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  The War in Context
     Iraq - war on terrorism - Middle East conflict : critical perspectives
     news - analysis - commentary
Iraqi council member 'critically' wounded
BBC News, September 20, 2003

One of the three woman on Iraq's Governing Council has been seriously wounded in a gun attack in western Baghdad.

Aqila al-Hashimi - the only council member to have served in the former government of Saddam Hussein - was leaving home by car when unidentified gunmen opened fire causing the vehicle to crash.

She was taken to Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, before being transferred to a US military hospital, where she is being treated for severe internal bleeding from abdominal wounds, doctors said. [complete article]

U.S. wants Israeli military's occupation training software
By Matthew Rosenberg, Associated Press (via San Diego Union-Tribune), September 18, 2003

In an apparent search for pointers on how to police a hostile population, the U.S. military that's trying to bring security to Iraq is showing interest in Israeli software instructing soldiers on how to behave in the West Bank and Gaza, an Israeli military official said Thursday. [complete article]

U.S. Rep. Rangel predicts wide support for Gen. Clark among blacks
By Devlin Barrett, Assoicate Press (via Newsday), September 19, 2003

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, the most outspoken supporter of newly minted presidential candidate Wesley Clark, predicted Friday the retired general will get wide and enthusiastic support among blacks because of his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Rangel, D-N.Y., a ranking member of the House Ways and Means committee, said he is already pressing officials in his home district of Harlem, around his state, and in the Congressional Black Caucus to support Clark.

"Anybody that's against the war that can beat Bush is going to be overwhelmingly supported in the black community," Rangel said.

The congressman will meet Saturday morning with elected and religious leaders in his Harlem district to talk up Clark's candidacy.

"I'm going to share with them that this is the most emotional political decision of my life," he said. "I truly believe that my community would be better off in putting their money on this horse to win." [complete article]

Shia militia arrest top Ba'athist
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 20, 2003

They came after midnight for Karim Ghaith. Outside his two-storey sandstone house in the holy city of Najaf, they shouted out his name, then opened fire.

After a gun battle lasting most of the night, Mr Ghaith, a high-ranking member of the former Ba'ath party, was held and taken for questioning on his suspected involvement in attacks on US troops.

It looked like another of dozens of raids since the war to capture senior Ba'athists. But the men who detained him early this month were not American soldiers or Iraqi police. Witnesses say they were the Badr Brigade, armed wing of Iraq's biggest Shia Muslim party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

The operation, denied by Sciri, is evidence of the frustration of Shia groups and the growing willingness to tackle the perceived security threat themselves. [complete article]

Israel fears growing terror threat by settlers
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, September 20, 2003

Even Israel's pervasive intelligence services are uncertain whether the Infants Underground and its allies are fringe groups of extremist settlers or the stirrings of a Jewish-style Hamas.

But the conviction on Wednesday of three settlers for trying to blow up a Palestinian girls' school in east Jerusalem last year reveals the lengths to which a marginalised, but apparently growing, band of militant settlers will go. [complete article]

Snapping to attention
By Bob Herbert, New York Times, September 19, 2003

Democrats wandering like outcasts in a desert of disillusion have spotted -- what?

Is that a four-star general out there? You say he's from the South? And he's a Democrat who wants to be president?

All right, all right, calm down! Yes, the original lineup of Democratic candidates -- Dean, Kerry, Lieberman, et al. -- was a caravan of disappointments. But some questions must be asked.

Is Wesley Clark -- first in his class at West Point, Rhodes scholar, former NATO supreme allied commander, holder of the Purple Heart and Silver Star — the real deal, or just a mirage? [complete article]

The U.N. Baghdad bombing: One month on
By Anita Sharma, Open Democracy, September 17, 2003

Nearly a month after the attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, humanitarian aid workers are in a state of flux. Mandatory staffing reductions have reduced UN international staff to mere placeholders in Iraq. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) still in Iraq operate with decreasing profiles and increasing trepidation. Those relocated to Jordan and Kuwait attempt to manage projects via “remote management” while theorising on re-entry strategies. All of this occurs amidst deteriorating security conditions, the uncertain possibility of broader international involvement and discussing the competing pressures of responsibility versus risk. [complete article]

Ariel Sharon and the geometry of occupation:
Strategic points, flexible lines, tense surfaces, political volumes

By Eyal Weizman, Open Democracy, September 9, 2003

Part one: Border versus frontier
The post-1967 transformation of the occupied territories is the story of how Israeli military and civilian planning became the executive arm of geopolitical strategy. The Suez Canal battles of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 were a national trauma that returned the 'frontier' to the Israeli public imagination. The figure of Ariel Sharon is central to this process.

Part two: Architecture as war by other means
How does Ariel Sharon imagine territory and practice space? The settlements, the 'battle for the hilltops', and now the security fence embody his long-term territorial ambition: to combine control of the West Bank with physical separation of its populations.

Part three: Temporary permanence
The 'barrier' exemplifies the dystopian logic of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, where a fragmented, borderless, always-provisional territory refuses accommodation with security ambitions that seek definitiveness. There is no spatial-technical design solution to the conflict: it can only be political. [complete article]

Terrorists...
By Riverbend, Baghdad Burning, September 19, 2003

Everyone is worried about raids lately. We hear about them from friends and relatives, we watch them on tv, outraged, and try to guess where the next set of raids are going to occur.

Anything can happen. Some raids are no more than seemingly standard weapons checks. Three or four troops knock on the door and march in. One of them keeps an eye of the 'family' while the rest take a look around the house. They check bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms and gardens. They look under beds, behind curtains, inside closets and cupboards. All you have to do is stifle your feelings of humiliation, anger and resentment at having foreign troops from an occupying army search your home.

Some raids are, quite simply, raids. The door is broken down in the middle of the night, troops swarm in by the dozens. Families are marched outside, hands behind their backs and bags upon their heads. Fathers and sons are pushed down on to the ground, a booted foot on their head or back.

Other raids go horribly wrong. We constantly hear about families who are raided in the small hours of the morning. The father, or son, picks up a weapon- thinking they are being attacked by looters- and all hell breaks loose. Family members are shot, others are detained and often women and children are left behind wailing. [complete article]

A confessed bomber's trail of terror
By Peter Baker, Washington Post, September 18, 2003

Karimov's story, as recounted in a prison interview as well as interviews with his family, his wife, relatives of his victims and the Uzbek and Kyrgyz investigators who captured him, offers a rare inside look at the life of a foot soldier on the other side of the war on terrorism -- from training camps in Chechnya and Afghanistan back to his impoverished and repressed homeland in Central Asia.

By his account, it is a tale of a listless teenager from a broken home sucked into the world of Islamic terrorism by choice and circumstance, less out of ideology than inertia, dominated by others with stronger wills, pressured by demands to repay loans and eventually trapped by his own delusion and remorselessness. [complete article]

U.S. troops fire at Italian diplomat's car in Iraq
Reuters, September 19, 2003

U.S. troops opened fire on a car carrying an Italian diplomat who holds a senior position in Iraq's U.S.-led administration, killing his Iraqi interpreter, American military sources said Friday.

Pietro Cordone, senior adviser on culture for the U.S.-led authority, was unhurt, Italian Foreign Ministry sources said. Cordone has been leading efforts to recover priceless antiquities looted from museums and archeological sites since the fall of Saddam Hussein. [complete article]

Can you hear me now, Mr. Bremer?
Our forces in Iraq can't even get decent cell phones

By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 18, 2003

Not until July did the cellular network in Iraq start up, and it turned out to be less than occupation officials expected -- or needed. According to officials who were there at the time, they could use the phones (which cost a staggering $4,000 a piece) to talk only among themselves. The network did not extend, or link, to Iraqi telephones.

The U.S. reconstruction officials in Baghdad could not even talk with U.S. military officers down the street. The Army had, in June, contracted Motorola to create a separate network for security forces.

According to a Defense Department official, if someone working for the U.S. occupation authority needed to talk with a battalion commander, there was no way to make direct contact. He or she had to call a desk officer back in the Pentagon, who would jot down the message and call the commander himself. If the commander wanted to reply to the message, the same desk officer would jot down the response and call back the occupation authority. [complete article]

Give Iraq to the U.N. (sort of)
How to share power during the occupation

By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 17, 2003

If President Bush doesn't play these next few weeks very carefully, he could wind up losing not just Iraq but Western Europe. On Saturday, the leaders of France, Germany, and Britain will meet in Berlin to discuss how to deal with the U.S. request for postwar assistance. This news flash bears repeating: Our key allies over the past half-century are meeting to form not a common Western position on how to deal with Iraq but a common Western European position on how to deal with us -- and in a form that does not include any Americans. Meanwhile, France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg are putting together a European defense force independent of NATO (i.e., free of U.S. control).


Not since World War I has the Atlantic Ocean seemed so wide. [complete article]

A Shiite cleric's caution
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, September 19, 2003

The Bush administration hoped its invasion of Iraq would produce a shock wave of democracy in the Arab world. But when you look at what America has actually wrought, the real earthquake is the new power of Iraq's long-oppressed Shiite Muslim majority.

Shiites throughout the Arab world have been emboldened by the fact that their co-religionists control the transitional 25-person Governing Council in Iraq and are almost certain to win elections that are likely in 2004. Some analysts tout Iraq as the Shiites' biggest political victory in the 1,200 years since they split from the Sunni branch of Islam.

But a leading Lebanese Shiite religious leader, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, cautioned in an interview here this week that Iraqi Shiites should proceed cautiously and avoid any quick political transition that might exacerbate Sunni fears that they will be victimized in the new Iraq.

"My advice to Iraqis is to stay away from all who want to start making trouble between the Sunni and the Shia," Fadlallah said, speaking through a translator. "We call on Iraqis to solve problems in a peaceful way. Iraq is not a country of Shia alone or Sunni alone, it's a country for everyone. They have to cooperate to solve its problems."

Rather than transferring political power quickly to the Shiite-led Governing Council, Fadlallah said he favored a more gradual transition under the auspices of the United Nations. "Iraqis have nothing against the U.N.," he said. "If the U.N. receives international support, there won't be any problem. Iraqis will receive it in a good way." [complete article]

U.S. is working to isolate France in U.N. council on Iraq approach
By Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, September 19, 2003

The Bush administration, incensed by France's demands for greater United Nations oversight in Iraq, is working to isolate France and win a majority at the United Nations Security Council for the American approach, administration officials said today.

In an echo of a tactic the administration tried earlier this year, without notable success, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is stepping up his efforts to enlist the support of Russia, Germany and other nations for American control over the occupation and transition to self-rule in Iraq, even though many of them sided with France in opposing the war. [complete article]

Big lie on Iraq comes full circle
By Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 2003

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie. That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself.

The president has insisted that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, a continuation of the administration's effort to link Iraq to the attack on the World Trade Center. While almost three-quarters of the public believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attack, the polls after the president's recent speech show that less than half believe that Iraq is the ''central front'' of the war on terrorism. Moreover, the majority believe that the war has increased the risk of terrorism. A shift is occurring in the middle, which is neither clearly pro-Bush nor clearly anti-Bush. The big lie is coming apart. [complete article]

2 U.S. fronts: Quick wars, but bloody peace
By Amy Waldman, Dexter Filkins, New York Times, September 19, 2003

Not for a long time has the United States embarked on two such ambitious projects as the simultaneous pacification and rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq. The administration argues that progress has been significant in both countries — the removal of the Taliban and its ally Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Baathists in Iraq, the liberation of millions of people in each country from oppressive governments, the taking of the fight to terrorists on the soil where they found havens.

But even American officials in Afghanistan concede that the sense of alienation and disappointment may be helping to nourish the boldest regrouping yet by supporters of the Taliban, the regime the United States toppled in 2001. The Gardez base has been attacked twice this month; in the area, bands of Taliban are roaming, harassing local men who do not grow beards.

In Iraq, there are daily attacks on American soldiers, including one that killed three yesterday, and they may not be just the work of foreign fighters or Saddam Hussein loyalists. Defense Department officials warned this week that ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American occupation might soon constitute the most formidable foe.

In both countries, an apparently rapid military victory has been followed by a murkier, bloodier peace. Militant Islamic extremism, in its Afghan and Iraqi guises, is proving, for now, to be an ideology that can be contained but not defeated.

The Bush administration is now struggling to respond. Aid to Afghanistan is being doubled, and the cost of the occupation of both countries over the next year is now put at $87 billion. In neither country does any exit for American troops appear feasible in the foreseeable future. [complete article]

Clark comes out blazing at Bush's 'arrogance' on Iraq
By Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2003

Former Gen. Wesley Clark, in his first full day as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted President Bush for a "dogmatic" foreign policy and for putting "strong-arm tactics" on Congress to rush approval for the war in Iraq.

Saying the Bush White House used its executive authority "in ways that cut off debate," Clark said he would likely have voted to authorize the war because "the simple truth is that when the president of the United States lays the power of office" on the line, "the balance of judgment probably goes to the president."

"I was against the war," Clark said. "In retrospect, we should never have gone in there. We could have waited. We could have brought the allies in." [complete article]

An interview with Paul Krugman
By Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, September 19, 2003

Accustomed to the vigorous ivy league tradition of calling a stupid argument a stupid argument (and isolated, at home in New Jersey, from the Washington dinner-party circuit frequented by so many other political columnists) he has become pretty much the only voice in the mainstream US media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people: first to sell a calamitous tax cut, and then to sell a war. [complete article]

Clock ticking for U.S. to sway Iraqis
By Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, September 19, 2003

The voice of Saddam Hussein - or someone who sounds like him - echoed through the streets of Baghdad this week exhorting Iraqis to "wage holy war against the foolish invaders." The public reaction here to the former Iraqi leader's "return" via audiotape offers a window on how the US is doing in its battle for hearts and minds.

"I was a political prisoner, so I enjoy our freedom more than most people," says Furkhan Mohammed, who teaches his neighbors to use a computer from a cramped corner of his wife's dental office.

"But I have some advice for the Americans: If they can't provide basic services, they had better bring back Saddam." [complete article]

Eighth pillar of wisdom? Iraq is a deep morass
By Michael Keane, Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003

That Iraq would become a troublesome source of guerrilla tactics should come as no surprise to any student of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is considered by many strategists to be the father of guerrilla warfare. He articulated a powerful treatise on the topic in his classic book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom."

During World War I, Lawrence's guerrilla victories against the Turkish forces occupying the Arabian peninsula provided a stunning contrast to the simultaneous slaughter occurring in the trenches of Europe. Although Lawrence claimed that his vision of warfare came to him as he lay dazed in a feverish state, he was actually formalizing a form of war practiced by Arab tribes for centuries. [complete article]

Iraq effect shakes National Guard
By Seth Stern, Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 2003

When two soldiers in Sgt. Edward Rose's unit died in Iraq this month, he couldn't hug and personally comfort his wife, Jennifer, who knew both men and their wives. In fact, just that week, Mr. Rose learned their time apart would grow as his tour as a military policeman in Iraq was extended well into next year.

What Rose did promise his wife that he would quit the Rhode Island National Guard when his current enlistment ends. Instead of staying for a full 20 years as he'd always intended, Rose now plans to get out as soon as possible. His wife says he's unable to bear the thought of another long separation.

Around the country, other reservists, National Guard members, and their families are also rethinking their commitment to the military as their duties as "weekend warriors" have morphed into full-time jobs that have become increasingly risky. [complete article]

No proof connects Iraq to 9/11, Bush says
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan stressed Wednesday that Bush administration officials never claimed any Iraq-Sept. 11 link.

McClellan's assertion appears to be factually correct, but many administration critics, including some in the intelligence community, said it was also somewhat misleading.

A reading of the record shows that while senior administration officials stopped short of accusing Hussein of complicity in the attacks, they frequently alluded to the possibility of such a connection, and consistently cast the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda in stronger terms than many in the intelligence community seemed to endorse. [complete article]

Carrying the weight
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, September 17, 2003

There is a sobering fact that has been overlooked in the Bush administration's drive to win United Nations support for a new multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq: establishing that force may not ease the main danger for American forces and is unlikely to substantially limit the growing American casualty toll. [complete article]

Saudis consider nuclear bomb
By Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor, The Guardian, September 18, 2003

Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned.

This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran's alleged nuclear programme. [complete article]

The Turkish card
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, September 16, 2003

One hidden casualty of the Iraq war has been the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey. Like so many other things, it was a victim partly of the Bush administration's overconfidence and wishful thinking.

Now the two countries are near agreement on a plan to send up to 10,000 Turkish troops into the savage battleground northwest of Baghdad known as the Sunni triangle, where U.S. forces are facing almost daily attacks. It's a bold plan that could bolster the American occupation -- and also revive the battered Turkish-American relationship.

But playing the Turkish card in Iraq is dangerous, too, for both the United States and Turkey. The widespread concern among Turkish analysts is that the two countries, in their rush to solve short-term problems, may be creating long-term ones that haunt them for years. [complete article]

Blix criticises U.K.'s Iraq dossier
BBC News, September 18, 2003

Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accused the British Government of using spin in its controversial dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Blix criticised the "culture of spin, of hyping" and told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he hoped governments would be more cautious in the future use of special intelligence.

He compared the way Britain and America were sure Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programmes to the way people in the Middle Ages were convinced witches existed and so found them when they looked. [complete article]

Our role in the terror
By Karen Armstrong, The Guardian, September 18, 2003

Since the second anniversary of September 11, we have had sober reminders that military force alone cannot eliminate the threat of religiously inspired terrorism. There has been the dramatic, if disputed, reappearance of Osama bin Laden; new reports that Islamist extremism is again gaining ground in Afghanistan; and in the wake of horrific attacks by Hamas, the Israeli right has called for the expulsion of Yasser Arafat - a move that would almost certainly provoke a new spate of suicide bombings.

How do we account for the rise of this religious violence in the post-Enlightenment world? Ever since 9/11, President Bush has repeatedly condemned Islamist terror as an atavistic rejection of American freedom, while Tony Blair recently called it a virus, as though, like Aids, its origins are inexplicable. They are wrong, on both counts. The terrorists' methods are appalling, but they regard themselves as freedom fighters, and there is nothing mysterious about the source of these extremist groups: to a significant degree, they are the result of our own policies. [complete article]

Not a lot like Chicago
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 17, 2003

It has become one of the most serious hurdles in America's project to reshape Iraq: how can a force that spent billions sending its troops to war still not manage to keep the lights on?

Restoring electrical power is the cornerstone of the west's reconstruction efforts. With electricity comes air-conditioning in the summer, heating in winter, water purification facilities, revived oil and gas production, functioning hospitals and industrial plants back on line. All this will do more than any number of troops to restore security and halt the frustration behind the continued wave of guerrilla attacks.

Given the scale of the task, the architects of America's war appear remarkably untroubled. "For a city that's not supposed to have power, there's lights all over the place. It's like Chicago," Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said earlier this month after a night-time Blackhawk helicopter tour over Baghdad. Unfortunately, Chicago it is not. [complete article]

Judith Miller takes a leak
By Jack Shafer, Slate, September 16, 2003

Suppose you had an advance copy of the testimony that Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton was scheduled to give to a House subcommittee today that details the dangers posed by Syria's unconventional weapons program. And let's suppose that you wanted to leak it to the reporter who would give it the most favorable bounce in today's papers. Would you give it to New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl, who followed a Knight Ridder story on July 18, 2003, with a critical account of how the CIA and other agencies blocked Bolton's July House appearance?

Or would you give it to Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has given sympathetic play time and again to leakers and defectors bearing information about weapons of mass destruction?

You needn't ask. [complete article]

Paths of glory lead to a soldier's doubt
By Tim Predmore, Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2003

For the last six months I have participated in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom. [complete article]

Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq.

Matchlessly wrong about everything
Behold, the head of a neo-con!

By Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, September 17, 2003

Since the breed is now being ripely abused as the sponsors of the US debacle in Iraq, we had better be clear about its political bloodlines. What exactly is a neo-con? The label was first stuck on those Democrats classed as liberals in the early 1970s who thought George McGovern, the anti-war Democratic nominee in 1972 crushed by Nixon, represented an unacceptable swerve to the left by their party, and who moved sharply to the right,advocating a tough coldwar posture, reassertion of imperial confidence after Vietnam, increased military spending and, above all, uncritical US backing for Israeli intransigeance. They flocked to Ronald Reagan. [complete article]

Cincinnatus for President
Listen up, Wesley Clark! Here's how generals get elected president

By David Greenberg, Slate, September 16, 2003

Slate's Michael Kinsley once described the early Al Gore as an old person's idea of a young person. Similarly, you might say that Gen. Wesley Clark is a peacenik's idea of a wartime candidate. It's easy to suspect that the groundswell of enthusiasm for his Democratic presidential campaign springs from the belief that he alone can risk a bold antiwar stand because his military stars would inoculate him from being Dukakis-ized. (In January, Slate's Chris Suellentrop assessed Clark.)

But to dismiss Clark's candidacy as a liberal delusion is to misread the appeal of generals as presidential candidates. The 10 generals (six of them notable) who have become president have typically won support by styling themselves not as candidates of war but as candidates of peace. [complete article]

Iraqis' bitterness is called bigger threat than terror
By Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger, New York Times, September 17, 2003

New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States' most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation, Defense Department officials said today.

That picture, shared with American military commanders in Iraq, is very different from the public view currently being presented by senior Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who once again today listed only "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs" as opponents of the American occupation.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were concerned about retribution for straying from the official line. They said it was a mistake for the administration to discount the role of ordinary Iraqis who have little in common with the groups Mr. Rumsfeld cited, but whose anger over the American presence appears to be kindling some sympathy for those attacking American forces.

Other United States government officials said some of the concerns had been prompted by recent polling in Iraq by the State Department's intelligence branch. The findings, which remain classified, include significant levels of hostility to the American presence. The officials said indications of that hostility extended well beyond the Sunni heartland of Iraq, which has been the main setting for attacks on American forces, to include the Shiite-dominated south, whose citizens have been more supportive of the American military presence but have also protested loudly about raids and other American actions. [complete article]

A chilling message to Muslims
By Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, September 16, 2003

When Sajidah Kutty called the Star on Friday, she seemed more bewildered than frightened.

Her family, frantic to find out what had happened to her father Ahmad, had finally received a phone call from him at 4:30 that morning.

I'm all right, he told them. The Americans were holding him and fellow Canadian citizen Abdool Hamid in a Fort Lauderdale jail. And no, he didn't know why.

"You hear of this kind of thing happening to Muslims just because they are Muslims," Sajidah told me. "But you never really expect it to happen to you or your family."

As it turned out, Kutty and Hamid were finally released and sent home after a bizarre 31-hour ordeal -- a post-9/11experience you might say -- that began when they landed in Florida last Thursday, climaxed with 16 hours of non-stop interrogation plus a night in jail, and ended with the two Canadians being escorted back to Fort Lauderdale's airport in handcuffs.

Ironically, the pair -- both of whom are imams in Toronto -- were on their way to a conference dealing with, among other things, the dangers of Islamic fanaticism. [complete article]

Democratic hawk urges firing of Bush Iraq aides
By David Firestone, New York Times, September 17, 2003

One of the strongest Democratic supporters of the invasion of Iraq joined the growing offensive against the administration's postwar planning today, demanding that President Bush fire his defense leadership team.

The Democrat, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said that he had been misled into voting for the war by incorrect information from top administration officials and that the president had also been misled.

"You can't fire the president unless you're in California," Mr. Murtha said. "But somebody recommended this policy to him, and he took the recommendation. Somebody has to be held responsible, and he's got to make the decision who it was."

Mr. Murtha was joined in his call for high-level resignations by Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader.

Democrats around Capitol Hill made it clear today that they intended to step up their aggressive criticism of Bush policies in Iraq. [complete article]

RUMSFELD, SADDAM, AND SEPTEMBER 11

On September 4, 2002, CBS News reported:

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes [taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on September 11, 2001] quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

"Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Rumsfeld sees no link between Iraq, 9/11
Associated Press (via ABC News), September 16, 2003

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday he had no reason to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that," Rumsfeld said.

He added: "We know he was giving $25,000 a family for anyone who would go out and kill innocent men, women and children. And we know of various other activities. But on that specific one, no, not to my knowledge." [complete article]

An outcome too terrible to imagine
By Yigal Bronner, Haaretz, September 17, 2003

One of the most dramatic geo-political changes in the history of the region is taking place at record speed and without any public debate [in Israel]. Before it becomes too late, we must take time out to look through the veil of lies about the fence.

The first lie is in the title. The so-called separation fence promises the worn-out and worried public that the Palestinians, and all the troubles that contact with them entails, will be tucked safely behind the fence. We are on one side, they are on the other, and that's that. The alignment of the fence will, inreality, annex much of the West Bank to Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will still be living west of the fence, on the Israeli side. Thousands of settlers will be living east of it. Call it what you will - separation it ain't. [complete article]

Seoul may send 10,000 troops to Iraq
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2003

South Korea could send up to 10,000 combat troops to Iraq, among them highly trained special forces, in what would be the largest deployment by Seoul on behalf of the United States since the Vietnam War, according to sources here.

The United States has requested help in Iraq from other Asian allies as well, among them Japan, Pakistan and India. However, it is expected that South Korea, which has one of the largest and best-trained militaries of any U.S. ally, will contribute the largest number of troops.

"The logic is very simple. The United States sacrificed for us in the Korean War. We are allies and the U.S. strongly wants help in Iraq," said a South Korean official who asked not to be quoted by name.

The official said South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun was likely to support the deployment despite his often blunt criticism of the Iraq war. "He is very much a pragmatist," the official said. [complete article]

Bush's worst nightmare
By Stephen K. Medvic, Tom Paine.com, September 16, 2003

General Wesley Clark will soon officially announce his candidacy. Democratic rank-and-file know very little about Clark's positions, but if they're smart they'll quickly realize that he has one thing going for him that none of the other Democrats have -- he's George Bush's worst nightmare.

I can almost hear the Dean supporters expressing Dean-like righteous anger. Their guy, they'll claim, is the most electable Democrat. I've been amused by this argument since they started making it (though it's no more of a stretch than the argument that Dean most embodies true Democratic principles). Let's face facts -- Bush will skewer a candidate who has built an entire campaign around opposition to war, or who has at least allowed himself to be portrayed as such.

Sadly, elections aren't about who has the better argument -- they're about images created by the campaigns in a dynamic process of emphasizing issues and personality traits. [complete article]

U.S. confronts army overstretch
UPI (via Military.com), September 16, 2003

"Are we stretched too thin?" Time magazine thunderously asked on a recent front cover. "U.S. forces are straining to meet missions in Iraq, Pentagon officials tell Congress," according to a headline a few days later in The New York Times. Imperial overstretch is here.

It did not take long.

Only two years after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of Sept., 11, 2001, and less than half a year after the U.S. Army and Marines carried off a lightning three-week conquest of Iraq with virtually zero casualties, the U.S. global military deployment is stretched dangerously thin, with dire potential consequences if a second full-scale conflict with a rogue nation such as North Korea should erupt. [complete article]

Shades of Vietnam
By Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, September 16, 2003

President Bush's most egregious misstatement about the situation in Iraq is that he is asking Congress for $87 billion to stabilize it. That is baloney. He is in fact asking Congress for a second installment (the first in April was $79 billion) on a war that has no geographical, time, or force limitations beyond the capacity of the brains of the ideologues who are making up what some of them like to call World War IV as they go -- in secret, of course.

There will be another installment -- probably this winter -- and almost certainly another after that. The only real question is which will come first in 2005 -- a running total in excess of $300 billion or a different president who might start by telling the truth about what he is doing.

As befits a secretive and deceptive administration, the whole ($87 billion) is being emphasized at the expense of the parts and their true sum. Looking diligently at the parts would show that the whole has been misstated -- way on the low side. The "sticker shock" from $87 billion was bad enough, but administration officials were not going to let the figure of $100 billion get into the headlines and on TV.

This is where the real analogy with America's Vietnam disaster lies. The analogy is false on most fronts -- different war, different enemies, different part of the world. The analogy most popular at the Pentagon -- France's failed war with pro-independence revolutionaries in Algeria -- is probably just as false.

The real analogy is with the lengths to which the administration is willing to go to avoid telling the truth about the nature of its commitment, the true cost, and the lengths to which Congress is willing to go to accommodate it. [complete article]

Who's counting?

Last week U.S. officials announced that there are 116,000 U.S. troops in Iraq - 14,000 fewer than previously stated. Now they say they have 10,000 prisoners, 3,800 more than previously stated. Who's going to keep track of $87 billion?

Coalition reveals almost 4,000 extra "security detainees" in Iraq
Agence France-Presse, September 16, 2003

US officials said they were holding 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, double the number previously reported, and count among the security cases six inmates claiming to be Americans and two who say they are British.

"They didn't fit into any category," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said Tuesday of the 3,800 extra people who have now been classified as "security detainees."

"We got an order from the Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) to categorise them" about a month ago, she said, but gave few details about who these detainees were.

"We were securing them. We didn't want people to be confused" about their status, she said.

They were being held in the area of north-central Iraq controlled by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, said Karpinski, speaking at Abu Gharib prison, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Baghdad.

Asked if they had any rights or had access to their families or legal help while they were being "secured", she said: "It's not that they don't have rights ... they have fewer rights than EPWs (enemy prisoners of war)."

But she added that "they didn't ask for" any such privileges. [complete article]

NUCLEAR MIDDLE EAST

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is meeting in Vienna for its 47th General Conference. The media is focusing most of its attention on Iran's nuclear program. Meanwhile, the State Department's leading neo-con (the Pentagon's Trojan horse), Under Secretary of State, John Bolton, has renewed charges that Syria has a program for developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In Congress, Democrats are accusing the administration of increasing the chances of nuclear war through its consideration of developing low-yield nuclear weapons. And though alarm bells are ringing warning of the dangers of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and elsewhere, the subject of disarmament rarely enters the discussion. But all the while, Israel's nuclear arsenal -- the only one in the Middle East -- hardly ever gets mentioned. As an editorial in Lebanon's Daily Star asks, if Israel can ignore the IAEA, why should anyone else listen?

For background information on nuclear weapons in the Middle East, see The War in Context's new link collection to the left.

DARPA's ditziness dents budget
By Noah Shachtman, Wired News, September 16, 2003

Under increased scrutiny for a series of controversial programs, the Pentagon's far-out research arm has had its proposed budget for next year slashed by hundreds of millions of dollars in the Senate.

Some of the cuts to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were expected: Lawmakers have been trying for the better part of a year to excise the notoriously far-reaching Terrorism Information Awareness database program. But others seem to have come out of regulatory left field. Widely hailed research into using the brain to control robotic limbs, and training the mind to function on little or no sleep, will come to an end if the Senate's version of the Defense Department Appropriations bill becomes law.

"Darpa got too much of the wrong kind of publicity, the kind that invites mockery and ridicule, and now the agency is paying the price," Steven Aftergood, with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in an e-mail. [complete article]

U.S. not even close to capturing Osama bin Laden
By Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and Sami Yousafzai, Newsweek, September 22, 2003

In the Pakistani city of Peshawar, the Kissakhani bazaar is buzzing with talk of Osama bin Laden. When a new video aired by Al-Jazeera last week showed the terror chieftain walking casually down a boulder-strewn mountainside, it was almost as if he had risen from the dead. The market in bin Laden baubles -- photos, tapes -- took off in hours.

Muhammad Yaqoob, a 25-year-old hotel worker, quickly bought three new color posters of bin Laden from a sidewalk vendor. "I'm so happy he's still in this world," said Yaqoob. "I hope to hear one day that he has exploded the Bush White House." In a nearby hotel lobby where locals usually gather over 10-cent cups of tea to watch Indian movies on TV, the price quickly doubled as a huge crowd jammed in for the constant replay. Many viewers proudly noted that bin Laden was wearing the rolled felt cap and loose-fitting shalwar kameez, shirt and pants that are the dress of this rough northwest region bordering Afghanistan. "Oh, America, look closely," shouted one man. "Osama's still strong and can walk over mountains." Amid the boosterism, even adoration, one skeptical voice could be heard, a middle-aged teacher who feared the war will go on forever. "I still can't understand why powerful America cannot catch him," he said. [complete article]

White House's cynical Iraq ploy: 'Misspeak' first, 'correct' it later
By Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2003

It's hard to believe that it was just a slip of the tongue rather than a calculated lie when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sullied the memory of those who died on 9/11 by exploiting their deaths for propaganda purposes. The brainwashing of Americans, two-thirds of whom believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, is too effective a political ploy for the Bush regime to suddenly let the truth get in the way.

"We know [Iraq] had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with Al Qaeda in particular and we know a great many of [Osama] bin Laden's key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime " Wolfowitz told ABC on this year's 9/11 anniversary.

We know nothing of the sort, of course, and the next day Wolfowitz was forced to admit it. He told Associated Press that his remarks referred not to a "great many" of Bin Laden's lieutenants but rather to a single Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. "[I] should have been more precise," Wolfowitz admitted. [complete article]

Baghdad's packed morgue marks a city's descent into lawlessness
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2003

U.S.-led coalition forces insist that stability is returning to Iraq. The ledger in the Baghdad morgue tells a different tale.

The number of reported gun-related killings in Baghdad has increased 25-fold since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. Before the war began, the morgue investigated an average of 20 deaths a month caused by firearms. In June, that number rose to 389 and in August it reached 518. Moreover, the overall number of suspicious deaths jumped from about 250 a month last year to 872 in August. [complete article]

Jimmy Carter criticizes Israel for threatening Arafat
Associated Press (via Toronto Star), September 15, 2003

"As I know from bitter experience at Camp David, the likelihood the two sides are going to come together voluntarily and make very troubling concessions is nil," the former president said of Israel and the Palestinians today.

"The only way this can be done is by the extreme, concerted commitment of the president of the United States or his top representatives - preferably himself - and a balanced approach between the two adversarial groups," Carter said.

"You have to let the Palestinians know we are representing their key interests," and you have to let the Israelis know the same, Carter said.

"The United States is not being even-handed," Carter said by telephone from his home in Plains, Ga. "You have to have a mediator, willing to negotiate freely with both sides, and equally firmly with both sides." [complete article]

Veiled and worried in Baghdad
By Lauren Sandler, New York Times, September 16, 2003

A single word is on the tight, pencil-lined lips of women here. You'll hear it spoken over lunch at a women's leadership conference in a restaurant off busy Al Nidal Street, in a shade-darkened beauty shop in upscale Mansour, in the ramshackle ghettos of Sadr City. The word is "himaya," or security. With an intensity reminiscent of how they feared Saddam Hussein, women now fear the abduction, rape and murder that have become rampant here since his regime fell. Life for Iraqi women has been reduced to one need that must be met before anything else can happen.

"Under Saddam we could drive, we could walk down the street until two in the morning," a young designer told me as she bounced her 4-year-old daughter on her lap. "Who would have thought the Americans could have made it worse for women? This is liberation?" [complete article]

Bin Laden's hideout in wilds of Pakistan
By Gretchen Peters, Christian Science Monitor, September 15, 2003

US officials say they have narrowed the zone of interest to an area [in South Waziristan] slightly larger than the field of battle on the nearby Tora Bora mountain range, where US and Afghan forces launched an attempt to capture bin Laden in December 2001.

This time around, officials acknowledge that a complex set of sensitivities - and the simple fact that America's military has been busy in Iraq - have stymied hopes of an aggressive campaign in the area.

Particularly sensitive is the issue of US forces operating missions inside Pakistan, a country where antiAmerican sentiment runs high and where many take a dim view of the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. US officials say they fear a joint military operation in the semi-autonomous tribal belt could result in grave consequences for President Pervez Musharraf, who has survived at least three assassination attempts since he threw his support behind the US-led war on terror in September 2001. A coalition of conservative Islamic political parties is already pushing for Musharraf's ouster, and would probably win wider public support if US troops entered Pakistan, analysts say. "If we lose Musharraf, all bets are off for Pakistan," says a senior American official who has worked extensively on the region. [complete article]

In these remote hills, a resurgent al-Qaeda
By Timothy J. Burger and Kamal Haider, Time, September 15, 2003

After keeping a low profile in the borderlands following their 2001 rout from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants are standing tall again. Besides taking potshots at Americans, they are also going after perceived local enemies. So far this year, 11 people suspected of informing on al-Qaeda have been murdered in the Switzerland-size, semiautonomous tribal land. An agent of Pakistan's much feared secret intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, was shot in March as he rode his motorcycle in daylight. A tribal chief's son sitting outside his shop in the marketplace of Wana was mowed down in July by a pair of gunmen in a car. His father had been suspected of collaborating in the U.S. hunt for al-Qaeda fighters. Though virtually every man in the town is armed, nobody in the bazaar moved against the assassins. [complete article]

Israel's big stick will bend but not break Hamas
By Mark Heinrich and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, September 15, 2003

Low-tech militants may be easy prey for high-tech missiles, but Israel will find it hard to wipe out the Islamic movement Hamas.

One of Israel's key strategies to counter a three-year-old Palestinian revolt against occupation has been to smash regional militant cells by killing or seizing the commanders and blowing up their bomb factories in raids into West Bank cities.

But Palestinian and Israeli political analysts say Hamas has popular roots and needs no central leadership to fight on. New local cells with new commanders have sprung from the rubble to send new waves of suicide bombers.

Ami Ayalon, who learned much about Hamas as chief of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service in the 1990s, said Israel's war on Hamas cannot be won in military terms.

"This is because Hamas is not an organization per se but an ideological movement incorporating the aspirations of many Palestinians who lost their hope in a negotiating process and seek to remove the occupation and find a better life," he said. [complete article]

MICHAEL MEACHER: "I DO NOT SUGGEST A CONSPIRACY THEORY"
By Paul Woodward, The War in Context, September 15, 2003

On September 6, I accused Michael Meacher, former minister in Tony Blair's government, of "regurgitating claims that can be found on most of the web sites that promote conspiracy theories about 9-11." Meacher was similarly ridiculed in the British press following the Guardian's publication of his article, This war on terrorism is bogus.

Meacher clearly doesn't like being accused of being a conspiracy theorist and in a letter to the Guardian this weekend wrote:

Contrary to the wilful misrepresentation by some of my article (This war on terrorism is bogus, September 6), I did not say at any point, and have never said, that the US government connived at the 9/11 attacks or deliberately allowed them to happen. It need hardly be said that I do not believe any government would conspire to cause such an atrocity.

Here's why Meacher has been accused of being a conspiracy theorist. In "The war on terrorism is bogus" he wrote:

The first hijacking [on September 11] was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority?


Why was Meacher asking whether fighter planes could have been "deliberately stood down" and further asking "on whose authority" if, as he now claims, he suspects no connivance on the part of the US government? If he had no such suspicions he would not be asking, "on whose authority." That question presupposes that there are strong indications that planes had in fact been deliberately stood down. And the conclusion that they had been deliberately stood down, presupposes that they had for any reason been stood down. Had Meacher questioned that premise he might have learnt that fighters had been scrambled and were airborne 6 minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 hit World Trade Center 1 - that being 10 minutes before United Airlines Flight 175 hit World Trade Center 2.

Iraqi guerrillas fight for independence, for their leaders
By Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder, September 13, 2003

...two cell leaders said their fighters primarily were former Iraqi army officers and young Iraqis who had joined because they were angry over the deaths or arrests of family members during U.S. raids in the hunt for Saddam Hussein and his supporters. [...]

Both cell leaders said they were willing to talk because they didn't want the story of what was going on in Iraq to be told only from the American military's standpoint. Abu Abdullah said he wanted to tell people he didn't consider himself a terrorist, but the enemy of "U.S. imperialism."

American officials have said they know little of the exact makeup of the Iraqi fighters. They have linked the guerrillas both to Saddam's Baath Party and to foreigners linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

The cell leaders themselves said they were guided by a blend of Islamist teachings and pan-Arab nationalism. Both spoke disdainfully of "Wahabbis," as hard-line Sunni Muslim followers are called. Abu Mohammed said there was no contact with members of al Qaida at his level; Abu Abdullah broke off the interview before the question could be asked. But he said his fighters were too valuable to participate in suicide missions, a hallmark of al Qaida, and he rejected the label of terrorist.

