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  The War in Context
     Iraq after Saddam :: war on terrorism :: Middle East conflict : critical perspectives
     news - analysis - commentary
U.S. insiders say Iraq intel deliberately skewed
Jim Wolf, Reuters, May 30, 2003

A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.

A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups.

This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.

The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.

Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi." [ complete article ]

Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims
Dan Plesch and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, May 31, 2003

Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq, the Guardian has learned.

Their deep concerns about the intelligence - and about claims being made by their political bosses, Tony Blair and George Bush - emerged at a private meeting between the two men shortly before a crucial UN security council session on February 5.

The meeting took place at the Waldorf hotel in New York, where they discussed the growing diplomatic crisis. The exchange about the validity of their respective governments' intelligence reports on Iraq lasted less than 10 minutes, according to a diplomatic source who has read a transcript of the conversation.

The foreign secretary reportedly expressed concern that claims being made by Mr Blair and President Bush could not be proved. The problem, explained Mr Straw, was the lack of corroborative evidence to back up the claims.

Much of the intelligence were assumptions and assessments not supported by hard facts or other sources. [ complete article ]

A love under fire
Nicholas Blincoe, The Guardian, May 31, 2003

I first saw Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf on April 18 2002, by the steps to the souk in the centre of Bethlehem. I had already heard so much about them, two Americans who had met in Jerusalem and fallen in love, Adam from a Jewish background and Huwaida from a Palestinian: folklore in the making. I was not disappointed. The pair were not only striking, with an easy physicality, they were also strikingly similar; like brother and sister, rather than boyfriend and girlfriend. They were confronting a chain of Israeli soldiers who were visibly diminished by the encounter.

This was three weeks into the Israeli invasion of the West Bank, the third invasion in six months. The centre of Bethlehem was deserted, and the air was filled with the smell of meat and vegetables rotting in the refrigerator plants of the market, a market that had been comprehensively vandalised by the soldiers. The smell joined with others, from the refuse that was tied in bags and dropped out of windows to remain, uncollected, in the street, and from drains that had been fractured by the weight of the Israeli tanks; when it rained, as it did often that Easter, the raw sewage swilled out into the street.

The soldiers were young, armed and tanned. In their wraparound sports shades, they looked as though they had come to the invasion straight from a skiing holiday. But they shrank before Adam and Huwaida's questioning: why were they there; why were they choosing to follow illegal orders; why were they blocking all attempts to deliver food to families who had been forbidden to leave their homes for the past 17 days? [ complete article ]

World or homeland? US National Security Strategy in the 21st century
Charles V. Pena, Open Democracy, May 29, 2003

The new National Security Strategy of the United States promulgated by the Bush administration in September 2002 describes itself as being "based on distinctly American internationalism". This new form of 'internationalism' – what may be termed the Bush Doctrine – projects what this remarkable document claims to be "the union of our values and our national interests". The outcome is a strategy whose "aim…is to help make the world not just safer but better."

This is a surprising posture for a Republican administration that had talked about a more humble foreign policy and criticised nation-building. It draws on early 20th century Wilsonian beliefs in America's mission to bring democracy to the old world of Europe. It reproduces a rather Clintonesque view of "promoting democracy." As such, it has brought together two groups in an unlikely alliance: the so-called neo-conservatives or 'neo-cons' (essentially, Republicans – and indeed some Democrats – who want to exercise power abroad), and liberal interventionists from the Clinton administration.

To be sure, the neo-cons would challenge the Clintonites' preference for working with the United Nations and having the support of the international community. But they arrive at the same end point, the belief that America's interests are best pursued by spreading democracy throughout the world by means of the direct projection of American military force.

While the Bush Doctrine draws upon the strategies developed by these contrasting sources in the 1990s, it only came about – and they only came together – after the events of 11 September 2001. [ complete article ]

Save our spooks
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, May 30, 2003

On Day 71 of the Hunt for Iraqi W.M.D., yesterday, once again nothing turned up.

Maybe we'll do better on Day 72. But we might have better luck searching for something just as alarming: the growing evidence that the administration grossly manipulated intelligence about those weapons of mass destruction in the runup to the Iraq war.

A column earlier this month on this issue drew a torrent of covert communications from indignant spooks who say that administration officials leaned on them to exaggerate the Iraqi threat and deceive the public.

"The American people were manipulated," bluntly declares one person from the Defense Intelligence Agency who says he was privy to all the intelligence there on Iraq. These people are coming forward because they are fiercely proud of the deepest ethic in the intelligence world -- that such work should be nonpolitical -- and are disgusted at efforts to turn them into propagandists. [ complete article ]

America's greatest enemy keeps no secrets
Faye Bowers, Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 2003

If the "high risk" terror threat has you hiding under the bed, come out, please. There's something you can do besides buy duct tape and bottled water. "Through Our Enemies' Eyes," by Anonymous - a man who's worked for 20 years in the US intelligence community - is now available in paperback. (This reviewer has spoken with the author several times, once in person.)

His book isn't another self-help treatise to help you remain safe should terrorists strike again. It is much more. It's a primer on Osama bin Laden - the experiences and primary religious beliefs that resulted in his jihad against the West.

The author considers everything bin Laden has said and done - including not only interviews and speeches available in the American press, but also those in the Pakistani and Arab press. The evidence is convincing: Bin Laden has telegraphed his every intention. We just have to pay better attention. As tragic as the 9/11 attacks were, "Anonymous" believes US leaders should have anticipated them. In fact, his book was completed by June 2001 and was going through government review prior to publication when the hijackers struck. [ complete article ]

Iranian apathy may hinder U.S. bid to foment unrest
Karl Vick, Washington Post, May 29, 2003

Iranian analysts warn that any U.S. plan to foment popular unrest in Iran will run up against the same challenge that has stalled the country's struggling reform movement: The careworn Iranian public is steadily disengaging from politics.

"In the current situation, it's impossible," said Saeed Laylaz, a reformist journalist and businessman. "The people are going to their homes, not coming out into the streets. The atmosphere in Tehran and Iran is being de-politicized, step by step and day by day."

As U.S. policymakers debate what stance to adopt toward a country they accuse of sheltering senior members of al Qaeda and seeking to develop nuclear weapons, the assessment voiced by Laylaz and echoed by other reformists and foreign diplomats in telephone interviews this week suggests scant support for those urging destabilization of a government that remains largely under the control of unelected conservative clerics. [ complete article ]

Al-Qaida 'sheltered in shah's lodge'
Julian Borger, The Guardian, May 29, 2003

The tough line on Iran contemplated by the Bush administration is partly driven by intelligence reports that al-Qaida leaders are being sheltered by the Iranian revolutionary guards at one of the former shah's hunting lodges, it emerged yesterday.

The terrorist leaders suspected of taking refuge in Iran include Saif al-Adel, an Eygptian believed to have risen to number three in the organisation, and Abu Mohammed al-Masri, a suspected organiser of the 1998 embassy bombings in east Africa. They may also include Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's sons.

The trail of clues that led to a grand hunting lodge - now a military base - in the eastern highlands near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, surfaced after an air crash in February outside the city of Kerman killed 200 soldiers from the revolutionary guards. [ complete article ]

Officials: Rumsfeld trying to make foreign policy
Joseph L. Galloway, Philadephia Inquirer, May 29, 2003

President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other top officials are spending hours coping with frequent, unsolicited attempts by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to make foreign policy, according to senior administration officials who are directly involved.

The officials said Bush himself had to quash a Rumsfeld proposal last month to send Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to South Korea to announce that the United States was pulling American troops off the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. [ complete article ]

Rumsfeld pushes for regime change in Iran
Guy Dinmore and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Financial Times, May 29, 2003

Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, is spearheading efforts to make "regime change" in Iran the official policy goal of the Bush administration, but his campaign is meeting with considerable resistance from other senior figures, according to officials and analysts.

A reassessment of US policy towards Iran coincides with an initiative launched by powerful conservative figures within the Islamic republic to engage the US in an attempt to restore relations -and thereby preserve the clerical regime in Tehran. [ complete article ]

Salam's story
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, May 30, 2003

No one in Baghdad knew who he was or the risks he was taking. Apart from a select group of trusted friends, they still don't. The telephones and the internet haven't worked here since the collapse of the regime, so the Iraqis never had a chance to read the diaries of the Baghdad Blogger. Outside the country, many didn't even believe that the man who wrote only under the sobriquet Salam Pax truly existed. It was the great irony of the war. While the world's leading newspapers and television networks poured millions of pounds into their coverage of the war in Iraq, it was the internet musings of a witty young Iraqi living in a two-storey house in a Baghdad suburb that scooped them all to deliver the most compelling description of life during the war. [ complete article ]

Senator rips lack of Iraqi weapons finds
Ken Guggenheim, Associated Press, May 30, 2003

If Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed enough of a threat to justify war, they should have been found by now, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia challenged comments by Bush administration officials that the weapons were well-hidden and may not be located soon.

"You can't quite say that it's going to take a lot more time if the intelligence community seemed to be in general agreement that WMD was out there," Rockefeller said in an interview.

Rockefeller said that if the weapons were so well concealed, the United States should have considered giving U.N. inspectors more time to find them. [ complete article ]

Lawmaker says Halliburton deals on Iraq bigger than reported
Agence France-Presse, May 30, 2003

Halliburton Co. has received more US government contracts in Iraq than earlier reported, including an "obscure but lucrative" deal with 425 million dollars, a US lawmaker says.

Representative Henry Waxman said in a letter dated Thursday that he recently learned of the deal for Halliburton's Kellogg Brown and Root subsidiary to provide logistical support for US armed forces dating back to 2001.

The contracts awarded to Halliburton, the oil firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, have been criticized by Waxman and others because of the potential for favored treatment and because many appeared to be awarded without bids.

"When the contracts are combined, the total amount that Halliburton has receieved to date for work related to Iraq is now nerly 500 million dollars," Waxman's letter to US Army Secretary Les Brownlee states.

In addition, Waxman said, the open-ended nature of some oil services contracts make the potential even greater.

One contract with the US Army Corps of Engineers has "a two year duration and a ceiling of seven billion dolalrs," he said, while the second contract "has no ceiling at all," making the amount Halliburton could receive "virtually limitless." [ complete article ]

Waggy dog stories
Paul Krugman, New York Times, May 30, 2003

An administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else -- including scandals involving administration officials -- from the public's consciousness.

The 1997 movie "Wag the Dog" had quite a plot.

Although the movie's title has entered the language, I don't know how many people have watched it lately. Read the screenplay. If you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial.

The Iraq war was very real, even if its Kodak moments -- the toppling of the Saddam statue, the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch -- seem to have been improved by editing. But much of the supposed justification for the war turns out to have been fictional. [ complete article ]

U.S. raids Palestinian mission in Baghdad
Slobodan Lekic, Assoicated Press, May 29, 2003

U.S. troops raided the Palestinian Authority's mission in Baghdad and arrested 11 people after ransacking the building, a Palestinian official said Thursday. A top U.S. general said eight people were arrested.

The detained men included charge d'affairs Majah Abdul Rahman, who was running the mission in the ambassador's absence, mission official Mohamed Abdul Wahab said. They were taken to a U.S. base in the center of the city and have not been released, he said.

"They even took all of our water bottles and food cans," Wahab said. "They behaved like common thieves." [ complete article ]

Brave new word
Derek Brown, The Guardian, May 28, 2003

That Ariel Sharon has applied the word "occupation" to Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is remarkable. That he has described the said occupation as "bad for us and them" is astounding. But that this should be interpreted as a change of heart; a signal that Israel is prepared to pull out of the territories, is both wrong-headed and dangerous.

Mr Sharon's play on words is interesting, and just might mark a significant shift in Israeli tactics. It is deeply unlikely, however, to mean a decisive change in strategy.

The Israeli prime minister, perhaps more than any other leader of our times, believes passionately that the West Bank should stay under Israeli control. That belief is founded not on religious fervour, on the endlessly repeated mantra that this is part of the land that God gave to Israel, but rather on military analysis. [ complete article ]

Lynch family silent over rescue
BBC News, May 29, 2003

Greg and Deadra Lynch also said they could not comment on reports disputing the US military's account of her rescue from an Iraqi hospital on 1 April.

An investigation by the BBC's Correspondent programme said the story of the rescue was "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived".

But the Pentagon denies claims that the facts of Private Lynch's rescue were misrepresented by the US military, saying they are "void of all facts and absolutely ridiculous".

"We're really not supposed to talk about that subject," Mr Lynch said during a news conference at the family's rural West Virginia home.

"It's still an ongoing investigation and we can't talk about anything like that." [ complete article ]

Pentagon aims guns at Lynch reports
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2003

It is one thing when the talk-show bullies who shamelessly smeared the last president, even as he attacked the training camps of Al Qaeda, now term it anti-American or even treasonous to dare criticize the Bush administration. When our Pentagon, however -- a $400-billion- a-year juggernaut -- savages individual journalists for questioning its version of events, it is worth noting.

Especially if you're that journalist. [ complete article ]

U.S. hedges on finding Iraqi weapons
Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, May 29, 2003

Pressed in recent congressional hearings and public appearances to explain why the United States has been unable to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials have begun to lay the groundwork for the possibility that it may take a long time, if ever, before they are able to prove the expansive case they made to justify the war. [ complete article ]

WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz
David Usborne, The Independent, May 30, 2003

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

The extraordinary admission, which is bound to stir the controversy in Washington and London about the murky motivations for war, comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

Mr Wolfowitz also discloses that there was one justification that was "almost unnoticed but huge". That was the prospect of the United States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the kingdom.

"Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door" towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, Mr Wolfowitz argued. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups.

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine, apparently alluding to the inter-departmental squabbling that occurred in Washington in the run-up to the war.

The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell. They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz's immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, conceded for the first time that the arms might never be found. [ complete article ]

God save the Iraqis from the American God
James P. Pinkerton, Newsday, May 29, 2003

Once upon a time, conservatives opposed God-playing hubris. The Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek, for example, wrote a book titled "The Fatal Conceit." And what was that "fatal conceit"? It was the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes." Hayek was no enemy of progress - which is achieved, he argued, through the trial-and-error experiments of the marketplace. His criticism was aimed at central planning, which sought progress instead by overturning the hard-learned lessons of human nature.

To Hayek, the idea that experts in a marbled ministry could gather the information necessary to make good decisions was the most lethal of follies. And the same centralization that strangles economic growth, he maintained, also strangles free expression, eventually turning technocrats into tyrants.

Hayek's conservatism was based on caution and prudence. The new conservatism, often called "neoconservatism," is radically different; it should be called pseudo-conservatism. It's based on the profoundly hubristic unconservative idea of creating heaven on earth, of playing God. To be sure, the pseudocons proclaim the purest of motives, but they should be judged on their results, not their rhetoric. [ complete article ]

Poverty doesn't create terrorists
Alan B. Krueger, New York Times, May 29, 2003

"The passing of Saddam Hussein's regime will deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training, and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers," President Bush predicted in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in February.

Others in the administration, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, highlighted that Iraq's widely reported increase in payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, to $25,000 from $10,000, in the spring of 2002, encouraged suicide bomb attacks. Regime change, it was argued, would eliminate the incentive for suicide bombings.

This month's spate of suicide bombing attacks in the Middle East -- five in Israel, three in Saudi Arabia and five in Morocco -- should put this argument to rest. The number of suicide attacks per week in Israel was higher in the month after the fall of Baghdad than it was, on average, in the 14 months before the invasion. Of course, this is not a controlled experiment; other contributing factors have changed. But it would seem that the financial incentive provided by Iraq's payments has had little impact on the supply of suicide bombers so far.

Why were the policy makers wrong? [ complete article ]

Behind the victory, a power struggle that drains life from a weary people
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, May 29, 2003

When Tony Blair visits Iraq today, he will be told about the achievements of the British armed forces, the swift and widely welcomed defeat of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime and how reconstruction, though difficult, is beginning apace.

It will only be half the story. He will not, for example, hear about Dr Hussain Ridha and the plight of Khalis, a small, provincial capital about 50 miles north of Baghdad. But if Khalis is anything like the hundreds of other small towns and villages across the country, then postwar Iraq is al ready in a far deeper crisis than its military occupiers will ever admit.

Khalis is an unremarkable town of around 40,000 people, set in fertile plains to the east of the Tigris river. Two days ago a newborn baby died in Dr Ridha's hands because the hospital where he works has run out of oxygen.

Doctors are now seeing 200 new patients daily, all suffering from severe diarrhoea. It is twice the average for this time of year. In addition, each day they see at least seven new typhoid patients. Yesterday Dr Ridha was on his last bottle of Flagyl, or metronidazole, one of the main antibiotics he uses for bacterial stomach illnesses. [ complete article ]

Official explodes key WMD claim
Tom Happold and agencies, The Guardian, May 29, 2003

Downing Street doctored a dossier on Iraq's weapons programme to make it "sexier", according to a senior British official, who claims intelligence services were unhappy with the assertion that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ready for use within 45 minutes.

Despite a No 10 denial that "not one word of the dossier was not entirely the work of the intelligence agencies," the revelations are likely to cloud Tony Blair's visit to Iraq today. Critics of the war are expected to claim that the document shows it was one of conquest, not pre-emptive self-defence or liberation.

It is understood that the parliamentary intelligence and security committee is set to launch an enquiry into the claims made by the government about Iraq. And the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who resigned over his opposition to the war, last night called for a more independent select committee to investigate the matter.

The unnamed official told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Most people in intelligence weren't happy with the dossier because it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward."

Describing how it was "transformed" in the week before it was published to make it "sexier", he added: "The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes. [ complete article ]

Pakistan is losing the fight against fundamentalism
Isabel Hilton, The Guardian, May 29, 2003

When Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, gave his support to the US in its war on Afghanistan 20 months ago, he took a calculated risk: he was confronting his country's conservative religious lobby in a stand-off that would determine whether Pakistan became a modern, outward-looking democracy or a reactionary Islamic republic. There were protests as the war began, but on the whole Musharraf seemed to get away with it: when it came down to it, it seemed, even devout Muslims in Pakistan had doubts about government by mullah.

Today, with religious parties dominant in Pakistan's parliament and the introduction of sharia law imminent in the North-West Frontier Province, the question seems less clear-cut: is the NWFP a harbinger of more general religious militancy, or a special case, unrelated to the rest of Pakistan? [ complete article ]

THE NEOCON ROADBLOCK

A road trap for America, too
Frank J. Gaffney Jr., National Post, May 29, 2003

Americans should be under no illusion: What might more accurately be called the "road trap" will probably have dire consequences for America's vital interests, as well. Specifically, if a new, sovereign safe-haven for terrorism called "Palestine" emerges, the road map will prove to be at cross-purposes with practically everything the Bush administration has been trying to do since September 11, 2001 to destroy terrorist organizations and the rogue-state regimes that sponsor them. [ complete article ]

The case for war is blown apart
Ben Russell and Andy McSmith, The Independent, May 29, 2003

Tony Blair stood accused last night of misleading Parliament and the British people over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and his claims that the threat posed by Iraq justified war.

Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, seized on a "breathtaking" statement by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that Iraq's weapons may have been destroyed before the war, and anger boiled over among MPs who said the admission undermined the legal and political justification for war.

Mr Blair insisted yesterday he had "absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction".

But Mr Cook said the Prime Minister's claims that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes were patently false. He added that Mr Rumsfeld's statement "blows an enormous gaping hole in the case for war made on both sides of the Atlantic" and called for MPs to hold an investigation.

Meanwhile, Labour rebels threatened to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for the cardinal sin of misleading Parliament - and force him to answer emergency questions in the House. [ complete article ]

International Press Institute: "Caught in the crossfire: The Iraq war and the media"
Electronic Intifada, May 28, 2003

In the 54-page report, "Caught in the Crossfire: The Iraq War and the Media - A Diary of Claims and Counterclaims", IPI documents the unfolding of events relating to the media from the point of view of the media.

At least 15 journalists died in the conflict. Two are still missing. Journalists and media outlets were targeted and attacked; journalists were beaten, harassed, jailed and censored. The battle over the airwaves and public opinion was seemingly as important to the belligerents as the battles over territory and air superiority. Propaganda, bias and disinformation were more prevalent than accurate and relevant information. [ complete article ]

Read the full report.

Unfulfilled promises leave Iraqis bewildered
Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, May 27, 2003

People are confused that U.S. military forces, assumed to be all-powerful, have delivered little. They are unsettled by the lawlessness that has encouraged religious forces to step into the breach and vigilantes to dole out their own brand of justice. They are bitter at the promises -- yet unfulfilled -- of a better life that would follow the war. To many of its residents, Baghdad is a capital both liberated and occupied, but most of all just bewildered. [ complete article ]

Global network aids theft of Iraqi artifacts
Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, May 28, 2003

Khalil is one of the middle links in a global network of plundering that is rapidly depleting the immense reserves of ancient art and historical data that lie buried in cities that once made up the Babylonian and Sumerian empires.

The looting has been under way on a smaller scale for years, but it has exploded into an orgy of theft in the weeks since American forces toppled the government of Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi police force, which disintegrated at the end of the war, is not only powerless but afraid to stop the heavily armed groups that now prowl over dozens of sites. American soldiers are generally too occupied with reducing street crime and restoring basic services like electricity to pay much attention. [ complete article ]

Daniel Pipes, peacemaker?
Michael Scherer, Mother Jones, May 26, 2003

Like many other Middle East scholars, Daniel Pipes sees a way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But unlike most of his peers, Pipes sees no room for negotiation, no hope for compromise and no use for diplomacy. "What war had achieved for Israel," Pipes explained at a recent Zionist conference in Washington DC, "diplomacy has undone."

His solution is simple: The Israeli military must force what Pipes describes as a "change of heart" by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza -- a sapping of the Palestinian will to fight which can lead to a complete surrender. "How is a change of heart achieved? It is achieved by an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat," Pipes continued. "The Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them."

Obviously, such extreme views put Pipes at odds with the stated policies of the Bush administration, and even Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has indicated he will accept the "road map" for peace. So it took many by surprise last month when President Bush nominated Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace, a Congressionally sponsored think tank dedicated to "the peaceful resolution of international conflicts." [ complete article ]

Amnesty International: Rights situation in Mideast, aggravated by war on terror
Agence France-Presse, May 28, 2003

The human rights situation across the Middle East and North Africa was further aggravated in 2002 in the name of combatting terrorism, Amnesty International said.

Amnesty catalogued what it said were clampdowns on freedom of expression and assembly, intimidation of human rights defenders, continued impunity for human rights violators, and denial of justice for victims and their families.

There was also continued widespread use of torture and unfair trials, as well as judicial and extra-judicial executions.

The London-based group slammed both Israel and the Palestinians for "war crimes" in their continuing conflict.

It accused the Israeli army of "unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, extensive and wanton destruction of property, torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement and the use of 'human shields.'"

Armed Palestinian groups were charged with the "deliberate targeting of civilians," which Amnesty said "constituted crimes against humanity," and the Palestinian Authority was accused of arresting scores of people for political reasons, executing some of them. [ complete article ]

Classified: Censoring the report about 9-11?
Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, June 2, 2003

Why is the Bush administration blocking the release of an 800-page congressional report about 9-11? The bipartisan report deals with law-enforcement and intelligence failures that preceded the attacks. For months, congressional leaders and administration officials have battled over declassifying the document, preventing a public release once slated for this week. [ complete article ]

Israelis set terms for peace plan
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, May 28, 2003

Israel has laid down a demand for a "complete cessation of terror" before it begins implementing the US-led "road map" to a peace settlement.

Palestinian negotiators say any such requirement would hold the process hostage to anyone with a bomb or gun.

The demand is among 14 amendments, leaked to the press yesterday, that the Israeli cabinet is seeking to the US plan as a condition of its reluctant approval. Other minimum demands include a requirement that the Palestinians waive any right of return to Israel for refugees, and the dismantling of Hamas and other "terrorist" organisations.

The Israelis are also demanding a bar on any discussion within the plan of the fate of established Jewish settlements or Jerusalem until final status talks towards the end of the process, and the acceptance before negotiations begin that Israel will control the borders and other aspects of a provisional Palestinian state. [ complete article ]

Sharon: Settlements will not be discussed as part of road map
Gideon Alon, Ha'aretz, May 28, 2003

There is an understanding with the heads of the American administration that the subject of the settlements and outposts will not be discussed in the framework of the road map, but rather separately between Jerusalem and Washington, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday.

Sharon revealed at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that a special American team had come here last month to examine the issue of the illegal outposts. He said he explained to them the difference between a settlement and an outpost.

Asked by Labor MK Ephraim Sneh when the illegal outposts would be dismantled, Sharon replied: "They have been, and are being, dismantled." This caused laughter among the committee's participants. [ complete article ]

US finds evidence of WMD at last - buried in a field near Maryland
Julian Borger, The Guardian, May 28, 2003

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.

