Guten Morgen Mr. Bush - 500 Beiträge pro Seite (Seite 2)

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March 24, 2003
A New War
NYT
The first days of the war in Iraq were so smooth, Americans might have been forgiven for imagining that the conflict would be clean and relatively free of casualties. Then over the weekend, they were faced with battlefield death, human error and other tragedies. The task of beating back Iraq`s best troops and capturing Baghdad while keeping the rest of the country under control looks increasingly formidable.

The most disturbing events of the weekend occurred at Nasiriya, where American forces engaged in a fierce firefight — an early glimpse of urban warfare — with Iraqi soldiers at a key junction on the Euphrates River. A small group of American soldiers, part of a support team from a maintenance unit, was captured by the Iraqis — the first known American prisoners of war in this conflict. It appeared that some may have been executed, which would be a gross violation of the conventions of war.

The capture of the Americans reflects the downside of the swift American advance. Those in the support services behind the front lines may be at grave risk from Iraqi units that have been bypassed. That may be true even in southeastern Iraq, which was supposedly coming under allied control days ago.

The days ahead will indicate whether the American decision to press ahead with a relatively small invasion force supported by overwhelming air and missile power was a wise one. The advantage of the strategy is speed — it avoids the need to wait months for a huge buildup of troops and armor. The downside is the lack of security in the rear of the invasion force. The dangers are not only to American troops and humanitarian workers, but also to the Iraqi civilians living in towns where order may break down and long-repressed ethnic or religious tensions could explode.

The most disheartening events of the weekend were two self-inflicted wounds by American forces. In one incident, an American Patriot missile appears to have shot down a British plane returning from combat. In the last gulf war, such "friendly fire" incidents accounted for a large proportion of allied casualties, and there were vows that better coordination and identification procedures would keep them to a minimum in this conflict. With redundant means of identifying aircraft, this kind of accident is not supposed to happen.

The other grievous blow was a fratricide attack at a rear base of the 101st Airborne Division, where a disaffected soldier described as a Muslim convert threw grenades into several tents, killing one soldier and injuring many others. If that sad event held any lesson at all, it was that war brings out the extremes in human behavior, for good and ill. In the first days of the war we saw a great deal of the first — the G.I.`s giving aid to Iraqi prisoners, townspeople welcoming the Americans and British as liberators. Now we are beginning to see the other, where welcoming civilians may turn out to be lethal Iraqi soldiers in disguise, where coalition troops inflict casualties not only on the enemy but on each other. In a sense, the real war has just begun.



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March 24, 2003
Bush Moves to Prepare Public for a Harder War
By R. W. APPLE Jr.


WASHINGTON, March 23 — Like a coach seeking a psychological advantage, President Bush pressed an effort today to temper public anticipation of an early, relatively painless victory in the fighting in Iraq.

"It is evident that it`s going to take a while to achieve our objective," the President said on the White House lawn after returning from Camp David.

"I can assure the American people we`re making good progress," Mr. Bush added, "and I can also assure them that this is just the beginning of a tough fight."

Mr. Bush spoke as word reached Washington of a sharp clash, surely the sharpest so far in this second Persian Gulf war, near Nasiriya, a strategically important city between Basra and Baghdad.

The Marine casualties there contrasted sharply, and potentially damagingly, with the news of almost unbridled coalition success in the first days of fighting. So did the ambush of an army convoy in the same area, with a dozen American troops reportedly killed or captured..

"A war is a war," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld remarked tersely on the NBC program "Meet the Press." "It`s a brutal thing."

The administration has always expected that there would be setbacks before the war`s end, especially in the environs of Baghdad, where the Republican Guard is concentrated and where the use of chemical and other weapons of mass destruction is thought more likely.

As that phase of the war draws closer, an overconfident, easily shaken public could be a problem for the administration.

Washington has ample reason to try to dampen the excitement.

A New York Times/CBS News poll, based on interviews Thursday through Saturday, shows that Americans` expectations have been rising as they watched, read and listened to accounts of wide swaths of Baghdad set ablaze by coalition bombs and missiles and American tanks racing easily and thrillingly across undefended sands. Early this month, with war clearly looming on the horizon, 43 percent of those interviewed said they expected a quick and successful campaign, as opposed to 50 who said they foresaw a protracted struggle. But late last week, 63 percent — almost two-thirds — told interviewers that they thought the war would end quickly.

More than half said that they thought the war would end in a matter of weeks rather than in months.

Part of the reason is the way that the war is being reported.

Any large-scale conflict can be viewed through several lenses, with subtly different results. The correspondent moving forward with a company or a battalion of combat troops will usually get the most vivid picture, with the most telling detail, but it may show little about the overall flux of the battle. Often he or she, lacking the broad view, will be too optimistic or too pessimistic.

In Vietnam, reporters were able to move from level to level, if they could find transportation and if they were brave enough.

In the 1991 Gulf War, they had almost no access to the front-line soldier`s perspective. This time, the system is more like the one used in World War II, except that correspondents are said to be "embedded" with small units rather than accredited to them.

"What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq," Mr. Rumsfeld cautioned last Friday. "What we`re seeing are slices of the war in Iraq."

The correspondent at regimental or division headquarters, where operational plans and intelligence are more accessible, may be better placed to assess the ebb and flow of battle, but less well placed to communicate what the troops are enduring — the blood and sweat of battle.

And the correspondent at theater headquarters can often learn little from closed-mouthed senior commanders. Just ask those who endured the sterile "five o`clock follies" briefings during the Vietnam War.

That is one reason that so many journalists have been "free-lancing," or operating in the war zone without the protection of friendly forces.

Starved for information, they have taken big chances, and some of them have already paid with their lives.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, began the process of dampening excessive expectations on Saturday at his belated first briefing of the war, at his headquarters in Doha, Qatar. He gave few details of the fighting, but he gave a confident prognosis.

"There may well be tough days ahead," he said, "but the forces on the field will achieve the objectives that have been set out by the governments of this coalition."

Given the chance to respond in kind to an Iraqi pledge to rout his forces, he answered mildly: "I don`t think it`s appropriate for senior military people to wave their arms in response to the sort of hype that was described, so I`m not going to do that."

A Marine colonel said during the repeated clashes at Nasiriya that the resistance had been far heavier than his units had expected. But neither General Franks nor his deputy, Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, who gave briefings today following the fighting near Nasiriya and elswhere, was willing to concede that any American troop units had encountered anything surprising.

"We do not consider the actions taking place in the sector as a defeat of any kind," General Abizaid said in discussing the fighting near Nasiriya.

At another point, he said that the main forces closing in on Baghdad, which he described as "powerful and unstoppable," would reach the vicinity of the capital "soon." He declined to endorse the prediction of a British general that this would happen late Monday or Tuesday.

In the long experience of the American military, he said in an obvious effort to provide some historical perspective, "there have been days much, much worse than this one by any stretch of the imagination."

Mr. Rumsfeld conceded that the struggle would intensify in the next few days, and that the United States could find itself locked in a difficult form of urban warfare.

"I`m the kind of person who is concerned about all the things and difficulties and problems that can occur," he said, sounding somewhat more measured than in recent days, "and we have spent a great deal of time thinking about them, analyzing them, preparing for them. There is a possibility that as the coalition forces move from the south and from the north and from the west that the degree of resistance could increase."

Speaking of the government in Baghdad, he went on, "On the other hand, the outcome is clear. There is no question but that that regime is through, that in fact it`s over."

Asked what the American public should expect in the days ahead, Mr. Rumsfeld replied: "The one thing I`d say is that there have to be tough days ahead. Wars are unpredictable. There are still a large number of the difficulties and things that can go wrong that are still ahead of us. The young men and women that are out there are doing a superb job."

Sounding nothing like a cheerleader, he added: "How long is not knowable. How many casualties is not knowable. And that`s just the only honest thing that anyone can say."



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Bush`s Nuclear Revolution aus Foreign Affairs:

http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/20030304faessay1022…

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washingtonpost.com
In Support, But Still Skeptical


By William Raspberry

Monday, March 24, 2003; Page A13


The disclaimers practically write themselves. Of course I support (and pray for) the Americans fighting in Iraq -- and their commander in chief. I fervently hope for a quick end to the conflict, with a minimum of death and suffering on all sides. I do not doubt that the world will be better off without Saddam Hussein. I`m not interested in making more difficult the brutal task on which America and its allies are embarked.

Did I forget to mention that I hope our side wins? If so, it`s because I take an American-led victory as a forgone conclusion.

My fear is the victory will prove Pyrrhic, in the dictionary meaning of the term -- "costly to the point of outweighing expected benefits."

The costs include the erosion of America`s credibility in the world. We will prove what was never in doubt: that we are the mightiest nation, militarily, in the history of the world. We will prove, as well, that this administration can be counted on to deliver on its threats.

But can the world -- can we at home -- count on the people who lead us to tell us the truth about their motives? The shifting rationales offered for launching this war have come across as the spiel of a salesman with a single-product inventory -- designed not to find out what the customer wants but how to get him to buy what the salesman is determined to sell.

It is to oust the Satan who "killed his own people." It is to punish him for his manifold offenses against the United Nations. It is to remove the tyrant`s weapons of mass destruction. It is to liberate the Iraqi people from their despotic leader. And, oh yes, it`s to make America safe from international terrorism.

So why are we ratcheting up the security designation from yellow to orange? Why don`t we feel safer?

It`s not just in our campaign against terrorism that the cost of the war could outweigh its benefits. The suspension of ordinary liberties in our own country -- open-ended detentions without charges, summary deportations, loss of privacy rights and more -- is nudging us in the direction of systems we claim to detest. We have made dissent -- the fundamental right of Americans -- virtually un-American. We are allowing Big Brother a more and more intrusive role in our lives, without major objection from rank-and-file Americans.

We say we are fighting for our freedom. So why don`t we feel freer?

The monetary cost of the war is unknowable, but this much is known already: We are spending billions of dollars (and were prepared to spend billions more in our embarrassing attempt to purchase allies for the war we were determined to have) that won`t, as a result, be available to do some of the things that desperately need doing at home. The gutting of the federal commitment to our children`s education, the shifting of welfare, prescription assistance, health care and care for the elderly to the already overburdened states is making life more difficult for those whose lives are difficult enough already.

Well, war always requires sacrifice, doesn`t it? Yes, but why must it be the have-nots who sacrifice, while the rich stand to prosper, not just from changes in the tax structure but also from the booty of war -- oil money and construction contracts? Won`t it be a lovely irony if we wind up paying more attention to the poor, hungry and ill-educated of Iraq than to our own?

Finally, it is reasonable to ask whether our military action might not have the effect of spawning more terrorism than it prevents.

If we should have learned anything from our too-cursory attention to the history of the Middle East, it is that unavenged defeats fester, sometimes for centuries.

Even if the Iraqi people welcome the allied forces as liberators (a proposition open to much doubt), how long will it be before we come to be seen, by millions of Arabs and Muslims, not as liberators but as religion-tinged crusaders? Will we be smart enough -- and lucky enough -- to avoid being drawn into some sort of holy war?

Of course, now that we are at war, we have to support our troops and hold the homeland together. But that doesn`t mean we have to put our intelligence on hold.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Oscar`s War Protest Trifecta

Liberal Hollywood has been under conservative attack from the days of Nixon and McCarthy up to the present days of Lieberman and DeLay, so it`s no wonder that Oscar played PC this year, not wanting to have Hollywood and Vine turned into Freedom and Vine. Word was out a week ago that the usual progressive activists who have spoken out at past Academy Awards were being kept from the podium this year. That didn`t happen, because podium tasks were carefully assigned so that speaking out would be awkward and self-defeating for the selected activists. Susan Sarandon was given the job of introducing clips of those who died this year. (Steve Martin said he would be honored to be on that list some day.) Richard Gere was selected to introduce a clip of his CHICAGO, up for a best picture award. Gere said nothing about the war, even in code. Sarandon talked about how important it is in life to learn to live with one`s deeds. Even Babs kept herself on a short leash, talking about how she values living in a country where everyone, even artists, are free to speak out, but choose not to speak out. That left the war protest fireworks to the Oscar winners

Spanish director-writer Pedro Almadovar won for best original screenplay and took up most of his five minutes accepting the award for TALK TO HER on behalf of the people of the world who believe in human rights and international legality. Almadovar said his time was up and the audience applauded, perhaps finding the allusion to those who question the legality of the Bush war vague enough to ignore.

Earlier, Adrien Brody, who won Best Actor for THE PIANIST, confessed that his speech was unprepared, but interrupted the orchestra when it tried to cut him off after a few minutes, claiming that this was his only shot and he had more to say. Brody then talked of the world`s sadness caused by the dehumanization of war, hoped that God and Allah would watch over mankind, and called for peace, getting a standing ovation from the audience. Supporting Actor winner Chris Cooper (ADAPTATION) also called for peace in his speech, but the most pointed peace reference came from the mexican star of Y TU, MAMA TAMBIEN, whose name I didn`t catch, who introduced the original score of FRIDA, saying that Mexican painter and communist Frida Kahlo would be against the Bush war if she were alive today. But the real anti-war fireworks was reserved for the Best Full-length Documentary winner.

Progressive activist Michael Moore won the Oscar and a standing ovation for BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, and came on stage to accept his award with a large group of people, most of whom, it turned out, were the other documentary filmmakers whose films were up for the same award. Moore began by saying all of those folks were on the stage because they were in agreement with what he was going to say. He then said, "We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons." He went on to say, "Same on you, Bush. Anytime you`ve got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against ya, your time is up," as the orchestra upped its volume and the mic sunk into the stage. Moore`s speech drew both boos and applause, but most of the audience sat in nervous silence.

Not long after, host Steve Martin came back on stage and told the audience that it was really sweet backstage, the Teamsters were helping Michael Moore into the trunk of a limo. "You should see it," he told the laughing audience. Then Julia Roberts came out, stared into the camera, said, "Well." And paused. For a moment you could see her thinking. Then she blinked and went on with her duties. --Jerry Politex, 03.24.03

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Bemerkung:
Im Board gibt es schon genug Gerichtsboten, die sich für Juristen ausgeben. Deshalb lieber einen gut geschriebenen Kommentar einstellen, als Unsinn aus eigener Hand. Die Selbstüberschätzung im Board ist grauenhaft. Logisch!
Auch KGB (King George Bush) hat das Fell des Bären schon verteilt, bevor er (der Bär) erlegt ist.
Kein Wunder, daß bei dieser Arroganz eine "Klammheimliche Freude" aufkommt.
Das ist schrecklich.
J.

Bush Is America`s Mid-Life Crisis

Well, it seems that the three day rule holds for war as well as for fish, for as Bush`s crisp new crusade entered the weekend, things were starting to stink. Rather than reiterate the increasing litany of discomforts, perhaps this might be a good time to remember how this war was originally envisioned by one of its primary architects - in Richard Perle`s estimation, the total number of troops needed for the Iraq wouldn`t exceed 40,000 (and as for the Pentagon`s claim that a few hundred thousand were needed: "Those Army guys don`t know anything") and that Iraqis would dance joyously in the streets.

So far, not so good for Mr. Perle`s powers of prophecy; so it wasn`t at all uncharacteristic that Mr. Perle got a little ahead of his own curve at the American Enterprise Institute on Friday, not just gloating over the apparently effortless invasion of Iraq and the destruction of the U.N., but bragging about the next targets of `regime change` - Iran and Syria, with `containment` targeted for France and Germany. (Though how Mr. Perle`s neighbors at his summer home in Provence will react to this, he didn`t mention.)

The impact of the weekend`s developments I think seems to arise as much as anything from Mr. Perle`s vision of an effortless invasion, for this vision seems to sadly accord with rather too much of American fashion these days. Too much of American style consists of working very hard to present the appearance of effortless affluence; that we`ve entered into that state of grace occupied by the imperial CEO, where reality itself is created by our personal fiat. And to this state of mind, George W. Bush would be the perfect president, representing as he does a man who has never worked or applied himself to anything, and yet to whom seemingly all the world`s earthly power has accrued. It`s the promise of consumerism applied to every aspect of life - every need or appetite easily satisfied, paid for with easy credit.

Today, when virtually the whole newspaper seemed an obituary, there appeared an interesting one, of `Elliott Jaques, 86: Made Map of Midlife Crisis.` Jacques was a psychoanalyst and management consultant whose first major theory was that industrial pay levels are scaled to the length of the worker`s or executive`s attention span. When entering his 40`s, his optimism and self-confidence darkened, and he investigated why.

"The compulsive attempts, in many men and women reaching middle age, to remain young, the hypochondriacal concern over health and appearance, the emergence of sexual promiscuity in order to prove youth and potency, the hollowness and lack of genuine enjoyment of life....are familiar patterns."

I don`t think I`m alone in noticing a pronounced `hollowness and lack of genuine enjoyment of life` in America, and instead of acknowledging the problem, we ever-more fiercely embrace consumerism`s promises - ever bigger SUV`s and fast food portions, etc., creating an environment where empty calories has become the national standard in everything.

I don`t think it`s just a conceptual conceit to point out that the baby boomers have reached middle age, and at the same time you could say the same for consumer culture and even America as a country. And so perhaps it should be no surprise that as a country we might be susceptible to facile sales talk that promises easy wars that will return us to our days of youthful vigor and unreflective self-confidence - because this is all the Bush administration is, and all it has done.