"Can you describe a man who defends his country as a terrorist?" asked Abu Abdullah, who said he was 31. "Iraq is the land of prophets and the birthplace of civilization. We will fight until we shed the last drop of our blood for this country." [complete article]

India's Muslim time bomb
By Pankaj Mishra, New York Times, September 15, 2003

What is particularly worrisome about the new Muslim terrorism is the backgroud of its adherents. Many of these young men have degrees in business management, forensic science, and chemical and aeronautical engineering. They have been radicalized in a geopolitical environment that has never been more highly fraught for the Muslim community at large. And so while the rage and resentment of such educated Muslims may have purely Indian origins, they are now likely to feed faster on the international events -- the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombings in Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Baghdad -- that probably still seem too remote to an older, impoverished generation of Indian Muslims.

The parallel with Indonesia, a new and floundering democracy, is striking. In the only country with more Muslims than India, a new, educated and politically aware generation has outgrown the old tolerant culture of Indonesian Islam. Its distrust of the Indonesian government, which they call anti-Muslim and pro-American, is increasingly channeled into the politics of anti-Americanism and, for some young Muslims at least, into association with Al Qaeda and radical Islamist groups in East Asia.

Yet while religious violence has made the Indonesian government cautious in its dealings with both radical Islamists and the Bush administration, the Hindu nationalists in New Delhi and the provinces seem eager to expand the Indian Muslim list of grievances. [complete article]

Our war's mistaken premise
By Benjamin R. Barber, Washington Post, September 14, 2003

Preventive war, the novel national-security doctrine announced after 9/11, exempted the United States from the obligation to justify war on grounds of self-defense or imminent threat. It promulgated a new right "to act against emerging threats before they are fully formed," to "act preemptively" against states that harbor or support terrorism. It is this strategic doctrine, and not tactics or policies on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is now failing so catastrophically.

The war on terrorism remains the Bush administration's ultimate rationale. The administration continues to insist that "in Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror" (Vice President Cheney), that "military and rehabilitation efforts now under way in Iraq are an essential part of the war on terror" (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz), that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a "terror regime" and that the ongoing war there today must be understood as part of the war on terror (President Bush).

Yet terrorism is flourishing -- not just in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kenya and Indonesia but in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were supposedly defeated, and in Iraq, where, prior to the war, there was no sponsored international terrorism at all. [complete article]

A bankrupt policy
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, September 14, 2003

Who is the head of the Hamas military wing in Hebron? Last week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that soldiers from the undercover unit Duvdevan had liquidated Ahmed Bader, describing him as "the head of the Hamas military wing in Hebron." Seven weeks earlier, on June 22, we were informed that a force of the Border Police and the Shin Bet security service had eliminated "the head of the military wing of Hamas in Hebron." On that occasion the part was played by Abdullah Qawasmeh.

Three months before that, on March 18, it was reported that the IDF had terminated Ali Alan, who was also "the head of the military wing of Hamas in Hebron." Seven months prior to that, on August 28, 2002, it was announced that the IDF had arrested "the head of the military wing of Hamas in Hebron," Abdel Halek Natshe. Less than a year before that, in November 2001, the IDF reported that a helicopter-launched missile killed Jail Jadallah - "the head of the military wing of Hamas in Hebron."

Yes, within less than two years Israel liquidated and arrested five people all of whom were described as "the head of the military wing of Hamas in Hebron."

Each of these events was termed a "major operational success" and the Israeli public was assured that the liquidation or arrest would "seriously affect the ability of Hamas to perpetrate large-scale terrorist attacks." [complete article]

One wall, one man, one vote
By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, September 14, 2003

If there is one iron law that has shaped the history of Arab-Israeli relations, it's the law of unintended consequences. For instance, Israel is still wrestling with all the unintended consequences of its victory in 1967. Today, Israel is building a fence and walls around the West Bank to deter suicide bombers. But, having looked at this wall extensively from both sides, I am ready to make a prediction: It will be the mother of all unintended consequences.

Rather than create the outlines of a two-state solution, this wall will kill that idea for Palestinians, and drive them, over time, to demand instead a one-state solution -- where they and the Jews would have equal rights in one state. And since by 2010 there will be more Palestinian Arabs than Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza combined, this transformation of the Palestinian cause will be very problematic for Israel. If American Jews think it's hard to defend Israel today on college campuses, imagine what it will be like when their kids have to argue against the principle of one man, one vote. [complete article]

Cleric's militia sees U.S. as enemy
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, September 15, 2003

"Will you disarm for the Americans?" the animated preacher at the microphone asks a thousand wound-up young men seated on a city street turned outdoor assembly hall.

"No, no to America!" the listeners respond in unison, pumping their fists toward the heavens in utter rejection of such a notion. "Yes, yes to Islam!"

This was the well-choreographed inaugural gathering of the Army of the Mahdi, a volunteer militia composed of followers of a militant young Najaf-based Shiite cleric, Muqtader Sadr. [complete article]

Desperate Iraqis clamor for help as Powell visits
By Andrew Cawthorne, Reuters, September 14, 2003

Black-robed women wept for lost sons. Old men brandished death certificates with photos of bombed homes and scarred bodies. Jobless men begged for work.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the main U.S. headquarters in Baghdad Sunday, desperate Iraqis kept up a daily ritual at barbed wire barriers outside.

Knowledge that Powell was just a stone's throw away -- meeting Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer inside one of the former palaces of deposed President Saddam Hussein -- heightened the clamor beyond the gates.

"He must be told that the Iraqi people have gained nothing from the American war. Now it is much worse than under Saddam," said Mushtaq Talib, 28. [complete article]

Iraq's security weakened by fear
By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, September 14, 2003

The convoy of U.S. military engineers had just entered this rough-and-tumble town when disaster struck. They had a flat tire, stopping the convoy along a ribbon of desert asphalt some Iraqis have nicknamed "the highway of death."

Soon after, masked guerrillas fired two rocket-propelled grenades. Machine guns crackled across the late afternoon sky. When it ended an hour later, witnesses said, homes were gouged with large holes, two U.S. vehicles were burning, and the soldiers had beat a retreat.

On the sidelines throughout the clash Thursday were Khaldiya's police, who are supposed to be the allies of the U.S.-led occupation in restoring order to Iraq. Not only was it not their fight, several said this week, but the guerrillas fighting U.S. soldiers had their blessing.

"In my heart, deep inside, we are with them against the occupation," said Lt. Ahmed Khalaf Hamed, an officer with the 100-man force trained, equipped and financed by U.S. authorities. "This is my country, and I encourage them." [complete article]

U.S. and Britain isolated as Iraq angrily buries its dead
By Rupert Cornwell, Andy McSmith and Jo Dillon, The Independent, September 14, 2003

Bitter divisions re-emerged yesterday among the world's five most powerful countries about how soon America is prepared to return power to the Iraqi people.

The United States slapped down as unacceptable a French plan to end its occupation within a month, although Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, talked down the differences after the Geneva meeting of the United Nation's big five.

The failure to reach agreement on a new Security Council resolution that would pave the way for tens of thousands of international troops to go to Iraq under a UN flag, came as the situation on the ground grew yet more perilous. [complete article]

A dead-end move
By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, September 14, 2003

With one decision, the Israeli cabinet succeeded in resurrecting Yasser Arafat, whose importance appeared to be declining both internationally and in the Arab world.

The cabinet's declaration of its intention to deport or kill Arafat raises serious doubts as to its capability to handle the acute, bloody crisis with the Palestinians adequately.

This is not the first time that this government, headed by Sharon, has resurrected the declining Arafat, who is imprisoned and besieged in the Muqata. The last time the siege was tightened and Israeli tanks threatened to storm the Muqata, Arafat also managed to attract renewed international attention and got Saudi King Fahd to ask President Bush to prevent the tanks' entrance. The Israel Defense Forces decided then not to make the same mistake twice. But the political level thought otherwise.

Due to the absence of a political plan and the difficulty of finding satisfactory answers to terror, the Israeli leadership's anger, desire for revenge and frustration are dictating
decisions, such as the one made over the weekend. [complete article]

BUSH LOGIC
Paul Woodward, The War in Context, September 14, 2003

This is an arcane subject that I have yet to master. It often leaves me wondering, am I more stupid than the president?

Having conceded that the mission has not in fact been accomplished and that the war is not over, President Bush, his administration and military leaders, now insist that Iraq is the frontline in the war on terrorism.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, President Bush's ground commander in Iraq echoes the words of his commander-in-chief. "We've got to realize that this is a critical battlefield for America itself. This is where we have to win. I am absolutely convinced that if we don't win here, the next battleground will be the streets of America. We can't allow that to happen."

What exactly does this mean? We are told that Iraq is now a magnet for foreign fighters belonging to or affiliated with al Qaeda who are eager to strike the infidels. Are President Bush and General Sanchez telling us that these very men, if not killed or captured in Iraq, will shortly be boarding planes and flying to America? Are we to fear such a literal movement of battlegrounds?

Maybe I'm being too literal - this is after all a war of good against evil with apocalyptic overtones. Maybe the repercussions we are being told to fear depend on the communication of courage or disappointment. In other words, if Islamicist terrorists are defeated in Iraq, then the sleeper cells who still lurk inside the United States will be so discouraged by the defeat of their comrades that they will remain, so to speak, asleep. Something like the way so many would-be suicide bombers in the occupied territories get discouraged each time a Hamas leader gets assassinated. But that doesn't work - I guess I'm still struggling with the logic.

Let's try again, we have to fight them over there so that we won't have to fight them here. Sounds familiar? Depends how old you are. When "over there" meant Korea and Vietnam, "them" meant communists. So this is what it's all about! Reinvoking the Cold War spirit - redefining the world in terms that make sense - "us" and "them," "good guys" and "bad guys." Osama equals Lenin and al Qaeda, the Bolshevik's. Or, Osama equals Ho Chi Minh and al Qaeda is the Vietcong. Is this the Bush logic? Am I getting it?

Their eyes on Iraq, Egyptian villagers mourn loss of old world order
By Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2003

It's a languid summer on the ancient farmlands of the Nile Delta. The mangoes are ripe in the grove near the old cemetery. The heat of day is thick and soft as butter in the fields. On the banks of the canal, men loiter with fishing poles, indifferent to the trash and sewage afloat in the green waters.

The Times first visited Mit Yaeesh in February, during the long months of anxiety that led up to the invasion. Then, the villagers dreaded an attack on Iraq, and fretted especially about the economic damage it might unleash. Now the panic is gone, and the village is calmer, because a threat that was looming has at least taken form. But helplessness and anger are deeper than ever, for the villagers sense that their fears have come true. These impoverished families dread what may come next in what many interpret as the loss of their old world order.

Hunched in the hot shadows of his family's sitting room and picking his words carefully, Mohammed Sezziq, a recent engineering school graduate, said it was not the American people or culture he deplored, but the U.S. government.

His mother nodded in agreement. "They're a bunch of fundamentalists," his father called from across the sitting room.

In this poor, proud land, as in much of the Arab world, the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq have played out as a personal affront. In Mit Yaeesh, a primitive farming village less than two hours by car from Cairo, the outrage and bewilderment are palpable. Anti-American anger has swelled. The people see Arabs fighting occupation on two fronts: Iraq and the Palestinian territories. There is more talk of pan-Arab nationalism. [complete article]

Sorting out Iraq's Shiites
By Sandra Mackey, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 12, 2003

Ignoring the complexities of Iraq before ordering American forces into war, the Bush administration is now finding just how convoluted the political and social dynamics of Iraq really are.

The well-known human mosaic of Arabs, ethnic Kurds, Turkomans, Assyrians and others; the religious configuration of Muslims and Christians; and the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims is almost simplistic. For each of these groups is then subdivided by its own internal forces. In none of them are the divisions more complicated than the Shiites, 60 percent of the population of Iraq. The United States cannot successfully pacify Iraq without first sorting out the Shiites. [complete article]

EVIDENCE OF MASSACRES

In its attempts to redefine the justification for war, the Bush administration has rarely hesitated in citing newly discovered mass graves as evidence of Saddam's brutality and thus the necessity to remove him from power. At the same time, as the following article indicates, interest in quickly reaping a political reward from the graves has overridden both the need to allow such evidence to serve as an instrument of justice and the need for survivors to learn what happened to their loved ones.

Glimpse of a massacre
By Matthew McAllester, Newsday, September 14, 2003

At about nine in the morning of March 7, 1991, Jaber Husseini was in his fields when the first three buses arrived: two buses that could each carry about 40 people and another that might have held about 20. A mechanical digger was there too.

The farmer tended his flock of sheep and watched as the digger carved out a trench. Then, men in khaki off-loaded their passengers and marched them to the edge, pushing them into the trenches. The security officers and Baath party enforcers shot dead the people in the trenches. The digger filled in the trench and then the men got back on the buses and drove away, Husseini said.

They came back twice that day. And they came back every day for a month. It was a time of unprecedented killing in Iraq, as Saddam Hussein punished the Shia and Kurdish populations of his country for daring to try to overthrow his government in armed uprisings following the 1991 Gulf war. Hussein decided to teach his restless, treacherous Shia and Kurdish populations a lesson in loyalty. [complete article]

Ensuring justice for Iraq: Evidence preservation and fair trials
Human Rights Watch, September, 2003

For years, Human Rights Watch has advocated accountability for the past crimes of the Iraqi leadership. During Ba'ath Party rule, that leadership perpetrated crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, "disappearances," and summary and arbitrary executions. In the genocidal 1988 "Anfal" campaign, we estimate more than 100,000 Kurds, mostly men and boys, were trucked to remote sites and executed. In the 1980s, the Iraqi government forcefully expelled over half a million Shi'a to Iran after separating out and imprisoning an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Shi'a men and boys, most of whom remain unaccounted for. Since the late 1970s, at least 290,000 people were "disappeared" in Iraq.

To date, the United States and its coalition partners have failed to take concrete steps to ensure that those responsible for serious past crimes are brought to justice in fair trials before impartial and independent courts.

After taking control of Iraq, coalition forces failed to secure mass gravesites and substantial evidence was destroyed. In the widespread looting that occurred following the fall of Baghdad and other cities, numerous documents were pilfered or ruined. Efforts are now being made to protect some gravesites, but much damage has already been done. [complete article]

What happened to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction?
By Frank Ronald Cleminson (a former UNSCOM inspector), Arms Control Today, September, 2003

"It's sort of puzzling that you can have 100 percent confidence about WMD existence, but zero certainty about where they are." -- Hans Blix to the Council on Foreign Relations June 23, 2003

With a new and perhaps final phase of the U.S. and British search throughout Iraq for Saddam Hussein's delinquent nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons now well underway, it might be too early to reach a final verdict on the existence of such weapons. But as each day passes with no evidence of a "smoking gun," the carefully worded series of analytical assessments by the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) increase dramatically in credibility. Despite pressure from the Bush administration to declare that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), UNMOVIC concluded that, after only a few months of investigations and little practical help from either Iraq or U.S. intelligence officials, they had insufficient evidence to prove the case either way. At the time, those conclusions rankled some in Washington certain that Saddam Hussein possessed a WMD arsenal, that continued UNMOVIC inspections would be unable either to locate them or prove they were destroyed, and that possession of those weapons by Saddam posed an unacceptable and immediate threat to U.S. national security interests. [complete article]

Iran's nuclear deadline
By Ian Traynor, Dan De Luce and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, September 13, 2003

The worsening international crisis over Iran's suspected nuclear bomb programme escalated last night when the UN set Tehran a deadline of 45 days to come clean on its nuclear activities.

Failure to comply by Iran, whose diplomats walked out of a meeting in Vienna yesterday in protest at the deadline, could lead to the imposition of UN sanctions. [complete article]

Iraq: The new war
By Mark Danner, New York Review of Books, August 28, 2003

We see the world through the stories we tell, and until recently the story most Americans told themselves about the war in Iraq was a simple and dramatic narrative of imminent threat, daring triumph, and heroic liberation -- a story neatly embodied in images of a dictator's toppling statue and a president in full flight gear swaggering across a carrier deck. Those pictures, once so bright and clear, have now faded, giving place to a second, darker story beneath: the story of an unfinished war, undertaken for murky reasons, that has left young Americans ruling indefinitely over people who do not welcome them and who are killing more and more of them each day. As long as Saddam Hussein remains at large, as long as the weapons our leaders said were threatening us are not found, and as long as Iraqis go on killing Americans, this second, darker story may come to blot out and finally to mock the memory of the first. [complete article]

Buried between the rivers
By Timothy Potts, New York Review of Books, September 25, 2003

After much initial confusion, the scale and significance of the looting are gradually becoming clearer. Initial estimates of 170,000 missing objects were hasty extrapolations from reports that "everything" was gone. It soon turned out that many of the showcases were empty because the museum's staff had removed the important objects to more secure locations, and that most of the collection was still intact (more or less) in the storerooms. This created something of a backlash. Having initially denounced the scandal of troops being stationed at the oil ministry while one of the world's great museums was looted -- "protecting Iraq's oil but not its cultural motherlode" -- much of the press has since played down the disaster as overblown. This is not the case. The quantities of works stolen were substantial and, more to the point, their cultural significance immense. [complete article]

Taliban officials tell of plans to grind down the Americans
By David Rohde, New York Times, September 12, 2003

The resurgent Taliban has embarked on a strategy of small guerrilla attacks intended to frustrate and steadily bleed American forces in Afghanistan and to force the United States to expend billions of dollars in military costs, according to two Taliban officials interviewed recently.

Hajji Ibrahim, who identified himself as a Taliban commander, said the group's goal was to tie down the United States in Afghanistan and force it to spend huge sums responding to limited attacks that draw American forces "here to there, here to there." He confidently predicted that the United States, sapped by a slow, costly and grinding conflict, would abandon Afghanistan after two to three years, and repeatedly compared the current situation to the defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980's.

"How is it possible that America will continue to do these things for many years?" he asked, pointing out that it cost virtually nothing for a single Taliban fighter to plant a land mine. "Just think -- one plane -- how much is it to take off and land?" [complete article]

Michael Moore to Wesley Clark: Run!
By Michael Moore, September 12, 2003

... right now, for the sake and survival of our very country, we need someone who is going to get The Job done, period. And that job, no matter whom I speak to across America -- be they leftie Green or conservative Democrat, and even many disgusted Republicans -- EVERYONE is of one mind as to what that job is:

Bush Must Go.

This is war, General, and it's Bush & Co.'s war on us. It's their war on the middle class, the poor, the environment, their war on women and their war against anyone around the world who doesn't accept total American domination. Yes, it's a war -- and we, the people, need a general to beat back those who have abused our Constitution and our basic sense of decency.

The General vs. the Texas Air National Guard deserter! I want to see that debate, and I know who the winner is going to be. [complete article]

Freedom on the line
By Christopher Kremmer, Sydney Morning Herald, September 13, 2003

The Philippines on alert for new coup attempts ... the Indonesian army on the rampage in Aceh ... civil rights threatened by new draconian laws in Thailand. Asia's democratic renaissance has hit rough water. Once on the run, spooks and generals are making a comeback. Their main weapon: the war on terrorism.

"Security trumps all other issues these days. Because of that you're seeing a re-emergence of the influence of the military in the Philippines, Indonesia and to a lesser extent Thailand," says Roland Rich, director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions in Canberra, an Australian-funded training centre that encourages good governance and democracy in the region.

While the police operation to round up terrorist leaders linked to the Bali bombings and other plots has progressed well, the US desire to re-engage with "friendly" governments and armed forces is encouraging a resurgence of authoritarian policies that have failed in the past, and will probably fail again. [complete article]

Republicans seek State Dept. control in Iraq
By Sonni Efron and Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2003

Frustrated by the slow pace of reconstruction in Iraq, an increasingly vocal group of Republicans on Capitol Hill is urging the White House to shift control of the effort from the Pentagon to the State Department.

The State Department, with its ability to muster civilian technocrats, is better equipped than the Pentagon to undertake the massive task of rebuilding Iraq, some argue. Others suggest that putting more of a civilian face on the U.S. presence in Iraq would defuse anti-American sentiment. [complete article]

U.S. killing of eight Iraqi police fuels anger in troubled town
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 13, 2003

The US military reignited tension in one of Iraq's most troubled towns yesterday when its troops mistakenly shot dead eight policemen who were chasing a car full of suspected bandits.