But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion.

Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence centre at Fort Detrick. Iraq's failure to come up with paperwork proving the destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of deception in the run-up to the war. [ complete article ]

Pentagon was warned over policing Iraq
Julian Borger, The Guardian, May 28, 2003

In the months before the Iraq war the Pentagon ignored repeated warnings that it would need a substantial military police force ready to deploy after the invasion to provide law and order in the postwar chaos, US government advisers and analysts said yesterday.

Some 4,000 US military police are now being deployed in Baghdad, but only after most Iraqi government services have been crippled by a wave of looting and arson.

The anarchy and crime in the Iraqi streets was predicted by several panels of former ambassadors, soldiers and peacekeeping experts, who advised the Pentagon and the White House while the invasion was being planned. [ complete article ]

Body counts
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, May 28, 2003

All over Baghdad on walls of mosques or outside private homes, pieces of black cloth inscribed with yellow lettering bear witness to the thousands of Iraqis killed in the American-led war. Only if they were officers do these notices make clear whether the victims were soldiers or civilians. As far as Iraqis are concerned all the dead are "martyrs", whether they fell defending their country or were struck when missiles or cluster bombs hit their homes.

Iraqis argue that in a war launched against their country illegally, every casualty is an innocent who deserves equal mourning. Yet the few western newspapers and human rights groups which have begun to calculate the war's death toll focus on civilians. [ complete article ]

Suicide attacker a heroine to frustrated Iraqis
Scott Wilson, Washington Post, May 28, 2003

Drifting through the afternoon heat shrouded in black, Eman Mutlag Salih paced by several times, shopkeepers recalled, and she looked nervous. She passed down one side of the street, past the children congregated outside the U.S. Army post, they said, then across to repeat the loop a third, fourth and fifth time.

"We suspected something strange because of the way she was walking," said Zuhair Mahmood Ahmed, who owns a tiny portrait photography studio between two former government buildings occupied by U.S. troops. "We thought maybe she had something to say to the Americans, but here we really don't accept women talking to the Americans. So we didn't know what was happening."

Then she strode toward the smaller of the two U.S.-occupied buildings, dipping into her small nylon shopping bag, witnesses said. She withdrew a grenade, they said, and tossed it at a small group of U.S. troops standing less than 20 feet sway. Moments later, after pulling out a second grenade despite shouts from U.S. troops to lie down, she died in a hail of bullets. Soldiers covered the body, bleeding into the ground from 10 bullet wounds, as a bewildered crowd looked on.

Salih's death at the hands of U.S. soldiers on Sunday might have been just one incident in one town in postwar Iraq. But the end to her short, puzzling life reflected a broader unrest alive in the country nearly seven weeks into the U.S. occupation. It has also made her a heroine among the men and women of Baquba, a role model in the city's hostile mosques, and a worry for U.S. forces trying to tame this still mostly defiant area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. [ complete article ]

Shia leader says Iraqis need their weapons
Wafa Amr, Reuters, May 26, 2003

A top Iraqi cleric who has been told to disarm his powerful private army kept the Americans guessing on Monday over whether he would comply.

In a Reuters interview, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim said his militia, which is meant to hand over weapons by June 14, was unarmed but that Iraqis had a right to defend themselves because the Americans were failing to keep the peace.

U.S. forces are struggling to restore law and order six weeks after toppling Saddam Hussein and have said all Iraqis must hand in their arms by next month's deadline or be punished.

Hakim, a leader of Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims who spent 23 years in exile in Iran, controls one of the biggest militias and said he was opposed to the disarmament deadline, but did not say if he would meet it. [ complete article ]

A formidable Muslim bloc emerges
William O. Beeman, Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2003

The war in Iraq has produced an unintended consequence -- a formidable Shiite Muslim geographical bloc that will dominate politics in the Middle East for many years. This development is also creating political and spiritual leaders of unparalleled international influence.

It is easy to see the Shiite lineup. Iran and Iraq have a Shiite majority, and so does Bahrain. In Lebanon, Shiites are a significant plurality. In Syria, although they are a minority, they are the dominant power in government. They are the majority in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and have a significant presence in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

The U.S. is used to thinking of the world in terms of individual nation-states. But the Shiites are a transnational force. The U.S. has unwittingly supplied the key linkage for this bloc by destroying the secular government of Saddam Hussein. That brought that country's Shiite majority to the fore, creating a solid line of Shiite-dominated nations from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. [...]

The Bush administration, as well as the U.S. Congress, has become nervous about the obvious power demonstrated by the Shiites in Iraq in the last few weeks.

The administration cannot seem to wean itself from the idea that states have primacy of power. Therefore it continually makes the conceptual error that if the Shiites become strong in Iraq they will be "controlled" by the established government in Iran.

Nothing could be further from the truth. [ complete article ]

Pentagon adds to despair of Iran's reformers
Dan De Luce, The Guardian, May 27, 2003

The Pentagon's pronouncement that it would seek to "destabilise" Iran's Islamic republic has given the country's clerics ammunition to portray their liberal opponents as traitors. Hardly a day passes without warnings in the official press against reformists accused of sowing divisions.

"America is trying to undermine our national unity by provoking chaos and political differences as well as creating a crisis," said Mohammed Baqer Zolqadr, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

Washington's rhetoric could not have come at a more awkward time for President Mohammed Khatami and his allies in parliament. As the political and constitutional battle between reformists and Islamists comes to a head, the US intervention is a distraction and a pretext for muffling dissent. [ complete article ]

A very mixed marriage
Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper, Newsweek, June 2, 2003

Opening another front in his war on terror, the president has launched an effort to coax Israelis and Palestinians toward peace. As Bush prepares for his trip to the G8 summit in France, there is talk he'll tack on a trip to the Middle East. But the "Roadmap" he wants to pursue there runs not only through the Byzantine byways of the Levant, but along the political freeways of America. If he is at all serious, Bush eventually will hit a potentially impenetrable roadblock at home: the deepening alliance between Jewish supporters of Israel and the growing ranks of Christian Zionists.

Simply put, the administration won't be able to lean hard on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon without being attacked by two blocs it cares very much about as the 2004 election approaches. Eager to capitalize on Bush's standing as a war commander and a friend of Israel's, White House strategists hope to double the size of Bush's Jewish vote. Still, the numbers there, however pivotal in places such as Florida, are small. Much more is at stake among the nation's 50 million evangelicals. Pressuring the Israelis also risks incurring the wrath -- perhaps expressed in thundering, Biblical terms -- of activists who claim to speak for that constituency, which the White House hopes will turn out in record numbers next year. "We are going to watch the Road-map very carefully," Jerry Falwell told Newsweek. [ complete article ]

Seeing Islam as 'evil' faith, evangelicals seek converts
Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, May 27, 2003

At the grass roots of evangelical Christianity, many are now absorbing the antipathy for Islam that emerged last year with the incendiary comments of ministers. The sharp language, from religious leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jerry Vines, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has drawn rebukes from Muslims and Christian groups alike. Mr. Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion, and Mr. Vines called Muhammad, Islam's founder and prophet, a "demon-possessed pedophile."

In evangelical churches and seminaries across the country, lectures and books criticizing Islam and promoting strategies for Muslim conversions are gaining currency. More than a dozen recently published critiques of Islam are now available in Christian bookstores. [ complete article ]

Neo-cons move quickly on Iran
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, May 28, 2003

Reports that top officials in the administration of President George W Bush will meet this week to discuss US policy toward Iran, including possible efforts to overthrow its government, mark a major advance in what has been an 18-month campaign by neo-conservatives in and out of the administration. [ complete article ]

The reek of injustice
Emma Williams, The Spectator, May 17, 2003

Most Israelis never go to East Jerusalem; most Palestinians avoid the West. Jerusalem is desperate, beautiful and divided -- so clearly divided that you could put up a wall along the seam. Indeed Israel is putting up a wall, but not along the seam. It doesn't so much divide Israelis from Palestinians as Palestinians from each other, and Palestinians from Israeli settlers, grabbing yet more land in the process; all part of the extremists' plan to make any future Palestinian state unworkable by expanding the network of colonies, intersecting roads and industrial developments, leaving the Palestinians living between the mesh, in ghettoes.

Unhappy word, ghetto; but there is no other word for the enclosures being built around Palestinian towns. Qalqilya, a once thriving market town of 45,000 people, is now shut off from the world by a fence and wall of concrete 24 feet high. There is one exit, guarded by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), who determine whether the occupants, their produce, their food and medicines may or may not pass. The word 'ghetto' comes from mediaeval Venice. It described the walled-off quarter in which Jews were obliged to live: a barbarous, discriminatory policy.

But they were allowed out of the ghetto when they wanted. And even in the worst days of P.W. Botha, the Bantustans were nothing like as restrictive as life in some of the West Bank cities or Gaza -- surrounded by a massive barrier, with armed guards at the only entrance that allows through selected foreigners and a handful of Palestinians with special permits. It is hard to describe the pricking alarm you feel when approaching the giant wall and its concrete watchtowers, manned by IDF soldiers who, for whatever reason, sometimes fire in the direction of the children within. I can say this from experience; it happened to my children, who are six and nine, when I took them to the local zoo. [ complete article ]

Next stop Tehran?
Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, May 27, 2003

Imagine for a moment that you are a senior official in Iran's foreign ministry. It's hot outside on the dusty, congested streets of Tehran. But inside the ministry, despite the air-conditioning, it's getting stickier all the time. You have a big problem, a problem that Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, admits is "huge and serious". The problem is the Bush administration and, specifically, its insistence that Iran is running "an alarming clandestine nuclear weapons programme". You fear that this, coupled with daily US claims that Iran is aiding al-Qaida, is leading in only one direction. US news reports reaching your desk indicate that the Pentagon is now advocating "regime change" in Iran. [ complete article ]

UN chief warns of anti-American backlash in Iraq
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, May 27, 2003

The UN's most senior humanitarian official in Iraq warned yesterday that US attempts to rebuild the country were overly dominated by "ideology" and risked triggering a violent backlash.

Ramiro Lopes da Silva said the sudden decision last week to demobilise 400,000 Iraqi soldiers without any re-employment programme could generate a "low-intensity conflict" in the countryside. [ complete article ]

The story of Hiba, 19, a suicide bomber. Can the road-map put an end to all this?
Sa'id Ghazali, The Independent, May 27, 2003

Even her family is baffled that Hiba Daraghmeh insisted on covering herself from head to toe in a dark brown, all-enveloping robe at all times. The white veil she also wore - a badge of Islamic fundamentalism - concealed her head, mouth and nose. Only her almond-coloured eyes were visible to the outside world.

The shy 19-year-old student of English literature never spoke to men, and so avoided drinking coffee or tea at the cafeteria of Al Quds Open University in her home town, Tubas in the West Bank. All of her friends were women. Even her cousin, Murad Daraghmeh, 20, also a student at Al Quds, says: "I never saw her face. I never talked to her. I never shook hands with her."

The first time the world saw her young face unveiled was in a poster. Islamic Jihad released it, after her death eight days ago.

Hiba was a suicide bomber. She detonated the explosives around her waist outside the Amakim Shopping Mall in the northern Israeli town of Afula, killing three Israelis and wounding 48. [ complete article ]

U.S. eyes pressing uprising in Iran
Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, May 25, 2003

The Bush administration, alarmed by intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda operatives in Iran had a role in the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, has suspended once-promising contacts with Iran and appears ready to embrace an aggressive policy of trying to destabilize the Iranian government, administration officials said.

Senior Bush administration officials will meet Tuesday at the White House to discuss the evolving strategy toward the Islamic republic, with Pentagon officials pressing hard for public and private actions that they believe could lead to the toppling of the government through a popular uprising, officials said.

The State Department, which had encouraged some form of engagement with the Iranians, appears inclined to accept such a policy, especially if Iran does not take any visible steps to deal with the suspected al Qaeda operatives before Tuesday, officials said. But State Department officials are concerned that the level of popular discontent there is much lower than Pentagon officials believe, leading to the possibility that U.S. efforts could ultimately discredit reformers in Iran.

In any case, the Saudi Arabia bombings have ended the tentative signs of engagement between Iran and the United States that had emerged during the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. [ complete article ]

Replace Iran's rulers, U.S. lawmakers say
William C. Mann, Associated Press, May 26, 2003

Iran's hard-line government, accused by the Bush administration of harboring top Al Qaeda members, poses a big problem for the United States and should be replaced, lawmakers said yesterday.

Democrats and Republicans urged extreme care in working toward that end in order to avoid fomenting an anti-American reaction among Iranians who admire the US way of life.

In Tehran, Iran's foreign minister insisted that his country does not and would not shelter Al Qaeda terrorists and has jailed members of Osama bin Laden's network and plans to prosecute them. [ complete article ]

U.S. adds power to India's Israeli links
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, May 27, 2003

Immediately after the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal featured an article arguing that Israel, India and Turkey were Washington's only "allies for the long haul" in the coming war against terrorism.

While an increasingly democratic Turkey turned out to be a major disappointment (from the Washington point of view), three-way ties between Israel, India and the United States are growing fast, spurred by precisely the same forces in Washington who championed the invasion of Iraq. [ complete article ]

Iraqis frustrated by shift favoring U.S.-British rule
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, May 26, 2003

The sudden shift in postwar strategy in favor of an American and British occupation authority has visibly deflated the Iraqi political scene, which earlier this month was bustling with grass-roots politicking and high expectations for an all-Iraqi provisional government.

This week Kurdish leaders are clearing out of Baghdad to return to the north to consult with their constituents about a course of action. They have asked the new American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, to visit northern Iraq to confront the popular disenchantment.

It was Mr. Bremer who broke the news to Iraqi political groups on May 16 that the Bush administration was reversing its plan to support the immediate formation of an interim government here that would have put Iraqis in charge of the country with allied forces and Western technocrats in a supporting role.

In a "leadership council" meeting on Saturday night, the main Iraqi political groups agreed to submit a formal protest to the occupation authorities over the delay in putting an Iraqi government in place. [ complete article ]

In Iraq, U.S. troops are still dying -- one almost every day
Alan Cooperman, Washington Post, May 26, 2003

In the public's mind, the war may be over, but U.S. troops continue to fall in Iraq at the rate of almost one a day. That is down from an average of three a day between the start of the war on March 19 and May 1, when a total of 139 American service members were killed.

The continuing casualties have had no discernible impact on the administration's willingness to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. On the contrary, the number of American GIs on the ground has risen by 15,000, to nearly 160,000, since Bush declared victory on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. [ complete article ]

The power of one
Martin Jacques, The Guardian, May 26, 2003

It has become fashionable to denigrate national sovereignty. The arguments are well versed: sovereignty is no absolute; it should not be used to excuse the abuse of human rights; the needs of justice should override the principle of sovereignty. It is suggested that this represents some profound shift in thinking, a reversal of centuries of history. This would be true if we were talking about the charmed circle of the developed world - Britain, France, the United States and the rest. But of course we are not. The sovereignty at issue is that of countries in the developing world which, until the second half of the 20th century, for the most part did not enjoy national sovereignty anyway. For them, the taste of self-rule, the possibility of not being governed by a race and culture from far away, is, historically speaking, an extremely recent experience. And now it is again under serious assault.

Many things came to an end in 1989, even though it was not until after 9/11 that we could begin to understand what many of them were. Nineteen eighty-nine was about the defeat of communism. With 9/11 we saw the emergence of a unipolar world. The invasion of Iraq began to define the nature of American interest and the parameters of that unipolar world, as well as bringing into question many post-1945 arrangements, norms and institutions. It is now clear that the latter included one profound change that has been barely commented upon. American hyperpower marks the end of the post-colonial era, little more than 50 years after it started. [ complete article ]

GOP politics vs. Mideast peace
Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times, May 26, 2003

The conventional wisdom inside the Republican hierarchy has always been that seeking the Jewish vote is even more of a fool's errand than going after African Americans. No longer, say hard-headed Republican leaders, who insist they can get 40 percent of the Jewish vote in 2004. They argue that social and economic liberalism now runs a poor second to support for Israel, and believe they for the first time have outdone Democrats in cheering the Jewish state. There is no more unyielding supporter of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies than House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the exemplar of muscular Republicanism.

But what about Bush's advocacy of the road map? He surely had to embrace it to retain Britain in the Iraq war coalition and keep moderate Arab states friendly. The question is whether he will risk Jewish votes by pressing for Middle East peace.

Republican activists leave no doubt about their views. DeLay has called the road map "a confluence of deluded thinking between European elites," the State Department bureaucracy and American intellectuals. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an intimate adviser of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, called the road map a conspiracy by the State Department and foreign powers "to work against U.S. policies." [ complete article ]

The scent of racism
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, May 26, 2003

Shock is the proper reaction to the remark of cabinet Minister Gideon Ezra, who explained last week that Arabs should be used as security guards in Israel because only they have "the sense of smell needed to smell other Arabs, more so than guards who are immigrants from the former Soviet Union."

If anyone in Europe dared to say something similar about Jews, the world would be outraged, and rightly so. Another possibility is to ignore what Ezra said: What's the relevance of a low-life utterance from a marginal minister whose level of speech only casts a gloomy light on the institution he came from, the Shin Bet security service, and on his current place at the cabinet table?

On second thought, though, we should be thankful to Ezra: He has provided an apt description of the reality in which we live. We do in fact "sniff out" Arabs, all of whom are suspect in our eyes solely because of their ethnic origins.

We are all racists. Like it or not, we live in a reality of national, not to say racist, separation. A fusion of genuine security distress, the appalling terrorist attacks in the cities, the moral scars we bear as a result of decades of occupation and the faulty education we received has created a day-to-day reality here that can only shock anyone who believes in human rights. [ complete article ]

The neocons in power
Elizabeth Drew, New York Review of Books, June 12, 2003

The word "neoconservative" originally referred to former liberals and leftists who were dismayed by the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the Great Society, and adopted conservative views, for example, against government welfare programs, and in favor of interventionist foreign policies. A group of today's "neocons" now hold key positions in the Pentagon and in the White House and they even have a mole in the State Department.

The most important activists are Richard Perle, who until recently headed the Defense Policy Board (he's still a member), a once-obscure committee, ostensibly just an advisory group but now in fact a powerful instrument for pushing neocon policies; James Woolsey, who has served two Democratic and two Republican administrations, was CIA director during the Clinton administration, and now works for the management consult-ing firm Booz Allen Hamilton; Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Ford and Reagan administrations who trains executives by using Shakespeare's plays as a guide to the use of power (www.moversandshakespeares .com); Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and the principal advocate of the Iraq policy followed by the administration; Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon official in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq; and I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. Two principal allies of this core group are John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control (though he opposes arms control) and international security affairs, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. Cheney himself and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can be counted as subscribing to the neocons' views about Iraq. [ complete article ]

On the roads of ruin
Peter Oborne, The Observer, May 25, 2003

Eighteen months have now passed since the West made a series of unequivocal promises to Afghanistan. As invasion loomed before the Labour conference in 2001, Tony Blair promised: 'We will not walk away from Afghanistan, as the outside world has done so many times before.'

The following month the Prime Minister told Parliament that he supported 'an inclusive, democratic political structure' for the country. Last month, during the Iraq war, Britain and America held up Afghanistan as the model for the elimination of a rogue state.

As British and coalition forces closed into Baghdad, documentary filmmaker Paul Yule and I flew into Kabul for Channel 4. We wanted to find out whether Britain and the West are keeping the pledges we made. We wanted to find out whether Afghanistan is on course for the secure and prosperous future promised by Tony Blair, or whether it is heading back into the horror and barbarism of the past 25 years, which has killed 1 million Afghans and spawned the terror movement that struck at New York on 11 September. To find out we visited warlords, ranged out far beyond Kabul, spoke to soldiers, policemen, farmers, refugees, aid-workers and diplomats. [ complete article ]

Friend or foe -- the world according to Bush
Roland Watson, The Times, May 24, 2003

Bush's capacity for nurturing grudges and acting on them is well known in the hardball arena of Texas politics. What is not yet fully clear is how far he will allow his fabled thin skin and long memory to govern international affairs; whether his payback is personal or political.

When he exchanges handshakes with Jacques Chirac on French soil next week, the first time that the pair will have met since the transatlantic bust-up over Iraq, what level of distrust will be concealed behind the President's smile? According to those who knew the young Bush in Midland, Texas, M Chirac should steel himself before looking too deeply into the President's eyes. Forgiveness is not a concept that strikes an obvious chord in the rough-and- tumble oilfields of west Texas. [ complete article ]

Pentagon sets sights on a new Tehran regime
Julian Borger and Dan De Luce, The Guardian, May 24, 2003

The Pentagon has proposed a policy of regime change in Iran, after reports that al-Qaida leaders are coordinating terrorist attacks from Iran.

But the plan is opposed by the US state department and the British government, officials in Washington said yesterday.

The Pentagon plan would involve overt means, such as anti-government broadcasts transmitted to Iran, and covert means, possibly including support for the Iraq-based armed opposition movement Mojahedin Khalq (MEK), even though it is designated a terrorist group by the state department. [ complete article ]

Gun gangs rule streets as U.S. loses control
Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, May 25, 2003

As the blood-red sun sinks below the Baghdad skyline, the shooting begins. It is the sound of the anarchy into which the Iraqi capital has spiralled since the war's end: the rasp of machine-guns accompanied by arcs of red tracer fire across the sky. Throughout the city, fires burn, their flames licking the night.

Now, with the United Nations Security Council having formally sanctioned America's military occupation of Iraq, a massive operation is being prepared to catch up on a month of default and negligence in dealing with chaos and desperate need, with newly admitted international organisations hoping it is not too late. [ complete article ]

Leading Shiite cleric questions U.S. rule over Iraq on return to holy city
Agence France-Presse, May 24, 2003

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, a top Shiite leader, returned to this holy city [Karbala] for the first time after 23 years in exile and demanded to know why Iraqis were not running their country.

"Have Iraqis reached the age of reason?" Hakim asked in a speech to thousands of the faithful whose shouts had delayed the start of what his aides billed as an important address to the people.

"Why do they not have the right to form a government and to manage their affairs?" [ complete article ]

The paradoxes of American nationalism
Minxin Pei, Foreign Policy, May-June, 2003

Nearly two years after the horrific terrorist attacks on the United States, international public opinion has shifted from heartfelt sympathy for Americans and their country to undisguised antipathy. The immediate catalyst for this shift is the United States' hard-line policy toward and subsequent war with Iraq. Yet today's strident anti-Americanism represents much more than a wimpy reaction to U.S. resolve or generic fears of a hegemon running amok. Rather, the growing unease with the United States should be seen as a powerful global backlash against the spirit of American nationalism that shapes and animates U.S. foreign policy.

Any examination of the deeper sources of anti-Americanism should start with an introspective look at American nationalism. But in the United States, this exercise, which hints at serious flaws in the nation's character, generates little enthusiasm. Moreover, coming to terms with today's growing animosity toward the United States is intellectually contentious because of the two paradoxes of American nationalism: First, although the United States is a highly nationalistic country, it genuinely does not see itself as such. Second, despite the high level of nationalism in American society, U.S. policymakers have a remarkably poor appreciation of the power of nationalism in other societies and have demonstrated neither skill nor sensitivity in dealing with its manifestations abroad. [ complete article ]

Ill-suited for empire
Joseph S. Nye, Washington Post, May 25, 2003

Some say the United States is already an empire and it is just a matter of recognizing reality. It's a mistake, however, to confuse the politics of primacy with those of empire. The United States is more powerful compared with other countries than Britain was at its imperial peak, but it has less control over what occurs inside other countries than Britain did when it ruled a quarter of the globe. For example, Kenya's schools, taxes, laws and elections -- not to mention external relations -- were controlled by British officials. The United States has no such control today. We could not even get the votes of Mexico and Chile for a second U.N. Security Council resolution. Devotees of the new imperialism say not to be so literal. "Empire" is merely a metaphor. But the problem with the metaphor is it implies a control from Washington that is unrealistic and reinforces the prevailing strong temptations toward unilateralism. [ complete article ]

U.S. may let Kurds keep arms, angering Shiites
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, May 24, 2003

The American occupation authority in Iraq, apparently preserving the prewar distinction between Kurdish-controlled northern areas and the rest of the country, will allow Kurdish fighters to keep their assault rifles and heavy weapons, but require Shiite Muslim and other militias to surrender theirs, according to a draft directive.

The plan has engendered intense criticism by Shiite leaders involved in negotiations with American and British officials who have met privately with the heavily armed political groups that have moved into the power vacuum here.

"Maybe we didn't fight with the coalition, but we didn't fight against them," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, an official of the largest Shiite group, which is headed by Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim. "We want conditions where all militias are dissolved and we will not accept that other militias will be allowed to stay there with their weapons while we will not be there with ours." [ complete article ]

Afghans' uranium levels spark alert
Alex Kirby, BBC News, May 22, 2003

Dr Durakovic, a former US army adviser who is now a professor of medicine, said in 2000 he had found "significant" DU [depleted uranium] levels in two-thirds of the 17 Gulf veterans he had tested.

