soldiers.
There have been a few happy images, a couple of young Iraqi men greeting American soldiers, some civilians watching tanks pass and making nonthreatening, supplicant gestures (for food, perhaps). But yesterday, the people of Iraq looked a lot more like the hassled and humiliated residents of America's poorest neighborhoods, the fodder for television shows like Fox's "Cops" and "World's Wildest Police Videos."
These were not images of liberation, but detention: Men in bluejeans with their hands on their heads and men lying on the ground with U.S. troops poised over them, guns at the ready. And if they weren't in custody, they were either in pain (a wounded 9-year-old girl, now a motherless child), or exulting over whatever small victories (a downed helicopter) they can snatch from the teeth of the overwhelming force descending on their homeland.
THE PROPHETS OF WAR
Remembering what we were told to expect
Ken Adelman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board member, former assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from 1975 to 1977 and deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and arms-control director under President Reagan:
"I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps."
Washington Post, February 13, 2002
"[When the United States 'liberates' Iraq] we will have plenty of allies. Foremost will be the Iraqi people cheering from their rooftops just as they did at the onset of the Gulf War in 1991. And there will be dancing in Baghdad streets just as the liberated Afghans did in Kabul a few months ago."
USA Today, September 4, 2002
Fear grips exhausted troops
Oliver Poole with the US Infantry, The Telegraph, March 26, 2003
The first of the soldiers draws on a cigarette and turns to his friend. "You bearing up?" he asks.
"I feel like we are getting our arse whipped," comes the reply. "Wherever I turn there is someone trying to kill me. Damn this country and damn these people."
"Roger that," the first says back. "Yesterday we were taking one of the soft top trucks and suddenly there are three Iraqis shooting at us. I was under that vehicle lying in the mud before I even knew it and the staff sergeant was there beside me as scared as I was.
"The Bradleys came up and started shooting the hell out of them. We got them. Took them prisoner. But, God, I thought I was going to piss myself."
His friend turns to shield his eyes from the sand. "That's the problem with this pussy army. We just wait to take hits. They [the Iraqis] took those mechanics prisoner and shot some of them in the heads. They start throwing shells at us and we can't even fire back in case it hits civilians. Damn that 'hearts and minds' shit." The first turns to the third of the guard duty who has been staring out into the sand clouds. "How you doing?"
"Not too good," he said. In recent days he has repeatedly spoken of wanting to talk to his mother.
"You'll be OK."
"I don't know if I will get out of this."
"Yes you will. We'll get through this."
The oldest, the first to speak, Sgt Bill Jones, is 21. The youngest, the last, Pte Roman Komlev, is 18. It is only four days since the American army crossed the Kuwait border but many of its soldiers are already tired and frightened.
Bush fiddles with economy while Baghdad burns
Mark Tran, The Guardian, March 26, 2003
The war in Iraq is not going as smoothly as the Bush administration would like and the conflict is looking less and less like a walkover by the day.
Yet there can be little doubt that the US, backed by Britain, its loyal junior ally, will eventually prevail. The conflict will bring the US little glory, pitting the world's most powerful military machine against a dilapidated army, but when American and British troops enter Baghdad, the US will surely cement its status as a hyperpower.
But does the US colossus have feet of clay? It takes a brave soul to argue that America, the world's largest economy and by far its most potent military power, is about to go into decline, when it is widely perceived as a hyperpower. But Independent Strategy, a financial research company for institutional investors, has made the case in a paper that is making the rounds of big investment banks such as Goldman Sachs.
Independent Strategy believes that the US shows many symptoms of an empire that is cresting. First, it sees deepening mistrust of the US and predicts a rise in terrorism in reaction to US unilateralism.
The big dilemma: use decisive force or fight humanely
Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, March 27, 2003
This war may yet be over within two or three weeks. But enough has happened already to show how America and Britain may be undermined by conflicting goals – the short-term demands of battle and their longer term aspirations for the future of Iraq used to justify the war in the first place.
Pulling in one direction is George Bush's promise to use decisive force to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime as quickly as possible. Tugging in the other is the importance of making this "pre-emptive strike" (in plain English, unprovoked invasion) as "humane" and non-destructive as possible for all Iraqis except the leader and his immediate followers.
This is a queasy moment in Washington. The heady expectation that the regime would collapse in a few days, at the first taste of America's power, has vanished. So have hopes that Iraqi commanders would cross sides en masse. So, too, has the notion, fed by the neo-conservatives whose brainchild this war is, that the grateful inhabitants of southern Iraq would be strewing rose petals before the advancing tanks.
Wayward bombs bring marketplace carnage
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, March 27, 2003
It was the single worst act of carnage in six days of an American aerial assault on the Iraqi capital carried out by B-52 bombers, F-17 jet fighters and cruise missiles, at all hours of the day.
And, as yesterday's marketplace slaughter so clearly demonstrates, increasingly the targets are on the edges of residential areas, far away from the lavish palaces and military installations that are the institutional heart of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The people of the Shaab neighbourhood, on the northern perimeters of Baghdad, never had an inkling they would be next. Iraqis had learned to adapt to the rhythm of the bombs, venturing out if they had to, by daytime largely, and with great caution to avoid official areas known to be the target of America's wrath.
Probe sought of Pentagon adviser, Richard Perle
Jeremy Pelofsky, Reuters, March 25, 2003
A senior U.S. Democrat has called for an investigation of Richard Perle, an architect of the war on Iraq, for possible conflicts of interest in his roles as corporate adviser and Pentagon consultant.
Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, asked the Pentagon's inspector general to probe Perle's work as a paid adviser to bankrupt telecommunications company Global Crossing Ltd. and his guidance on investment opportunities resulting from the Iraq conflict.
Amnesty International: Both sides in Iraq war may be guilty of war crimes
Agence France-Presse, March 26, 2003
Both sides of the week-old-war Iraq war may already be guilty of war crimes, Amnesty International human rights group said.
The US-led coalition side would be guilty because of the bombing of state television in Baghdad, Claudio Cordone, senior director for international law at the London-based group, said in a statement.
"Attacking a civilian object and carrying out a disproportionate attack are war crimes," she said.
"The onus is on the coalition forces to demonstrate the military use of the TV station and, if that is indeed the case, to show that the attack took into account the risk to civilian lives," Cordone said.
"The bombing of a television station simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda is unacceptable. It is a civilian object, and thus protected under international humanitarian law," she said.
The Iraqi side would be guilty if its troops are found to have fired mortars on their own people to quell an uprising in Basra, as British officials alleged yesterday.
"Any direct attack on civilians is a war crime," Cordone said. "Those who blur the distinction between combatants and civilians undermine the very foundations of humanitarian law."
The 'Palestinization' of Iraq
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, March 27, 2003
One of the most extraordinary developments of the war so far is how the resistance of the Iraqi population against a foreign invasion has galvanized this sentiment of anger in the Arab world. "We are all Palestinians now," as a Bedouin taxi driver puts it. One of the first things anyone mentions in Jordan - be it a Jordanian, an Egyptian, a Lebanese or a Somali refugee - is their happiness about the way the Iraqi people are resisting the "invaders" (never qualified as "liberators"). Their intuition also tells them that every extra day in this war is further humiliation to the Pentagon - especially because the real war, and not the US version, is being followed by the whole Arab world, in Arabic, through Arab satellite channels.
'Many casualties' after Baghdad market hit
Andrew Gilligan, BBC News, March 26, 2003
Fourteen civilians died and another 30 were injured in Baghdad when a shopping area was hit during an air raid by US-led coalition forces, the Iraqi authorities say. The BBC's Andrew Gilligan, at the scene in the north of the city, says it appears that two missiles hit a busy parade of shops.
An angry crowd of several hundred people gathered in the area following the strike, waving the shoes and clothes of victims. They shouted: "Down with Bush" and "Long live Saddam".
Our correspondent says the buildings have been burnt out and their contents scattered over a wide area, while several cars were set on fire. He adds that the nearest military buildings are at least a quarter of a mile away.
Reuters news agency correspondents say they have seen at least 15 burnt bodies, while some local people have said the number of dead could be as high as 45.
How a breakdown in sanitation can bring a city to its knees within a few days
John Davidson, The Independent, March 26, 2003
The sudden collapse of a population's water supply is the most serious of humanitarian emergencies. People affected by a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a flood, are more likely to fall ill and die from diseases related to inadequate water and sanitation than from any other single cause. And the effects are seen very quickly.
Water and sanitation experts at charities and non-governmental organistations say people start to fall ill after just two or three days without clean water.
Inevitably, the most vulnerable are affected first and suffer the most. That includes children under five, the elderly, the sick and the malnourished. In a city such as Basra, where health standards were already poor before the hostilities, that will be a very high proportion of the population.
With daytime temperatures soaring to more than 100F (38C), people have to drink. If clean water is not available they will drink whatever they can. And, again, the position in Basra – where there is virtually no safe alternative to the public water supply for the poorest people – is particularly serious.
The unquiet Americans
As the U.S. military footprint grows, so does Jordanian anger
Kareem Fahim, Village Voice, March 26, 2003
For a Jordanian government concerned about the domestic backlash from a war in Iraq, the weekend was full of bad news. Apart from the televised images of Basra's war dead, and the reports of stiff resistance put up by elements of the Iraqi army, on Sunday the kingdom expelled five Iraqi diplomats, saying they violated "the security agreement" between the two countries. The prime minister swore it was merely a matter between two neighbors. But the move follows a demand by the U.S. to 60 countries worldwide to expel Iraqi diplomats and close their embassies. Jordan was the first Arab country to comply, though officials here deny it was at America's behest.
And predictably, the protests against the war have started up in earnest, some of them violent. Riot police in Amman beat back Jordanian lawyers attempting to march to the Iraqi embassy in a show of solidarity. Clashes were also reported in Palestinian neighborhoods, as well as in the southern city of Ma'an, a flashpoint for anti-government unrest. There are no signs that the anger is diminishing, and in response, King Abdullah has appeared on Jordanian television appealing for calm.
As the images of Iraqi casualties have brought about a measure of popular sympathy, tales of Iraqi resistance have become a source of pride. On Monday, Jordanians discussed the recent pictures of Iraqi farmers and their antique guns celebrating around a downed American helicopter. Whether or not the farmers did anything to bring the Apache down seems beside the point. The image would have been more powerful only if the thing had been shot out of the sky by a Palestinian teenager with a slingshot.
Bush backer sponsoring pro-war rallies
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, March 26, 2003
They look like spontaneous expressions of pro-war sentiment, "patriotic rallies" drawing crowds of tens of thousands across the American heartland.
In a counterpoint to anti-war demonstrations, supporters of war in Iraq have descended on cities from Fort Wayne to Cleveland, and Atlanta to Philadelphia. They wave flags, messages of support for the troops - and also banners attacking liberals, excoriating the UN, and in one case, advising: "Bomb France Now."
But many of the rallies, it turns out, have been organised and paid for by Clear Channel Inc - the country's largest radio conglomerate, owning 1,200 stations - which is not only reporting on the war at the same time, but whose close links with President Bush stretch back to his earliest, much-criticised financial dealings as governor of Texas. The company has paid advertising costs and for the hire of musicians for the rallies.
Tom Hicks, Clear Channel's vice-chairman, is a past donor to Bush's political campaigning. The two were at the centre of a scandal when Mr Bush was governor and when Mr Hicks chaired a University of Texas investment board that awarded large investment-management contracts to several companies close to the Bush family - including the Carlyle Group, on whose payroll Mr Bush had been until weeks previously, and which still retains his father.
THE NEO-CON WAR CRY: KILL THE UNITED NATIONS!
Whenever Public Enemy Number One proves elusive (first it was Osama, now Saddam), the neo-cons look for a more immediate target. While Saddam might be able to hold out in his bunker for a few months, the neo-cons don't want to miss the opportunity to destroy the UN. Washington Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer, pours scorn on the idea of Bush going back to the Security Council, but he concedes that, "If we're going to negotiate terms, it should be with allies who helped us, who share our vision and our purposes." What he neglects to mention is that the principal among those allies, Britain, is itself strongly arguing that the UN should have a central role in post-war Iraq.
Forget them all, Mr Bush
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post (via The Guardian), March 26, 2003
Don't go back, Mr. President. You walked away from the United Nations at great cost and with great courage. Don't go back.
No one knows when this war will end. But when it does, you'll have to decide the terms. Yet in the past few days both you and Tony Blair have said you will seek a new UN resolution, postwar, providing for the governance of Iraq.
Why in God's name would we want to re-empower the French in deciding the post-war settlement? Why would we want to grant them influence over the terms, the powers, the duration of an occupation bought at the price of American and British blood? France, Germany and Russia did everything they could to sabotage your policy before the war. Will they want to see it succeed after the war?
The Frankfurter Allgemeine reports that on February 21, Germany's UN ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, wrote to his foreign ministry that the US, blocked on a UN war resolution and fighting alone, would later "remorsefully return to the council" to seek help in rebuilding Iraq.
That is their game. Why should we play it?
The glory but not the gore
Embedded journalists are providing only a sanitised version of the war
Ghida Al-Juburi, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, March 24, 2003
A group of American soldiers have been captured by Iraqi forces - but the mainstream media in the United States has not shown footage of the event. Providers sponsoring Internet news have censored pictures of prisoners-of-war and casualties. The government has denounced any screening of POWs or fatalities in print and broadcast media, stating that this is in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based television network, was the first to report that American soldiers had been captured south-eastern Iraq. Within minutes, the images spread across the world. Al-Jazeera and others say they report the news as they see it - and gore is just as much part of war as the glory that comes with flag-waving coverage.
In the first week of the American-led war against Iraq, Americans are witnessing the war and its repercussions take place in real time. With the help of technology, the coverage of this war will show us more than we have ever seen before, and faster. We are bearing witness to a new form of the ultimate reality television. Yet American television and media censorship have determined and demanded that we do not need to see it all. We can see the glory, but not the gore.
Drawing the enemy to Baghdad
Maj. Gen. Abd al-Ameer Abaees, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, March 24, 2003
Saddam Hussein has built his entire military strategy around one goal: to stay in power. All Iraq's revenue and all its institutions, military and civilian, are directed toward that purpose.
In this war for survival, Saddam's strategy is quite unique. Conventional military strategy is to defend ground, but Saddam's plan is to leave the North and the South of his country in order to defend himself in Baghdad.
By establishing the pockets of resistance we have seen in the South, Saddam is trying to wear down American and British forces so they arrive weakened at Baghdad.
In the long hours of darkness, Baghdad shakes to the constant low rumble of B-52s
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 26, 2003
"Can you imagine the effect on the Arabs if Iraq gets out of this war intact?" [a senior Iraqi business executive] asked. "It took just five days for all the Arabs to be defeated by Israel in the 1967 war. And already we Iraqis have been fighting the all-powerful Americans for five days and still we have held on to all of our cities and will not surrender. And imagine what would happen if Iraq surrendered. What chance would the Syrian leadership have against the demands of Israel? What chance would the Palestinians have of negotiating a fair deal with the Israelis? The Americans don't care about giving the Palestinians a fair deal. So why should they want to give the Iraqis a fair deal?"
This was no member of the Baath Party speaking. This was a man with degrees from universities in Manchester and Birmingham. A colleague had an even more cogent point to make. "Our soldiers know they will not get a fair deal from the Americans," he said. "It's important that they know this. We may not like our regime. But we fight for our country. The Russians did not like Stalin but they fought under him against the German invaders. We have a long history of fighting the colonial powers, especially you British. You claim you are coming to 'liberate' us. But you don't understand. What is happening now is we are starting a war of liberation against the Americans and the British."
BOMBING BAGHDAD
On Sunday's CBS Face the Nation, Donald Rumsfeld said, "We are not bombing Baghdad." He choses to distinguish between the buildings used by the regime and the city in which they are located. Many residents of Baghdad don't appreciate the distinction.
Civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes fuel rising anger in Iraq
John Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2003
Saman Atef was finishing a late breakfast Monday when he heard a long, whining whoosh. Before he had time to ponder the noise, three of his neighbors' houses exploded in a rain of bricks, glass and dust.
In the instant the bomb or missile hit, four people were killed and 23 were injured, Atef said, and the people of his working-class neighborhood of northern Baghdad counted one more reason to feel angry with the United States.
Just before the midday attack, a robust-looking President Saddam Hussein had appeared on state television in military uniform and exhorted Iraqis to attack the U.S. and British enemy.
"Cut their throats and even their fingers," Hussein urged. "Strike them and strike evil so that evil will be defeated."
The U.S. war strategy has counted in part on separating the people of Iraq from the government of Hussein.
But the deaths and injuries from misdirected or errant bombs, or from shrapnel and fragments that spray into nearby homes even when the munitions find their intended target, are making more and more people believe that the United States is heedless of the Iraqi public.
A TIMELY REMINDER
The following article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, six months ago.
Pearl Harbor in reverse
Jack Beatty, Atlantic Monthly, September 25, 2002
Richard Perle, a Pentagon official during the Reagan years, says that unseating Saddam will be "a cakewalk." Perhaps, ventured Senator Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, Perle should join the first wave into Baghdad to experience his hypothesis. An estimated one million Iraqis are tied in with Saddam's regime or party. They face imprisonment, war-crimes trials, or reprisal murders if Saddam loses power. The collateral damage that will accompany a bombing campaign could rally even more Iraqis to Saddam, making the war more lethal and the U.S. occupation more hazardous. Regimes as cruel as Saddam's have successfully used foreign aggression to galvanize resistance. Stalin scourged the Russian people, yet he successfully appealed to their nationalism to defeat the Nazis. Pol Pot, after killing more than a million of his fellow Cambodians, was able to mobilize support against the Vietnamese invasion of 1979. Saddam's strategy will be to draw us into the cities. In the open we can target his artillery, neutralizing his capacity to deliver chemical weapons. That will be difficult to do in the streets of Baghdad. Saddam will want to make us kill civilians to get at him, knowing that the bomb blasts, the collapsing houses, the bloody faces and torn bodies will be shown throughout the Arab world by al Jazeera, exacting a potentially catastrophic political price.
THE PROPAGANDA WAR
Zvi Bar'el, writing for the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, makes an observation who significance cannot be overemphasized. Iraqis, with access to information issued by the Iraqi government along with news from outside sources, can now treat with the same degree of skepticism both the statements of their own government and those of the US government. Is it not then the ultimate irony that inside the "liberating" nation, both the media and the populace seem less capable of exercising critical judgment in response to their own government than do a people who America is presuming to set free? The propaganda war may be being fought between two governments, but with the complicity of much of the U.S. media, it is the American people who risk losing this war.
What happened to the civil uprising
against Saddam?
Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz, March 25, 2003
The port of Umm-Qasr, the main Iraqi exit to the sea, has begun to evolve into a kind of symbol of resistance. For the past four days, continuous fighting has taken place in the city. Every day has ended with an optimistic report that the city is in U.S. hands, only for it to emerge the following day that the battles there are still ongoing.
Similar reports have started to come in about Nasiriyah and Basra - that "they are under control." These reports are not fictitious. Rather, they are partial. The cities are under external control but not total occupation.
The significant thing as far as the psychological war is concerned, is that the Iraqi people, who listen both to Iraqi television and Western radio reports (some of them on satellite channels), can now reach the conclusion that they can relate with almost the same degree of credibility to western reports as to those emanating from their own government.
Invasion v liberation: flag rises and falls in clash of ideology
Hugh White, Sydney Morning Herald, March 25, 2003
Washington must adjust its postwar plans to the possibility that US occupation may not be welcome.
All the complexity and ambiguity of this strange war was captured in a single incident in Umm Qasr at the weekend, when United States marines raised the Stars and Stripes over the captured port, and were then ordered by the higher-ups to pull it down again.
The marines had one view of this war, and the headquarters another. The marines may prove to be right.
The marines' flag-raising was a simple, almost reflexive gesture - a symbol of conquest, harking back to the famous flag raising at Iwo Jima. It's a symbol of the old view of war - war as a business of violence and subjugation.
The curt instruction from headquarters to take the flag down again was an attempt to reassert the Administration's official view - that this is not an invasion and conquest of Iraq, but a liberation of it. It's the new view of war, much beloved by Donald Rumsfeld - of war as a matter of subtlety, psychology and persuasion.
The marines themselves have discovered in Umm Qasr that psychology and persuasion have so far not worked on Iraq's army, and more traditional means may be needed. Their coalition comrades have had similar experiences near Basra, at Nasiriyah and elsewhere in southern Iraq.
U.S. is assembling a civilian team to run Iraq
Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, March 25, 2003
The United States is preparing to establish immediate sole control of postwar Iraq, initially without recourse to the United Nations, with a civilian administration under the direct command of the military, according to senior administration officials.
Even before American troops reach Baghdad, administration officials are assembling a team of civilian officials, largely retired American diplomats, to run Iraq as soon as the fighting is over.
Saddam starts to sound more like his hero, Uncle Joe
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 25, 2003
"Be patient," President Saddam kept saying. Be patient. Fourteen times in all, he told the army and the people of Iraq to be patient. "We will win ... we will be victorious against Evil." Patient but confident in victory. Fighting evil.
Wasn't that how President Bush was encouraging his people a few hours earlier? At other times, President Saddam sounded like his hero, Joseph Stalin. "They have come to destroy our country and we must stand and destroy them and defend our people and our country ... Cut their throats ... They are coming to take our land. But when they try to enter our cities, they try to avoid a battle with our forces and to stay outside the range of our weapons."
Was this, one wondered, modelled on the Great Patriotic War, the defence of Mother Russia under Uncle Joe? And if not, how to account for – let us speak frankly – the courage of those hundreds of Iraqi soldiers still holding out under American air and tank attacks?
People, party, patriotism. The three P's ran like a theme through the Saddam speech along with a bitter warning: as the American and British forces made less headway on the ground, President Saddam said, they would use their air power against Iraq ever more brutally.
This real-time war is getting all too real
James P. Pinkerton, Newsday, March 25, 2003
So which war are you watching? The top American general, Tommy Franks, describes one war: At a press conference yesterday, he declared that American - oops, Coalition - progress has been "rapid" and "dramatic." But Iraqi second-in-command Tariq Aziz describes another: Saddam Hussein, he says, is "in good shape" and "in full control of the army and the country."
Why Colin Powell should go
Bill Keller, New York Times, March 22, 2003
I can't count the number of times in the past two years I've heard -- occasionally from my own lips -- the observation that the Bush administration would be a much scarier outfit without Colin Powell. Allied diplomats, international businessmen and the American foreign policy mainstream have regarded him as the lone grown-up in an administration with a teenager's twitchy metabolism and self-centered view of the world. He was the one who acknowledged that other countries had legitimate interests, and that in the application of America's unmatched power there was a case for generosity because what goes around comes around. His pragmatic caution offset a moralism that sometimes verged on recklessness. If others, including the president, seemed given to hype and swagger, Mr. Powell's word seemed bankable -- at least until the White House began misspending his credibility in its rush to the war that couldn't wait.
Blessed are the warmakers?
Foreign Policy, May-June, 2003
The United States and the European Union both want peace in the Middle East -- but that's about all they agree upon. While Washington believes that regime change in Iraq will usher in an era of regional peace and stability, Brussels worries that U.S. adventurism will make the clash of civilizations a self-fulfilling prophecy. Will war in Iraq prove to be an act of creative destruction, or simply destruction? Two outspoken thinkers from opposite sides of the Atlantic -- Richard Perle, a key national security advisor to the Pentagon, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the European Parliament's Green Party -- traded views and barbs at a recent debate in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of Helga Flores Trejo, the new Director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation.
A live report from Baghdad
Nate Thayer, Slate, March 24, 2003
The atmosphere on the street gets more and more menacing every day. There are groups of people chanting anti-American slogans. The military presence has increased dramatically. Outposts and bunkers are on every corner. Roadblocks are set up on all the main streets. The oil trenches ignited over the weekend continue to burn -- casting a literal black cloud over the city. Iraqis assume that American forces will encircle Baghdad, and they are preparing for a siege. [...]
Iraqi officials are continuing to harass us. I was just told that we will be expelled first thing in the morning. They said we will have to drive to Syria -- a 20-hour ride on a highway that we've heard is under bombardment from the coalition. It's a suicide drive, and I am not going to do it. I have about six hours to figure out how to get out of it.
Marines losing the battle for hearts and minds
James Meek, The Guardian, March 25, 2003
Hopes of a joyful liberation of a grateful Iraq by US and British armies are evaporating fast in the Euphrates valley as a sense of bitterness, germinated from blood spilled and humiliations endured, begins to grow in the hearts of invaded and invader alike.
Attempts by US marines to take bridges over the river Euphrates, which passes through Nassiriya, have become bogged down in casualties and troops taken prisoner. The marines, in turn, have responded harshly.
Out in the plain west of the city, marines shepherding a gigantic series of convoys north towards Baghdad have reacted to ragged sniping with an aggressive series of house searches and arrests.
A surgical assistant at the Saddam hospital in Nassiriya, interviewed at a marine check point outside the city, said that on Sunday, half an hour after two dead marines were brought into the hospital, US aircraft dropped what he described as three or four cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing 10 and wounding 200.
You should have known we'd fight
Burhan al-Chalabi, The Guardian, March 25, 2003
It is now five days since the British and US governments launched an unprecedented military invasion of my country of birth, its people, land, towns and cities. This attack was launched without UN authority, public support or the will of the international community. To win support for this unjust and illegal campaign, it has been claimed that this is not a colonial war of occupation but a war of liberation; a compassionate war. Britain and the US will save the Iraqis by bombing so they can thrive in a democratic Iraq and live at ease with their neighbours. Those who believed the hype expected the Iraqis to welcome the invading armies. After British troops were forced to retreat from Basra yesterday, a military spokesman said: "We were expecting a lot of hands up, but it hasn't quite worked out that way."
It is now clear to everyone that ordinary Iraqis are resisting this military aggression with their lives and souls. Commentators and politicians in Britain and America seem taken aback: how come the Iraqis are putting up such a fight? Why do they so passionately resist this attempt to liberate them from the brutal dictator, Saddam? But Iraqis aren't surprised at all.