So, to the world, I would like to apologize on behalf of those Americans listening to the better angels of our nature, and who possess due respect for the opinions of mankind. It`s a stupid thing we`re doing right now, and hopefully, like the mid-life crisis man waking up with a hangover in a Tijuana whorehouse with his wallet stolen, we`ll soon see the error of our ways and return to sanity. 03.24.03



http://www.bushwatch.com/kent.htm

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam Lange nicht mehr zitiert.


Rome, Hitler And Bush – Facing Reality - Monday 24, March-2003
by David Comissiong
THE “will of power” and the “impulse to dominate” have been dominant trends in much of the European thought, behaviour and culture over the past 2 500 years.

What we are witnessing with United States President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and their assault on the nation and people of Iraq, is the spectacle of the international Anglo-Saxon ruling oligarchy’s love affair with force, power and domination.

Make no mistake about it, the ultimate aim that the Bush and Blair regimes have embarked upon is nothing less than “universal or world domination”. Iraq is merely a stepping stone along the way.

And we must not fall into the fatal error of believing that these blood-thirsty policies are the personal creations of the two individual political leaders of the United States and Britain. On the contrary, it is important to grasp that Bush and Blair are the agents for powerful, deeply entrenched Anglo-American elites, who have determined that the 21st century must be a new “age of empire”, totally saturated with Anglo-American power.

In fact, the fundamental policy-making of the Bush Administration is held captive by a cabal of powerful policy-makers who operate under the aegis of an entity called, “Project For The New American Century”.

Key leaders of the “Project” are United States Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and such strategically placed National Security and Pentagon advisers as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Abram Schulsky and Elliot Abrams.

Any meaningful effort to analyse and understand this imperialist drive toward universal domination, and to develop effective strategies to counteract it, must examine the historical precedents upon which it is based. The two most important such precedents are the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler and the ancient Roman Empire.

One philosopher/historian who examined the Roman and Hitlerian enterprises on detail, and who sought to pinpoint the common fundamental strategies that these two imperialisms used in order to construct their oppressive empires, was Simone Weil.

In her 1939 essay entitled Reflections On The Origins Of Hitlerism, Weil identified common, fundamental characteristics of Roman and Hitlerian policy – characteristics which are today unfolding before our very eyes with the Bush and Blair regimes.

The first principle of both Roman and Nazi policy was to maintain the maximum degree of prestige in all circumstances and at any cost. There is indeed no other way by which a limited power can proceed to universal domination – for no single nation can possess in reality, sufficient force to dominate many other peoples.

This is why in the third Punic War, the Romans exhausted themselves in an interminable war against a relatively small city – Carthage – whose existence was no threat to them. It was all a matter of maintaining the prestige and reputation of Roman power.

Indeed, the parallels between Carthage and Iraq are startling. In 149 BC, Rome won a quick and complete victory over the North African city of Carthage, and the Carthaginians accepted all Roman demands and surrendered their arms. They were then ordered to abandon their city and permit it to be destroyed. Thereupon, the Carthaginians rescinded their surrender and defended themselves heroically for three years. After much effort by the Romans, the weak and harmless city was finally captured and razed to the ground.

Rome, Nazi Germany and George Bush’s America also exhibit a great concern to preserve the prestige of their power by investing it with the appearance of legality. As Weil noted – “Pretexts, are not useless, even when they are transparent and cannot fool anyone, provided they are put forward by the strong.” Hence, Bush’s grossly contradictory and hypocritical contention that his assault in Iraq is legally justified by the United Nations Charter and Security Council Resolution 1441.

And what will be the eventual outcome of an age of global United States domination?

Well, once again, the record of Rome provides a clue:

“The long and profound decadence that was caused for the subjugated peoples by a single, centralised domination cannot be denied. The Mediterranean basin was reduced to spiritual sterility . . . The Roman peace was soon the peace of the desert, of a world from which had vanished together with political liberty and diversity, the creative inspiration that produces great art, great literature, science and philosophy.”

David Comissiong is president of the Clement Payne Movement and writes this column in that capacity.


http://www.nationnews.com/

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Und die Erde ist eine Scheibe

March 23, 2003, 10:10PM


Texas sodomy law goes to high court this week
Houston-area case could become landmark
By PATTY REINERT
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- When police descended on John Lawrence`s Houston-area home one night in 1998 and found him having sex with another man, they hauled the couple off to jail and charged them with violating Texas` little-known Homosexual Conduct Law.

Lawrence and his partner, Tyron Garner, pleaded no contest, paid $200 fines and then decided to fight back. This week, their case will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, setting the stage for what observers on both sides of the issue say is the most significant gay rights decision in two decades.

"Americans value privacy in their bedrooms," said Ruth Harlow, an attorney with New York`s Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund who is representing Lawrence and Garner. "We should all be able to take for granted that the police cannot burst in and tell us how we can express love and affection for another consenting adult in private."

The state of Texas disagrees and will argue that there is no reason for the high court to recognize a constitutional right to engage in sex outside of "monogamous heterosexual marriage," said Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal.

"Reasonable people can disagree about whether something is moral or amoral, such as sexual intimacy between people of the same sex," Rosenthal said last week. "But the Supreme Court has said in the past that those issues should be resolved in the legislature."

In the state`s brief to the court, Rosenthal wrote that the state has an interest in discouraging its citizens from engaging in "what is still perceived to be immoral conduct."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called Texas` sodomy law "appropriate," and 70 Texas lawmakers have filed a "friend-of-the-court" brief supporting the state`s position. They have been joined by political and religious groups who are concerned that any bolstering of gay rights by the court could lead to more acceptance of gays marrying and rearing children, which they consider immoral.

Weighing in on the side of Lawrence and Garner are the American Bar Association, several religious groups, historians, psychologists and a broad range of Democrats, Republicans and libertarians who believe sodomy laws amount to the government snooping where it was not meant to intrude.

The Bush administration has not taken sides in the case.

Sodomy laws, which ban oral or anal sex, existed in every U.S. state as recently as the 1960s, but have since been thrown out in most. The high court last considered such laws in 1986 when it upheld Georgia`s law, ruling that there is no constitutional right to engage in homosexual sex, even in private.

Georgia has since repealed its law, but Texas and 12 other states kept theirs. Punishments range from fines to 20 years in prison.

Nine of the states that still have the laws on their books -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Idaho and Utah -- consider sodomy a crime for heterosexuals as well as homosexuals.

Texas, which used to outlaw sodomy for everybody, rewrote its law in 1973 and renamed it the Homosexual Conduct Law. Same-sex couples engaging in oral or anal sex can be charged with a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum $500 fine. Opposite-sex couples can engage in the same acts without breaking any law.

Lawrence and Garner argue that such unequal treatment of gay and straight people violates the U.S. Constitution`s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Texas disagrees, saying states can make the call as to what citizens consider acceptable behavior. In this case, lawyers for the state will argue, Texans consider it immoral for people of the same gender to have sex.

The nine justices, who decided last December to hear the case, could use it to rule on the constitutionality of all sodomy laws, or they could limit their decision to laws that target homosexuals. The case will be argued Wednesday and should be decided by July.

The case before the court began in 1998, when Harris County deputies responding to a "weapons disturbance" tip burst into Lawrence`s Pasadena apartment. The officers quickly determined that the gun report was bogus, but they found Lawrence, then 55, and Garner, then 31, having sex in Lawrence`s bedroom. The men were arrested and taken to jail, where they spent the night.

Lawrence and Garner, who were "outed" as gay when their jailhouse mugshots hit the press, have declined all requests for interviews.

Harlow said that while Texas` sodomy law is rarely used as it was in her clients` case, it has been cited by people trying to deny gays jobs or housing, the right to meet in public libraries and schools, to adopt children, serve as foster parents, or gain custody of their children after a divorce. It also has been used by opponents of gay and lesbian candidates running for public office, who sometimes try to paint gay candidates as lawbreakers.

Former Texas Rep. Glen Maxey, an openly gay Democrat from Austin who retired in January after six terms in office, said he faced "a steady drumbeat" of opposition among his fellow lawmakers who used the law as a license to belittle him and treat him as a criminal.

"People would ask me, `How can you legally be here? How can you be a member of the Legislature if you have taken an oath to uphold the law,` " he said.

The Texas Legislature has repeatedly considered, and declined, to repeal the state`s sodomy law. This session, with the issue pending before the Supreme Court, gay rights supporters have not filed a bill.


Chronicle reporter Andy Netzel contributed to this story.

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What comes next?
The shape of the postwar world
Joseph Cirincione
Sunday, March 23, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ar…


We already have a fairly good idea of what the world will look like after the Iraq War is concluded and the Iraq Occupation begins. If President Bush`s vision of a quick military victory, a benign and untroubled occupation and the quick construction of a democratic Iraq is correct, then the rules and structures of the international system will be completely rewritten in favor of a U.S.-centric system.

However, the future is unlikely to be so obliging.

The reason so many governments and experts urged Iraqi disarmament short of war is that the consequences of the invasion are likely to be mixed at best and possibly catastrophic. This concern does not underestimate the brutality of the Iraqi regime, but reflects a fear that the war cure is worse than the Saddam disease.

Here are four likely consequences of America`s first pre-emptive war.


MIDEAST INSTABILITY WILL GROW
For administration hawks, Iraq is the beginning, not the end.

Iraq is the start of a plan to change all the regimes in the Middle East. "There is tremendous potential to transform the region," says Richard Perle, "If a tyrant like Saddam (Hussein) can be brought down, others are going to begin to think and act to bring down the tyrants that are inflicting them." U. S. troops will be there to help in these transformations, operating from new, more secure bases in Iraq.

It is more likely that the mass movements in the war`s wake will be anti- American, not pro-democracy. Arab citizens, already inflamed over what they consider the brutal military assaults of Ariel Sharon`s and willing to excuse suicide bombers, will see American troops as Israeli reinforcements, not Iraq`s liberators.

Fatwas are already flowing from mainstream clerics urging all Muslims to resist the U.S. invasion. Governments may indeed fall, but it may be the rulers in Jordan that are threatened, not the dictatorship in Syria.


TERRORISM WILL INCREASE
For the president, terrorism is the new communism. "Freedom and fear are at war," he says "and we know that God is not neutral between them." There are no credible connections between Baghdad and al Qaeda, but in the president`s mind the two are one and thus, he promised the nation, "The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

But the war -- whatever the outcome -- will likely increase both amateur and organized terrorism. Much of the terrorism will be spontaneous outrage at the invasion and deaths, striking out at close by, identifiable American targets.

Some will certainly be sophisticated attacks on the American homeland. "An American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by al Qaeda and other groups," a senior American counterintelligence official told The New York Times. "And it is a very effective tool."


ALLIANCES WILL BE WEAKENED
Never before has a U.S. president so scorned world opinion. Truman had the United Nations with him in the Korean War, Kennedy had the Organization of American States backing his blockade of Cuba; Clinton had NATO in the war in Kosovo. Bush goes almost alone. The United Nations and NATO will never be the same. They and other multilateral institutions are now under pressure from both sides.

U.S. conservatives have already targeted the United Nations for destruction.

"The United Nations is not a good idea badly implemented. It is a bad idea," says columnist George Will.

On the other side, there is deep distrust of Bush and his vision to transform the world. The staid Financial Times of London opined, "The measure of this diplomatic fiasco is that a perfectly arguable case about one of the most despicable dictators of modern times was so mishandled that public opinion internationally came to worry more about the misuse of U.S. power than about Saddam Hussein."

Of the 200 countries in the world, U. S. claims 40 governments support the war. And the people of almost all these nations actually opposed the attack in overwhelming majorities.

If the war goes well, world publics may fear emboldened, postwar U.S. intentions even more. The Bush doctrine seems likely to generate exactly the anti-U.S. coalitions that it was designed to discourage.


PROLIFERATION MAY GROW
What lesson will North Korean or Iranian leaders draw from the Iraq war? Should they curtail their nuclear ambitions, or speed them up?

If inspections had been given a chance to work, if Hussein had been disarmed without war, it would have been seen as a tremendous victory for Bush and as the world`s enforcement of international treaties.

This is now Bush`s War, a highly personal vendetta and exercise in raw power. Worse, to justify war, the Bush administration has disparaged inspections, thus undercutting future applications in Iran or North Korea.

But the impact may be more immediate.

If the war destabilizes Pakistan, nuclear weapons, materials or scientists may flow to other nations or terrorist groups. North Korea, ignored during the crisis, may go overtly nuclear, pushing nuclear ambitions in South Korea or even Japan. Iraqi military officers or scientists, fearing war crime trials, may flee invading U.S. troops carrying their knowledge or even weapons with them to other nations or groups.

The "bold stroke" so long sought by administration hawks has now hammered not only Hussein`s regime but the international institutions so patiently constructed by Democrats and Republicans over the past 60 years. It will destabilize the region, increase terrorism, decrease alliance unity and make the spread of deadly weapons more likely without measurably increasing our national security.

That will be the postwar world.

Joseph Cirincione is the author of "Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction" and director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Absolut lesenswert, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

R.C. Longworth: `War from 30,00 feet: Whipping up a crisis`
Date: Monday, March 24 @ 10:08:56 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism


Bush has stampeded America into conflict

By R.C. Longworth, Chicago Tribune

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

If the only thing we still have to fear is fear itself, there is more than enough to go around.

When President Roosevelt coined the phrase in his inaugural address in 1933, he used it to banish fear and steel the nation`s courage in facing down the Great Depression.

Seventy years later to the month, President Bush is using fear as a weapon, not to build courage among Americans but to stampede them into endorsing a case for a war that has been built literally on a grab bag of possibilities, contingencies, ifs and maybes, of things that haven`t happened but could happen, of bad guys who might hit us if we don`t hit them first.



This is a created crisis. Now that the crisis is upon us, we can only hope that it passes quickly, with minimum loss of life on either side, and that our native skepticism prevents it from happening again.

Supporters of the war have presented some strong arguments--Saddam Hussein`s repeated flouting of UN resolutions, or his reign of terror over the Iraqi people. But when Bush made his final case for war in his ultimatum speech to the nation Tuesday night, what came through instead was the voice of a frightened man trying to infect the nation with his fear.

In the short term, this fear is working. In times of crisis, it often does. When the president of the United States sounds the alarm, the natural instinct of Americans is to rally to his side, to assume that he knows the facts and is reacting to a real danger. The hunch that the danger is mostly imaginary is as unproven as are most of the administration`s justifications for this war.

Fear has finally given Bush the popular backing for the war that had eluded him since he first began campaigning for it. Less than six months ago, barely 20 percent of Americans told pollsters that they would approve a war on Iraq without the backing of allies or the UN. Now that support is more than 70 percent, even though the UN has refused its backing and the allied support ranges from the plausible, like Britain, through the symbolic, like Iceland, to the ludicrous, like Azerbaijan or Eritrea.

Most of the rest of the world remains unconvinced, not out of affection for Hussein but out of conviction that Bush and his neoconservative advisers have manufactured an unneeded war, for reasons of their own, and are leading an America that, with its power and lack of restraint, is more dangerous to world order than Hussein ever could be.

"As much as one would like to get Saddam Hussein out of power, this is going to be George Bush`s war," said the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Too many Americans, cheered on by the administration, blame this attitude on the French. But it takes more than Gallic lures to persuade so much of the world, including allies who have stood beside us in conflicts through the past half-century, to desert us on this one.

National hysteria

The fact is that national hysteria does not translate well. Americans not only are afraid but they are isolated in their fear, with a few scattered sympathizers, like Albania and Uzbekistan, arrayed against the overwhelming opinion of a world that thinks we have gone collectively nuts.

Most commentators, noting the macho strutting of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the president`s insistence that the world is either for us or against us, have blamed the Iraq policy more on testosterone than terror, with an unhealthy dash of hyper-religious certainty mixed in. But Bush often comes across as truly frightened, convinced of threats that the rest of the world just doesn`t see.

These presidential fears were on full display in his ultimatum speech.

The president claimed that Hussein has "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." By any reckoning, this just isn`t true. No one doubts that Iraq has developed chemical and biological weapons of uncertain effectiveness, as have many other nations. But effective anthrax? Not known. Smallpox? No evidence. Nuclear weapons? Certainly not now.

"The danger is clear," Bush said. "Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq . . . terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in one country or another."

"Clear dangers" seldom contain so many ifs or coulds, so many varied weapons in the hands of so many unidentified terrorists intent on acting "one day . . . in one country or another." If we don`t attack Hussein, the president surmised, he "might try to conduct terrorist operations."

"These attacks are not inevitable," he conceded, but "they are . . . possible. And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail."

A possibility is not a fact but a guess, a worst-case worry that could be applied to any cloud on the international horizon. If there is a threat of blackmail here, it is self-imposed.

If the U.S. does not attack now, "in one year or five years the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over," Bush said.

No sane analyst believes this. After 12 years of international sanctions, Iraq is weaker now than it was before the 1991 gulf war. Five years from now? Who knows? No one does, including the administration. But the thought that a Third World international pariah could multiply its strength and turn itself into a power sufficient to blackmail the most powerful nation in the history of the world is nothing but panic-mongering.

The result is a "pre-emptive" war that, by the administration`s own admission, breaks international law.