In May 2002 he sent a team to Afghanistan to interview and examine civilians there.

The UMRC [Uranium Medical Research Center] says: "Independent monitoring of the weapon types and delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces." There is no official support for its claims, or backing from other scientists.

It says Nangarhar province was a strategic target zone during the Afghan conflict for the deployment of a new generation of deep-penetrating "cave-busting" and seismic shock warheads.

The UMRC says its team identified several hundred people suffering from illnesses and conditions similar to those of Gulf veterans, probably because they had inhaled uranium dust.

To test its hypothesis that some form of uranium weapon had been used, the UMRC sent urine specimens from 17 Afghans for analysis at an independent UK laboratory.

It says: "Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium internal contamination.

"The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf veterans tested in 1999. [ complete article ]

See also the Uranium Medical Research Centre homepage.

Anguish of the pensioners of Baghdad
Anthony Browne, The Times, May 19, 2003

It was meant to bring relief, but it ended in tragedy. From six in the morning they came: the old on crutches, the sick, the frail, widows with children to support and pensioners with grandchildren.

They came for the first pension pay day of the new regime, but instead of help for a desperate people, the seething, exhausted crowds found only frustration, anger, injury and death in their search for the $40 (£24) payment.

This first big test of the Baghdad social support system under the American administration had spun terrifyingly out of control, pitching the weakest members of one of the world’s most-battered countries against the world’s supreme military superpower. [ complete article ]

Faux Pax Americana
Phillip Carter, Washington Monthly, June, 2003

During the lead-up to the Iraq war, hawkish Pentagon appointees like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz predicted that the conflict could be won with as few as 50,000 troops. Meanwhile, senior generals like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki and CENTCOM Commander Tommy Franks said that it would take at least 200,000 for the offensive and far more to police and rebuild the country after victory. For a brief week at the end of March, as U.S. troops met stiff resistance in Nasiriya and found their supply lines harassed in the south, it seemed the generals' doubts about fighting the war on the cheap might be confirmed in the worst way. Then, almost overnight, resistance collapsed. That rapid victory proved the contention that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld had been pressing for more than two years: that America's new high-tech, highly mobile military could win wars with far fewer troops and armor than traditional war-fighting doctrines called for--and with far fewer casualties. (At the height of the war, the United States and the United Kingdom had just 90,000 combat troops in the country.) That was a crucial test of the broader Bush administration policy of using America's military might to crush determined foes rather than simply "managing" them, as previous administrations were wont to do. If America could "preempt" future threats without overextending its military, as Iraq seemed to show, then the argument for the Bush Doctrine would be vastly strengthened.

But the hawks' gloating proved premature. The generals' argument had never been just about what forces it would take to decapitate Saddam's regime. It was also about being ready for the long, grinding challenge after the shooting stopped. By that measure they have been proven dizzyingly correct. April and May brought daily news reports from Baghdad quoting U.S. military officers saying they lacked the manpower to do their jobs. As the doubters predicted, we may have had enough troops to win the war--but not nearly enough to win the peace. [ complete article ]

Victims of the peace decide Americans are worse than Saddam
Anthony Browne, The Times, May 23, 2003

The small dank cells with cold stone floors, tiny windows and iron bars for a door used to house criminals and the victims of Saddam Hussein's regime. Now Khan Bani Saad prison, overlooked by watchtowers and surrounded by razorwire, is filled with families who are victims, not of the war, but of the peace.

Sabrir Hassan Ismael, a mother of six, held her three-year-old daughter Zahraa in the cell that is now their living room and bedroom, and cried: "Look at me; look at my family. We live in prison. We can't buy food because we don't have money. We have no gas to cook.

"We can't sleep because it's very hot. There are huge insects that bite us. All night my daughters cry and they can't sleep. I live without any hope. Just look at us."

Outside children play in the foetid puddles, swirling dust and searing heat of the prison courtyard, where prisoners once walked in dread.

Before the end of the war Mrs Sabrir lived with her husband, a local mayor, on a farm in the town of Khanaqin, close to the Iranian border. They are members of the Arab Saraefien tribe that had survived unscathed through the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq. As opponents of Saddam they even welcomed the American invasion.

But it is the peace, and the disintegration of Saddam's grip, that has destroyed their lives. On April 11, two days after the fall of Saddam, Kurdish fighters entered Khanaqin, ordering all 15,000 Arabs to leave within 48 hours. [ complete article ]

Memorial Day 1968/2003: The casualties of war
Chris Appy, TomDispatch, May 23, 2003

A few weeks ago I picked up the morning paper and, for the first time in months, there was no front-page story on Iraq. My response? I went right to the sports section. I knew I was indulging a delusion. Real peace had not arrived. Events in Iraq were as chaotic and distressing as ever. Even the killing hadn't stopped. American troops were firing on crowds of demonstrators; armed looters were still rampaging; children accidentally detonating unexploded ordnance; shoot-outs over gas evidently commonplace. But our Top Gun president had landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, victory was all but declared, and troops were headed home. The war was over, it seemed, so what was going on with the Celtics? [ complete article ]

So much for the peace dividend: Pentagon is winning the battle for a $400bn budget
Julian Borger and David Teather, The Guardian, May 22, 2003

The biggest US defence budget since the cold war is being rammed through Congress by the Republican majority this week despite persistent questions over waste and the Pentagon's own admission that it cannot account for more than a trillion dollars.

The 2004 military spending request of over $400bn (£244bn) does not include the occupation of Iraq, which will be covered by a later, supplemental bill of up to $35bn. Very little of the money will go towards the war on terrorism or homeland security, which are principally paid for by other agencies like the FBI and the CIA.

The threat of more terrorist attacks has created public and congressional support for a ballooning defence budget, but the lion's share of the money is being spent on traditional weapons such as the jet fighters and submarines originally designed to fight the Soviet Union.

The last time the US spent this much on defence was in 1991. In fact the current budget is bigger in real terms than the average during the cold war, when US force levels were considerably higher. [ complete article ]

The apartheid wall
Ran HaCohen, Antiwar.com, May 21, 2003

A central function of the "Road Map" is to distract from the actual map of the Palestinian territories. This map is being radically altered, and unlike the Road Map, which will be forgotten like all its cynical forerunners ("Zinni Plan", "Tenet Plan", "Mitchell Report", "Regional Peace Conference" etc.), the geographical map of Palestine is here to stay, with a huge Wall now being built in its middle – the "Security Fence" in official Israeli language, in fact an Apartheid Wall. [ complete article ]

See also B'Tselem's Behind the barrier: Human rights violations as a result of Israel's separation barrier

After the war, the terrible peace
Alice Thomson, The Telegraph, May 19, 2003

Relatively few people were killed and injured in the war; it is the aftermath - the unexploded ordnance, the lack of water and electricity, the sewage spewing out around the cities - that is terrifying people in the south. Looters have ransacked the water and sewage plants, often taking even the bricks.

This comes on top of three wars, 24 years of dictatorship and 12 years of sanctions. More than 80 per cent of the population were dependent on hand-outs from the oil for food programme, and most were employed by the government.

For two months these people have received no food or salaries. Now the only currency is the corrugated iron torn from the roofs of government buildings, the light bulbs pilfered from schools and the sinks from orphanages - all sold for knock-down prices on the looters' market.

The aid agencies say we are witnessing a humanitarian disaster, and Unicef has launched its largest appeal, asking for £167 million.

An entire country is living on the brink. [ complete article ]

Israel discovers that democracy, its most widely touted "common value" with the West, is not actually an Israeli value
Arjan El Fassed and Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, May 22, 2003

The results of [a poll conducted in 2003 by the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem] show that over the last few years there has been "a significant decline in the Jewish population's support of democratic norms on all levels" and a twenty year low in the percentage of support for the statement that "democracy is the best form of government." Israel and Poland ranked lowest in the percentage of citizens who agreed with the statement that "democracy is a desirable form of government."

Israel -- together with Mexico, India and Romania -- is only one of four countries out of 31 in which the population is of the opinion that "strong leaders can be more useful to the state than all the deliberations and laws." On one indicator, measuring freedom of the press, Israel's media came in as "nearly free".

Asked about the Palestinian minority, the results reveal a shockingly racist and anti-democratic attitude among Israel's Jews towards its Palestinian minority that numbers just over one million, or 20% of Israel's total population:

"As of 2003, more than half (53%) of the Jews in Israel state out loud that they are against full equality for the Arabs; 77% say there should be a Jewish majority on crucial political decisions; less than a third (31%) support having Arab political parties in the government; and the majority (57%) think that the Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate" [ complete article ]

Dangerous loot south of Baghdad
John Hendren, Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2003

Elifat Rusum Saber, 14, has been nauseated, tired and bleeding from the nose since her brother brought home metal and chemicals from the neighboring Tuwaitha nuclear research center two days after the fall of Baghdad.

"I used to take care of my family and my youngest sister," Elifat, her frail figure lost in a billowing flower-print dress, said through an interpreter this week. "Nowadays I feel weak. I can't pick up a pot."

A few blocks away, through trash-strewn streets reeking from open sewers, Hassan Aouda Saffah is recovering from a rash that left white blotches on the dark skin of his right arm. The rash appeared the same day he took a dusty generator from the nuclear site to restore some of the electricity the village lost during the war.

Dr. Jaafar Nasser Suhayb, who runs a nearby clinic, said that over a five-day period he had treated about 20 patients from the neighborhood near Tuwaitha for similar symptoms — shortness of breath, nausea, severe nosebleeds and itchy rashes.

Suhayb is worried that the residents may be suffering from radiation poisoning since several of the symptoms are consistent with those of acute radiation syndrome. [ complete article ]

Surveys pointing to high civilian death toll in Iraq
Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2003

Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys of the country.

None of the local and foreign researchers were willing to speak for the record, however, until their tallies are complete.

Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam.

Though it is still too early for anything like a definitive estimate, the surveyors warn, preliminary reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and homes point to a level of civilian casualties far exceeding the Gulf War, when 3,500 civilians are thought to have died. [ complete article ]

It's apparent that Washington has no clear plan for Iraq
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent (via Seattle Post-Intelligencer), May 21, 2003

In one sense everybody -- supporters and opponents of the war in Iraq -- got it wrong. Opponents denounced U.S. plans to impose neo-imperial control on the country. Supporters spoke of the good things the United States planned to bring to the Iraqi people once Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

It was only as the looting of Baghdad continued week after week and the United States visibly failed to get control of the situation that the bizarre truth emerged: Washington does not have any real plans for Iraq at all. It is making up its policy as it goes along. [...]

The United States seems to have fought the war essentially because it wanted a war. It did so because the political fuel on which the present U.S. administration runs is to emphasize the external threat. Through this means it has won control of the Senate and may well win the next presidential election. [ complete article ]

The truth will emerge
Senator Robert C. Byrd, U.S. Senate, May 21, 2003

The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. [ complete article ]

Wave of Baghdad killings as Iraqis take revenge on Baath party
Agence France-Presse, May 22, 2003

When Najem al-Miyahi stepped out of a taxi in Baghdad's dirt-poor Shiite Muslim suburbs, he met the same fate as dozens of members of Saddam Hussein's once all-powerful Baath party.

He was gunned down in cold blood.

"My son swore to me on his soul that he never hurt an Iraqi even though he was a Baathist," said his father Abdullah, sitting in the funeral tent outside their house on the day after the killing.

"He never harmed anybody. My son was innocent."

The pent-up rage over decades of brutality at the hands of the Baath has erupted in a wave of murders in Sadr City, a Shiite slum where Saddam repaid the hatred for his regime with his own brand of oppression.

Hospital officials said dozens of Baathists have been slaughtered or left critically wounded in recent weeks. They said the numbers are rising as Iraqis exact vengeance on their former tormentors. [ complete article ]

On rescuing Private Lynch and forgetting Rachel Corrie
Naomi Klein, The Guardian, May 22, 2003

Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie could have passed for sisters. Two all-American blondes, two destinies for ever changed in a Middle East war zone. Private Jessica Lynch, the soldier, was born in Palestine, West Virginia. Rachel Corrie, the activist, died in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

Corrie was four years older than 19-year-old Lynch. Her body was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza seven days before Lynch was taken into Iraqi custody on March 23. Before she went to Iraq, Lynch organised a pen-pal programme with a local kindergarten. Before Corrie left for Gaza, she organised a pen-pal programme between kids in her hometown of Olympia, Washington, and children in Rafah.

Lynch went to Iraq as a soldier loyal to her government. Corrie went to Gaza to oppose the actions of her government. As a US citizen, she believed she had a special responsibility to defend Palestinians against US-built weapons, purchased with US aid to Israel. In letters home, she described how fresh water was being diverted from Gaza to Israeli settlements, how death was more normal than life. "This is what we pay for here," she wrote. [ complete article ]

The looting of Iraq's nuclear facilities: What do we do now?
Susan Rice, The Globe and Mail, May 21, 2003

President George W. Bush's chief justification for war against Iraq was to disarm Saddam Hussein and prevent his use or transfer of weapons of mass destruction. Virtually all Americans, whether they supported or opposed the war, agreed on the importance of disarming Iraq and preventing the proliferation of its WMD. This objective was so compelling that many who doubted the necessity or the timing of the war went along with it, despite misgivings. Their expectation was that America would be more secure after war with Iraq.

So are we more secure? Are Saddam Hussein's weapons now safely out of the hands of potential "evildoers"? Frighteningly, and possibly tragically, the answer may well be no.

The primary problem is not that the weapons we were so certain existed have not yet been found, however unsettling or embarrassing that may be. The most pressing problem is that Iraqi nuclear facilities containing valuable documents, partially enriched uranium and other radiological materials ideal for "dirty bombs" have been looted and ransacked under the noses of U.S. forces. [ complete article ]

Senate OK's repeal of 'mininuke' ban
Robert Schlesinger, Boston Globe, May 21, 2003

The Senate voted last night to repeal a decade-old ban on developing low-yield nuclear weapons, affirming a Bush administration push to study new uses for nuclear arms.

Debate is expected to continue today on the issue, as well as on continued study of nuclear weapons capable of shattering hardened, deeply buried bunkers.

The issue had been building since the Bush administration released a ''Nuclear Posture Review'' in January 2002 that called for researching new types of nuclear weapons. The Senate debate illustrated competing visions for the makeup and size of the US nuclear arsenal -- one envisioning a diminishing reliance on nuclear weapons in a world with overwhelming US conventional superiority and the other bringing nuclear deterrence capabilities out of the Cold War and into a post-Sept. 11 world. Critics said the United States cannot simultaneously try to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world and consider augmenting its own arsenal. [ complete article ]

Why everybody now wants the bomb
Christopher Kremmer, Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2003

On May 1, 2001, the US President, George Bush, declared: "Nuclear weapons still have a vital role to play in our security and that of our allies."

The Administration's Nuclear Posture Review completed later that year called for new and improved nukes. New weapons require testing, and having refused to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the US faces no legal impediment to a resumption of nuclear tests. Soon test sites from Nevada to India and China could be rumbling once more to the sound of underground nuclear explosions.

The Bush strategy is to maximise America's room to manoeuvre in its war on terrorists and rogue regimes. But in doing so it threatens to inflict mortal damage on the global agreement that for 30 years has contained the spread of nuclear weapons.

The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1968 enshrines a bargain between states with the bomb and those without it. Under Article Six, the 182 signatory nations that don't have nukes promised not to acquire them, while the five officially recognised nuclear powers agreed to negotiate in good faith to reduce and ultimately eliminate their arsenals. But, says a former director of alliance policy at the Australian Defence Department, Ron Huisken, a methodical analysis of American statements and actions in recent years would reveal "no trace of a commitment to Article Six". [ complete article ]

Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges
Rockford Register Star, May 20, 2003

I want to speak to you today about war and empire.

Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now.

We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep. [ complete article ]

Listen here to the words that some of Rockford College's graduating students attempted to censor.

The masters of the universe
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, May 22, 2003

It may be instructive to learn what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle were doing last weekend. From May 15 to 18 they were guests at the Trianon Palace Hotel, close to the spectacular Versailles palace near Paris, for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg club.

Depending on the ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power elite of Europe and America, capable of steering international policy from behind closed doors; a harmless "discussion group" of politicians, academics and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret society operating entirely through self interest and plotting world domination. [ complete article ]

Soros watchdog to monitor U.S. use of Iraqi oil
Irwin Arieff, Reuters, May 20, 2003

Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros said on Tuesday he was setting up a watchdog group to guard against any abuses in how the United States manages Iraq's oil resources while it occupies Baghdad.

Soros, at a news conference at U.N. headquarters, also said he hoped Iraq would not repay all its foreign debt stemming from Saddam Hussein's years in power, in order -- he said -- to discourage the practice of lending money to dictators.

"I personally would favor not paying in full the debts incurred by the Saddam Hussein regime," Soros said. "I think that would send a very healthy signal to the financial markets and others that extending credit to dictatorships is not without risk."

Citing reports that a handful of U.S. corporations were winning huge reconstruction contracts from Washington without competitive bidding, Soros said many people around the world feared the United States might abuse its authority while it and close ally Britain occupied post-war Iraq.

"It is very much in the interest of the United States to allay these fears, and we want to help," he said.

A U.S.-drafted resolution pending in the U.N. Security Council would give the United States and Britain wide-ranging powers to run Iraq and control its oil industry until a permanent government was set up, a process that could take years. [ complete article ]

Skepticism on Bush's weapons claims grows
George Gedda, Associated Press, May 21, 2003

CIA Director George Tenet warned last fall that if the United States attacked Iraq, President Saddam Hussein might hand off his forbidden weapons to Islamic terrorists for a counterattack.

Some analysts say that scenario cannot be ruled out now that that 60 days of searches by U.S. troops have produced scant evidence of the doomsday weapons Saddam supposedly had.

Did they wind up in the hands of terrorists?

Charles Pena of the CATO Institute said if Tenet's speculation was correct, it would be the ultimate irony because, he said, the whole point of invading Iraq was to prevent Saddam from passing his weapons on to the al-Qaidas of the world.

There are more benign theories for the lack of progress in finding weapons.

Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation said Saddam may simply have decided to hide the armaments. Or, he said, perhaps Saddam destroyed them to leave U.N. weapons inspectors with no smoking guns and thus diminish the possibility that President Bush would make war against him. (The inspectors came up empty-handed, but Bush attacked anyway.)

To Brookes, it matters little whether weapons are found.

"The important thing is that we've eliminated the regime's capacity to use these things," he said. [ complete article ]

Selection of Iraqi government likely delayed
Jim Krane, Associated Press, May 21, 2003

A national conference that will pick Iraq's new interim government will probably be delayed until mid-July, the top U.S. official in Iraq said Wednesday.

Six weeks after the U.S. military took Baghdad and Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed, Iraq remains without a formal government. Ministries are operating under American auspices, staffed by Iraqis who know their employment may be limited.

"We're talking now like sometime in July to get a national conference put together," said L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's U.S. civilian administrator. "I don't think it will be in June."

He estimated the conference would be held in mid-July, claiming that an earlier June deadline was created by the press. Other Western officials have said the plan was to assemble about 300 representatives from Iraq's many factions who would elect a new authority. [ complete article ]

Hardline cleric issues fatwa amid Baghdad chaos
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, May 21, 2003

Baghdad's most powerful Shia cleric warned yesterday he would use a "hand of iron" to impose an extreme vision of Islam that could seriously challenge America's secular ambitions for Iraq.

Sheikh Mohammed al-Fartousi, a youthful hardliner, said he would vigorously enforce a new fatwa that bans alcohol, commands women to wear veils and orders cinemas to close.

The sheikh appears to have considerable popular support in the vast, impoverished Shia district in eastern Baghdad, formerly known as Saddam City, where his supporters stepped in swiftly to fill the power vacuum after the war. [ complete article ]

Crushed: The farmers caught between the Israeli army and Hamas
Sa'id Ghazali, The Independent, May 21, 2003

"We have lost our livelihood. We have lost our orange gold," said Maher al-Shawwa, walking through his ruined citrus groves. "Each tree is like my baby."

Israeli tanks pulled out of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip yesterday, after what was deemed a "successful" five-day operation to stop Palestinian militants firing rockets into Israel. The withdrawal was seen by some as a positive sign towards possible implementation of the "road-map" to Middle East peace. But first, the Israelis bulldozed Mr Shawwa's 6,000 orange and lemon trees "to prevent Hamas militants using them as cover". Touching one of his toppled trees, Mr Shawwa said: "I took care of it for 15 years. It produces at 15. When it is 40, I can make a profit." He estimated his loss at hundreds of thousands of dollars, adding: "I have been set back 40 years." [ complete article ]

How do you spell democracy in Arabic? D-i-g-n-i-t-y
Laurie King-Irani, Electronic Iraq, May 19, 2003

It is jarring to hear the words "democracy" and "democratization" twanging on the Texan tongue of President George W. Bush, a leader who came to power through an election of dubious democratic processes. It is even more jarring to realize that American leaders, and perhaps a large percentage of the American public, assume that "democratization" means "Americanization," or doing democracy as it is done in the United States of America.

Is it possible that democracy has different meanings and incarnations in different societies? Must the political culture of democracy be uniform? This, of course, is another way of asking a question that has been posed countless times, in different ways, since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago: Does "civil society" mean imitating US society? Does democratization automatically entail Westernization?

What such questions touch upon are not simply matters of formal political structures and electoral procedures, but rather, deeper philosophical, moral and cultural issues. Implicit in such "democratization talk" is a theory of human nature, as well as far-reaching -- and unexamined -- value judgments about American versus non-American ways of embodying democratic principles and values. [ complete article ]

Pentagon defends surveillance program
Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press, May 20, 2003

The Pentagon assured Congress that its planned anti-terror surveillance system will only analyze legally acquired information and changed the name of the project to help allay privacy concerns that prompted congressional restrictions.

The Total Information Awareness program now under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, will henceforth be named the Terrorism Information Awareness program. [ complete article ]

A spy machine of DARPA's dreams
Noah Shachtman, Wired News, May 20, 2003

The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index it and make it searchable.

What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?

The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.

All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went; audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says; and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health.

This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to "trace the 'threads' of an individual's life," to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog's sponsor.

Someone with access to the database could "retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier … by using a search-engine interface."

On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of Darpa's "blue sky" research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But Steven Aftergood, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, says he is worried. [ complete article ]

Israel: Another day, another outrage
Phil Reeves and Leonard Doyle, The Independent, May 19, 2003

The attacks themselves are no surprise; international observers had been expecting an Islamist backlash after the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. But the ferocity and frequency has been shocking. And yesterday there were still more.

The wave of suicide attacks in an arc that stretches from Morocco and Algeria through Israel ­ where seven were killed yesterday ­ to Saudi Arabia, Chechnya and Pakistan have been mounted by different violent groups for different reasons. Yet they stand as testimony to the inaccuracy of President George Bush's view that America is winning the "war on terror". They also fortify the position of those who say the war in Iraq was not so much part of that war as a diversion from it ­ and that it has fuelled anti-Western attacks rather than reduced them. [ complete article ]

Shiites denounce occupation
Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, May 20, 2003

Thousands of Shiite Muslims marched peacefully through Baghdad today in the largest protest so far against the six-week-old U.S. occupation of Iraq, calling on the United States to surrender power to an elected government and denouncing the exiles and ethnic organizations that U.S. officials have courted to help form a temporary administration.

The demonstration, in its message and numbers, appeared to open a new chapter in the still-tentative relations between the U.S. occupation authority and Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim population, which was often repressed during more than three decades of Baath Party rule.

Since the war's end, Shiite gatherings have been largely religious, involving rituals that were long banned or discouraged. But today's protest by an estimated 10,000 people took on a political tone -- a warning of what lies ahead, many protesters said, if their demands are ignored. [ complete article ]

U.S. compromises at U.N. but keeps control of Iraq oil
Evelyn Leopold, Reuters, May 20, 2003

In hopes of getting strong U.N. support, the United States made some concessions in its quest to lift 13-year-old trade sanctions against Iraq, somewhat enhancing the role of the United Nations and opening the door for the return of U.N. arms inspectors.

But the resolution, expected to be adopted by Friday, still gives the United States and Britain wide-ranging powers to run Iraq and control its oil industry until a permanent government is established, which could take years. [ complete article ]

Let's hear it for Belgium
An attempt to try Tommy Franks for war crimes in a Belgian court has outraged the US

George Monbiot, The Guardian, May 20, 2003

We should not be surprised to learn that the US government has responded to the suit [against Tommy Franks] with outrage. The state department has warned Belgium that it will punish nations which permit their laws to be used for "political ends". The Belgian government hasn't waited to discover what this means. It has amended the law and denounced the lawyer who filed the case.