One rule for them
George Monbiot, The Guardian, March 25, 2003
Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".
He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they "must at all times be protected... against insults and public curiosity". This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.
This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.
Iraqi city suffers water shortage
David Batty, The Guardian, March 24, 2003
The Red Cross today warned of an imminent humanitarian disaster in Iraq's second city of Basra, as the aid agency struggled to restore water supplies destroyed in the war.
Most of the city has been without water and electricity since Friday, which has been threatening hospitals and sanitation services in the area, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The ICRC's spokesman, Florian Westphal, said that tackling the situation in Basra was now its top priority.
'We're in a dark, dark tunnel'
Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, March 24, 2003
While the outside world has grown accustomed to detached images of fire and fury over Baghdad, and the government here boasts of victory over the invaders, this rattled family of five in the middle-class neighborhood of Jihad has watched war turn life upside down. Their world now is isolation, dread and a bitter sense that they do not deserve their fate.
"We're in a dark, dark tunnel, and we don't see the light at the end of it," the daughter-in-law said. [...]
When it came to the cause of Iraq's predicament, family members pointed to Hussein, describing him as rash. He invaded Iran, trapping them in an eight-year war. He seized Kuwait, bringing on the Persian Gulf War and the devastation of sanctions that largely wiped out Iraq's middle class. After that war, they were ready to overthrow him themselves.
But they bitterly denounced the war the United States has launched. Iraq, perhaps more than any other Arab country, dwells on traditions -- of pride, honor and dignity. To this family, the assault is an insult. It is not Hussein under attack, but Iraq, they said. It is hard to gauge if this is a common sentiment, although it is one heard more often as the war progresses.
"We complain about things, but complaining doesn't mean cooperating with foreign governments," the father said. "When somebody comes to attack Iraq, we stand up for Iraq. That doesn't mean we love Saddam Hussein, but there are priorities."
Outrage in Baghdad
April Hurley M.D., Electronic Iraq, March 24, 2003
In America, the saying goes goes: If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
In Bagdhad, at Al Kindi Hospital Emergency, Fatima Abdullah is screaming in outrage: "Why do you do this to us??!"
Her 8 year old, Fatehah is dead, two other daughters are on stretchers wounded by a missle that crushed her uncle's home where they were staying outside Baghdad, near the Diala Bridge. An extended farming family, they have suffered with sanctions and ecomonic devastation shrinking their stock of animals to one cow, a donkey and chickens; they are barely able to feed themselves.
'LIBERATING' BAGHDAD
The Bush administration has repeatedly told the American people that this is a war of liberation. The consequence of failing to persuade sceptics has been the sight of mass demonstrations that while troublesome could ultimately be ignored. The sceptics in Baghdad carry guns. Whether they operate inside or outside a command structure, all they will need to identify their opponents is their own eyes. With a gun, a bullet and the notion that they're defending their homeland, it won't matter whether they love or loathe Saddam. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, and all their friends spent a great deal of energy spreading the message of 'liberation.' Ultimately, there was really only one constituency they needed to convince - the people of Iraq. Was the PR over there more successful than it was here? We'll soon know.
In Baghdad, a deadly risk of urban war
Robert Little, Baltimore Sun, March 24, 2003
American soldiers approaching the outskirts of Baghdad are poised for one of the most dangerous and unpredictable operations of modern combat - a mission they are trained to perform but one that could easily lead to long days of fighting, indiscriminate destruction and casualties on a scale so far avoided in the high-tech age.
Instead of storming Basra and An Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, coalition soldiers were cordoning off those cities. But if Iraq's elite Republican Guard troops are entrenched in Baghdad as suspected - and if they choose to fight - American soldiers could soon wade into some of their heaviest and costliest urban combat since the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive in 1968.
To the Arabs, this crusade too will fail
James Reston Jr., Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2003
On Sept. 16, 2001, only five days after the apocalypse, President Bush proclaimed a U.S. "crusade" against terrorism. Like many American politicians in our history, from Thomas Jefferson to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to John McCain, he was using the term loosely. In the American political parlance, a crusade, up to now, has meant merely a passionate campaign of moral rectitude.
For the Arab world, as we are learning, "crusade" has an entirely different meaning. In using the word, Bush scratched a raw sore of Arab resentment and handed Muslim fundamentalists a great gift: They could now use the U.S. president's own words in casting the struggle as another Western crusade against Arab lands and Islam itself. Bush's gaffe ensured that the terms of the conflict between the West and the East were defined at the outset: Christianity against Islam, Western materialism vs. Eastern spiritualism. With his talk of preemptive attack and occupation, Bush fed the Arab view of him as the quintessential Western crusader.
Anti-war movement faces its fork in the road
Todd Gitlin, Los Angeles Times (via Newsday), March 23, 2003
For months now, the antiwar movement has defined itself in opposition to George W. Bush, to his bulldozer style, his hellbent drive toward war with Iraq, his barely disguised contempt for dissent - domestic and foreign - and his preference for "shock and awe" over treaties.
The movement may have been hazy about what it wanted, but it was crystal clear about what it didn't want: war with Saddam Hussein. With war launched, the antiwar movement faces a tactical dilemma and a programmatic one. How does it keep its troops energized? What should the new goals be?
War is personal
Bob Herbert, New York Times, March 24, 2003
Wars are mostly talked about in grand terms -- precision bombing, shock and awe, triumph and glory, the geopolitical winners and losers.
The polls and the late-night comedians have been telling us that Bush is up and France is down, and that there's nothing more pathetic than a Democrat. When President Bush delivered his final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, a crowd watching on closed-circuit television at a professional hockey game cheered lustily and began chanting, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"
Yesterday we were issued several shocking reminders direct from the battlefield that wars are actually fought on a plane that is excruciatingly, devastatingly personal. As a sergeant who was shot in the back in Vietnam once told me, "There was nothing in the whole world except me and that pain."
In this new era of televised warfare, the Arab satellite station Al Jazeera showed gruesome footage yesterday of several Americans who had been killed and five who were being held as prisoners of war. If you were looking for a reason not to ever make light of warfare, this would be a good one. The prisoners were questioned on camera, and when one was asked why he was in Iraq, he replied, "Because I was told to come here."
However one feels about the pros or cons of this war, this development was heartbreaking. An undisclosed number of American troops in the region saw the footage, and some wept.
20 Americans dead or missing after day of sharp clashes
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, March 24, 2003
American and British ground forces on Sunday suffered their worst casualties so far while they battled determined Iraqi forces on two fronts in what an American commander said were "the sharpest engagements of the war."
Military officials in the war zone reported that at least 20 American soldiers were missing or killed and 50 or more wounded in a day of ambushes, accidents and tank and artillery engagements.
Battles rage in Iraqi cities, bodies litter desert
Reuters, March 23, 2003
Charred Iraqi corpses smolder in burned-out trucks. Black smoke hangs over bombed cities where U.S. troops battle Iraqi soldiers. Youths greet British tanks with smiles, then sneer when they have passed.
Allies split over Iraq's fate
Ian Mather, Scotsman, March 23, 2003
They are united in military action but Britain and the US are divided over what to do with Iraq once war is done.
A fierce diplomatic battle is under way to gain the upper hand. Despite having bypassed the United Nations in order to go to war with Iraq, Tony Blair wants to bring in the organisation at the soonest possible moment and give it a major role in running Iraq until a legitimate government of Iraqis can be established.
US plans for post-war Iraq are more like those they put into place for a defeated Japan after the Second World War. General Tommy Franks, commander-in-chief of the American and British forces, will probably take control of Iraq as soon as Saddam Hussein is deposed, to become a modern version of General Douglas MacArthur, who was appointed de facto ruler of Japan by President Truman.
This solution is not what the British want. Britain is loath to see a foreign occupation of Iraq because of its own colonial history there, and is pushing for a full-blown UN administration along the lines of those in Kosovo and East Timor, with another UN agency to control Iraq’s oil.
Air raids wreck civilian homes in Baghdad
Hassan Hafidh, Reuters, March 23, 2003
When Shafa Hussein returned from taking her sick son to a Baghdad hospital, she found her home in ruins, destroyed in U.S.-British air strikes.
Her house in the Qadissiya residential area of central Baghdad was reduced to rubble and all her belongings, including money, food and furniture, were buried under heaps of concrete.
"Thank God that my husband, my child and myself were not hurt," said the distraught 39-year-old woman.
Five other houses were demolished and 12 damaged in the raid, which residents said took place at 7:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. EST) on Saturday. They said several people had been wounded and taken to the nearby Yarmouk hospital, but no one had been killed.
The target of what residents said had been cruise missiles was not clear. President Saddam Husssein's Salam palace, hit in air strikes on Friday, is about two miles away. [...]
"This is real terrorism. Innocent people are sitting in their homes and bombs fall on their heads. I ask America, isn't this terrorism?" said Hulayel al-Jekhafi, whose house was damaged in the attack on the Qadissiya neighborhood.
How a walkover turned into a three-day battle
Daniel McGrory and Tim Butcher, The Times, March 24, 2003
The skies over Umm Qasr burned orange last night as the allies brought in tanks, aircraft and heavy artillery in an attempt to bring to an end a three-day siege.
The scale of the resistance met by allied forces in Iraq's only deep-water port has stunned coalition forces.
Intelligence officers had assured the US Marines that they would meet at most a handful of Iraqi diehards refusing to surrender when they marched into Umm Qasr, and on Friday allies spoke of "pockets of resistance".
By last night that assessment had proved so wide of the mark that Marine commanders, edging nervously through the backstreets of this decrepit port, refused to predict how many more gunmen might be waiting for them. One officer said: "The fighting has got worse with each day. So much for the walkover we were told to expect."
Flags in the dust
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, March 24, 2003
Most wars start by accident or with a flourish of misplaced jingoism. But this war is unique. It is hard to recall any conflict in history that aroused so much opposition even before it began. At best its legitimacy and purpose is in serious doubt. At worst, millions regard it as illegal and/or immoral.
Besides that, it is led by a president for whom few outside the United States have any respect. Just as the onus was placed on Iraq, during the period of inspections, to prove that it had no weapons of mass destruction, the onus now is on the invasion forces to convince a sceptical world of their bona fides. This is probably impossible to do, since the official and unofficial aims of the war cannot be reconciled. [...]
Friday brought the appalling "Shock n' Awe Show" which, in its visual effects, resembled something that might have been conceived by a big-budget Hollywood director. Its military purpose, if any, is still far from clear, and those shocked by it were mainly TV viewers outside Iraq.
After decades of wars, sanctions and repression, Iraqis themselves have become inured to almost anything. As the attack was ending, some of the Arab TV channels lingered for a few seconds on a bizarre scene in flickering night-vision green: Iraqi spectators standing in open parkland on the opposite side of the river, watching the fireworks.
Though this attack was meant to terrify the Baghdad regime into submission, nobody in Washington seems to have anticipated its effect on the rest of the world. To some in the Arab and Muslim countries, Shock and Awe is terrorism by another name; to others, a crime that compares unfavourably with September 11.
At 100 hours, Iraq war is no re-run of Gulf triumph
Douglas Hamilton, Reuters, March 24, 2003
Military analysts said the entire operation was now entering a crucial phase which could show whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's gamble on lighter but sharper armies would pay off or prove to be too great a risk.
"The next 72 hours could show whether we've overplayed our hand," said MSNBC television analyst Dan Goure, noting that the northern front Washington had originally hoped to open from Turkey did not exist, due to Ankara's refusal to allow it.
Richard Perle's conflict
Editorial, New York Times, March 24, 2003
As chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle has been an influential architect of the Bush administration's Iraq policy and war plans. At the same time, it turns out, he has signed on to represent a major telecommunications company that has a strong financial interest in lobbying the Defense Department. This is a conflict pure and simple, and Mr. Perle should immediately drop one of his two roles.
'This makes us love Saddam, not America'
34 die as US missiles hit wrong target
Luke Harding, The Guardian, March 24, 2003
The last thing that Omar Mohammed Saeed heard was the sound of the American missile plunging through the roof of his dormitory. It was 12.30 at night, and Mr Saeed and his fellow peshmerga fighters had been fast asleep.
The laser-guided bomb reduced the compound where Mr Saeed had been staying into a tomb of pulverised concrete and metal. There was no chance of escape.
"We don't understand. Why did America do this? My uncle was a kind man who would never have hurt anybody," his nephew, Sadar Mohammed, said yesterday. "This makes us love Saddam Hussein rather than America," he added.
Mr Saeed was killed in a US missile strike against Iraq in the early hours of Saturday. Over the weekend the US fired more than 70 missiles at territory in north-east Iraq controlled by Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamist group linked by the Bush administration to al-Qaida.
It was Mr Saeed's misfortune that on the night the missiles fell from the sky he was sleeping in the next-door village. Most of the missiles landed on Ansar's tiny mountainous enclave, close to the town of Halabja and the Iranian border.
But four missiles hit Khormal, a large neighbouring village, and the headquarters of another Islamic group, Komala. [...]
Ansar's guerrillas have been expecting an American attack since late January, when the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told the UN that the group had links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Its fighters took to the mountains long ago, and appear to have survived the bombardment largely unscathed.
Mr Saeed and his comrades, by contrast, were not thought to be on any US target list. They have no known connection with al-Qaida or with Baghdad. They have spent most of their life fighting Saddam Hussein.
It's my family they're bombing
Aida Kaisy, The Guardian, March 24, 2003
If you catch yourself getting a bit of a kick out of seeing all the weaponry in action, try to remember that, contrary to the images on your television screens, people live in the building you've just seen annihilated, or in the suburb they've just announced is the next target. A missile that "accurately" hits the ministry of defence could well flatten a school next door, and on the pavement outside there will be people carrying on with their lives as best they can.
People in Iraq have to venture outside at some point if they are to survive the coming weeks. Many of my family are doctors and medics, so they have no choice but to be out on the streets of Baghdad. When I see reports of the latest attack, my first thought is not what amazing new technology America has, but which member of my family lives or works in that area .
Nightmare in a minefield
James Meek, The Observer, March 23, 2003
Among the thousands of frightened US Marines out there in the dark on the night America invaded Iraq, Kyle Brisebois, a veteran at 33, should have been one of the cool, confident father figures to the younger men. He kept his head, but the hours of combat and chaos he saw in the fight to take Iraq's oilfields from Thursday to Friday were worse than anything he had experienced in the 1991 Gulf war.
His account to The Observer was one of the first to reveal the intensity of that first night across the border, and the blunders and breakdowns which are the bleak, farcical reality of war.
'It was a nightmare,' he said yesterday, spitting regularly from a plug of chewing tobacco as he waited on a motorway bridge near Basra, preparing to move west. 'It was the worst fucking night of my life.'
A movement, yes, but no counterculture
John Leland, New York Times, March 23, 2003
Three and a half decades ago, protesters massed with a political goal -- to end a war -- but also out of a conviction that many of the values undergirding American society were flawed: 1950's conformity, the materialistic rat race, racism, and even monogamy and the nuclear family. The alternative values they expressed through fashion, music, sexual mores and other lifestyle choices seemed to propose an entirely different world. And many historians feel that this counterculture shaped America more profoundly and for years longer than the stop-the-war rallies.
But as protesters came together across the country last week, with a few radical contingents disrupting cities or destroying property, so far there has been little sense that they also shared a common desire to remake the country's values and institutions.
"It's been amazingly diverse," said Paul Buhle, a lecturer in American civilization and history at Brown University and founder of the New Left Journal of Radical America. "Typically, the radicalizing experience in America is that a group of people wake up and say, 'Everything I've been told is a lie.' And so you have a movement for change in values about race, sexuality, peace and art, all coming together in periods of stress. So far, we've seen very little of that. The only thing that unites people is fear of the consequences of war."
Good foreign policy a casualty of war
Today, it is we Americans who live in infamy
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2003
We are at war again -- not because of enemy attack, as in World War II, nor because of incremental drift, as in the Vietnam War -- but because of the deliberate and premeditated choice of our own government.
Now that we are embarked on this misadventure, let us hope that our intervention will be swift and decisive, and that victory will come with minimal American, British and civilian Iraqi casualties.
But let us continue to ask why our government chose to impose this war. The choice reflects a fatal turn in U.S. foreign policy, in which the strategic doctrine of containment and deterrence that led us to peaceful victory during the Cold War has been replaced by the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. The president has adopted a policy of "anticipatory self-defense" that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, lives in infamy.
CIA questioned documents linking Iraq, uranium ore
Dana Priest and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 22, 2003
CIA officials now say they communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence backing up charges that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons, charges that found their way into President Bush's State of the Union address, a State Department "fact sheet" and public remarks by numerous senior officials.
That evidence was dismissed as a forgery early this month by United Nations officials investigating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. The Bush administration does not dispute this conclusion.
Asked how the administration came to back up one of its principal allegations against Iraq with information its own intelligence service considered faulty, officials said all such assertions were carefully tailored to stay within the bounds of certainty. As for the State of the Union address, a White House spokesman said, "all presidential speeches are fully vetted by the White House staff and relevant U.S. government agencies for factual correctness."
Questioned about the forgery during a recent congressional hearing, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, "We were aware of this piece of evidence, and it was provided in good faith to the [U.N.] inspectors."
But in the days preceding the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, some intelligence officials had begun to acknowledge more openly their doubts about how this and other information was used to support charges that Iraq has a significant covert program to produce weapons of mass destruction.
US general: 'West is failing Afghans'
Phil Reeves, The Independent, March 23, 2003
As American and British cruise missiles create havoc in Baghdad, a US general has accused the West of failing to do enough to rebuild the last country visited by President Bush's military – Afghanistan.
His remarks come amid widespread fury in the international community over the US-British invasion of Iraq, coupled with concern that the onslaught began before adequate preparations had been made for a possible humanitarian crisis.
The chief of the US forces in Afghanistan, Lt-Gen Dan McNeill, said he was "frustrated" that the West had "not made a more bold step" to rebuild Afghanistan, adding that this could be an important lesson for Iraq. The US search for al-Qa'ida and the Taliban would have been easier if the aid had flowed faster, he said.
His remarks echo the worries of many in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, ranging from international aid workers to officials in the unstable transitional government of President Hamid Karzai. Fears abound that the war in Iraq, and its aftermath, will mean that international support falls away.
The philosopher of Islamic terror
Paul Berman, New York Times, March 23, 2003
In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, many people anticipated a quick and satisfying American victory over Al Qaeda. The terrorist army was thought to be no bigger than a pirate ship, and the newly vigilant police forces of the entire world were going to sink the ship with swift arrests and dark maneuvers. Al Qaeda was driven from its bases in Afghanistan. Arrests and maneuvers duly occurred and are still occurring. Just this month, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants was nabbed in Pakistan. Police agents, as I write, seem to be hot on the trail of bin Laden himself, or so reports suggest.
Yet Al Qaeda has seemed unfazed. Its popularity, which was hard to imagine at first, has turned out to be large and genuine in more than a few countries. Al Qaeda upholds a paranoid and apocalyptic worldview, according to which ''Crusaders and Zionists'' have been conspiring for centuries to destroy Islam. And this worldview turns out to be widely accepted in many places -- a worldview that allowed many millions of people to regard the Sept. 11 attacks as an Israeli conspiracy, or perhaps a C.I.A. conspiracy, to undo Islam. Bin Laden's soulful, bearded face peers out from T-shirts and posters in a number of countries, quite as if he were the new Che Guevara, the mythic righter of cosmic wrongs.
Perle's plunder blunder
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 23, 2003
It's Richard Perle's world. We're just fighting in it.
The Prince of Darkness, a man who whips up revelatory soufflés and revolutionary pre-emption doctrines with equal ease, took a victory lap at the American Enterprise Institute on Friday morning.
The critical battle for Baghdad was yet to come and "Shock and Awe" was still a few hours away. (The hawks, who are trying to send a message to the world not to mess with America, might have preferred an even more intimidating bombing campaign title, like "Operation Who's Your Daddy?")
Yet Mr. Perle, an adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, could not resist a little pre-emptive crowing about pre-emption, predicting "a general recognition that high moral purpose has been achieved here. Millions of people have been liberated."
His conservative audience at the Reagan shrine's "black coffee briefing" (they're too macho for milk and sugar) was buzzed that their cherished dream of saving Iraq by bombing it was under way.
Israeli commentators delight in destruction
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, March 23, 2003
It's been a long time since we've seen such enthusiasm. The television studios are filled to overflowing with major generals and brigadier generals who are terribly impressed with the war in Iraq and attempt to infect the viewers with their delight. Veteran warmongers, some of whom are responsible for past wars of choice and for appalling fiascos, hallucinatory operations and unnecessary bloodshed, are now the voice of national reason. Avigdor Ben Gal, for instance, a senior commander in the Lebanon War, without batting an eye called on the IDF to find an immediate "pretext" under cover of the Iraq war for returning to Lebanon. Others who dragged us into unnecessary adventurism, and their colleagues who turned the IDF into a brutal occupation army in the territories, are now our only national commentators.
It was apparent already during the waiting period that the lengthy anticipation was hard on them: They considered every postponement a terrible mistake and every debate about the justification for the war was heresy. Now that the forces are finally on their way, their enthusiasm bursts forth, not merely about the very outbreak of the war, but about the sophisticated equipment being used. The smart bombs and the guided missiles, the satellite navigation and the turbofan engines, the Stealth bombers and the mega-bombs are firing their imagination.
A smile akin to that of a child describing his new toys spreads on their face as they describe the magical allure of the American power of destruction. Former air force commanders, who apparently find it difficult to give up their posts, describe horrific bombing runs or flying extermination machines as if they were works of art.
Rallies across U.S. keep anti-war message alive
San Jose Mercury News, March 23, 2003
Nearly 200,000 anti-war demonstrators took to the streets of Manhattan on Saturday, protesting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq even as bombs rained down on Baghdad again.
Smaller demonstrations took place in dozens of cities nationwide, from thousands marching in San Francisco to several hundred protesters snaking through downtown Washington, chanting, "No blood for oil!"
In New York, the turnout for a march that was 20 abreast and 40 blocks long surprised some parade organizers. They had worried that the round-the-clock bombing and videotape of U.S. tanks racing across the Iraqi desert might cause some anti-war Americans to despair. Instead, unofficial police estimates of the crowd size grew steadily through the day, and marchers spoke of their determination to be heard a final time.
"It's too late to stop the war, but it's important to register that this is an unpopular war," said Joe Fitzgerald, 45, a musician who marched past Manhattan's tree-lined Union Square with his child and his wife, Deane Beebe. "Our government's reasoning is so nakedly cynical -- one day it's because of Al-Qaida, then weapons of mass destruction, then to establish a military presence.
"The pretext for this invasion changes ever day."
For Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Turks, when war stops, the trouble starts
David Pryce-Jones, The Telegraph, March 23, 2003
Saddam will soon be gone. Then what happens? One prediction is a bloodbath - a bloodbath followed by Saddam Mark II. The pessimists believe that the various groupings who inhabit Iraq - the Sunnis and the Shias, the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans and the Turcomen, to name just some of them - will fracture, and relations between them will degenerate quickly into civil war.
The State Department and the Foreign Office have always felt that Iraq was only held together by terror. That was why both Britain and America spent so much time and money supporting Saddam: they knew he was brutal - but they thought that only a tyrannical thug like him could prevent Iraq from imploding.
I am not a pessimist, and I believe that view is wrong - but there is an element of truth in it. Iraq's diverse religious and ethnic groups certainly have a serious potential for conflict. The northern city of Kirkuk, which is on the biggest oil-field in Iraq, is a good example of the kind of problem that lies in wait.
This is the reality of war. We bomb. They suffer
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 23, 2003
Donald Rumsfeld says the American attack on Baghdad is "as targeted an air campaign as has ever existed" but he should not try telling that to five-year-old Doha Suheil. She looked at me yesterday morning, drip feed attached to her nose, a deep frown over her small face as she tried vainly to move the left side of her body. The cruise missile that exploded close to her home in the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad blasted shrapnel into her tiny legs they were bound up with gauze and, far more seriously, into her spine. Now she has lost all movement in her left leg.
A major player waits in Iran
Mohamad Bazzi, Baltimore Sun, March 22, 2003
Before prison and torture, before life in exile, before surviving seven assassination attempts and the execution of dozens of his relatives, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim wished only to become a Muslim theologian.
By the age of 25, al-Hakim had achieved his goal and was teaching Islamic law in Baghdad. The choice he made to become a Shiite Muslim cleric - like his grandfather, father and older siblings - set him on a lifelong confrontation with the secular Iraqi regime and a life in which religion and politics were inextricably linked.
Today, al-Hakim, 63, is the most important Iraqi opposition political or religious figure, a man who will have a lot to say about the stability of Iraq if the United States forcibly removes Saddam Hussein from power. While Shiites are the dominant group in Iraq, making up 60 percent of the country's population of 24 million, a minority from the Sunni branch of Islam has ruled the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1932. The Shiites have been waiting seven decades for a chance to rule, and most of them look toward al-Hakim for leadership.
Construction paper
Why liberals need an affirmative position on Iraq
Nick Penniman and Richard Just, The American Prospect, March 21, 2003
With the U.S. invasion of Iraq under way, American liberals seem at a loss for how to respond. In recent months, most lined up against unilateral war; now that war has begun, the only semi-coherent message emerging from progressive ranks is one of rejectionism. But that tack is a mistake. And it is one liberals could pay for dearly -- at the ballot box and in the department of intellectual credibility -- in future years. When it comes to questions of war, Iraq and reconstruction, liberals need to start thinking constructively, and fast.
A struggle for nuclear power
Rob Edwards, New Scientist, March 22, 2003
The long search by UN inspectors in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has been ended by war. But another, no less urgent, investigation is under way in the little-known town of Natanz, Iran.
The Iranian government admitted in February that it has been secretly building a uranium enrichment plant capable of making fuel either for nuclear reactors, or for bombs. Since then, UN inspectors have been trying to assess whether Iran's intentions are peaceful, or whether it too, like North Korea, is perilously close to building nuclear weapons.