International law permits every nation to defend itself, by force if necessary. If a nation has evidence that an attack is imminent, it is legally justified in acting first, to hit before it is hit.

But no one, not even the administration, argues that an attack by Iraq is imminent. The president himself says the danger may be five years away. To strike Iraq now is to strike against a will-o`-the-wisp, not a certain danger, to hit the other guy before he even gets the gloves on. International law forbids this.

The Bush administration knows this and says the solution is not to obey the law but to change it.

The administration`s National Security Strategy, issued seven months ago, reads now like a preplanned justification for this war in its rejection of "traditional concepts of deterrence."

The paper grants that international law "conditions the legitimacy of pre-emption on the existence of an imminent threat--most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack." Obviously, the Iraq situation doesn`t meet that definition, so the paper says that "we must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today`s adversaries."

In other words, if international law does not let us chase mirages, then we rewrite the law.

Spreading the fear

This is the codification of fear, which seems to be in the saddle of national policy right now.

A policy based on fear works only if the fear is widely spread. The administration has worked hard to spread it, through repeated "orange alerts" and the recommended hoarding of emergency items such as duct tape. Terrorist threats exist, as 9/11 proved, but a terrified population is in no condition to sort out the real from the imaginary and take realistic precautions.

In times like this, we look to elected officials for leadership, but some seem almost unhinged by the terror in the air. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a physician, wrote that "physicians and policymakers have a duty to help keep people healthy and alive." The threat from Hussein is so great and immediate, Frist said, that "preventive care" is needed now "to protect humanity. . . . Getting rid of his regime is our best inoculation."

Frist does not seem to have realized that this "inoculation" will kill thousands of people, most of them Iraqis. Or perhaps he feels that the Hippocratic oath doesn`t apply to foreigners.

National hysterias come and go, leaving a great deal of damage and creating a sense of communal shame when the panic wears off: The McCarthyite era is an example. Invariably, the cause is fear--of foreigners, of nameless threats, of Reds under the bed.

The United States is going through such a hysteria now. We can only pray that not too many lives are sacrificed to it.

R.C. Longworth is a Tribune senior correspondent

Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune

Reprinted from The Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/
perspective/chi-0303230274mar23,1,1593536.story

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Sie können nur noch verlieren

Flags in the dust

Although coalition forces may be winning the military battle on land and in the air, political incompetence means that Iraq is winning the battle of hearts and minds, writes Brian Whitaker

Monday March 24, 2003

One of the finest war photographs ever taken shows the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima in February, 1945. The battle for this tiny island in the Pacific, just five miles long and two miles wide, lasted 31 days and cost 6,821 American lives.
In the picture, six helmeted figures grapple with a pole, attempting to plant it on a rock-strewn mountain top. At the end of the pole, the Stars and Stripes flutters in the wind against a vast open sky.

The symbolism of this picture, taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, was clear to everyone at the time. The huddle of human figures represented heroic endeavour, while the flag and the sky signalled hope and freedom.

As an artistic composition, the photograph was so brilliant that ever since the day it appeared there have been people who claimed it was specially posed - though there is ample evidence that it was not. In just 1/400th of a second, Rosenthal`s camera captured the spirit of the time.

Maybe this was what someone had in mind early last Friday when invading American marines removed an Iraqi flag from a building in Umm Qasr, just across the border from Kuwait, and raised the Stars and Stripes. But what might have seemed a noble gesture in 1945 is open to different interpretations 58 years later.

In Britain, even supporters of the war denounced the flag-raising as a stupid act, undermining claims that the goal is to liberate Iraq, not to conquer it - and by nightfall the Iraqi flag was back.

In the midst of more dramatic events, this was a very minor incident, but a telling one nonetheless: it highlighted a credibility gap that may yet become a catastrophic flaw in America`s war strategy.

Most wars start by accident or with a flourish of misplaced jingoism. But this war is unique. It is hard to recall any conflict in history that aroused so much opposition even before it began. At best its legitimacy and purpose is in serious doubt. At worst, millions regard it as illegal and/or immoral.

Besides that, it is led by a president for whom few outside the United States have any respect. Just as the onus was placed on Iraq, during the period of inspections, to prove that it had no weapons of mass destruction, the onus now is on the invasion forces to convince a sceptical world of their bona fides. This is probably impossible to do, since the official and unofficial aims of the war cannot be reconciled.

One example of confused messages came on the first day with the attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Apart from looking hasty and opportunistic, it conflicted with argument made during the UN inspection process that the main goal was to disarm Iraq.

That might not have been so bad if, after Saddam had appeared on television to show that he was still alive, US officials had quashed speculation that he might be dead. Whatever private doubts they might have harboured (about the use of lookalikes, etc), joining in the guesswork merely cast doubt on their credibility as sources of authoritative information.

The Centcom command centre in Qatar, with its hugely expensive press facilities, has also been slow to get its case across. It was not until Saturday that General Tommy Franks got round to speaking to the world`s media, with a polished performance that said almost nothing. In the meantime, other officials made all sorts of statements that were contradictory in some cases and downright wrong in others.

The battle for Umm Qasr, the small port near the border with Kuwait has been won and un-won so many times that by now most people have lost count. It`s no excuse to attribute these failures to the "fog of war" or "psychological operations" against the Baghdad regime.

Iraqi spokesmen, on the other hand, have been remarkably forthcoming and, if we disregard the usual rhetoric, the factual content of their statements has often been more accurate than that of the invasion forces. Their figures for Iraqi casualties have also been low enough to sound plausible.

Friday brought the appalling "Shock n` Awe Show" which, in its visual effects, resembled something that might have been conceived by a big-budget Hollywood director. Its military purpose, if any, is still far from clear, and those shocked by it were mainly TV viewers outside Iraq.

After decades of wars, sanctions and repression, Iraqis themselves have become inured to almost anything. As the attack was ending, some of the Arab TV channels lingered for a few seconds on a bizarre scene in flickering night-vision green: Iraqi spectators standing in open parkland on the opposite side of the river, watching the fireworks.

Though this attack was meant to terrify the Baghdad regime into submission, nobody in Washington seems to have anticipated its effect on the rest of the world. To some in the Arab and Muslim countries, Shock and Awe is terrorism by another name; to others, a crime that compares unfavourably with September 11.

To the homespun folks in Middletown, California - recorded by the BBC the other day singing patriotic songs around their dinner table - such perceptions may be utterly incomprehensible, but they are real and cannot be ignored. They explain why the American flag has become a liability and why westerners in Yemen, for example, have taken to flying the blue-and-gold European flag from their cars to discourage attackers.

General Franks, of course, is at pains to point out that modern American missiles are extremely accurate and that every target is carefully selected to minimise civilian casualties. This may be, but it takes only a few exceptions to persuade people otherwise - as happened at the weekend when al-Jazeera television showed millions of Arab viewers the picture of a child with a shattered head.

As the invasion forces move closer to Baghdad, it is still an open question as to whether ordinary Iraqis will view them as conquerors or liberators. The omens so far are not particularly good. When they arrived in Safwan last Friday, one Iraqi greeted them by saying: "What took you so long? God help you to become victorious."

Possibly he meant it, though it`s not hard to imagine similar words being addressed to anyone who arrived in town with a conspicuous display of weaponry. Two Reuters correspondents, travelling independently of the military, told a different story:

"One group of Iraqi boys on the side of the road smiled and waved as a convoy of British tanks and trucks rolled by. But once it had passed, leaving a trail of dust and grit in its wake, their smiles turned to scowls. `We don`t want them here,` said 17-year-old Fouad, looking angrily up at the plumes of grey smoke rising from Basra. `Saddam is our leader,` he said defiantly. `Saddam is good`."

All these effects were easily foreseeable, though not easily avoided once a decision was made to go to war. With less than a week gone, the invasion forces may be slowly winning the battle on land and in the air but Iraq is winning the battle of hearts and minds.

To have reached such a position against an adversary who is demonstrably one of the world`s most disgusting tyrants, to have transformed him into a hero figure, and to have transformed the American flag into a symbol of oppression, is not only unfortunate but reeks of political incompetence.

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Für alle, die mehr lesen wollen die besten Kommentare der englischschreibender Presse:


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/


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[Blumberg]

Jo, guter sräd, werde morgen malein bischen weiterlesen,bin jetzt müde..
aber das mit der US Flagge habe ich auch gesehen und mich hat der Schlag getroffen.....sind die echt so bescheuert und wollen echt den ganzen Orient auf die westliche Welt hetzen ??

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Nur heisse Luft?

March 24, 2003 CONTRIBUTOR ARCHIVES
About that Alleged Chemical Weapons Plant Found in Iraq. It was Actually Discovered 12 years ago, Mr. Bush. Also, Who Will be Planting WMD If Saddam Doesn`t Have Them?

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

From a March 23rd CNN article:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/23/sprj.irq.iraqi.pla…

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pentagon officials on Sunday said the U.S. military has secured a facility in southern Iraq that may have been used to produce chemical weapons.

The officials cautioned that it was not clear what suspect materials may still be at the plant, which is located in Najaf, some 90 miles south of Baghdad."

* * *

From a BuzzFlash Reader:

Buzz,

The "discovery" of the "huge chemical weapons factory" in Najaf is not a discovery. This facility has been known about since 1991 (witness below). "You do the math"

...Summary: [deleted] Several sites in Iraq with the capability to produce and store BW weapons. Although the capability exists, no evidence of current production or storage was found. Enclosures. Text 1. Background [deleted] suspected biological warfare sites. Among the sites were the Al-Kindi company, An-Najaf, Taji, the Serum and Vaccine institute, the
Agriculture Research and Water Resources Center, and the Ibn Haithan institute....

Source: GulfLINK, "Suspect BW Sites in Iraq," DIA, October 1991, File: 961031_950719_60210003_92d.txt.

Leith Elder

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 24. März 2003, 23:03
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,241939,00.html


Saddams Strategie

Die Guerilla-Krieger vom Tigris

Die irakischen Soldaten haben offensichtlich ein Mittel gefunden, um gegen die drückende Überlegenheit der alliierten Truppen anzukämpfen. Sie nutzen die Taktik von Guerilla-Kämpfern - und versetzen ihre Gegner damit in Angst und Schrecken.

Camp al-Sayllihah - Den 24. März werden US-Sergants John Goodier und Mathew Mueller als ihren zweiten Geburtstag in Erinnerung behalten. Während der Wache war plötzlich eine Granate haarscharf an ihren Köpfen vorbei geflogen. Wenig Zentimeter nur trennten die beiden Wachposten an diesem Tag vom sicheren Tod.

Mehr Sorgen noch bereiten ihren Vorgesetzten aber die Umstände des Angriffs. Denn die Granate war keineswegs von einer Stellung der Iraker abgeschossen worden, oder von einem Soldaten in Uniform. Der Mann habe ausgesehen wie ein Zivilist, sagten die Sergants aus. Kein Detail habe auf die drohende Gefahr hingedeutet.

Damit tritt der Krieg in eine neue Phase ein, die für die zahlenmäßig und technisch haushoch überlegenen Truppen der Alliierten extrem ungemütlich werden könnte. Statt sich Mann gegen Mann von der Übermacht hinmetzeln zu lassen, operieren irakische Elitekämpfer der Fedajin verstärkt aus dem Hinterhalt - lautlos und ohne Mitleid für den Gegner.

Saddam Hussein soll die Einheit der Fedajin 1991 gebildet haben, um die inneren Unruhen, die auf die Befreiung Kuwaits durch die Amerikaner folgten, im Keim zu ersticken. Ihnen soll der Diktator sogar noch eher trauen als seinen Republikanischen Garden. Die Kämpfer wiederum gehorchen nach Informationen des US-Geheimdienstes auf das Kommando von Husseins Sohn Udai und sind ihrem Führer bedingungslos ergeben. Sie würden sogar ihre Eltern töten, wenn es ihnen befohlen würde, heißt es. Für Hussein zu sterben sei für sie eine Ehre.

Im Kampf gegen die Eindringlinge nutzt die Spezialtruppe vomLand am Tigris alle Tricks. Viele kämpfen in den Reihen der Frontsoldaten oder mischen sich in Zivilkleidung unter das Volk. Sie operieren mit leichten Waffen, die sie unter der Kleidung verstecken können. Nach Aussage eines Brigade-Generals reisen einige sogar per Bus oder Taxi zum Einsatz. Andere wiederum sollen sich in Häusern verstecken, die offensichtlich von Zivilisten bewohnt sind.

Viel schlimmer noch als der Einsatz menschlicher Schutzschilde ist aber die Tatsache, dass der Feind für die alliierten Truppen kaum noch auszumachen ist. "Jeder ist plötzlich verdächtig, ein Feind zu sein, der einen Terroranschlag vorbereitet", sagt ein US-Soldat.

Sich ausbreitendes Misstrauen aber könnte die Strategie der Alliierten, sich dem irakischen Volk als Befreier zu präsentieren, zur Makulatur werden lassen. Vor dem Einsatz waren die US-Soldaten noch eigens geschult worden, mit welchen Worten sie auf die Zivilbevölkerung zugehen sollten, um sie von ihren guten Absichten zu überzeugen. Inzwischen aber grassiert die Angst davor, man könnte in ein Sperrfeuer geraten, wenn man auf einen scheinbar freundlich winkenden irakischen Bauer zugeht.

Ebenso schlimm könnte sich die Taktik der Guerilla-Kämpfer auswirken, die eigene Bevölkerung anzugreifen und dies den US-Truppen in die Schuhe zu schieben. US-Geheimdienstler berichten, dass sich die Iraker bereits Uniformen beschafft hätten, die denen der amerikanischen und britischen Soldaten bis ins Detail gleichen. Als Ziel könnten insbesondere die Zivilisten auserkoren werden, die dem schiitischen Glauben angehören. In den Wohnvierteln Bagdads, die von Schiiten bewohnt werden, sollen angeblich bereits Sprengsätze an einigen Häusern gefunden worden sein.

Solche Grausamkeiten trauen Experten dem irakischen Diktator durchaus zu. Saddam Hussein, der wie seine Leibgarde der sunnitischen Minderheit im Irak angehört, habe keinerlei Skrupel, Morde auf diese Weise zu begehen, wenn sie seinen Zielen nützen könnten.

Die Loyalität seiner Kämpfer lässt Saddam sich Einiges kosten. Während ein einfacher Regierungsangestellter umgerechnet drei Dollar pro Monat verdient, bekommt die Fedajin-Kämpfer umgerechnet 100 Dollar ausbezahlt.

Diese Männer sind extrem gefährlich und haben keinerlei Skrupel, sagt Peter Wall, Stabschef der britischen Streitkräfte. Sie wissen, dass sie im zukünftigen Staat Irak keine Rolle mehr spielen werden, dass sie also nichts zu verlieren haben.

Doch auch auf amerikanischer Seite gibt es harte Typen, die sich von dieser Art der Kriegsführung nicht irritieren lassen. So wie der General-Leutnant John Abizaid zum Beispiel: In seinen Augen sind die Fedajin zwar gefährlich für die Truppe im Feld, "aber sie sind keinesfalls gefährlich für den Erfolg unserer Mission."

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One rule for them
Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 25, 2003
The Guardian

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".

He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they "must at all times be protected... against insults and public curiosity". This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful combatants". The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country. But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be regarded as prisoners of war.

Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified, article 5 insists that they "shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal". But when, earlier this month, lawyers representing 16 of them demanded a court hearing, the US court of appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory, the men have no constitutional rights. Many of these prisoners appear to have been working in Afghanistan as teachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US government either tried or released them, its embarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to light.

You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some of the other men captured by the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Many of them have never been seen again.

As Jamie Doran`s film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, of them were loaded into container lorries at Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on November 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the sun for several days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan prison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum`s men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead.

The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum`s men to "get rid of them before satellite pictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner`s neck. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Another soldier alleged: "They took the prisoners outside and beat them up, and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned, and they disappeared."

Many of the survivors were loaded back in the containers with the corpses, then driven to a place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the presence of up to 40 US special forces, the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that: "No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue." The US group Physicians for Human Rights visited the places identified by Doran`s witnesses and found they "all... contained human remains consistent with their designation as possible grave sites".

It should not be necessary to point out that hospitality of this kind also contravenes the third Geneva convention, which prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture", as well as extra-judicial execution. Donald Rumsfeld`s department, assisted by a pliant media, has done all it can to suppress Jamie Doran`s film, while General Dostum has begun to assassinate his witnesses.

It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.

www.monbiot.com


Guardian Unlimited

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Der Unterschied zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich oder wie A. Merkel die Welt rettete.

Death to French fries
Engel in America
Tuesday March 25, 2003
The Guardian

This is a war, according to General Tommy Franks, "unlike any other in history". He can say that again. Last Thursday evening, less than 24 hours after the conflict began, every TV set in the departure concourse at the Midway airport, Chicago, was tuned to the same channel: it was showing a college basketball game. No one complained. Normally, in an American airport, CNN comes at you out of every orifice, loudly, whether anything is happening or not. After all, if the noise ceased, people might pause for quiet reflection, and who knows where that might lead?

At the bar, there was a man from Louisiana with his plane delayed: he was getting drunker. Down there, he said, people were exercised about the war: they were pouring French wine down drains. And there was talk, he said, of changing the name of both the French Quarter in New Orleans and the state capital, Baton Rouge, which would become Red Stick.