The Bush government's response would doubtless be explained by its apologists as a measure of its insistence upon and respect for national sovereignty. But while the US forbids other nations to proscribe the actions of its citizens, it also insists that its own laws should apply abroad. The foreign sovereignty immunities act, for example, permits the US courts to prosecute foreigners for harming commercial interests in the US, even if they are breaking no laws within their own countries. The Helms-Burton Act allows the courts in America to confiscate the property of foreign companies which do business with Cuba. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act instructs the government to punish foreign firms investing in the oil or gas sectors in those countries. The message these laws send is this: you can't prosecute us, but we can prosecute you.

Of course, the sensible means of resolving legal disputes between nations is the use of impartial, multinational tribunals, such as the international criminal court in the Hague. But impartial legislation is precisely what the US government will not contemplate. When the ICC treaty was being negotiated, the US demanded that its troops should be exempt from prosecution, and the UN security council gave it what it wanted. The US also helped to ensure that the court's writ runs only in the nations which have ratified the treaty. Its soldiers in Iraq would thus have been exempt in any case, as Saddam Hussein's government was one of seven which voted against the formation of the court in 1998. The others were China, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen and the US. This is the company the American government keeps when it comes to international law. [ complete article ]

Disunited nations
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, May 20, 2003

As ambassadors of the council's 15 member states go into new discussions on Iraq this week, an outsider might think we are back to last autumn, when six weeks of argument produced resolution 1441 and a new mandate for UN weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad. Wrong. The war George W Bush launched in mid-March not only changed Iraq; it changed the UN. The current arguments over an international role in post-Saddam Iraq may look the same in form, but the context is new. [ complete article ]

The return of the poppy fields
Michael Scherer, Mother Jones, May 19, 2003

Early this spring, the Afghan government sent an armed patrol into the mountains east of Kabul to uproot the illegal opium fields. The local farmers of Nangarhar province fought back, taking up guns to defend the plants that feed their families. "The resistance was extremely fierce," says Aziz Arya, an economist for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, who was working nearby. "People were hurt on both sides." More importantly, the government retreated, leaving most of the poppy intact.

Unfortunately, such clashes have become typical of modern day Afghanistan, where tribal chiefs and private armies still control the countryside and the official government struggles with scant resources in Kabul. American led security and reconstruction efforts are stumbling, say observers, leaving a vacuum that has increasingly been filled with the most profitable and deadly of crops. Last year opium production in Afghanistan increased 18 fold to 3,400 tons, leaving the fragile country once again responsible for more than 75 percent of the world's heroin. The harvest this summer is expected to break new records, owing to high prices and new poppy fields in the country's most remote reaches. [ complete article ]

Shiite group says U.S. is reneging on interim rule
Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, May 19, 2003

One of Iraq's largest Shiite political groups accused the United States' new civilian administrator today of reneging on promises to support the rapid creation of an Iraqi-led interim government.

"We were talking about an interim government, with authority to make decisions," said Adel Abdel Mahdi, political adviser to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But, he continued, a draft resolution sponsored by the United States at the United Nations is "clearly something else."

The Supreme Council and its newly returned leader, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, have close ties to Iran and have long been critical of the United States. But the Shiite group's unhappiness and suspicion regarding recent American statements echo sentiments in a wide range of other parties, including the two main Kurdish political groups and the strongly pro-American Iraqi National Congress under Ahmad Chalabi. [ complete article ]

This is no way to run an occupation
Con Coughlin, The Telegraph, May 18, 2003

It is barely six weeks since US troops received a rapturous welcome from ordinary Iraqis when they made their triumphant entry into Baghdad, and in that time most of the goodwill that was initially shown towards the liberation forces has been eroded.

The victory bunting has now been replaced by ominous graffiti, some of it posted adjacent to US military positions. The more polite slogans state: "You have done your job US, now please go home". Others declare: "US army, you will die." The US troops are no longer being seen as liberators, but as occupiers, and incompetent ones at that.

At the end of the war not much was left of Saddam's palaces and those buildings directly associated with the Ba'ath Party's security apparatus, but, because of precision bombing, the rest of the capital's administrative infrastructure remained intact. No longer. Thanks to the activities of the gangs of looters that have been allowed to rampage through the city unimpeded, the entire infrastructure of Baghdad now lies in ruins.

While the looting of the capital's banks and the national museum captured the headlines, the more serious damage has been done by the wanton vandalism committed against more mundane institutions, such as schools and universities. It is no exaggeration to say that more damage has been inflicted on Baghdad by the looters than the bombs of the coalition. [ complete article ]

Plan to secure postwar Iraq faulted
Peter Slevin and Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, May 19, 2003

A month before the war began in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said their plan for winning the peace was built upon the swift provision of basic services that would "immediately" make the Iraqi people feel they were better off than they had been under the government of Saddam Hussein.

Five weeks after the war ended, the administration is still struggling to accomplish that goal. It has failed to establish law and order on the streets and has achieved only mixed results in restoring electricity, water, sanitation and other essential needs.

In interviews here and in Washington, and in testimony on Capitol Hill, military officers, other administration officials and defense experts said the Pentagon ignored lessons from a decade of peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Somalia, the Balkans and Afghanistan. [ complete article ]

US post-war effort seen as on the brink of "fiasco"
Agence France-Presse, May 19, 2003

Nearly 40 days after the fall of Baghdad, US efforts to restore order and establish a functioning administration in Iraq are faltering as US forces struggle to cope with lawlessness, a fragile infrastructure and fractious Iraqi political forces, analysts said.

"It's close to a fiasco," said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington research organization.

"The contrasts between the efforts to rebuild Iraq and the stunning military victory could hardly be more pronounced."

Rejecting criticism that the United States failed to prepare for the post-war occupation, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has suggested that no plan could have anticipated the conditions confronting US forces.

"You couldn't know how it would end," Rumsfeld said in an interview with The New York Times published Sunday.

"When it did end, you take it as you found it and get at it, knowing the single most important thing is security."

But the Pentagon did have a detailed plan for the post-war rehabilitation of Iraq. It just proved overly optimistic. [ complete article ]

Terror's myriad faces
Jason Burke, The Observer, May 18, 2003

It has not been a good week for counter-terrorism. After a brief pause following the war in Iraq, it is now business as usual for the bad guys. This weekend sees terror alerts covering a great part of the world. The past few days have brought a casualty list running into the hundreds. 'It's dangerous in the world,' President George Bush said on Friday with his customary perspicacity, 'and it's dangerous so long as al-Qaeda continues to operate.'

In part, the President is right. It is dangerous in the world. In fact, it is becoming more dangerous with every passing day. This is because the President and the men who answer to him and his allies are not winning the war on terror, they are losing it.

The reason for this is to be found in the second part of Bush's statement. He believes eliminating al-Qaeda will end the threat of Islamic militant terrorism. Though this is rubbish, as a close analysis of recent terrorist attacks shows, it is the conventional wisdom among most of those charged with ending the violence that we are now being subjected to. [ complete article ]

Shiites march in Baghdad against U.S.
Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press, May 19, 2003

Thousands of Shiite Muslims marched peacefully through the capital Monday to protest the American occupation of Iraq and reject what they feared would be a U.S.-installed puppet government.

Small groups of U.S. infantrymen, including snipers on nearby rooftops, watched the rally but did not intervene. Several dozen Shiite organizers armed with AK-47 assault rifles patrolled the area. They, too, were left alone by the Americans.

Up to 10,000 people gathered in front of a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad's northern district of Azimiyah, then marched across a bridge on the Tigris River to the nearby Kadhamiya quarter, home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Iraq.

It appeared to be the largest protest against the U.S. occupation since the war ended. [ complete article ]

The exit that isn't on Bush's 'road map'
James Bennet, New York Times, May 18, 2003

The Bush administration argues that the defeat of Saddam Hussein has provided a chance to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and that only the eventual creation of a Palestinian state can accomplish that.

Benyamin Elon, a minister in the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon, agrees. But, reviving a vision long cherished by Israel's religious and secular hawks, he argues that the new Palestinian state must be Jordan.

This is the "window of opportunity," he says, for Israel to annex at last the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If the Bush administration has the courage to abandon "clichιs" about land for peace, he argues, it can now achieve a "long-term, spiritual earthquake" in the Middle East.

Mr. Elon's vision has new punch because of the strengthening alliance between those Jews who favor a Greater Israel and conservative Christians in the United States who are moved by the same ancient dream, based on what evangelicals call the "Abrahamic covenant."

And Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Sharon, are well aware of that alliance as they consider their response to President Bush's new drive for peace. In fact, the religious nationalism that Mr. Elon embraces so tightly appears to be gaining adherents faster in the United States than in Israel. [ complete article ]

Instant-mix imperial democracy
(buy one, get one free)

Arundhati Roy, Center for Economic and Social Rights, May 13, 2003

Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.

Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal" for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries - earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official. [ complete article ]

Acts of hope: Challenging empire on the world stage
Rebecca Solnit, OrionOnline, May, 2003

A lot of activists expect that for every action there is an equal and opposite and punctual reaction, and regard the lack of one as failure. After all, activism is often a reaction: Bush decides to invade Iraq, we create a global peace movement in which 10 to 30 million people march on seven continents on the same weekend. But history is shaped by the groundswells and common dreams that single acts and moments only represent. It's a landscape more complicated than commensurate cause and effect. Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences. [ complete article ]

Bombings bring U.S. 'executive mercenaries' into the light
William D. Hartung, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 16, 2003

You had probably never heard of the Vinnell Corp. before the brutal bombing that killed at least nine of its employees in Saudi Arabia this week, but you should have.

This is the second time Vinnell's Saudi operations have been targeted. The first attack, in November 1995, hit the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, or SANG, and a nearby office complex that housed Vinnell employees. Though both attacks were decried by U.S. officials as senseless violence, they actually had a chillingly clear, brutal logic.

Vinnell's job in Saudi Arabia is to train the national guard, which Jane's Defense Weekly has described as "a kind of Praetorian Guard for the House of Saud, the royal family's defense of last resort against internal opposition." That is why company employees were targeted in 1995 and again last week. The story of how an obscure American firm ended up becoming an integral part of the Saudi monarchy's handpicked internal security force is a case study in how unaccountable private companies have become a central tool of U.S. foreign policy. [ complete article ]

What next for Pax Americana?
John Gershman, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 12, 2003

With the occupation of Iraq firmly underway, and despite the uncertainties on the ground and within the occupying administration, some neoconservative analysts are already looking ahead--and not just to Syria or Iran or North Korea. "The real question now is how the United States can leverage its victory in Iraq to uphold, expand, and institutionalize the Pax Americana," says Thomas Donnelly in a recent issue of the American Enterprise Institute's National Security Outlook. Donnelly is a resident fellow at AEI and served as the deputy executive director at the Project for the New American Century from 1999-2002.

Donnelly's piece focuses on shaping the overall framework guiding the Bush doctrine and the practical challenges facing the institutionalization of unipolarity, and recognizes, unlike some of the less nuanced advocates of unilateralism, the importance of multilateral institutions for managing empire. Two key developments include efforts to refocus on China and soft-pedaling the unilateralist nature of the exercise of U.S. imperial power. [ complete article ]

Karzai powerless as warlords battle
April Witt, Washington Post, May 18, 2003

Meymaneh, Afghanistan -- Assassins with their turbans wrapped to hide their faces ambushed a convoy on a main street in the middle of an April afternoon, executing Rasul Beg, a mid-level local militia commander, and igniting one of the fiercest battles between rival warlords ever waged in this northern town.

The gunfight lasted 20 hours, killed 13 people, including an 8-year-old boy, trapped international aid workers and left President Hamid Karzai's administration struggling to extend the rule of law to this provincial capital about 300 miles northwest of Kabul, the capital.

"I'm in a bad situation," said Enayatullah Enayat, a former Supreme Court justice whom Karzai recently sent here to serve as governor of surrounding Faryab province. "The warlords have men with guns and I don't. They might kill me." [ complete article ]

Why the war on terror will never end
Michael Elliott, Time, May 18, 2003

Before Riyadh and Casablanca, it was tempting, if just for a moment, to believe that the war on terrorism was going well, that the big picture was of one success after another. The U.S. had notched a quick victory in Iraq, deposing a regime the Administration had linked to extremist Islamic terrorists. The much feared retaliatory strikes didn't take place, and no attacks had hit the U.S. after Sept. 11, 2001. Several key leaders of al-Qaeda, the network headed by Osama bin Laden that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, had been arrested. Just days before the bombings in Riyadh, President Bush stood on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to bask in his Iraq triumph and declared, "The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide."

Then reality returned with a vengeance. After the latest blasts, no one is talking about turning any tide. Instead, the world is focused again on mourning, on soul searching, on how to deliver an effective response. Make no mistake about it: Islamic extremists are still angry enough, and organized enough, to cause considerable damage to the U.S. and its allies. [ complete article ]

IN THE LAND WHERE WINNING IS ALL THAT COUNTS...

No political fallout for Bush on weapons
Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post, May 17, 2003

President Bush appears to be in no political danger from the failure to find chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, with Democrats reluctant to challenge Bush on any aspect of the war and polls showing Americans unconcerned about weapons discoveries.

Disarming Saddam Hussein of his "weapons of mass destruction" was the main justification the Bush administration used both at home and abroad for attacking Iraq. But while other countries that opposed the U.S. military action claim they are vindicated by the failure so far to find those weapons, Americans -- even some of Bush's political opponents -- seem content with the low-casualty victory and believe the discoveries of mass graves and other Hussein atrocities justify the war.

Few Democrats are challenging Bush on the forbidden weapons, preferring to put the war behind them and focus attention on the economy, health care and other domestic issues. [ complete article ]

Troops 'vandalise' ancient city of Ur
Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, May 18, 2003

One of the greatest wonders of civilisation, and probably the world's most ancient structure - the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Iraq - has been vandalised by American soldiers and airmen, according to aid workers in the area.

They claim that US forces have spray-painted the remains with graffiti and stolen kiln-baked bricks made millennia ago. As a result, the US military has put the archaeological treasure, which dates back 6,000 years, off-limits to its own troops. Any violations will be punishable in military courts.

Land immediately adjacent to Ur has been chosen by the Pentagon for a sprawling airfield and military base. Access is highly selective, screened and subject to military escorts, which - even if agreed - need to be arranged days or weeks in advance and carefully skirt the areas of reported damage.

There has been no official response to the allegations of vandalism - reported to The Observer by aid workers and one concerned US officer. [ complete article ]

Secrecy over shoot-to-kill fear in Gaza
Sandra Jordan, The Observer, May 18, 2003

The two men met on the road to Baghdad, shortly before the war - Tom Hurndall, 21, aspiring photojournalist, and James Miller, award-winning director and cameraman.

Disturbed by the levels of risk, both Hurndall and Miller left Iraq before the war to cover the more manageable risks of the 'low-intensity' war in Palestine's Gaza Strip.

Now Hurndall lies in a coma so deep he is more dead than alive, and Miller is dead. Hurndall was wearing an orange day-glo jacket in broad daylight when he was shot in the head by the Israeli army. James Miller was shining a torch on to a white flag and wearing a helmet with 'TV' on it in large bright letters when he too was shot by Israeli soldiers.

Both men were carrying cameras. Their families believe they were targeted by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), as part of a deliberate strategy of suppressing foreign eyewitnesses in the Occupied Territories.

IDF killings in the Gaza are not new. Since September 2000, 2,300 Palestinians have been killed in the Occupied Territories, many of them children; 773 Israelis have been killed. Palestinians don't expect justice, but the Hurndall and Miller families did from a country that constantly stresses it is the only democracy in the Middle East. [ complete article ]

Questions linger about Hillah battle
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press, May 17, 2003

The telltale evidence is everywhere: in the pattern of blast marks gouged in a schoolyard's concrete, in the yellow metal casings that once held small bombs, in the bomblets themselves.

"They're all over. They're even in people's bedrooms," said one bomb disposal specialist.

A month after U.S. cluster munitions fell in a deadly shower on Hillah's teeming slums as U.S. forces drove toward victory in Baghdad, 55 miles to the north, the most telling evidence may lie in the crowded, fly-infested wards of the city hospital, where the toll of dead and wounded still mounts.

At least 250 Iraqis were killed and more than 500 wounded during 17 days of fighting in the area, most of them civilians and many the victims of cluster munitions, according to hospital medical staff. Leftover bomblets still kill or maim hapless civilians daily, they said. [ complete article ]

Bin Laden's followers strike back after Iraq war
Alistair Lyon, Reuters, May 17, 2003

Whether or not al Qaeda was behind the Morocco bombings, Osama bin Laden's followers are bent on striking back after the U.S.-led war on Iraq. [...]

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on Islamist radicals, said suggestions before this month's bombings that al Qaeda was a spent force were completely off the mark.

"Signs of their reactivation in Afghanistan and Chechnya were only a prelude to their reactivation in the Middle East and other parts of the world," the Lahore-based analyst said.

He said the network, now much more widely dispersed across the world, was still able to recruit and to build new cells.

"The command and control is now in the hands of separate groups in different countries. Al Qaeda provides the leadership, while the rank and file may not be trained by al Qaeda. The foot soldiers may belong to local groups," he said. [ complete article ]

Among Kurds, impatience and anger is growing
Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, May 17, 2003

Old and painful fault lines are beginning to open in the messy ethnic patchwork of Iraq's north.

Since the end of the war, Kurds in the area have been making the trek from the towns to which they were banished by Saddam Hussein during brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns of the 1970's and 1980's back to the places where they grew up.

But the homecomings can be awkward affairs. In many instances, returning Kurds confront Arabs who were brought in to replace them as part of the government's strategy of establishing a firm hold over the rich oil resources of the north.

Now Kurdish leaders want them out but the Americans want to move deliberately in order to protect legitimate property rights. In an interview this week, Sami Abdul Rahman, one of the highest-ranking members of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, criticized the American approach as too slow.

"We can compromise on everything but Arabization," Mr. Rahman said. "The Arabs are leaving the land they stole, but Americans are bringing them back. This is the biggest insult to the Kurdish people. Those who delay decisions will have to face popular anger." [ complete article ]

In reversal, plan for Iraq self-rule has been put off
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, May 17, 2003

In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.

Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period, said Iraqis who attended the meeting. It was conducted by L. Paul Bremer, the new civilian administrator here. [ complete article ]

The major roadblock on road map to peace
Herbert C. Kelman, Boston Globe, May 16, 2003

The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza present major obstacles on the road to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

First, the presence of the settlements - along with the roads built to connect them and the troops deployed to protect them - restricts Palestinians' freedom of movement, interferes with their livelihood, and generally makes their life unbearable.

Second, the continued expansion of settlements even after the 1993 Oslo agreement has undermined Palestinians' trust in Israel's readiness to make peace: They ask why Israel continues settlement activities in territories slated for Israeli withdrawal and establishment of a Palestinian state.

Third, the number and distribution of settlements may soon make it physically and politically impossible to create an independent, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state and thus put in place the two-state formula that is widely accepted today as the optimal solution to the conflict. [ complete article ]

Victory in Iraq shows signs of unraveling
James Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2003

Is President Bush's victory in Iraq coming undone like a cheap cowboy boot? Let's look at some of the unraveling stitches.

First, there's the situation on the ground in Iraq. After a series of attacks on GIs, the American "peacekeepers" adopted the same modus operandi they used in Bosnia: Forces have been under orders to travel as little as possible. It's especially critical to avoid casualties now, as body bags might upstage the administration's declare-victory-and-let's-cut-taxes blitz. Of course, the problem is that not much policing -- let alone nation-building -- gets done.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. shuffles the bureaucratic players into their various boxes at the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the Shiites are mobilizing. The multiple factions of Shiite Islam don't agree on much, except that the United States should leave. In the past, colonialists kept the Shiites under control through a divide-and-conquer strategy. But for the U.S. to be so Machiavellian, it will need Americans who speak Arabic, and those are in short supply in Baghdad. [ complete article ]

National Public Radio reports (5/16/03) that up to this week the U.S. civil administration in Iraq numbering seven hundred officials included only three Arabic speakers!

In Baghdad, a surge in homicides
Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 2003

Five weeks after US troops entered Iraq's capital, reconstruction has taken a backseat to security. "There are a number of problems, in particular the problem of law and order in Baghdad," L. Paul Bremer, the new chief civilian administrator for Iraq, said yesterday. He appeared to be introducing a get-tough policy, pledging the US would beef up infantry and military police forces.

Mr. Bremer's comments acknowledged a reality Faik Amin Bakr understands all too well. On Wednesday night, the director of the Baghdad morgue counted through his register of violent deaths. There have been 124 over the past 10 days, he says, almost all gunshot homicides. That marks a 60 percent rise over the previous 10-day period, despite claims by US officials here that the security situation is improving. [ complete article ]

Beirut redux
Hassan Fattah, The New Republic, May 15, 2003

Thus far violence in Baghdad has been limited to unorganized gangs of looters carrying Kalashnikovs. But Iraqi security experts and other sources in the capital say that, under the nose of the American forces, Iraq's nascent political groups are forming armed militias and storing weapons as they prepare for a potential civil war for control of the country. In fact, The New Republic has learned, several Iraqis say even Hezbollah has formed a branch in Baghdad. Ultimately, if Baghdad's power vacuum is not filled soon, the rise of organized armed factions could turn Iraq's capital into a twenty-first-century version of 1980s Beirut. [ complete article ]

Advisor cites conflict potential
Mark Fineman, Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2003

Retired Texas oil executive Philip J. Carroll, the Pentagon's hand-picked advisor overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry, acknowledged Thursday that he faces potential conflicts of interest because of his financial holdings in U.S. companies planning to bid on Iraqi oil contracts.

"Absolutely," he said of potential conflicts during a wide-ranging interview with The Los Angeles Times, a week into his job as senior advisor to an emerging Iraqi Oil Ministry.

Carroll, however, said he will attempt to avoid any conflicts by distancing himself from the oil contracting process. He also has declared to the Defense Department all of his financial holdings in companies that may seek a role in rebuilding Iraq, he said.

"I know at this stage of my life I don't want my reputation tarnished," said the 65-year-old Houston resident. "And I will stay so far away from any consideration of the bidding process, evaluation process or even the administration and arbitration of things associated with any of those companies in which I have a financial interest Believe me, I will have absolutely nothing to do with it."

Carroll also vowed that he will not advise Iraqis to privatize their oil industry. Rather, he will present an array of alternatives, including continuation of the 100% state-owned system in place during the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"I would not be surprised if they pick something other than the American model," said Carroll, 65, who retired a year ago from Aliso Viejo-based Fluor Corp., an engineering and construction firm. "If they did pick that [American model], it might be a wonderful thing in some people's eyes. It probably would not be a wonderful thing in everyone in Iraq's eyes."

Even after a 32-year career with Shell Oil Co. in Texas, where he retired as its chief executive, and four years as head of Fluor, Carroll sounds like an advocate for keeping Iraqi oil as a national industry.

"You have to realize that oil occupies a very important and unique place in the minds of the Iraqi people. It constitutes the overwhelming, dominant economic force in the country," he said. "It provides the wherewithal of building a better life for the Iraqis.

"There are also feelings throughout the population that oil represents, in essence, the national heritage of Iraq." [ complete article ]

America's military 'imperial perimeter'
Marco Garrido, Asia Times, May 17, 2003

In the words of one senior official in the Bush administration: "On September 11 [2001] we woke up and found ourselves in Central Asia. We found ourselves in Eastern Europe as never before, as the gateway to Central Asia and the Middle East." And after Iraq, the US found - or rather, placed - itself in the Middle East. The widening scope of US military deployments configure what one analyst calls an "imperial perimeter" hemming in the aspirations of regional great powers-rivals with the United States for local influence - by projecting US might as preponderant and proximate.

New bases in the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, along with its sizable military presence in Afghanistan, not only enable the US to loom over Iran and Syria but put it right in Russia's underbelly and at China's western frontier. [ complete article ]

Afghanistan hangs on a thread
Atiq Sarwari and Robert Crews, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2003

With the United States preoccupied with Iraq, the fate of its previous object of liberation -- Afghanistan -- hangs precariously in the balance.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Kabul this month to signal a shift in American priorities from "major combat" to "stability." But within days of his announcement, multiple guerrilla attacks forced the United Nations to suspend mine-clearing operations. Increasingly bold and frequent strikes by opponents of Hamid Karzai's government have since targeted Afghan and U.S. and other foreign soldiers. On Saturday, American warplanes engaged Taliban troops after a deadly ambush near Khost.