In January 2002, President Bush declared Iran, North Korea and Iraq an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." Since then, the US, backed by Britain, has been loudly preparing for war against Iraq. But it is Iran and North Korea that have taken the opportunity to quietly expand their nuclear programmes.
Ending the age of human rights?
Adam Hochschild, TomDispatch, March 22, 2003
In the war that has just begun, soldiers and civilians will not be the only casualties. Although President Bush trumpets the bringing of democracy to Iraq, in a larger sense the deadly rain of missiles on Baghdad has dealt a major setback to what historians someday may call the Age of Human Rights.
Anti-war protests sweep the globe
BBC News, March 22, 2003
Tens of thousands of people worldwide have taken to the streets to stage the latest series of demonstrations against the conflict in Iraq.
There have been rallies in Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East and Asia, while in the US marches are planned in Washington and other major cities.
Demonstrations are also being held in Paris, Brussels and London, where protesters gathered in the city's Hyde Park for an afternoon of speeches.
Baltimore man among those killed in Iraq
Eric Siegel and Reginald Fields, Baltimore Sun, March 21, 2003
Michelle Waters, the oldest of the dead Marine's four sisters, criticized the U.S. government for starting the hostilities.
"It's all for nothing, that war could have been prevented," she said Friday night in the living room of the family home, tears running down her cheeks. "Now, we're out of a brother. [President] Bush is not out of a brother. We are."
Not in a soldier's name
Paul Oestreicher, The Guardian, March 22, 2003
Interviewed by television crews in the desert, the officers and men on the frontiers of Iraq put a brave face on it all. "We're here to do a job." But killing, and being killed, isn't just a job. At least, some of them know it. Once in the service, it is very, very hard to quit. Comradeship is no mean virtue.
But in the US, it has become an issue. The Quakers, in North Carolina, have established a hotline to counsel disturbed members of the armed services. It is much in demand. Many Americans are devout Christians. Do they listen to church leaders, or do they follow their fundamentalist president, who still believes in crusades? It is tragic and ironic that Christian fundamentalism plays unwittingly into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalism it purports to despise.
A cold shoulder for Saddam's victims
Melanie McFadyean, The Guardian, March 22, 2003
In a sparsely furnished lounge in a flat on the 14th floor of a Salford tower block, a group of Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers gather to talk. Their hosts, Mohammed Saeed and Aso Baram, make them welcome, observing Kurdish hospitality in spite of their poverty, handing round a dish of strawberries.
Three of the men have been given permission to remain in the UK, two others have had their appeals rejected and are technically homeless, and a third has had his initial claim turned down; the rest are in limbo, waiting for a decision on their claims. These young men, and many hundreds like them, lead lives of longing for the homes they have left, of uncertainty about their futures, and of fear for the family and friends they left behind.
It is an unpalatable irony that the UK government, in the midst of its crusade to liberate the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, should be giving such a wretched welcome to many of those who have escaped his regime, condemning them to misery in our cities or sending them back where they came from. For Iraqis from Saddam-controlled Iraq, "enforced removals are not possible", a Home Office spokeswoman says. However, different rules will "shortly" apply for Iraqi Kurds, she adds. Even as war loomed, Iraqi Kurdistan was considered a safe haven for deportees. Until now, the Home Office has not gone so far as to forcibly eject Iraqi Kurds because none of the bordering countries would accept asylum seekers in transit. This has not prevented the National Asylum Support Service (Nass) issuing letters to Iraqi Kurds instructing them to leave the UK immediately.
Minute after minute the missiles came, with devastating shrieks
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 22, 2003
How could the Iraqis ever believe with their broken technology, their debilitating 12 years of sanctions, that they could defeat the computers of these missiles and of these aircraft? It was the same old story: irresistible, unquestionable power.
Well yes, one could say, could one attack a more appropriate regime? But that is not quite the point. For the message of last night's raid was the same as that of Thursday's raid, that of all the raids in the hours to come: that the United States must be obeyed. That the EU, UN, Nato nothing must stand in its way. Indeed can stand in its way.
An empty pledge to civilians?
Sarah Sewall, New York Times, March 21, 2003
In an effort to assuage public concern over civilian casualties in Iraq, President Bush has pledged that America will do its utmost to "spare innocent lives."
The military has shown similar concern, publicly detailing for the first time its significant efforts to limit what it calls "collateral damage." Officials are briefing reporters about collateral damage simulations, ordnance and delivery options and stressing their intentions to avoid harming noncombatants.
Despite these reassuring statements, and the fact that the United States has the technology and the sensibility to fight the cleanest war in town, the Pentagon does not study how military force actually affects civilians. For all of its computer simulations and painstaking planning, the Department of Defense has never undertaken a systemic evaluation to determine whether its efforts to spare lives succeed or fail -- or what might be done to improve them.
America's image further erodes, Europeans want weaker ties
Pew Research Center, March 18, 2003
Anti-war sentiment and disapproval of President Bush's international policies continue to erode America's image among the publics of its allies. U.S. favorability ratings have plummeted in the past six months in countries actively opposing war France, Germany and Russia as well as in countries that are part of the "coalition of the willing." In Great Britain, favorable views of the U.S. have declined from 75% to 48% since mid-2002.
In Poland, positive views of the U.S. have fallen to 50% from nearly 80% six months ago; in Italy, the proportion of respondents holding favorable views of the United States has declined by half over the same period (from 70% to 34%). In Spain, fewer than one-in-five (14%) have a favorable opinion of the United States. Views of the U.S. in Russia, which had taken a dramatically positive turn after Sept. 11, 2001, are now more negative than they were prior to the terrorist attacks.
Unauthorized entry
The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone's permission
Michael Kinsley, Slate, March 20, 2003
Until this week, the president's personal authority to use America's military might was subject to two opposite historical trends. On the one hand, there is the biggest scandal in constitutional law: the gradual disappearance of the congressional Declaration of War. Has there ever been a war more suited to a formal declaration—started more deliberately, more publicly, with less urgency and at more leisure—than the U.S. war on Iraq? Right or wrong, Gulf War II resembles the imperial forays of earlier centuries more than the nuclear standoffs and furtive terrorist hunts of the 20th and 21st. Yet Bush, like all recent presidents, claims for his person the sovereign right to launch such a war. Like his predecessors, he condescends only to accept blank-check resolutions from legislators cowed by fear of appearing disloyal to troops already dispatched.
On the other hand, since the end of World War II, the United States has at least formally agreed to international constraints on the right of any nation, including itself, to start a war. These constraints were often evaded, but rarely just ignored. And evasion has its limits, enforced by the sanction of embarrassment. This gave these international rules at least some real bite.
Plan B for the peace movement
Paul Loeb and Geov Parrish, In These Times, March 20, 2003
Although millions have marched worldwide, Bush's war on Iraq is underway. But the peace movement is working not only to stop this war, but to lay the groundwork to prevent it from leading to future wars in Iran, North Korea, Colombia or wherever else the Bush administration sees a "target of opportunity." This means we'll need those now surging into the peace movement to stick around for the long haul, and not melt away when times get hard.
During the first Gulf War, one arguably more justified, the U.S. peace movement got kicked in the gut. Then too, major protests surged through American and European cities, hoping to stop the war before it started. But once the war began, mainstream American debate over the wisdom of war was quickly supplanted by the insistence that anything other than relentless cheerleading was disloyal to the troops and the country. Americans overwhelmingly supported the first Gulf War because it succeeded militarily, and because the more than hundred thousand Iraqis who died were faceless and anonymous.
Those who continued speaking out for peace quickly found themselves marginalized, isolated and silenced. Most quickly retreated, many entering a political cocoon they would stay in for years. Yet for some who've been active working for justice and peace ever since, that war was their entry point to involvement.
Mass arrests at US peace demo
BBC News, March 21, 2003
Police in San Francisco have arrested 1,025 people during violence at an anti-war demonstration. Protesters blocked streets leading from the city's Oakland Bay Bridge, while small groups of people clashed with police and threw debris.
Tens of thousands of people joined demonstrations across the US.
There were huge protests across the world on Thursday, with violence in several countries including Belgium, Egypt, Spain, India and Switzerland.
Bubbles of fire tore into the sky above Baghdad
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 21, 2003
It was like a door slamming deep beneath the surface of the earth; a pulsating, minute-long roar of sound that brought President George Bush's supposed crusade against "terrorism" to Baghdad last night.
There was a thrashing of tracer on the horizon from the Baghdad air defences – the Second World War-era firepower of old Soviet anti-aircraft guns – and then a series of tremendous vibrations that had the ground shaking under our feet. Bubbles of fire tore into the sky around the Iraqi capital, dark red at the base, golden at the top.
Saddam Hussein, of course, has vowed to fight to the end but in Baghdad last night, there was a truly Valhalla quality about the violence. Within minutes, looking out across the Tigris river I could see pin-pricks of fire as bombs and cruise missiles exploded on to Iraq's military and communications centres and, no doubt, upon the innocent as well.
Pentagon hawk linked to UK intelligence company
Richard Perle is director of firm selling terror alert software
David Leigh, The Guardian, March 21, 2003
Amid general stock market jitters, one British company linked to the American hawk Richard Perle and dealing with secret intelligence is among the few UK commercial organisations that stand to profit from the Iraq war and its accompanying worldwide terrorist alert.
The Cambridge-based Autonomy Corporation, with Mr Perle's help, is secretively selling advanced computer eavesdropping systems to intelligence agencies around the world.
Its software simultaneously monitors hundreds of thousands of intercepted emails and phone conversations while they are taking place.
It claims to turn patterns of conversation into "beams of light" of varying thickness on a screen, revealing anomalies that might be code phrases.
Clients to date are believed to include MI6 and GCHQ, the newly launched US department of homeland security in Washington, and intelligence agencies in Italy.
Today it is a pile of desert stones. Tomorrow it may mark an exodus
Mark Baker, The Age, March 21, 2003
As the United States and its allies head to war in Iraq, confident that their overwhelming military superiority will ensure a decisive victory over Saddam Hussein, there is an even greater certainty - thousands of Iraqi civilians will be killed and injured, countless more will be forced to flee the conflict and most of those left behind will face hunger and disease.
But while months of meticulous planning have been invested in the preparations for war, there is an alarming lack of preparation for its inevitable human impact.
See also Invading troops will have to feed 16m Iraqis, warn aid agencies
Another Gulf War, another al-Qaeda
Ahmad Faruqui, Asia Times, March 20, 2003
Arguing that there is a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, the administration of US President George W Bush convinced Congress last October about the need to invade Iraq as an act of self-defense. A slender majority of Americans now believe that Iraq was behind the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, and support such a war with or without United Nations approval. Unfortunately, this link is a mirage. The real link between al-Qaeda and Iraq is very different.
It is a fact of history that the US decision to prosecute the Gulf War in 1991 spawned al-Qaeda. From the very beginning, Osama bin Laden's refrain has been that Western forces on Arab soil have compromised Arab sovereignty and polluted Islam's holy lands. Al-Qaeda played on these grievances to recruit radical young Arabs to its cause. By pointing out the pro-Israel bias in US foreign policy, bin Laden gave his message a grassroots appeal on the Arab street. Through the clever use of historical symbols, he has sought to position himself as a modern-day Saladin who would wrest control of Jerusalem for the Muslims.
Residents of Afghan capital condemn America as Iraq war begins
Todd Pitman, Associated Press, March 20, 2003
Residents of Afghanistan's capital on Thursday condemned the United States and its allies for attacking Iraq, and the United Nations ordered all nonessential staff to stay home as a precaution against possible violence.
"Today is a dark day for Muslims," said Sher Aga, a 50-year-old military aviation teacher at the Air Force Academy in Kabul. "My heart is crying for the nation of Iraq. I hope the aggressors will be buried."
Washington says Afghanistan is among some 30 countries that are part of a "Coalition for the Immediate Disarmament of Iraq."
Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government, put in place after a U.S.-led anti-terrorist war ousted the Taliban regime in 2001, has said using force to disarm Iraq is justified -- a point of view that starkly contrasts with most of the population's.
After the shooting stops, dreams of politicians often fall apart
Mark Mazower, Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2003
The Bush administration has it all planned out. War will lead to the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The fall of the dictator will usher democracy into Iraq. Then the contagion of freedom will spread throughout the region, bringing its people prosperity, taking the wind out of the sails of terrorism and securing American interests.
Well, it may be right. But it may as easily be seriously wrong. Wars can lead to sweeping changes on a world scale, as some in the administration believe will happen. But there is a sting, too, in the historical tail: War's changes are unpredictable. That's the lesson of World War I, which set the stage for the creation of the modern Middle East.
A century ago there was no Iraq, no Israel, Jordan or Kuwait, no republics of Lebanon, Syria or Turkey. It was war that swept away the old Ottoman Empire and allowed European and American statesmen to conjure up states where none had existed before. Yet ultimately, they were unable to bring their plans to fruition or create the stability and order they dreamed of. None of those who entered the war came close to predicting the world order that emerged at the other end.
Halliburton makes a killing on Iraq war
Cheney's former company profits from supporting troops
Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch, March 20, 2003
As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, CorpWatch has learned that thousands of employees of Halliburton, United States Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, are working alongside United States troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. According to US Army sources, they are building tent cities and providing logistical support for the war in Iraq in addition to other hot spots in the "war on terrorism."
While recent news coverage has speculated on the post-war reconstruction gravy train that corporations like Halliburton stand to gain from, this latest information indicates that Halliburton is already profiting from war time contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Iraq oil field fires could be devastating
Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist, March 20, 2003
Iraqi oil wells near the southern city of Basra may have been set alight, according to unconfirmed reports. If true, the consequences of such fires could be far worse than devastating effects of the Kuwaiti wells torched by retreating Iraqi forces in the 1991 war.
Third U.S. diplomat resigns over Iraq policy
Reuters, March 20, 2003
A third U.S. diplomat has resigned partly because of opposition to U.S. policy toward Iraq, a U.S. State Department official said on Thursday.
Mary Wright, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, cited U.S. policy toward Iraq, North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as reasons for her decision to step down, said the official, who asked not to be named. The official did not know when Wright's resignation took effect.
"I strongly believe that going to war now will make the world more dangerous, not safer," Wright, the senior-most U.S. diplomat to step down over Iraq, said in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell that quoted by the Washington Post.
HOW LARGE IS LARGE?
"The coalition against Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, is large and growing. This is not a unilateral action, as is being characterized in the media. Indeed, the coalition in this activity is larger than the coalition that existed during the Gulf War in 1991." Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon briefing, March 20, 2003
While Donald Rumsfeld just made this audacious claim, the numbers tell a very different story. In 1991, coalition forces provided more than 295,000 troops (including 66,000 from Saudi Arabia, 35,000 from Egypt, and 19,000 from Syria) to augment a U.S. force of 430,000. This time in addition to 255,000 American troops committed to the war, there are 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian, while troops committed by the remaining 42 'willing' coalition members number precisely zero.
War will be mostly an American effort
Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, March 19, 2003
The "coalition of the willing" arrayed against Iraq may bolster the U.S. war effort diplomatically, but defense officials said yesterday that the impending war is still largely an American affair.
Of the 45 or so nations listed in the coalition poised to strike Iraq, just a few are offering military support beyond logistical aid and transit rights. Besides the United States, only Britain, with its 45,000 troops, planes and warships, and Australia, with its 2,000-strong phalanx of special forces, fighter planes and naval vessels, are offering up potent strike capability.
The twenty lies of George W. Bush
Patrick Martin, World Socialist, March 20, 2003
Monday night's 15-minute speech by President Bush, setting a 48-hour deadline for war against Iraq, went beyond the usual distortions, half-truths, and appeals to fear and backwardness to include a remarkable number of barefaced, easily refuted lies.
The enormous scale of the lying suggests two political conclusions: the Bush administration is going to war against Iraq with utter contempt for democracy and public opinion, and its war propaganda counts heavily on the support of the American media, which not only fails to challenge the lies, but repeats and reinforces them endlessly.
Rep. Stark blasts Bush on Iraq war
Fremont Democrat says plan to bomb Baghdad is 'act of extreme terrorism'
Zachary Coile, San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2003
In one of the most brutal critiques of the administration's policy toward Iraq by a member of Congress, East Bay Rep. Pete Stark said President Bush would be responsible for "an act of terror" by launching a massive bombing campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war . . . to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism," said Stark, a Democrat from Fremont.
Even as we shop for canned food and painkillers, it is difficult to grasp the reality of what is coming
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 20, 2003
In Yasser Arafat Street, at the Sana Nimr al-Ibrahim pharmacy, Riad offered to give me two rolls of bandages free. I told him I'd better pay, since I thought the RAF was going to bomb him in a few hours time. "I think they are,'' he said. Then he shot me the kind of grin I didn't deserve.
As a Brit, buying emergency rations in the shops of Baghdad yesterday evening was an instructive experience. Riad's pharmacy was crowded, his customers buying up not just bandages but splints, painkillers, tweezers, cotton wool, disinfectant and rubbing alcohol. It had been the same on Tuesday night, from 5pm right up to 10pm.
Yet in all Yasser Arafat Street, there wasn't a curse or a bad word for a Brit. I was told always that I was "welcome in Iraq'' – the few journalists here must fervently hope this remains the case when the blitz begins – and that it was pleasant to see a sahafa, a journalist, taking the same risks as the people in the street. This was not, of course, the moment to remind them that I had a flak jacket when they did not, that I had a gas mask, which they have not, that I even have a helmet that would fit any of their heads but is likely to be only on mine.
World leaders decry US attack
Paul MacInnes, The Guardian, March 20, 2003
The declaration of war brought fierce criticism from world leaders today, as Russia accused the US of committing "a big political mistake" and France expressed its "regret" over the strikes.
Taking aim at military technology
Noah Shachtman, Wired News, March 19, 2003
As America is poised to launch into a high-tech war in Iraq, a growing group of military thinkers is questioning the U.S. military's reliance on gadgetry.
U.S. precision weapons, Predator drones, and the like were less responsible for recent victories in Afghanistan and in the first Gulf War than is generally assumed, they argue. And increasing American dependence on technology leaves U.S. troops dangerously vulnerable to low-tech attacks.
"Just as technology gives you capabilities, it also gives you an Achilles heel," said Deborah Avant, a George Washington University international affairs professor. "It becomes something you have to protect."
In Afghanistan, the conventional wisdom goes, all it took was a handful of Special Forces, some spy sensors and a few thousand smart bombs to roll over al Qaeda and the Taliban. But that's a myth, according to Army War College professor Stephen Biddle.
Regime change
Paul Woodward, The War in Context, March 20, 2003
A tangled web of speculation has been woven around the motives of the Bush administration as it now embarks on war. The one thing that is indisputable is George Bush's dedication to the goal of deposing Saddam Hussein's regime. The detour through the United Nations was merely an attempt -- that turned out to be fruitless -- to enlist international support under a legal fig leaf of disarmament. What the administration insisted as describing as a diplomatic process never deviated from Bush's fundamental doctrine; you're either with us or against us.
In recent days, before the so-called diplomatic process had officially ended and outside the attention of the Western media, it became apparent that America would broach no peaceful settlement with Saddam. The Saudi-backed London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, reported on March 10 that the White House refused to take delivery of a letter from President Hussein to President Bush, carried by the intermediary, Qatari foreign minister, Sheihk Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al-Thani. The letter reportedly stressed Saddam's complete readiness to cooperate with the United States in all its demands in return for allowing the regime to remain in place. White House officials would neither accept delivery of the letter nor allow the Qatari minister to discuss its contents with President Bush.
If these reports are accurate, they suggest that not only has George Bush remained unwavering in his commitment to remove Saddam, but they also provide a clear warning to others: lose your lines of communication to the White House and your days are numbered.
Yasser Arafat and Kim Jong-Il take note. If George Bush denies your political authority you likely have no future. As for President Khatami and others who have thus far merely been cold-shouldered by this administration, there's never been a time when it mattered more to enlist support from friends and allies.
Meanwhile, as George Bush wields America's military might he needs to decide, even before the dust has cleared and the dead have been buried, whether America truly needs friends.
How quickly liberators turn into oppressors
James P. Pinkerton, Newsday, March 20, 2003
"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." That was Dick Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, speaking of the forthcoming U.S. occupation of Iraq. And when host Tim Russert looked at him skeptically, the vice president said it again.
Others differ. Wesley Clark, a retired four-star general, former supreme commander of NATO, says, "The occupation is going to be very challenging." Clark, of course, remembers Vietnam; he was there for two tours of duty. American GIs were well-enough received in 1965, but just a decade later, the last Americans had to be evacuated via helicopter from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
And that's the lesson: in the game of "liberating" and "peacekeeping," the last chapter is often different from the first chapter.
Some dare call it treason
Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange, March 19, 2003
Saddam Hussein has rejected President Bush's ultimatum to leave Iraq. At home, the Department of Homeland Security raised the terror alert to orange, indicating a high risk of attacks. When history's deadliest one-day display of air power hits Iraq, thousands of Iraqis will be shocked, awed and killed and President Bush will be well started on his road to empire building.
What will happen to the US anti-war movement when the bombs start falling on Iraq?
Cheney's bogus nuclear weapon
Imad Khadduri (former Iraqi nuclear scientist), YellowTimes, March 19, 2003
On NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday, March 16, 2003, Vice President Cheney audaciously reiterated an ominous note.
NBC: "And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree?"
Cheney: "I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree. Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. … We know that based on intelligence, that [Saddam] has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong."
After 218 inspections of 141 sites over three months by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei charged that the U.S. had used faked and erroneous evidence to support the claims that Iraq was importing enriched uranium and other material, notably the aluminum tubes and small magnets for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date, found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq," the chief atomic weapons inspector had told the U.N. Security Council on Friday March 7, 2003.
The arrogance of power
Senator Robert C. Byrd, United States Senate, March 19, 2003
I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.
But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.
The sum of all fears
What you should and shouldn't worry about as we go to war
Robert Wright, Slate, March 18, 2003
Brace yourself for a round of I-told-you-so's from Iraq hawks. And blame it partly on Iraq doves. In trying to head off war, some doves have warned of nightmarish consequences that are in fact not all that likely, thus setting the stage for a postwar public relations triumph by hawks. That's too bad because for every dubious nightmare scenario there's a more valid and equally harrowing worry about the effects of the coming war.
Nuclear inspectors reportedly angry
Dan Stober, San Jose Mercury News, March 18, 2003
As United Nations nuclear inspectors flee Iraq, some of them are angry at the Bush administration for cutting short their work, bad-mouthing their efforts and making false claims about evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Some inspectors are "scandalized" at the way President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others, have "politicized" the inspection process, said a source close to the inspectors.
None of the nuclear-related intelligence trumpeted by the administration has held up to scrutiny, inspectors say. From suspect aluminum tubes to aerial photographs to documents -- revealed to be forgeries -- that claimed to link Iraq to uranium from Niger, inspectors say they chased U.S. leads that went nowhere and wasted valuable time in their efforts to determine the extent of Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons banned after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Antiwar movement divided by thoughts on civil disobedience
Kate Zernike, New York Times, March 19, 2003
The antiwar movement is splintered over how to respond to a conflict in Iraq. Some advocates argue for showy acts of civil disobedience. Others say they fear that too much disruption would alienate the public that they are trying to sway.
The dispute occurs at a turning point for the movement, as the hundreds of thousands of protesters who overwhelmed the streets of several cities last month realize that they have not been able to stop the war.
Bugging devices found at European Union
BBC News, March 19, 2003
Electronic bugging devices have been found at offices used by French and German delegations at a European Union building in Brussels, officials have confirmed. Devices were also discovered at offices used by other delegations, said EU spokesman Dominique-Georges Marro.
Extra security measures have been adopted in the building, ahead of a meeting of EU leaders to be held there on Thursday and Friday.
The discovery of the telephone tapping systems was first reported on Wednesday by France's Le Figaro newspaper, which blamed the US. But Mr Marro said it was "impossible at this stage" to determine who had planted the devices.
The telephone tapping comes at a time of heightened tensions within the EU - which is deeply divided over Iraq - and of worsening relations between the US and EU members France and Germany.
Oppressed by Saddam, my family will now bear the brunt of this onslaught
Dr Salih Ibrahim, The Independent, March 19, 2003
I fear I may have spoken to my sisters for the last time. At the weekend I tried to telephone Widad and Dhikra, who live in Baghdad, but I couldn't get through. And now America and Britain are preparing to bomb the city and the line will soon go dead for a long time.
What a bitter taste it leaves, knowing that my sisters are being made to endure this fresh atrocity. This assault on Iraq is unjustified and cruel and I oppose it totally. Martin Luther King said: "Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows" and I feel this war will be no different.
New scrutiny of role of religion in Bush's policies
Jane Lampman, Christian Science Monitor, March 17, 2003
President Bush has never been shy about injecting his faith into the public arena - his campaign remark that Jesus Christ was his "favorite political philosopher" was an early signal. But his rising use of religious language and imagery in recent months, especially with regard to the US role in the world, has stirred concern both at home and abroad.
In this year's State of the Union address, for example, Bush quoted an evangelical hymn that refers to the power of Christ. "'There's power, wonder-working power,' in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people," he said.
Now, some critics are wondering whether the influence of Bush's evangelical faith goes beyond public rhetoric to shape his foreign policy regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
Hope fades as the citizens of Baghdad begin to foresee the appalling fate awaiting them
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 19, 2003
The darkness is beginning to descend, the fog of anxiety that falls upon all people when they realise that they face unimaginable danger. It's not just the thousands of empty, shut-up shops in Baghdad, whose owners are taking their goods home for fear of looting. It's not even the sight of concrete barges beside the Tigris to provide transport if the Americans blow up the great bridges. It's a feeling – and I quote a long-term Baghdad resident who has lived in the Middle East for almost a quarter of a century – that "the glue will come unstuck and there will be nothing left to hold people together".