I laughed this off, as most people seemed to do when a congressman got the canteen to make French fries "freedom fries". But there are signs that this stuff is catching on: some French restaurants in New York - New York! - are reporting business down 20%; a Frenchwoman in Houston had "Scum go back to France" spraypainted on her garage; Montana`s state pension funds are planning to sell French shares; in Kansas City there have even been complaints about French onion soup.

Vilification of the enemy is normal in wartime. But, last we heard, the French were not the actual enemy. No one is going round blaming the Swiss, the Pope or the Quakers. No one is even saying much about the Iraqis, who were pretty much assumed to be onlookers until the weekend. Saddam himself has had nothing to compare with the post-September 11 odium heaped on Osama.

Most interestingly, no one is now denouncing the Germans either. And the truth behind that represents one of the more fascinating secrets of the past few weeks.

A month ago, all the bile for the failure to get UN support for their war was being directed at Germany. This reached its peak when Donald Rumsfeld created his own personal second-tier axis of evil, lumping the Germans together with Cuba and Libya as countries that would never, ever help the US.

Then, suddenly and deliberately, there was silence on that front: the verbal guns were trained one square further west. This was a very high-level Anglo-American decision and official sources explained that it was only fair: the Germans were not on the security council last autumn when resolution 1441 was passed and therefore had no obligation to support it; it was different with the "poisonous" French. That is a rationale, but hardly a reason.

The reason is harder to get at. The one thing we do know is that the change came at the very end of February, immediately after a visit to Washington by Angela Merkel, the German opposition leader, who was granted an A-list schedule, seeing just about everyone who matters except the president himself. Her public statements were strongly pro-American; privately, it is thought, she told Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice to back off, because the more they attacked the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, the more they strengthened him politically. There are no comparable political divisions in France.

Britain went along with this strategy of assisting the German right, suggesting that the prime minister`s journey towards becoming Ramsay MacBlair is continuing apace.

The boobs who get egged on by the US rightwing media are, I think, more comfortable with the new stance. German-Americans are the largest ethnic group in the country, and are especially strong in the heartland. As a group they prefer to keep their heads down politically, for obvious historical reasons. But an awful lot of people are at least part-German. In contrast, the concept of "French-American" hardly exists. Most Americans have probably never met a Frenchman, nor drunk French wine, eaten French cheese or driven a French car. Indeed, French culture has been in full retreat in the US for some time. The secondary language of choice in schools is now Spanish, for obvious demographic reasons. French is associated with the folks who go to fancy restaurants, vote Democratic and talk of Mer-LOW, Ren-WA and Van GO.

France thus fits the bill as a hateful and remote enemy, a role the Iraqis cannot fulfil. We hope and trust the vast majority of them believe they are being liberated. But the more they fight, the more it suggests that some, even outside the tyrannical elite, actually resent having their country invaded. And that thought is a little hard to contemplate right now.

matthew.engel@guardian. co.uk


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Ein Wort für die Sepp`ls dieser Welt






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Passt zu dem vorherigen Posting #522 nur Göring hat es viel kürzer und glaubwürdiger ausgedrückt, im Angesicht der zig Millionen Toten des WWII.
J.



March 25, 2003
Channels of Influence
By PAUL KRUGMAN


By and large, recent pro-war rallies haven`t drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. One of the most striking took place after Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, criticized President Bush: a crowd gathered in Louisiana to watch a 33,000-pound tractor smash a collection of Dixie Chicks CD`s, tapes and other paraphernalia. To those familiar with 20th-century European history it seemed eerily reminiscent of. . . . But as Sinclair Lewis said, it can`t happen here.

Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry — with close links to the Bush administration.

The CD-smashing rally was organized by KRMD, part of Cumulus Media, a radio chain that has banned the Dixie Chicks from its playlists. Most of the pro-war demonstrations around the country have, however, been organized by stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, a behemoth based in San Antonio that controls more than 1,200 stations and increasingly dominates the airwaves.

The company claims that the demonstrations, which go under the name Rally for America, reflect the initiative of individual stations. But this is unlikely: according to Eric Boehlert, who has written revelatory articles about Clear Channel in Salon, the company is notorious — and widely hated — for its iron-fisted centralized control.

Until now, complaints about Clear Channel have focused on its business practices. Critics say it uses its power to squeeze recording companies and artists and contributes to the growing blandness of broadcast music. But now the company appears to be using its clout to help one side in a political dispute that deeply divides the nation.

Why would a media company insert itself into politics this way? It could, of course, simply be a matter of personal conviction on the part of management. But there are also good reasons for Clear Channel — which became a giant only in the last few years, after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed many restrictions on media ownership — to curry favor with the ruling party. On one side, Clear Channel is feeling some heat: it is being sued over allegations that it threatens to curtail the airplay of artists who don`t tour with its concert division, and there are even some politicians who want to roll back the deregulation that made the company`s growth possible. On the other side, the Federal Communications Commission is considering further deregulation that would allow Clear Channel to expand even further, particularly into television.

Or perhaps the quid pro quo is more narrowly focused. Experienced Bushologists let out a collective "Aha!" when Clear Channel was revealed to be behind the pro-war rallies, because the company`s top management has a history with George W. Bush. The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, whose name may be familiar to readers of this column. When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel`s chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university`s endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire.

There`s something happening here. What it is ain`t exactly clear, but a good guess is that we`re now seeing the next stage in the evolution of a new American oligarchy. As Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic, in the Bush administration "government and business have melded into one big `us.` " On almost every aspect of domestic policy, business interests rule: "Scores of midlevel appointees . . . now oversee industries for which they once worked." We should have realized that this is a two-way street: if politicians are busy doing favors for businesses that support them, why shouldn`t we expect businesses to reciprocate by doing favors for those politicians — by, for example, organizing "grass roots" rallies on their behalf?

What makes it all possible, of course, is the absence of effective watchdogs. In the Clinton years the merest hint of impropriety quickly blew up into a huge scandal; these days, the scandalmongers are more likely to go after journalists who raise questions. Anyway, don`t you know there`s a war on?

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March 25, 2003
Using the News as a Weapon
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV


LOS ANGELES
Neither Clausewitz nor Sun Tzu had any advice for military commanders on how to manage the news media during time of war. But both agreed that strategic information — about battle plans, troop strength, disposition of forces and so forth — should be denied the enemy so as to enhance an army`s ability to use deception and the element of surprise.

Pentagon war planners have turned this ancient military maxim inside out. From the first moments of the war, television screens and newspaper pages around the world have shown and described with images of exploding palaces and an armored phalanx rolling rapidly toward Baghdad. Reports from the Third Infantry Division do everything but cite highway mile-markers of their progress. Reporters are "embedded" so deep into the war that they are subsisting on the same dreadful rations eaten by the troops.

The Pentagon may have been dragged kicking and screaming into its current embrace of the news media. But it is making the most of it. Planners must have contemplated advances in media technology and decided that if they can`t control the press, they may as well use it.

And make no mistake: the news media are being used — in more ways than they realize. When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first announced that reporters would be welcome in the trenches, members of the media were suspicious. After all, this was the same Pentagon that kept journalists far from the front lines during the Persian Gulf war. Yet from reporters inhaling the exhaust of infantry units to bleary-eyed New York anchors spellbound by squads of generals analyzing the data stream, the news media have marched practically in lock step with the military.

Not since the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan has an administration been so adept at managing information and manipulating images. In Iraq, the Bush administration has beaten the press at its own game. It has turned the media into a weapon of war, using the information it provides to harass and intimidate the Iraqi military leadership.

None of the early attacks on Baghdad destroyed the power or communications infrastructure, as they did in the early hours of the gulf war. As bombs fell on palaces and government ministries, the real war was being brought to Baghdad via satellite dish. Images that had been curtailed in the gulf war are now being used as a force-multiplier.

Knowing that Iraqi military leaders are watching the same satellite feeds as they are — from CNN as well as from Al Jazeera and other cable networks — Pentagon officials have been in contact with Iraqi generals by radio, cell phone, even e-mail. The message they are sending is simple and direct: Surrender your forces. Opposition is hopeless. If you don`t believe us, just turn on your TV.

Iraqi leaders have made their own attempts to manipulate the media, of course. They have provided Al Jazeera footage of American prisoners of war, downed aircraft and injured and dead civilians. But the audience they`re trying to influence doesn`t wear stars. Iraq is trying to influence the so-called Arab street — inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. And they are no doubt attempting to counter the depressing effect of the bombs-over-Baghdad footage on their own beleaguered forces.

Both sides are taking an enormous gamble by using the news media. But it`s an especially risky gamble for the Pentagon. The same satellites that transmitted images of United States armor rolling easily across the sand last week are now carrying images of dead and captured American soldiers. And now American commanders have to worry not only about embedded reporters, but also about embedded Iraqi fedayeen forces left in cities passed by during the American advance on Baghdad. All the Iraqi fighters have to do is sneak a dish up on a rooftop in the dark, and they will have access to much of the same information as their enemy.

So maybe the American news media were suspicious of the Pentagon`s newly permissive policy for the wrong reasons. They thought the administration had the same goal as they did: high ratings — not necessarily for the war coverage, but for the war itself. But it turns out that the Pentagon had a different audience in mind. At this point in the war, it is entirely unclear whether its strategy will achieve the results that were intended when the media was weaponized.


Lucian K. Truscott IV, a 1969 graduate of West Point, is a novelist and screenwriter.



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washingtonpost.com
Safe Driving In Baghdad


By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, March 25, 2003; Page A09


In Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, the early morning radio had the oddest traffic report. It would announce what streets should be avoided on account of snipers. If you paid attention, you could drive with near absolute security. I know this because a colleague and I did not pay attention. Nothing happened, but it was one ride I will never forget.

Now something like that is happening in Baghdad. As I am watching television pictures of the Iraqi capital, the corner of the screen gives the time: 5:31 p.m. This is a Muslim country, so it hardly matters that it`s Sunday. Indeed, there is some traffic. Apparently, the drivers of Baghdad are taking American assurances at face value: Civilian areas will not be targeted and smart bombs are indeed as smart as advertised.

This is the oddest war -- and not just because it is being fought preemptively. It is a war that attempts to exclude the civilian population and, in its earliest stages, even the bulk of the Iraqi military. It is a war against a regime -- and it might have ended almost before it began had Saddam Hussein and his loathsome sons (he`s been a bad parent) been killed in that opening night attack on one of his compounds. As it is, he apparently lives -- and the war goes on.

I hope -- but I do not expect -- that the world in general, and particularly the Muslim world, notices what you and I notice. I hope people note that about 600 journalists are embedded with allied forces, reporting from the battlefield virtually without censorship. Even the tragic fragging in Kuwait, which so far has cost one American life, was instantly reported around the world. What other government would permit something like that?

You could argue that the media policy was predicated on the expectation that the war would be won swiftly, easily and with a minimum of bloodshed. Huge numbers of Iraqi soldiers were expected to come out of their positions, arms raised, surrendering. The civilian population would array itself in a vast welcoming ceremony, denouncing Hussein and looking like World War II pictures of the liberation of France from the Nazi occupation. That has not happened -- not yet anyway.

But military planners know that things go wrong -- not that they can, but that they will. They know that even a single fatality when shown on TV is a horror for the viewing audience. They know that they will make mistakes -- and in wartime there is no eraser at the end of the pencil. There are only the dead and the wounded, and nothing eradicates that.

Contrast the way the allies are fighting this war with the way Hussein has fought his. Contrast the concern for civilian lives with Hussein`s use of poison gas against Kurdish civilians, who died while engaged in the most banal of household tasks. Contrast it with what`s happening now: Iraqi soldiers hiding among civilians or using them as shields.

Contrast this war, if you will, with even those America has fought before -- the civilian toll in Vietnam or, at its apogee of horror, the firebombing of Tokyo, Dresden or Hamburg during World War II and the finale of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once, we made almost no distinction between military and civilian targets. Now -- at the apparent cost of American lives -- we do.

I hope the world notices. I hope that throughout the Arab world it was noticed how American military briefers took questions from Arab media outlets, treating them no differently than reporters from the mightiest of American networks. Some of their questions were obnoxious -- a kind of backhanded homage to American values. I hope the anti-American demonstrators throughout the Muslim world pause to ask themselves if their own governments would invite such scrutiny and respond with such apparent candor -- even permit their troops to be interviewed on the battlefield and confess to being afraid. I hope a little of this sinks in.

When last I looked, the lights were on in Baghdad and cars could be seen scurrying to and fro. The so-called coalition of the willing -- mainly America and Britain with a dash of Australia -- will win this war. But in a way, the winning of it is being accomplished in the waging of it -- and the unseen drivers of those cars at the bottom of the TV screen know it better than anyone. Already, they must trust America more than they possibly could their own regime.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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"Ich bin kein Pazifist"

Der Schriftsteller und Rechtsanwalt Louis Begley über den amerikanischen Krieg gegen den Irak, seine Suche nach Identität als US-Bürger europäischer Herkunft, seine Soldatenzeit in Deutschland und seine erste Annäherung an den Wilden Westen.



SPIEGEL: Mr. Begley, macht Ihnen die aktuelle Weltlage zu schaffen?

Begley: Eigentlich bin ich ein unheilbarer Optimist. Ich wache morgens auf und fühle mich gut. Aber im Moment ist es schwierig, angesichts der politischen Situation nicht pessimistisch zu sein. Es ist fast unmöglich.

SPIEGEL: Warum? Wenn man der US-Regierung glauben darf, waren die Angriffe auf den Irak bisher erfolgreich.

Begley: Die irakische Armee zu besiegen dürfte, glaube ich, das kleinste Problem sein. Aber anschließend müssen wir den Irak wieder aufbauen, eine zivile Gesellschaft dort erst einmal schaffen. Wie soll das gehen ohne die Vereinten Nationen? Und wie soll man sich nebenbei auch noch um Nordkorea kümmern und um Iran?

SPIEGEL: Sie hatten als Kind selbst unter Bombardierungen zu leiden. Verändert das die Wahrnehmung des Krieges?

Begley: Im September 1939 haben deutsche Messerschmitt-Flugzeuge im Tiefflug mit Maschinengewehren die Straße beschossen, auf der meine Eltern und ich aus meiner polnischen Heimatstadt Richtung Rumänien flüchteten. Später habe ich die Bombenangriffe auf Warschau erlebt. Diese unmittelbare Erfahrung hat mir sehr deutlich gemacht, was Krieg bedeutet - Zerstörung, Tod und alles, was dazugehört.

SPIEGEL: Was folgt daraus? Nie wieder Krieg?

Begley: Krieg ist der reine Horror. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass ich Krieg als Mittel der Politik grundsätzlich ablehne. Ich bin kein Pazifist, ich kann keiner sein. Wenn sich 1939 die Pazifisten durchgesetzt hätten, hätte Hitler die ganze Welt erobert. Saddam Hussein zu beseitigen, den Irak zu entwaffnen ist meiner Meinung nach keine schlechte Idee. Aber Präsident Bush und seine Regierung haben es nicht geschafft, dafür internationale Unterstützung zu erhalten. Stattdessen sind sie, fürchte ich, gerade dabei, all die Strukturen und Institutionen zu zerstören, die seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg dafür gesorgt haben, die Welt etwas lebenswerter zu machen.


SPIEGEL: George Bush Sr. hat Saddam Hussein mit Hitler verglichen. Teilen Sie diese Einschätzung?

Begley: Nein, da gibt es keine Gemeinsamkeiten. Hitler war komplexer. (lacht) Außerdem hat Saddam Hussein meines Wissens nach keine Ambitionen, die ganze Welt zu beherrschen.

SPIEGEL: Dennoch hat George W. Bush in seiner Fernsehansprache am Montag vergangener Woche seine Politik auch mit der gescheiterten Appeasement-Politik vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gerechtfertigt.

Begley: Das ist reine Demagogie.

SPIEGEL: Glaubt Bush, was er sagt?

Begley: Verzeihen Sie, aber es ist mir schlicht unmöglich, mich in Präsident Bush oder sonst wen aus seiner Kamarilla hineinzuversetzen. Ich kann es einfach nicht. Aber ich glaube fest daran, dass Übertreibung der Feind jedes Gedankens ist. Schon am 11. September 2001 haben Präsident Bush und seine Entourage behauptet, wir befänden uns im Krieg. Diese aufgeblasene Sprache hat dazu beigetragen, uns in die Ecke zu manövrieren.

"Ich kümmere mich nicht um den europäischen Antiamerikanismus."

SPIEGEL: Haben die Ereignisse der vergangenen Wochen Sie Ihrer Wahlheimat Amerika entfremdet?

Begley: Ich könnte mich diesem Land niemals entfremden. Ich bin als Fremder, als Flüchtling hierher gekommen, wurde freundlich aufgenommen und bin jetzt seit 50 Jahren amerikanischer Staatsbürger. Ich bin ein leidenschaftlicher Patriot. Das wird sich niemals ändern. Aber ich stehe der Regierung Bush sehr kritisch gegenüber - nicht nur wegen ihrer Irak-Politik, sondern auch aus vielen anderen Gründen.

SPIEGEL: Zum Beispiel?