Eighteen months after the fall of the Taliban regime, the threat of renewed mass violence haunts Afghanistan. Veteran moujahedeen like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have declared war against the U.S.-backed government. Taliban leaders have also resurfaced, backed by supporters in Pakistan. These fighters and their foreign sponsors bear responsibility for jeopardizing the gains of the post-Taliban era. But they are not alone. [ complete article ]

Republicans 'used anti-terror agency' to find political foes
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, May 16, 2003

Fifty-one Texan Democrats who skipped town in the dead of night to defeat a controversial piece of legislation were tracked down after Republicans reportedly used a federal anti-terrorism agency, it emerged yesterday.

The group of state representatives were found holed up at a Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on Tuesday by Texas Rangers with orders to arrest them.

They fled Austin to prevent the Texan house of representatives from reaching a quorum in time to vote through a bill which would redraw electoral boundaries, along with other proposals for spending cuts which they argued would harm the poor.

The law allows for the arrest of quorum-busting legislators - though they face no civil or criminal penalties - but it does not apply outside Texas.

Now it has been alleged that the Democrats were only found after the Republicans asked the air and marine interdiction and coordination centre - part of the homeland security department - to trace an aircraft belonging to one representative, Pete Laney. [ complete article ]

American ties are no help in Saudi's domestic crisis
Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, May 16, 2003

When Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush in Texas in April last year, it is believed he promised to rein in or even abolish the religious police, and to begin the process of reforming the educational curriculum to remove its fundamentalist tendencies. But the difficulties were soon apparent. The religious police are not an arm of the Saudi state, but an unpaid voluntary body. Their existence is part of the internal truce in Saudi society between state and religious establishment. So is religious influence over education in general, and religious control of private universities that inculcate a particularly narrow kind of Islamism into an increasingly large segment of Saudi youth.

Similarly, when Abdullah called in the ulema to ask them to cease preaching so directly against the US at Friday prayers, his plea went largely unheard. In the competition for the loyalty of the population, religious leaders are ahead of the royals, and they know it.

Said Aburish, the journalist and writer who was one of the first to offer a detailed exposition of the weaknesses of the royal regime, believes Saudi society has been in a state which amounts almost to a permanent uprising for at least a year. This shows itself, he suggests, in a variety of forms, from the disobedience of the Wahabi religious group, the opposition of moderate and extreme Islamists, petitions by merchants and businessmen, anti-Bush demonstrations by women, and even the growing crime rate. The protest is not united except in agreement that the government's formula for ruling the country and protecting its interests is no longer acceptable. [ complete article ]

Intelligence chiefs forced to rethink as bomb targets complacency
Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, May 14, 2003

A week ago the US intelligence community was talking with a swagger bordering on arrogance that had not existed since the attacks of 11 September. Al-Qa'ida was on the run, said officials in Washington. It may not have been entirely destroyed but the back of the organisation had been broken, its leadership and operational capabilities severely disrupted.

"It's no coincidence [that al-Qa'ida did not launch an attack during the war against Iraq]," boasted Cofer Black, a CIA veteran who heads the State Department's counter-terrorism office. "This was the big game for them: you put up or shut up and they have failed. It proves that the global war on terrorism has been effective, focused and has these guys on the run."

Yesterday, Mr Black was unavailable for further comment, while rescue workers in Riyadh were searching the rubble left by attacks Mr Black's boss, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said had "all the fingerprints" of the supposedly defeated terror network. [ complete article ]

Settlements: A user guide
Gabriel Ash, Yellow Times, May 15, 2003

Colin Powell's list of humiliations in Israel included a lecture by Prime Minister Sharon explaining to him why Israel cannot stop expanding settlements. Sharon asked Powell, "What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?"

The imagery of settlers as benign civilians, just wanting to live their lives as they choose, serves Sharon's intentions of burying the "roadmap" and saving Israel once more from the looming threat of peace. Indeed, the continuing expansion of settlements during the Oslo process already "saved" Israel from peace once. From 1993 to 2001 settler population in the West Bank increased 91 percent, convincing Palestinians that Israel had no intentions to leave the Occupied Territories.

But that imagery is false. West Bank settlements are nothing like suburbs in New Jersey. They are a fundamental aspect of what is unique about Israel. It is therefore necessary to understand settlements for what they really are -- weapons. [ complete article ]

See also B'Tselem's extended report Land grab (136 page PDF document) and Settlement facts in SUSTAIN Campaign's Spring 2003 Newsletter (PDF document).

Step forward, Tony Blair
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, May 15, 2003

It took just a few hours for US Secretary of State Colin Powell's mission to implement the road map to founder on the rocks of Israeli intransigence. Ariel Sharon's "gestures" to humor his American guest lasted barely longer than the visit itself. The movement restrictions that Sharon ordered lifted in Gaza were re-imposed after a mere 23-hours, while Jewish settlers announced plans to establish new colonies in the West Bank. [ complete article ]

The China syndrome
Paul Krugman, New York Times, May 13, 2003

A funny thing happened during the Iraq war: many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view -- something they couldn't find on domestic networks, which, in the words of the BBC's director general, "wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."

Leave aside the rights and wrongs of the war itself, and consider the paradox. The BBC is owned by the British government, and one might have expected it to support that government's policies. In fact, however, it tried hard -- too hard, its critics say -- to stay impartial. America's TV networks are privately owned, yet they behaved like state-run media. [ complete article ]

Whose problem, whose solution?
Ian Williams, The Nation, May 14, 2003

Perhaps the most telling comment on the latest US/UK resolution on Iraq was the resignation of British overseas development minister Clare Short over its marginalization of the United Nations' role. Of course, she is quite right. In no way does this resolution give the UN the "vital" role that Bush promised Blair, and that the latter promised the world--and Clare Short.

Despite the best efforts of the State Department and the British, who together wrestled with the Pentagon over its wording, the resolution still emerged as a cynically expedient response to the White House's horrified discovery that it could not sell Iraqi oil to finance the occupation of Iraq without the UN's say-so. Until then, the prevailing Washington view was, "We stole it fair and square. It's ours." [ complete article ]

Looting and conquest
Zainab Bahrani, The Nation, May 14, 2003

The looting of Baghdad's museums has generally been represented as an accident of ignorance or poor planning. Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that for several months before the start of the Iraq war, scholars of the ancient history of Iraq repeatedly spoke to various arms of the US government about this risk. Individual archeologists as well as representatives of the Archaeological Institute of America met with members of the State Department, the Defense Department and the Pentagon. We provided comprehensive lists of archeological sites and museums throughout Iraq, including their map coordinates. We put up a website providing this same information. All of us said the top priority was the immediate placement of security guards at all museums and archeological sites. US government officials claimed that they were gravely concerned about the protection of cultural heritage, yet they chose not to follow our advice. [ complete article ]

Shiite Iraqis question U.S. presence
Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press, May 15, 2003

In his little souvenir shop near the shrine of Imam Ali, a revered figure whom Shiite Muslims consider the Prophet Muhammad's successor, Zahra Shokri pulls out a box of American-made Kent cigarettes and scribbles a message for President Bush on the back.

"Explain to us what you think is wrong with Islam, and why do you reject an Islamic government in Iraq?"

The note, handed to a journalist this week, refers to a statement by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said that a government dominated by hard-line Muslim religious clerics "isn't going to happen" in Iraq.

"The only good thing the Americans did was to oust the notorious Saddam Hussein," Shokri said. "Now, they are overstaying in Iraq. Worse than that is they are opposing an Islamic government here." [ complete article ]

Nuclear weapons we don't need
J. Peter Scoblic, Washington Post, May 14, 2003

Last month the United States put on the most impressive display of precision bombing in the history of warfare and demonstrated the unmatched power of the U.S. military. But despite this overwhelming conventional superiority, the Bush administration is looking to pursue new nuclear weapons too -- nuclear weapons designed to be used on rogue-state battlefields.

Congress is now considering whether that's a good idea, as it marks up and votes on the 2004 defense authorization bill, in which the Bush administration has asked for a repeal of the ban on producing low-yield nuclear weapons, $15 million to further study earth-penetrating nuclear weapons and funds to shorten the time it takes to conduct a nuclear test.

It's a shocking piece of legislation that shows the Pentagon wants the option to use nuclear weapons not just for deterrence against nuclear states but for war-fighting against nonnuclear countries as well. Its chief goal is the capability to destroy deeply buried bunkers, where it believes rogue states may house weapons of mass destruction.

That would indeed be a good capability to have, but nuclear weapons can't provide it. If we wanted to use a nuclear weapon to destroy an underground bunker, we'd need to know precisely where the bunker was located, and we'd need to be very sure that destroying its contents was worth breaking a 58-year taboo against nuclear use, enraging our allies and friends and scaring our enemies into developing their own atomic arsenals.

Our recent experience in Iraq shows just how elusive that certainty would be. [ complete article ]

The truth about Jessica
John Kampfner, The Guardian, May 15, 2003

Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a victory too slow in coming.

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars. [...]

The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital [where Jessica Lynch was treated] the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team's Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. "He asked: 'Are there any Fedayeen over there?' and I said, 'No'." All the same, the next day "America's finest warriors" descended on the building.

"We heard the noise of helicopters," says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame.

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Al-Houssona [one of the Iraqi doctors caring for Jessica] had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life." He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

A military cameraman had shot footage of the rescue. It was a race against time for the video to be edited. The video presentation was ready a few hours after the first brief announcement. When it was shown, General Vincent Brooks, the US spokesman in Doha, declared: "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen comrade." [ complete article ]

This conflict will be solved by liberation
Uri Avnery, The Guardian, May 15, 2003

The clash between Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen is not a personal matter, as it is presented by journalists. Of course, egos do play a role, as in all political fights. But the controversy goes deeper. It reflects the unique situation of the Palestinian people.

An upper-class Palestinian defined it on Israeli television as "the move from the culture of revolution to the culture of a state". Meaning: the Palestinian war of liberation has ended, and the time has come to put the affairs of state in order. Therefore Arafat, who represents the first, must go and Abu Mazen, who represents the second, must take over.

No description could be further from reality. The Palestinian war of liberation is now at its height. The Palestinians are faced with existential threats: ethnic cleansing (so-called "transfer") or imprisonment in Bantustan-style enclaves. How has this illusion - that the national struggle is over and it is time to turn to administrative matters - arisen? [ complete article ]

Iraqi holy men leap into postwar politics
Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, May 14, 2003

Shiites, who broke away from the dominant Sunni early in Islam's history in a dispute over the Prophet Muhammad's lineage, are distinguished by their refusal to automatically bow to temporal authority, and by their tradition of ijtihad, whereby sharia [Islamic law] is adapted to suit the age.

Shiite Muslims thus rely on religious scholars - ayatollahs and other learned men collectively known as marja - to interpret the Koran and the law in rulings known as fatwas.

The marja, most of whom live in the holy city of Najaf where the founder of Shiism, Ali, is buried, often disagree among themselves on issues of law and religion. But every devout Shiite Muslim must choose his own marja, from whom he takes moral, spiritual, and political guidance.

Such guidance takes on special meaning at such charged and volatile times as Iraq is currently living through. [ complete article ]

Bush officials change tune on Iraqi weapons
Alan Elsner, Reuters, May 14, 2003

The Bush administration has changed its tune on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the reason it went to war there. Instead of looking for vast stocks of banned materials, it is now pinning its hopes on finding documentary evidence.

The change in rhetoric, apparently designed in part to dampen public expectations, has unfolded gradually in the past month as special U.S. military teams have found little to justify the administration's claim that Iraq was concealing vast stocks of chemical and biological agents and was actively working on a covert nuclear weapons program.

"The administration seems to be hoping that inconvenient facts will disappear from the public discourse. It's happening to a large degree," said Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think-tank which opposed the war. [ complete article ]

Press not ready to cover our own Gaza
Barbara Bedway, Editor and Publisher, May 14, 2003

"We don't have a sense of what we have waded into here," said [Chris] Hedges, author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a winner of the Amnesty International 2002 Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, and a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. "The deep divisions among the varying factions could be extremely hard to bridge, and the historical and cultural roots are probably beyond the American understanding."

The hard work of both reporting and analysis will inevitably be the province of newspapers, he asserted, though only a handful of publications will grapple with it: "Now that the feel-good, flag-waving part of war is over, the real culprits, the commercial-broadcast media, are going to pack up and leave. What they've done is a huge disservice to the nation. They have no sense of responsibility to continue reporting as the story gets more complicated and difficult to report."

The message put out by the Bush administration and the commercial media portraying Americans only as "liberators" ill equips the country to understand why that is not the perception of many Iraqis or much of the rest of the world. Hedges compared the situation to Israel's taking over Gaza in 1967, and operating among a hostile population: "For occupation troops, everyone becomes the enemy." [ complete article ]

A MORE "MUSCULAR" APPROACH: U.S. TROOPS GET PERMISSION TO EXERCISE THEIR TRIGGER FINGERS

In reporting the new policy to shoot looters on sight, The New York Times gladly uses the administration's euphemism for sanctioned violence -- a "far more muscular approach" -- suggestive, perhaps, of a more athletic policing technique. U.S. officials in Baghdad who explained how the new policy will be implemented said that "They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around." Word will no doubt "get around" but the word might not be that the looting must stop but that America justice always comes down the barrel of a gun.

New policy in Iraq to authorize G.I.'s to shoot looters
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, May 14, 2003

United States military forces in Iraq will have the authority to shoot looters on sight under a tough new security setup that will include hiring more police officers and banning ranking members of the Baath Party from public service, American officials said today.

The far more muscular approach to bringing order to postwar Iraq was described by the new American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, at a meeting of senior staff members today, the officials said. On Wednesday, Mr. Bremer is expected to meet with the leaders of Iraqi political groups that are seeking to form an interim government by the end of the month. "He made it very clear that he is now in charge," said an official who attended the meeting today. "I think you are going to see a change in the rules of engagement within a few days to get the situation under control." [ complete article ]

US forces to use more "muscle" to restore order in Baghdad: Rumsfeld
Agence France-Presse, May 14, 2003

US forces will use more "muscle" to restore order in Baghdad, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, amid mounting criticism of the troops' failure to curb rampant lawlessness in the Iraqi capital.

Rumsfeld's pledge in congressional testimony echoed a report in The New York Times that the troops will be given the authority to shoot looters on sight.

"The forces there will be using muscle to see that the people who are trying to disrupt what is taking place in that city are stopped and either captured or killed," he said. [ complete article ]

Al-Qaeda hated corporation
Marian Wilkinson, The Age, May 15, 2003

The bloody attacks in Riyadh are telling because of their targets, in particular the Vinnell Corporation. The residential compound and the offices used by Vinnell were hit, killing nine of the company's employees and injuring several others, two critically.

Al-Qaeda has a particular hatred for the US Vinnell Corporation because it trains the Saudi Arabian National Guard, the country's internal security force and an integral part of the Saudi military forces.

Vinnell, under contract to the US Army, employs about 800 people in Saudi Arabia including 300 Americans. Vinnell recently came under the financial control of giant US defence contractor Northrop.

Vinnell's relationship with Saudi Arabia over nearly three decades has been intriguing and controversial. For five years until 1997 it was owned by the Carlyle group, a defence and investment house close to the Bush family. Several former Republican cabinet ministers sat on Carlyle's board. [ complete article ]

See also Mercenaries Inc.: How a U.S. company props up the House of Saud and Vinnell Corporation: 'We train people to pull triggers'

How not to run a country
Paul Knox, Globe and Mail, May 14, 2003

Hamid Karzai seemed like the perfect leader to head the transitional government of Afghanistan. He was well-educated and media-friendly, with family and extensive experience in the United States. He was a member of a key tribe of the country's Pashtun-speaking majority. He was duly installed as president in December of 2001, and began the job of constructing a post-Taliban nation.

Mr. Karzai is now in deep trouble. The post-Taliban era is on hold because the Taliban, apparently including their one-eyed leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, are still around. Taliban guerrillas killed more than 30 Afghan soldiers and a Red Cross worker last month, and Mr. Karzai appealed to neighbouring Pakistan to crack down on cross-border marauding. [ complete article ]

China hawk settles in neocons' nest
Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 12, 2003

Neoconservative hawks have scored a new victory in the administration of President George W. Bush with the hiring by Vice President Richard Cheney of a prominent hawk on China policy. China specialist and Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg has been named deputy national security adviser and director of policy planning on Cheney's high-powered foreign policy staff headed by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, one of the most influential foreign policy strategists in the administration. Libby also served as the general counsel to the Cox Commission, a House Select Committee that issued a report in 1999 accusing China of large-scale espionage to advance its nuclear weapons program and was soundly criticized by many China scholars for its factual errors, unsupported allegations, and shoddy analysis. [ complete article ]

Sharon rejects US pressure on settlements
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, May 14, 2003

Ariel Sharon has rebuffed American warnings that the continued expansion of settlements is a major obstacle to a Middle East peace deal by saying that Israel will not surrender sovereignty of Jewish towns in the occupied territories.

The prime minister further aggravated the issue by saying that the controversial "security fence" being constructed around the main Palestinian cities and towns on the West Bank will follow a route that in effect annexes some of the largest settlements into Israel.

Mr Sharon's comments to the Jerusalem Post reflect off-the-record remarks from his allies dismissing the US secretary of state Colin Powell's failed attempts this week to secure more than a lip service commitment to the "road map" which envisages a Palestinian state by 2005.

The Israeli leader's statements come a week before he visits the White House for talks that are expected to provide the crucial test of how serious the Bush administration is about pushing the road map. [ complete article ]

Terror crackdown has not reduced al-Qaida threat, warns thinktank
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, May 14, 2003

Al-Qaida remains a "potent" international terrorist network with more than 18,000 trained members at large in up to 90 countries, and could take a generation to dismantle, a leading international affairs thinktank warned yesterday.

The warning came in the annual strategic survey of the International Institute for Strategic Studies whose author, Jonathan Stevenson, said the Riyadh bombings "bore the hallmarks" of an al-Qaida operation.

The bombings "may be the first indication that the regime change in Iraq in the short term is going to cause a terrorist backlash and be an inspiration for terrorists", he added.

Although the audacity and sheer power of the American-led invasion could have a "suppressive effect" on terrorists, it was equally likely that the conflict "increased al-Qaida's recruiting power", he said.

The report warns that al-Qaida has reconstituted itself since the war in Afghanistan and was now "doing business in a somewhat different manner, but more insidious and just as dangerous as in its pre-September 11 incarnation". [ complete article ]

Garner surrenders control of Baghdad in bloodless coup
Richard Beeston, The Times, May 13, 2003

After less than a month in charge of the vast post-war reconstruction operation, General Garner and five top aides were eased out in a bloodless coup after failing to get government running in Iraq and to restore a semblance of normality to Baghdad.

"We intend to have a very effective, efficient and well-organised handover," Mr Bremer, the US State Department's former terrorism expert, declared at Baghdad's international airport.

Although US officials insisted that the arrival of Mr Bremer, who will work alongside John Sawers, Tony Blair's special envoy, was not a reflection on General Garner, the facts suggested otherwise.

Baghdad today is a city without essential utilities, law and order or a functioning government. Nor does there appear to be any detailed plan to curtail the anarchy and to restore basic public services. Arguably the situation, far from improving, is deteriorating, with potentially dangerous political consequences for the coalition.

Barbara Bodine, a former US Ambassador to Yemen who was supposed to run the Baghdad region, was among those returning home. At one recent meeting with the press, she was asked about the shooting of a dozen Iraqis by US troops in Fallujah, a town outside Baghdad and within her jurisdiction. It was clear from her answer that she was unaware of the incident, which was making headline news around the world. [ complete article ]

Baghdad anarchy spurs call for help
Peter Slevin, Washington Post, May 13, 2003

Baghdad residents and U.S. officials said today that U.S. occupation forces are insufficient to maintain order in the Iraqi capital and called for reinforcements to calm a wave of violence that has unfurled over the city, undermining relief and reconstruction efforts and inspiring anxiety about the future.

Reports of carjackings, assaults and forced evictions grew today, adding to an impression that recent improvements in security were evaporating. Fires burned anew in several Iraqi government buildings and looting resumed at one of former president Saddam Hussein's palaces. The sound of gunfire rattled during the night; many residents said they were keeping their children home from school during the day. Even traffic was affected, as drivers ignored rules in the absence of Iraqi police, only to crash and cause tie-ups.

The calls for more U.S. troops to police the city coincided with the arrival of L. Paul Bremer III, the Bush administration's new civilian administrator assigned to run the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. The U.S. occupation authority, which had previously been headed by retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, has struggled to restore Iraqi institutions since Hussein's government collapsed April 9 in the face of a U.S. military invasion. [ complete article ]

Death shadows U.S. troops in Iraq
Eric Slater, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2003

The war in Iraq is not over, but from boot level it hardly appears the same one launched by allied forces on March 20. Soldiers now find themselves in a conflict with few battles but no peace, trying to carry out missions they never trained for, and dying all the while.

On Thursday, a man on a Baghdad bridge came up behind a soldier directing traffic, put a pistol to the back of his skull and shot him dead. A sniper beside a bridge just downriver killed another U.S. Army soldier by shooting him in the head. Some fellow soldiers say this kind of dying -- and the tedious vulnerability that has come to mark their days -- is harder to accept than the heavy battles early in the war and their requisite casualties. [ complete article ]

The U.S. and post-war Iraq: An analysis
Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus, May, 2003

Even putting aside the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have engaged in anti-American demonstrations in recent weeks -- some of which have been met by gunfire from U.S. occupation forces -- there is a pervasive sense of ambiguity among ordinary Iraqis regarding the U.S. invasion and occupation. What few Americans are willing to recognize at this stage is the fact that most Iraqis -- including strong opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime -- simply do not trust the United States. [ complete article ]

Sharon: No settlement retreat despite peace plan
Mark Heinrich, Reuters, May 13, 2003

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday rejected any talk of dismantling Jewish settlements in the foreseeable future despite U.S. calls for conciliatory gestures to advance a new Middle East peace plan.

His remarks, underlining his rightist coalition's objections to the peace "road map," were in an interview published as he prepared for talks with the new reformist Palestinian premier later this week and President Bush on May 20.

It was Sharon's second rebuff to Secretary of State Colin Powell's requests for confidence-building measures in weekend talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and was quickly condemned by Palestinian officials.

Israel eased a travel ban on Palestinians on Sunday in a move it touted as a humanitarian gesture in response to Powell's appeals, only to seal off the Gaza Strip again on Monday. [ complete article ]

Which Sharon will we see next? Both, of course
Aluf Benn, Washington Post, May 11, 2003

Reactive by nature, Sharon has avoided putting forward any Israeli peace plan, opting instead for coordination with Washington. Nevertheless, when handed others' blueprints for easing the conflict, he has managed to neutralize them without formally rejecting them. Here's how: Sharon asks for time "to study the details"; then he accepts them "as basis for discussion" and suggests "comments and corrections." If the plan survives this stage, Sharon delays implementation until the Palestinians meet ever-tougher tests. This dismantling mechanism has been applied to the Jordan-Egypt initiative, the Mitchell Report, the Saudi initiative and now to the road map. [ complete article ]

Saddam's fall leads Iran into talks with arch-enemy
Dan De Luce, The Guardian, May 13, 2003

Jolted by the swift collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the hardline clerics who rule Iran have been cracking down on dissent at home and talking discreetly to US diplomats abroad in an effort to stave off American pressure.

With US troops and military bases now virtually surrounding their country, the conservative leaders have broken an old taboo by talking to their arch-enemy in an attempt to pre-empt any US military action. [ complete article ]

An interesting day:
President Bush's movements and actions on 9/11

Allan Wood and Paul Thompson, Center for Cooperative Research, May 9, 2003

At approximately 8:48 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, the first pictures of the burning World Trade Center were broadcast on live television. The news anchors, reporters, and viewers had little idea what had happened in lower Manhattan, but there were some people who did know. By that time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service, and Canada's Strategic Command all knew that three commercial airplanes had been hijacked. They knew that one plane had been flown deliberately into the World Trade Center's North Tower; a second plane was wildly off course and also heading toward Manhattan; and a third plane had abruptly turned around over Ohio and was flying back toward Washington, DC.

So why, at 9:03 a.m. - fifteen minutes after it was clear the United States was under terrorist attack - did President Bush sit down with a classroom of second-graders and begin a 20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows the answer to that question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush about it.

Bush's actions on September 11 have been the subject of lively debate, mostly on the internet. Details reported that day and in the week after the attacks - both the media reports and accounts given by Bush himself - have changed radically over the past 18 months. Culling hundreds of reports from newspapers, magazines, and the internet has only made finding the "truth" of what happened and when it happened more confusing. In the changed political climate after 9/11, few have dared raise challenging questions about Bush's actions. A journalist who said Bush was "flying around the country like a scared child, seeking refuge in his mother's bed after having a nightmare" and another who said Bush "skedaddled" were fired. [Washington Post, 9/29/01 (B)] We should have a concise record of where President Bush was throughout the day the US was attacked, but we do not.