American military officials were at a loss last night to explain why their soldiers opened fire with heavy machines guns on the officers, who were in two clearly marked Iraqi police cars in the town of Falluja.

As well as the eight who died, four other policemen were injured. Their patrol cars had their sirens on and their warning lights flashing as they chased the suspects through the centre of town early yesterday. As the vehicles passed in front of a US military base American tanks opened fire without warning. [complete article]

Israeli threat of exile strengthens Arafat's hand
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, September 13, 2003

"Palestinian governments are legitimised by Arafat. He may undermine them but they derive their authority, and therefore their acceptance by the Palestinian people, from Arafat," said one diplomat.

"If the Israelis take that away by removing him entirely, then no Palestinian government can function. It will be seen as collaborationist; it will have no legitimacy. I wouldn't be surprised if its members weren't killed by Arafat's supporters. Certainly it would not be in any position to negotiate any kind of concessions as part of a peace deal with Israel." [complete article]

BAGHDAD'S BLOGGERS

While Salam Pax, Baghdad's most famous blogger is just about to release his first book, his American counterpart, Sergeant Sean, creator of the weblog, Turningtables, is just about to head home. The War in Context caught up with Sean while he was still in Baghdad and is pleased to bring you the following exclusive interview.

Escape from Baghdad
By U.S. Army Sergeant Sean ----, author of Turningtables, interviewed by Paul Woodward, editor of The War in Context, September 13, 2003

Sergeant Sean is one of the lucky soldiers deployed to Baghdad. By the time you read this, he will be on his way home. In mid-summer though, before he had any idea when he might get out, I spoke to him via email and I tried to find out more about life in Iraq for an American soldier. In particular, I wanted to learn why a sergeant in the US Army would chose to express publicly his personal perspective, as Sean had eloquently been doing through his now widely read weblog, Turningtables.

Back in January 2002, when I started The War in Context, I was hoping to reach an audience whose hunger for inquiry ran deeper than its ideological presuppositions. The nascent anti-war movement had assumed its position but it struck me that the individuals who had most at stake as the Bush administration flexed it muscles were those men and women whose lives actually constitute those muscles -- the members of the United States armed services.

At the end of June, out of the blue came an email from a Sergeant Sean ----, a member of the signals corps in Baghdad. He had recently started his weblog, Turningtables and hoped I might add a link from my site to his. I initially treated his inquiry with due skepticism -- this voice from Baghdad might turn out to be a trickster in Fort Worth. So, I questioned Sean with some insistence and studied his journal, but it didn't take long to establish that he really was an American soldier and he truly was stuck in Baghdad.

Turningtables speaks for itself. Through the eyes of an unusually reflective and observant soldier we get to see some of the many challenges now facing American forces. Nevertheless, since I imagine that, like me, quite a few readers might want to know more about what led Sean to voice his thoughts, I recently interviewed him by email and this is what he had to say. [complete interview]

See also the transcript of a live webchat with Salam Pax at the BBC.

10 years after Oslo, question of single state unavoidable
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, September 12, 2003

If Israel's colonization of the occupied territories, which within a few years will make the creation of a Palestinian state a practical impossibility, cannot be stopped, the alternative cannot be interminable bloodshed. We must not allow despair over the dismal prospects for a negotiated solution to make continued conflict appear either desirable or inevitable.

Rather, we will have to embrace a "South African solution"--bringing Palestinians and Israelis together in one political entity where they enjoy equal rights and freedom. This is decidedly a fringe idea among Israelis and Palestinians alike, although it is advocated by prominent people in both societies, such as Edward W. Said, prominent spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the U.S., and Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli historian and longtime critic of Israel's policies in the occupied areas.

If South Africans, after generations of white supremacy, could adopt a system of "one person, one vote," why can't Israelis and Palestinians?

One crucial difference thus far is that unlike Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, Palestinian leaders have never offered Israelis such a vision of reconciliation. Whatever its rhetoric, the Palestinian national movement has been an expression of ethno-nationalism, almost as strongly as Zionism has been. [complete article]

Moussaoui myths
By James Bovard, Washington Times, September 7, 2003

As the Bush administration and Congress focus anew upon the Patriot Act, few issues are more controversial than the issue of the failure to search the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, prior to September 11.

According to supporters of the Patriot Act, the FBI was fatally prevented by excessive concerns about civil liberties from securing a search warrant for Moussaoui's belongings -- thereby thwarting the feds from gaining key data on a possible hijacking conspiracy.

In reality, as two bipartisan congressional reports concluded, Moussaoui's computer was not searched prior to September 11 because of the FBI's gross incompetence. [complete article]

Neocons vs. supply-siders
By Timothy Noah, Slate, September 9, 2003

The neocons are the party of war, which is the favored path to what Bill Kristol and David Brooks have termed "national greatness." The supply-siders are the party of tax cuts, which is the favored path to prosperity and, for some, limited government. Thus far, the two camps have coexisted more or less peacefully because the two goals have not come into conflict. Or rather, the two goals have come into conflict, but both camps have refused to recognize that. [complete article]

Arafat comes back to haunt Bush
By Tony Karon, Time, September 12, 2003

We've seen this movie before: Israel surrounds what's left of Yasser Arafat's battered compound and assumes a menacing posture, vowing to act against him for failing to end terror attacks; masses of Palestinians, regardless of what they may think of Arafat's stewardship, rally to their elected president and national icon; moderate Arab leaders warn of a regional cataclysm if the Israelis carry out their threat; and U.S. officials suggest politely but firmly that Arafat's physical ouster would be "unhelpful." But each rerun of the "Rumble in Ramallah" appears to simply confirm the aging Palestinian leader's centrality to the fate of his people -- and that of their neighbors. And also that, three years into a Palestinian uprising that has killed 818 Israelis and 2,595 Palestinians, neither side is able to break the strategic stalemate by imposing its will on the other. [complete article]

Architects of Iraq war put on the defensive
By Howard LaFranchi and Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, September 12, 2003

The neoconservative policymakers who helped spur George W. Bush toward war in Iraq may not be on the way out, but their influence is undergoing its greatest test since Sept. 11.

This week, Congress has grilled key promoters of the idea of transforming the Middle East, and spreading American values, through regime change in Iraq. Gone is the self-assuredness - some say arrogance - that typified Bush administration testimony through the end of "major hostilities." Gone, too, are claims that Americans would be greeted as liberators and then soon leave, or that Iraqi oil would quickly defray reconstruction costs. [complete article]

Returning from Iraq war not so simple for soldiers
By Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, September 12, 2003

For all the questions that have been raised about the president's rationale for the war and the Pentagon's strategy for winning it, most of the brigade's troops said they felt a sense of purpose and of mission, though as Captain Lockridge put it, it is "a mission still being accomplished."

What lasting effects the war had on the First Brigade's soldiers -- on re-enlistment rates, which have slumped, on broken bodies and on battered psyches -- remains to be seen.

Sergeant Bortz said fighting in Iraq made him rethink a career in the Army.

"I feel good for what I did, but out there, that's when you really think about what you want," he said on Friday. "And in Baghdad, I knew the Army wasn't for me."

Sgt. Jamie A. Betancourt, also in the Second Battalion, plans to get out when his enlistment is up in May for a simple reason. "There's nowhere else I can go in the Army," he said, "that's not going back over there."

Others have no choice. [complete article]

In Jerusalem, memories of Nazi Germany

The glittering edge of the boot
By Batya Gur, Haaretz, September 12, 2003

The three women soldiers who detained an old Palestinian on the main street of the German Colony in West Jerusalem didn't hit him; they didn't spit at him or kick him or shove him against a wall with the butt of a rifle, but there was something in the behavior of these three girls, border policewomen in uniform, detaining an old Palestinian on a narrow stretch of a main street in Jerusalem that made me pause, look at them for a moment, go on walking, then retrace my steps. There was something I couldn't overlook and then go about my business. [complete article]

Blair's war: PM ignored intelligence advice on Iraq
By Paul Waugh and Kim Sengupta, The Independent, September 12, 2003

As MPs prepared to vote on the war on 18 March, [Blair] even said that links between Iraq and al-Qa'ida were hardening. "The possibility of the two coming together, of terrorists groups in possession of a weapon of mass destruction or even a so-called dirty radiological bomb - is now in my judgement a real and present danger to Britain and its national security," he said.

Yet just over five weeks before the American-led invasion of Iraq, Mr Blair was told secretly by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) that there was no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Crucially, the JIC "assessed that al-Qa'ida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests and that threat would be heightened by military action". [complete article]

Cornered: but will he end up as exiled martyr or deal maker?
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, September 12, 2003

Most of Ariel Sharon's ministers went into last night's emergency cabinet meeting, called in the wake of the suicide bombers' latest carnage, clear about who they blame and what they want to do with him.

Almost all said they would have Israeli troops snatch Yasser Arafat from the Ramallah compound that has been his de facto prison for more than a year and put him on a plane to anywhere that will have him. [complete article]

de Mello's delight
By Don Kraus, Foreign Policy in Focus, September 10, 2003

Sergio de Mello's death might accomplish something the dynamic and debonair UN special representative in Iraq would have loved to have seen--a U.S. request for the United Nations to take a leadership role in marshaling the international force and legitimacy needed to end the growing guerrilla war in Iraq. Now that Secretary of State Powell has initiated negotiations on a new UN resolution, United Nations officials and Security Council members should do more than pull the Bush administration's fat out of the fire in Iraq. They should, with the support of U.S. internationalists, use it as an opportunity to permanently repair tattered UN-U.S. relationships. And they should demand a deal that will permanently fix the United Nations' capacity to mount credible peace operations. [complete article]

Tribes, traditions and two tragedies
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, September 12, 2003

Opposition to the US-led military presence in Afghanistan comes mainly from a rapidly-regrouping Taliban, ousted from government at the end of 2001, mujahideen veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyr's Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), and fighters of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front, all grouped under the banner of the Saiful Muslemeen (the Sword of Muslims).

Operationally though, different area commanders have been controlling combat operations in their respective areas. As a result, the resistance movement has not been as effective as it could have been as it has lacked central direction. Recent reports, however, indicate that Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, has personally taken over overall command.

The resistance movement has been aided by a break down of law and order in the Pashtun belt, as the writ of Kabul does not reach that far. In this environment of lawlessness approaching anarchy, the Taliban guerrillas have found perfect hiding places.

At the heart of the US problems in Afghanistan is that it has failed completely in winning any allegiance among the local population, apart from the north of the country. [complete article]

The height of myth-making
By Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, September 11, 2003

This time, it's a pastoral, a dreamscape with terrorists.

And as if to prove that dreams are prompted by anxieties, the new video of Osama bin Laden arrived right on schedule, just as the country was preparing to mark the second anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. The fact that there was nothing particularly threatening in the images, just a walk in the woods, makes it, by the perverse logic of dreams, all the more threatening. [complete article]

Jewish settlers insist on living in doubt-free zone
By Harvey Morris, Financial Times, September 11, 2003

Kedumim was the first Jewish community founded in the northern West Bank after the territory was captured by Israel in 1967. Since the first 30 families arrived in 1975, the settlement has spread out from its original site into the valleys and hills of Samaria.

The predominantly religious Zionist settlers live in chalet-style homes and red-roofed bungalows set amid closely cropped lawns that contrast with the square, stone houses and rutted roads of neighbouring Palestinian villages.

It is a doubt-free zone, whose inhabitants do not question the Zionist doctrine that they have an inalienable right to settle anywhere in the biblical Land of Israel. [complete article]

Two years later, a thousand years ago
By Robert Wright, New York Times, September 11, 2003

When transmitting information gets cheaper, groups that lack power can gain it. Within weeks of Martin Luther's unveiling his 95 Theses in 1517, German printers in several cities took it upon themselves to sell copies. An amorphous and largely silent interest group -- people disenchanted with the Roman Catholic Church -- crystallized and found its voice. Protest was now feasible. (Hence the term Protestant.)

The ensuing erosion of central authority went beyond the church. The "wars of religion" that ravaged Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries were about politics, too, and by their end the Hapsburgs, not just the pope, had lost possessions. If Europe's powers had adjusted more gracefully to the decentralizing force of print, much bloodshed might have been averted.

Today, similarly, new information technologies allow previously amorphous or powerless groups to coalesce and orchestrate activities, from peaceful lobbying to terrorist slaughter. And the revolution is young. As the Internet goes broadband, Osama bin Laden's potent recruiting videos will get more accessible -- viewable on demand from more and more parts of the world. Other terrorist televangelists may spring up, too. As in the age of print, far-flung discontent will grow more powerful -- often through peaceful means, but sometimes not.

Paradoxically, the increasing volatility of intense discontent puts Americans in a more nonzero-sum relationship with the world's discontented peoples. If, for example, unhappy Muslims overseas grow more unhappy and resentful, that's good for Osama bin Laden and hence bad for America. If they grow more secure and satisfied, that's good for America. This is history's drift: technology correlating the fortunes of ever-more-distant people, enmeshing humanity in a web of shared fate.

The architects of America's national security policy at once grasp this crosscultural interdependence and don't. They see that prosperous and free Muslim nations are good for America. But they don't see that the very logic behind this goal counsels against pursuing it crudely, with primary reliance on force and intimidation. They don't appreciate how easily, amid modern technology, resentment and hatred metastasize. Witness their planning for postwar Iraq, with spectacular inattention to keeping Iraqis safe, content and well informed.

Nor do they seem aware, as they focus tightly on state sponsors of terrorism, that technology lets terrorists operate with less and less state support. Anarchic states -- like the ones that may now be emerging in Iraq and Afghanistan -- could soon be as big a problem as hostile states. [complete article]

Still being fooled by Osama
By Michael Young, Daily Star, September 11, 2003

Two years after the mass homicides in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, it is remarkable to see how little the Arab world truly understood what Sept. 11 meant to the US. And it is no less extraordinary how little the US grasped this.

Since 2001, the Middle East has been caught between these two misunderstandings, between the observer who refuses to give the victim his due; and the victim who cannot see that his predicament elicits indifference. There are plenty of stock explanations Arabs have for their cognitive dissonance with the US when it comes to Sept. 11: The US is arrogant and overbearing; it has enhanced Palestinian suffering by siding with Israel; it has waged war on Islam; it seeks to dominate the Middle East.

Yet what is interesting is how these explanations, thrown out in sundry permutations, tend to refer to a perception of US behavior after Sept. 11, 2001. Caught in a bizarre time warp, those who now see reason in the attacks do so by claiming they were defensible in light of American actions after the attacks actually happened.
[complete article]

Terror doesn't need Hamas leaders
By Danny Rubinstein, Haaretz, September 11, 2003

The killing of leaders and top field operatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad will probably
damage these movements' organizational ability. There will be less rallies featuring masked, rifle-toting men in Palestinian cities. The number of conferences and other types of demonstrations will decrease. The financial network which delivers money to families of suicide terrorists will be hurt, as will be the social-educational functions carried out by the extreme Islamic movements.

On the other hand, the liquidation of these leaders will significantly heighten the motivation harbored by militants in Hamas' military wing to seek revenge. Thirst for revenge and the desire to retaliate after assassinations are themselves highly important factors in what is called the terror infrastructure. Even without Hamas' political leaders, terror wrought by suicide strikers is liable to continue - and it might even accelerate. [complete article]

Amateurs and zealots
By Richard Cohen, Washington Post, September 11, 2003

Bush's foreign policy is a shambles -- a war against the wrong enemy (Iraq and not worldwide terrorism), for the wrong reasons (where are those weapons of mass destruction?), a debacle in postwar Iraq (who are those terrorists?), a Middle Eastern road map to nowhere (wasn't Iraq going to make it all so easy?) and a string of statements about nearly everything (the cost of rebuilding Iraq, for instance) that have proved either untrue or just plain dumb. To make matters worse, truth-tellers have been punished while liars and fog merchants have remained in office.

Who in the administration paid a price for having the president tell the nation about nonexistent yellowcake uranium? No one. Who got whacked for preposterous manpower numbers for the occupation of Iraq? Funny you should ask. The guy who told the truth, Gen. Eric Shinseki. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz remain. In the Pentagon, the truth will really make you free.

For Bush, the danger is that this sorry record will revive the cartoon persona of a dummy -- not the steady custodian of our national security, as he seemed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, but a man without judgment, a naif who was manipulated by a cadre of hawks. For the rest of us, the danger is that the caricature was spot on, so obvious it was disregarded. [complete article]

A healer of terror victims becomes one
By Greg Myre, New York Times, September 11, 2003

In this tormented city [Jerusalem], responding to terror attacks has become a grim medical specialty, and Dr. David Applebaum was known as "the first man on the scene."

Dr. Applebaum spent years dashing to bomb sites to treat the wounded, and he was an innovator in emergency medical services that are called into action all too often here.

Dr. Applebaum, 50, was present at the bombing of a cafe on Tuesday night -- this time as a victim. He was killed with his daughter Nava, 20, as they ventured several blocks from home for a late night snack and a father-daughter talk on the eve of her wedding.

Instead of giving his daughter away today at a large celebration set for a Jerusalem kibbutz, Dr. Applebaum was buried alongside Nava in an even larger funeral at the stony, hilltop cemetery of Givat Shaul on the western edge of the city. [complete article]

Foreign views of U.S. darken since Sept. 11
By Richard Bernstein, New York Times, September 11, 2003

In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.

"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."

In interviews by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval.

To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President Bush, who is seen by many of those interviewed, at best, as an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, as a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil, if not the entire world. [complete article]

Justice Dept. defies judge on Moussaoui
By Larry Margasak, Associated Press, September 10, 2003

The Justice Department on Wednesday defied a federal judge for the second time, refusing to allow Zacarias Moussaoui to question senior al-Qaida captives in preparation for his criminal trial.

Judicial punishment that could damage the prosecution is likely to follow.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has a range of options, including exclusion of government evidence, barring the death penalty and dismissing charges in the only case to arise from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. [complete article]

In Afghanistan, the war on terror is anything but over
By Phil Reeves, The Independent, September 11, 2003

Afghans are not easily shocked. Repeated invasion, decades of civil war and centuries of poverty harden a place. Yet the latest atrocity to hit this nation was stunningly brutal, even by their dismal standards.

It happened early on Monday afternoon, a multiple execution by men determined to render it impossible for the international community to reconstruct or stabilise the country under the control of a US- supported government. [complete article]

Pentagon targets Latinos and Mexicans to man the front lines in war on terror
By Andrew Gumbel, The Independent, September 10, 2003

With the casualty rate in Iraq growing by the day and President George Bush's worldwide "war on terrorism" showing no signs of abating, a stretched United States military is turning increasingly to Latinos - including tens of thousands of non-citizen immigrants - to do the fighting and dying on its behalf.

Senior Pentagon officials have identified Latinos as by far the most promising ethnic group for recruitment, because their numbers are growing rapidly in the US and they include a plentiful supply of low-income men of military age with few other job or educational prospects. [complete article]

More troops will destabilize Iraq, says Rumsfeld
By Eric Schmitt, New York Times, September 10, 2003

In comments after a speech at the National Press Club, Mr. Rumsfeld repeatedly said that it was Iraqis, not necessarily the United States or other countries, that bore the responsibility to quickly assume responsibility for the country's political, economic and security levers of power.

"I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct the country," said Mr. Rumsfeld, who just returned from a six-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. "The Iraqi people will have to reconstruct that country over time."

He noted that Iraq could not rely on its oil revenue alone to rebuild its decrepit infrastructure, but must plan on developing industries like tourism that would showcase national and historic treasures like the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon.

"They have to create an environment that's hospitable to investment and enterprise," Mr. Rumsfeld said. [complete article]

Bush's many miscalculations
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 10, 2003

Painful as it is to recall those planes smashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon two years ago this week, it's nearly as heartbreaking to think back on the moment of nascent harmony that ticked in the wake of the attack -- until President Bush decided to reject the opportunity that History thrust before him.

Remember? The French newspaper Le Monde, never one for trans-Atlantic sentimentalism, proclaimed, "We are all Americans." The band outside Buckingham Palace played "The Star-Spangled Banner" during a changing of the guard, as thousands of Londoners tearfully waved American flags. Most significant, the European leaders of NATO, for the first time in the organization's history, invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on its 19 member-nations to treat the attack on America as an attack on them all -- a particularly moving gesture, as Article 5 had been intended to guarantee American retaliation against an attack on Europe.