Begley: Weil Bush sich der Welt als Unilateralist präsentiert, der sich nicht um die Meinung der Weltgemeinschaft schert - ob es um das Kyoto-Protokoll zum Klimaschutz geht oder den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof, um nur zwei krasse Beispiele zu nennen. Ich könnte noch weitere geben. Genauso wenig stimme ich mit seiner gesamten Innenpolitik überein.

SPIEGEL: Verachtet Bush die Welt jenseits der amerikanischen Grenzen?

Begley: Verachtung ist vielleicht ein zu starkes Wort. Vermutlich ist es eher Gleichgültigkeit. Viele Amerikaner misstrauen der Alten Welt, und so denkt vermutlich auch Präsident Bush. Dass jemand wie er, ein Kind des Establishments - der Oberklasse, wenn Sie so wollen -, vor seinem Amtsantritt praktisch kaum im Ausland war, finde ich schon sehr ungewöhnlich.

SPIEGEL: Ist das vielleicht auch der Grund dafür, dass die Beziehungen zwischen Amerikanern und Europäern im Moment so schlecht sind wie noch nie seit 1945? Als gebürtigem Europäer ...

Begley: ... als wiedergeborenem Amerikaner ...

SPIEGEL: ... müssen Ihnen diese transatlantischen Spannungen doch in der Seele wehtun.


Begley: Ich kümmere mich nicht um den europäischen Antiamerikanismus. Der ist seit 200 Jahren in Europa endemisch, so wie sich umgekehrt die Amerikaner über froschfressende Franzosen und die deutschen Krauts lustig machen. Das hat nicht viel zu bedeuten. Aber der Mangel an gegenseitigem Respekt, wie wir ihn jetzt auf Regierungsebene beobachten, kann gefährlich sein.

SPIEGEL: Sie haben selbst in der US-Armee gedient - 1955 kamen Sie als Wehrpflichtiger nach Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg. Waren Sie gern in Deutschland?

Begley: Es war eine faszinierende Erfahrung. Die Uniform war eine fabelhaft schützende Verkleidung. Ich fühlte mich unverwundbar. Ich war zum amerikanischen Soldaten in einem besiegten Land geworden. Eine ziemlich neue Erfahrung für mich im Verhältnis zu Deutschen!

SPIEGEL: Der Krieg war doch längst vorbei.

Begley: Aber er war noch allgegenwärtig. Göppingen war zwar weniger getroffen worden, aber in Stuttgart oder Ulm lagen ganze Stadtviertel in Trümmern. Ich muss zugeben, dass es mich mit großer Befriedigung erfüllt hat, die Zerstörungen zu sehen.

SPIEGEL: Und die Menschen?

Begley: Die Deutschen waren in jeder Hinsicht sehr gedemütigt. Und ich bin offenbar nicht besonders rachsüchtig, denn ich habe mich mit einigen angefreundet. Ein Gymnasiallehrer zum Beispiel hat mit mir den "Faust" im Original gelesen. Mein Deutsch war damals erheblich besser als heute.

"Es hat mich mit Befriedigung erfüllt, die Zerstörungen in Deutschland zu sehen."

SPIEGEL: Haben Sie jenen Freunden erzählt, dass Sie Jude sind und beinahe von Deutschen umgebracht worden wären?

Begley: Nein, nie. Ich hatte nie das Gefühl, ich müsse etwas offenbaren.

SPIEGEL: Und vorher? Haben Sie den Amerikanern von Ihrer Vergangenheit erzählt, nachdem Sie mit Ihren Eltern in die USA ausgewandert waren?

Begley: Ja, wann immer ich gefragt wurde, was immer seltener vorkam. Im Allgemeinen versuchte ich mich so amerikanisch wie möglich zu benehmen.

SPIEGEL: Das heißt?

Begley: Das heißt, dass ich versucht habe, so gut wie nur möglich Englisch zu lernen und zu begreifen, wie die Dinge hier laufen. Ich wollte so denken, so handeln und so sein wie ein Amerikaner. Das war einer der Gründe, warum ich nicht an anderen Einwanderern kleben wollte, auch nicht an den polnischen - Juden wie Nichtjuden. Ich wollte unter Amerikanern leben.

SPIEGEL: Auch um sicherzugehen, nicht mehr an Ihre Kindheit erinnert zu werden?

Begley: Überhaupt nicht. Es waren nicht die Menschen, die mich an meine Kindheit erinnert haben. Natürlich hatte jeder Amerikaner schon von Konzentrationslagern gehört und von anderen Methoden, mit denen die Deutschen Juden ermordet hatten. Aber anders als heute, wo sogar Kinder im Kindergarten über den Holocaust Bescheid wissen, war dieses Kapitel der Geschichte damals - ich spreche von den späten vierziger und frühen fünfziger Jahren - von einer Mauer des Schweigens umgeben. Viele Themen wurden tabuisiert. Auch meine Mitschüler waren nicht sehr neugierig auf meine Vergangenheit.


SPIEGEL: Haben Sie mit Ihren Eltern über Ihre Vergangenheit sprechen können?

Begley: Natürlich, aber es tat weh, und ich war nicht besonders versessen darauf. Vergessen Sie nicht, dass ich schon mit 16 aufs Harvard College ging. Das bedeutete eine große Freiheit. Es bedeutete, eher in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft zu leben als in der Vergangenheit.

SPIEGEL: War Ihre Herkunft im College ein Thema?

Begley: Natürlich war es klar, dass meine Familie nicht dem üblichen Harvard-Standard entsprach: wohlhabend, weiß, nichtjüdisch. Aber das hatte weiter keine Auswirkungen darauf, dass ich am College sehr glücklich war.


SPIEGEL: Antisemitismus war in den fünfziger Jahren in den USA keine Seltenheit. Hatten auch Sie darunter zu leiden?

Begley: Zweifellos gab es eine Art sozialen Antisemitismus, der am Harvard College sehr sichtbar war. Wie er sich ausdrückte? Meist in Kleinigkeiten. Es war damals selbst für Studenten aus vornehmen und reichen jüdischen Familien unmöglich, in einen der gehobenen Studenten-Clubs aufgenommen zu werden. Es war allerdings genauso undenkbar, dass ein einfacher Nichtjude aufgenommen wurde. Man könnte sagen, dass elegante Juden auf Grund ihres Judentums sozial degradiert wurden.

SPIEGEL: Haben Sie - nach einem Literaturstudium - Jura studiert, um die Welt besser zu verstehen?

Begley: Ich wünschte, das könnte ich sagen. Tatsächlich wusste ich nur, dass ich mir meinen Lebensunterhalt verdienen musste. Ich hatte keine Ahnung, was Anwälte eigentlich machen. Ich wusste nur, dass Jura ein liberales Fach ist, und mein europäisches Vorurteil riet mir, wenn ich schon arbeiten müsste, dann lieber in einem liberalen Beruf.

"Ich könnte auch mit einer Wand reden, wenn es sein muss."

SPIEGEL: Man könnte auch vermuten, Sie sind Anwalt geworden, um professionell Distanz zu Menschen wahren zu können.

Begley: Vermutlich. Ich bin auch nicht besonders gesellig. Ich bin zwar immer sehr gespannt auf andere Menschen, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass ich auch gleich mit ihnen sprechen muss. Small Talk finde ich sehr anstrengend, obwohl ich glaube, dass ich auch mit einer Wand reden könnte, wenn es sein muss. Die Juristerei ermöglicht es einem, alles mit Distanz zu betrachten. Ich finde das recht angenehm. Und natürlich gab mir der Anwaltsberuf die einmalige Gelegenheit zu lernen, wie unsere komplexe Gesellschaft funktioniert - wie Kapital eingesetzt wird und wie Geld verdient und verloren wird.

SPIEGEL: Wir vermuten mal, dass Sie meistens die Gewinner vertreten haben.

Begley: Nicht unbedingt. Der Anwaltsberuf entspricht einem Charakterzug, der tief in mir liegt: Ich bin lieber der Champion der Interessen anderer als meiner eigenen. Ich kann recht gut zum Nutzen anderer verhandeln, aber ich bin sehr schlecht, wenn es um mich selbst geht.

SPIEGEL: Nach 30 Jahren als Anwalt haben Sie eine Auszeit genommen und "Lügen in Zeiten des Krieges" geschrieben, den Roman über Ihre Kindheit. 56 ist ein stolzes Alter für einen Debüt-Autor.

Begley: Dass ich recht gut schreiben konnte, hatte ich schon als Schüler gemerkt. Aber ich dachte, ich hätte kein Thema; ich wüsste nicht genug über mein neues Umfeld, um darüber zu schreiben. Das war dumm, weil man sehr wohl darüber schreiben kann, dass man die Welt, in der man lebt, nicht versteht. Aber das habe ich damals nicht gesehen.

SPIEGEL: Und später?

Begley: Später hatte ich einfach keine Zeit, um über Romane nachzudenken. Ich hatte - und habe - einen anspruchsvollen Beruf, und dann waren da noch die Ansprüche meiner Familie, vor allem, als meine Kinder klein waren. Zum Glück hat meine Frau Anka mich schließlich ermutigt, eine Auszeit zu nehmen. Vorher hatte ich gezögert - weil ich zwar gern ein Buch geschrieben hätte, aber ich nicht wusste, ob ich es können würde. Aber es ging, und als ich einmal angefangen hatte, konnte ich erst aufhören, als ich fertig war - nach vier Monaten.

SPIEGEL: Aber die Geschichte hatten Sie schon vorher im Kopf?

Begley: Ja, ich hatte natürlich schon darüber nachgedacht, mit Unterbrechungen. Aber ganz bewusst habe ich nicht dafür recherchiert. Es war mir klar, dass ich einen Roman schreiben wollte und keine Autobiografie - einen Roman im Geiste eines Märchens, an dem aber andererseits alles wahr ist. Alles in dem Buch habe ich entweder selbst erlebt oder von anderen erfahren, die es erlebt hatten.

SPIEGEL: Sie haben es immer abgelehnt, genau zu sagen, welche Passagen von "Lügen in Zeiten des Krieges" autobiografisch sind. Vielleicht können Sie eine Ausnahme machen: Der Junge, Ihr Alter Ego im Roman, liest Karl-May-Bücher. War das tatsächlich auch Ihre erste Annäherung an Amerika?

Begley: An den Wilden Westen, ja. Ich habe als Kind leidenschaftlich gern Karl May gelesen - natürlich ohne zu ahnen, dass ich tatsächlich einmal nach Amerika kommen würde. Es erschien so wahrscheinlich, dass die Deutschen mich töten würden, bevor ich irgendwohin käme!

SPIEGEL: Beruhigt Sie das Schreiben?

Begley: Ich war schon vorher sehr ruhig.

SPIEGEL: Aber etwas lässt Ihnen doch keine Ruhe?

Begley: Sicher, die Erinnerung an den Krieg. Ich glaube, es gibt keine Nacht, in der ich keine Alpträume wegen des Krieges habe. Das ist merkwürdig, denn das Schlimmste habe ich ja gar nicht erlebt - ich war nicht im Ghetto, ich war in keinem Konzentrationslager, niemand hat mich geschlagen oder sonstwie körperlich misshandelt. Aber es war wohl genug, dass wir ständig in Todesangst lebten und unter äußerst erniedrigenden, entmenschlichenden Umständen.

SPIEGEL: Angst verändert alles, erklärt der Großvater in "Lügen in Zeiten des Krieges" seinem Enkel.

Begley: Ja, Angst verändert einen für immer. Ich habe nie aufgehört, Angst vor Gewalt zu haben, vor anderen Menschen. Ich kann diejenigen nicht verstehen, die Ähnliches erlebt haben wie ich und trotzdem ihren Mut bewahrt haben.

SPIEGEL: Sie haben gesagt, als junger Mann hätten Sie sich bemüht, Amerikaner zu werden. Haben Sie irgendwann aufgehört, es immer nur zu versuchen?

Begley: Das hat sehr lange gedauert. Meine Frau hat viel dazu beigetragen. Sie ist der ausgeglichenste Mensch, den ich kenne. Von ihr habe ich gelernt, dass ich die Kluft zwischen dem, der ich war, und dem, der ich hätte sein können - wäre ich ein Amerikaner mit einer anderen Vergangenheit gewesen -, nicht unbedingt überwinden muss. Das war eine große Befreiung. Ich konnte endlich zu mir sagen: Ich bin hier, und ich bin, wer ich bin.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Begley, wir danken Ihnen für dieses Gespräch.




Das Gespräch führten die Redakteure Martin Wolf und Gerhard Spörl.


Louis Begley
wurde 1933 als Ludwik Begleiter in Polen geboren. Seine Erlebnisse nach dem Einmarsch der Deutschen - als Jude drohte ihm die Ermordung - verarbeitete er in dem Roman "Lügen in Zeiten des Krieges" (1991), der ihn auf Anhieb zu einem der angesehensten Schriftsteller der Welt machte. Seitdem hat Begley fünf weitere Romane veröffentlicht, vor allem sarkastisch-sensible Gesellschaftsporträts wie "About Schmidt", dessen Verfilmung mit Jack Nicholson zurzeit in den Kinos läuft. Begley, der 1947 mit seinen Eltern in die USA ging, ist nur im Nebenberuf Romancier: Seit 1959 arbeitet er als Rechtsanwalt in New York. In den USA kommt im September sein siebter Roman "Shipwreck" heraus; in Deutschland ist soeben die Hommage "Venedig unter vier Augen" erschienen, die Begley mit seiner zweiten Frau Anka Muhlstein verfasst hat (Marebuchverlag, Hamburg; 168 Seiten; 18 Euro).


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© DER SPIEGEL 13/2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet AG
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[Joerver]

Interessant wie sich die Zahlen von einem Tag auf den anderen verändern. Die Anzahl der befragten Leute liegt bei 605, das ist recht wenig. +/- 5%

CBS News/New York Times Poll. Latest: March 23, 2003. N=605 adults nationwide. MoE

"Regarding the war with Iraq, which of the following do you think is most likely: a fairly quick and successful effort, or a long and costly involvement?"

....Quick,.....Successful Long,.. Costly Don`tKnow
......................%..%.%
.3/23/03...........53.43.4
.3/20-22/03......62.32.6
.3/20-21/03......62.33.5 .

.

"In the war with Iraq, how many American soldiers do you expect to lose their lives: under one thousand, between one thousand and five thousand, or more than that?"

......Under1,000.....1,000 to5,000...More...Don`tKnow
...................%..%.%..%
.3/23/03.........67.19.5..9
.3/20-22/03....67.14.7.12
.3/20-21/03....66.14.7.13
.

"Do you think the war with Iraq is more likely to be over in just a few weeks, or do you think it is more likely to continue for many months?"

.......FewWeeks.....ManyMonths...Don`tKnow
................%..%.%
.3/23/03.......42.53.5
.3/20-22/03....53.42.5
.3/20-21/03....53.42.5
.

"Would you say you feel proud about what the U.S. is doing in the war with Iraq or not proud about what the U.S. is doing?"

......Proud.....NotProud....Don`tKnow
................%..%.%
.3/23/03.......69.23.8
.3/20-22/03....63.28.9
.3/20-21/03....64.28.8
.1/19/91.......48.38.9
.

"In the military action against Iraq so far, do you think the U.S. military has used the right amount of force against Iraq, has used too much force, or should the U.S. military use even more force against Iraq?"

.....RightAmount...TooMuch...More...Don`tKnow
................%..%...%..%
.3/23/03.......53..5..33..9
.3/22/03.......58.10..20.12

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Iraq rebuilding contracts awarded
Halliburton, Stevedoring Services of America get government contracts for early relief work.
March 25, 2003: 2:19 PM EST
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The first contracts for rebuilding post-war Iraq have been awarded, and Vice President Dick Cheney`s old employer, Halliburton Co., is one of the early winners.

The Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) unit of Halliburton (HAL: up $0.66 to $20.78, Research, Estimates), of which Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000, said late Monday that it was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires and make emergency repairs to Iraq`s oil infrastructure.

President Bush Tuesday asked Congress for $489.3 million to cover the cost of repairing damage to Iraq`s oil facilities, much or all of which could go to Halliburton or its subcontractors under the terms of its contract with the Army.

Cheney divested himself of all interest in Halliburton, the largest U.S. oilfield services company, after the 2000 election.

Halliburton wouldn`t speculate about the total monetary value or duration of its contract, under which it will put into action some of the firefighting and repair plans it detailed for the Army in a study it conducted in November.

"KBR`s ... contract is limited to task orders under the contract for only those services which are necessary to support the mission in the near term," Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said.

The Army Corps of Engineers told CNN Tuesday that Halliburton would be paid on a "cost plus" basis, meaning it would be reimbursed for the costs of its work and would get a certain percentage of those costs as a fee.

Since the amount of damage that has been or will be done to Iraqi oil fields in the war is still unknown, it`s difficult to estimate the contract`s eventual dollar value.

But its biggest value could be that it puts Halliburton in a prime position to handle the complete refurbishment of Iraq`s long-neglected oil infrastructure, which will be a plum job.

Getting Iraq`s oil fields to pre-1991 production levels will take at least 18 months and cost about $5 billion initially, with $3 billion more in annual operating expenses, according to a recent study by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, named for the first President Bush`s secretary of state during the first Gulf War.