What follows is an attempt to give the most complete account of Bush's actions - from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska to Washington, DC. [ complete article ]

Graham alleges a 9/11 'coverup'
Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2003

Sen. Bob Graham on Sunday accused the Bush administration of engaging in a "coverup" of intelligence failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks to shield it from embarrassment, and said the war with Iraq has allowed Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to become a greater threat to Americans than ever before. [ complete article ]

American will advise Iraqis on writing new constitution
Jennifer Lee, New York Times, May 11, 2003

On its face, it is surprising that the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance set up for Iraq would put a 32-year-old assistant law professor in the critical role of advising the Iraqis in writing their Constitution.

For one, Professor Feldman is finishing up his second year of teaching -- at New York University Law School, where he is immensely popular with the students. His politics seem somewhat liberal in an administration known to vet scientists to sit on advisory committees.

But as people blink and begin to focus their eyes, a consensus is emerging that liberal or conservative, fresh-faced or gray-haired, Professor Feldman was the obvious choice. [ complete article ]

Yanks go home
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, May 12, 2003

The speed with which the US is forfeiting the goodwill it had in Iraq is breathtaking. With the exception of the Kurds, most Iraqis opposed the invasion of their country, and once US troops had succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein without massive casualties or tides of refugees the dominant emotion was relief. Public displays of gratitude were few, but there was widespread satisfaction that the dictator and his regime were gone.

A month later, the mood has changed. Iraqis are staggered that the efficiency of the US fighting machine was not matched by post-conflict competence worthy of a superpower. Overriding everything is the issue of governance. Who is going to run Iraq, and will it be done for the benefit of Iraqis or of outside powers? Some reports suggest that Iraqis do not care who governs them, as long as someone competent ends the chaos soon. That is a false perception. American mismanagement in the first month of occupation has led an increasing number of Iraqis to distrust the whole US enterprise. [ complete article ]

Disorder deepens in liberated Baghdad
Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2003

Fearful of going out after dark, waiting up to 10 hours to fill their cars with gas, spreading rumors in the absence of reliable media, watching landmark buildings set on fire and wondering who is in charge, the residents of this capital are growing increasingly impatient with the deepening disorder that is plaguing their lives more than a month after US troops took over the city.

"My worst fear is chaos, of all hell breaking loose, and it seems like that is happening," says the Jenan Khadimi, an American-Iraqi who teaches architecture at Baghdad University. "You don't know who is running things." [ complete article ]

Frustrated, U.S. arms team to leave Iraq
Barton Gellman, Washington Post, May 11, 2003

The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal component of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war. [ complete article ]

Moqtadah al-Sadr
Peter Maass, New York Times, May 11, 2003

Najaf is one of the great spiritual centers of the world's 120 million Shiites because it is home to the tomb of Imam Ali, founder of the Shiite faith and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. But the true heart of Najaf today, and the place where the political future of Iraq may be decided, is not Ali's tomb; it is a ramshackle building on an alley across the street from the ornate shrine.

Every day, a crowd gathers at the building, trying to talk its way past the locked doors, making faint pleas and waving pieces of paper -- petitions, requests, questions -- in front of the guards. The people want to see Moqtadah al-Sadr, who, although he is only 30, has emerged, since the destruction of Saddam Hussein's government, as the most powerful Shiite leader in Iraq, a man who is adored by his followers and feared by his adversaries. [...]

When I presented myself at Sadr's headquarters, I was led to a room on the second floor and told to wait. After a few minutes, Sadr walked into the room along with several aides, many of them as young as he is or younger. They, too, were unsmiling. Perhaps what their faces portrayed is the fatal determination of youth, youth who are convinced that right and resolve are the spears behind which their goals will be reached.

Sadr did not reveal his plans in detail, perhaps because he is improvising them; it is impossible to control a situation with so many variables. What he does, and what he becomes, depend not just on his own intentions but also on those of the Americans, whose plans are unknown and perhaps undecided, and those too of his rivals -- other Shiite leaders, as well as Sunni leaders and Kurds. Will Sadr become a political leader or a religious leader or a corpse? The answer is unknown to him; he says he believes it will be decided by Allah.

''I think it will be very hard to make a completely Islamic state in the near future, but hopefully in the distant future,'' he said, through the interpreter who accompanied me. Sadr speaks in a strong voice, absent of doubt. ''Our government should be led by religious men, but they should be very good in science too. Religion is with politics and politics is with religion. They are as one.''

He had mentioned, in his sermon at the Kufa mosque, that ''enemies'' would try to stand in the way of Iraq's Shiites. He did not name the enemies, so I asked whether it was the Americans whom he had in mind.

He didn't hesitate. ''Everyone knows that America is not looking for reforms to unify the country,'' he said. ''They will be an enemy to us, or shall we say they will not be a friend to us. We are looking for a unified Islamic nation, so we think our aim is different than their aim.''

For policy makers in Washington, there are two nightmare scenarios for Iraq. The first is that Iraq becomes an Islamic state led by Shiite clerics from Najaf. The second is that Iraq becomes an Islamic state led by Shiite clerics from Najaf who are, in turn, led by fundamentalists in Iran. The latter possibility was bolstered on April 8, when Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, an Iraqi cleric living in Qum, Iran, issued a fatwa, or religious order, that urged clerics in neighboring Iraq to ''seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities.'' Using phrases and ideas common among fundamentalists in Iran, the fatwa also said, ''People have to be taught not to collapse morally before the means used by the Great Satan'' -- the United States -- ''if it stays in Iraq. It will try to spread moral decay, incite lust by allowing easy access to stimulating satellite channels and spread debauchery to weaken people's faith.'' [ complete article ]

Seven nuclear sites looted
Barton Gellman, Washington Post, May 10, 2003

Seven nuclear facilities in Iraq have been damaged or effectively destroyed by the looting that began in the first days of April, when U.S. ground forces thrust into Baghdad, according to U.S. investigators and others with detailed knowledge of their work. The Bush administration fears that technical documents, sensitive equipment and possibly radiation sources have been scattered.

If so, there are potentially significant consequences for public health and the spread of materials to build a nuclear or radiological bomb. President Bush had said the war was fought to prevent the spread of "the world's most dangerous weapons."

It is still not clear what has been lost in the sacking of Iraq's nuclear establishment. But it is well documented that looters roamed unrestrained among stores of chemical elements and scientific files that would speed development, in the wrong hands, of a nuclear or radiological bomb. Many of the files, and some of the containers that held radioactive sources, are missing. [ complete article ]

Shia mullahs take charge of hospitals to halt chaos
Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, May 11, 2003

Thawra City is a metaphor for war's aftermath; it is a shanty of teeming humanity where each day turns the ratchet of deprivation, desperation, violence and chaos.

About half of the capital's population is packed into this place where the country's persecuted and downtrodden Shia Muslims, now fly flags of green and black from peeling balconies.

The populace of Thawra City is among Iraq's happiest at Saddam's demise: Shia mosques have opened for the first time in seven years, their outer walls decorated by the prints of hands dipped in the blood of the dead.

Here, as everywhere, there were murals of Saddam: as soldier, Arab statesman or whatever - and, in one square, as fireman, helmeted and climbing a ladder to douse an inferno. Last Wednesday, that mural was doused in petrol and set alight: Saddam the fireman engulfed in swirling flame.

But the wrathful joy of crowds does nothing to stop the counting of days without potable water, or clear the rising mountains of stinking garbage picked over by children in search of flotsam and jetsam to sell in order to buy food, like mudlarks of old. It does nothing to move the puddles of putrid water that collect from open sewers in the streets and alleyways.

The people's jubilant rage does not stop the flow of guns into the market, where weaponry is up for sale to anyone, alongside the bright colours of fish and fruit tumbling onto the pavement and covered by a swarming, buzzing layer of flies. It does nothing to stop the nightly explosions, the ever-increasing chatter of machine guns and arcs of red tracer fire that illuminate the city skyline.

Nor does it appear to hasten the advent of a government the Americans are still planning from pristine offices at the Oil Ministry or in the pleasant grounds of Saddam's old Hunting Club, now headquarters to the US's favoured Iraqi National Congress. Above all, it does nothing to bring the humanitarian aid which remains invisible, even though the international community has had months to prepare. [ complete article ]

US rivals turn on each other as weapons search draws a blank
Paul Harris, Martin Bright and Ed Helmore, The Observer, May 11, 2003

The Iraqi military base at Taji does not look like a place of global importance. It is a desolate expanse of bunkers and hangars surrounded by barbed wire and battered look-out posts. It is deserted apart from American sentries at the gate.

Yet Taji, north of Baghdad, is the key to a furious debate. Where are Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Was the war fought on a platform of lies? Taji was the only specific location singled out by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his address to the UN when he argued that evidence compiled by US intelligence proved the existence of an illegal weapons programme. 'This is one of 65 such facilities in Iraq,' Powell said. 'We know this one has housed chemical weapons.'

But The Observer has learnt that Taji has drawn a blank. US sources say no such weapons were found when a search party scoured the base in late April. By then it had already been looted by local villagers. If Taji ever had any secrets, they are long gone. That is bad news for Britain and the United States. The pressure is building to find Saddam's hidden arsenal and time is running out. [ complete article ]

From Baghdad to Tehran?
Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 7, 2003

With Iraq under U.S. occupation and Syria's leaders shaken by a series of high-level threats from top Bush administration officials, Iran has come under increased U.S. pressure. As officials in Washington talk about "Iranian agents" crossing the border into Iraq to foment trouble for the U.S. occupation, a leading neoconservative strategist Monday said the United States is already in a "death struggle" with Tehran, and he urged the administration of President George W. Bush to "take the fight to Iran," through "covert operations," among other measures.

The appeal by the chief editor of The Weekly Standard, William Kristol, followed last week's surprise announcement that U.S. military forces had signed a surrender agreement with rebel Iranian forces based in Iraq that permits them to retain their weapons and equipment, including tanks, despite their formal designation by the State Department as a terrorist group. The agreement between the military and the Mujahedeen Khalq sparked speculation that Washington may deploy the group, which had been supported by Baghdad for more than 20 years, against Tehran or its allies in Iraq, despite its terrorist tactics.

"The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East," wrote Kristol in the Standard's latest issue. "The next great battle--not, we hope, a military battle--will be for Iran. We are already in a death struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq," added the editor, who is closely associated with Richard Perle and other neoconservatives in the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB). [ complete article ]

See also Kristol's editorial The end of the beginning.

The unseen war
Michael Massing, New York Review of Books, May 29, 2003

Before arriving in Doha, I had spent hours watching CNN back home, and I was sadly reminded of the network's steady decline in recent years. Paula Zahn looked and talked like a cheerleader for the US forces; Aaron Brown kept reaching for the profound remark without ever finding it; Wolf Blitzer politely interviewed Washington's high and mighty, seldom asking a pointed question. None of them, however, appeared on the broadcasts I saw in Doha. CNN International bore more resemblance to the BBC than to its domestic edition -- a difference that showed just how market-driven were the tone and content of the broadcasts. For the most part, US news organizations gave Americans the war they thought Americans wanted to see. [ complete article ]

Top Iraqi opposition leader returns to homeland after years in exile
Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press, May 10, 2003

The leader of the largest Iraqi Shiite Muslim group opposed to Saddam Hussein returned to his homeland on Saturday after two decades in exile and called for Iraq to become an Islamic state.

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim condemned religious extremism in the same speech. He rejected any foreign-installed government for Iraq, but did not mention the United States directly.

Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, rolled across the Iranian frontier into Iraq at the Shalamjah border crossing. He had been in exile in Iran and under protection of its Shiite religious leaders since 1980.

"I am a soldier of Islam, serving all the Iraqi people," al-Hakim told a crowd of about 10,000 supporters hours later in the southern city of Basra, a Shiite stronghold. But, he added, "We don't want extremist Islam, but an Islam of independence, justice and freedom."

He said Iraq must be governed by Iraqis, not foreigners. [ complete article ]

In the wreckage of Saddam's nuclear research centre, villagers take their pick of lethal spoils
Donald Macintyre, The Independent, May 10, 2003

The labels were clearly visible when the caretaker of the al-Wrdiya village school pulled from a storeroom at the back of the building two looted plastic drums and a translucent off-white crate.

No, he said rather sheepishly, he hadn't shown them to the Iraqi and US experts who visited earlier in the day. One of the blue drums, both of which were stamped "Made in West Germany", carried on its side the words "Radio Aktiv". On the crate, resembling a large toolbox, underneath the designation "Hardigg Ind, USA", was the word again, this time in English, "Radioactive". Another, much smaller, white label warned in English "Observe Prescribed Separation Distances for Film and Personnel." None of the labels was in Arabic.

It was the clearest evidence yet that potentially deadly materials had been among the loot taken from the Tuwaitha nuclear research plant, where inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had supervised the storage in a locked and guarded facility of tons of partly enriched uranium and natural and depleted uranium, metals that could be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The Tuwaitha complex is also the site of the Osirak reactor bombed by the Israelis in 1981.

Told about the drums, a senior IAEA official said yesterday: "Our concerns about this site grow every day." The IAEA has been desperate to visit the site and has warned the US since 11 April to take action to stop looting. It is concerned about radiation and also fears the material could fall into the hands of those seeking to create makeshift nuclear weapons. But Washington has consistently refused to allow the IAEA inspectors in. [ complete article ]

Iraq Inc: A joint venture built on broken promises
David Usborne, Rupert Cornwell and Phil Reeves, The Independent, May 10, 2003

America and Britain declared themselves yesterday to be the "occupying powers" in Iraq and produced a blueprint for the administration of the country that confined the United Nations to a co-ordinating role.

Although George Bush declared in Belfast last month that the UN would have "a vital role" in Iraq, there was great disappointment yesterday after the organisation was denied an operational role. [ complete article ]

Where is the outrage over activist's death?
Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star, May 8, 2003

On April 9, nearly a month after American peace activist Rachel Corrie, 23, met a gruesome end beneath an armoured Israeli bulldozer, the Jerusalem Post noted that the international media were "surprisingly'' mute about her fate which, depending on your view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was either murder, a "regrettable accident,'' or "suicide by bulldozer.''

While the death meant "bad press for Israel,'' Erik Schechter wrote, it had "not yet generated the political firestorm that ensued, in October, 2000, after the death of Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old killed in a Gaza clash between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen.

"This might be due to the world's preoccupation with the war in Iraq, which began four days after Corrie's death,'' he continued. "Two or three more American deaths might just peek out from behind the Baghdad headlines."

Well, no.

Since Corrie's death, two of her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement also met grisly fates. American Brian Avery, 24, had his face shot off by Israel Defence Forces and Briton Thomas Hurndall, 21, is clinically dead after he took a bullet to the head. This week, a British cameraman was shot dead as well, adding to the string of journalists who have been killed in Israel in recent years.

So where is the outrage?

After a flurry of headlines in the days after her death, virtual silence, at least in the mainstream news organs. Her memorial service, broken up by Israeli forces, got scant notice in the U.S. There's been no word on Israel's investigation into her death. Meanwhile, a resolution, introduced by her congressman, calling on Washington to conduct a "full, fair and expeditious investigation'' goes ignored. [ complete article ]

Israeli army raids main office of International Solidarity Movement
Agence France-Presse, May 9, 2003

Israeli soldiers arrested three volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement in a raid on the office near here of the group, engaged in non-violent resistance to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, the ISM spokesman said.

"The army invaded our office and arrested three people. Two are internationals and another is a Palestinian. They also took a lot of equipment, computers and hard disks," said Ghassan Andoni, an ISM member who witnessed the raid on the groups' premises in the town of Beit Sahur.

Palestinian witnesses said the building, which houses the ISM main office for the Palestinian territories, was surrounded by 15 armoured vehicles and searched by soldiers, who emerged with two foreigners and computers. [ complete article ]

House demolitions hit 12,700 in West Bank and Gaza Strip
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Electronic Intifada, May 7, 2003

The total number of Palestinians made homeless by Israeli's military demolition campaign climbed above 12,000 this month following a rapid acceleration of the policy in Gaza during the first quarter of this year.

Since the beginning of the current strife in September 2000 until April 30 2003, a total of 12,737 people had seen their homes demolished in Gaza and the West Bank. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is responsible for the welfare for almost all of those affected, is trying to raise donor funds to replace the lost shelters in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Recent months have seen a sharp increase in house demolitions in the Gaza Strip. At the end of 2002, total and partial demolitions had until then averaged under 30 per month. In the first three months of 2003, 221 shelters were demolished or damaged beyond repair - making an average of 74 per month. These alone housed 401 families (2,273 persons).

Demolitions often occur late at night with little or no warning. Israeli military units - supported by tanks, APCs and helicopters - enter Palestinian areas to destroy a variety of targeted houses. A great many demolitions have occurred near Gaza's border with Egypt where Israel is building a security fence. Houses close to settlements are often also destroyed. In some cases the demolished buildings belong to the families of militants or Palestinians detained in Israeli jails. Increasingly, explosives rather than bulldozers are used to destroy property creating widespread collateral damage. [ complete article ]

Gaza visitors must sign waiver in case army shoots them
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, May 9, 2003

The Israeli military yesterday began obliging foreigners entering the Gaza Strip to sign waivers absolving the army from responsibility if it shoots them. Visitors must also declare that they are not peace activists.

The move came hours before an autopsy on James Miller - the British cameraman killed in a Gaza refugee camp - confirmed that he was almost certainly killed by an Israeli soldier, despite the army's assertions to the contrary.

Yesterday, the British government demanded an Israeli military police criminal investigation into Miller's death and the shooting of another Briton by the army in Gaza, Tom Hurndall, a peace activist.

Mr Hurndall is in a coma with severe brain damage after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier last month as he attempted to protect a small child from gunfire. The Foreign Office minister, Mike O'Brien, called in the Israeli ambassador to London to press the demand, which diplomatic sources portrayed as a ratcheting up of pressure on the Israeli government.

"On the basis of the evidence we've seen, we feel this case is so serious that we are asking for a military police investigation," said a Foreign Office spokesperson.

The waiver to enter Gaza requires foreigners, including United Nations relief workers, to acknowledge that they are entering a danger zone and will not hold the Israeli army responsible if they are shot or injured. The army document also warns visitors they are forbidden from approaching the security fences next to Jewish settlements or entering "military zones" in Rafah refugee camp close to the Egyptian border where Miller was shot dead on Saturday. [ complete article ]

Who is Michael Ledeen?
William O. Beeman, Pacific News Service, May 8, 2003

Most Americans have never heard of Michael Ledeen, but if the United States ends up in an extended shooting war throughout the Middle East, it will be largely due to his inspiration.

A fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen holds a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin. He is a former employee of the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. As a consultant working with NSC head Robert McFarlane, he was involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair -- an adventure that he documented in the book "Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair." His most influential book is last year's "The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win."

Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq. [ complete article ]

Danger seen in angry Iraqi youth
Patrick Healy, Boston Globe, May 8, 2003

Stunning poverty and youthful bravado are a dangerous, common combination on the streets of Fallujah, known for its proud Bedouin families whose hot-headed streaks are legendary. [...] Not only are angry young men harassing and firing on [the U.S.] base intermittently, and running a brisk illegal gun market a mile away, but they're also seen as viable new recruits for anti-American agitators in Iraq and even terrorist groups abroad.

''We are keeping a close eye on the young men,'' said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Poirier, stationed at another US camp on the outskirts of Fallujah that was just set up to reduce tensions downtown. ''We're trying to help these people, not anger them.''

But some soldiers say privately that they fear they're seeing Saudi Arabia all over again. The presence of US troops in that country has been one of Al Qaeda's chief complaints and best recruiting tools, producing 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. [ complete article ]

Liberation, one month on: Chaos on the streets, cholera in the city and killings in broad daylight
Phil Reeves, The Independent, May 9, 2003

Exactly a month has elapsed since the toppling of the statue of Saddam in the centre of Baghdad confirmed that the capital and the regime had at last fallen. Since then the country has seen an extraordinary redistribution of wealth, in which many thousands of impoverished Iraqis have embarked on a round-the-clock looting spree.

The lawlessness continues. Yesterday an American soldier was shot dead in broad daylight by an Iraqi who approached him with a pistol. US forces exchange fire with armed Iraqis almost daily across the country.

The continued failure to impose law and order on the streets of many towns and cities is drawing harsh criticism. "The last month has been pretty catastrophic in terms of building a new government," said Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador who has spent the last three weeks in Iraq.

"The authority of the occupying power of the United States was very much diminished by this orgy of looting and destruction," he said.

There are some small successes. Thousands of manu-scripts and hundreds of artifacts missing from the National Museum have been recovered. Among them are a 7,000-year-old clay pot and a cornerstone from King Nebuchadnezzar's palace.

But it is the rapidly deteriorating public health system – as summer temperatures take hold – that is most worrying. After a month of occupation it remains in a state of collapse. Drinking water, from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contaminated with sewage, has caused outbreaks of cholera and thyphoid among children in Basra. And the World Health Organisation warned yesterday that unless the security situation improves and medical staff can work in safety, the cholera outbreak could become an epidemic. [ complete article ]

Death in the temple
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, May 9, 2003

Soon after the call for noon prayers rang out over the holy city of Najaf on 10 April, Sayed Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a Shia Muslim cleric, was shot and hacked to death within sight of the great Imam Ali shrine, whose golden dome rises above the closely packed streets.

Al-Khoei was the most liberal and sophisticated of Shia clerical leaders. Born in 1962 into a revered religious family, he had just returned to Iraq after 12 years in exile in London, where he fled for his life after Saddam Hussein crushed the great Shia uprising that erupted after the 1991 Gulf War.

The news of the murder was overshadowed by the collapse of Saddam's regime. But the death of al-Khoei robbed the Shia community, to which 60 per cent of Iraqis belong, of a leader who believed that he knew how to end the centuries-old political marginalisation of the Shia in Iraq. [ complete article ]

Pentagon challenged over cluster bomb deaths
Mark Oliver, The Guardian, May 9, 2003

Iraq Body Count, a group that monitors the numbers of civilian deaths in the recent war and its aftermath, is challenging the Pentagon's claim that only one civilian was killed by a cluster bomb.

The group, which keeps track of reports of fatalities on its website, said this week that at least 200 civilians had been killed by this type of weapon and castigated last month's Pentagon statement as prompting "widespread incredulity". [ complete article ]

The two faces of Rumsfeld
Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, May 9, 2003

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration. [ complete article ]

Iranian exile army sets camps in Iraqi bases
Carol Rosenberg, San Jose Mercury News, May 8, 2003

An Iranian exile army on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations has settled into abandoned Iraqi army bases and set up checkpoints throughout the sensitive Iran-Iraq border region just weeks after U.S. bombers systematically struck the bases it had occupied as special guests of Saddam Hussein.

U.S. military sources say the turf grab comes as Special Forces are struggling to negotiate a full-blown surrender of the Mujahadin el Khalq, following a secret cease-fire agreement April 15.

Although lobbyists for the MEK have won some sympathy for its cause in the U.S. Congress, the group has been labeled a terror organization by the State Department and has emerged as the sole, organized force still under arms as U.S. forces try to assert themselves as the sole armed authority in Iraq.

Moreover, U.S. officers trying to negotiate the MEK surrender have found "they're kind of a weird organization," said Army Capt. Josh Felker, spokesman for the 2nd Battalion 4th Infantry Division.

Their cult-like zeal to overturning the regime in Iran, evident in a day spent at their base here, makes it difficult to see how they will willingly cast aside their weapons. [ complete article ]

America stumbling along in Iraq
Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, May 8, 2003

America was good at conquering Iraq, but is not good at governing it and may prove worse at shaping its future, so clueless it seems about Iraqi political aspirations. Four weeks after the capture of Baghdad, there are few signs of the restoration of law and order or essential services.

Hospitals are, in fact, in worse shape than during the war, says the Red Cross.

About the only security and social benefits available are being provided not by the 135,000 Anglo-American troops but by tribal leaders in the rural areas and clerics in the urban centres.

About the only humanitarian aid extended, beyond the first choreographed arrival of the British ship Sir Galahad, has come from Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

The oft-cited reason for the American failure on the civilian front is that Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed quicker than expected. While true, it does not cover up the real reasons:

-- There was no coherent post-war plan.

-- The Bush administration, having worked mainly with Iraqi exile groups, totally misread post-Saddam Iraq, just as the Kennedy administration got misled by Cuban exiles over the Bay of Pigs.

-- Washington has been distracted by two political battles: the Pentagon fighting the State Department on who controls Iraq, and both, together, resisting any useful role by the United Nations. [ complete article ]

Halliburton: Plywood at $86 a sheet
Editorial, Baltimore Sun, May 8, 2003

The army fessed up yesterday and admitted that Halliburton Co. stands to make a lot more money out of the mess in Iraq than it had been letting on.