The nightmare is not so much the cruel bombardment of Iraq, whose inevitability is now assured, as the growing conviction that the Anglo-American invasion will provoke a civil war, of Shia against Sunnis, of Sunnis against Kurds, of Kurds and Turkomans. Driving through the streets of the great Shia slums of Saddam City – the millions here originally came from the Amara region of southern Iraq – it is possible to comprehend the fears of the Sunni minority, that the poor will descend in their tens of thousands to pillage Baghdad City the moment central authority crumbles.
The war after the war
U.S. army documents warn of occupation hazards
Jason Vest, Village Voice, March 19, 2003
Despite the sanguine way George W. Bush and his chamberlains talk about a post-war Iraq, senior military officers are worried.
According to recent unpublicized U.S. Army War College studies being read with increasing interest by some Pentagon planners, "The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious."
And that's especially true if occupation force soldiers are not retrained to be "something similar to a constabulary force" and imbued with the understanding that "force is often the last resort of the occupation soldier." The War College studies explore in detail a troubling paradox: While all experts agree that stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq would be a protracted endeavor, "the longer a U.S. occupation of Iraq continues," one of the studies notes, "the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces."
Iraq's ultimate option
Surrender to the United Nations
Lead Editorial, The Guardian, March 19, 2003
Iraq must surrender. It really has no other viable choice. The Baghdad regime should agree to relinquish power and place the country under the protection of the UN security council. Saddam Hussein, his sons and chief cronies should accept the American offer of safe conduct and go into exile while they still can. Iraq might then be peacefully occupied by military forces operating under UN auspices and with a fresh UN mandate. If Iraq's dictator does not immediately follow this course of action, it is certain that President George Bush will not rest until he has been forcibly removed from power and in all probability killed. For the greater good, but also for his own wretched survival, Saddam must give it up. Surrender is now the only way to avoid a devastating, imminent onslaught that may claim thousands of lives and will have but one ultimate outcome.
Dilemmas of war
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, March 19, 2003
These will be dark days for everyone. Darkest for those caught up in combat - whether they are the civilians whose homes and families are about to be bombarded in an unprecedented display of "shock and awe", or the uniformed men and women dropping the bombs. They are both about to enter the dizzying, topsy-turvy world of war, where death could come at any moment.
But there is darkness closer to home, too. In these days of anxiety and fear, where should those who have opposed this war put themselves? How should they cope with the coming days of shock and awe?
This is a road map to nowhere
The Palestinians need an end to occupation, not bogus statehood
Ahmad Samih Khalidi, The Guardian, March 19, 2003
George Bush and Tony Blair's burst of enthusiasm for Palestine is a transparent attempt to stretch the sticking plaster of a Middle East settlement over the gaping wound of the Iraq crisis. The notion of "linkage" between the two regional conflicts, hotly denied during the first Gulf war, has now seemingly become official Anglo-American policy.
That would not be such a bad thing if the much-vaunted "road map", due to be unveiled by George Bush this week, were capable of leading to a real resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crises. Instead, international Middle East peacemaking has effectively been forced to adopt the agenda of the Israeli right.
Its basic assumptions are as follows: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the primary source of insecurity in the area. Democracy, or rather the lack of it, is. So democratisation needs to come before any lasting peace. Since Arabs and Muslims are, as we know, largely immune to democratic contagion, a long-term transitional phase will be necessary. During that period, Israel must be ready to quell Palestinian national aspirations by force, while the Palestinians and other Arabs should be put through their democratic paces, until they prove worthy of whatever crumbs of freedom and independence can be proffered without real cost or inconvenience to Israel.
Metaphor and war, again
George Lakoff, AlterNet, March 18, 2003
Metaphors can kill.
That's how I began a piece on the first Gulf War back in 1990, just before the war began. Many of those metaphorical ideas are back, but within a very different and more dangerous context. Since Gulf War II is due to start any day, perhaps even tomorrow, it might be useful to take a look before the action begins at the metaphorical ideas being used to justify Gulf War II.
One of the most central metaphors in our foreign policy is that A Nation Is A Person. It is used hundreds of times a day, every time the nation of Iraq is conceptualized in terms of a single person, Saddam Hussein. The war, we are told, is not being waged against the Iraqi people, but only against this one person. Ordinary American citizens are using this metaphor when they say things like, "Saddam is a tyrant. He must be stopped." What the metaphor hides, of course, is that the 3000 bombs to be dropped in the first two days will not be dropped on that one person. They will kill many thousands of the people hidden by the metaphor, people that according to the metaphor we are not going to war against.
Bush clings to dubious allegations about Iraq
Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank, Washington Post, March 18, 2003
As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged -- and in some cases disproved -- by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports.
For months, President Bush and his top lieutenants have produced a long list of Iraqi offenses, culminating Sunday with Vice President Cheney's assertion that Iraq has "reconstituted nuclear weapons." Previously, administration officials have tied Hussein to al Qaeda, to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and to an aggressive production of biological and chemical weapons. Bush reiterated many of these charges in his address to the nation last night.
But these assertions are hotly disputed. Some of the administration's evidence -- such as Bush's assertion that Iraq sought to purchase uranium -- has been refuted by subsequent discoveries. Other claims have been questioned, though their validity can be known only after U.S. forces occupy Iraq.
Concessions of a dangerous mind
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, March 17, 2003
It was a scene reminiscent of 1938 when the hapless British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, returned from Munich with a piece of paper signed by Herr Hitler.
Last Friday, having wrought what he imagined was an important concession from the most dangerous leader of his day, Tony Blair summoned the media to Downing Street to give them the good news.
Those privileged to hear it first were not just the normal Westminster press corps. Arab journalists were given pride of place at the press conference, and allowed to ask the first questions.
Unlike Chamberlain, Mr Blair did not actually have a signed piece of paper to wave, but he said President George Bush had agreed that the road map for Middle East peace would be "published as soon as the Palestinian prime minister [Abu Mazen] takes office".
White House has plans to rebuild Iraq within a year
Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, March 18, 2003
Regardless of President Bush's aversion to nation building during the 2000 election campaign, Washington is about to embark on the most ambitious such exercise since it supervised the reintegration of Germany and Japan into the international system after the Second World War.
The first firm indications of what it has in mind will come in the supplemental budget request, which could reach $100bn (£63bn), the administration will submit to Congress to cover the cost of war and its immediate aftermath.
But the plans reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday give a flavour. Just $50m has been earmarked for NGO humanitarian groups, compared with a first tranche of reconstruction contracts pencilled in for US companies, worth $1.5bn. Many of the companies involved have been substantial donors to the Republican Party.
Things to come
Paul Krugman, New York Times, March 18, 2003
The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts.
Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court -- all in just two years.
A naked bid to redraw world map
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2003
The island bit over the weekend was a revealing farce. The three wannabe liberators, determined to export popular rule to Iraq, had to flee the protests of their own peoples to an inaccessible retreat in the Azores. How fitting to choose an island chain originally settled by a Portuguese Crusader whose goal was to encircle the Muslim world with Christian armies.
Unlike the other leaders of his tiny "coalition of the willing," George W. Bush can at least claim a slim majority at home in support of his war after selling frightened Americans the big lie that Iraq is connected to 9/11. But how do British and Spanish leaders claim to be acting in the spirit of democracy when almost no one in their countries supports going to war without the backing of the United Nations, which has now been gutted? Instead of a U.N. vote and a final report from the chief weapons inspectors, Bush jettisons democracy with a 48-hour ultimatum.
How dare Bush and company champion freedom and the rule of law after running roughshod over the U.N. Security Council following their failed attempt to intimidate or bribe a majority of members into compliance? Clearly, the independence demonstrated by the council among countries large and small was one of the U.N.'s finest moments.
A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the eve of war
Dear Governor Bush:
So today is what you call "the moment of truth," the day that "France and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table." I'm glad to hear that this day has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya, having survived 440 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure if I could take much more. So I'm glad to hear that today is Truth Day, 'cause I got a few truths I would like to share with you:
1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works!
On the bink
The neocon-xenophobe war
Harold Meyerson, LA Weekly, March 14, 2003
The plans are laid, the troops are in place. All that America lacks as it stands on the brink of war are allies, international sanction and a plausible rationale for why we’re going to war in the first place.
Listening to the president justify the war he is about to start, one question that invariably springs to mind is whether the argument is really that weak, or the arguer just that inept. (As Yeats put it, “Who can tell the dancer from the dance?”) Bush has boiled down the case for the war to a soundbite that, as the Washington Post’s David Broder has pointed out, is internally consistent (but nothing else): Bush was sworn to protect the country; Saddam Hussein is or will be a threat to the country and is not disarming sufficiently; Bush must therefore order his removal.
To all the objections to this case, Bush’s robotic response, as anyone who heard last week’s press conference can attest, is to repeat his case. (Clearly, Bush’s chief goal during that press conference was to get through it without a smirk or anything that betrayed how utterly comfortable he is with the thought of going to war.) Since increasingly his case is based on the threat that Saddam presents, Bush is now stating baldly that Iraq poses a direct threat to the U.S., something the administration never bothered to bring up until the last couple of months.
Whose interests at heart?
The invasion and occupation of Iraq cannot give my people their freedom
Sami Ramadani, The Guardian, March 18, 2003
A couple of weeks ago I went with my partner and our little boy to see our Labour MP, Bridget Prentice, in the House of Commons. We waited for two-and-a-half hours but she neither showed up nor sent a note. I wrote her a brief letter but she hasn't acknowledged it yet.
We are British citizens of Iraqi origin. My wife, who is Kurdish from Sulaimaniyah, fled Iraqi Kurdistan in the mid-1980s, risking her life in the process. I am also an exile and cannot go back to Iraq because of my resistance to Saddam's tyranny. Our son is four, and was born here.
As a family, we wanted to tell our MP how we feel now, with war against Iraq imminent. So far, she has supported the government; we went to see her in the hope that, even at this late hour, she will change her mind and vote against war.
Why I had to leave the cabinet
Robin Cook, The Guardian, March 18, 2003
I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour's foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us
I cannot defend a war with neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.
In recent days France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.
The harsh reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato. Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
In vain, I looked for signs of the storm to come. Baghdad is a city sleepwalking to war
Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 18, 2003
For Baghdad, it is night number 1,001, the very last few hours of fantasy. As UN inspectors prepared to leave the city in the early hours of this morning, Saddam Hussein has appointed his own son, Qusay, to lead the defence of the city of the Caliphs against the American invasion. Yet at the Armed Forces club yesterday, I found the defenders playing football. Iraqi television prepares Baghdad people for the bombardment to come with music from the Hollywood film, Gladiator. But the Iraqis went on with their work of disarming the soon-to-be invaded nation, observing the destruction of two more Al-Samoud missiles.
The UN inspectors, only hours from packing, even turned up to observe this very last bit of the disarmament which the Americans had so fervently demanded and in which they have now totally lost interest. With the inspectors gone, there is nothing to stop the Anglo-American air forces commencing their bombardment of the cities of Iraq.
So is Baghdad to be Stalingrad, as Saddam tells us? It doesn't feel like it. The roads are open, checkpoints often unmanned, the city's soldiery dragging on cigarettes outside the United Nations headquarters. From the banks of the Tigris river – a muddy, warm sewage-swamped version of Stalingrad's Volga – I watched yesterday evening the fishermen casting their lines for the fish that Baghdadis eat after sunset. The Security Council resolution withdrawn? Tony Blair calls an emergency meeting of the Cabinet? George Bush to address the American people? Baghdad, it seems, is sleep-walking its way into history.
The man who would be president
Thomas Powers, New York Times, March 16, 2003
If war comes -- the phrase used so often in recent months -- the fighting may be quick or prolonged, but few experts doubt that the huge American force now concentrating in the Middle East will prevail in the end. When the regime finally changes in Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein is dead, in custody or in exile, 70 years of Iraqi independence will end, political authority will pass into the hands of George W. Bush and Western rule will be planted on Arab soil for the first time since the French and British left the region in the middle of the last century.
What then happens to Iraq's 23 million people, its oil and its relations with its neighbors will remain the personal responsibility of Mr. Bush and his successors in the White House until one of them chooses to surrender it.
This dramatic expansion of President Bush's job description, little discussed during the long months of argument at the United Nations over Iraqi weapons, will be the immediate practical result of an American military victory and the occupation of Iraq by the Army's Central Command.
As the military commander in chief, the president will have virtually unlimited power to change and rebuild Iraq as he sees fit, far greater power, for example, than Queen Victoria's over India in the 19th century.
With ears and eyes closed
Bob Herbert, New York Times, March 17, 2003
It was a weekend of going through the motions. Lip service was still being given to the idea that the war could be stopped. "It's Not Too Late," read one of the signs displayed on Saturday as tens of thousands of antiwar protesters marched from the Washington Monument to the White House.
Dick Cheney was on television yesterday morning advancing the fiction that "we're still in the final stages of diplomacy." President Bush was meeting in the Azores with his coalition of the hard-of-hearing, the small but stubborn group of men committed to attacking Iraq no matter how wrong or undesirable that might be, or how much outrage it provokes around the world.
We're about to watch the tragedy unfold. The president, who's wanted war with Iraq all along, has been unwilling to listen seriously to anyone with an opposing view. He's turned his back on those worried about the consequences of a split in the trans-Atlantic alliance that has served the world well for better than half a century. He's closed his mind to those who have argued that pre-emptive warfare will ultimately make the world more — not less — unstable.
Mr. Bush has remained unmoved by the millions of protesters against the war who have demonstrated in the United States and around the world. If any one of those millions has had something worthwhile to say, the president hasn't acknowledged it.
Doomsayer heaven
Bill Broadway, The Age, March 17, 2003
Ever since Jesus said that only God knows the hour or day of the Second Coming, preachers and self-appointed doomsayers have been trying to predict when it will happen. Even those who chastise date-setters nearly always say, "God's final judgement is coming soon, so get ready".
In recent weeks, the prophetic interpreters have been citing a new reason they believe the end is coming: the impending US-led war with Iraq.
Anxious discussions have arisen on prophecy websites, in Bible study groups and churches, and at such gatherings as last month's 20th International Prophecy Conference in Tampa, Florida.
Many see evidence of Iraq's significance in doomsday scenarios in key passages of the apocalyptic book of Revelation. Chapter 16, which includes the only mention of Armageddon in the Bible, carries a direct reference to the Euphrates River, which runs through modern-day Iraq.
A road map to nowhere
Alon Ben-Meir, UPI, March 17, 2003
After more than two years of strategic neglect that brought the Israelis and Palestinians to the brink of disaster, President Bush, under intense pressure from his staunch ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and many Arab heads-of-state decided to advance his ideas about a road map for peace in the Middle East.
To do so on the eve of waging war against Iraq, however, seems to be nothing more than a diplomatic stunt designed to placate a politically besieged friend and assuage incensed Arab leaders who feel abandoned for a narrow American objective with Iraq as its only focus.
WHO'S LISTENING TO GOD?
George Bush thinks God is on his side, Tony Blair hopes he's right, but the Vatican emphatically disagrees.
War in Iraq a crime, says Vatican
Agence France-Presse, March 18, 2003
Military intervention against Iraq would be a crime against peace demanding vengeance before God, the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has said.
"War is a crime against peace which cries for vengeance before God," said Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, speaking on Vatican Radio.
He stressed the deeply unjust and immoral nature of war, saying it was condemned by God because civilians were the worst sufferers.
Martino, formerly Vatican permanent representative to the United Nations, strongly denounced the determination of the United States and its allies to disarm Iraq by force.
War may realign world and define a presidency
Susan Page, USA Today, March 17, 2003
War in Iraq could do more than topple Saddam Hussein. Another potential casualty: the system of global alliances that has governed the world since World War II. After Sunday's summit in the Azores, Portugal, President Bush is poised to order a U.S.-led attack on Iraq even if the Security Council fails Monday to approve a resolution paving the way. He is proceeding with the support of such new allies as Bulgaria but against the open opposition of longtime friends such as France, a comrade in arms since the days of the American Revolution. He is pushing ahead despite the breach that the showdown has opened at the United Nations and NATO and the political peril it poses for his chief ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It would be the first preventive war in U.S. history, the first time the nation has attacked without being struck first. An aide says Bush sees himself as redefining the U.S. role at a moment the "tectonic plates" of the world order are shifting -- as they did in 1776 and 1914 and at other big moments in history.
Invading Iraq is unconstitutional
Ed Frimage, Salt Lake Tribune, March 17, 2003
President George Bush is leading this country into a war that is at once unconstitutional, a gross violation of international law, aggresses our own civil liberties and threatens our national security by violating norms of common sense, including the Powell Doctrine stemming from the lessons learned from the first Gulf War.
First, this war violates the U.S. Constitution. The non-delegation doctrine of American constitutional law forbids Congress delegating to another branch of government its own unique core responsibilities.
The resolution rammed through the Congress by this administration in the emotional spasm following 9-11 was exactly that: a delegation to the president of the war-deciding power exclusively given to Congress by the Constitution. That exclusivity of the power to decide for peace or war was what motivated Thomas Jefferson to write the constitutional framers from Paris, where he was American ambassador to our oldest ally, France, and congratulate them for "chaining the dog of war."
'The United Nations is just an instrument at the service of American policy'
Interview with former UN secretary general, Boutros Boutros Ghali
Francesca de Châtel, The Guardian, March 17, 2003
"Since the attacks of September 11 Bush sees the world as divided between good and evil. They are going back to Reagan's rhetoric: he talked about the threat of communism, now Bush has replaced communism with terrorism. September 11 was not a military aggression - it is impossible to destroy the American military power - it was an ideological aggression.
"Thus the Bush administration needed to come with an ideological response. But the change in foreign policy was not determined by 11 September alone: since the arrival of Bush there was an intention to do something about Iraq and address terrorism. September 11 only gave added strength to this resolve.
"Multilateralism and unilateralism are just methods for the United States: they use them a la carte, as it suits them."
Looming devastation dawns on Baghdad
Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, March 18, 2003
Saddam Hussein threatened international retaliation against a United States-led invasion yesterday as his people finally grasped that they are on the verge of one of the most merciless bombing campaigns in military history.
The veneer of bravura that has been the hallmark of Baghdad street interviews cracked as government workers were cleared from buildings that are likely targets; long queues formed late into the night for petrol; many shops and restaurants prepared to shut down - even as panic buying began - and those who could started to flee the capital for the relative safety of rural Iraq.
Why Asia fears Bush's war
The repercussions of a U.S. campaign in Iraq will be widespread -- and Asians are dreading the coming fight
Hannah Beech, Time, March 24, 2003
Prajim Praiwet thinks he knows all about the U.S. and its wars. The 55-year-old Thai rice farmer remembers four decades ago when the jungles of his home province, Nakhon Phanom, were a key staging ground in American-backed efforts to eradicate communism in Indochina. Then a teenager, he watched in despair as a proxy war between the U.S. and China terrorized his little village: U.S.-funded Thai troops tortured and killed locals, while the communists responded by beheading Thai soldiers. "America will bully other countries because it is strong," says Prajim. "Everyone else will suffer."
This time around, the battleground is thousands of miles away in Iraq. But the weathered Thai peasant speaks for many Asians who appear surprisingly unified both in their condemnation of unilateral U.S. action in the Middle East and their worry that this faraway fight could have very local repercussions. Their fears are manifold. Asian investors worry that their reeling stock portfolios will be further ravaged by war, while businessmen fret that further oil price hikes will clobber their export-led economies. Political leaders, meanwhile, are wary of Islamic extremists interpreting an attack on Saddam Hussein as yet another call to arms, triggering more terrorist actions in Asia and even radicalizing Muslim moderates. But beyond these economic and political anxieties, there is also a moral component to Asia's concern: the U.S., its critics argue, hasn't sufficiently justified an engagement in Iraq, and Washington's go-it-alone approach is proof of an arrogant and increasingly aggressive superpower willing to ignore global opposition. "There is no difference in the way Hindus and Muslims think on Iraq," says Anand Varadhan, an Indian bank employee in the Hindu holy town of Varanasi. "The American argument for war just makes no sense."
Why the U.S. inspires scorn
Other nations, and especially the Arab world, fear the start of an American empire
Tyler Marshall and David Lamb, Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2003
On what looks like the eve of war in Iraq, there is evidence of a vast gap between the way the United States and the rest of the world view the crisis.
What Americans see largely as a campaign to eliminate one Middle Eastern dictator -- Saddam Hussein -- is viewed by many in Europe and especially the Arab world as nothing less than a watershed in global affairs.
They worry that America's self-declared right to launch preemptive wars, its willingness to dismiss the United Nations, to shuck allies and make plans to invade and occupy another country -- all amid talk of remaking the Mideast -- are the beginning of the end of the post-World War II order and the start of an American Imperium.
Being antiwar isn't enough
Daniel Terris, Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2003
Like many other Americans, I have been increasingly uneasy in recent months about the Bush administration's single-minded march to war in Iraq, about the abandonment of meaningful multilateralism and the assault on civil liberties that have accompanied the martial drumbeat.
Yet as rhetoric and preparation escalate, I find myself worrying that opponents of the rush to war are falling into the same habit of single-mindedness that is getting the country into such trouble. The president insists on reducing a complex world to simple dualisms. Those in opposition complain about this but seem determined to follow his lead in falling back on pieties.
The peace camp needs a broader and deeper platform than the simple slogan, "No War in Iraq." The slogan threatens to ignore two of the most significant developments of our time: the destructive capacity of modern weaponry (in both its high-tech and low-tech forms) and the growing international consensus about the paramount importance of human rights.
True believer's moral certainty leads us astray
Gordon Livingston, Baltimore Sun, March 16, 2003
As the United States prepares to launch a pre-emptive war, it is worth looking at what is driving President Bush to ignore the reservations of most of our allies and at least half of the American people in pursuit of his obsession with Iraq.
The answer clearly lies in the combination of the myth of the Old West and Southern religion that informs his every action. The former evokes images of the lonely gunfighter as a force for good; the latter provides a moral justification for the constructive use of violence.
American woman peace activist killed by Israeli army
bulldozer in Gaza
Arnon Regular, Haaretz, March 16, 2003
An American woman peace protester was killed Sunday by an IDF bulldozer, which ran her over during the demolition of a house at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Another activist was wounded in the incident.
Rachel Corey, 23, from Olympia, Washington, was killed when she ran in front of the bulldozer to try to prevent it from destroying a house, doctors in Gaza said.
"Corey was killed in the al-Salam neighbourhood when an Israeli bulldozer covered her with sand as she stood in front of a bulldozer," said Dr Ali Musa, a doctor from the al-Najar hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. He said she died from skull and chest fractures.
The IDF said it was checking the report. The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment.
See Electronic Intifada's detailed report Israeli bulldozer driver murders American peace activist
The arrogant empire
Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, March 24, 2003
It is true that the United States has some allies in its efforts to topple Saddam. It is also true that some of the governments opposing action in Iraq do so not for love of peace and international harmony but for more cynical reasons. France and Russia have a long history of trying to weaken the containment of Iraq to ensure that they can have good trading relations with it. France, after all, helped Saddam Hussein build a nuclear reactor that was obviously a launching pad for a weapons program. (Why would the world's second largest oil producer need a nuclear power plant?) And France's Gaullist tendencies are, of course, simply its own version of unilateralism.
But how to explain that the vast majority of the world, with little to gain from it, is in the Franco-Russian camp? The administration claims that many countries support the United States but do so quietly. That signals an even deeper problem. Countries are furtive in their support for the administration not because they fear Saddam Hussein but because they fear their own people. To support America today in much of the world is politically dangerous. Over the past year the United States became a campaign issue in elections in Germany, South Korea and Pakistan. Being anti-American was a vote-getter in all three places.
Look at the few countries that do publicly support us. Tony Blair bravely has forged ahead even though the vast majority of the British people disagree with him and deride him as "America's poodle." The leaders of Spain and Italy face equally strong public opposition to their stands. Donald Rumsfeld has proclaimed, with his characteristic tactlessness, that while "old Europe" -- France and Germany -- might oppose U.S. policy, "new Europe" embraces them. This is not exactly right. The governments of Central Europe support Washington, but the people oppose it in almost the same numbers as in old Europe. Between 70 and 80 percent of Hungarians, Czechs and Poles are against an American war in Iraq, with or without U.N. sanction. (The Poles are more supportive in some surveys.) The administration has made much of the support of Vaclav Havel, the departing Czech president. But the incoming president, Vaclav Klaus -- a pro-American, Thatcherite free-marketer -- said last week that on Iraq his position is aligned with that of his people.
Some make the argument that Europeans are now pacifists, living in a "postmodern paradise," shielded from threats and unable to imagine the need for military action [editor's note: the view of neocon guru, Robert Kagan]. But then how to explain the sentiment in Turkey, a country that sits on the Iraqi border? A longtime ally, Turkey has fought with America in conflicts as distant as the Korean War, and supported every American military action since then. But opposition to the war now runs more than 90 percent there. Despite Washington's offers of billions of dollars in new assistance, the government cannot get parliamentary support to allow American troops to move into Iraq from Turkish bases. Or consider Australia, another crucial ally, and another country where a majority now opposes American policy. Or Ireland. Or India. In fact, while the United States has the backing of a dozen or so governments, it has the support of a majority of the people in only one country in the world, Israel. If that is not isolation, then the word has no meaning.
Bush wanted his doctrine and the allies, too
James Mann, Washington Post, March 16, 2003
We are witnessing a major intellectual failure by the Bush administration.
For more than two years, indeed even before President Bush took office, the members of his foreign policy team have repeatedly advanced a series of optimistic, self-justifying ideas about America's relationship with its friends and allies -- namely, that these nations' growing estrangement from U.S. foreign policy wasn't real, wasn't serious or wouldn't last. Now, the administration is belatedly discovering that both its beliefs and its underlying assumptions were wrong.
It is almost as if the administration has been running its foreign policy out of two different sides of its brain. On one side, it has been developing a whole new set of principles, centered on the doctrine of preventive war. On the other, the administration has clung to and operated with more traditional views about the continuing importance of our friends and allies, who do not accept the administration's new doctrines.