But the Bush administration brushed aside these supportive gestures -- and that may loom as the greatest tragedy of Sept. 11, apart from the tolls taken by the attack itself. [complete article]

Bush's conceptual blunders
By Tim Llewellyn, Counterpunch, September 10, 2003

Of all the United States' conceptual blunders in the Middle East, this failure to understand how deeply the Palestinian tragedy is engraved in the Arab psyche, and how it has become the starkest model of how the US grades the peoples of the Middle East (Israelis good, Arabs and Moslems bad), has been the greatest of them. It is even greater than the expectation that with Saddam Hussein's regime toppled the Iraqis would crawl out of their rubble, bereavement and misery and stand to, smiling and cheering, to join enthusiastically and without delay the American plan for free-market democracy (including Iraq's recognition of Israel). [complete article]

The Twin Towers and the Tower of Babel
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, September 10, 2003

Part 1: Sleeping with the enemy

Two years after September 11, 2001, the Washington neo-conservative dream of a rainbow of democracy shining from Israel to Afghanistan and traversing Iraq has vanished into thin air. From Kabul to Baghdad, the vision is being wiped out by the truth of hard facts. 1) The American army does not have the resources to play by itself the role of global sheriff. 2) America is not prepared for or interested in nation-building. 3) Military "victories", like Afghanistan and Iraq, mean nothing when they are not complemented by moral and political legitimacy. The lack of legitimacy creates a political void, immediately exploited by radical Islam. [complete article]

Part 2 : The roadmap of human folly

"I wonder whether there can be a future for the UN in Iraq," asks an European diplomat. Some Iraqis recognize that the United Nations' humanitarian aid, in the shape of the oil for food program, may have saved lives during the embargo. But many hate the UN exactly because of the embargo: for them, the UN just enforces what Washington decides. The undisputable fact is that the UN supervised the harsh sanctions that, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, were directly responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children and an explosion in the mortality rate. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, two senior, respected UN officials, resigned in disgust against the way in which the oil for food worked (or not) - for them, the UN had betrayed the people of Iraq. [complete article]

Iraq's Shiites under occupation
International Crisis Group Report, September 9, 2003

The massive car bomb in Najaf on 29 August 2003, which took the lives of over 90 Iraqis, including the prominent cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, has put renewed focus on the fate of the country's Shiites. The attack comes in the wake of the attempted killing of other prominent clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Saed Al-Tabatab'i al-Hakim, al-Hakim's uncle. Although it is too soon to assign blame, it is not too soon to assess potential consequences: a heightened sense of insecurity; anger, directed both at the former regime and at the current occupiers; intensified intra-Shiite rivalry; and a growing risk of sectarian conflict as militias loyal to different groups vie for control. [complete article]

Will press roll over again on new WMD report?
By Greg Mitchell, Editor and Publisher, September 9, 2003

Some time in the next two weeks, David Kay, head of the Iraqi Survey Group, is expected to finally release a crucial report on his findings so far in his search for weapons of destruction.

"I am confident that when people see what David Kay puts forward they will see that there was no question that such weapons exist, existed, and so did the programs to develop more," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "We did not try to hype it or blow it out of proportion."

Since no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq, close observers now report that Kay is likely to drop on the media a massive weapon of his own: hundreds or thousands of pages of summaries and documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs recently (and hid them) and/or had numerous WMD programs underway that we succeeded in pre-empting.

In the parlance once used by Howell Raines, Kay thereby will "flood the zone" and hope the press portrays what may be largely assertion -- not fact -- as compelling proof. Would the media possibly fall for this? There are disturbing indications that they would. [complete article]

Stuck like Lyndon
By Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, September 10, 2003

So much for American unilateralism.

As our strategic doctrine of choice, unilateralism had a one-year run, from one Labor Day to the next. A year ago the administration announced we had both the right and the might to run the world free from the constraints of entangling alliances or multinational accords.

George W. Bush didn't repudiate that right in his speech to the nation on Sunday, but he did allow how we didn't have the might. [complete article]

Homecoming bittersweet for troops
By Chris Tomlinson, Associated Press (via Washington Times), September 9, 2003

The men of A Company, code-named Attack, took part in some of the most dramatic battles of the war. The young infantrymen had staged a courageous feint to lure Iraqi troops into the open, captured two of Saddam Hussein's palaces on the first day of the Battle of Baghdad and spent two months patrolling and clashing with Iraqi insurgents.

They had spent three months longer in Iraq than they expected, and when they finally were replaced, they and their Bradley Fighting Vehicles looked ragged from the beating they had taken.

Once in the Kuwaiti barracks, they could kid around at last. Would their wives pitch tents for them in the front yard so they would feel at home? Would they still know how to flush the toilet?

A few, though, were returning to divorce papers or delayed heartbreaks.

"I'm not sure if she's going to be there or not," Spc. Choice Kinchen of Friendswood, Texas, said of his wife. [complete article]

Understanding Iraq's resistance
By Fawaz A. Gerges, Christian Science Monitor, September 10, 2003

With increased bombing of soft targets and daily killings of US troops, the Bush administration characterizes the Iraqi armed resistance as a terrorist phenomenon. Although this has emerged as a major obstacle to reconstruction in Iraq, the reality is too much more complex and dangerous to simply broad-brush it all as "terrorism."

Armed resistance in Iraq represents a broad spectrum of political and ideological forces that need to be understood individually before they swell, coalesce, and become a major threat. The perception in Washington that attacks against US forces and other targets are conducted mainly by hardened elements of the old Saddam Hussein regime - along with Ansar al-Islam, a small fundamentalist Kurdish group with no proven ties to Hussein - is dangerously myopic. [complete article]

Senators want answers after $87-billion request
By John Hendren and Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2003

Before the war, [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D] Wolfowitz said the cost of rebuilding Iraq could "range from $10 billion to $100 billion." Total proposed spending on the Iraq campaign and aftermath is so far $166 billion. Although administration officials have blamed Iraq's poor infrastructure for some of the unanticipated costs, $65.5 billion of the $87-billion request is earmarked for military operations -- including in Afghanistan -- not rebuilding.

Administration officials and their allies have suggested that an appearance of division among Americans could aid the enemy. When Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) asked if such debate encouraged Saddam Hussein loyalists and their allies who "are watching closely what we do and say here today in Washington," Wolfowitz picked up the theme.

"Well, the stakes are enormous, and they do have a lot of access to what goes on here," he said. While the debate is healthy, he added, "I do think it is important that we be able to project confidence."

Even among Republicans, however, there seems to be no hurry to close ranks behind the key architects of the administration's Iraq policy.

Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.), who has criticized the administration's postwar planning, on Tuesday raised the prospect that the Bush administration might have to consider sacking high-profile war planners. Among those mentioned on Capitol Hill, though not by Hagel, were Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

"This business is all about accountability," Hagel said. "Cabinet members are accountable." [complete article]

Feith-based initiative
By Al Kamen, Washington Post, September 10, 2003

With a great chunk of President Bush's proposed $87 billion scheduled to flow to Iraqi reconstruction "big time," as they say, we've come across a most timely announcement from the highly regarded international corporate and commercial law firm of Zell, Goldberg & Co.

The firm "has recently established a task force dealing with issues and opportunities relating to the recently ended war with Iraq," its Web site announced. With offices in Israel and Washington, the firm says it "is assisting regional construction and logistics firms to collaborate with contractors from the United States and other coalition countries in implementing infrastructure and other reconstruction projects in Iraq. Through its Washington, D.C., office, ZGC is also assisting American companies in their relations with the United States government in connection with Iraqi reconstruction projects as prime contractors and consultants."

Interested parties can reach the law firm through its Web site, at www.fandz.com. Fandz.com? Hmmm. Rings a bell. Oh, yes, that was the Web site of the Washington law firm of Feith & Zell, P.C., as in Douglas J. Feith, former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration and now undersecretary of defense for policy and head of -- what else? -- reconstruction matters in Iraq.

It would be impossible indeed to overestimate how perfect ZGC would be in "assisting American companies in their relations with the United States government in connection with Iraqi reconstruction projects." [complete article]

Who aided hijackers is still mystery
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, September 10, 2003

Two years after al Qaeda terrorists slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, FBI and congressional investigators remain deeply divided over whether the 19 hijackers received help from other al Qaeda operatives inside the United States and still are unable to answer some of the central questions in the case.

The uncertainties persist despite the largest FBI investigation in U.S. history -- which has included 180,000 interviews and 7,000 agents -- and raise the possibility that Americans will never know precisely how the conspirators were able to pull off the most devastating terrorist attacks in U.S. history. [complete article]

Bombers hit back at Israel
By Chris McGreal and Assaf Ha Rofeh, The Guardian, September 10, 2003

Two Hamas suicide bombers killed at least 15 people in attacks yesterday on a busy Jerusalem cafe and on soldiers at a crowded bus stop near Tel Aviv. The blasts came just days after the Islamic organisation had said that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, had "opened the gates of hell" by targeting its leaders for assassination. [complete article]

You can't make a deal with the dead
By Kevin Toolis, The Guardian, September 10, 2003

[Hamas leader Ismail Abu] Shanab met his predicted end under a hail of Israeli rocket fire two weeks ago in Gaza City. His death was the 138th "targeted killing" of Palestinian militants by the Israeli military since 2000. Since Shanab's immolation, Israel has stepped up the killing game against Hamas, culminating in the failed strike against the paraplegic spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin, last weekend. The total is now around 150 and rising.

But then so is the overall casualty count: 2,600 Palestinians and 840 Israelis. Hamas appears undeterred by the attrition campaign against its leadership. The materials for suicide vest bombs come cheap, around Ł30, and there is an endless army of Palestinian volunteers to wear them. In classic counter-insurgency warfare terms, the Israeli level of casualties, one in four, remains unsustainably high. [complete article]

RUMSFELD'S APPROACH TO WMD ISSUE:
DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL


Rumsfeld is muted on weapons hunt
By Dana Priest, Washington Post, September 9, 2003

When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took time during his five-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan to highlight the accomplishments of the United States and its allies, he did not include on his list progress in the search for Iraq's suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld, who often acted as the Bush administration's pit bull this spring in arguing that such weapons existed and justified going to war, said he had not even asked about the subject during his 30-minute meeting Saturday with David Kay, the CIA representative in Iraq who is coordinating the search for weapons of mass destruction.

"I have so many things to do at the Department of Defense," Rumsfeld said during an interview aboard his plane, which stopped in Ireland to refuel on the way back to Washington. "I made a conscious decision that I didn't need to stay current every 15 minutes on the issue. I literally did not ask. . . . I'm assuming he'll tell me if he'd gotten something we should know." [complete article]

What Bush hopes to buy for $87-billion
By Paul Knox, Globe And Mail, September 9, 2003

The desert is chewing up the treads on his army's vehicles. His soldiers are grumbling about the length of deployment. His allies are hedging on support.

What's a U.S. President to do? Ask Congress for $87-billion.

That, in U.S. funds, is what George W. Bush says he needs to keep American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and continue reconstruction efforts.

The amount, for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, would more than double the cost to date of what Mr. Bush calls a war on terrorism abroad. It is greater than the world's annual official foreign-aid total for all countries. [complete article]

'Trust me' is still the message from Bush
By Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, September 9, 2003

If only more Americans could chew gum and think like Britney Spears. In a recent CNN interview, the gum-snapping pop star said that we should "trust our president in every decision he makes" and "be faithful in what happens." Then again the country is already fairly trusting. According to a recent Washington Post poll, seven in 10 Americans believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even though there is no proof of that connection.

Not surprisingly, President Bush is doing nothing to dissuade his fellow Americans of that so-far unproven notion. For over a year, Bush built up support for war with Iraq by repeatedly hinting of such a link. And the president's Sunday night speech to the American people continued the classic Bush pattern of juxtaposing Iraq and Al Qaeda in ways that establishes the perception of a pre-9/11 link. [complete article]

ET TU, BRUTE?

As noted here last month (neocons change their tune) Donald Rumsfeld's loyal supporters at the Weekly Standard no longer agree with the Defense Secretary on fundamental issues. Now it looks like the Standard senses that Rumsfeld is turning into a liability. They might not be about to join the chorus calling for his resignation, but they'd probably be relieved to see him go.

The neocon crackup
By Timothy Noah, Slate, September 8, 2003

The smoothly oiled neoconservative message machine is showing signs of breakdown. Having argued for five months that things were basically fine in Iraq -- and that any suggestion otherwise was liberal cant -- the Weekly Standard last week broke with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about whether additional troops were needed to restore order in Iraq. Rumsfeld says no; the Standard said yes in a lead editorial by publisher William Kristol and contributing editor Robert Kagan. [complete article]

Secretary of stubbornness
By Tom Donnelly, Weekly Standard, September 15, 2003

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can claim, as much as any man, to be the architect of victory in Operation Iraqi Freedom. History might also tag him as the architect of defeat in the larger war for Iraq. [complete article]

Spy agencies warned of Iraq resistance
By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, September 9, 2003

U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.

Although general in nature, the sources said, the intelligence agencies' concerns about the degree of resistance U.S. forces would encounter have proved broadly accurate in the months since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. [complete article]

What is $87 billion worth?
Washington Post, September 9, 2003

If George Bush wants to call on Americans to make a sacrifice to pay for Iraq, at the risk of upsetting some of his most generous campaign contributors, it would be quite easy: Drop the proposed $108 billion tax cut.
[graphic]

Gen. Clark's critique
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, September 9, 2003

The Democrats' larger problem is that Iraq is now their war, too, since they mostly agree it would be disastrous for the United States to cut and run. Their critique of Bush doesn't answer the question of how to exit Iraq in a way that protects U.S. national interests and keeps faith with the Iraqi people.

It is in these delicate areas that Clark may have a special advantage if he decides to run. Indeed, but for the Iraq factor, the politically inexperienced Clark wouldn't merit serious attention.

On the big issue, Clark has the right stuff. He has commanded troops in battle and he won a decisive victory in his war -- the 1999 NATO campaign in Kosovo. He also stuck his neck out in criticizing planning for the Iraq invasion at a time when many Democrats were running for cover. [complete article]

BUSH HAS FAITH IN IGNORANCE OF FELLOW AMERICANS

Iraq-terrorism link continues to be problematic
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2003

In describing Iraq as the "central front" in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, President Bush was sounding a theme that continues to resonate powerfully with the American people -- even as some in the counter-terrorism community increasingly wonder whether the assertion is true mainly because the American invasion made it so.

The president invoked the terrorism theme repeatedly in his speech to the nation Sunday night, portraying the invasion of Iraq as part of the U.S. response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. [...]

Tying Iraq to the war on terrorism has become crucial to the Bush administration's appeal for continued public support, particularly with the failure so far to find banned weapons and the ongoing turmoil that is undercutting visions of a swift transition to democracy that might spread across the Middle East.

But the terrorism link is problematic. The administration has yet to prove that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had any complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, or even any significant relationship with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. For that reason, some counter- terrorism experts challenge Bush's characterization. [complete article]

4 bombing suspects released
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2003

U.S.-led occupation forces in this holy city have released four of seven suspects arrested in the car bombing here last month that killed more than 100 people, and they have yet to find any direct evidence linking the blast to Al Qaeda or other foreign terrorist groups, officials said Monday. [complete article]

The post-modern president
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly, September, 2003

When Reagan said he didn't trade arms for hostages, or Clinton insisted he didn't have sex with "that woman," the falsity of the claims was readily provable--by an Oliver North memo or a stained blue dress. Bush and his administration, however, specialize in a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion. In his State of the Union address last January, the president claimed that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and a robust nuclear weapons program, and that therefore we needed to invade Iraq. Even at the time, many military and intelligence experts said that the president's assertions probably weren't true and were based on at best fragmentary evidence. But there was no way to know for sure unless we did what Bush wanted. When the president said on numerous occasions that his tax cuts--which were essentially long-term rate reductions for the wealthy--would spur growth without causing structural deficits, most experts, again, cried foul, pointing out that both past experience and accepted economic theory said otherwise. But in point of fact nobody could say for sure that maybe this time the cuts might not work.

This summer, when it became clear that Iraq had no active nuclear weapons program--indeed showed no apparent evidence of any weapons of mass destruction at all--that the economy was still losing jobs, and that the administration's own budget office predicted deficits as far as it dared project, Bush's reputation for honesty took a turn for the worse. By the middle of July, only 47 percent of adults surveyed by Time/CNN said they felt they could trust the president, down from 56 percent in March. The president's response to all this was to make yet more confidently expressed, undisprovable assertions. [complete article]

Former U.S. envoy challenges Bush approach on N. Korea
By Carol Giacomo, Reuters, September 8, 2003

Prospects are "grim" for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis unless the United States engages in a sustained bilateral dialogue with Pyongyang, recently resigned U.S. negotiator Charles L. "Jack" Pritchard said on Monday.

In his first public comments since resigning from the Bush administration three weeks ago on the eve of six-party talks in Beijing, Pritchard challenged the administration's steadfast refusal to have one-on-one negotiations with North Korea. [complete article]

Deadly diplomacy
By Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, September 9, 2003

Ariel Sharon arrived yesterday in New Delhi bearing arms - or more precisely, $1bn worth of Israeli spy planes. In doing so, the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to the subcontinent threatens not only to accelerate the arms race between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, but also marks the emergence of a new US-backed coalition of the willing in a region whose influence stretches from the Bay of Bengal to the Dead Sea.

The 150-strong Israeli delegation underlines how far both countries have travelled since they established full diplomatic relations with each other in 1992. But it was the reordering of the world since 9/11 that has seen both nations' interests converge to such an extent that the Delhi government's national security adviser speaks of America, Israel and India being part of an "alliance [which] would have the political will and moral authority to take bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation". [complete article]

Is the neocon agenda for Pax Americana losing steam?
By Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus, September 8, 2003

President George W. Bush's speech to the nation last night was notable in many ways, most critically for marking what appears to be a weakening of the steep unilateralist trajectory on which neoconservative and right-wing hawks set U.S. foreign policy two years ago. Who would have thought it would lose momentum so quickly after Washington's stunning military victory in Iraq in early April and plummet back to earth?

Now, just a week before the second anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Bush administration appears to have decided that Washington really cannot run Iraq, let alone the entire Middle East, by itself and must rely on others--even the much-despised United Nations--to help out. [complete article]

Under the palm leaves
By Riverbend, Baghdad Burning, September 8, 2003

Abu Ra'ad (meaning 'father of Ra'ad') was a lawyer with his own private practice… if it could be called that. It was an office in a crowded, mercantile area in Baghdad large enough for three desks: one secretary and a partner.

On April 10, in the middle of the chaos, Abu Ra'ad left his house, his wife and three children to go check on his parents, whom he had lost contact with a week earlier. At 10 am, he got into an old Toyota, said a prayer and headed out to seek his family. He never came back.

For 3 days, Umm Ra'ad (mother of 'Ra'ad') thought he was held up at his parents' house for some reason. Perhaps her husband had found his family hurt? Maybe he had found a parent dead- after all, his father was very sick and old… Maybe the fighting was so heavy, he couldn't make it out of their area? The possibilities were endless. Finally, one of the other neighbors delivered a note to Umm Ra'ad's brother asking him to please visit Abu Ra'ad's family and find out if he was okay. After a long day, Umm Ra'ad's brother visited her home, grim- Abu Ra'ad wasn't at his parents' home. He never made it and no one knew where he was.

For 7 days, everyone thought he was being detained by the Americans. We heard that hundreds of civilians were taken prisoner simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Abu Ra'ad's younger brother, and his brother-in-law, visited authorities every day. They went to the various hotels, they visited the two or three remaining hospitals, and went over endless lists of detainees and POWs in search of Abu Ra'ad.

By the end of April, his family had resigned themselves to Abu Ra'ad's death. His 35-year-old wife was wearing black from head-to-toe in anticipation of the news she knew she was bound, sooner or later, to receive. [complete article]

Iraq proposes to buy electricity from Iran, Syria
By Stephen J. Glain, Boston Globe, September 8, 2003

The US-appointed Iraqi interim government said late last month in a little-noticed statement that it would buy electricity from Syria and Iran, a deal that would probably enrich with US funds two countries that top the White House list of states that support terrorism. [...]