Halliburton had gotten a no-bid contract that supposedly was limited to extinguishing oil fires, but then Saddam Hussein's men inconveniently neglected to set many wells ablaze. No worry - there were a few other paragraphs buried in that no-bid contract, paragraphs that talk about Halliburton's "operation of facilities" and - our favorite - "distribution of products."

You want to get Iraq's oil out of the ground? Turn to Halliburton. You want to buy some oil there? Turn to Halliburton. In fact, at the moment, Halliburton is importing oil into Iraq.

The Army says Halliburton has been paid $76.7 million for its work in Iraq so far. Rep. Henry A. Waxman wonders if the total is going to be measured in the billions of dollars, because it's a completely open-ended contract. The Army answers with a weak promise that a new replacement contract will be sent out for bids in August.

This whole business is stupefyingly wrong - and if Washington can't see that, the U.S. effort in Iraq is in for serious trouble. [ complete article ]

Taliban appears to be regrouped and well-funded
Scott Baldauf and Owais Tohid, Christian Science Monitor, May 8, 2003

As the fiery chief justice of the Taliban's Supreme Court, Abdul Salam shook the world once, proclaiming the right to execute foreign aid workers accused of converting Afghans to Christianity.

Today, not only is Justice Salam back, talking to a foreign reporter for the first time since the Taliban fell a year and a half ago, but he says the Taliban are back as well. Regrouped, rearmed, and well-funded, they are ready to carry on guerrilla war as long as it takes to expel US forces from Afghanistan. [ complete article ]

See also In Pakistan border towns, Taliban has a resurgence

Henry Norr loses his job for going against the war in Iraq
LA Weekly, May 9, 2003

Henry Norr, a columnist covering high-tech issues from spam to Palm Pilots for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a former editor of MacWeek, was fired on April 21. The 57-year-old’s transgression? He was one of the 1,400 demonstrators arrested in San Francisco’s financial district on the first day of the war in Iraq. [ complete article ]

GURU OF NEO-CONSERVATISM: LEO STRAUSS

Neocons dance a Strauss waltz
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, May 9, 2003

Is United States foreign policy being run by followers of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher whose views were elitist, amoral and hostile to democratic government? Suddenly, political Washington is abuzz about Leo Strauss, who arrived in the US in 1938 and taught at several major universities before his death in 1973.

Following recent articles in the US press, and as reported in Asia Times Online This war is brought to you by ... in March, the cognoscenti are becoming aware that key neoconservative strategists behind the Bush administration's aggressive foreign and military policy consider themselves to be followers of Strauss, although the philosopher - an expert on Plato and Aristotle - rarely addressed current events in his writings. [...]

"Strauss was neither a liberal nor a democrat," [Shadia Drury, author of 1999's Leo Strauss and the American Right] said in a telephone interview from her office at the University of Calgary in Canada. "Perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical [in Strauss's view] because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them.

"The Weimar Republic [in Germany] was his model of liberal democracy for which he had huge contempt," added Drury. Liberalism in Weimar, in Strauss's view, led ultimately to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

Like Plato, Strauss taught that within societies, "some are fit to lead, and others to be led", according to Drury. But, unlike Plato, who believed that leaders had to be people with such high moral standards that they could resist the temptations of power, Strauss thought that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior".

For Strauss, "religion is the glue that holds society together", said Drury, who added that Irving Kristol, among other neoconservatives, has argued that separating church and state was the biggest mistake made by the founders of the US republic.

"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing," because it leads to individualism, liberalism and relativism, precisely those traits that might encourage dissent, which in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. "You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty," according to Drury.
[ complete article ]

For an insider's exposition of Staussian philosophy see Robert Locke's Leo Strauss, conservative mastermind.

See also A classicist's legacy: New empire builders

U.S. terror tactics in Iran
Hooman Peimani, Asia Times, May 8, 2003

At the end of its military operation in April, the US military reached a ceasefire agreement with an Iraqi-based Iranian group, the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), a group declared by the US and British members of the "coalition of the willing" as terrorist. While the Americans described the agreement as a step toward the MKO's surrender, the group's backing by many members of the US Congress and its own claim of a rapprochement suggested a deal between the two sides.

Until the April agreement, designating a terrorist status to the MKO was the only common view of Tehran and the United States. In its efforts to normalize estranged US-Iranian ties, the Bill Clinton administration added the MKO to its list of terrorist organizations in the late 1990s. It also conducted an inquiry into the group's fundraising activities in the US. Notwithstanding these developments, the MKO, also operating under the name of the National Council of Resistance, has enjoyed the backing of many members of Congress. Viewing the MKO as an acceptable alternative to the current Iranian regime, on many occasions they have demanded the US government's support of the group to overthrow the Iranian regime. [ complete article ]

Saudi Shiites take hope from changes next door
Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2003

Qatif, Saudi Arabia: All but a few of the people who live in this old city on the Persian Gulf are Shiite Muslims, but in public schools the children often are told that Shiites are infidels bound for hell. Over the years, members of the faith have been imprisoned, flogged and held in solitary confinement for long stretches. Protests from international human rights groups go unheeded.

But in another sign that the war in Iraq could have consequences elsewhere in the region, the Shiite minority community of Saudi Arabia is hopeful that the liberation of their Iraqi brethren from the regime of Saddam Hussein could put significant pressure on the Saudi government to ease up as well. [ complete article ]

Patriot raid
Jason Halperin, AlterNet, April 28, 2003

A month ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war. [ complete article ]

Faith and freedom
Karen Armstrong, The Guardian, May 8, 2003

The sight of millions of Iraqi pilgrims flocking to the holy Shia city of Kerbala has caused disquiet in Washington. Since Shias comprise about 60% of the population of Iraq, it is not inconceivable that the ousting of Saddam Hussein could result in a democratically elected Shia government - a nightmare scenario to many in the west, where Shi'ism has been regarded as the epitome of fanaticism since the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. Among many the mention of Shi'ism immediately evokes thoughts of sinister ayatollahs, processions of flagellants, and an implacable hostility to progress and democracy. But how accurate is our perception of the Shia, and would a Shia Iraq necessarily be a disaster?

Unlike the governments of Europe and America, Iraqi Shias have consistently and heroically opposed Saddam. During the 70s and 80s, while we in the west seemed to find the Ba'ath regime quite acceptable, the Shias of Iraq regularly risked their lives in the arba'in pilgrimage, a three-day march from Najaf to Kerbala, braving police bullets, waving the bloodstained shirts of those who had fallen, and shouting: "Oh Saddam, take your hands off the army! The people do not want you!" It was not Saddam's secularist policies, his initial courting of the west, nor his neglect of Islamic law that principally offended them. Their resistance to Baghdad was fuelled by a visceral and religiously inspired rejection of tyranny. [ complete article ]

RICHARD PERLE "SQUEEZING EVERY NICKEL OUT OF THE DEFENSE POLICY BOARD"

Consulting and policy overlap
Ken Silverstein and Chuck Neubauer, Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2003

Last February, the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisors to the Pentagon, received a classified presentation from the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency on the crises in North Korea and Iraq.

Three weeks later, the then-chairman of the board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing of his own at an investment seminar on ways to profit from possible conflicts with both countries.

Perle and his fellow advisors also heard a classified address about high-tech military communications systems at the same closed-door session in February. He runs a venture capital firm that has been exploring investments in that very area.

The disclosures in recently released board agendas and investment documents are the latest illustrations of how Perle's private consulting and investment interests overlap with his role on the board, which advises the secretary of Defense. [ complete article ]

Clerics' group emerges as shadow rule in Iraq
Elizabeth Neuffer, Boston Globe, May 7, 2003

In theory, the United States and its occupying forces are in charge of Iraq until it emerges from the shadow of its repressive past. But in practice in the holy city of Najaf -- and countless other communities across Iraq -- the Shi'ite religious leadership of al Hawza al Ilmiya is running the show.

Electric lights gleam in Najaf, spiritual base of the Hawza, when much of Baghdad is still dark, largely because Hawza clerics called staff back to work weeks ago. Firefighters, paid for by the Hawza, keep their trucks ready. Traffic cops, summoned by the religious leaders, keep the steady flow of donkey carts and rickety automobiles under control.

Part Islamic religious school, part grass-roots organization, the Hawza has moved into the power vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, becoming a shadow government among Iraq's Shi'ites that the United States will have to deal with as it works toward an interim government.

''The Hawza's opinion will determine whether the Americans are accepted or rejected,'' said Mohammed Selman Khagani, a 64-year-old Muslim imam who heads the Al Khagani mosque in Najaf. ''No doubt about it.'' [ complete article ]

Poland puts Iraq carve-up in doubt
Giles Tremlett and Julian Borger, The Guardian, May 7, 2003

Plans to deploy a multinational stabilisation force in Iraq were thrown in doubt yesterday when Poland, one of the expected key troop contributors, insisted that the force required a UN mandate.

The demand throws a shadow over a meeting in London tomorrow aimed at securing pledges of troop deployments for the British zone of control.

The Polish foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, presented his position after talks in Washington with the US secretary of state, Colin Powell. "We believe that we need that kind of resolution. I understand that in days ahead there will be some initiatives opening the way to have such a resolution," he said.

The US is preparing to present a comprehensive UN resolution to the UN security council covering the division of responsibilities and powers in postwar Iraq, but it is likely to meet stiff resistance from France, Russia and China. [...]

Mr Cimoszewicz said it was intended "to have all the countries ready to engage" in Iraq by the end of this month.

After meeting Mr Powell, he urged Germany and other European states to contribute to Iraq's stabilisation and reconstruction. "Success or failure will have broad international consequences," he said.

Spanish newspapers quoted defence ministry officials yesterday saying that Honduras and Nicaragua had offered troops for the "Spanish brigade" only if Spain paid for them. Chile and Argentina had said they would take part in a UN force only, the reports said.

The odd assortment of nations being consulted reflects the difficulties Washington has faced trying to gain support for its occupation of postwar Iraq. Few countries with experience in the Middle East are on board, and no Islamic countries have offered troops.

Most of the willing are relatively impoverished states eager to enhance their relationship with the US but unable to pay their way. [ complete article ]

Baathist appointees stir suspicion in Iraq
Michael Slackman, Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2003

The future of former Baathists may be one of the most painful and difficult issues this country will have to face. How will the people judge -- or forgive -- each other? And how will people rationalize their own cooperation with the regime?

But the question of the Baathists has proved a more immediate dilemma for U.S. administrators, who are increasingly turning to former party members to occupy the highest ranks of reconstructed government ministries.

The U.S. has faced a crisis of confidence in Iraq in recent days, having failed to restore order, stability and basic services in the month since it took over. And the United States' apparent partnership with former Baathists is not improving its credibility on the street. [ complete article ]

Pro-Iranian Iraqi Muslim group lobbies for Washington's favor
Douglas Jehl and Nazila Fathi, New York Times, May 7, 2003

A Shiite Muslim cleric arrived at the Pentagon last week armed with a fatwa, or religious edict, a prop in his campaign to persuade the Bush administration of the worthiness of the Iranian-based Iraqi ayatollah he calls his leader.

Among Iraq's main opposition chiefs, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim is the one administration officials regard with most mistrust. In its name alone, his organization, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, conjures exactly the vision of a theocratic, Iranian-style Iraqi future that the Bush administration is trying to avoid.

And yet, administration officials concede that Ayatollah Hakim commands wide respect and support among the large majority of Iraq's people who are Shiites. So on the question of what future role the Supreme Council might play, the administration and the group have been warily engaged in what both sides portray as a dance of great consequence.

In describing the fatwa, in which Ayatollah Hakim is said to urge his followers to cooperate with American troops, Imam Husham al-Husainy was trying to demonstrate to American officials that the Shiite leader, still based in Tehran, could be a positive force in a future Iraq if Washington gives him a chance. [ complete article ]

Pentagon to release child prisoners
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, May 6, 2003

Children held at Guantanamo Bay are expected to leave the American detention camp in the near future as part of what may be the biggest single release of prisoners since it was established, US military officials said last night.

But they rejected reports that the Pentagon was succumbing to international pressure after protests greeted news that the juveniles were in detention - or to a complaint from Colin Powell, the secretary of state, that US policy at the camp was straining relationships with allies.

Between one and two dozen inmates, mostly Afghans, will be released in the near future, according to unnamed military officials.

One official said he believed juveniles would be among them, though it was not clear whether that number would include all three of the boys aged 13 to 15 whose presence at Guantanamo caused outrage when it was revealed last month. It was also unclear whether they would be freed, or transferred to detention in their home nations. [ complete article ]

Another regime change in Iraq
Jim Lobe, Asia Times, May 7, 2003

The war between the Pentagon and the State Department appears to be raging as furiously as ever with reports that the latter may have mounted something of a coup d'etat against the neo-conservative hawks around Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld by having former diplomat L Paul Bremer as Washington's new viceroy in Baghdad.

But, as in almost everything involving Iraq - or the Mideast road map or North Korea - these days, no one can say with certainty who is really up and who is really down at the moment. [ complete article ]

Deciding who rebuilds Iraq is fraught with infighting
Dan Morgan, Washington Post, May 4, 2003

On April 21, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced she was appointing a prominent agribusiness executive to "lead the U.S. government's agriculture reconstruction efforts in Iraq" and serve as her personal liaison with American military officials there. Her appointee, Dan Amstutz, flew to Kuwait, where he detailed his hopes for Iraq in an upbeat teleconference with reporters last Thursday.

But his new status came as news to the Pentagon-led team in the Iraqi capital. An official at the Baghdad-based U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) said late last week that Lee Schatz, a USDA employee, was in charge of the office's agriculture portfolio, and he referred questions about Amstutz's role to Veneman's department.

Such crossed signals and confusion have been part of the growing pains of ORHA, a new, makeshift bureaucracy that has recruited retired generals and diplomats, government technocrats, oil executives and even a university president to usher in a new democratic Iraq. Conceived in secrecy, amid bitter disputes between the departments of State and Defense, the office is beginning to take public shape. But conflicts continue and forming a cabinet of Americans to run a defeated country a third of the way around the world is proving to be an untidy process. [ complete article ]

Without laws, guns are order of day
Elizabeth Neuffer, Boston Globe, May 6, 2003

Gun merchant Odai al-Rubbai would like to thank the US-led coalition - not for Iraq's liberation from Saddam Hussein, but for the maelstrom of civil disorder that followed.

''Business is booming!'' said Rubbai, 32, who does brisk business selling stolen weapons to a panicked citizenry in the capital city. ''It is the law of the jungle out there now.''

Guns, whether AK-47s nabbed from looted armories or Berettas heisted from private collections, have flooded Iraq in recent weeks, stolen by thieves, resold to gun dealers, and then purchased by anxious families seeking a way to protect themselves. [...]

The abundance of weapons on the streets tops everybody's list of complaints, and is often the first topic at any gathering. To many Iraqis, their presence is a sign that American ''colonialism'' has plunged Iraq into a kind of dark ages, where freedom may have been gained but civilization lost.

''You can't see an Iraqi family without a gun,'' said Hasim al-Nassiny, the director general of preventive medicine at the Ministry of Health. ''Even 10-year-old children have guns.''

Yet others see in the weapons a kind of Wild West independence, an insurance policy against the US presence if things go wrong. ''If the Americans stay longer than we want, we will organize to throw them out and use our guns to do it,'' said gun merchant Jabbir al-Mohammedawi, 53. [ complete article ]

Missing in action: Truth
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, May 6, 2003

When I raised the Mystery of the Missing W.M.D. recently, hawks fired barrages of reproachful e-mail at me. The gist was: "You *&#*! Who cares if we never find weapons of mass destruction, because we've liberated the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant."

But it does matter, enormously, for American credibility. After all, as Ari Fleischer said on April 10 about W.M.D.: "That is what this war was about."

I rejoice in the newfound freedoms in Iraq. But there are indications that the U.S. government souped up intelligence, leaned on spooks to change their conclusions and concealed contrary information to deceive people at home and around the world. [ complete article ]

White House refuses to release Sept. 11 info
Frank Davies, Miami Herald, May 5, 2003

The Bush administration and the nation's intelligence agencies are blocking the release of sensitive information about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, delaying publication of a 900-page congressional report on how the terrorist assault happened.

Intelligence officials insist the information must be kept secret for national security reasons. But some of the information is already broadly available on the Internet or has been revealed in interim reports on the investigation, leading to charges that the administration is simply trying to avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report.

Disputed information includes a well publicized warning from an FBI agent that al-Qaida supporters might be training in U.S. flight schools and the names of the president and his national security adviser as people who may have received warnings that a terrorist attack was possible before Sept. 11, one official said. [ complete article ]

"This is chaos, not freedom."
Peter Slevin, Washington Post, May 6, 2003

Nearly a month after the war ended in Iraq, the U.S.-British occupation in the south is defined mainly by absence: the absence of Saddam Hussein's ruthless government, but also the absence of authority, the absence of improvements, the absence of answers about what is coming next.

In cities across the Shiite-inhabited region stretching southward from Najaf to the Persian Gulf, business and personal affairs remain largely at a standstill. Iraqis say they are waiting, most of all, for someone to take charge. An Iraqi, an American -- many say they do not care in the short run as long as their lives gain purpose and direction. [ complete article ]

Real American agenda now becoming clear
Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, May 4, 2003

A superpower like the United States does not invade a pipsqueak power like Iraq -- outside the framework of international law and against worldwide opposition -- only for its publicly stated reasons, in this case, fighting terrorism, liberating Iraq and triggering a domino effect for the democratization of the Middle East.

The real American agenda is only now becoming clearer.

The conquest of Iraq is enabling a new Pax Americana that goes well beyond the much-discussed control of oil, as central as that is to the enterprise.

America is redrawing the military map of the region with amazing alacrity. It has pulled its bases out of Saudi Arabia and Turkey in favour of less-demanding hosts.

Its relations with Egypt have been placed on the back burner.

It is no accident that those three nations are the region's more populous. And that America's newest partners -- Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates -- are thinly populated and tightly controlled monarchies.

People are a problem for America in the Arab and Muslim world. They are bristling with anti-Americanism, principally over the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. [ complete article ]

Selective intelligence
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, May 5, 2003

They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal -- a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush's main source of intelligence regarding Iraq's possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question. [ complete article ]

Road to nowhere
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, May 6, 2003

The Israeli right is already marshalling its forces against the road map. Yehiel Hazan, a member of the Likud party and chairman of the Knesset lobby for settlements, said last week: "The road map is a disaster for Israel ... Israel cannot agree to a settlement freeze and dismantling the outposts. That's a red line we cannot cross."

The Yesha Council of settlements also issued a statement describing the road map as "worse than Oslo" (the peace process of the 1990s that led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority).

These may be extremist views, but it is instructive to look at what Mr Sharon himself has been doing since March 14, the day when President Bush publicly committed himself to publishing - and then implementing - the road map. From that point on, Mr Sharon knew what he was required to do in order to achieve peace.

Just two days after Mr Bush's announcement, Mr Sharon took his cabinet on a secret tour of "the fence" - a 230-mile wall, 20ft-high and topped with barbed wire that Israel has begun constructing to separate Palestinians from Israelis.

It is ostensibly being built for security reasons, though it also helps to pre-empt territorial negotiations by creating yet more "facts on the ground". When complete, it will extend the length of the West Bank, creeping deep inside Palestinian territory for long stretches.

During the tour, Mr Sharon informed his cabinet of plans for another stretch, running the length of the Jordan valley, which will link the two ends of the fence already under construction and totally encircle the West Bank Palestinians, in effect imprisoning them. [ complete article ]

Amid power vacuum, Iraqis grow desperate
Michael Slackman and Alissa J. Rubin, Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2003

Hamid Kadhim does not know where to turn for help. The 54-year-old farmer is running out of food, has no running water and can barely irrigate the crops that are his livelihood.

"We don't know who is in charge," said Kadhim, 54, a father of three in this small town about 50 miles northeast of Baghdad. "Believe me, we are frightened. We don't know if things are getting better or worse. We don't understand what is happening here."

With thousands of U.S. and British troops on the ground and a commitment from the White House to restore law and order and rebuild this nation, Iraqis expected to see their situation improve after 12 years of sanctions and the stress of war.

Instead, they are uncertain about the present and worried about the future. The U.S. military commander has been invisible to ordinary Iraqis, and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance has yet to set up a place where people can get help or information. [ complete article ]

See also U.S. struggles in quicksand of Iraq

An Islamic state doesn't have to be Bush's nightmare
Yasir Suleiman, Sunday Herald, May 4, 2003

In the short to the medium term, Iraq faces an uncertain future. The Shia of Iraq have started the ball rolling to convert their demographic majority into tangible political gains. Those who count among them boycotted the Nasiriyah conference last month, and declared that they would not take part in any deliberations over the shape of a future Iraqi government as long as the Americans were in charge of the process.

Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia organisation, is still in Iran where his Badr Brigade of approximately 10,000 men was stationed before the fall of the Saddam regime. The Americans gave him permission to enter Iraq recently, but he refused because of their insistence that he did so through Kuwait.

Al-Hakim knows what he is doing: he is signalling to the Americans where his political allegiances lie, which must be worrying to Washington. His decision has nothing to do with the Kuwaitis, who stood by him during the last decade, but with the calculation that those who come politically close to the Americans at this stage in Iraqi history will end up as the firewood for any political blaze in the future. Recognising this mood, even Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress opposition group, has started to distance himself from any organic alliance with the Americans, although nobody believes him. In Newsweek magazine recently, he is quoted to have said: 'Anyone who thinks that America can rule Iraq is sadly mistaken. I'm very happy to have US support, but I certainly don't want to be a candidate imposed by America.' [ complete article ]

Shia clergy push for Islamist state
Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, May 3, 2003

The acting director of the Qadissiya hospital in Sadr City, Baghdad, is Sheikh Tahsin al-Ekabi, a Shia cleric. As he chatted to three people at the same time amid the chaos of post-Saddam medical services, a woman knocked on his office door and requested two tins of powdered milk. He signed a piece of paper and told her to take it to the local mosque, where she would be given the milk.

While the US and their Iraqi allies discuss the country's future, Shias have taken control on the ground.

The Shia - the majority sect of Islam in Iraq - who were suppressed by Saddam, are running not only hospitals but every aspect of life, including community and cultural centres and police stations. [ complete article ]

Iraq's weapons of mass distraction?
Skeptics eye war's rationale

Ken Fireman, Newsday, May 4, 2003

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq to date, although the hunt continues and Bush said yesterday that it was just "a matter of time" until they were found.

But U.S. officials now acknowledge that Hussein may have destroyed or transferred at least part of his alleged arsenal before the war began. No new evidence has been uncovered on Hussein-al-Qaida links to buttress an administration case that many analysts have long regarded as tenuous. And an Iraqi army that Washington repeatedly portrayed as a major security threat to the region proved to be incapable of defending its own territory, let alone waging offensive operations against a neighbor.

This state of affairs has led some foreign affairs analysts to conclude that the Bush administration had something else in mind when it planned, organized and launched the war: a high-profile demonstration of American military might and the political resolve to use it that would reverberate through the Middle East and beyond, causing governments as near as Syria and Iran and as far away as North Korea to recalibrate their actions. [ complete article ]

Who wants to be a martyr?
Scott Atran, New York Times, May 5, 2003

One given in the war against terrorism seems to be that suicide attackers are evil, deluded or homicidal misfits who thrive in poverty, ignorance and anarchy.

President Bush, at last year's United Nations conference on poor nations in Monterrey, Mexico, said that "we fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican, argued that a new security doctrine including wars of preemption was necessary because "those who would commit suicide in their assaults on the free world are not rational." A State Department report issued on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks said that development aid should be based "on the belief that poverty provides a breeding ground for terrorism."

As logical as the poverty-breeds-terrorism argument may seem, study after study shows that suicide attackers and their supporters are rarely ignorant or impoverished. Nor are they crazed, cowardly, apathetic or asocial. If terrorist groups relied on such maladjusted people, "they couldn't produce effective and reliable killers," according to Todd Stewart, a retired Air Force general who directs the Ohio State University program in international and domestic security. [ complete article ]

What Europe has to do to avoid becoming a US vassal
Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, May 5, 2003

A curious reticence pervades the broader post-Iraq debate. Yet what happens next in terms of the relationship between American hyperpower and Europe, the UN and a seriously battered world order is of vastly greater significance than the specifics of Iraq's rehabilitation. So how to explain this quietude, this almost embarrassed silence?