The result of the administration's disjointed approach has been plain to see. Over the past few months, Americans have been stunned to discover that some allied governments and large numbers of people overseas are focusing upon the power of the United States -- rather than upon Saddam Hussein's programs for weapons of mass destruction -- as the main international problem.
Hundreds of thousands march in anti-war protests in Spain
Daniel Woolls, Associated Press, March 15, 2003
Furious with their pro-U.S. prime minister, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards took to the street Saturday, whistling, chanting and screaming against the prospect of war in Iraq.
In a balmy, sunset procession through Madrid, protesters sporting peace signs on their cheeks waved placards that called Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar everything from an assassin to the lapdog of President George W. Bush.
Demonstrators in Barcelona held hands and formed a five-kilometer (three mile) human chain linking the U.S. consulate and the local headquarters of Aznar's Popular Party. A handful of youths pelted the latter building with eggs, oranges and paint.
The Interior Ministry put attendance at the Madrid rally at 120,000, but organizers said it was a million, roughly as many as they took part in a rally held here Feb. 15 as part of a global day of protest similar to Saturday's.
The Barcelona town hall said 300,000 demonstrated in Spain's second largest city but organizers said it was half a million, the national news agency Efe said. Besides the human chain, protesters there assembled to form giant letters reading GUERRA NO, or no war.
Tens of thousands march against Iraq war
Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, March 16, 2003
In what many saw as a last chance to head off military action, tens of thousands of antiwar protesters marched in several demonstrations around the country today in opposition to the Bush administration's policy on Iraq.
In Washington, just hours after President Bush said in his weekly radio address that he saw little chance that Iraq would disarm without the use of force, throngs of protesters armed with banners and bullhorns implored Mr. Bush to abandon a possible war.
Women take a leading role in protesting against war with Iraq
Anne-Marie O'Connor, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2003
In a Venice bungalow crowded with people who oppose the looming conflict with Iraq, longtime activist Jodie Evans was ticking off a list of potential antiwar actions.
Would Thursday be a good day for everyone to crowd into the Los Angeles offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and deliver a "pink slip" for not doing enough to prevent war with Iraq?
What about a pink carpet outside the Academy Awards on March 23 or smuggling pink umbrellas into the fan bleachers where they would be seen by millions on television?
Evans, a onetime campaign manager for former Gov. Jerry Brown, is one of a number of people working full time with one goal: to stop the war on Iraq before it begins. The 30 people at her house Thursday night were thinking pink -- the name of this national movement is Code Pink -- because the color is being used to symbolize women-led opposition to the war.
US and Israel's 'common cause'
Barbara Plett, BBC News, March 15, 2003
These are days of war talk, and the same sort of talk is coming out of Israel and the United States.
From Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon: "Israel will not surrender to blackmail. He who rises up to kill us, we will pre-empt it and kill him first. As we have proven there is no and there will never be any shelter for evil."
From US President George W Bush: "We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction. We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise and as a last resort we must be willing to use military force."
It is the language of war against terrorism, used for both Iraq and for the Palestinians.
But are the two conflicts the same?
War now no better 'than terrorism'
Andrew Wilkie, The Age, March 16, 2003
Invading Iraq now would be wrong. There's nothing complicated about that.
The current international dynamic, and the question of whether or not a war would be short and successful, are only part of the story. Instead, the main issue is whether or not a war would be the most ethical and sensible way to solve the Iraqi problem.
My position is based on the best information and intelligence in Australia, including assessments provided to the Government by the Office of National Assessments (ONA). The Government's claim that I was not involved in Iraqi issues is false. Until 5pm on March 11, I was a senior analyst at the ONA where I covered transnational issues, including some related to Iraq, and was prepared for duty in the Iraq war-watch office. My access to intelligence has always included material on Iraq.
I'll fight Turks with a hoe, says farmer
Ashley Gilbertson, The Age, March 16, 2003
Jule Amin has lived on Iraq's northernmost border with Turkey for 56 years, and he has no doubt which of the two country's armies would be the lesser of two evils.
"If the Turkish military enter (northern Iraq), I prefer Saddam's regime than Turkish intervention. The Turkish military is even more hostile than Saddam Hussein."
Mr Amin is an Iraqi Kurd, and like many in the region he fears the Turkish military may exploit the likely US war to crush the Kurds in northern Iraq.
His muddy plot of land houses sheep, chickens and his family of three. In his 56 years here, he's experienced two conventional wars, one ongoing civil war, become an amputee due to a landmine injury whilst shepherding, and was the victim of a 1991 exodus in which more than a million Iraqi Kurds fled a defeated uprising into Turkey.
He talks wildly of his time in Turkish refugee camps.
"The Turks hate the Kurdish people, throughout history they have fought against and killed us, in those camps they treated us worse than animals."
Onward Bush's soldiers
Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange, March 14, 2003
Armageddon may or may not be televised. But if Dr. Mike Evans has his way, his newly launched Evangelical Israel Broadcasting Network will be broadcasting directly from the scene. Dr. Evans, who heads the Jerusalem Prayer Team, believes a war with Iraq could be a "dress rehearsal for Armageddon" -- the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Although there is by no means unanimity on the question of Iraq and Armageddon, Dr. Evans' reading of the Bible may help explain why many conservative Christian fundamentalists are supporting President Bush's push toward a war with Iraq.
Just the beginning
Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?
Robert Dreyfuss, The American Prospect, April 1, 2003
For months Americans have been told that the United States is going to war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, remove him from power, eliminate Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Baghdad from blackmailing its neighbors or aiding terrorist groups. But the Bush administration's hawks, especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war, see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq's borders, are likely to be mistaken.
Ex-CIA officers questioning Iraq data
John J. Lumpkin, Associated Press, March 14, 2003
A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.
Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends -- while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting.
They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to al-Qaida is unconvincing, and accuse policy-makers of pushing out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof.
Senator seeks FBI probe of Iraq documents
Ken Guggenheim, Associated Press, March 14, 2003
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FBI on Friday to investigate forged documents the Bush administration used as evidence against Saddam Hussein and his military ambitions in Iraq.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said he was uneasy about a possible campaign to deceive the public about the status of Iraq's nuclear program.
An investigation should "at a minimum help to allay any concerns" that the government was involved in the creation of the documents to build support for administration policies, Rockefeller wrote in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Is it anti-American to be anti-war?
Jonathan Pitts, Baltimore Sun, March 9, 2003
Rush Limbaugh, the self-described "doctor of democracy," has built an audience of 20 million, spooked liberal foes and, quite possibly, changed the shape of politics by framing, as vividly as anyone, the questions we all must face if we are to keep refining our identity as Americans. So it mattered last month when Limbaugh, holding forth on anti-war rallies around the world, raised the stakes in midsentence. "I want to say something about these anti-war demonstrators," he said. "No, let's not mince words. Let's call them what they are: anti-American demonstrators." With that, he had questioned the motives -- and patriotism -- of hundreds of thousands who had taken to the streets to exercise their right to question their government.
The "anti-American" charge is not new -- nor, historically, is it fruitless. It has sparked debate as far back as the Revolutionary War, self-examination as useful today as it was in the earliest days of the Republic. What are the duties of a good American at a moment of national crisis? Is it more patriotic to question a looming war or to line up behind it? Who makes that decision, and when? Norman Thomas, a longtime Socialist activist who opposed the war in Vietnam, said his fellow protesters should have washed the Stars and Stripes, not set it afire. Yet in a country so resilient it protects even flag-burning as free speech, is any dissent unpatriotic?
America may be no better than the conversations its citizens hold. As U.S. forces gathered around Iraq this past week, seven people who make free speech their living discussed these and other issues with The Sun -- celebrating our liberties by hashing out, as Limbaugh would have it, what it really means to be an American.
Waiting for war - in the White House
Howard Fineman, Newsweek, March 12, 2003
I’m waiting for war to break out -- not in Iraq, but in the Bush administration. I’m wondering what’s going through Colin Powell’s mind. The secretary of State is looking pretty grim these days, like a man going through the motions. Might he bail out after a not-too-distant decent interval? Friends say no, he’s a team player. “But he’s not a happy camper,” one admits.
In the meantime, who’s going to be blamed for the Turkey screwup, or the U.N. screwups? Who’s going to leak the authoritative -- and explosive -- estimates of the true cost of maintaining 100,000 troops in Iraq for the indefinite future? (One general already has been whacked for piping up, but there will be others.) Who’s going to take the fall for the fact that we’ve lost the international moral high ground? The world is blaming the president, of course, but that’s not the way things work here. Someone else goes down. Who? The “neocons”? Donald Rumsfeld? The State Department? Dick Cheney? Condi Rice?
'Bush wins': The Left's nightmare scenario
Mark LeVine, AlterNet, March 13, 2003
As the American-imposed deadline for Iraqi "disarmament" approaches, the antiwar movement seems to be counting on one of two scenarios to frustrate the plans of the Bush Administration.
The first is an optimistic "We Win" scenario, which would result from massive protests and diplomatic pressure forcing President Bush to postpone an invasion indefinitely. (What has yet to be addressed is what exactly we win if Hussein remains indefinitely in power and the sanctions go on killing Iraqis.) With war seemingly imminent, the movement is being forced to fall back on a second scenario, "Everyone Loses," in which the warnings of a protracted and bloody war that destabilizes the Middle East and increases terrorism bear their bitter fruit.
However unpalatable in terms of destroyed lives and infrastructure, this latter scenario would at least quash the Administration's imperial dreams and force the kind of soul searching of United States' policies that is a major goal of the movement. But this outcome is less likely than many assume, and the antiwar movement would be well advised to plan for a third scenario: "Bush Wins."
Democracy domino theory 'not credible'
Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2003
A classified State Department report expresses doubt that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document.
The report exposes significant divisions within the Bush administration over the so-called democratic domino theory, one of the arguments that underpins the case for invading Iraq.
The report, which has been distributed to a small group of top government officials but not publicly disclosed, says that daunting economic and social problems are likely to undermine basic stability in the region for years, let alone prospects for democratic reform.
Even if some version of democracy took root -- an event the report casts as unlikely -- anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that elections in the short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States.
If war hits, Kurds see way to grab old lands
David Rohde, New York Times, March 14, 2003
Before leaving Kurdish-controlled territory here this morning for his nearby village on the Iraqi-controlled side, a stocky 31-year-old Arab farmer talked about how much this land meant to him. He said he came here as a child and that this stretch of fertile plain in northern Iraq has been his home for the last 25 years. He thanked Saddam Hussein for bringing him here and making his life so bountiful.
"I won't leave," he said. "I intend to live here until I die."
The farmer, who would not give his name, is one of tens of thousands of Arabs moved north by Mr. Hussein and resettled in and around the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. Under a program known as "Arabization," the government expelled Kurds from villages and cities over the last three decades and replaced them with Arabs.
But war in Iraq could cause this forced demographic change to unravel quickly, according to Kurdish and Arab villagers. For in establishing a new home for Arabs, Mr. Hussein's program also created a patchwork of grudges and grievances. American forces could quickly find themselves in the center of a sea of fleeing Arabs, vengeful Kurds and countless disputes over homes, land and lucrative oil fields.
Difficulties of long division
Luke Harding, The Guardian, March 14, 2003
The two Kurdish groups that control northern Iraq, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), want the American military to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But they fear Turkey's proposed 50km military "incursion" into their territory would, in reality, amount to little more than an old-fashioned invasion.
Its real, sinister purpose is to redraw the boundaries of modern Iraq, they believe. Turkey has always regarded the area as its backyard. For four centuries Iraq was ruled by Istanbul, and was a neglected and fading province of the vast Ottoman Empire.
British troops finally drove the Turks out of Baghdad in 1917. In the controversial settlement that followed, the League of Nations decided to incorporate the two northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk into the new state of Iraq- a decision bitterly resented by Turkey.
Some 85 years later, historical tensions dating back to Britain's forgotten rule in the Middle East have resurfaced- and appear ready to ignite.
Wall Street Journal editorial reveals imperialist arrogance and racism behind US war drive
Patrick Martin, World Socialist, March 13, 2003
An editorial published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal drops the pretense that "human rights" and democracy are the motivation for a US war against Iraq, and fulminates in unabashedly chauvinist and imperialistic terms against any international opposition to the Bush administration's war plans.
The editorial, entitled "Bush in Lilliput," presents the United States as a world-straddling Gulliver, beset by opponents so insignificant that they should be brushed aside with contempt. It is focused on the six countries -- Guinea, Angola, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile and Pakistan -- which have so far, despite enormous US pressure, refused to commit themselves to support the US-British resolution authorizing war.
The Journal bemoans the Bush administration's decision to seek a second resolution from the UN body, complaining, "The US has already been reduced to bribing these countries with cash or other favors in return for their support. Yet they've all played hard to get, posing as Hamlet for their 10 minutes of fame on the world stage."
The leading US business newspaper describes the six undeclared countries in racist terms, lashing out at "the Mexican and Chilean fandango," sneering at "the always strategically vital Cameroon," and referring to the six countries -- including three African nations -- as "pygmies." (There is ignorance as well as racism here, since the six countries have a combined population of 293 million, greater than that of the United States).
The Wall Street Journal editorial Bush in Lilliput
Baghdad: Rich flee from capital as panic grips city's poor
Janine di Giovanni, The Times, March 13, 2003
Over the past week the fatalistic Iraqi attitude of maktoub ("it is written") has deteriorated into anxiety and fear.
While the Government of Iraq continues to court France, Germany and Russia, hoping that diplomacy may avert a war, its people are facing up to the reality that the next few days or weeks may be catastrophic.
People who previously laughed off the bombing, saying that they had managed to survive before, are now running for cover. If there were any delusion left that war was not imminent, the jets that screeched across the clear Baghdad sky a few mornings ago have given them a sharp dose of reality.
"Tell me where to go, where can I run to?" begged a frightened city hotel bellman who a few weeks ago scoffed at the notion of war. A tennis coach and a waiter at the hotel said their goodbyes the day before.
"Maybe this is the last time we meet on Earth," said the waiter, who was taking refuge in a northern village. "May God preserve you in what you will soon endure."
Blair is plunging Britain into a crisis of democracy
Seumas Milne, The Guardian, March 13, 2003
Without an explicit UN resolution backing war, Blair will face a choice. He could try to ride out the tide of opposition in the hope that the war would be short, the known casualties relatively few and the military occupation at least initially welcomed on the streets of Iraqi cities. Alternatively, but improbably, he could perform a historic u-turn and refuse to take part in an unlawful at tack opposed by a clear majority of the British people. A third option would be to go for a low profile backup role in a US invasion of the kind floated by Rumsfeld and certainly discussed in Downing Street as a possible fallback position over the past few weeks - though that might seem the worst of both worlds, neither pacifying opponents nor offering full entitlement to the political and commercial spoils.
But whichever way he turns, the prime minister will not avoid being seriously damaged by the fallout, either at home or abroad. He is after all a leader who has staked everything on the benefits of his embrace of the Bush administration, his moral determination to act against Saddam Hussein, his ability to lead his own people, his commitment to multilateral action through the UN, his credibility as a principled international statesman. Some, or even most, of these hopelessly inflated claims will not survive the conflagration of the coming weeks. And it is not only Blair, but his government as a whole, that will be irreversibly weakened as a result.
CLEMENCEAU, LINCOLN, CHURCHILL, BEN-GURION ....BUSH?
Michael Young reviews Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot A. Cohen, one of George Bush's sources of inspiration in fashioning his identity as commander in chief.
Command performances
The civilian-military conflict over the conduct of war
Michael Young, Reason, April, 2003
If great men are so rare, then how relevant are their performances to defending the principle of civilian control in military affairs? How do their lessons apply to the bevy of less extraordinary leaders, if not downright mediocrities, who generally govern?
Cohen is right that sensible societies shouldn’t trust generals to navigate the myriad curvatures of war without civilian oversight. But since he provides no absolute canon to guide ordinary leaders (nor can such a canon really exist), his argument in favor of civilian dominance can easily backfire when politicians fail to grasp their limitations.
WMD-capable drone - made with duct tape!
Niko Price, Salon, March 12, 2003
A remotely piloted aircraft that the United States has warned could spread chemical weapons appears to be made of balsa wood and duct tape, with two small propellors attached to what look like the engines of a weed whacker.
Iraqi officials took journalists to the Ibn Firnas State Company just north of Baghdad on Wednesday, where the drone's project director accused Secretary of State Colin Powell of misleading the U.N. Security Council and the public.
"He's making a big mistake," said Brig. Imad Abdul Latif. "He knows very well that this aircraft is not used for what he said."
In Washington's search for a "smoking gun" that would prove Iraq is not disarming, Powell has insisted the drone, which has a wingspan of 24.5 feet, could be fitted to dispense chemical and biological weapons. He has said it "should be of concern to everybody."
Burst the bubble of U.S. supremacy
George Soros, Miami Herald, March 13, 2003
As U.S. and British troops prepare to invade Iraq, public opinion in these countries does not support war without U.N. authorization. The rest of the world overwhelmingly opposes war. Yet Saddam Hussein is regarded as a tyrant who must be disarmed, and the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, demanding that Saddam destroy his weapons of mass-destruction.
What caused this disconnect?
Iraq is the first instance when the Bush doctrine is being applied, and it is provoking an allergic reaction. The Bush doctrine is built on two pillars:
-- The United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy.
-- The United States arrogates the right to preemptive action.
These pillars support two classes of sovereignty: American sovereignty, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other states. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated starkly; it is buried in Orwellian doublespeak, which is needed because the doctrine contradicts American values.
The Bush administration believes that international relations are relations of power; legality and legitimacy are mere decorations. This belief is not false, but it exaggerates one aspect of reality to the exclusion of others. The aspect it stresses is military power. But no empire could ever be held together by military power alone.
Turkey recalls parliament
Sky New, March 13, 2003
Turkey's ruling party is calling parliament to assemble over the weekend. The move suggests it may be preparing to consider an urgent US request to allow it to use Turkey for an attack on Iraq
Turks add a hurdle to U.S. war plans
Airspace use to require parliamentary approval
Philip P. Pan, Washington Post, March 13, 2003
Hardening their position, Turkey's leaders insist they need further assurances about post-war Iraq before they allow U.S. troops to deploy along the border for an attack. In a new complication, they also are refusing to let the Pentagon use Turkish airspace without approval from parliament.
Despite the acceleration of U.S. military preparations elsewhere, Turkey's leaders appear to be in no hurry to schedule a new vote in parliament on the U.S deployment or use of airspace. They say they are confident that the United States will wait for them because an invasion of Iraq without Turkey's help would be riskier, take longer and result in more casualties.
But U.S. officials say the Turkish government has misjudged the Bush administration's determination to move quickly against Iraq and are increasingly pessimistic about Turkey's participation. If Turkey does not offer its full cooperation before President Bush orders an attack, they warned, it risks losing the billions of dollars in aid that the United States has offered and damaging relations with a key ally.
Kurds in positions along Turkish border
David Rohde, New York Times, March 12, 2003
Hundreds of Kurdish soldiers armed with artillery, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns are continuing to take up positions along Iraq's border with Turkey, according to Kurdish officials and local residents. Turkey moved a large military convoy of its own to the border area late last week.
The United States has been trying to broker an agreement to prevent open clashes between the two bitter rivals that could complicate an American-led attack on Iraq. Turkey has said it reserves the right to move its forces into northern Iraq to prevent Kurds from declaring an independent state. Kurds, whose forces would probably be quickly overwhelmed, say Turkey is simply trying to occupy their territory.
Panel faults Bush on war costs and risks
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, March 12, 2003
The cost of postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence against former members of Saddam Hussein's government, a panel of national security experts say in a new study.
The panel, consisting of senior American officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. It concludes that President Bush has failed "to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs" of Iraq.
The panel was led by James R. Schlesinger, secretary of defense in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and Thomas R. Pickering, ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Bush's father. Others on the panel included Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997 and is now retired, and Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, who served in senior positions in the Reagan administration.
Blair stakes all on US alliance
UK forces will join war regardless of UN backing
Patrick Wintour, Michael White and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, March 13, 2003
Tony Blair yesterday took the political gamble of his life when he signalled that British forces will join an imminent US-led military invasion to disarm Saddam Hussein, even if a majority of the security council fails to endorse such action in a second UN resolution.
The prime minister moved to end the sense of deep crisis that engulfed Downing Street over the previous 48 hours, quelling doubts about his resolve to fight alongside the US.
He stressed that there was sufficient justification for war in UN resolution 1441, passed last November. While the immediate battle to secure a fresh resolution would continue, there would be no turning back.
The prime minister told the Commons: "We hold firm to the course we have set out."
After what appeared a day of frayed nerves inside Downing Street on Tuesday, and increasing diplomatic division between London and Washington, Mr Blair made his decision to fight, even though it could prompt a wave of resignations from his government.
Bush counts the cost of broken promises
Richard Beeston, The Times, March 12, 2003
A catalogue of broken promises from Mexico to Russia and Pakistan were being blamed yesterday for undermining America’s attempts to secure international backing for action against Iraq.
As the Bush Administration launched a final diplomatic offensive to recruit the support of wavering countries on the United Nations Security Council, its mission was apparently being hampered by past disappointments among key allies.
Iraq war will not end inspection challenges
Jeffrey W. Knopf, US Naval Postgraduate School, March 1, 2003
Debates on Iraq have largely boiled down to two options: giving inspections more time or giving up on inspections and going to war instead. This framing of the debate, coupled with administration comments that time is running out for inspections, create an impression that war would represent the end of the inspection effort. War, however, will not end inspections; it will involve only their temporary suspension. After any successful military intervention by a U.S.-led coalition, inspections will have to be resumed, most likely in a format similar if not identical to the current inspection regime.
I vant to be alone
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 12, 2003
It will go down as a great mystery of history how Mr. Popularity at Yale metamorphosed into President Persona Non Grata of the world.
The genial cheerleader and stickball commissioner with the gregarious parents, the frat president who had little nicknames and jokes for everyone, fell in with a rough crowd.
Just when you thought it couldn't get more Strangelovian, it does. The Bush bullies, having driven off all the other kids in the international schoolyard, are now resorting to imaginary friends.
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars here yesterday and reassured the group that America would have "a formidable coalition" to attack Iraq. "The number of countries involved will be in the substantial double digits," he boasted. Unfortunately, he could not actually name one of the supposed allies. "Some of them would prefer not to be named now," he said coyly, "but they will be known with pride in due time."
The veto and how to use it
Tarik Kafala, BBC News, March 10, 2003
Seven of the last nine vetoes at the Security Council have been by the United States, and six of these have been of draft resolutions criticising the Israeli Government in some way.
The most recent, in December 2002, was a draft resolution criticising the killing by Israeli forces of several United Nations employees and the destruction of the World Food Programme warehouse in the West Bank.
In total, the US has blocked 35 draft resolutions on Israel.
Washington first used its veto in March 1970. Along with the UK it blocked a draft resolution on what was to become Zimbabwe.
The US has vetoed 10 resolutions criticising South Africa, eight on Namibia, seven on Nicaragua and five on Vietnam.
It has been the lone voice in blocking a resolution 53 times.
Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor
Robert Bryce and Julian Borger, The Guardian, March 12, 2003
Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.
The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.
When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George Bush's running mate, he opted not to receive his leaving payment in a lump sum but instead have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons.
The vice-president's office said yesterday it had nothing to do with the award of Pentagon contracts, and said it would look into the details of the Halliburton payments.
The company would not say how much the payments are. The obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and $1m. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.
Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis Berger Group - invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the second world war.
Daniel Ellsberg seeks leaks on Iraq
Mark Benjamin, UPI, March 11, 2003
Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, on Tuesday called on government officials to leak documents to Congress and the press showing the Bush administration is lying in building its case against Saddam Hussein.
Ellsberg, an ex-Marine and military analyst, said he held out hope that exposing alleged lies by the Bush administration could still avert an unjust war. He warned that whistleblowers may face ruin of their careers and marriages and be incarcerated.
"Don't wait until the bombs start falling," Ellsberg said at a Tuesday press conference in Washington. "If you know the public is being lied to and you have documents to prove it, go to Congress and go to the press."
Ellsberg did not leak the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times until 1971, although he says he had information in the mid-1960s that he now wishes he had leaked then.
"Do what I wish I had done before the bombs started falling" in Vietnam, Ellsberg said. "I think there is some chance that the truth could avert war."
Compromising positions
How the Security Council could postpone war
Fred Kaplan, Slate, March 11, 2003
War is certain: The president all but says so, as does the commentariat. Slate's "Saddameter" puts the odds at 99 percent. It's all the more intriguing, then, that a flurry of last-minute negotiations has overtaken the U.N. Security Council in recent days. The effect of this could a) delay the onset of war significantly; b) lend the war greater legitimacy if it happens; or -- less likely but not utterly out of the question -- c) disarm Iraq, gradually, slowly, but verifiably, through means other than war.
U.S. LAWMAKERS WRESTLE WITH THE IMPLICATIONS OF WAR
No more "French" fries in Congress - what next? Time to ship back the Statue of Liberty (which might please Tom Ridge - one less target for terrorists)? And Louisiana - a state named after a French monarch - that's a name that'll have to go. And Majority Leader Tom DeLay - he should go, or at least dump that French name. He says that Congress doesn't need to take any formal steps to signal its disapproval of France. Sounds like he must be a collaborator. The FBI better keep an eye on him. FBI? Bureau? No, that needs to change. By the time Congress is finished with all this name changing, peace and democracy will have swept across the Middle East and GWB will be ready to dissolve the Constitution as he is annointed George the First, Supreme Ruler of the American Empire.
House cafeterias change names for 'french fries' and 'french toast'
Sean Loughlin, CNN, March 12, 2003
The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.
Ditto for "french toast," which will be known as "freedom toast."
The name changes were spearheaded by two Republican lawmakers who held a news conference Tuesday to make the name changes official on the menus.