"Certainly Halliburton would have the lead [in the competition for that job], even absent this contract, given the size and scope of their current operations," said Pierre Conner, an analyst with Hibernia Southcoast Capital. "But there`s no question they`ll start with some footprint there. It clearly puts them in the position where they will know more about the situation and have a bit of an operation there."

Though none of the potential administrators of such a contract -- including the Defense Department, the State Department`s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations -- have claimed responsibility for handing out the job, Monday`s award and Bush`s request for funding seem to indicate the U.S. government will be in charge.

Halliburton said it has subcontracted the firefighting portion of the Army contract to Houston-based companies Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. (WEL: up $0.17 to $1.27, Research, Estimates) and Wild Well Control Inc., a private company.

Hall of Halliburton said all oil fires should be put out within 240 days. Very few oil wells have been set ablaze by Iraqis so far, in contrast to the first Gulf War in 1991, when Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait set fire to more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells. Halliburton`s KBR unit was involved in putting out the 1991 fires.

Separately, USAID late Monday awarded a $4.8 million contract to Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), a private company based in Seattle, to manage the Umm Qasr ports in southern Iraq.

Umm Qasr`s ports, where U.S. and British troops have struggled for full control, are seen as critical to efforts to bring humanitarian relief to Iraqis. SSA will handle several tasks, including assessing the need for dredging and repairs to the ports, and unloading and warehousing cargo.

USAID plans to issue seven other contracts, including one for $600 million for general construction work in post-war Iraq. Halliburton is among several companies reported to have put in bids for that contract.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- CNNfn`s Scott Spoerry contributed to this report.

[Joerver]

consortiumnews.com

International Law a la Carte

By Nat Parry
March 25, 2003

As U.S. forces encounter stiffer-than-expected resistance in Iraq, the Bush administration and the U.S. news media are gaining a sudden reverence for international law.

In the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, five American soldiers were captured and their images were broadcast Sunday on Iraqi TV. Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews with the prisoners as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

That charge was repeated over and over by U.S. television networks, which spared the American people the unpleasant sight of the halting conversations and other scenes of dead U.S. soldiers.

Not only did the U.S. news media censor the video on Sunday, U.S. television "reporters" stayed silent about the obvious inconsistency between their outrage over the footage of the American soldiers and the U.S. media`s decision only a few days earlier to run repeated clips of Iraqis identified as prisoners of war.

In that case, Iraqi POWs were paraded before U.S. cameras as "proof" that Iraqi resistance was crumbling. Some of the scenes showed Iraqi POWs forced at gunpoint to kneel down with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers.

Yet neither the Bush administration nor a single U.S. reporter covering the war for the major news networks observed how those scenes might be a violation of international law.

Then on Sunday, the same U.S. networks apparently "forgot" about the earlier scenes of Iraqi POWs and took up Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s charge that by showing videotape of U.S. POWs, the Iraqis had contravened the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

"It`s illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners," Rumsfeld said.

Bush Repudiating Rules

The U.S. television networks also did not see fit to remind viewers how George W. Bush had drawn widespread international condemnation a year ago for his decision to strip prisoners of war captured in Afghanistan of their rights under the Geneva Conventions.

Bush ordered hundreds of captives from Afghanistan to be put in tiny outdoor cages at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those prisoners were shaved bald and forced to kneel down with their eyes, ears and mouths covered to deprive them of their senses. The shackled prisoners were filmed being carried on stretchers to interrogation sessions. Their humiliation was broadcast widely for all the world to see.

In early 2002, U.S. allies objected to the humiliation of the prisoners and to Bush`s assertion that the prisoners were "unlawful combatants" outside the protection of international law. One of the chief arguments from European and other nations was that by flouting the Geneva Conventions, Bush was weakening respect for international law, a development that could prove dangerous to U.S. and other soldiers in the future.

Some of the loudest criticism of Camp X-Ray came from the staunchest U.S. ally, the United Kingdom, where three cabinet ministers – Robin Cook, Patricia Hewitt and Jack Straw – expressed concern that the prisoners were not being treated well and that international agreements about the treatment of prisoners of war were being breached.

Legal experts pointed out that "unlawful combatant" is not a category recognized by international law. They also noted that detainees whose status is in any doubt must be accorded all rights enumerated in the Geneva Convention until a "competent tribunal" is established to determine each individual prisoner`s legal status.

The Bush administration never established that "competent tribunal." Bush instead unilaterally declared which prisoners were POWs (with protections under the Geneva Convention) and which ones were to be considered "unlawful combatants" (with zero protections under the Geneva Convention).

Even those detainees that Bush deemed POWs were only granted some rights under the Convention, as determined by Bush. They were denied other rights, again as determined by Bush.

Devil`s Island

Most of the prisoners from the Afghan war are still being held in Guantanamo in a state of legal limbo.

There has been no indication from the White House when, if ever, they will be released or brought before a tribunal. U.S. courts have determined that they have no jurisdiction over the Afghan prisoners, since the detainees are being held in Cuba at a base controlled by the U.S. military.

For its part, the U.S. military has said that the prisoners will be held until the end of the "war on terror," a war that Bush has said "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." In other words, this war may never end and the prisoners may spend the rest of their lives on a modern-day Devil`s Island.

Human rights groups also have argued that the U.S. treatment of some prisoners may have crossed the line into torture, with the Bush administration using sensory deprivation techniques.

“Keeping prisoners incommunicado, sensory deprivation, the use of unnecessary restraint and the humiliation of people through tactics such as shaving them, are all classic techniques employed to ‘break’ the spirit of individuals ahead of interrogation,” mistreatment that is specifically prohibited under the Geneva Convention, Amnesty International said.

Saddam`s Complaint

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein picked up on this theme more than a year ago, in January 2002, when the controversy was at its height.

The Iraqi dictator, who has been broadly criticized for his own human rights record, claimed that the U.S. "used human rights and the rights of prisoners for propaganda purposes against other countries," when it served its purpose. "But when their turn came to uphold those rights, they openly violated them," he said.

Over the past year, there have been other allegations about Bush administration`s abuse of captives from the "war on terror." The Washington Post reported that terrorist suspects were being subjected to "stress and duress" tactics, which in some cases could be considered forms of torture. [Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2002]

U.S. officials have admitted to the use of sleep deprivation in their interrogations of prisoners, a practice with ambiguous status in international law. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that when used for the purpose of breaking a prisoner`s will, sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture."

Senior U.S. officials have defended these dubious tactics, with one official maintaining that, "If you don`t violate someone`s human rights some of the time, you probably aren`t doing your job." He elaborated that the U.S. shouldn`t be "promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

Virtually affirming the new U.S. policy of using torture in its interrogation techniques, Cofer Black, former head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, told a joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees on Sept. 26, 2002, that there was a new "operational flexibility" in dealing with suspected terrorists. He said that "There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off."

In response to the Washington Post article, Human Rights Watch`s Kenneth Roth reminded the U.S. that “torture is always prohibited under any circumstances." He also warned that, “U.S. officials who take part in torture, authorize it, or even close their eyes to it, can be prosecuted by courts anywhere in the world.”

Threat to U.S. Troops

Some people have criticized Bush`s handling of POWs on humanitarian grounds. Others have cited the need to maintain the system of international law put in place since World War II in large part by prior U.S. presidents.

But other critics have noted that once the U.S. disregards international norms in treatment of prisoners of war, it will undermine demands that other nations adhere to those rules when U.S. soldiers are captured in battle.

Veterans for Peace, for one, expressed "grave concern" for those serving in the U.S. military who, if captured, might likely be subjected to "unrestrained, debasing treatment, in similar disregard of the Geneva Conventions." With the safety of U.S. soldiers in mind, Veterans for Peace demanded that the Bush administration treat the Guantanamo detainees as POWs and grant them all the rights and privileges spelled out in the Geneva Convention.

Despite this prodding, the Bush administration has refused to live up to its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. It has kept the Afghan war prisoners in a state of legal limbo, with no access to legal counsel or granting them the most basic rights laid out in international agreements to which the U.S. is a signatory.

With all this in mind, it is not surprising if the world community reacts with skepticism to Rumsfeld`s complaints that Iraqi forces are not respecting the Geneva Conventions.

Picking and Choosing

The Bush administration`s new regard for international law also comes after Bush failed to win the backing of the United Nations Security Council for the invasion of Iraq.

Unable to persuade a majority of the council to endorse an immediate war with Iraq, Bush decided to ignore the U.N. Charter`s ban on aggressive warfare. Indeed, Bush put U.S. troops in greater jeopardy under international law by ordering them to wage war outside the U.N. Charter, against a country that was not threatening the United States.

That background has left many in the world viewing the administration`s outrage over videotapes of American POWs as a case of a country that likes its international law a la carte, effectively picking and choosing when the rules should apply and when they shouldn`t.

Now, as the U.S. military campaign in Iraq finds itself confronting unexpected obstacles and dangers, the Bush administration is using the videotaped interviews to fan the flames of American war passions.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has sidestepped any debate about its inconsistency toward the Geneva Conventions. In maintaining this contradictory posture, Bush has been aided and abetted by an American news media that has – with very few exceptions – substituted pro-war cheerleading for anything approximating professional journalism.

Bedding and Embedding

The U.S. news media has offered the American people largely two perspectives on the war: the view of "embedded" journalists who travel with U.S. military units and the "in-bed" journalists who fill up the rest of the hours with interviews with retired U.S. generals during which both the generals and the "reporters" use the first person plural "we" to describe what the U.S. military is doing to the Iraqi military.

For instance, on March 19 during the first hours of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was discussing with a panel of retired U.S. officers what "we" were planning for Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Explaining why the U.S. bombing might avoid destroying Iraq`s infrastructure, Brokaw said, "in a few days, we`re going to own that country."

The cable news networks – CNN, MSNBC and Fox News – have demonstrated even less professionalism as they root for the U.S. team and duck troublesome questions about the early U.S. setbacks in the war.

In an apparent competition to "brand" themselves the most patriotic news channel, MSNBC and Fox News have even employed a logo of a waving American flag often superimposed over green, night-vision-lit scenes of the U.S. bombardment of Baghdad. In some shots of Iraq, a casual viewer might think the Stars and Stripes were flying over Iraqi territory.

While the consistent pro-war messages of the U.S. news media might guarantee that none of Bush`s contradictory positions on the Geneva Conventions will become the subject of extensive debate in the United States, the rest of the world might not be so selective in its outrage.

No matter how much the Bush administration complains, it shouldn`t be surprised if the rest of the world shakes its head, rolls its eyes and says, "Well, what did you expect?"

For an earlier Consortiumnews.com story on the Afghan War and the Geneva Conventions, click here.

[Joerver]

Robert Scheer: `The wraps come off Bush`s colonialist agenda`
Date: Tuesday, March 25 @ 09:46:34 EST
Topic: Foreign Policy


By Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times

The war is getting messy, but the peace will be much worse.

The Bush administration`s plan to keep several hundred thousand U.S. and British troops for years in a divided, heavily armed Muslim country will make all Americans "targets of opportunity" for terrorists and become a rallying point for fundamentalist revolutionaries throughout the world.

The post-Hussein strategy, formed by a neoconservative clique close to the White House, is another indicator that this is in no way a war "to disarm Iraq." If disarmament were the central goal, the U.S.-British alliance would need to control Iraq for only months, not years. That would be enough time for its weapons inspectors to do what it said the United Nations could not accomplish.



Instead, unable to produce any real evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the invasion or since it began, the administration publicly shifted its rationale from disarmament to the "nation-building" that Bush properly derided during the 2000 election.

However, there is ample evidence that "regime change" and redrawing the map of the Mideast were the goals of the Bush administration`s neoconservative core all along.

The Carnegie Endowment (www.ceip.org) last week published "Origins of Regime Change in Iraq," a thorough portrait of this "textbook case of how a small, organized group can determine policy in a large nation, even when the majority of officials and experts originally scorned their views."

The president, who seems to pride himself on knowing more about the mores of Midland, Texas, than about the rest of the world`s complex cultures, has bought this cabal`s naive and dangerous plan for a Pax Americana.

Bush already refers to warlord-controlled Afghanistan as "democratic," so perhaps an Iraq run by an American general -- for the profit of Dick Cheney`s old company Halliburton and other defense contractors -- will justify for Bush the war that spinmeisters are calling "Operation Iraqi Freedom." But it won`t wear well with most of the world, which has seen that even the best intentions of colonialists inevitably go awry.

Lest we forget, Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party were the preferred choice of U.S. governments for most of the last 40 years. Even after Hussein gassed his own people, the 1988 signature horror to which Bush constantly refers, the U.S. government attempted to shift the blame to Iran and Bush`s father extended to Iraq an additional $1.2 billion in credits and loans.

The Commerce Department under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had long permitted U.S. companies to sell anthrax and other biological and chemical supplies to Iraq, the Senate Banking Committee documented.

Furthermore, it was Reagan who signed National Security Decision Directive 114 on Nov. 26, 1983, committing the U.S. to do "whatever necessary and legal" for Iraq to win its war against Iran, even after documented reports of Iraq`s use of what we now call weapons of mass destruction. It was at that time that Donald Rumsfeld was dispatched by Reagan as a special envoy to reassure Hussein of unwavering U.S. support.

It is an act of extreme hubris for this administration to repeatedly justify its invasion of Iraq by citing Iraq`s attacks on Iran decades ago and its use of banned weapons in that war. Those old charges won`t suffice for a world demanding hard and more recent evidence supporting the need for a preemptive attack.

If the U.S. fails to unearth weapons of mass destruction that U.N. inspectors might have been able to discover -- if they had been given sufficient time -- the imperial designs of this administration will stand exposed as the true cause of the war.

If the weapons in question don`t exist, however, some in the U.S. government might be tempted to plant them, lest the Bush administration be accused of a grand fraud. It was certainly suspicious that someone in the administration Sunday leaked "evidence" of a chemical weapons factory in Najaf, which the Pentagon ended up downplaying as "premature." The "news," not coincidentally, was first and most aggressively carried by the Jerusalem Post and the Fox network, both of which are far-right cheerleaders for the war.

Were Ted Koppel at his post on "Nightline" and not uselessly "embedded" in some troop convoy, he might be asking the government tough questions about the lack of evidence to back up its rationale for the war. Instead, like so many others in the media, he fell for the illusion that war roadies hanging on to every word of the Pentagon`s spin performers can also be journalists.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[thetoto]

Drei Texanische Chirurgen spielen Golf und unterhalten sich über die
Fortschritte in der Chirurgie. Einer sagt, "ich bin der beste Chirurg in
Texas. Ein Konzertpianist verlor 7 Finger bei einem Unfall, Ich habe
sie wieder angenäht und 8 Monate später hat er ein privat Konzert bei
der Königin von England gegeben."
Ein anderer sagt. "Das ist nichts. Ein junger Mann verlor beide Arme und
beide Beine bei einem Unfall, Ich habe sie wieder angenäht und 2 Jahre
später hat er eine Goldmedaille an den olympischen Spielen gewonnen." Der
dritte Chirurg meint, "Ihr seid Amateure. Vor einigen Jahren
ritt ein Mann high von Kokain und Alkohol frontal in einen Zug der mit 80
Meilen daher kam. Alles was noch übrig war, war der Arsch des Pferdes
und der Hut des Cowboys. Heute ist er Präsident der Vereinigten
Staaten."

[Joerver]

March 25, 2003

Blood Indicator
Casualties and the Stock Market
By JASON LEOPOLD


I hope the stock market gets hammered. I hope the Iraqis set fire to as many oil fields as possible. I hope oil prices in the United States surge and shortages persist. I hope the antiwar protestors become disobedient. I hope the economy never recovers. I hope Iraq doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction. I hope our troops make it home alive.

This is the only way to drive home the point that war is brutal no matter who the enemy is. After the bombs dropped on Baghdad and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers surrendered to U.S. and British troops, the pundits on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC reported that the war could end within a month.

“Nonsense,” I said.

This war would be an easy victory for the U.S. and its allies, the cable news outlets said. Kind of like watching the Los Angeles Lakers pummel the Los Angeles Clippers. Reaction here to the commentaries and the real-time images was swift. The stock market soared. Oil prices plummeted. It appears that the outcome of the war is measured by how well the Dow Jones Industrial Average performs

Since last Wednesday, I have been glued to the television, watching in shock and awe how the pundits on the cable news outlets reported on the conflict like it was some sort of sporting event. The television and print reporters covering the war failed to ask any questions about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and where they were hidden. It’s as if the media forgot the reasons the Bush administration said we were invading Iraq in the first place.

Then last weekend, the realities of war set in. A few military helicopters crashed. U.S. and British soldiers died. On Saturday, a dozen American soldiers were captured and may have been executed in an ambush by Iraqi soldiers, which was aired on an Arab news station. President Bush warned that if U.S. soldiers were executed it would violate the Geneva Convention and that those responsible would be prosecuted for war crimes.

Excuse me for being cynical, but for a president who only last week promised to eradicate Saddam Hussein’s regime and everyone who fights on behalf of it, why would Iraqi soldiers abide by the rules of war? What’s the incentive? The way they see it they’re dead men walking.

Reaction here to the two-dozen U.S. and British casualties in the four-day war has been anger, frustration, even disbelief. And the ground war against Iraq’s elite Republican Guard—which promises to bring even more U.S. and British combat deaths—hasn’t even started yet.