One answer is that, to varying degrees, leading anti-war states like Germany and France are now engaged in pragmatic repairs to bilateral relations. They have no wish, for now at least, to pursue a damaging confrontation with the US. But another, more disturbing answer is that they are at a total loss over what to do about what is variously described as American-centred unipolarity or unilateralism or hegemony or, more candidly, the Bush administration's unapologetic, ideological and steadily advancing belief in the rightness and inevitability of US global dominance. [ complete article ]

Lost in translation: The narrowing of the American mind
K.A. Dilday, Open Democracy, May 1, 2003

The indifference of American public culture to the imaginative experience of other peoples is reflected in the dearth of work translated from foreign languages. As the world becomes more complex and its literary voices more varied and challenging, the damage of this complacency is not only to unheard, unread writers, but to the American mind itself. [ complete article ]

He who dares wins: Why Washington should court Hizbullah
Marc Sirois, Yellow Times, May 2, 2003

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah rarely goes out of his way to be of service to the United States. As secretary-general of Hizbullah, he led a long and costly but ultimately successful struggle to end the occupation of south Lebanon by Washington's primary proxy in the Middle East, Israel. That feat has earned him and his group considerable esteem across the Arab world, where recent memories of military confrontation with the Jewish state are otherwise wholly unpleasant. When he speaks, Arabs listen because he does so from what they see as a position of moral, political and spiritual authority, one buttressed not least by the fact that his own son was killed fighting the Israelis. The entire region pays attention to what he has to say, and that is almost invariably hostile, in both tone and substance, to the U.S. government.

On Tuesday, April 23, however, Nasrallah made a speech from which Washington can profit immensely -- if the right people were listening. Western media outlets emphasized the defiance in his comments, which included a call for all Arabs to defend Syria against recent American saber-rattling and a prediction that Iraqis would rise up against the coalition that toppled Saddam Hussein because its promises of democracy and freedom would not be honored. Those remarks were predictable, but it was another line of thought which made the speech memorable -- and that one was totally ignored in Western coverage.

"The greatest lesson to be learned" from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the cleric argued, "is that a country that is fragmented or ruled by repression has no future when faced by a superior enemy. We [Arabs] and our regimes must learn the lesson … An army and intelligence organizations can protect a regime against an unarmed people, but when they face a greater power, they can't protect the regime. It is the people that protect it."

Coming from the head a fundamentalist Shiite organization known abroad principally for violence of one form or another, these words could form the basis for a major breakthrough in both Arab statecraft and relations between the Arab and Western worlds. [ complete article ]

See also Marc Sirois' earlier article The history of Hizbullah.

A drifter's oddysey from the Outback to Guantanamo
Raymond Bonner, New York Times, May 4, 2003

David Hicks took the wanderer's road from the Adelaide suburbs to his capture with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now his home is a prison cell at the American naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. He is going nowhere, yet he remains a man adrift.

Mr. Hicks, a 27-year-old high-school dropout, former ranch hand and convert to Islam, was seized by Northern Alliance forces in Kandahar as the fighting wound down in December 2001. Here in Australia, he has been depicted as the local version of John Walker Lindh, popularly known as the American Talib.

But the United States no longer wants Mr. Hicks: seeking to winnow detainees from its campaign against terrorism, the Bush administration has asked the Australian government to take custody of him and prosecute him, Australian officials say. Australia, though, does not especially want him either: senior police and intelligence officials say there is no evidence that he violated Australian law. Even so, the government has not pressed the United States for his release, Australian and American officials say.

All of which leaves Mr. Hicks in the limbo of Guantanamo, with no rights of due process, charged with nothing, yet with no particular prospect of release. The American and Australian governments have said publicly that he will remain at Guantanamo until the war on terrorism is ended, whenever that may be. [ complete article ]

Shiite and Sunni Muslims struggle to fill leadership void In Iraq
Ahmed Rashid, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 2, 2003

Anti-American protests in Iraq, such as the April 28 incident in Fallujah that left an estimated 15 Iraqis dead, should not come as a surprise to Washington. Most Iraqis don't share the U.S. vision of a reconstructed Iraq resting on a foundation of Western-style democracy. For many, the end of Saddam Hussein's regime has prompted a yearning for a religious and cultural revival, raising the prospect of an Islamic state based on conservative Shiite beliefs.

Although it appears certain that Iraq is set for a revival of Islamic values, at present there remains ample room for religious developments to move in many directions. The revival could move toward the recognition of Iraq's Islamic legacy while making it compatible with greater freedom, economic development, and openness to the outside world. Such is the approach taken by President Hamid Karzai's administration in Afghanistan. It is also possible, however, that the revival may travel down the road toward Islamic extremism, anti-Westernism and sectarian violence that could easily culminate in a new dictatorship.

The lack of a cohesive American post-war political and economic strategy for Iraq--coupled with the arrogance of the Bush administration and Washington's disregard for a historical perspective--is diminishing the chances for the development of a secular democratic government in Iraq. The country is now developing into a battleground between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, who both seek to fill the leadership void created by the quick collapse of Saddam's regime. [ complete article ]

It's the oil, stupid
Michael T. Klare, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 2, 2003

On the second day of the invasion of Iraq, U.S. commandos seized two Iraqi offshore oil terminals in the Persian Gulf, capturing their defenders without a fight. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," exulted James Dao of the New York Times, Navy SEALs claimed "a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire."

Dao's dramatic turn of phrase revealed more about the administration's plans for Iraq than almost every other report from the battlefield. While American forces turned a blind eye to the looting of Iraq's archeological treasures, they moved quickly to gain control over oilfields, refineries, and pipelines. Even before Iraqi resistance had been squelched, top U.S. officials were boasting that Iraq's oil infrastructure was safely in American hands. [ complete article ]

Afghanistan: Launchpad for terror
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, May 3, 2003

Even as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared this week in Kabul that an end to military operations in Afghanistan is in sight, indications on the ground paint a somewhat different picture.

On a brief visit to the capital, Rumsfeld said that the "bulk of the country is now secure ... we have concluded that we're at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities".

However, as reported in Asia Times Online (Afghanistan, once more the melting pot - May 1) the country can expect escalated guerrilla activity over the coming months. And further, the International Islamic Front, a grouping of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and several other terrorist networks dedicated to jihad against America, is increasingly using Afghanistan as a base.

Asia Times Online has learned that new cells are in place in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and they will be responsible for carrying out attacks - including suicide attacks - against United States interests in a number of regions. This will be the new face of al-Qaeda, which will emerge soon with a new name and under new command. [ complete article ]

Afghanistan, once more the melting pot
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, May 1, 2003

As spring approaches in Afghanistan, a number of factors are likely to contribute to a significant escalation of the country's ongoing guerrilla war.

These include Iran, which fears the US presence in its region, Pakistan's mafia groups, a local cartel of Afghan governors-cum-warlords who foresee no political future for themselves in elections scheduled for next year, as well as Islamic radicals looking to regroup for an assault on the United States and it allies. [ complete article ]

U.S. is now in battle for peace after winning the war in Iraq
Dexter Filkins and Ian Fisher, New York Times, May 3, 2003

The war in Iraq has officially ended, but the momentous task of recreating a new Iraqi nation seems hardly to have begun. Three weeks after Saddam Hussein fell from power, American troops are straining to manage the forces this war has unleashed: the anger, frustration and competing ambitions of a nation suppressed for three decades.

In a virtual power vacuum, with the relationship between American military and civilian authority seeming ill defined, new political parties, Kurds and Shiite religious groups are asserting virtual governmental authority in cities and villages across the country, sometimes right under the noses of American soldiers.

There is a growing sense among educated Iraqis eager for the American-led transformation of Iraq to work that the Americans may be losing the initiative, that the single-mindedness that won the war is slackening under the delicate task of transforming a military victory into political success.

"Real freedom is organized and productive," said S. S. Nadir, a prominent art critic in Baghdad. "It is productive with real institutions of civil society that can do work. It needs groups of smart, educated, free, liberal people who can build projects."

"The Iraqi people have always been prepared for freedom," he said. "But we need help, and we are not sure the Americans can provide that." [ complete article ]

Shias in Iraq told to reject all Western customs
Donald Macintyre and Phil Reeves, The Independent, May 3, 2003

Hundreds of thousands of worshippers in the Shia heart of Baghdad were exhorted by their spiritual leaders yesterday not to use their newfound liberation by US forces to absorb Western habits which were designed to "harm Islam".

Several leading Shia clerics used the Friday prayers to outline a vision of a country in which alcohol would be eschewed, women would be covered from head to foot and the country's leading Islamic scholastic group would run schools at every level.

Part of the prayers at the Al-Mussehn mosque, the most important in the Sadr City (formerly Saddam City) suburb of the Iraqi capital, were led by Sheikh Mohammed Fartowzi, who was earlier detained for three days by US forces.

He said that they "should leave Iraq as soon as possible". He added: "They came as liberators and not as occupiers. If this is not an occupation they should leave soon."

But, overall, the addresses were dominated by repeated calls for the enforcement of strict Islamic social codes and for looters to hand back stolen goods. The main preacher at Al-Mussehn, Sheikh Jaber al-Khafaji, confined his criticisms of the Americans to claims that they had been presenting "unacceptable gifts" to Muslim women and that they had actively encouraged looting. [ complete article ]

No grasp
Why a far-reaching American empire will not serve anyone's interests, least of all ours

Jeff Faux, The American Prospect, May 2, 2003

Opposing the march to empire seems daunting when the nation is flush with a military victory. But it would be a mistake to believe that Americans will not accept any other path. Certainly Karl Rove thought they would when he had Bush reject nation- building in favor of a more "humble" American role in the world during the 2000 presidential debates. The difference between then and now is the memory of September 11. Thus, an alternative must generate more security for the average American.

To lay the political foundation for a different story about how Americans protect themselves, liberals should begin by challenging the central myth with which the Bush administration has stopped all rational conversation: the idea that terrorism is a matter of good versus evil and has nothing to do with America's behavior in the world. Whatever the nature of Islamic fundamentalism, there is little doubt that repeated American efforts to control the Middle East by supporting corrupt leaders -- from the Iranian shah to the Saudi Arabian princes -- is a large part of what has made "them" hate "us." [ complete article ]

ECHOES OF RAMALLAH

Iraqi city simmers with new attack
Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Scott Wilson, Washington Post, May 2, 2003

Fallujah has been wracked by violent anti-American demonstrations since Monday, when shooting broke out as demonstrators converged on a school where soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division had set up camp. U.S. officers said the soldiers opened fire after several armed protesters shot at the school, but participants in the rally insisted they were unarmed. Local officials said 16 people were killed and more than 50 were wounded. [...]

At the school where Monday's shooting occurred, teachers spent the day cleaning up in preparation for the start of classes on Saturday. The headmaster, Mohammed Ahmed, said that before they left, U.S. soldiers had damaged furniture and classroom supplies and left offensive graffiti on the walls.

In one classroom, "I [love] pork," with the word love represented by a heart, was written on the blackboard, along with a drawing of a camel and the words: "Iraqi Cab Company." In another room, "Eat [expletive] Iraq" was scrawled on a wall. And in Ahmed's office, sexual organs were drawn with white chalk on the back of the door.

"They came to liberate us?" Ahmed asked, pointing out the graffiti to a reporter. "What is the point of doing this?" [ complete article ]

Rummy's North Korea connection
Richard Behar, Fortune, April 28, 2003

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it's surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What's even more surprising about Rumsfeld's silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. [ complete article ]

The real casualty rate from America's Iraq wars
Chalmers Johnson, TomDispatch, May 2, 2003

Most young Americans who enlist in our all-volunteer armed forces -- roughly four out of five -- specifically choose non-combat jobs, becoming computer technicians, personnel managers, shipping clerks, truck mechanics, weather forecasters, intelligence analysts, cooks, or forklift drivers, among the many other duties that carry a low risk of contact with an enemy. They often enlist because they have failed to find similar work in the civilian economy and thus take refuge in the military's long-established system of state socialism -- steady paychecks, decent housing, medical and dental benefits, job training, and the possibility of a college education. The mother of one such recruit recently commented on her 19-year-old daughter, who will soon become an Army intelligence analyst. She was proud but also cynical: "Wealthy people don't go into the military or take risks because why should they? They already got everything handed to them."

These recruits do not expect to be shot at. Thus it was a shock to the rank-and-file last month when Iraqi guns opened up on an Army supply convoy, killing eight and taking another six prisoner, including supply clerk Jessica Lynch of Palestine, West Virginia. The Army's response has been, "You don't have to be in combat arms [branches of the military] to close with and kill the enemy." But what the Pentagon is not saying to the Private Lynches and their families is that they stand a very good chance of dying or being catastrophically disabled precisely because they chose the U.S. military as a route of social mobility. [ complete article ]

The wellspring of American empire
James M. Banner Jr., Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2003

Not since the Spanish and British empires has a nation so bestrode the world as the United States does today. The collapse of the Soviet system, the superiority of American arms and the strength of the American economy have created a new American imperium.

But empires, like trees, have many roots, some of them ancient and deep. And the taproot of American worldwide dominance sprouted two centuries ago this week when the administration of Thomas Jefferson sealed with France the agreement that set the U.S. on its way to becoming a continental nation: the Louisiana Purchase. Rarely has that extraordinary act had as much resonance as it does today. [...]

The Purchase vastly strengthened an American disposition to claim for itself what it wished and gave it the muscle to do so. [ complete article ]

WHEN'S A TERRORIST NOT A TERRORIST?

Everyone knows the answer to that question: A terrorist is not a terrorist if he/she is the enemy of my enemy. The enemy of my enemy is, as the New York Times is obliging enough to make clear, a "fighter" or "guerilla," like say the circa 1980's Osama bin Laden.

Iran opposes U.S. accord with fighters based in Iraq
Nazila Fathi, New York Times, May 2, 2003

Iran's Foreign Ministry today criticized the American cease-fire agreement with an Iranian guerrilla group based in Iraq, accusing the United States of hypocrisy in claiming to fight terrorism and in its efforts to reshape Iraq.

The ministry's spokesman, Hamidrez Assefi, said the truce with the group, Mujahedeen Khalq, or the People's Mujahedeen, in Iraq was evidence of American "weakness" and "lies in combating terrorism." He rejected the accusations by the United States that Iran was meddling in Iraq's reconstruction, saying, "Occupying Iraq is an obvious sign of interfering into affairs of a country, and an occupier cannot accuse others." [ complete article ]

The war inside Bush's cabinet
H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe, May 2, 2003

There have been serious interdepartmental struggles in other administrations. Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a constant burr under the saddle of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. And Henry Kissinger, in his NSC years, ate Secretary of State William Rogers alive. Caspar Weinberger at Defense and George Schultz at State often seemed at sword's point in the Reagan years. But seldom, if ever, has a Defense Department so actively challenged a secretary of state for control of foreign policy as is happening today. This is exacerbated by the office of Vice President Richard Cheney, with its own foreign policy team usually supporting the Pentagon.

At bottom, the current fights are about whether the United States should try to work out diplomatic solutions to the world's problems, in conjunction with allies, as Colin Powell has argued, or use unilateral force to get its way. Do other nations have legitimate concerns or should all bend before the hurricane of American power? The hard-right Pentagon civilians and advisers have much in common with the old radical left in their messianic belief that they have an internationalist duty to change the world, whether the world likes it or not. [ complete article ]

Maneuvering for power
Mohamad Bazzi, Newsday, May 1, 2003

The opinions of devout Iraqi Shias could have profound consequences for the shape of a new government in Baghdad, and for any long-term American plans for Iraq. Many Shias have celebrated the overthrow of Hussein, whose regime suppressed Shia opposition movements with mass arrests, executions and torture. But Shias remain suspicious of U.S. motives.

"We were oppressed by Saddam for so many years," said Ali Mahdi, 44, a Najaf butcher who works in the shadow of the grand mosque. "Now, the Americans are trying to oppress us once again by telling us how to choose our government. The Americans just want to put in their puppets so they can control our oil."

Already, several leading Shia clerics have called on the United States to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government and pull out its troops as quickly as possible. Some clerics have warned of a popular uprising if American forces remain in Iraq for two years or more, as some U.S. officials have suggested. [ complete article ]

A trap of their own making
Anatol Lieven, London Review of Books, May 8, 2003

As is clear from their public comments, let alone their private conversations, the Neo-Conservatives in America and their allies in Israel would indeed like to see a long-term imperial war against any part of the Muslim world which defies the US and Israel, with ideological justification provided by the American mission civilisatrice - 'democratisation'. In the words of the Israeli Major-General Ya'akov Amidror, writing in April under the auspices of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, 'Iraq is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is the Middle East, the Arab world and the Muslim world. Iraq will be the first step in this direction; winning the war against terrorism means structurally changing the entire area.' The Neo-Con model is the struggle against 'Communism', which they are convinced was won by the Reaganite conflation of military toughness and ideological crusading. The ultimate goal here would be world hegemony by means of absolute military superiority.

The Neo-Cons may be deluding themselves, however. It may well be that, as many US officials say in private, Bush's new national security strategy is 'a doctrine for one case only' - namely Iraq. Those who take this position can point to the unwillingness of most Americans to see themselves in imperial terms, coupled with their powerful aversion to foreign entanglements, commitments and sacrifices. The Bush Administration may have made menacing statements about Syria, but it has also assured the American people that the US military occupation of Iraq will last 18 months at the very most. Furthermore, if the economy continues to falter, it is still possible that Bush will be ejected from office in next year's elections. Should this happen, some of the US's imperial tendencies will no doubt remain in place - scholars as different as Andrew Bacevich and Walter Russell Mead have stressed the continuity in this regard from Bush through Clinton to Bush, and indeed throughout US history. However, without the specific configuration of hardline elements empowered by the Bush Administration, American ambitions would probably take on a less megalomaniac and frightening aspect. [ complete article ]

What if real democracy rears its head?
Ian Urbina, Asia Times, May 2, 2003

When administrators sit down in Baghdad to draft a constitution for the new country and turn toward holding elections, they will likely run into the thorny issue of what role to grant religion in the state. After years of repression, religious fervor is swelling in postwar Iraq. On the local level, especially in the Shi'ite south, it is often clerics and religious groups (not US forces) who have stepped forward to fill the void and restore order while providing basic social services.

If elections are truly fair and open, there is a real possibility that Islamist parties backed by these clerics will hold considerable sway in the post-Saddam Hussein era. Washington's reaction on the matter will determine whether its true goal is democracy or not. Either the administration of George W Bush will opt to craft the constitution and slant the electoral playing field so as to guarantee a secular pro-Western government, or it will lean strictly toward transparent and clean elections, come what may.

It's anyone's guess how this issue will play out. But one voice within the administration in Baghdad clearly leans toward putting full US faith in strict democracy. Noah Feldman is a law professor from New York University and is advising the future Iraqi interim authority on how to design a new constitution. He is under the auspices of retired US General Jay Garner - Iraq's current de facto leader - in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Last week, Feldman held a number of underreported interviews in which he expressed his clear preference for letting democracy run its course, even if this means voters going to the polls and rejecting Western-style secular liberalism. [ complete article ]

Bush's Top Gun photo-op
David Corn, The Nation, May 1, 2003

After 9/11, after Afghanistan, after Iraq--and before who-knows-what--Bush has become a man with no past. He is a different fellow, that's for sure, and now wears the commander-in-chief uniform more comfortably than before those airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But could Bill Clinton--even in a similar situation--have gotten away with joy-riding a S-3B Viking aircraft onto a carrier for a mega-photo-op without commentators reminding viewers of his sly draft-dodging ways? [ complete article ]

The secrets of September 11
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, May 1, 2003

Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.

At the center of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks -- including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.

The report was completed last December; only a bare-bones list of "findings" with virtually no details was made public. But nearly six months later, a "working group" of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell Newsweek. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to "reclassify" some material that was already discussed in public testimony -- a move one Senate staffer described as "ludicrous." The administration's stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report -- Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney. [ complete article ]

Vilified weapons inspectors may have got it right
Marian Wilkinson, Sydney Morning Herald, May 1, 2003

Almost three weeks since the fall of Baghdad, with senior Iraqi scientists and officials in US custody, no chemical or biological weapons stockpiles have been found. Neither has any evidence been uncovered that Iraq had restarted a nuclear program.

In explaining the gap between the prewar and postwar claims on Iraq's WMD, Dr Rice said the US was now seeing the programs in a different light. "The fact is that we are beginning to see a kind of pattern on how Iraq may have hidden its weapons of mass destruction from the outside world for all of these years," she said this week.

According to Dr Rice, the weapons programs are "in bits and pieces" rather than assembled weapons. "You may find assembly lines, you may find pieces hidden here and there," she said. Ingredients or precursors, many non-lethal by themselves, could be embedded in dual-use facilities.

She had a new explanation too for Iraq's ability to launch these weapons that were not assembled. "Just-in-time assembly" and "just-in-time" inventory, as she put it. [ complete article ]

Betting on Abu Mazen - to lose
Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz, May 1, 2003

On the face of it, rightists in Israeli officialdom should be anxious. The Bush administration, with a robust push from Britain's Tony Blair, has pledged to vigorously pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace through cooperation and mutual compromise.

The plan speaks of a phased approach, leading with political and procedural reform of the Palestinian Authority and PA efforts to quell attacks on Israelis, to be matched by broad Israeli military withdrawals from areas re-occupied during the Intifada, and the institution of a freeze on new settlement activity - this last a concept particularly odious to hardline Israeli officials.

So why are these people smiling? The mood elevation stems from clear channels of communication with Washington, and the signals they are receiving from the White House and Capitol Hill, argues Haaretz commentator Akiva Eldar:

"The message that they are getting now, is that the Rumsfeld-Richard Perle school of thought is now in charge, people who were against the Oslo peace process, people who don't trust the Palestinians, people who feel that after what they did in Iraq, the Palestinians must now go after and crack down hard on the Islamists, the radicals, the terrorists - something the Palestinians may be unable to accomplish," Eldar says, adding of the neoconservative-oriented U.S. officials, "These are people who are against any appeasement."

In their interpretation of the road map, Sharon need not make a single move until the Palestinian Authority has demonstrated that it is putting up a significant battle against the militants in its midst. Moreover, "they know that Sharon has raised the required threshhold to so high a level that it is unrealistic to believe any Palestinian could reach it." [ complete article ]

U.S. STILL HAS SOFT SPOT FOR TERRORISTS

Iranian rebels get a new lease on life
David Kelly, Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2003

The Moujahedeen Khalq, or People's Holy Warriors, is an Iranian exile group that is fighting the Tehran government and had allied itself with Hussein. The group has killed U.S. citizens, and it took part in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. The State Department lists the group as a terrorist organization.

Ousted from Iran for its Marxist ideology after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the group was given bases in Iraq, where it launched attacks on Iran and plotted the assassination of Iranian officials. In return, Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime used the organization to oppress Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq.

But with the ouster of Hussein, many members of the group -- including leader Maryam Rajavi and her husband -- fled to the Jordanian border, desperate to get out, Jordanian officials say.

With their longtime quarry cornered, Iran pressured Jordan to refuse them sanctuary and hand them over to Tehran. Iran believed that for once, Tehran and Washington were on the same side.

"It was a unique opportunity, a rare chance to work together," said Mohammad Safaee, the Iranian consul in the Jordanian capital, Amman. "We promised there would be no death penalty, that only the leaders would face trial."

But about 11 p.m. Sunday, witnesses said, dozens of Moujahedeen Khalq members here climbed into a fleet of cars and drove a few hundred yards to the American checkpoint beneath a towering, defaced portrait of Hussein.

Passing the U.S. soldiers who check passports these days, some of the members headed toward Baghdad. A Jordanian official who asked not to be identified said some went to Khanaqin, a city northeast of Baghdad close to the Iranian border.

Eight to 10 others were allowed into Jordan, where they boarded planes for France, Germany and the Netherlands, Jordanian officials said.

Their passage apparently was allowed because American officials had recently reached a cease-fire agreement with the Moujahedeen Khalq. U.S. military officials said the group had promised not to attack allied troops in Iraq; in exchange, it has been allowed to keep its weapons and artillery to fight the Iranians if provoked. [ complete article ]

'The classical definition of a police state'
Robyn Blumner, St. Petersburg Times, April 28, 2003

Sometimes, before an abusive government practice gains widespread attention, bad things have to happen to someone with this bio: American citizen, blond wife, adorable children, good job and high-status friends.

That victim would be Maher "Mike" Hawash, a naturalized American of Palestinian descent who has been held in federal custody as a material witness to a terrorism investigation since March 20. [ complete article ]

Civilian deaths, executions found in Afghan fighting
Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2003

The United Nations has revealed that factional fighting in northwestern Afghanistan in March led to a string of killings that may have been the bloodiest series of human rights abuses since the end of the war on the Taliban regime and the Al Qaeda terrorists it harbored.

A U.N. team found that a string of clashes, slayings and lootings that began March 24 in Badghis province claimed 38 civilian lives. In addition, 26 combatants were executed, the investigators said, and found with their hands tied behind their backs. The deaths were concentrated in the village of Akazi.

In an unusually critical statement Sunday, the U.N. urged local police and the Badghis governor appointed by President Hamid Karzai to "arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice, as well as take all other necessary measures to prevent the recurrence of similar events." [ complete article ]

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