When bombs fall, U.S. will join ranks of war criminals
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2003
The maiming or killing of a single Iraqi civilian in an attack by the United States would constitute a war crime, as well as a profound violation of the Christian notion of just war. That is because the recent report of the U.N. inspectors has made indelibly clear that disarmament is working and that Iraq at this time poses no direct threat to the well-being of the American people.
Of course, we are not talking about one or two casualties. In seriously considering such war strategies as bringing a city- destroying firestorm down upon a population half made up of children, the U.S. is planning to disarm a nation of its weapons of mass destruction by using weapons that cause mass destruction.
Brutal, preemptive and unilateral war under such circumstances is -- by the standards of any great civilization or religion -- morally indefensible and also seriously damages the reputation of free societies, the principles of which we are trying to market to the rest of the world.
To distract us from this essential truth, the president has shamefully frightened the American people, first with his baseless attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and then with unproven claims that Iraq's government and weapons pose an immediate danger to Americans.
Opposition attracts
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, March 10, 2003
"Vive la France!" The placard would not have looked out of place at a Gaullist election rally in Paris, or a protest by French farmers objecting to imports of British cabbages.
However, the bearer of the message was an Egyptian citizen who was demonstrating, in Cairo, against the threat of war in Iraq. For good measure, a second line on the placard added, in Arabic, "Arab leaders, go to hell!"
Something very odd is happening in the Middle East. To declare such public support for a former imperial power, which once vied with Britain for the spoils of the region, and throw in a disparaging comparison with today's Arab leaders, is enough to make the late President Nasser turn in his grave. It casts aspersions on decades of Arab nationalism.
Rumsfeld: US may have to launch war without Britain
Rupert Cornwell, Paul Waugh and Mary Dejevsky, The Independent, March 12, 2003
America has suggested for the first time that Britain may have to reduce its role in a war against Iraq – or not take part at all – because of Tony Blair's political difficulties.
Asked whether the US would go to war without Britain or with Britain playing a smaller part than planned, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said Britain's situation was "distinctive", an apparent reference to the opposition among the public and Labour MPs to an invasion without the passage of a second United Nations resolution. Mr Blair faced fresh pressure yesterday when 40 Labour MPs called publicly for him to step aside.
See also 40 Labour parliamentarians call for Blair to resign
Hatreds steeped in blood
Nicholas D. Kristoff, New York Times, March 11, 2003
When the war in Iraq begins sometime soon, one of the messiest and most dangerous battles may be across from here in northern Iraq. And it won't even involve the Iraqi Army.
In the so far unsuccessful haggling to bribe Turkey into the coalition, the U.S. acquiesced in the deluded Turkish plan to intervene in Kurdish lands in northern Iraq. So Turkish Army trucks are rumbling along toward Iraq on roads in this rugged and remote area of southeastern Turkey, carrying tanks and artillery and pausing only to confiscate film from journalists who photograph them.
Many Kurds hate Turks with the kind of enmity steeped in blood and ripened by centuries of antagonism, and in the confusion of war some Kurd will surely seize the opportunity to toss a grenade into a truck full of Turkish troops. That's when Turkish and Kurdish units will begin slaughtering each other.
The unfolding mess in northern Iraq is a reminder that if we invade Iraq, we are stepping into an immensely complex region of guns, clans and hostilities that we only dimly understand. The White House thinks it can choreograph the warfare, but if we can't control effete gavel-wielding diplomats on the familiar turf of the United Nations, how will we manage feuding troops with mortars in the mountains of northern Iraq?
Why Hussein will not give weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda
Gene Healy, Cato Institute, March 5, 2003
Of all the reasons the administration has offered for war with Iraq, keeping chemical and biological weapons out of the hands of Al Qaeda resonates most strongly with the American people. President Bush used that frightening prospect to dramatic effect in his State of the Union speech: "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
But the administration's strongest sound-bite on Iraq is also its weakest argument for war. The idea that Saddam Hussein would trust Al Qaeda enough to give Al Qaeda operatives chemical or biological weapons -- and trust them to keep quiet about it -- is simply not plausible.
How a war became a crusade
Jackson Lears, New York Times, March 11, 2003
President Bush's war plans are risky, but Mr. Bush is no gambler. In fact he denies the very existence of chance. "Events aren't moved by blind change and chance" he has said, but by "the hand of a just and faithful God." From the outset he has been convinced that his presidency is part of a divine plan, even telling a friend while he was governor of Texas, "I believe God wants me to run for president."
This conviction that he is doing God's will has surfaced more openly since 9/11. In his State of the Union addresses and other public forums, he has presented himself as the leader of a global war against evil. As for a war in Iraq, "we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them." God is at work in world affairs, he says, calling for the United States to lead a liberating crusade in the Middle East, and "this call of history has come to the right country."
Mr. Bush's speeches are not the only place one finds this providentialist spirit — everyone from Christian fundamentalists to interventionist liberals is serving up missionary formulas: bogus analogies to the war against Hitler; contrasts between American virtue and European vice; denials that sordid material interests could have anything to do with the exalted project of exporting American democracy.
Will Richard Perle profit from war?
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, March 10, 2003
When Perle was asked whether his dealings with Trireme [a venture capital company in which he is a managing partner] might present the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said that anyone who saw such a conflict would be thinking “maliciously.” But Perle, in crisscrossing between the public and the private sectors, has put himself in a difficult position—one not uncommon to public men. He is credited with being the intellectual force behind a war that not everyone wants and that many suspect, however unfairly, of being driven by American business interests. There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war. In doing so, he has given ammunition not only to the Saudis but to his other ideological opponents as well.
A hazy target
Before going to war over weapons of mass destruction, shouldn't we be sure Iraq has them?
William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2003
Instructively, the one place where policy is not being driven by the focus on chemical and biological weapons is inside the American armed forces.
For one thing, while not dismissing the seriousness of chemical and biological warfare, most field commanders are reasonably confident they can handle any such attacks Hussein can mount. For another, they understand all too well the mass destruction a full-scale war might inflict.
Moreover, most know that, after nearly four months of renewed weapons inspections by the United Nations and the most intensive effort in the history of the U.S. intelligence community, American analysts and war planners are far from certain that chemical and biological weapons even exist in Iraq's arsenal today.
Incredible as it may seem, given all the talk by the administration -- including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's discourse last week about continuing Iraqi deception -- there is simply no hard intelligence of any such Iraqi weapons.
There is not a single confirmed biological or chemical target on their lists, Air Force officers working on the war plan say.
Beating the African drum
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, March 11, 2003
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States may have "nine or 10 votes" to pass the US-UK-Spanish-sponsored second United Nations resolution setting March 17 as the last deadline for Iraq to disarm - or else. It's not true, though. The key is Africa. If two of the three African nations - Guinea, Cameroon and Angola - currently sitting as non-permanent members of the Security Council vote "no", there will be no UN second resolution to legitimize war.
African diplomats are bemused, and quick to point out that when you are a poor African nation, the international community only voluntarily turns all its attention to you for reasons of self-interest or power politics - and not to alleviate poverty, help in investment in health and education, or to fight corruption. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Sunday started a whirlwind tour of the three members of the U-6 (undecided six), as they are known in UN corridors, after Washington has been frantically on the phone with all of them. It's a Paris-against-Washington game played out in western Africa with a time limit and no strategies spared. The prize for Washington is to get all three votes. For Paris, two are enough to prevent it from having to use its veto if a resolution is passed. In a nutshell, Africa - snubbed by the West in any major international decision - is now in effect deciding whether the United States and United Kingdom go to war in Iraq legitimized or not by the concert of world nations.
White House listens when Weekly Standard speaks
David Carr, New York Times, March 11, 2003
"Reader for reader, it may be the most influential publication in America," said Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and author of "What Liberal Media?" (Basic Books). The circulation may be small, but "they are not interested in speaking to the great unwashed," Mr. Alterman said. "The magazine speaks directly to and for power. Anybody who wants to know what this administration is thinking and what they plan to do has to read this magazine." [...]
The Weekly Standard's willingness to domesticate and Americanize the globe, at gunpoint when necessary, gives a shiver of delight to most conservatives, but others wonder how that strategy might end.
"They are urging a de facto return to empire," said Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Mr. Kagan [a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard] remains a senior fellow. "Announcing a global crusade on behalf of democracy is arrogant, blind to local realities, dangerous and ignorant of history."
Mr. Kristol advocates just such a crusade in "The War Over Iraq" (Encounter Books), a new book he wrote with Lawrence F. Kaplan, a senior editor at The New Republic. The collaboration with a writer from a magazine identified with the Democratic Party is one more symptom of The Weekly Standard's transformation from outré journal of the right to the Boswell of the new global agenda.
New world order
Remaking the United Nations
Lead Editorial, The Guardian, March 11, 2003
French and German officials argue ... that the UN will only remain relevant and effective if the previously agreed Iraq policy of coercive disarmament and, more broadly, traditional security council procedural and legal norms are upheld. This is entirely reasonable, up to a point. But what they and other opponents fail to address, at least in public, is the more fundamental dilemma of how best to co-opt or contain one UN member - the US - that is uniquely and disproportionately powerful; how best to work with the US instead of being steamrollered by it. This problem has been brewing ever since the US emerged as sole superpower. But it has taken a rogue US administration ideologically antipathetic to multilateral restraints as typified by the UN and by international treaties to bring the problem to a head. In this wider context, Iraq is but a harbinger of things to come. For this reason, it is a watershed event.
Second US diplomat quits over Iraq policy
Agence France-Presse, March 11, 2003
A veteran US diplomat resigned today in protest over US policy toward Iraq, becoming the second career foreign service officer to do so in the past month.
John Brown, who joined the State Department in 1981, said he resigned because he could not support Washington's Iraq policy, which he said was fomenting a massive rise in anti-US sentiment around the world.
In a resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Brown said he agreed with J Brady Kiesling, a diplomat at the US embassy in Athens who quit in February over President George W Bush's apparent intent on fighting Iraq.
"I am joining my colleague John Brady Kiesling in submitting my resignation from the Foreign Service - effective immediately - because I cannot in good conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq," he said.
"Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force," Brown said in the letter, a copy of which he sent to AFP.
"The president's disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century," he said.
See also John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation
A wilful blindness
George Monbiot, The Guardian, March 11, 2003
Those of us who oppose the impending conquest of Iraq must recognise that there's a possibility that, if it goes according to plan, it could improve the lives of many Iraqi people. But to pretend that this battle begins and ends in Iraq requires a wilful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context is a blunt attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to suit itself.
Storm warnings for a supply-side war
A review of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq
Ian S. Lustick, The Nation, March 4, 2003
Having finished The Threatening Storm, the careful reader will wag his or her head in disbelief. How can a book resounding with so many warnings against an invasion be heralded as acompelling call to arms? The question parallels the large question ringing in the ears of millions of puzzled Americans. What is the reason for this war? What has made it such an urgent matter to dispose of Saddam Hussein? What has changed in Iraq to produce a threat to the United States and the world that was not present eight, six or four years ago? What is the "demand" for this war?
The answer is simple. This is a supply-side war. There is very little demand for the war, and nothing in the way of a compelling necessity for it. But the enormous supply of political capital flowing toward the President after 9/11 combines with the overweening preponderance of US military power on a global level to make the production of war in Iraq not a trivial affair but one that can be embraced with relatively little thought and almost no need to appeal to a readiness to sacrifice. That a war is militarily and politically so "easy" for the United States government can explain why so little reason for a war can produce so powerful a campaign for one. It also explains why so weak an argument for it, as is contained in the Pollack book, can be so widely regarded as persuasive.
Smart-mobbing the war
George Packer, New York Times, March 9, 2003
You can find America's new antiwar movement in a bright yellow room four floors above the traffic of West 57th Street -- a room so small that its occupant burns himself on the heat pipe when he turns over in bed and can commute to his office without touching the floor. Eli Pariser, 22, tall, bearded, spends long hours every day at his desk hunched over a laptop, plotting strategy and directing the electronic traffic of an instantaneous movement that was partly assembled in his computer. During the past three months it has gathered the numbers that took three years to build during Vietnam. It may be the fastest-growing protest movement in American history.
The good oil from the heart of Texas
Michael Davie, The Age, March 8, 2003
They sang Deep in the Heart of Texas on the steps of the vast domed Capitol building - reasonably enough, since that's where they were: Austin, the Texas capital.
They also sang the Star-Spangled Banner and took the Pledge of Allegiance. They had assembled to support US President George Bush and the military. They wanted to say that, with the country on the edge of war, this was not the time for anti-war protests. They called themselves the Rally for America and carried signs that said Let's Roll, God Bless the USA, and Adios Saddam.
But it was not much of a rally - only 250 people, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper. And some of those wanted it known that they were not necessarily in support of war against Iraq; they were there to stand behind the President.
Two weeks ago, 10,000 took to the streets in an anti-war protest: a number that surprised the protesters. It also surprised an outsider like myself. I have been in Texas just over two weeks, doing some research at the University of Texas. I had assumed that in coming here I would be right at the centre of Bush support, with not a dissenting voice to be heard.
After all, his ranch is just down the road. Heads of state are transported here when he wants to flatter or threaten them, and where they don inappropriate Texan gear, jeans and cowboy boots, in an attempt to flatter him. Everyone in these parts knows Dubya.
Yet in two weeks we have yet to meet one person who favours the war.
Why I am going to the Gulf with a heavy heart
A serving officer, The Telegraph, March 9, 2003
I have been a serving officer in Her Majesty's Armed Forces for more than 23 years and I am as proud to serve Britain today as I was when I was commissioned in 1980. I have seen British servicemen fight, die and kill for their country. I was involved in operations in the Falklands War, the Gulf War and peace-keeping in Bosnia. I am proud that I fought for my country.
After the Gulf War, I helped to administer and enforce the no-fly zones over Iraq. Since then I have returned to the Gulf theatre of operations several times and have seen the success which the no-fly zones have had in containing Saddam Hussein.
Over the last few months, however, I have grown increasingly uneasy with the British Government's policy towards Iraq and the seemingly inevitable war. In my service career, I have never felt compelled to speak to a journalist or contact a newspaper. Until now. I should also add that I am not alone in my views. Many junior, middle-ranking and senior military officers whom I have encountered have similar concerns over this Government aligning itself so closely with the Bush strategy. The last thing a commander in the field wants to see is his soldiers die in what many in the Armed Forces believe is a misguided military campaign.
Bush tactics strengthen UN brake on US power
William Pfaff, Boston Globe, March 10, 2003
The impending Iraq war has become a watershed event. It will permanently alter the American relationship to the Islamic Middle East. It has already provoked serious change in Europe's relations with Washington. It may have lasting influence on what becomes of American society. US troops already operate inside Iraq, and President Bush and his people insist nothing short of Saddam Hussein's abdication will stop them.
Inside the mind of a terrorist
Rachid, The Observer, March 9, 2003
As fear of terror attacks in Britain rises, it is vital to understand what drives young to men carry out atrocities. In a harrowing personal testament, Rachid, a 31-year-old Algerian jailed in his homeland for his beliefs and now living illegally in London, gives an insight into the mesh of religion, politics and violence that creates killers.
The fig leaf of moral impotence
Imad Khadduri, Yellow Times, March 10, 2003
On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), submitted, in accordance with U.N. Resolution 1441, his third report to the Security Council on Iraq's nuclear non-capability.
ElBaradei's report unequivocally disproved most of Colin Powell's alleged "evidence" of Iraq's continued nuclear weapons program after the end of the 1991 war that Powell so brazenly offered in a theatrical presentation to the same Security Council just a month earlier on February 5, 2003. Powell's pathetic response to ElBaradei's report would be laughable were it not for the moral crime the Bush administration is about to commit in Iraq.
West's failure to donate humanitarian aid threatens catastrophe for millions
Jonathan Steele and Luke Harding, The Guardian, March 10, 2003
With a war against Iraq perhaps days away, the world's richest governments have given the United Nations barely a quarter of the funds its agencies have asked for to deal with the expected humanitarian catastrophe.
"We made an updated appeal for $120m (£75m) in February and have so far received $30m (£18.75m)," Elizabeth Byrs, the Geneva spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Activities (Unocha), said yesterday.
The result of this shortfall in funds is starkly illustrated by the empty field near the Kurdish town of Soran. There are no tents. There is no sanitation. In fact, there is nothing at all - merely a vast, muddy plain beneath a freezing snow-covered mountain. But it is here, close to the border with Iran, that authorities in opposition-controlled northern Iraq are planning to house tens of thousands of refugees.
A supreme international crime
Mark Littman, The Guardian, March 10, 2003
The United Nations Charter is a treaty, one to which 192 out of a total of 196 sovereign states in the world are parties. It takes precedence over all other treaties.
At the Nuremberg trials, the principles of international law identified by the tribunal and subsequently accepted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations included that the planning, preparation or initiation of a war contrary to the terms of an international treaty was "a crime against peace". The tribunal further stated "that to initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime".
It was for this crime that the German foreign minister Von Ribbentrop was tried, convicted and hanged.
WAR ON IRAQ: A FAITH-BASED INITIATIVE?
Some see Iraq war in Scripture
Bill Hillburg, San Bernardino County Sun, March 8, 2003
For millions of Americans, the looming war with Iraq is far more than an effort to eliminate a dictator and his weapons of mass destruction. Citing Scripture, they fervently believe that the conflict is yet another strong sign that the end of time is approaching.
Christian conservatives who adhere to a strict literal interpretation of the Bible see ample indications of fulfilled prophecies in the Middle East conflict and strongly back President George W. Bush's war plans.
"This is part of the overall picture of what the end times will look like," said Manuel Gonzalez, pastor of the Calvary Chapel in Chatsworth. "The stage is being set."
The end scenario, say Christian conservatives, is clearly laid out in the Bible. The events, centered in Israel and nearby nations including Iraq, include seven years of violent upheaval culminating in Armageddon, a battle between good and evil. A returned and victorious Jesus Christ would then rule the Earth for 1,000 years before rendering a final judgment.
Adherents further believe that they would be spared the violence of the end times by being transported to heaven in a phenomenon called "the rapture."
Such beliefs have led to strong conservative-Christian support for Israel as well for Bush's Middle East and anti-terrorism policies.
Nuclear weapons: A bad idea in Vietnam, an even worse idea today
Peter Hayes and Nina Tannenwald, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2003
Should the United States use nuclear weapons against rogue states and nonstate actors such as terrorists and insurgents? This question has been raised by the Bush administration in a variety of policy statements, including last year's Nuclear Posture Review, which ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against a number of countries, including Iraq.
But the question is not new. It was asked three decades ago, during the Vietnam War. As a recently declassified top-secret report from 1966 reveals, both the analysis conducted then and the answer -- a decisive no -- remain remarkably relevant.
See also Making the case against calamity
Just war - or a just war?
Jimmy Carter, New York Times, March 9, 2003
Profound changes have been taking place in American foreign policy, reversing consistent bipartisan commitments that for more than two centuries have earned our nation greatness. These commitments have been predicated on basic religious principles, respect for international law, and alliances that resulted in wise decisions and mutual restraint. Our apparent determination to launch a war against Iraq, without international support, is a violation of these premises.
As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards.
On Iraq, Congress cedes all the authority to Bush
Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2003
The United States is teetering on the brink of war with Iraq. Edgy citizens brace for terrorist retaliation. The United Nations is consumed by the looming conflict. The Turkish and British parliaments are riven over U.S. war plans.
But back in "the world's greatest deliberative body," the U.S. Senate spent most of last week mired in a partisan brawl over a single federal judge. The House, meanwhile, squabbled over a tax bill laden with special-interest goodies and passed a resolution mourning the death of Mister Rogers.
The disconnect between Congress' parochial preoccupations and the sense of historic peril abroad is a striking reminder that U.S. lawmakers have put themselves squarely on the sidelines of impending war against Iraq.
Markets threatened by 'new world disorder'
Faisal Islam, The Observer, March 9, 2003
Global stock markets will slump further into turmoil if there is a war on Iraq without a clear United Nations mandate, the City is warning.
Bond and stock traders fear action by the United States and Britain without backing this week from the UN Security Council could lead to economic and financial disruption around the world.
'The political damage could be massive - globally, regionally, between and within nations - new world disorder,' said Mark Cliffe, chief economist at ING Financial markets. 'This would imply greater postwar instability, heightened terrorist risks and collateral damage to economic relations.'
Oil war: 23 years in the making
Toronto Star, March 9, 2003
Consider who drew up U.S. goals and objectives in the Persian Gulf, when, and why.
Consider oil.
This particular operation - Pentagon working title: "OpPlan 10-03-Victor" - has been on the drawing board for a year, according to defence officials. The immediate goal is disarming Iraq and getting rid of Saddam. It's expected to begin soon, this week or next. Hard to hold back more than 300,000 U.S. and British troops, in place and pumped to go.
But the long-term goal, say big-picture analysts, has been in the works for far more than the 23 years since former U.S. president Jimmy Carter linked American security - "the vital interests of the United States'' - to the Persian Gulf and its oil, and threatened military intervention.
This war, say analysts, is about power and oil. It's about control of the Gulf states by means of strategic Iraq and, by extension, a final post-Cold War shakeout to give the U.S. more economic clout over China and Russia by controlling the oil spigot.
This is the moment, Thomas Barnett, from the U.S. Naval War College, wrote recently in Esquire magazine, "when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.''
CIA holding children for interrogation
Olga Craig, The Telegraph, March 9, 2003
Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.
Yousef al-Khalid, nine, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, seven, were taken into custody in Pakistan last September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
He fled just hours before the raid but his two young sons, along with another senior al-Qa'eda member, were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.
The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father.
Last night CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities.
UN launches inquiry into American spying
Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy and Peter Beaumont, The Observer, March 9, 2003
The United Nations has begun a top-level investigation into the bugging of its delegations by the United States, first revealed in The Observer last week.
Sources in the office of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan confirmed last night that the spying operation had already been discussed at the UN's counter-terrorism committee and will be further investigated.
The long history of UN espionage
Ian Davis and David Isenberg, The Observer, March 9, 2003
Last Sunday's revelation, published in The Observer, of a 'top secret' US memo, supposedly showing that the NSA has eavesdropped on members of the UN Security Council in recent weeks for insights into their negotiating positions on Iraq, is shocking. But perhaps not for the reasons that might first come to mind.
While the US administration has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of the memo, it is a sad truth that spying at the United Nations, both at the headquarters and among its various agencies and field missions is as old as the UN itself. The real significance of this story is what this rare public disclosure of such aggressive dipomatic tactics, whether seen as fair or foul, tells us about the atmosphere at the United Nations at a time when the world's diplomats stand starkly divided over the prospect of war on Iraq.
Why we are not prepared
to win the peace in Iraq
US Ambassador Robert Barry, Conflict in Iraq, March 7, 2003
The increasingly ambitious agenda for post-Saddam Iraq now includes disarmament, regime change, democracy in Iraq and a safer world for all. What is missing is any realistic discussion of the sacrifices that will be required to produce this kind of rosy scenario. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair seem determined to avoid discussing the costs and burdens of defeating Saddam Hussein and rebuilding the country afterwards until after a decision to go to war has been made. This creates a serious risk that our publics and parliaments will decline to shoulder the burdens of victory. Losing the peace in Iraq may carry greater risks than attempting to contain Saddam Hussein. We need to look carefully at plans for peace before the die is cast for war.
Industrial-scale mortuaries being sought for mass terror fatalities
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent, March 9, 2003
[British] Ministers are secretly scouring the country for mortuaries to take thousands of civilian bodies from a terrorist attack after war breaks out with Iraq.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has appointed one of Britain's leading coroners to spearhead the search for huge temporary mortuaries, such as aircraft hangers. Richard Sturt, who retired as the East Kent Coroner two years ago, is touring the country meeting planning chiefs to assess how they could cope with "mass fatalities".
But emergency planners are criticising the search as too small and too slow to meet the urgency of the threat.
Not in our name, Mr Blair
You do not have the evidence. You do not have UN approval. You do not have your country's support. You do not have your party's support. You do not have the legal right. You do not have the moral right. You must not drag Britain
Lead Editorial, The Independent, March 9, 2003
The die is cast. President Bush says he will go to war with or without the backing of the UN. Tony Blair indicates he will support him. The senior UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, asks to be given more time – a few more months at most. His request is brushed aside by the US and the UK governments.
There is only one way out of this nightmare: Tony Blair could be genuinely bold. This is his last chance to use his unique position close to the shoulder of President Bush to urge restraint, calm and reason – a cautionary voice that will be even more necessary if there is no second UN resolution authorising military action.
It is a sad reflection on Mr Blair's position, locked in an alliance with President Bush, that we hold out no hope that he will use his influence to avert a rush to war. Yet before he leads this country into a conflict it does not want, with consequences too ghastly to contemplate, we urge Mr Blair to reflect again on the motives and justification for a pre-emptive strike unparalleled in modern times. None of the shifting causes for war have been convincing, and are even weaker now, on the eve of a military campaign.
Who is in charge?
Edward Said, Al-Ahram, March 6, 2003
The Bush administration's relentless unilateral march towards war is profoundly disturbing for many reasons, but so far as American citizens are concerned the whole grotesque show is a tremendous failure in democracy. An immensely wealthy and powerful republic has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals, all of them unelected and therefore unresponsive to public pressure, and simply turned on its head. It is no exaggeration to say that this war is the most unpopular in modern history. Before the war has begun there have been more people protesting it in this country alone than was the case at the height of the anti- Vietnam war demonstrations during the 60s and 70s. Note also that those rallies took place after the war had been going on for several years: this one has yet to begin, even though a large number of overtly aggressive and belligerent steps have already been taken by the US and its loyal puppy, the UK government of the increasingly ridiculous Tony Blair.
Bush, the Bible, and Iraq
Stan Crock, Business Week, March 8, 2003
Two reasons have surfaced for the deep divisions over Iraq that have created a political chasm between the U.S. and allies such as France, Germany, and Russia. One is that other nations oppose what they see as an unprovoked war. The second is that they view the threat Baghdad poses to the world as far less ominous than the one the Bush Administration imagines.