An official at the Department of Treasury, which monitors countries under US embargo, said he was unaware of Iraqi efforts to buy electricity from its neighbors, but doubted the United States would veto such a transaction. "It could be we regard Iraq as a sovereign state that can purchase electricity from any country it likes," the treasury official said.

A spokesman for the Pentagon, which has authority over the US occupation of Iraq, referred questions to a counterpart in Baghdad, who could not be reached. [complete article]

Congressman to Bush: Fire the "raving romantics", Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz

Obey tells why he wrote the president
By John Nichols, Capital Times, September 6, 2003

Wisconsin's usually blunt U.S. Rep. David Obey chose his words carefully Friday when he told President Bush that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz have so mishandled the war with Iraq that they should quit.

"I recommend that you allow the secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense to return to the private sector," the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee wrote at the start of a three-page letter to the president. [complete article]

Rumsfeld finds no easy answers in Iraq
Agence France-Presse (via Arab Times), September 9, 2003

He came in talking more troops and left blaming the Iraqi people. Either way, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found no easy answers on a three-day inspection of Iraq's worsening security woes. Rumsfeld flew in unannounced Thursday for a first-hand look at the US-occupied country that has become bogged down in violence, lawlessness and rising tensions among heavily armed communal groups. But by the time he headed off for Kuwait and Afghanistan, another troubled front in the US war against terrorism, Rumsfeld appeared no closer to a solution to instability and daily attacks on US-led forces here.

At a pre-departure news conference Saturday, the US defence chief even chided the Iraqi people to "stand up and take responsibility" for their own security by providing more alerts on potential threats. While Washington was making a big push at the United Nations for more international troops to support the 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq, Rumsfeld expressed misgivings about adding more outsiders. "I have always believed that foreign forces in a country are unnatural, they are an anomaly," Rumsfeld said. "To the extent that you flood the zone and bury this country in security forces ... you create this heavy unnatural presence." [complete article]

For Bush, rosy scenarios meet reality in Iraq
By Adam Entous, Reuters, September 8, 2003

President Bush's budget director predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor" and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once declared: "I don't know that there is much reconstruction to do."

Five months and tens of billions of dollars later, Bush and his top aides are acknowledging for the first time the magnitude of occupying and rebuilding the battered country by asking Congress for an extra $87 billion for next year, on top of the $79 billion already approved for this year. [complete article]

Amnesty condemns Israel's W.Bank security barrier
By Corinne Heller, Reuters, September 8, 2003

Israel's construction of a West Bank security barrier is deepening the crippling economic impact of its tough travel restrictions on Palestinians, Amnesty International said on Monday.

In a new report, "Israel and the Occupied Territories: Surviving under Siege," the London-based human rights group said some 60 percent of Palestinians live below the poverty line of $2 per day and unemployment is close to 50 percent. [complete article]

See Amnesty's complete report Israel and the Occupied Territories: Surviving under siege

George Bush, Ariel Sharon, and terrorism
Who is the teacher, who the student, and what is the lesson?

Paul Woodward, The War in Context, September 8, 2003

"We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness." President George W. Bush, address to the nation, September 7, 2003


When George Bush declared a war on terrorism, Ariel Sharon didn't simply applaud. Within days, Israeli tanks and troops were pouring into the West Bank, placing Palestinian cities under siege and engaging in a relentless and ruthless campaign to destroy the Palestinian "terrorist infrastructure." During the first 12 months of the second intifada, prior to September 11, 2001, 177 Israelis had died as a result of Palestinian violence and terrorism. In the following 12 months, a period during which it would be hard to argue that Palestinians must have seen the operations of the Israeli military as a sign of Israel's weakness, another 443 Israelis were killed.

Over the course of the intifada, from September 29, 2000 up to September 1, 2003, in acts of violence committed by Palestinians against Israelis, 743 Israelis have been killed, 504 severely injured, 710 moderately and 3837 lightly injured (source - Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs). During the same period in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli "counterterrorist operations" have resulted in 2,446 Palestinian deaths and 23,419 injuries (source - Palestine Red Crescent Society). Who in either Israel or America can draw the conclusion that through the use of force, Israel is winning its "war on terrorism"?

U.S.-led occupation brings frontline against al-Qaeda to Iraq: analysts
By Agence France-Presse (via Yahoo), September 7, 2003

The United States struggled before the war to convince the world there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda network, but five months of US-led occupation of Iraq may have created precisely such an unholy alliance.

Stripped of their privileged positions under the ousted dictator's brutal regime, Saddam's henchmen may finally have thrown in their lot with their ideological adversaries in Osama bin Laden's terror network to wage war on their common foe two years after the suicide hijackings in the United States, analysts say. [complete article]

Ridiculed and betrayed: why Abbas blames Arafat
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, September 8, 2003

Mahmoud Abbas threatened to quit so often during his four months as Palestinian prime minister that when he finally dispatched a resignation letter to Yasser Arafat at the weekend it was widely assumed to be a tactical move to strengthen his hand and hang on to power.

Yesterday, Mr Abbas, who is more popularly known as Abu Mazen, offered contradictory signals by insisting his resignation is final while keeping open the possibility of return by saying any such talk is "premature".

But the prime minister's allies privately say that while they believe the decision is not set in stone, his critics have misjudged his motivation for quitting. They describe Mr Abbas as embittered, believing he has been lied to by Ariel Sharon, betrayed by the Americans and been the victim of a scurrilous campaign by Mr Arafat to demonise him among the Palestinian public as a collaborator. [complete article]

Settling differences
By Ian Black, The Guardian, September 8, 2003

Europeans may be forgiven a touch of what Germans call "schadenfreude" as they contemplate how the United States is now seeking their help in sorting out the bloody mess that is postwar Iraq.

With George Bush proposing a new UN resolution to spread the military and financial burden of rebuilding the country, the moment has come for Washington's bitterest critics to do their bit - but without crowing "I told you so." It isn't going to be easy. [complete article]

Let Israelis and Palestinians vote on a final settlement
By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, The Guardian, September 8, 2003

The current Israeli-Palestinian peace process relies on a step-by-step approach, which is destined to fail. Moreover, its goal is final status negotiations, which are unlikely to succeed.

Enough with the small steps. Years of intermittent talks between Israelis and Palestinians have produced a good notion of what a settlement acceptable to both sides must look like. The challenge is to get there before a catastrophic chain of events takes place. The weekend resignation of the Palestinian government, together with Israel's attempt to kill the top leaders of Hamas, could be the first links in that chain. It is time for a fresh approach that leaps directly to a final deal, without further negotiations, backed by a US-led international mandate and submitted for approval via popular referendums among the Israeli and Palestinian people. This is the best and most realistic way forward. [complete article]

Iraq: Heading for showdown
By Agence France-Presse (via News24), September 7, 2003

The US-led coalition appeared Sunday headed for a showdown with Iraqi militias after giving them an ultimatum to lay down their arms that was immediately rejected by a leading anti-US firebrand.

Captain Edward Lofland, spokesperson for the US Marines in this holy Shiite city, said coalition forces had given unauthorised militias until Saturday to disarm or have their weapons confiscated and face possible arrest.

A leading Shi'ite group, whose head was among 83 people killed in a massive car bombing nine days ago, gave qualified backing to the disarmament drive. But an aide to the militant cleric Moqtada Sadr dismissed it categorically. [complete article]

Al Qaeda plans a front in Iraq
By Peter Finn and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post, September 7, 2003

The occupation of Iraq -- once the home of the caliph, or universal leader, of Muslims -- is a galvanizing symbol for radical Islamic groups. On Internet sites and in mosques across the Islamic world, thousands of potential fighters are hearing -- and heeding -- calls to go to Iraq to fight the infidel, according to European and Arab intelligence sources who have tracked some of the movements of the recruits. [complete article]

Baghdad's mean streets stretch new police force
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 8, 2003

It is the first stop of the afternoon patrol for the newly retrained Iraqi police officers of al-Saddoun, Baghdad's toughest neighbourhood. A man stands by the road with blood streaming down his face and his hand clamped over a gash in his head. He has just emerged from a brawl with a handful of drunken men.

Walid Khalid, 30, one of the non-commissioned officers in the police van, switches off the Arabic pop playing on the stereo and jumps down. He walks up to a drunken Sudanese man in the crowd and kicks him to the ground. He shouts at the others and the street empties, while the wounded man wanders off alone to hitch a lift home.

There is no more than the briefest questioning, no arrest and no further investigation. "Pretend you didn't see any of that," the police officer says. [complete article]

Farah tried to plead with the U.S. troops but she was killed anyway
By Peter Beaumont, The Observer, September 7, 2003

Farah Fadhil was only 18 when she was killed. An American soldier threw a grenade through the window of her apartment. Her death, early last Monday, was slow and agonising. Her legs had been shredded, her hands burnt and punctured by splinters of metal, suggesting that the bright high-school student had covered her face to shield it from the explosion.

She had been walking to the window to try to calm an escalating situation; to use her smattering of English to plead with the soldiers who were spraying her apartment building with bullets.

But then a grenade was thrown and Farah died. So did Marwan Hassan who, according to neighbours, was caught in the crossfire as he went looking for his brother when the shooting began.

What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable. What happened in Mahmudiya last week should not be forgotten, for the story of this raid is also the story of the dark side of the US-led occupation of Iraq, of the violent and sometimes lethal raids carried out apparently beyond any accountability. [complete article]

Iraq's militias complicate security picture
By Thanassis Cambanis, Boston Globe, September 7, 2003

The US occupation authority here is scrambling to put Iraqis in charge of security, but the task is even more complicated than it was just a few months ago, when criminal gangs and Fedayeen fighters terrorized the streets.

Now, impatient with rampant lawlessness, militias have sprung up all over the country, as ubiquitous as machine guns and grenade launchers. In many quarters they're winning more popular support than either the new Iraqi police or US military, even though military officials insist they will disarm militias, including the Badr Brigade.

The paramilitaries may prove difficult to control. In Najaf on Friday, for example, Iraqi police officers deferred to Badr gunmen, who decided which cars would be allowed past checkpoints into the city's holy center.

"For every hundred of us carrying guns here, only five have permission," said Abu Montazar Al-Abudi, the Badr commander directing the fighters who cordoned off Najaf for the busy Friday prayers, searched cars, and prowled with sniper rifles on the mosque's 30-foot-high perimeter walls. "We won't let the Americans take away our guns and stop us from protecting our religious scholars and our people." [complete article]

Aggressive U.S. foreign policy generates distrust
By John Hassell, NJ Star Ledger, September 7, 2003

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks nearly two years ago, America became a mailbox, receiving letters of condolence from all corners of the globe. Even Moammar Gadhafi and Mullah Mohammed Omar of the Taliban, no friends of the United States, sent their sympathies.

Today, after U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the launching of an ambitious enterprise to reshape the politics of the Middle East, things are very different. Polls show a deepening resentment of U.S. power worldwide, even among traditional allies. America's mailbox is again full, this time with hate mail. [complete article]

Shiites humiliate Bush
By Gary Leupp, Counterpunch, September 5, 2003

"The occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was spilt in holy Al-Najaf, the blood of al-Hakim and the faithful group that was present near the mosque. This force is primarily responsible for all this blood and the blood that is shed all over Iraq every day. Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must leave so that we can build Iraq as God wants us to do."

The remarkable funeral oration by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, brother of Iraq's most prominent Shiite cleric and political figure, the slain Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, might just prove the death-knell of the occupation and even the neocons' whole world-changing project. [complete article]

'Liberated' but not free
By Ellen Goodman, Washington Post, September 6, 2003

There is a moment in Azar Nafisi's memoir of life in Iran when she describes what it was like to be a captive in someone else's dream. "A stern ayatollah," she writes, "a blind and improbable philosopher-king, had decided to impose his dream on a country and a people and to re-create us in his own myopic vision."

Nafisi's book, whose very title -- "Reading Lolita in Tehran" -- was to set all the ayatollahs on edge, chronicles her resistance to this "myopic vision." She created an air pocket in the suffocating atmosphere of the Islamic revolution, a private classroom where a handful of students could come and talk about literature and life.

The subject of her book is not only freedom but what it was like for a woman to lose it. "Now that I could not call myself a teacher, a writer, now that I could not wear what I would normally wear, walk in the streets to the beat of my own body, shout if I wanted to or pat a male colleague on the back on the spur of the moment, now that all this was illegal," she recalls, "I felt light and fictional, as if I were walking on air, as if I had been written into being and then erased in one quick swipe."

This "memoir in books" is a remarkable blend of imagination and politics. But it's a way to think about Iraq and Afghanistan as well. You see, things are not going so well for the women in the countries that we have "liberated." There is a struggle there too with "stern ayatollahs." [complete article]

More about Reading Lolita in Tehran

Bush bets that the world will help him in Iraq
By David E. Sanger, New York Times, September 7, 2003

Now that President Bush is going back to the United Nations for troops and money to save his occupation strategy in Iraq, the question is whether he has burned too many bridges to get the help he needs.

More than a few countries have taken not-so-quiet satisfaction in watching Mr. Bush move, in four months, from triumphal declarations to a plea to the world to help an occupying army beset by troubles. Some are clearly tempted to think of this as payback time. [complete article]

CAMPAIGN TO WIN HEARTS AND MINDS OVER:
Rumsfeld to Iraqis - It's your fault
Iraqis to Rumsfeld - Go to hell!


Rumsfeld lashes out at Iraqi critics
By Matt Kelley, Assoicated Press, September 6, 2003

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld lashed out at Iraqi critics of the U.S.-led occupation Saturday, demanding that they give American forces more information about saboteurs and terrorists.

"Instead of pointing fingers at the security forces of the coalition, ... it's important for the Iraqi people to step up and provide information," Rumsfeld said at a news conference.

Many Iraqis, as well as some members of Congress, have said they are frustrated that security remains a problem in Iraq four months after President Bush (news - web sites) declared that major combat had ended. Rumsfeld acknowledged Iraq is not as safe as it should be but said the fault does not lie with American forces. [complete article]

From Baghdad, Riverbend writes:

Rumsfeld is in Iraq. It's awful to see him strutting all over the place. I hate the hard, smug look that seems plastered on his face… some people just have cruel features. The reaction to seeing him on tv differs from the reaction to seeing Bremer or one of the puppets. The latter are greeted with jeers and scorn. Seeing Rumsfeld is something else- there's resentment and disgust. It feels like he's here to add insult to injury… you know, just in case anyone forgets we're an occupied country.

Palestinian PM resigns, Israel wounds Hamas founder
By Wafa Amr and Mohammed Assadi, Reuters, September 6, 2003

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas submitted his resignation on Saturday in a power struggle with Yasser Arafat, dealing a possibly fatal setback for a U.S.-backed plan for peace with Israel.

Underscoring peacemakers' plight, Israeli forces fired a missile into a house in Gaza City in an apparent bid to kill the spiritual leader of the biggest Palestinian militant movement Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was slightly wounded.

It was not known whether Abbas's resignation would be accepted by Arafat, who is wary of being blamed for a collapse of peacemaking and of Israeli threats to expel him. [complete article]

WAR ON TERRORISM - VACATION OPPORTUNITY!
"THE ULTIMATE MISSION TO ISRAEL"


While most people might prefer a vacation away from the war on terrorism, Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, is offering a luxury package this November for "English-speaking professionals" who want to get closer to the action. Participants will not only be able to enjoy "small airplanes flight over the Galilee, moonlight cruise on the Kinneret Lake, a cook-out barbecue and a traditional Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalem's Old City," but also see an "exhibition by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) undercover soldiers who carry out targeted assassinations of Palestinian terrorists and deep penetration raids in Arab territory." On day three of this seven-day package, participants will be able to witness the "security trial of Hamas terrorists" in an Israeli military court. The complete package (excluding airfares) is $1,480 with an additional $500 to $5,000 donation to the Center to "aid in the fight against Arab terror."

Shiite militia deploys forces
By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, September 6, 2003

Dozens of armed men belonging to a militia loyal to Iraq's best-organized Shiite Muslim party deployed today in this sacred city, posing a challenge to U.S. forces that have vowed to disband them.

The Badr Brigade, a force of lightly armed fighters once said to number 10,000, was supposed to have been disarmed early in the U.S. occupation. But in the wake of the assassination last week of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, killed with scores of others in a car bombing outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, the brigade has returned to the streets of this southern city.

Men in black uniforms with armbands that read "Badr" in Arabic were visible throughout Najaf today. About a dozen were posted atop the shrine, the most sacred to Shiites in Iraq, and others manned checkpoints on roads leading to its grounds. Several pickup trucks, carrying men with Kalashnikov rifles, roamed the city's streets and the perimeter of the shrine.

"We don't depend on the Americans, we depend on ourselves," said Montadhir Naim, a 23-year-old militiaman. [complete article]

Meanwhile, Associated Press reports that 'U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, said Saturday the armed men were in Najaf "with the full cooperation of the Coalition Provisional Authority and in full cooperation with the coalition forces." ' Sounds like Bremer's busy sending out retroactive commands.

MICHAEL MEACHER AND THE 9-11 CONSPIRACY
Paul Woodward, The War in Context, September 6, 2003

This war on terrorism is bogus, an article by Michael Meacher appearing in today's Guardian is currently bouncing all over the Internet drawing gasps of shock and awe. Aren't these claims shocking, coming from one of Tony Blair's former ministers? Maybe not. Meacher is not the first ex-minister to discover that being out of office means lots more time for surfing the Web.

Michael Meacher is regurgitating claims that can be found on most of the web sites that promote conspiracy theories about 9-11. In fact, I suspect that that's where he drew most of his information from -- citations not withstanding. I don't think the Guardian would have published this article had it been written by any of the secondhand sources on whom Meacher clearly relied. The fact that it was written by a former government minister doesn't give it credibility as much as it provides the Guardian with a flimsy excuse. (When a newspaper makes headlines - Meacher sparks fury over claims on September 11 and Iraq war - from a controversy that they themselves have stirred up, it's best to conclude that there are idle hands in the newsroom.)

To see the war on terrorism as part of a political agenda whose goal is U.S. global hegemony does not require believing that the group of neoconservatives pushing that agenda had any foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks. They are, as far as I'm concerned, opportunists, not conspirators. Let's face it, their opportunity depended on hanging chads (Florida) -- perhaps the best evidence of their opportunistic as opposed to conspiratorial tendencies. (Isn't it strange that a group of people who, conspiracy theorists would have us believe, had the power to engineer a plot requiring the coordination of international terrorists, U.S. intelligence, military and civilian administrators, were nevertheless hamstrung when it came to securing a convincing election result?)

Conspiracy theories always involve reducing a hugely complex set of variables, to a rather narrow set of "facts" that with the benefit of hindsight provide "evidence" of a sinister plan. They provide, above all, a huge distraction from the serious and often tedious process of following current events and trying to understand what's going on in a world where chance is often as instrumental as design.

The story that most of the anti-war movement seems to be missing right now is that Iraq is already proving that the grand imperial ambition of the neoconservatives is the stuff of fantasy. Over the coming months I expect to see the much feared neocons gradually sidelined. That doesn't mean that they won't be looking for new opportunities to make a power grab, but at least for now they're losing their friends and supporters and in America, no one gets shunned faster than someone who is perceived as a loser -- especially in the run-up to an election.

Hussein link to 9/11 lingers in many minds
By Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, Washington Post, September 6, 2003

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

The main reason for the endurance of the apparently groundless belief, experts in public opinion say, is a deep and enduring distrust of Hussein that makes him a likely suspect in anything related to Middle East violence. "It's very easy to picture Saddam as a demon," said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University and an expert on public opinion and war. "You get a general fuzz going around: People know they don't like al Qaeda, they are horrified by September 11th, they know this guy is a bad guy, and it's not hard to put those things together." [complete article]

Envoys urge U.S. to cede more power to U.N.
By Felcity Barringer, New York Times, September 6, 2003

Despite swift opposition from France and Germany, diplomats here and around the world said today that the American draft of a Security Council resolution on Iraq could be a basis for consensus if Washington would cede more political power to the United Nations and speed up the timetable for transferring authority to Iraqis. [complete article]

British charity worker killed in Iraq gun attack
By Rebecca Allison, Richard Norton-Taylor and Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 6, 2003

Two civilians, a Briton and an American working in Iraq have been shot and killed in separate incidents, it emerged last night, fuelling concerns that guerrillas launching attacks on the military occupiers may be widening their targets. [complete article]

Cleric calls for resistance to U.S. occupation
By Tarek al-Issawi, Associated Press, September 5, 2003

A senior Shiite cleric called Friday for peaceful resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and warned his followers were running out of patience. In Baghdad, gunmen attacked worshippers after prayers at a Sunni mosque, wounding three people.