What this proves is that the public can’t and won’t accept the loss of U.S. life in exchange for the Bush administration’s goal of overthrowing Saddam and liberating the Iraqi people. Nor should they.

Sure, the U.S. will prevail. We will win this war. Saddam will be history. Iraqi’s will be free. But it will come at a cost. Only when the reality of war sets in, when mothers lose their sons, wives lose their husbands and children lose their fathers and mothers will people start to question the motives of invading a country that so far has proved to be nothing more than a nuisance to the U.S., not a threat

[thetoto]

dungen + + + letzte mel
+ + + Der Lieblingssport der Amerikaner erlebt zurzeit einen Niedergang. Das berichtet die Washington Post. Seit Kriegsbeginn hat es in den USA keinen Amoklauf mehr gegeben. + + + Wie der US-Fernsehsender FOX berichtet, schläft Tommy Franks, der Oberkommandierende der US-Streitkräfte, öfter mit seinem Gewehr als mit seiner Frau in einem Bett. Nachwuchs sei aber nicht in Sicht. + + + Wo Rudolf Scharping ist, da reifen Entscheidungen langsam. Der ehemalige Verteidigungsminister hat seinen lang geplanten Urlaub verschoben für den Fall, "dass er im Krieg gebraucht werde", wie Scharping in einem Interview der Haubenföhnzeitschrift Fit for fun erklärte. + + + Die 200 polnischen Soldaten, die am Irakkrieg teilnehmen wollten, sind versehentlich im Iran gelandet und dort festgenommen worden. + + + Eine amerikanische Rakete hat im Indischen Ozean irrtümlich einen japanischen Tunfisch-Trawler versenkt, nachdem von der US-Marine ausgebildete Delfine das Schiff als Ziel markiert hatten. + + + Angela Merkel soll die nächste Steuben Parade in New York anführen. Das meldete die Deutsch-Amerikanische Gesellschaft am Dienstag. Fraglich sei, ob der besten Freundin aller Amerikaner das Cheerleaderkostüm passe. + + + Der Papst leidet derzeit aufgrund seines Dauerbetens während des Krieges an dicken Knien.
+ + +" AM TICKER: MIR

taz Nr. 7014 vom 26.3.2003, Seite 20, 46 Zeilen (TAZ-Bericht), MIR

[Joerver]

Schlappe für Bush bei seinen Steuerplänen, 51 zu 48 gegen ihn im Senat

March 25, 2003
Senate Votes to Slash Bush`s Tax Cut Plan
By DAVID STOUT


WASHINGTON, March 25 — The Senate dealt President Bush a stinging setback this afternoon when it reversed itself and voted to reduce the size of his tax cut plan.

Senators voted, 51 to 48, to approve tax cuts of $350 billion through 2013, rather than the $726 billion that Mr. Bush has made the cornerstone of his economic stimulus package.

The about-face came as it became increasingly clear that the war in Iraq might drag on longer than many people had thought, thus making it impossible to gauge what it might ultimately cost. And long before the start of the war, it became clear that budget deficits would be a certainty for years to come.

Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, who has been a leader in efforts to trim back the president`s tax plan, told reporters that "concern about the cost and the uncertainty" of the Iraq campaign had convinced some senators that deep tax cuts could not be justified.

Senator Don Nickles, the Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, argued before the vote that lowering the tax cuts would "cut the growth out of the growth package."

The timing could hardly have been worse for the president, with the White House having just sent a request for a $74.7 billion supplemental appropriation to Capitol Hill to finance the war in Iraq.

Today`s action came only four days after the Senate and House approved a $2.2 trillion spending plan for the next fiscal year, with President Bush`s tax proposals part of the measure. The House voted, 215 to 212, on Friday to give the president all the $726 billion in tax cuts that he wanted. The Senate voted, 62 to 38, the same day to trim only $100 billion from the tax cuts that Mr. Bush is advocating.

Thus, even before today`s surprise vote, there was sure to be heavy negotiating between the House and Senate as the White House`s allies in the Capitol sought to restore at least some of what Mr. Bush wanted.

The vote today to scale back the president`s plans drastically, as part of a budget measure for the next fiscal year, was possible in part because three Republican senators — Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, George V. Voinovich of Ohio and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine — voted against the president`s proposal. No Democrat voted for the president`s plan today. Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, a Democrat who often votes with Republicans on tax issues, did not vote.

Mr. Chafee also voted against the president on Friday, as did two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and John S. McCain of Arizona. But Ms. Collins and Mr. McCain sided with Mr. Bush today.

Since Republicans hold a slim margin in the Senate, there will no doubt be considerable persuasion and arm-twisting to reverse today`s outcome, or at least to restore some of what Mr. Bush wants. (There are 51 Republican senators, 48 Democrats and 1 independent, James M. Jeffords of Vermont, who votes with the Democrats.)

It will not be surprising if the White House applies intense pressure to the three Republican crossover senators in hope of achieving at least a 50-50 tie, which would then be broken by Vice President Dick Cheney in his role as president of the Senate. Mr. Voinovich, in particular, may be under considerable pressure, since he is up for re-election in 2004.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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First girl lost in the war



Country girl ... Jessica



By WILL BARKER

A PRETTY 19-year-old country girl who joined the US Army to escape unemployment was feared to be the first woman soldier to die yesterday.

Blonde Jessica Lynch was among 12 soldiers in a US supply convoy ambushed by Iraqi troops.

Her parents were left weeping like others in America and
Britain as more Coalition victims of the war were identified.

Supply clerk Jessica was feared dead after five survivors from the ambush were paraded before Iraqi TV cameras in sickening footage beamed around the world on Sunday.

Also shown were the bodies of the other seven members of the 507th Maintenance Co convoy, but Jessica’s parents could not identify her among them.

Her father Greg Lynch said: “The only thing they can tell us is she’s missing.

“I just want them to bring her back safely — her and all the rest of the kids.”

Private Jessica — known as Jessie — only joined up because she could not find a job in her farming community home town of Palestine, West Virginia.

Lorene Cumbridge, a 62-year-old cousin, said: “She’s just a West Virginia country girl. Warm-hearted. Outgoing. I really thought growing up she would become an elementary school teacher.



Missing ... supply clerk Jessica


But for West Virginia children in some of the more rural areas, the military is the one good chance of getting an education and making something of themselves.”

Lack of jobs and the military service of her older brother,
Gregory Lynch Jr., led Jessica into the Army, her father said.

She signed up before graduating from Wirt County High School in Elizabeth, where she played basketball and softball.

Greg said: “The Army offered a good deal.” Jessica’s brother is stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Locals have been supporting Greg, Jessica’s mother Deidre, and her 17-year-old sister, Brandi Renee.

A yellow ribbon was tied to a tree near the family’s mailbox and two others were attached to posts on the front porch.

[Joerver]

Zerstörung der Städte oder Aushungern

Burkhard Schröder 26.03.2003
Deutsche Militärhistoriker prophezeien den Briten und Amerikanern im Irak eine Niederlage

Noch nie in der Geschichte der Kriege sei, so Militärhistoriker, eine Großstadt wie Bagdad militärisch von einer Invasionsarmee erobert worden. Für die Alliierten im Irak gäbe es nur zwei Möglichkeiten, Badgad oder auch Basra zu erobern: Die Städte völlig zu verwüsten oder sie auszuhungern. Basra gilt schon jetzt als militärisches Ziel. Das heißt: Straßenkampf. Und der könne letztlich nicht gewonnen werden.


Professor Dr. Manfred Messerschmidt, 76, Professor und bis 1988 in Freiburg leitender Historiker des Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes, ist seit 1995 pensioniert, gilt aber immer noch als der Doyen der deutschen militärhistorischen Forschung. Selbst seine zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen und politischen Gegner beziehen sich auf den unbequemen Historiker mit Respekt.


Messerschmidt hält eine militärische Niederlage der Alliierten für wahrscheinlich, falls sich das Regime Saddam Husseins an der Macht halte. Eine Eroberung Bagdads sei unmöglich, falls die Alliierten nicht planten, die irakische Hauptstadt in Schutt und Asche zu legen. Der Zweite Weltkrieg habe gezeigt, insbesondere die 900 Tage dauernde Belagerung Leningrads, dass ein Straßenkampf immer zur völligen Zerstörung und zu schrecklichen menschlichen Verlusten führte.

Selbst die deutsche Wehrmacht habe zunächst gezögert, die russischen Großstädte militärisch erobern zu wollen, bis Hitler persönlich anordnete, sie entweder komplett zu zerstören oder auszuhungern. Sowohl in Leningrad als auch in Stalingrad ging dieses Konzept nicht auf. Eine Millionenstadt könne man nicht sichern, Invasoren könnten sich höchstens in bestimmten Punkten einigeln.

"Und wenn nach Bombardements erst Schutt auf den Straßen liegt, kommen auch Panzer nicht mehr durch."


Die "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kriegsursachenforschung" ( AKUF) am Institut für Politische Wissenschaft der Universität Hamburg betreibt eine Website und ein Archiv, die umfassend über das weltweite Kriegsgeschehen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. informieren. Wenn es den Amerikaner und Briten gelänge, die Millionenstadt Bagdad zu erobert, wäre das ein historischer Präzendenzfall, da dies unter vergleichbaren Umständen noch keiner Armee gelungen sei.

Dr. Gerd Krumeich Professor an der Universität Düsseldorf und Vorsitzender des "Arbeitskreises Militärgeschichte", sieht das ähnlich. Schon 1870, im deutsch-französischen Krieg, habe Paris nur deswegen kapituliert, weil sich die französische Armee samt ihrem Kaiser schon ergeben hatte und die Versorgungslage der Stadt katastrophal wurde. Die russische Bevölkerung in den belagerten Städten Leningrad und Stalingrad habe zwar gehofft, militärisch entsetzt zu werden. Das sei im Irak nicht zu erwarten: "Aber der Glaube versetzt Berge."

Die Amerikaner hätten offenbar nicht damit gerechnet, dass Saddam Hussein einen gewissen Rückhalt in Teilen der irakischen Bevölkerung habe. Niemand wisse genau, wie stark der sei. Die haushohe technische Überlegenheit der alliierten Truppen und ihre Luftüberlegenheit nutze bei einem Straßenkampf überhaupt nichts. Man könne keine Großstadt "sauber" einnehmen. Und die Bombardements bewirkten, dass die Bevölkerung sich um so mehr um den Diktator schare. Nichts habe die deutsche Bevölkerung "näher an Hitler herangebracht als die Bomben" der Alliierten. Das sei ein merkwürdiges Phänomen, aber auch bei anderen verbrecherischen Regimes der Geschichte zu beobachten

Der Militärhistoriker Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kroener von der Universität Potsdam hat über die angestrebte Eroberung irakischer Städte eine klare Meinung:


"Wenn Widerstand geleistet wird, ist eine Großstadt prinzipiell nicht einzunehmen."


Dafür gäbe es keine historischen Beispiele, Paris 1940 und Rom 1944 seien nicht verteidigt worden, nur deshalb wäre eine militärische Okkupation möglich gewesen. Und die damals südvietnamesische Hauptstadt Saigon sei 1973 zwar erobert worden, aber nicht von "fremden" Invasoren, sondern von Vietnamesen.

Das Bewusstsein der Europäer habe sich geändert, meint Kroener. Ein Bombenkrieg wie zum Beispiel der alliierte Angriff auf Hamburg mit 30.000 Toten in zwei Nächten sei nicht mehr denkbar. Ein Straßenkampf um Bagdad auch nicht: "Jeder, der noch bei Trost ist, wird den vermeiden. Der ist nicht zu gewinnen." Alternativen gebe es nicht. Falls die Alliierten versuchten, Bagdad weiträumig abzuriegeln, müssten sie wesentlich mehr Truppen ins Land bringen und mit einer monate-, gar jahrelangen Belagerung rechnen. Der jetzige Vorstoß auf die irakische Hauptstadt ginge offenbar immer noch von der Idee aus, dass die Bevölkerung "vom Regime schnell abfallen" würde. Das sei, meint Kroener, ein Irrtum: Selbst wenn sich die Bevölkerung passiv verhalte, reichte es auch, wenn die Elitetruppen den Widerstand noch organisieren könnten, um die Stadt zu verteidigen. "Wenn es nicht gelingt, das Regime Saddam Husseins zu destabilisieren und die Führungsspitze auszuschalten, ist die Niederlage vorprogrammiert."

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kroener empfiehlt den britischen und amerikanischen Militärs Lektüre, die zwar schon alt ist, aber dennoch gut beschreibt, wie sich irakische Kommandos bei der Verteidigung Bagdads verhalten werden: die gesammelten Werke Mao Zedongs. Der Guerillakämpfer bewege sich in der sympathisierenden Bevölkerung wie der Fisch im Wasser.

Die deutschen Militärs dürfen jetzt zum Irak-Krieg nichts mehr sagen. Das gilt sowohl für die Pressestelle der Bundeswehr als auch für das jetzt in Potsdambeheimatete Militärgeschichtliche Forschungsamt. Ehemalige Militärs wie Brigadegeneral a.D. Helmut Harff, erster Befehlshaber der deutschen Truppen im Kosovo und heute Geschäftsführer des Ausschusses Verteidigungswirtschaft im Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, sind offener. Hauff bestätigt die deutschen Militärhistoriker:



"Bagdad mit militärischen Mitteln zu beherrschen ist nicht möglich. Es wird zu einem langjährigen Häuserkampf, einem regelrechten terroristischem Kleinkrieg kommen."


Das habe man schon im "relativ kleinen" Mogadischu in Somalia gesehen. Damals zogen die Amerikaner wieder ab, weil die Stimmung in den USA kippte.

[Joerver]

Neue Animation

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/george_doubl…


.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

The Garbo doctrine
After the war, America may ask UN blue helmets to aid reconstruction. But the stars and stripes will prevail

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday March 26, 2003
The Guardian

They`re playing that old Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi, on the radio again and it couldn`t have come at a better time. "And don`t it always seem to go," inquires the plaintive chorus, "that you don`t know what you`ve got till it`s gone?"

The first people to hear that line back in 1970 might have taken it as a lament for the lost tranquillity of American life before the Vietnam war. Maybe the new generation lapping up the current Counting Crows` version hear their own yearning for the days before wartime. But the people who should be chanting that chorus loudest this week are not the peaceniks and protesters, but the men who plotted and planned this war. For it`s the Washington hawks who have greatest reason to identify with Joni`s line. In the last few days they have come to appreciate something they used to take for granted or, worse still, mock outright.

I`m thinking of international rules. Since the day the Bushies took charge, they have disdained the very idea of cooperation with other nations. Multilateralism was for wimps; go-it-alone, America First unilateralism was the future. The early demonstrations of the new Garbo doctrine - America "wants to be alone" - form a list that has grown wearily familiar: the US trashing of the Kyoto protocol on global warming, the refusal to back the new international criminal court and the threatened break from the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia. Such pacts and rules were just ropes to tie down the American Gulliver, ran the new thinking: the Bushies would slash them all and break free. The ultimate exercise of the new freedom started a week ago today: a pre-emptive war unleashed by Bush, "at a time of our choosing", with not a shred of international authorisation.

But it`s taken just a few days of desert combat to remind Washington that the old, collective system was not all French vetoes and pesky third world countries refusing to vote the right way. Multilateralism had its plus side, too - even for America.

Take Donald Rumsfeld, lambasting the Iraqis for their mistreatment of US prisoners of war, paraded on TV like so much booty. How could Baghdad ignore the Geneva convention!, he raged on Sunday. And then perhaps he remembered. Wasn`t the Geneva convention the same document he had cheerfully binned when it came to shackling al-Qaida suspects at Camp X-Ray? It seemed little more than an irritant back then, a way for bleeding-heart busybodies to stop America locking up the bad guys. But now, perhaps, Rumsfeld is coming to see its value.

The US might even be undergoing a similar pang of regret about the United Nations itself. What a pain that body was in the lead-up to war! But it could be essential to governing a post-Saddam Iraq. At least one faction, centred on Colin Powell`s State Department, holds that view, believing that only a UN administration can attract funding from the rest of the world - and that a blue-helmeted presence would be less provocative to Iraq`s people, and less likely to stir resistance, than an occupying force governing alone under the stars and stripes. In other words, a UN seal on an American victory would make US servicemen and women less vulnerable.

But this sudden realisation of the UN`s value may have come too late. Jacques Chirac is in no hurry to give UN legitimacy to what he calls the US and UK "belligerents." Right now, he believes London and Washington made this mess in Iraq - they can clear it up. Tony Blair knows how much of a fix the warmaking coalition is in; hence his near-desperate plea yesterday for Europe and the US to come together and his trip to see both Bush and the UN`s Kofi Annan later this week. He knows that having snubbed the UN before the war, it won`t be easy for the US to win them over now.

The US fares no better when it accuses Russian companies of selling Iraq sensitive military kit - from night-vision goggles to radio-jammers - in violation of UN sanctions and a raft of arms control agreements. As Vladimir Putin might have reminded Bush in their Monday telephone call, arms accords didn`t seem to matter much to the White House 18 months ago when they were threatening to tear up the ABM treaty. Similarly, when Bush promises to prosecute Iraqi top brass for war crimes, he should pause to wonder which court might house such a trial. It surely can`t be the international criminal court which America has derided from the start.