A third factor is also at work, though: religious rhetoric, perhaps even fervor, which divides the President and many of those who voted for him from leading thinkers abroad, including those in some Western democracies. As European nations become more secular, they're increasingly suspicious of a country with a born-again Christian President, whose political base includes the majority of non-Arab fundamentalists in the U.S. British playwright Harold Pinter spotlighted this suspicion when he recently called Bush "a hired Christian thug."
Bush's irrelevant case for war
David Corn, The Nation, March 7, 2003
Bush's problem has been that a case for war based on the potential threat from Iraq is, obviously, not as compelling as a case predicated on an actual and immediate threat. If a nation faces a potential threat, it has the luxury of weighing--and debating--various aspects of going to war: the moral legitimacy of the action, the possible consequences and costs, how other governments and populations will react, the alternatives to an invade-and-occupy response. Many of these concerns, though, could be shoved aside, if the United States were confronting a clear-and-present danger.
Consequently, Bush has had to hype the case--to present it in black-and-white terms in order to turn a judgment call into an imperative.
UK nuclear evidence a fake
Ian Traynor, The Guardian, March 8, 2003
In a 55-page report last September detailing British intelligence evidence of Baghdad's ongoing attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the government said that since 1998 "Iraq has sought the supply of significant supplies of uranium from Africa".
British officials named the state of Niger as the source of the uranium and passed their evidence to the UN nuclear watchdog, the international atomic energy agency, in Vienna.
"Close scrutiny and cross-checking of the documents, the letterheads on them, the signatures on them, led us to conclude with quite absolute certainty that the documents were false," an IAEA official said.
"They were fabricated," said another IAEA official.
The fabrication was transparently obvious and quickly established, the sources added, suggesting that British intelligence was either easily hoodwinked or a knowing party to the deceit.
Bush fights the good fight, with a righteous quotation
Ben Macintyre, The Times, March 8, 2003
The literature of the First World War shapes our consciousness of war itself: nearly a century later, the language, myths and iconography of that conflict underpin an understanding of what war means across much of the world.
It seems appropriate, then, as we prepare for war in Iraq, that George W. Bush should be immersing himself in the words of a British writer from the Great War. His choice from the canon could hardly be more telling. Not for Bush the grimly inspired ironies of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, nor the poignant, painful questioning of Wilfred Owen. Instead, every morning at dawn, the US President devotes himself to the exhortations of Oswald Chambers, a Scottish evangelist who died while serving as an army chaplain in Egypt in 1917.
Chambers's little book, My Utmost for the Highest, provides a daily devotional commentary alongside a biblical text. It is uncompromising stuff, "full of spiritual pluck and athleticism" in the writer's words, advocating absolute devotion to the will of God. That Bush should be reading this before going into battle says much about the religious belief that permeates his Administration, and much about the way the conflict will be fought and interpreted. It is also central to explaining the disquiet of nations with embedded secular political traditions, most notably France, when faced with the most overtly Christian American President of modern times.
Storm of Mideast war has gathered over decades
Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, March 8, 2003
How did it come to this, and so quickly? History can be a roller coaster but for all the markers along the way, it is still hard to understand how in 18 months the ride has led from Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein; from a nightmarish day of terrorist attacks in the United States to an unprovoked war against a country that had nothing to do with those attacks.
On September 11, 2001, America had the sympathy of the world. Now, as 200,000 of its troops stand poised to invade Iraq, with 40,000-plus from its faithful ally Britain alongside, attitudes have been transformed.
America, or more accurately perhaps, the people who run America, have rarely been so mistrusted, disliked, even hated.
Bush's struggle over N Korean threat
Geraldine Carroll, BBC News, March 7, 2003
Poised to unleash war on Iraq, the Bush administration is under siege at home and abroad over its failure to ease the growing North Korean nuclear crisis.
Critics say the Stalinist North is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein, and are worried by President George W Bush's refusal to order direct talks with its leader Kim Jong-il.
Mr Bush is also being accused of standing by as Pyongyang prepares to crank up a reprocessing plant at Yongbyon which could churn out up to six nuclear bombs by midsummer, according to CIA estimates.
William Perry, a former defence secretary who supported the Clinton administration's policy of engagement with the North, has a dire warning for Mr Bush.
"The proposed policy of isolation and containment will not work. It can hardly isolate North Korea more than they are already isolated," he said.
And for Americans still traumatised by the horror of September 11, he warned that with Pyongyang's proliferation record, North Korean plutonium could find its way into the hands of terrorists.
Democrats lambaste Bush on Iraq
Jim VandeHei and Helen Dewar, Washington Post, March 7, 2003
Congress's top two Democrats yesterday pointedly criticized President Bush's Iraq policy, signaling a renewed Democratic willingness to challenge the administration's march toward war just as international opposition is hardening.
In separate Capitol Hill appearances a few hours before Bush's prime-time news conference, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it would be premature to invade Iraq without trying to win broader international support.
Daschle's and Pelosi's double-barreled criticism stood in contrast to the largely bipartisan and subdued support that Congress has given to Bush's approach to Iraq. Although a few congressional Democrats have vocally opposed war plans from the outset, party leaders generally have kept low profiles.
"The situation has put us in a more isolated position than I ever anticipated," Daschle said, adding there is "virtual unanimity" among Democrats that Bush has failed in his diplomatic dealings. He said Democrats feel the administration is "rushing to war without adequate concern for the ramifications of doing so unilaterally or with a very small coalition of nations."
Pelosi, an opponent of war in Iraq from the beginning, told reporters that Bush has not made a convincing case to the three audiences that matter most.
"It has not been made to the American people," she said. "It has not been made to the world community. It has not been made to the [United Nations] Security Council that war is the best way."
War with Iraq 'could be illegal'
Peter Gould, BBC News, March 7, 2003
Could George W Bush and Tony Blair one day find themselves facing criminal charges for going to war against Iraq?
A British academic, Professor Nicholas Grief, says this is not as far fetched as it may seem. He cites the Nuremberg charter of 1945, which established the concept of a crime against peace.
"There is a school of thought that going to war without the express authority of the Security Council would violate the UN charter," says Professor Grief.
"That could raise serious questions about the personal responsibility of President Bush and Mr Blair, and they could have a case to answer.
"They could be held to account in years to come. It is something they ought to be concerned about."
An unnecessary, avoidable, dangerous war
Robert Malley, International Herald Tribune, March 7, 2003
After months of furious zig-zagging, the rationale for the coming U.S. invasion of Iraq finally has landed where it always was meant to be. This war-to-be has little to do with disarmament and everything to do with regime change.
As the Bush administration has made plain, it matters not now whether Saddam Hussein destroys more weapons or cooperates with the inspectors. These steps, we are told, are only being taken in response to the pending military threat - whose purpose, mind you, was precisely to force such concessions - and therefore are of no moment.
Apocalypse now
Peter Beinart, The New Republic, March 6, 2003
Already, hawks inside and outside the Bush administration are tiptoeing in the direction of a preemptive strike [against North Korea]. In the March issue of Commentary, Joshua Muravchik writes, "Not only does the North's belligerence leave us no choice but to `think' about war, we cannot exclude the possibility of initiating military action ourselves." Defense Policy Review Board Chairman Richard Perle recently said the Bush administration needed to consider ways to "neutralize" North Korea's massive military firepower. As the Nelson Report, an influential Washington newsletter on Asian policy, put it last week, "The dirty little secret ... is that some Bush hard-liners not only are willing to risk war, they think that if the U.S. pushes hard enough, N. Korea will prove to be a paper tiger and swiftly collapse." When Pyongyang begins building nukes and the U.S. military is done toppling Saddam, that dirty little secret will become a full-blown policy option.
Given these circumstances, you'd think the president and his top advisers would be frantic. Instead, they're eerily sanguine. For weeks now, Bush officials have been denying that North Korea's behavior constitutes a "crisis." Secretary of State Colin Powell called Pyongyang's missile test "fairly innocuous" and "not surprising." One Bush official told Sanger that "nothing is happening--and no one knows how we will respond when the bomb-making starts."
Neglect of the Palestinian plight is risky and wrong
Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, March 7, 2003
So anxious are we about the coming war in the Middle East that we sometimes overlook the one that is already going on. It takes an unusually bloody round of killing by Israelis and Palestinians like the one this week to remind outsiders that they are still at each other's throats. Yet the hostilities between the two peoples are clearly as great a source of instability, violence, and terror as anything for which Saddam Hussein is at this moment responsible. Clearly. And yet that is not clear to the Israeli government, nor to the Bush administration in Washington, welded as it is to Ariel Sharon and his purposes. Their blindness is familiar enough, but familiarity does not mean that it is any the less dangerous.
Using torture to fight terror
Richard Cohen, Washington Post, March 6, 2003
Of course, lots of nations practice [torture]. Some of them, as it happens, are our allies. The Washington Post reported on Dec. 26 that the United States shipped -- "rendered," is the term of obfuscation -- some suspected terrorists to these countries to be, well, tortured. The information is then used by U.S. intelligence, which pretends ignorance. The Post named Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.
Here is what happened after The Post broke that story: nothing. The Bush administration naturally denied that it condones torture, and the American public, possibly busy returning Christmas presents, smartly moved on to the funny pages. Only some human rights organizations paid any attention, but they might as well have been yelling into the wind. No one gave a damn.
America admits suspects died in interrogations
Andrew Gumbel, The Independent, March 7, 2003
American military officials acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners captured in Afghanistan in December had been killed while under interrogation at Bagram air base north of Kabul – reviving concerns that the US is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qa'ida operatives.
The way we live now
Tony Judt, New York Review of Books, February 27, 2003
The Americans who laid the framework for the only world most of us have ever known - George Marshall, Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, and the presidents they served - knew what they wished to achieve and why the European-American relationship was so crucial to them. Their successors today have their own very different conviction. In their view Europeans, and the various alliances and unions in which they are entwined, are an irritating impediment to the pursuit of American interests. The US has nothing to lose by offending or alienating these disposable allies of convenience, and much to gain by tearing up the entangling web of controls that the French and their ilk would weave around our freedom of movement.
This position is unambiguously stated in a new short book by Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol, The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission. Both men are Washington-based journalists. But Kristol, who once gloried in the title of chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and is now a political analyst for Fox TV, is also the editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the "brains" behind the neoconservative turn in US foreign policy. Kristol's views are shared by Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and others in the power elite of the Bush administration, and he articulates in only slightly restrained form the prejudices and impatience of the White House leadership itself.
The War over Iraq is refreshingly direct. Saddam is a bad man, he ought to be removed, and only the US can do the job. But that is just the beginning. There will be many more such tasks, indeed an infinity of them in coming years. If the US is to perform them satisfactorily - "to secure its safety and to advance the cause of liberty" - then it must cut loose from the "world community" (always in scare quotes). People will hate us for our "arrogance" and our power in any event, and a more "restrained" American foreign policy won't appease them, so why waste time talking about it? The foreign strategy of the US must be "unapologetic, idealistic, assertive and well funded. America must not only be the world's policeman or its sheriff, it must be its beacon and guide."
The Pentagon's private army
Nelson D. Schwartz, Fortune, March 3, 2003
If and when the shooting starts in Iraq, American companies will be more critical than in any previous conflict, including the last Gulf war. That's because the Army has changed dramatically in the past decade, shedding almost one-third of its soldiers even as it has taken on missions from Kosovo to Kabul. At the same time, a government-wide push to privatize, as well as the increasing complexity of military hardware, makes the military more and more dependent on contractors. The upshot is that the Pentagon is outsourcing as many tasks as possible to enable the military, if you'll forgive the MBA-speak, to focus on its core competency: fighting.
Mundane chores like KP duty and laundry detail have been outsourced at bases as far away as Afghanistan and Kuwait. Closer to home, even recruiting is being privatized. At stations in ten states, the medal-bedecked, ramrod-straight recruiter of yesteryear has been replaced by a casual-Friday-outfitted headhunter from one of two private firms. You probably have never heard of these corporations--Cubic, DynCorp, ITT, and MPRI aren't exactly household names--but the Pentagon would clearly be lost without them. "You could fight without us, but it would be difficult," says Paul Lombardi, CEO of DynCorp, which saw revenues rise 18% in 2002, to $2.3 billion. "Because we're so involved, it's difficult to extricate us from the process."
Hungry in Gaza
Peter Hansen, The Guardian, March 5, 2003
The world has grown used to the idea that severe hunger manifests itself only in the hollow cheeks and distended stomachs of an African famine. But today in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank an insidious hunger has the Palestinian people in its grip. Hidden in the anaemic blood of children or lost in the statistics of stunted growth, a dreadful, silent malnutrition is stalking the Palestinians.
The populations of Gaza and the West Bank have lived for over two years with checkpoints, closures and curfews that have ravaged their economy. Over half are now unemployed and more than two-thirds are living below the poverty line.
The effect of this economic collapse was felt first in the erosion of family savings, followed by increased indebtedness and then the forced sale of household possessions. The Palestinian extended family and community networks have saved the territories from the absolute collapse that might have been found elsewhere in the face of such rapid decline.
See also World Bank report highlights 60 percent poverty level in Palestinian territories
Strangeloves in bloom
James P. Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2003
The intellectual mission of the Iraq hawks today is to erase bad memories of past conflicts so as to wipe the slate clean for future conflicts. "Liberal views, forged in Vietnam and tempered in Central America and beyond, got the world wrong," [columnist Mona] Charen laments. War opponents, she alleges, were politically and ideologically misguided, although it is likely that most simply wanted to prevent more Americans from being killed in a futile quagmire. Fortunately for the pro-warriors, after 30 years the memories of the Vietnam debacle and its terrible toll have grown dim.
Yet even as the U.S. was losing the hot war in Vietnam, it was winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union. And that's a victory the hawks don't like to talk about anymore. Why not? Because the favored strategy of the ultrahawks -- the forcible "rollback" of the Soviet Union -- was not adopted. Instead, presidents from Truman to the first Bush followed a tough-minded strategy of armed containment. Acting in conjunction with allies, in accordance with international law, the U.S. waited out the Soviet Union until it collapsed of its own dead weight.
Today, the Iraq hawks, in their increasingly Strangelovian fashion, don't want to repeat the Cold War patience. They don't want to let the inspections process chip away at Hussein's arsenal; they don't want the dictator to be lured into exile. They want a hot war, and they want it now.
Agent who saw 9/11 lapses still faults F.B.I. on terror
Philip Shenon, New York Times, March 6, 2003
The veteran F.B.I. agent who exposed the bureau's failure to heed evidence of terrorist plots before the Sept. 11 attacks is now warning her superiors that the bureau is not prepared to deal with new terrorist strikes that she and many colleagues fear would result from an American war with Iraq.
The agent, Coleen Rowley of the bureau's Minneapolis field office, is not a counterterrorism specialist and does not have access to detailed intelligence about Al Qaeda and its planning. But she is a 22-year F.B.I. veteran who is intimately acquainted with the bureau's inner workings and with the thinking of fellow agents, including agents who specialize in counterterrorism.
In a letter last week to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, Ms. Rowley said that he had a responsibility to warn the White House that the bureau would not be able to "stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq."
Excerpts from F.B.I. agent's letter to Director Mueller
Full text of F.B.I. agent's letter to Director Mueller
A fissure deepening for allies over use of force against Iraq
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, March 6, 2003
The declaration issued today by Germany, Russia and France against war in Iraq now - with its implicit threat of veto - may go down as the loudest "No!" shouted across the Atlantic in a half century or more.
The nine-paragraph statement may not have slowed the seemingly inexorable drive by the Bush administration to commence military operations as early as next week.
But the fact that Europe's largest powers felt compelled to present President Bush with an 11th-hour challenge deepened fissures that have opened in the last year with major allies.
It also set up a final confrontation at the Security Council over a resolution authorizing war in Iraq, a step that increasingly looks as if it could be forsaken for lack of majority support among the 15 members.
Joint statement issued by France, Germany, and Russia.
Rights on the rack
Alleged torture in terror war imperils U.S. standards of humanity
Jonathan Turley, Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2003
In Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising to find two dead bodies with signs of torture. This week, however, a shocking U.S. military coroner's report also suggested that the most likely suspect in the homicides was the U.S. government. Even more disturbing is emerging evidence that the United States may be operating something that would have seemed unimaginable only two years ago: an American torture facility.
Credible reports now indicate that the government, with the approval of high-ranking officials, is engaging in systematic techniques considered by many to be torture.
U.S. officials have admitted using techniques that this nation previously denounced as violations of international law. One official involved in the "interrogation center" in Afghanistan said "if you don't violate someone's human rights, you probably aren't doing your job."
COMEDY ALERT
This isn't funny. If Dick Cheney has his way, before long, newspaper editors will be submitting cartoons for government approval before they get published. Has Cheney heard of the First Amendment?
Web site hears from Dick Cheney after parody involving wife
Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, March 6, 2003
Vice President Dick Cheney's office has spurred an unusual dispute by asking a Web site that parodies the Bush administration to remove a satirical biography and pictures of the vice president's wife, Lynne.
After receiving the request in a letter from Mr. Cheney's counsel, the Web site doctored the photographs of Mrs. Cheney, adding a red clown nose and blackening out one of her front teeth, said its creator John A. Wooden.
"The letter is, if you read it carefully, it is only a request," he said. "But there's really no such thing as a request from the vice president's office. It's a threatening letter."
The New York Civil Liberties Union said yesterday that it would go to court to defend the parody's posting if Mr. Cheney's office did not back down from its request.
"They should know better — this is pure intimidation," said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the civil liberties group.
Whitehouse.org's Mrs Cheney page
Letter from the Vice President's Counsel
Britain's dirty secret
David Leigh and John Hooper, The Guardian, March 6, 2003
A chemical plant which the US says is a key component in Iraq's chemical warfare arsenal was secretly built by Britain in 1985 behind the backs of the Americans, the Guardian can disclose.
Documents show British ministers knew at the time that the £14m plant, called Falluja 2, was likely to be used for mustard and nerve gas production.
Senior officials recorded in writing that Saddam Hussein was actively gassing his opponents and that there was a "strong possibility" that the chlorine plant was intended by the Iraqis to make mustard gas. At the time Saddam was known to be gassing Iranian troops in their thousands in the Iran-Iraq war.
But ministers in the then Thatcher government none the less secretly gave financial backing to the British company involved, Uhde Ltd, through insurance guarantees.
Paul Channon, then trade minister, concealed the existence of the chlorine plant contract from the US administration, which was pressing for controls on such exports.
He also instructed the export credit guarantee department (ECGD) to keep details of the deal secret from the public.
What can the world do if the US attacks Iraq?
Jeremy Brecher, Common Dreams, March 5, 2003
If the US attacks Iraq without support of the UN Security Council, will the world be powerless to stop it? The answer is no. Under a procedure called "Uniting for Peace," the UN General Assembly can demand an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal. The global peace movement should consider demanding such an action.
See also There is a way to stop the war
The Pentagon Papers
Upcoming broacast of FX Networks original movie, Sunday March 9, 8PM E/P
"A one-time war-planner who became an antiwar advocate when he obtained a secret history that revealed how America's leaders had misled the nation to gain support for the Vietnam War. Convinced that Americans have a right to know the truth, and hopeful that the truth will bring an end to the war, Ellsberg copies this massive document, more than 7,000 pages long, and leaks it to the New York Times, touching off a constitutional crisis that pits the rights of a free press against the government's right to protect national security secrets. At the same time, Ellsberg finds himself the target of a nationwide manhunt, facing charges of treason that are finally dropped only when it is discovered that the Nixon administration had broken the law in its attempt to bring him to justice, taking what would prove the first steps toward its eventual downfall in the Watergate scandal." - Text from FX Network's promotional web site.
Daniel Ellsberg hopes that this movie will encourage others who are now in the position he was in to consider leaking current documents.
Europeans think America does more harm than good
Andrew Osborn, The Guardian, March 5, 2003
Anxiety about America and the way it projects its global power was exposed yesterday when an European commission opinion poll showed that half the union's citizens see Washington as a danger to world peace rather than a force for good.
Citizens in all 15 member states believe it does more harm than good when it comes to promoting world peace, fighting poverty in the developing world and protecting the environment.
THE SILVER LINING IN THE KOREAN NUCLEAR CLOUD
While the 9-11 attacks seemed to expose the absurdity of missile defense, a nuclearized North Korea will provide the proponents of missile defense with a justification for their multi-billion dollar project that it might otherwise lack.
U.S. said to be resigned to a nuclear Korea
Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2003
The Bush administration has concluded that it probably cannot prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and is focusing on managing the geopolitical fallout, informed Capitol Hill sources said Tuesday.
In closed briefings and private conversations with members of Congress over the last several weeks, administration officials have indicated that they expect North Korea to begin reprocessing its plutonium stockpiles soon, perhaps within a few weeks, the sources said. Once reprocessing begins, North Korea will be able to produce enough plutonium for one nuclear weapon a month.
A Senate staff member who is privy to the briefings said the administration was "preparing people up here for a de facto, if not declared, North Korean nuclear state and saying that this is something we can deal with through isolation, sanctions, deterrence and national missile defense."
Anti-war Turkish MPs shifting towards support of US troop deployment
Agence France-Presse, March 5, 2003
Anti-war Turkish lawmakers who blocked the deployment of US troops in Turkey for any Iraq conflict are changing their minds ahead of a possible second vote in parliament, officials said.
The powerful Turkish army threw its weight behind the deployment of US forces in the country Wednesday, saying Ankara would otherwise lose both vital US financial aid and a say in shaping post-war Iraq.
But even before the army chief spoke out, members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) reported that opinion in the Islamist-rooted movement had begun to swing in favor of backing the United States.
"There are many who say they have changed their opinion and will vote in favor if a second vote is held," senior AKP legislator Vahit Erdem told AFP.
He said the change of heart was mostly a result of anti-war MPs realizing that Turkey would not be able to influence developments in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, where it perceives serious threats to its own security, if it denied support to the United States.
In the name of God
Jack Beaty, The Atlantic, March 5, 2003
Unless a coup topples Saddam Hussein or he goes into exile, the U.S. will soon mount the first unprovoked war in its history, the first fought in pursuance of a doctrine under which we claim the right to attack nations that have not attacked us but who might, who could, who would if we do not strike first—a war fought in the subjunctive, based on a string of "ifs." If Saddam possesses usable weapons of mass destruction and if, to take a scenario George W. Bush takes seriously, he builds a fleet of pilotless drones and if he somehow gets them out of Iraq and if he builds or hires ships and launches his drones from them and if he has found a way to make the drones spread weapons of mass destruction and if it is not a windy day and if our Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, CIA, and DIA are as asleep as they were on September 11, then Saddam will attack us. Alternatively, Mr. Bush warned in the State of the Union address, "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." Italics mine.
WHEN DEMOCRACY DOESN'T WORK
Turkish democracy only operates by military consent - and that suits the White House just fine!
Turk military backs U.S. troops move, warns Kurds
Ayla Jean Yackley, Reuters, March 5, 2003
Turkey's powerful armed forces on Wednesday backed a tentative government move to submit a fresh motion to parliament allowing U.S. troops to open a "northern front" against Iraq from Muslim Turkey.
Chief of the General Staff Hilmi Ozkok said Turkey would be better off in any war than out of it, and argued that opening an extra front against Iraq from Turkey would mean a short war.
The rare public statement from the influential general could boost U.S. hopes for a deal with its NATO ally after a pledge of billions of dollars in aid failed to convince parliament last weekend to allow 62,000 U.S. soldiers to deploy.
Bush pushes the big lie toward the brink
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2003
So the truth is out: George W. Bush lied when he claimed to be worried about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, Iraq's stepped-up cooperation with the U.N. on disarmament would be stunningly good news, obviating the need to rush to war.
Instead, the U.N. weapons inspectors' verification of Iraq's destruction of missiles, private meetings with Iraqi weapons scientists, visits to locations where biological and chemical weapons were destroyed in 1991 and a series of unfettered flights by U2 spy plans have been met with a shrug and sneer in Washington. The White House line is that even if the Iraqis destroy all their slingshots, Goliath is still bringing his tanks and instituting "regime change." The arrogance is breathtaking. We have demanded that a country disarm -- and even as it is doing so, we say it doesn't matter: it's too late; we're coming in. Put down your guns and await the slaughter.
Right takes centre stage
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, March 4, 2003
Adopting a thoroughly US capitalist view of terrorism, that suicide bombers are only in it for the money, Mr Bush wants to wait until the funds for Palestinian attacks on Israel have been cut off.
He goes on to suggest that other countries allegedly responsible for funding Palestinian terrorism must be dealt with after Iraq. They include Syria and Iran, but also, according to the Israelis, Saudi Arabia and the EU.
Once these regimes have been sorted out, there will still be the problem of suicide bombers who are not trying to earn a bit of cash for their families, but are supposedly attracted by the prospect of 72 virgins awaiting them in paradise.
At that stage, Mr Bush may have to consider further military strikes to bring about regime change in heaven: that could prove to be an especially interesting confrontation.
U.S. cannot live in world without allies
Senator Chuck Hagel, Kansas State University, February 20, 2003
With new eras come new challenges, and today America again [as it did after World War II] stands at a pinnacle of power and again bears a heavy burden for securing a better tomorrow, for our citizens and for all the peoples of the world. At this critical juncture, the success of our actions will be determined not by the extent of our power, but by an appreciation of its limits. America must approach the world with a sense of purpose in world affairs that is anchored by our ideals, a principled realism that seeks not to re-make the world in our image, but to help make a better world.
We must avoid the traps of hubris and imperial temptation that comes with great power. Our foreign policy should reflect the hope and promise of America tempered with a mature wisdom that is the mark of our national character. In this new era of possibilities and responsibilities, America will require a wider lens view of how the world sees us, so that we can better understand the world, and our role in it.
Senator Hagel is a Republican member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Lawyer arrested for wearing a 'peace' T-shirt
Reuters, March 5, 2003
A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.
According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.
"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.