Imam Sadreddine al-Qobanji spoke to more than 15,000 people who jammed the Imam Ali mosque, Iraq's holiest Shiite Muslim shrine. He said last week's bombing outside the mosque -- which killed Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and dozens of other people -- was aimed at sowing discord in Iraq.

"Once we find that this road (peaceful resistance) has come to a dead end, we will adopt other means," said al-Qobanji, who had been al-Hakim's deputy. [complete article]

Iraqis threaten to go it alone
By Ilene R. Prusher, Christian Science Monitor, September 5, 2003

Close to five months after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, frustration with the slow pace of rebuilding and the rapid decline in security is giving prominent Iraqis a platform to promote going it alone.

In two key spheres in which the US-led coalition is having a difficult time asserting its authority - security and governance - prominent Iraqis are threatening to ignore or upstage the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) plans for Iraq.

Mohammed Bahr al-Ulloum, a highly respected Shiite cleric who withdrew from the interim Governing Council this week, says that he may set up militias around Iraq to address deteriorating security. [complete article]

Iraq foreign minister says no Turkish troops
By Joseph Logan, Reuters, September 5, 2003

Iraq's new foreign minister said on Thursday Turkish troops should not be let into Iraq as peacekeepers as their presence could undermine the security of the country rather than improve it.

Hoshiyar Zebari said all Iraq's neighbours should stay out in order to stabilise the country.

The appointment of a Kurd as foreign minister shows the growing political pull of Iraqi Kurds, whose influence Turkey fears could fire separatism among its own Kurdish community.

"It is far better for everybody to keep all of Iraq's neighbours from conducting any peacekeeping mission because each and every one of them when they come into the country are bringing their own political agenda," Zebari told Reuters in an interview. [complete article]

Under the blue flag
By Anthony Cordesman, ABC News, September 5, 2003

Asking the U.N.to play a military role in Iraq may or may not be part of the solution.

The basic problem is that the United Nations has no forces of its own, and each U.N. command and multinational force has to be built up in a different way and around a different mission.

The fact that a U.N. flag flies over the result does not mean that it represents anything other than a coalition operation with all of the military problems involved. [complete article]

Fire the neocons
By Paul Craig Roberts, Washington Times, September 5, 2003

Do you remember the ridicule neocons heaped on critics who predicted a quagmire in Iraq? Now neocons William Kristol and Robert Kagen are calling for more troops and more money -- two more Army divisions and an additional $60 billion, to be exact. "Next spring, if disaster looms," they write, "it may be too late."

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- who experienced, but has forgotten, the Vietnam quagmire -- has taken the bait and is urging President Bush to send more troops. But there are no troops to send. The Pentagon doesn't know where it is going to get the troops to carry on the occupation of Iraq at the present level of troop strength. [complete article]

(Editor's note: The neocon-friendly Washington Times obviously didn't have the stomach to title this piece "Fire the neocons" -- they chose instead the cryptic "The U.N. and Iraq." Nevertheless, columnist Paul Craig Roberts is single-minded and unequivocal in appealing to President Bush to get rid of his neoconservative advisors. He concludes, "It is time Mr. Bush replaced his delusional neocon advisers with wise people of integrity.")

General Zinni criticizes Bush's postwar policy
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, September 5, 2003

A former U.S. commander for the Middle East who still consults for the State Department yesterday blasted the Bush administration's handling of postwar Iraq, saying it lacked a coherent strategy, a serious plan and sufficient resources.

"There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing."

In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?" [complete article]

Iraq's fresh start may be another false dawn
By Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, September 5, 2003

Six times since the fall of Saddam Hussein British and US officials have summoned journalists to briefings on Iraq. Six times the story has been the same: there have been mistakes, but from now on it's going to be different.

Once again, amid plans for a UN-mandated peacekeeping force, there is talk of a fresh start. Or perhaps just another false start. [complete article]

Regardless of outcome, resolution poses risks
By Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2003

The Bush administration faces enormous risks in going back to the United Nations for help in Iraq -- with no guarantees that it will win passage of a new resolution or, even if it does, that it will be able to persuade skeptical, nervous and cranky allies to provide the infusion of foreign troops and funds it wants.

But the United States had little choice, according to U.S. officials and analysts as well as foreign envoys.

A confluence of factors -- including congressional pressure, public anxiety, the approaching presidential campaign, the impending new U.N. session, worsening violence in Iraq and growing impatience among Iraqis -- forced President Bush to return to the world body and put his Iraq policy on the line, the array of sources said.

Although the U.N. Security Council refused to endorse military action against Iraq earlier this year, going back to the arena of one of the administration's worst defeats appears to be the only way to address problems the world's mightiest military and strongest economy cannot resolve on its own, they added.

The biggest risk is being rejected -- again. [complete article]

US 'corporate invasion' brings no respite from war
By Justin Huggler and Seb Walker, The Independent, September 5, 2003

Donald Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad yesterday. Not to a skyline bristling with cranes but to a city where there is still no electricity for much of the day because less power is being generated than under Saddam Hussein.

Almost five months after the overthrow of Saddam, entire neighbourhoods are still without phone lines. The government offices bombed in the war are still blackened shells. Next to them stand the burnt-out ruins of ministries and shopping centres set on fire in the looting that followed.

But the US Defence Secretary was unlikely to see those, cocooned in security to keep him from the seething anger against the American occupation. Much of Baghdad is still an armed American camp. The country's infrastructure is in a worse state than it was under Saddam.

One of the accusations levelled at the US invasion was that it was simply paving the way for a subsequent American corporate invasion. But despite billions of dollars of contracts won by American companies, there are no visible signs of reconstruction at all. [complete article]

The nail in the wood: an interview with Ismail Abu Shanab
By Paul Hilder, Open Democracy, September 4, 2003

I met Ismail Abu Shanab in the summer of 2002, in Gaza. Everyone knew where he lived. My young friend Yusuf, who attended the Islamic University with his son, proudly led me to their home on the outskirts of Gaza City. We rang the bell. His daughter led us inside to a book-lined living room where Abu Shanab, a strong-jawed man in white robes, offered us lemonade. No bodyguards in sight.

Just three days before our meeting, Salah Shehadeh, leader of Hamas's military wing and formerly Abu Shanab's cellmate, had been assassinated with a one-ton bomb. It demolished a refugee-camp block and killed fourteen civilians. But I felt no fear. Abu Shanab was the most moderate leader of Hamas's political wing, not at that time a target. This was Hamas's ceasefire negotiator, a man who advocated engagement in parliamentary process, who was openly prepared to entertain the two-state solution.

On 21 August 2003, Ismail Abu Shanab was assassinated by an Israeli helicopter missile strike while travelling by car in Gaza. Government press releases termed him "terrorist", "operative".

But veering off-message, an Israeli security source told the Washington Post after his killing, "To what extent that person was involved [in terrorism] or not is not important. What is important is that this man... is one of the people who makes decisions about what kind of policies Hamas should adopt."

We talked for an hour. He was no liberal, and no innocent. But without him, Hamas will be very different. [complete article]

Surviving for what?
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram, September 4, 2003

History will judge what lessons Israel will take on board from the Or Commission's investigation into the killings of 12 Palestinian citizens of Israel during the "internal Intifada" of October 2000. There is no need for history concerning Israel's policies towards those other 3.2 million Palestinians under its charge in Gaza and the West Bank. These policies are current, military and openly declared as a "new and different chapter" by Israel's Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz.

They consist of severing all contacts with the Palestinian Authority (and therefore all obligations under the roadmap); round-the- clock arrest and search raids in West Bank Palestinian cities and villages; warnings that Yasser Arafat may "soon" have to be banished and Gaza invaded; and, above all, a relentless war against Hamas at "all levels of its leadership". [complete article]

'This is no good, sir!'
The Guardian, September 5, 2003

The distinguished Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa reports from Iraq


The only authority [in Baghdad] is represented by the tanks, the armoured cars, trucks and jeeps, and by foot patrols of US soldiers who cross and re-cross streets all over, armed with rifles and submachine guns, making the buildings shake with the power of their war vehicles. Soldiers who, on a closer look, seem as helpless and frightened as the citizens of Baghdad themselves. Since I arrived the attacks against them have been increasing systematically, and have already killed 30 and injured around 300. It is not surprising that they seem suspicious and in bad spirits, with fingers on triggers, patrolling streets full of people with whom they cannot communicate, amidst a hellish heat, which for them, dressed in helmets, bullet-proof jackets and other war paraphernalia, must be even worse than for the average local. I tried to talk to them - many being adolescents not yet capable of growing a beard - on four occasions, but I got only very concise replies. They were all pouring sweat, eyeballs perpetually moving, like distrustful grasshoppers.

But Morgana, my daughter, succeeded in conversing on a more personal level with a soldier of Mexican origin who suddenly opened his heart from atop his tank: "I've had it! I've been here for three months and I cannot stand it any longer! I ask myself what the hell I'm doing here every day! This morning they killed two buddies. I can't wait to go back to my wife and child, damn it!" [complete article]

New Iraq coalition troops face Tower of Babel woes
By Orly Halpern, Globe and Mail, September 4, 2003

At the gate to Camp Babylon, the new face of occupation looked strained.

Despite their shiny NATO-type weapons and new uniforms bearing the Arabic translation of "Poland," four fresh arrivals to the Iraq front came across as visitors in a very foreign land.

The new troops were unable to talk with local citizens, with their fellow members of the occupying coalition, or with their U.S. commanders, even though they were supposed to keep track of everyone coming and going at Camp Babylon. [...]

While English-Arabic translators are plentiful among Karbala's one million citizens, there is a distinct lack of Bulgarian-Arabic and Polish-Arabic speakers.

Ironically, few local officials are complaining.

"We feel more relaxed with the Polish and the Bulgarians," said deputy mayor Abdul Aziz Nasrawi. "I think they are calmer because they also came from a dictatorship and they are used to a low standard of living." [complete article]

General agreement
Does the U.N. U-turn signal a comeback for Colin Powell?

By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 4, 2003

The whiff of a battle royal comes wafting up the Potomac. It has all the markings of a bureaucratic stink bomb of a fight, with fisticuffs, body blows, and incessant acts of treachery. The gong for the first round sounded in today's Washington Post, which reports that President George W. Bush agreed to offer more authority to a U.N. peacekeeping force in Iraq after Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has long favored a more multilateral approach, came into the Oval Office last Tuesday -- Bush's first day back from the ranch -- and announced that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were on his side. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "whose office had been slow to embrace the U.N. resolution," the Post notes, "quickly agreed." As, of course, did Bush.

Talk about "coalition forces"! Powell, whose political demise has been forecast practically since he joined this administration, may -- once again -- be back in action, possibly just aft of the helm. And, if that proves true, his route to regained power will have been through his foe's own backdoor. [complete article]

See also Powell and Joint Chiefs nudged Bush toward U.N.

Full command or no involvement
By Amin Saikal, Sydney Morning Herald, September 5, 2003

After lambasting the United Nations for months as an ineffective and irrelevant organisation, the US President, George Bush, has turned to it for help.

In proposing a new UN resolution recognising "that international support for restoration of conditions of stability and security is essential to the well-being of the people of Iraq" he wants the UN to share the burden and blame in Iraq.

It would be erroneous of the UN Security Council to authorise the deployment of a multinational peacekeeping and peace-enforcing force without a full commitment from the US to allow it to play a determining role in administering and rebuilding Iraq, and stabilising the region, with a clear set of objectives within a specific timeline. [complete article]

Just fix it
By Molly Ivins, WorkingForChange, September 4, 2003

It is insufficient to stand around saying, "I told you Iraq would be a disaster." Believe me, saying, "I told you so" is a satisfaction so sour it will gag you when people, including Americans, are dying every day.

I think our greatest strength is still pragmatism. OK, this isn't working, now what? In an effort to be constructive, even in the face of a developing catastrophe, I have been combing the public prints in an effort to find something positive to suggest. [complete article]

The whistleblower
By Richard Norton-Taylor and Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, September 4, 2003

A senior [British] government intelligence official who was deeply involved in the production of the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction yesterday accused the government of "over-egging" the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and of ignoring concerns about central claims made in the document.

Brian Jones, a top analyst in the defence intelligence staff, described how the "shutters came down", preventing experts on chemical and biological weapons from expressing widespread disquiet about the language and assumptions in the dossier.

He told the Hutton inquiry that he and fellow intelligence officials regarded as "nebulous" the hotly disputed claim that Iraqi forces could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes - the assertion at the centre of the row between Downing Street and the BBC.

The claim, he said, came from a single but "secondary" source whose purpose might have been to "influence rather than inform" British intelligence agencies. [complete article]

Iraq move points to U.S. limit
By Stephen J. Glain, Boston Globe, September 4, 2003

By allowing the United Nations a significant role in postwar Iraq, the Bush administration is ceding authority over what it regards as an important asset in its war on terrorism: a platform from which it can extinguish radical Islam and cultivate a democratic Middle East.

The decision to seek UN help, while not unexpected, validated concerns among security specialists that US forces alone will not be enough to stabilize the country. But it also exposes the limits of President Bush's doctrine to use force -- preemptive and unilateral when necessary -- to subdue dictators and extremists on the front lines of the war on terrorism.

"For the militants, now is their golden moment," said Isam Al-Khafaji, a former Iraqi dissident and a scholar-in-residence at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. "America's credibility in the region is at worrisome low levels. The situation could go either way." [complete article]

MORE TROOPS NEEDED IN IRAQ?

Apparently Donald Rumsfeld thinks that's a trick question - that's why his answer is "no" and "yes."

Push for multinational force in Iraq
Agence France-Presse (via News.com.au), September 4, 2003

[Rumsfeld, speaking while en route to the Middle East today,] insisted US commanders believe that the estimated 140,000 US troops now in the country were sufficient.

"Should the total number go up for security? Yes, I think so, but I think it's going to be on the Iraqi side and on the international side more than the US side," he said. [complete article]

Iraqis' struggle for peace
By Paul Wood, BBC News, September 4, 2003

Outside a Baghdad television shop, two men argue fiercely. One of the sets atop a stack still in boxes crashes to the ground. An American soldier in a passing Humvee jerks around and opens fire. One of the men is shot dead. The Humvee does not stop.

This is typical of the many stories you hear in Baghdad these days. A foreign cameraman was there, so the details can largely be confirmed. It shows how this whole city is wracked with tension. [...]

You often hear about the British or American soldiers who die in the daily guerrilla or "terrorist" attacks, but for ordinary civilians here, Baghdad also has the highest murder rate in the world. On a typical day, the city's mortuary may get 40 bodies with gunshot wounds. [complete article]

'They deal in danger'
By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, September 4, 2003

Dayikh's life and, perhaps more telling, his death provide a glimpse into the obscure world of the campaign against U.S. troops occupying Iraq -- of the interplay between crime and resistance, of the fear that still prevails in the parts of Baghdad where the U.S. presence and police are rarely seen, and of the anger that the lawlessness breeds.

A known criminal, suspected guerrilla and most likely both, Dayikh lived on the fringes of Baghdad's underworld, where residents say U.S. officials and their Iraqi allies are unprepared and ill-equipped to face resistance that has persisted for months. [complete article]

'Targeted killings' strengthen Hamas as innocents die
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, September 4, 2003

Sana Al-Daour, 10, was sitting in the back seat with her father, mother and sister on the way to buy books for the new school year when the missile hit their Mercedes taxi.

She died this week from the injuries she suffered six days earlier because the taxi happened to be overtaking a car containing two Hamas militants when it was hit by the first of three missiles from an Israeli helicopter.

As his family handed out dates and coffee in his daughter's mourning tent, Jamil al-Daour, a carpenter, was quietly caustic when asked who he blamed for her death. As if the source of the missile made the question redundant, he said: "I blame my daughter for getting into the car." [complete article]

Thrust onto the throne of an Iraqi district
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2003

U.S. Army Capt. Joe Ewers came to Iraq expecting to chase down Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, but it didn't work out that way. He's been thrust into the role of civil administrator and is finding it a tougher, more complex and thankless job than he ever imagined. [...]

His most daunting task is promoting and forming Baghdad's embryonic democracy. He recruits and directs two neighborhood advisory councils that are viewed by the U.S.-led administration of Iraq as the building blocks of the country's future elected government.

Ewers has found democracy to be a hard sell in a country accustomed to repression and state-sponsored mayhem. That and the difficulties he has had meeting residents' expectations in administering his densely populated patch of Baghdad say much about the obstacles ahead as Iraq lurches from dictatorship to democracy. [complete article]

Nice war. Here's the bill
By Donald Hepburn, New York Times, September 3, 2003

In 1991, America's so-called Operation Tin Cup got enough money from its allies to cover the costs of the first Persian Gulf war. In contrast, what could be called "Operation Begging Bowl" after the latest war in Iraq has come up empty, leaving us stuck with the bill for the invasion and occupation -- the full extent of which is only now becoming apparent.

The Bush administration's recent willingness to consider a greater United Nations role on the ground is the first sign that it is aware of how vastly mistaken its assertions about the occupation were. Contrary to the prewar view that Iraq's oil revenues would greatly offset American costs, we now know that Iraq -- with its shattered economy, devastated oil industry and plundered national wealth -- is incapable of making any significant reimbursement of the invasion and occupation costs. And the military expense is only a fraction of the total expense of making Iraq into a functioning country. [complete article]

Europeans' doubt over U.S. policy rises
By Thomas Crampton, International Herald Tribune, September 4, 2003

The yawning political divide between Europe and the United States that was opened by the war in Iraq has continued to widen, according to a new survey of trans-Atlantic attitudes.

The survey of 8,000 Americans and Europeans, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, found citizens on both sides of the Atlantic raising similar concerns about global security, but expressing increasingly divergent views on how to respond.

"It is clear that the trans-Atlantic rift has deepened over the last year," said William Drozdiak, executive director of the Brussels- based Transatlantic Center of the fund. "Europeans are increasingly dismayed by U.S. leadership and the use of U.S. force." [complete article]

Afghan military tied to drug trade
By Scott Baldauf, Christian Science Monitor, September 4, 2003

Opium, and the money it generates, is the engine for the Taliban's resurgence, as evidenced in the growing number of attacks across southern provinces of Afghanistan in recent months. And Afghan warlords who traffic drugs, even if they were useful to America in the past, now pose a dire threat to the future of the country. [complete article]

Israel and Hezbollah trade fire on northern border
By Uri Ash, Haaretz, September 3, 2003

Israel Air Force fighter jets attacked a Hezbollah base in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, destroying the artillery position which hours earlier had fired anti-aircraft shells in the western section of Israel's northern border.

In the wake of Wednesday's strikes and counter-strikes, IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] sources said that Syria, which backs Hezbollah and has a military presence in Lebanon, has not taken the hint, and suggested that more expansive and aggressive action against Syria is now called for. [complete article]

Indonesian VP: United States is 'terrorist king'
Reuters, September 3, 2003

Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz branded America the "terrorist king" Wednesday in remarks at odds with Jakarta's support for the war on terror.

"Actually, who is the terrorist, who is against human rights? The answer is the United States because they attacked Iraq. Moreover, it is the terrorist king, waging war," the official Antara news agency quoted Haz as saying.

It was unclear what prompted Haz to make his remarks in a speech to heads of Muslim boarding schools in Central Java. [complete article]

AND THE JOKERS IN THE PENTAGON THINK THEY DESERVE APPLAUSE FOR BEING "BRUTALLY HONEST"!