When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.
What would Genghis do?
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 5, 2003
In her new book "The Mission," about America's growing dependence on the military to manage world affairs, Dana Priest says that the Pentagon commissioned the study [on ancient empires] at a time [before 9/11] when Rummy did not yet have designs on the world.
To the dismay of his four-star generals, the new secretary was talking about pulling American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia, the Sinai Desert, Kosovo and Bosnia. He thought using our military to fight the South American drug trade was "nonsense."
He hated to travel and scorned "international hand-holding," Ms. Priest writes, adding that the defense chief was thinking that "maybe the United States didn't need all these entanglements to remain on top." He canceled multinational exercises, and even banned the word "engagement." His only interest in colonization was in putting weapons in space.
Then 9/11 changed everything. At the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz talked about "ending states who sponsor terrorism." He and Richard Perle said our best bet for stomping out Islamic terrorism was to take over Iraq, rewrite those anti-American textbooks and spur a democratic domino effect.
Now, with the rest of the world outraged at the administration's barbed and swaggering style, the Bushies have grown tetchy about the word "empire." They insist they are not interested in hegemony, even as the Pentagon proconsuls prepare to rule in Iraq, the ancient Mesopotamian empire.
Afghanistan rebuild sidelined as U.S. intensifies Iraq focus
Jim Lobe, OneWorld, March 4, 2003
Despite efforts by Democratic lawmakers, the World Bank, and worried relief and development organizations, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai ended a week's lobbying in Washington for increased support and attention to his country Monday more or less ignored by the media.
With some 200,000 U.S. troops poised to invade Iraq and the United Nations Security Council deeply split over whether to authorize military action, Karzai found it near impossible to pull the media limelight back to Afghanistan, confirming the fears of many of his supporters that the administration of President George W. Bush has moved on to other pursuits.
Independent Iraqis oppose Bush's war
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, March 5, 2003
A new myth has emerged in the pro-war camp's propaganda arsenal. Iraqi exiles support the war, they claim, and none took part in last month's march through central London. So if the peaceniks and leftwingers who joined the protest had the honesty to listen to the true voice of the Iraqi people they would never denounce Bush's plans for war again.
Wrong, and wrong. A large number of Iraqis were among the million-member throng, including two key independent political groups. They carried banners denouncing Saddam Hussein (thereby echoing the sentiments of many non-Iraqis since this was not a protest by pro-Saddam patsies, as the pro-war people also falsely claim). They represented important currents in the Iraqi opposition, and ones whom the Americans have repeatedly tried to persuade to join the exiles' liaison committee.
HOW TO INTERVIEW A POLITICIAN
American journalists would do well to study David Dimbleby's interview technique.
Donald Rumsfeld interview
BBC Television, March 4, 2003
David Dimbleby: And yet America is seen as applying double standards in this, isn't it? I mean, using the UN against Iraq, for instance, and then you yourself saying - repeating two or three times, in the context of Israel and the UN resolutions there, that the occupied territories on the West Bank are so-called occupied territories. That's the kind of thing that makes people think, well, actually America is not serious about this, they're so pro-Israel that they're not.
Donald Rumsfeld: Interesting -
DD: Well, you said that.
DR: Well, first of all, I did not repeat it two or three times. You're just factually wrong.
DD: You said it twice in the same series of remarks. You used the expression "so-called".
DR: Fair enough. I was in a meeting, and I was asked a question, and the phrase came out.
DD: But is it what you think that they're so-called occupied, or do you think they're occupied and should be given up?
DR: I think that that's what a negotiation is going to solve. I mean, that is what the negotiation is about. Obviously Israel has offered to give back a major portion of the occupied territories. We know that. The agreement was there. It could have been solved if Arafat had accepted it. He didn't.
DD: But your use of the word "so-called".
DR: If it bothered you, then don't use it.
DD: It's not me it bothers. It's the other Arab states it bothers.
Democracy pricks imperial balloon
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, March 5, 2003
"Turkish support is assured," declared deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz triumphantly after a meeting with top military and government officials in Ankara in early December.
He was referring, of course, to the US plan to deploy tens of thousands of troops at bases in southwestern Turkey from which they would open a second, northern front in their invasion of Iraq and quickly secure control of strategic oil fields around Kirkuk, while racing south to Baghdad and Tikrit.
The bluff certainty with which Wolfowitz, leader of the neoconservative faction in the administration of President George W Bush, declared his confidence was characteristic of the way in which Washington's hawks have approached the impending war with Iraq and their broader imperial ambitions.
Khalid capture: Truths and half truths
B Raman, Asia Times, March 5, 2003
United States officials and the army of so-called counter-terrorism experts which sprang up after September 11 are projecting Khalid Shaikh Mohammad as the Field Marshal Montgomery or General Patton of al-Qaeda. But his case is getting more and more complex and mystifying - just like the earlier case involving the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, a US journalist, last year.
U.S. diplomat's letter of resignation
John Brady Kiesling, New York Times, February 27, 2003
[Prior to] this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.
The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.
The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves.
Beginning a modern religious war
James O. Goldsborough, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 3, 2003
George W. Bush's Iraq war will be America's first religious war, one inspired by groups of Christian fundamentalists and Jewish neoconservatives, a coalition whose zeal for war is as great as that of the original crusaders.
See also Archbishops confront Blair over Iraq war
INTELLIGENCE VS. PR
Since, for better or worse, the US government has claimed the right to conduct arrests and perform extra-judicial killings anywhere in the world, it needs to be asked which interests were being served by the announcement of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest over the weekend. It certainly made for great headlines and a compelling image of the bedraggled fugitive being hauled into custody, but it also looked like politics got the upper hand in a conflict with intelligence. We are told that intelligence services are now racing to thwart terrorist attacks whose timing may have been brought forward because of the arrest. (Today's bombing in the Philippines may be evidence of that danger.) At the cost of losing valuable publicity during a period when the administration has been accused of losing its focus on al Qaeda, would intelligence have not been better served by delaying the announcement of Mohammed's arrest?
Taliban: Mohammed arrest won't weaken al Qaeda
Saeed Ali-Achakzai, Reuters, March 4, 2003
An intelligence officer in the Taliban government until its overthrow in late 2001, Mullah Abdul Samad, said [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed's capture would not yield information about the whereabouts of fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, or the Taliban's one-eyed leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
"Representatives of al Qaeda and the Taliban keep their communications going, but that doesn't mean we are likely to snitch on each other," Samad told Reuters.
Samad, who spoke by telephone from an undisclosed location, said it did not matter for the al Qaeda network if operatives were captured or died as others were trained to replace them.
"In al Qaeda, every mujahid (holy warrior) is no less than Osama bin Laden," Samad said.
The arrest of Mohammed appeared to jump-start an apparently flagging U.S.-led hunt for bin Laden and his top associates, but analysts said the fugitives would probably have moved quickly to new hiding places once they learned of his capture.
Turkey gives Europe a lesson in democracy
Mary Dejevsky, The Independent, March 4, 2003
In rejecting a string of US requests to station troops in Turkey for deployment against Iraq, Ankara demonstrated its sense of national identity and its democratic credentials. In voting as it did, Turkey's parliament has done more than any institution in any other country to force a re-think in Washington, at least of means, if not of ends. And even if Turkey's parliament reverses its vote today – or sees it overridden on economic or strategic grounds – that will not alter two striking facts. On Saturday, Turkey's parliament showed itself, perhaps for the first time, prepared to resist the will of its transatlantic patron. It also showed itself more in harmony with popular sentiment across Europe than with Washington's war plans.
Is this the end for a Palestinian state?
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, March 4, 2003
A single question stalks what remains of the creaking efforts to find peace in Israel: When is a state not a state?
There is growing agreement among EU officials, UN negotiators and even some American diplomats that the answer can be found in Ariel Sharon's proposals for Palestinian "independence", and the White House's evident willingness to go along with them.
Last week, President Bush made a fresh pledge to push his "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement once Iraq is dealt with. But those with an interest in the wording noted a subtle but important shift in tone that seemed to drop an insistence on dismantling many Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
A day later Mr Sharon told the knesset that the development of existing settlements would be a priority for his government, abandoning the pretence that only "natural growth" would be allowed.
Between those two pronouncements, some of those close to the negotiations see the looming death of the "two-state solution".
Student, faith and labor groups join moratorium
Press Release, Not in Our Name, March 3, 2003
As part of the ongoing commitment to peace and justice, a diverse group of organizations has united for a National Moratorium to Stop The War to take place this Wednesday, March 5. Bringing together students, labor groups and communities of faith, the Moratorium will draw attention to a “war that will last a generation” by stopping business as usual.
The Moratorium will build upon the momentum of the massive worldwide protests of February 15th by creating a series of local events throughout the country, which together express a unified statement against the imminent war with Iraq. Massive walkouts across the nation as a display of solidarity will illustrate the broad spectrum of those opposed to war.
The thirty year itch
Robert Dreyfuss, Mother Jones, March 1, 2003
If you were to spin the globe and look for real estate critical to building an American empire, your first stop would have to be the Persian Gulf. The desert sands of this region hold two of every three barrels of oil in the world -- Iraq's reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to those of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico combined. For the past 30 years, the Gulf has been in the crosshairs of an influential group of Washington foreign-policy strategists, who believe that in order to ensure its global dominance, the United States must seize control of the region and its oil. Born during the energy crisis of the 1970s and refined since then by a generation of policymakers, this approach is finding its boldest expression yet in the Bush administration -- which, with its plan to invade Iraq and install a regime beholden to Washington, has moved closer than any of its predecessors to transforming the Gulf into an American protectorate.
In the geopolitical vision driving current U.S. policy toward Iraq, the key to national security is global hegemony -- dominance over any and all potential rivals. To that end, the United States must not only be able to project its military forces anywhere, at any time. It must also control key resources, chief among them oil -- and especially Gulf oil. To the hawks who now set the tone at the White House and the Pentagon, the region is crucial not simply for its share of the U.S. oil supply (other sources have become more important over the years), but because it would allow the United States to maintain a lock on the world's energy lifeline and potentially deny access to its global competitors. The administration "believes you have to control resources in order to have access to them," says Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "They are taken with the idea that the end of the Cold War left the United States able to impose its will globally -- and that those who have the ability to shape events with power have the duty to do so. It's ideology."
The world casts a critical eye on Bush's style of diplomacy
Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2003
"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way," George W. Bush said during his 2000 presidential campaign. "But if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us."
Little more than two years later, the world's verdict on President Bush's diplomacy is split -- between critics who see it as arrogant and allies who support its goals but sometimes wonder where the "humble" went.
An Iranian-backed brigade, with ties to the Kurds, sets up camp in Northern Iraq
C.J. Chivers, New York Times, March 3, 2003
Advance elements of the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-backed militia that includes many deserters from Iraq's army, are building a new military encampment in northern Iraq, and preparing to move several thousand fighters into the area, according to local Kurdish officials familiar with the deployment and a visit to the camp.
The expanding activities of the brigade, which intelligence officials say receives support from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and might fight as an Iranian proxy against President Saddam Hussein, pose fresh diplomatic challenges to both Kurdish authorities and the United States.
Thousands of Iraqi Kurds march against Turkey
Sebastian Alison, Reuters, March 3, 2003
Thousands of Iraqi Kurds took to the streets on Monday to protest against Turkish plans for military intervention in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq (news - web sites), but police said the demonstration passed off peacefully.
"Anti-Turkish feeling is very high," traffic policeman Rajab Ali Kakel told Reuters at the march in Arbil, where several Turkish flags were burned. "There's never been a protest of this size here," he added.
Kakel and his colleagues put the number of marchers at up to half a million, although this could not be independently verified and other estimates put the figure below 100,000.
Turkish vote is study in miscalculation
Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2003
Early last month, Vice President Dick Cheney telephoned Turkey's prime minister with an urgent message: The Bush administration wanted the country's parliament to vote within days - just before the Muslim holiday of Bayram -on a request to base U.S. troops in Turkey for an assault on Iraq.
The timing of the pressure struck a raw nerve here, one that was still aching when Turkish lawmakers finally took up the request Saturday and dealt it a surprise defeat. As Turks offered explanations Sunday for this stinging defiance of their strongest ally, tales of American insensitivity were high on the list.
Bush is undeterred by opposition to using force against Iraq
David E. Sanger, New York Times, March 3, 2003
The political and logistical obstacles to realizing President Bush's goal of ousting Saddam Hussein within weeks seem to keep mounting.
Billions of dollars in promised aid have not yet persuaded Turkey to open its bases to American troops. Most members of the Security Council are still demanding both more time for inspections and better evidence that Mr. Hussein cannot be contained except by war. And Mr. Hussein himself — just as the White House predicted — has begun blowing up a few Al Samoud missiles in hopes of averting an American invasion.
And yet Mr. Bush not only sounds more certain than ever that he is about to lead the United States into war — he also talks almost as if Mr. Hussein has already been deposed.
In a deliberate and risky strategy, Mr. Bush appears to be dropping out of the public debate over whether there is value in further inspections or any alternative to ousting Mr. Hussein, or sending him into exile.
"The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government," Mr. Bush said in his Saturday radio address, skipping past the question of how he plans to remove the current one.
Organizers of antiwar movement plan to go beyond protests
Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, March 3, 2003
The people who helped organize the largest worldwide peace demonstration in history last month say they are not through yet.
More than 120 activists from 28 countries emerged from an all-day strategy session here this weekend with plans not just to protest a prospective U.S.-led war against Iraq but to prevent it from happening. They want to intensify political pressure on the Bush administration's closest allies -- the leaders of Britain, Italy and Spain -- and force them to withdraw their support, leaving the United States, if it chooses to fight, to go it alone. And they intend to further disrupt war plans with acts of civil disobedience against U.S. military bases, supply depots and transports throughout Europe.
Finally, if war breaks out, they say, they will demonstrate in towns and cities around the world on the evening of the first day, and hold a worldwide rally on the following Saturday that they hope will rival or surpass their efforts of Feb. 15.
The arrest of the al-Qa'ida suspect shows how the war on terror could be fought
Lead Editorial, The Independent, March 3, 2003
With the reported arrest over the weekend of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged organiser of the 11 September attacks on America, we return once again to the central question of the impending war on Iraq: will it make attacks like those of 11 September more or less likely?
From the start, The Independent has argued that war will only increase the probability of more suicide attacks on Western civilians. From the start, we have taken issue with the driving force behind this war, which is George Bush's desire to be seen to be responding forcefully to an appalling atrocity visited on his nation.
We have argued all along that the way to conduct the campaign against terrorism – apart from avoiding the rhetoric of war – ought to be through better security, cleverer intelligence and patient diplomacy. This unheroic and undramatic posture might not appeal to politicians, although we thought there was some scope for idealism and the occupation of the high moral ground. We were struck, for example, by Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference three weeks after 11 September, when he spoke in high idealistic terms of solving some of the grievances on which terrorism might feed, most notably in seeking a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Allies bomb key Iraqi targets
Nicholas Watt, Richard Norton-Taylor, and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, March 3, 2003
Britain and the United States have all but fired the first shots of the second Gulf war by dramatically extending the range of targets in the "no-fly zones" over Iraq to soften up the country for an allied ground invasion.
As Baghdad threatened to stop destroying its Samoud 2 missiles if the US presses ahead with its invasion plans, allied pilots have attacked surface-to-surface missile systems and are understood to have hit multiple-launch rockets.
Targets hit in recent days include the Ababil-100, a Soviet-designed surface-to-air missile system adapted to hit targets on the ground, and the Astros 2 ground rocket launcher with a range of up to 56 miles. These would be used to defend Iraq in the event of an invasion or to attack allied troops stationed in Kuwait.
Britain and the US insist publicly that the rules for enforcing the no-fly zones over the north and south of Iraq have not changed - that pilots only open fire if they are targeted. But privately defence officials admit that there has been an aggressive upping of the ante in recent weeks to weaken Iraqi defences ahead of a ground invasion.
Analysts confirm there has been an intensification of what is known as "the undeclared war".
Endgames: Washington, UN, and Europe
Peter Howard, Foreign Policy in Focus, February 28, 2003
The dispute in NATO and the UN is not really about Iraq. It never was. It's about the United States. More specifically, it's about the Bush administration's post-September 11 doctrine to use U.S. military power to achieve national security objectives. On September 20, 2001, Bush adamantly declared: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Bush's subsequent national security strategy articulated the aggressive position of preemptive military action to eliminate potential threats. The United States is now committed to use its superior military force to shape the world in America's interests. What scares France and Germany is that Bush means it. Iraq is merely a symptom of this new disposition, a war the U.S. chooses to wage on its own terms.
What the French, Germans, and others fear most is the massive concentration of international power in and around a Bush-led United States. It's not the power capability that has produced the transatlantic rift; it's the fear that America's power is now unchecked and unmitigated by international institutions and norms. It's the fear that the U.S. can go to war without them.
Dreaming of democracy
George Packer, New York Times, March 2, 2003
In Arabic, ''Iraq'' means ''well-rooted country,'' which suggests the kind of promotional thinking that makes urban planners christen a concrete housing project ''Metropolitan Gardens.'' The country was assembled at Versailles after World War I out of three former Ottoman provinces and handed over by the League of Nations in 1920 to be a British mandate, breaking the promise of postwar independence that T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, had made to Britain's Arab allies. But the British found this unruly concoction of peoples more trouble to govern than it was worth, even with Lawrence's friend King Faisal I on the throne, and in 1932 Iraq became an independent constitutional monarchy, though the imperial power didn't leave without securing favorable oil concessions. Within four years Iraq gave the Arab world its first modern coup. After that, the violence never really stopped, with coups, ethnic pogroms and massacres among political parties. (The Arab Baath movement emerged in World War II as a pro-Nazi group.) But the most turbulent decade followed the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy in 1958. One military regime was toppled by the next. In 1968 the Arab Baath Socialist Party finally consolidated power, destroying its opponents among the Communists and the other Arab nationalists. Saddam, the head of internal security, quickly acquired de facto power but assumed the presidency only in 1979 amid a bloody purge. Chaos gave way to dictatorship, two ruinous foreign wars and the Kurdish genocide. [...]
This bloody history has produced a hopeful new idea. Call it Iraqi exceptionalism. It's the idea that Iraqis have suffered so intensely under a radical nationalist regime that they are by now immune to the anti-Western rhetoric that remains potent in the rest of the Arab world. Iraqis crushed by Saddam's brand of Arab nationalism do not see America and Israel as their eternal enemies. The real enemy is the one within. [...]
The champions of Iraqi exceptionalism include the neoconservatives in the administration -- Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon; John Bolton at the State Department; Lewis Libby in the vice president's office; Richard Perle, who is chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a panel that advises the Pentagon -- and numerous scholars, columnists and activists, most of them identified with the pro-Israel American right. In recent weeks, President Bush himself has appeared to embrace the idea as a geopolitical rationale for war. The story being told goes like this:
The Arab world is hopelessly sunk in corruption and popular discontent. Misrule and a culture of victimhood have left Arabs economically stagnant and prone to seeing their problems in delusional terms. The United States has contributed to the pathology by cynically shoring up dictatorships; Sept. 11 was one result. Both the Arab world and official American attitudes toward it need to be jolted out of their rut. An invasion of Iraq would provide the necessary shock, and a democratic Iraq would become an example of change for the rest of the region. Political Islam would lose its hold on the imagination of young Arabs as they watched a more successful model rise up in their midst. The Middle East's center of political, economic and cultural gravity would shift from the region's theocracies and autocracies to its new, oil-rich democracy. And finally, the deadlock in which Israel and Palestine are trapped would end as Palestinians, realizing that their Arab backers were now tending their own democratic gardens, would accept compromise. By this way of thinking, the road to Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh and Jerusalem goes through Baghdad.
The idea is sometimes referred to as a new domino theory, with tyrannies collapsing on top of one another. Among the harder heads at the State Department, I was told, it is also mocked as the Everybody Move Over One theory: Israel will take the West Bank, the Palestinians will get Jordan and the members of Jordan's Hashemite ruling family will regain the Iraqi throne once held by their relative King Faisal I.
At times this story is told in the lofty moral language of Woodrow Wilson, the language that President Bush used religiously in his State of the Union address. Others -- both advocates and detractors -- tell the story in more naked terms of power and resources. David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter who wrote the first two words in the phrase ''axis of evil,'' argues in his new book, ''The Right Man,'' ''An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein -- and a replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States -- would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe the Romans.''
Bush and Blair to ditch UN if France blocks intervention
James Cusick, Sunday Herald, March 2, 2003
As hopes fade of winning a second UN resolution, Britain and the United States are now preparing the ground to argue that both governments already have the implied authority of the UN for conflict.
Sources close to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw yesterday admitted that if 'there was no prospect of winning a second resolution' -- due to the use of a UN Security Council veto by potentially France, Russia or China -- 'then we may consider abandoning it altogether'.
Washington also yesterday altered its strategy in exactly the same manner when Pres ident George Bush, referring to the existing Security Council resolution 1441, said the US was determined to enforce its terms, which demand that Saddam Hussein surrender his country's weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, called the new draft resolution presented to the UN last week simply 'an affirmation of the council's willingness to enforce its own resolution'.
Over the coming week, Tony Blair is expected to reinforce the message that it is the 'authority of the UN', already explicit in the unanimously agreed resolution 1441, that must be upheld.
Something to fear: Fear itself
The long run-up to a possible war in Iraq is exacting a heavy toll on psyches and economies from Orlando to Shanghai to Jerusalem
Shawn Hubler, Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2003
In actions large and little, local and global, the world's bystanders are bracing for an imminent invasion of Iraq. Long months of debate and deadlines -- an extraordinary public run-up to possible armed conflict -- have put on hold lives and livelihoods worldwide in ways that are turning out to be as demoralizing in some respects as war itself.
"It's hard to find a historical analogy for what's been happening," said David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford University and author of "Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945."
"You'd look a long way to find a war that's had this much foreplay."
And this time, Kennedy notes, the conflict at hand affects a world shot through with connections. The impulse to hunker down has been triggered, not just in New York and Washington and Baghdad, but also in Tokyo supermarkets and San Francisco rug outlets.
US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war
Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy and Peter Beaumont, The Observer, March 2, 2003
The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.
Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.
The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input.
The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.
Turkey upsets US military plans
BBC News, March 1, 2003
Turkey's parliament has narrowly failed to approve the deployment of US troops on its territory for a possible war with neighbouring Iraq.
MPs voted 264-250 in favour of the deployment, but the motion fell four votes short of the required majority of deputies present in the chamber.
The vote came amid mounting pressure from Washington, which has ships laden with tanks anchored off the Turkish shore.
In its first reaction, the State Department asked for "clarification" of the Turkish vote.
Turkey will receive $15bn in aid and loans from the US if it allows the deployment.
The motion - if passed in a subsequent vote scheduled on 4 March - would also authorise the government to send Turkish troops to Kurdish-populated northern Iraq in the event of war.
The US urgently wants to deploy 62,000 troops and more than 250 planes in Turkey as part of its military plans.
Turkey could send twice as many troops to northern Iraq.
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Ankara says the knife-edge vote is a massive blow for the four-month-old Turkish Government which has a massive majority in parliament.
But he says, it is in accord with overwhelming popular disapproval of a war against Iraq - thousands took to the streets as the vote was being taken.
Lust for empire
Jill Nelson, MSNBC, February 26, 2003
If anything has become clear over the past months it is that the Bush administration is determined to go to war. Whether the American people want it or not. With or without the support of our traditional allies. In spite of the will of the members of the U.N. Security Council. Regardless of what people around the world, from California to Capetown, South Africa, think about it.
The truth is, in the past few months it’s become clear that this war is about far more than toppling the head of one of the nations in George W. Bush’s self-defined “axis of evil” in order to liberate the people of Iraq, and even far more than a war for oil — which it clearly is. What the Bush administration is hell-bent on initiating in Iraq is the first salvo in a war for empire. Iraq is just the first step by an administration committed to global hegemony, the creation of a United States to which all other nations are made subservient through bludgeoning, bribery, or the threat of American-made terror.
Arab states paralysed by fear of their people and the US
David Hirst, The Guardian, March 1, 2003
All Arabs, regimes and peoples, agree on one thing: war on Iraq may affect the entire world, but they and their region will pay far the highest price. The Arab League's secretary general, Amr Moussa, warns that war will "open the gates of hell", and President Mubarak of Egypt says that it will light a "gigantic fire" of violence and terror.
An Arab world deeply conscious of its history of humiliation by foreigners' affairs is about to see one of its member states conquered and occupied; and the Bush administration does not hide its ambition to make this the first step in a "reshaping" of the region at least as much in the interest of the Arabs' historic adversary, Israel, as its own.
Why should we in Britain help Bush to get re-elected?
Richard Dawkins, The Independent, March 1, 2003
Cowboy Bush is saying, in effect, "Stick your hands up, drop your weapons, and I'll shoot you anyway."
Bush wants oil and he wants the 2004 election. Unlike Blair's two aims, Bush's two are far from contradictory. An important part of the post-11 September American electorate likes kicking Arab butt, and never mind if a completely different lot of Arabs (who, incidentally, detest the secular Saddam) committed the atrocity. If Bush now wins a quick war, with few American casualties and no draft, he will triumph in the 2004 election. And where will that leave us?
Bush, unelected, has repudiated Kyoto, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, international trade agreements and environment-friendly initiatives set up by the Clinton administration, and he threatens the UN and Nato. What may we expect of this swaggering lout if an election success actually gives him something to swagger about?
Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
'Human shields' may be considered combatants
Reuters, February 27, 2003
A senior defense official said Wednesday that foreigners who have gone to Baghdad to volunteer as "human shields" at key Iraqi sites might be considered war combatants rather than civilians.
The volunteers arrived in Baghdad this month and have begun to take their places at Iraqi installations in the hope of warding off attacks from any U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein's regime.
The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters: "I'm not a legal expert, but you certainly could argue that since they're working in the service of the Iraqi government, they may in fact have crossed the line between combatant and noncombatant."
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