The war in Iraq was waged on the pretext that its purpose was to disarm Saddam. In a secret report, the Pentagon now excuses their failed efforts to find weapons of mass destruction on the grounds that "insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission." This begs the question, if on August 29, 2002, President Bush approved "Iraq goals, objectives and strategy," did the plan he was approving actually have as one of its central goals disarmament? Are we to believe that a defense department driven by a sense of urgency to disarm a ruthless dictator, would overlook the need for an effective plan to locate and disarm the weapons that supposedly threatened the world?

"It is a brutally honest report," one of the Pentagon officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. "It shows that the military is self-critical -- not just satisfied with 93 percent effectiveness in combat."


U.S. rushed post-Saddam planning
By Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, September 3, 2003

A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays the blame for setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process that "limited the focus" for preparing for post-Saddam Hussein operations.

The report, prepared last month, said the search for weapons of mass destruction was planned so late in the game that it was impossible for U.S. Central Command to carry out the mission effectively. "Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission," the classified briefing said.

The report is titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned" and is stamped "secret." A copy was obtained by The Washington Times.

The report also shows that President Bush approved the overall war strategy for Iraq in August last year. That was eight months before the first bomb was dropped and six months before he asked the U.N. Security Council for a war mandate that he never received. [complete article]

For the president, the least painful alternative
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, September 3, 2003

President Bush, in his decision to seek broader help in Iraq from the United Nations, has concluded that blue helmets are better than a black eye.

For months, the president and his administration have resisted the notion of sharing power in Iraq with the U.N. "blue helmets" -- part of officials' longstanding suspicion of the international body and particularly the notion that U.S. troops might answer to foreign generals.

But as more and more U.S. troops are killed in Iraq, and the number of car bombings and anti-America demonstrations there grow, the Bush administration concluded that principle alone will not suffice: The United States needs more help in Iraq. [complete article]

Israeli report is welcomed, dismissed
By Molly Moore, Washington Post, September 3, 2003

After 34 months of investigation and 377 interviews, an inquiry panel Monday issued the most searing government-sponsored assessment ever of the country's relations with its Arab minority. While advocates viewed the blunt findings as a historic call for change, other Israelis seemed unwilling to recognize or confront the issue.

The report not only criticized Israeli police for using excessive force against Israeli Arab demonstrators in October 2000. Twelve Arabs, one Jew and one Palestinian resident of the Gaza Strip were killed in the riots. It accused generations of Israeli leaders of "neglectful and discriminatory" treatment of the Arabs who make up nearly one-fifth of the country's population. [complete article]

THE LIMITS OF POWER

U.S. 'offers U.N. greater Iraq role'
BBC News, September 3, 2003

The United States is to ask the United Nations to approve the creation of a multinational force in Iraq in return for ceding some political authority, US officials say.
No exact details have been released of the draft resolution, approved by President George W Bush, but it could be put before the Security Council as early as this week.

Unnamed US officials have said it redefines the role of the UN in the process of transferring power to the Iraqi people - and opens the way for more troop and financial contributions to help Iraq's reconstruction.

The US proposals come amid ongoing attacks on coalition troops - as well as domestic criticism over the costs of the occupation.

They also coincide with a threat from an Iraqi member of the Iraqi Governing Council to set up armed militias because of the lack of security. [complete article]

Why Bush now wants the U.N.
By Paul Reynolds, BBC News, September 3, 2003

In accepting that the UN should have a security role in Iraq, President Bush has accepted reality.
Despite a recent claim by chief US administrator Paul Bremer that Iraq is "not a country in chaos and Baghdad is not a city in chaos", events suggest otherwise. Mr Bush does not want to get bogged down there.

The presidential election next year is a powerful incentive for the Bush team to consider any proposal that prevents Iraq from becoming a determining campaign issue.

And the influential Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which carries out independent policy studies, has provided a practical reason for Mr Bush to change his policy.

It says basically that the United States does not have enough troops to do the job, especially if it needs to keep a substantial force free for potential action elsewhere. And the Korean peninsula is on everyone's mind these days. [complete article]

See also the CBO's report, "An Analysis of the U.S. Military's Ability
to Sustain an Occupation of Iraq," contained in a Letter to the Honorable Robert Byrd. (Follow the link 09-03-Iraq.pdf.)

Shia mourners demand end to U.S. occupation
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, September 3, 2003

Mindful of the increase in violence, the US administrator, Paul Bremer, said yesterday that the coalition was looking to devolve authority quickly to a new Iraqi cabinet appointed on Monday.

"We should find ways quickly to give Iraq and Iraqis more responsibility for security," he said, adding that as the new ministers settled into their positions, "the advisers from the coalition will not only yield authority, we will thrust authority".

Yet that may not be enough for the people who thronged in Najaf yesterday for Ayatollah Hakim's funeral.

His brother, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who sits on Iraq's US-appointed governing council, laid the blame for Friday's atrocity at the feet of the American-led force. "The occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was spilt in holy Najaf," he said.

"Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must end so that we can build Iraq as God wants us to do." [complete article]

Caged
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, September 3, 2003

Baqa al-Sharqia's plight is much the same as that of a string of Palestinian villages severed from their lands or caged behind barbed wire under a large red sign in Hebrew and Arabic: "Mortal danger. Military zone. Any person who passes or damages this fence endangers his life." But the mayor dwells on a single, telling distinction. When Moayad Hussain faces Israel's vast new "security fence" toward the beginning of its meandering journey through the occupied territories - which the Israeli government envisages will end nearly 400 miles later with almost the entire Palestinian population encircled - he is not looking out from the West Bank but into it. The fence carving through Baqa al-Sharqia's olive groves places the village and its 4,000 Palestinian residents on the Israeli side of the wire.

"We have asked ourselves the same question many times," says Hussain. "If the fence is for security, if the fence is to keep us out, then why aren't we on the other side? With every kilometre of fence [prime minister Ariel] Sharon builds we are sure there is only one answer. This is not about security, it's about land and resources."

There are two ways to travel the 123 kilometres (76 miles) of the newly completed first section of what the Israelis used to call the "separation obstacle" - until they realised that smacked too much of apartheid and so renamed it the "security fence". You can drive its length on the Israeli side along a new motorway, straining to spot the fence on distant hilltops deep inside the West Bank. Or you can pursue a more tortuous route in the Palestinian territories along rutted tracks, tracing the barrier as it cages villages, slices through olive groves and brings once busy roads to a jarring halt in front of the ominous warning signs. [complete article]

The blind prophet
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, September 3, 2003

With astonishing speed, the United States and Britain are making their nightmares come true. Iraq is fast becoming the land that they warned about: a throbbing hub of terror. Islamists bent on murder, all but non-existent in Saddam's Iraq, are now flocking to the country, from Syria, Iran and across the Arab world. In the way that hippies used to head for San Francisco, jihadists are surging towards Baghdad. For those eager to strike at the US infidel, Iraq is the place to be: a shooting gallery, with Americans in easy firing range. Afghanistan is perilous terrain, but Iraq is open country. For the Islamist hungry for action, there are rich pickings. [complete article]

Militant cleric sentenced in Indonesia
By Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 2003

The four-year sentence given Tuesday to Abu Bakar Bashir, the man Indonesia and the United States allege is the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group that in recent years has murdered more than 300 people in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, satisfied no one.

The sentence didn't satisfy Mr. Bashir's supporters, who chanted "God is Great" outside the courthouse and claimed their leader had been framed by the CIA. And it didn't satisfy the victims of JI violence, or the foreign governments who believe Bashir is at the center of a terrorist network that may number as many as 1,000. [complete article]

Taliban said teaming with al-Qaida again
By Kathy Gannon, Assoicated Press, September 2, 2003

The Taliban are no longer on the run and have teamed up with al-Qaida once again, according to officials and former Taliban who say the religious militia has reorganized and strengthened since their defeat at the hands of the U.S.-led coalition nearly two years ago.

The militia, which ruled Afghanistan espousing a strict brand of Islam, are now getting help from some Pakistani authorities as well as a disgruntled Afghan population fed up with lawlessness under the U.S.-backed interim administration, according to a former Taliban corps commander.

"Now the situation is very good for us. It is improving every day. We can move everywhere," said Gul Rahman Faruqi, a corps commander of the Gardez No. 3 garrison during the Taliban's rule.

"Now if the Taliban go to any village, people give them shelter and food. Now the people are tired of the looters and killers," Faruqi told The Associated Press, referring to regional warlords aligned with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government. [complete article]

After Ayatollah Hakim's assassination, fears for the future
By Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, September 2, 2003

Ayatollah Hakim's death eliminated one of the few leaders of any stature who counseled against fighting the Americans, for now.

While a critic of what he saw as the Americans' bungling administration, he helped temper those seeking to wage a holy war against them, and the presence of his political group on the Iraqi Governing Council lent it a legitimacy that no other Shiite could. Perhaps most important, the very combination of politician and senior religious scholar made him the voice of Shiite aspirations.

In his absence, his political movement and the Coalition Provisional Authority both fear what lies ahead -- whether the strength of his legacy will hold the Shiites together, accepting the occupation, or whether the Shiites will splinter into murderous factions that could sink Iraq's reconstruction. [complete article]

Resistance in Iraq is home grown
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2003

The men attempting to recruit a former soldier in the Fedayeen Saddam militia for today's war against the Americans took him to a bearded sheik seated in a pickup truck.

They appealed to the mortar expert's sense of nationalism and then to his religious conviction. The Americans have done nothing for Iraqis. They defile the homeland. Attacking the American occupiers is the only way to make them leave, the recruiters argued.

In their shadowy guerrilla war to drive American forces out of Iraq, hundreds of insurgents have organized into cells, especially in Al Anbar province west of Baghdad and Diyala province to the northeast, both strongholds for Saddam Hussein, the Sunni tribes that supported him and Wahhabi and other Islamic fundamentalists.

Despite the U.S. government's insistence that Iraq has become the new battlefield of global terrorism, most of the resistance is home grown. The guerrillas are militants from the deposed regime, but they are also ordinary Iraqis opposed to occupation. They are ex-intelligence officers and farmers, militiamen and merchants, bombers and fishermen, according to more than a dozen interviews with Americans and Iraqis. [complete article]

Facing the truth about Iraq
By James Carroll, Boston Globe, September 2, 2003

The war is lost. By most measures of what the Bush administration forecast for its adventure in Iraq, it is already a failure. The war was going to make the Middle East a more peaceful place. It was going to undercut terrorism. It was going to show the evil dictators of the world that American power is not to be resisted. It was going to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis. It was going to stabilize oil markets. The American army was going to be greeted with flowers. None of that happened. The most radical elements of various fascist movements in the Arab world have been energized by the invasion of Iraq. The American occupation is a rallying point for terrorists. Instead of undermining extremism, Washington has sponsored its next phase, and now moderates in every Arab society are more on the defensive than ever. [complete article]

REGIME CHANGE

Wesley Clark might still end up like Colin Powell in 2000 - the most popular could-be-a-candidate who chose not to enter the race. If however he decides to run, then voters currently uncommitted but trying to decide whether they feel more inclined to back Clark or Howard Dean might ask themselves, which is likely to become the more numerous breed? Clark-Republicans or Dean-Republicans?

Draft Clark contingent hopes candidacy is near
By Joanna Weiss, Boston Globe, September 2, 2003

What's best known about Clark are his statements on foreign policy: He has blasted the Bush administration for alienating allies and fixating on Iraq at the expense of other trouble spots. Administration leaders have struck back, saying Clark and other retired-military critics are jeopardizing soldiers' morale. Clark makes no apologies: "I've been outspoken, but I've been moderate in what I've said . . . I've just called it like I've seen it."

Lately, Clark hasn't shied from staking out domestic positions, either.

His social views run liberal: He supports abortion rights, affirmative action, and Vermont-style civil unions for gay couples. On questions about health care and education issues, he points to his career in the military, where "we treat people well and we look after them as individuals." [complete article]

U.S.-North Korea war seems 'strong possibility'
By Jimmy Carter, USA Today, September 2, 2003

We face the strong possibility of another Korean war, with potentially devastating consequences, so the endangered multilateral talks in Beijing are of paramount importance. It is vital that some accommodation be reached between Pyongyang and Washington.

North Korea is an isolated country, poverty stricken, paranoid, apparently self-sacrificial and amazingly persistent in international confrontations, as is now being demonstrated. It is a cultural and almost sacred commitment for its leaders not to back down, even in the face of international condemnation and the most severe political and economic pressure. [complete article]

Number of wounded in action on rise
By Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, September 2, 2003

U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action."

The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported.

The rising number and quickening pace of soldiers being wounded on the battlefield have been overshadowed by the number of troops killed since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1. But alongside those Americans killed in action, an even greater toll of battlefield wounded continues unabated, with an increasing number being injured through small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, remote-controlled mines and what the Pentagon refers to as "improvised explosive devices."

Indeed, the number of troops wounded in action in Iraq is now more than twice that of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The total increased more than 35 percent in August -- with an average of almost 10 troops a day injured last month. [complete article]

Countries resist aid to Iraq
By Peter Slevin, Washington Post, September 2, 2003

The Bush administration's effort to secure significant pledges of money to help rebuild Iraq is meeting stiff resistance from many foreign governments because of continued concerns over security and the predominant role played by the United States, according to diplomats and aid officials.

The concerns, which were fueled by the Aug. 19 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and continuing doubts about the politics of the U.S. occupation, have dramatically lowered expectations for a donors conference scheduled for October. Some U.N. officials are asking whether the meeting in Madrid should be postponed until the United Nations can reinforce its team in Iraq and reach a more solid understanding with the Bush administration over the world body's role in the battered country.

The implications for U.S. taxpayers could prove significant. With postwar Iraqi revenue running lower than the administration anticipated and expenses running much higher, the administration is seeking significant help from outside. L. Paul Bremer, the coordinator of the U.S.-led occupation, said in an interview last week that "several tens of billions of dollars" will be needed in the coming year alone. [complete article]

Israeli Arabs decry inquiry report
By Ben Lynfield, Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 2003

In an already poisoned atmosphere, the findings of an official Israeli inquiry into the death of 13 Arab citizens at the hands of Israeli police in 2000 seems to have no chance of bringing about catharsis, or even much relief.

Arab reactions to the findings of the three-member commission yesterday were generally negative, stressing that it did not find any of the police criminally culpable or make operative recommendations against the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak.

The deaths of the 13 Arabs deepened wounds and distrust between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority, which accounts for 19 percent of Israel's population. The killings are considered by Israel's Arab citizens clear proof that their lives are cheap and they are seen as enemies, while Jewish memories tend to focus on the images of Arab citizens throwing stones and blocking roads, similar to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. [complete article]

Israeli assassins kill hopes of peace for Palestinians
By Conal Urquhart, The Observer, August 31, 2003

The death of Abu Shenab [the Hamas leader who was assassinated by Israelis on August 21] has radicalised Hamas, ironically suppressing the ideas for which he stood, and put Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas - known as Abu Mazen and recently regarded as the man to carry forward the US-backed road map - in a position described yesterday as 'clinically dead'.

Imad Falouji, an independent member of the Palestinian parliament who left Hamas in the 1990s when it refused to take part in elections, said that Israeli violence would only make Hamas stronger and more extreme. 'People have greater sympathy for them and the movement is growing all the time,' he said.

'There are two wings in Hamas. The first believes the only language the Israelis understand is the language of blood. The second was led by Abu Shenab and it believed in the possibilities of dialogue and negotiation. Now the second group is silenced and the extreme line has been vindicated by Israel's actions.' [complete article]

Taliban finds new strength in Pakistan
By Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2003

A revitalized Taliban army is drawing recruits from militant groups in Pakistan, including Al Qaeda loyalists, as it fights an escalating guerrilla war against U.S. forces and their allies across the border in Afghanistan.

These fighters are answering the call from Muslim clerics to wage jihad, or holy war, against U.S.-led forces, according to Taliban members and supporters as well as Pakistani militants interviewed on both sides of the border. The Taliban is also exploiting the alienation felt by ethnic Pushtuns in Afghanistan because of continued insecurity, a scarcity of development projects and ongoing U.S. military operations. [complete article]

U.S. raid herds Iraqi old and young in barbed wire
By Andrew Cawthorne, Reuters, September 1, 2003

Iraqi sheep farmer Thani Mushlah was asleep on his roof when the American soldiers arrived before dawn.

"They banged open my door, came for me and made me lie face down on the floor in front of my wife and children," he said.

Two hours later, as the heat rose with the morning sun, Mushlah, 33, was sitting handcuffed on the desert floor inside a ring of barbed wire used as a temporary prison during the U.S. military raid on the village of Hamreen.

"The Americans said they came to free us, so why do they humiliate and insult us?" Mushlah muttered to a reporter out of hearing of his guards. "They say my crime is to have a gun, but we all need a weapon here for security."

The scene, commonplace since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, illustrated the dilemma the occupiers face: how to stop alienating the population they said they came to liberate while flushing out guerrillas who attack U.S. forces daily. [complete article]

Confessions of a terrorist
By Johanna McGeary, Time, August 31, 2003

By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the most wanted men on earth. A leading member of Osama bin Laden's brain trust, he is thought to have been in operational control of al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. After the spectacular success of the airliner assaults on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, he continued to devise terrorist plans.

Seventeen months ago, the U.S. finally grabbed Zubaydah in Pakistan and has kept him locked up in a secret location ever since. His name has probably faded from most memories. It's about to get back in the news. A new book by Gerald Posner says Zubaydah has made startling revelations about secret connections linking Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and bin Laden. [...]

Zubaydah's capture and interrogation, told in a gripping narrative that reads like a techno-thriller, did not just take down one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives but also unexpectedly provided what one U.S. investigator told Posner was "the Rosetta stone of 9/11 ... the details of what (Zubaydah) claimed was his 'work' for senior Saudi and Pakistani officials." [complete article]

The Ayatollah: Iraq's archduke?
By Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, September 1, 2003

...a few years from now we may look back on the bombing that killed Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, along with more than 90 other Shia Muslims, as a pivotal event that tipped the balance towards civil war and the disintegration of Iraq.

The killing of Ayatollah Hakim, the country's most prominent Shia cleric, has been likened to murdering the Pope, but it's more serious than that because popes these days have little real influence.

Ayatollah Hakim was also head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the leading Shia political organisation. A better comparison would be the murder of the Austrian archduke that sparked the first world war. [complete article]

Understanding Iraqi Shiites:
Part one
Part two
By Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, The Daily Star, August 30/September 1, 2003

No story has been more confusing for the Western news media to cover in post-war Iraq than the politics of the country’s Shiite majority. That they would be a central story was expected. They had suffered systematic repression under Saddam Hussein, especially after the 1991 Gulf War, when they staged a revolt in the south. If anyone required liberation in Iraq, it was the Shiites.

After they failed to welcome their liberators with rapturous joy, and one of their religious leaders was murdered by followers of another one of their religious leaders, the rosy storyline of liberation collapsed amid a many unanswered questions.

Were the Shiites pro-American or anti-American? Why did they have so many leaders? Did they look for direction to the Shiite religious leaders in neighboring Iran? What did they want?
[Part one]
[Part two]

Driving half-blind in Washington
By Julian Borger, The Daily Star, August 29, 2003

The Pentagon policy unit that helped steer America into war in Iraq has changed its name. The infamous Office of Special Plans (OSP) is now known as the Northern Gulf Affairs office, its title before it embarked on a covert buildup to the conflict.

But old habits die hard. Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who oversaw the OSP’s work gathering useful intelligence on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, has shifted his attention to Iran. Despite State Department protests, his office has continued to promote as potential “freedom fighters” the Mujahideen Khalq organization, the bizarre cult-like movement dedicated to overthrowing the Tehran government. The MKO, as the group is known in Washington, has been designated a terrorist group by the State Department. [complete article]

White House likens Iraq to postwar Germany to retain support
By Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2003

With violence escalating and the death toll mounting, the Bush administration insists it will stay the course in Iraq. But only in the last few weeks has it said how long that might take: a generation or more.

"We and our allies must make a generational commitment to helping the people of the Middle East transform their region," national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said last month.

Administration officials describe Iraq as the linchpin in their ambitious plans to transform the entire Mideast from autocracy and conflict to democracy and peace. But while they express no doubts about the course they have chosen, they are increasingly concerned about keeping the country on board. As a result, top officials have adopted a new communications strategy: comparing the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq to the occupation and rebuilding of West Germany after World War II. [complete article]

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