Whether it`s PoWs or rebuilding Iraq, arms or war crimes, Washington is learning the hard way that even a hyperpower cannot easily act alone. Not that the collective tools don`t exist. They do and they were there for America to use; but the US didn`t want to know. Isn`t life always like that? Joni understood: "You don`t know what you`ve got till it`s gone."

So will the US have a road-to-Baghdad conversion and change its ways, swapping its pre-war unilateralism for postwar multilateralism? No, says one Washington official. Collective ways of doing business are a matter of "convenience, not conviction" for the administration. They`ll use the Geneva convention or the UN if it suits their interests, he says, but drop them the moment they stand in their way.

Why? Because the hawks in this administration believe in unilateralism as a matter of ideological faith. This is not a game or a debating position: they are deadly serious. Witness hawkish outriders like David Frum and Richard Perle calling for the burial of the UN once and for all, to be replaced by a new world order in which America gets a free hand. See Monday`s editorial in the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal: "Au revoir, security council."

Or take one more striking, practical illustration. In the months before war a debate raged in the Pentagon between, crudely put, the uniforms and the suits. The soldiers wanted more time, so they could build up to the 250,000 troops that would constitute the "overwhelming force" believed since the first Gulf war to be the best way to deploy US power. They wanted another month. But the Pentagon civilians, led by Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, insisted on going earlier, with many fewer men.

Why would a hawk like Rumsfeld prefer less to more? My Washington source offers an astonishing explanation: "So they can do it again." The logic is simple. Rumsfeld and co know that amassing an army of quarter of a million is a once-a-decade affair: 1991 and 2003. But if they can prove that victory is possible with a lighter, more nimble force, assembled rapidly - then why not repeat the trick? "This is just the beginning," an administration official told the New York Times this week. "I would not rule out the same sequence of events for Iran and North Korea as for Iraq."

So Washington may be regretting its hasty shredding of international custom - some of those rules could have come in handy in this war - but the pangs will fade. After all, this is a band of men with big dreams - and work to do.

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We have been set adrift in the middle of the Atlantic
Blair`s priority should be obvious: he must re-establish our European mooring

Hugo Young
Tuesday March 25, 2003
The Guardian

There aren`t many things to be said for a long stay in hospital during the fieriest international crisis of our time. For a columnist, enforced silence is the worst affliction. But it does supply perspective. It keeps the eye trained on a beginning that may have got lost in the fog of war and the months of jockeying over abortive UN resolutions. In the beginning, our leader had a strategy that governed his approach not only to Iraq but to the entire positioning of Britain in the world of the 21st century.

It`s clear to me that this has been a total failure. Whatever happens in the war, that verdict surely cannot change. A lot of other outcomes remain speculative, and if Iraq falls quickly may turn out to be less bad than the doom-mongers have predicted. A cornucopia of terrorism? Let`s wait and see. More instability in the region? Likely, though not easy to specify for sure. But the British role as bridge/pivot/hinge or indispensable lubricant between Washington and Europe can never truly have these metaphors of benign uniqueness, so passionately formulated by Tony Blair, applied to it again. The bridge has collapsed. In its place, unless Blair changes his vision quite dramatically, the image of a small boat adrift in mid-Atlantic swings into view.

The break-up comes about for contrasting reasons. Consider the Washington end first. The build-up to Iraq has been a lesson for the British people. They have acquiesced for decades in the special Anglo-American relationship so beloved of the British political class, partly because it has sometimes done Britain good but mainly because they`re not required to think about it.

The Iraq war has changed all that. People now see what it means. Though the polls show a majority getting behind our soldiers in the field, nobody can pretend the British favour what George Bush has dragged them into. Though Blair has clothed the war, with brilliant articulacy, in his personal moral rectitude and presumed to align this alarming phenomenon with the British national interest, his persuasion largely failed. People know this is not a British war, but one conducted by a tightly knit group of hard-faced men in Washington, for whom the Brits are a necessary inconvenience.

Blair did his best to interpose himself. He ushered the war game into the security council. He helped induce just enough diplomatic delay for the American military to perfect their preparations on the ground. He did this in good, internationalist faith. He really wanted the UN route to succeed. But he was working with an administration that wanted no such thing, and now gathers round itself a rhetoric that says the UN should cease to have any role in global politics. This is a wholly over-mighty ally: abusive about old friends, contemptuous of multinational diplomacy, scornful of the right of other nations to have their interests, indifferent to the need to do big things together rather than apart.

That`s the kind of regime the British people see across the Atlantic. It isn`t the natural American way. It contradicts much American history. But it is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld way, which has every chance of enduring for another term. What Blair`s infamous bridge therefore proposes is hooking up for another six years, on terms that allow negligible British leverage, with an America whose international stance is as alarming to the British people as most of its domestic policies are repugnant to even a Blairite Labour party.

This strikes me as a relationship that will be redefined by popular demand. That will be the legacy of the Iraq war, whatever happens on the battlefield. We see with clarity that, whatever other advantages the specialness may occasionally bring, it imposes obligations that are intolerable, and claims affinities that are ceasing to exist. Nothing looks more out of touch and out of date than the daily rantings of Americanism in the American-owned parts of the British media.

But what about the other end of the bridge? Here Iraq has had the same destructive effect, and Blair has taken down many of the bricks. From the divisive letter he got eight, mostly minor, European leaders to sign up to kicking France and Germany in the teeth, to the dishonest politics he played against France in a vain attempt to relocate the blame for the refusal of Chile, Mexico et al to take the Anglo-American line, he behaved like the acme of an anti-European. When Rumsfeld breezily insulted Germany and France, he didn`t dare raise a whimper of complaint. While quite willing to abuse France, he never dares offer the smallest dissent from anything an American leader says or does.

This doesn`t mean Blair has become a Eurosceptic. He certainly wants to take Britain into the euro zone. He wants to be a big player in the building of an EU constitution. But, like many British leaders before him, he decided anti-Frenchness was the way to save his domestic skin, and deserves to pay a heavy price for it. His people helped orchestrate the anti-French press. The only two powers that can make anything important come out of a European presence in the world will barely speak to each other, a disaster for which Blair is at least as responsible as Jacques Chirac.

The war has posed real problems for the EU. There are genuine and respectable differences of perception. Chairing last week`s Brussels summit, the Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, began by inviting discussion of the war. There followed a surreal silence, a witness told me. Not one leader wanted to begin. Everybody`s toes were too delicate to dare to touch. So much for the finer points of a common foreign policy, which the Giscard convention is apparently still concerning itself to pin down.

Now the great bridge-builder enters the fray again. He is committed, rightly, to a UN-based authority for post-war Iraq. He wants a security council resolution. Indeed, without one, it`s hard to see the EU agreeing to help finance the rebuilding of a country which most of its members believe should never have had to face this war. Likewise, Blair puts great emphasis on the Middle East peace process being resumed. Yet both initiatives face stiff opposition in Washington. Bush has paid lip service to the second, not even that much to the first. If the experience of the past six months is anything to go by, the one force unlikely to have a conclusive influence compelling Bush in the right direction is the sibilant, desperate, private voice of Tony Blair.

Very likely nothing will persuade the US to do what its triumphant hawks don`t want to do. This can only reinforce the alienation into which grassroots British opinion has been rudely jolted by the pre-history of this war. In that circumstance, Blair`s priority should be obvious. Since we can`t possibly exist alone - small boat cut adrift by the captain`s misjudgments - the European mooring is the one we have to re-establish. That doesn`t mean abandoning Atlanticism. It does mean reformulating British strategy before we get manipulated and taken for granted as fast as Donald Rumsfeld can spit once again on old Europe.

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QUOTATION OF THE DAY
Arab pride is at stake here. American propaganda said it was going to be so quick and easy, meaning we Arabs are weak and unable to fight. Now it is like a Mike Tyson fight against some weak guy. They don`t want the weak guy knocked out in the first 40 seconds.
KHALID M. BATARFI, a Saudi newspaper editor, on the ambivalence felt by Arabs who dislike Saddam Hussein but admire his fight against the United States.

Aus der NYT 26.03.

[Joerver]

Siehe #534

March 26, 2003
Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER


mericans say the war in Iraq will last longer and cost more than they had initially expected, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The shift comes as the public absorbs the first reports of allied setbacks on the battlefield.

The percentage of Americans who said they expected a quick and successful effort against Iraq dropped to 43 percent on Monday night from 62 percent on Saturday. And respondents who said the war was going "very well" dropped 12 points, to 32 percent, from Sunday night to Monday night, an erosion that followed an increase in allied casualties and the capture of several Americans.

The poll also found an increase in the respondents who fear an imminent retaliatory terrorist attack on American soil, now that images of the allied assault on Baghdad have been televised around the world, though two-thirds of respondents said the nation was adequately prepared to deal with another terrorist strike.

At the same time, President Bush`s campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power is producing sharp fissures at home.

The poll found that black Americans are far more likely than whites to oppose Mr. Bush`s policy in Iraq. They are also much more likely to say that the cost of ousting Mr. Hussein was too high, as measured by the loss of life.

Over all, with the war not even a week old, the nation`s opinion about the conflict appears to be in flux, driven by an intensity of coverage that has allowed television viewers seemingly to follow every move from their living rooms, and in an environment where many Americans say they remain unsure of Mr. Bush`s rationale for the conflict.

Indeed, the Times/CBS News Poll found that the number of Americans who expected the war to be won quickly dropped 9 points from Saturday to Sunday, and 10 more points from Sunday to Monday. Those shifts coincided with television coverage of prisoners of war and battlefield casualties that seems to have caught at least some Americans — accustomed to the relatively bloodless victory in Afghanistan last year — by surprise.

"I think I was living in a pipe dream thinking no one would get killed," Shirley Johnson, 79, a registered Republican from Davenport, Iowa, said in a follow-up interview. "But all of a sudden people were getting killed, and I was horrified."

Pam Wallman, 60, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said, "I think the American public was duped into believing that our troops could just go in there, clean everything up and come home in 10 days."

Nonetheless, support for both the war and for the president, who has kept a low profile after announcing the invasion last week, remains high; Mr. Bush`s job approval rating is now 60 percent. Still, Americans said Mr. Bush had failed to give them enough information about how long the war might last, how much it might cost and how many Americans might die in the effort. They also said Mr. Bush had failed to detail how the administration would manage a postwar Iraq.

The nationwide poll of 2,383 adults was taken from Thursday through Monday. It was designed to take into account of daily changes in opinion. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample was plus or minus two percentage points. The margin of error is larger when measuring smaller groups, like blacks, or when chronicling one- or two-night shifts in opinion.

A Times/CBS News poll last week found evidence of divisions between Democrats and Republicans over the war. This latest poll found even sharper differences on the issue between two other groups: blacks and whites. Blacks Americans are far more likely to oppose the war than both white Americans and white Democrats, and are correspondingly unhappy with Mr. Bush`s job performance.

While 82 percent of whites said the United States should take military action to oust Mr. Hussein, just 44 percent of blacks said they supported that approach. In addition, 71 percent of whites said they were proud of what the United States was doing in Iraq, compared with 33 percent of blacks.

The findings reflected directly on Mr. Bush`s standing among African-Americans. Thirty-four percent of blacks said they approved of the job he is doing, compared with 75 percent of whites.

The finding comes as a number of black political leaders have been at the forefront of the antiwar movement, arguing that young black men and women would be disproportionately represented on the front lines, and that the war would drain federal money that should be spent on domestic programs.

"I have a sick feeling about all the young lives that are going to be destroyed," said Geraldine Hunter, 75, a black Democrat in Cleveland. "I don`t know why Bush was in such a hurry to go to war."

Latifa Palmer, 29, of Chino, Calif., who is also black, said: "If you don`t mess with them, they won`t mess with us. Bush telling Saddam to leave his country would be like Saddam telling Bush to leave his country."

Support for Mr. Bush and the war remains high. By 70 percent to 24 percent, Americans believe that the United States did not make a mistake getting involved in Iraq. But there has been a measurable decline in the national confidence that was on display last week. On Saturday, 53 percent of respondents said the war would be over within weeks; by Monday, only 34 percent of respondents said it would end that soon.



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March 26, 2003
Take Down Saddam TV
By MAUREEN DOWD


ASHINGTON

Rummy was grumpy.

TV generals and Pentagon reporters were poking at his war plan, wondering if he had enough troops and armor on the ground to take Baghdad and protect the rear of his advancing infantry.

"It`s a good plan," the war czar insisted with a grimace, adding that battle is "a tough business."

The cocky theorists of the administration, and their neo-con gurus, are now faced with reality and history: the treacherous challenge, and the cost in lives and money, of bringing order out of chaos in Iraq.

With sandstorms blackening their TV screens, with P.O.W.`s and casualties tearing at their hearts, Americans are coming to grips with the triptych of bold transformation experiments that are now in play.

There is the president`s dream of remaking the Middle East to make America safer from terrorists.

There is Dick Cheney`s desire to transform America into a place that flexes its power in the face of any evil.

There is Donald Rumsfeld`s transformation of the American military, changing from the old heavy ground forces to smaller, more flexible units with high-tech weapons.

When Tommy Franks and other generals fought Rummy last summer, telling him he could not invade Iraq without overwhelming force, the defense chief treated them like old Europe, acting as if they just didn`t get it.

He was going to send a smaller force on a lightning-quick race to Baghdad, relying on air strikes and psychological operations — leaflets to civilians and e-mail and calls to Iraqi generals — to encourage Iraqis to revolt against Saddam.

(The Pentagon has downgraded Saddam, the way it did Osama when it just missed getting him. Now the war in Iraq is "not about one man," as General Franks put it.)

The administration was afraid that with too many Iraqis dead, we would lose the support of the world. But some generals worry that by avoiding tactics that could kill Iraqi civilians and "baby-talking" the Iraqi military, we have emboldened the enemy and endangered American troops.

As Ralph Peters, a retired military officer, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed article: "Some things do not change. The best way to shock and awe an enemy is still to kill him."

Despite the vast sums we spend on our intelligence and diplomatic services, American officials often seem clueless about the culture of our adversaries. After Vietnam, Robert McNamara admitted that he and other war planners had never understood Vietnamese history and culture. Our intelligence services didn`t see the Iranian revolution coming, or the Soviet Union`s breakup.

It`s hard to know why the administration seems so surprised at Iraqi ruses. As Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military tactician who inspired the "shock and awe" campaign, noted, "All war is deception." Besides, the Iraqis used similar fake surrender tricks in the last gulf war.

It`s also hard to know why the Pentagon is surprised at Iraqi brutality, or at the failure of Iraqi ethnic groups, deserted by America after the last gulf war, to celebrate their "liberation" by the U.S., or by the hardened resistance of Saddam loyalists like the fedayeen, who have no escape hatch this time around.

American war planners were privately experiencing some shock and awe at Iraqi obliviousness to shock and awe, which we can see on TV, as Iraqis crowd into restaurants and onto roofs to watch the bombing.

Miscalculating, the Pentagon delayed trying to take down Iraqi TV until last night because it hoped to use the network after the war. But that target should have been one of the first so the Iraqis could not have peddled their propaganda, paraded our P.O.W.`s and shown brazen speeches by Saddam, or Stepford-Saddam, and the mockery of Iraqi officials over the predictions of a quick victory.

The Pentagon considered last year an "inside out" strategy that would rely on dropping Special Forces into Baghdad, with U.S. forces then taking over the rest of the country. That was scrapped in favor of the "outside in" strategy that we`re now witnessing.

But Saddam has turned our strategy upside down with his own "inside out" strategy.

Tragically for everybody, the Iraqi fiend is still inside, dug in and diabolically determined to kill as many people as he can on the way out.






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March 26, 2003
Scorecard for the War
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


was in a restaurant at Chicago`s O`Hare Airport on Sunday, and it had an NCAA basketball game playing on the TV at one end of the bar and the Iraq war on the other. Most people were watching the basketball game — probably because it`s so much easier to keep score. How will we know if we are winning in Iraq? Here are six things I am watching for:

(1) Have we occupied Baghdad — without leveling the whole city? This war is not being fought simply to disarm the regime of Saddam Hussein. It is being fought to replace that regime with a decent, accountable Iraqi government. That is the real prize here, because only such a government can stabilize Iraq and ensure that another Saddam-like general does not emerge. That can`t even begin to happen until the capital has been taken by U.S. and British forces.

(2) Have we killed, captured or expelled Saddam? President Bush keeps saying that this war is not against one man. Nonsense. We have been chasing one man in Iraq for 12 years, and it is essential that he be eliminated because until and unless he is, Iraqis will never express what they really think and feel. Indeed, average Iraqis will not even know what they really feel until the dictator who has run their lives with an iron fist for more than 30 years is removed and they are certain that he is not coming back. (Do not rule out, even now, an Arab-brokered deal for Saddam to leave peacefully.)

(3) Have we been able to explain why some Iraqi forces are putting up such a fierce fight? Are these the most elite, pampered Special Republican Guard units, who have benefited most from Saddam`s rule and are therefore willing to fight to preserve it? Or are these primarily Sunni Muslim units, terrified that with the fall of Saddam the long reign of the Sunnis of Iraq will end and they will be replaced by the Shiite majority? Or is this happening because even Iraqis who detest Saddam love their homeland and hate the idea of a U.S. occupation — and these Iraqis are ready to resist a foreign occupier, even one that claims to be a liberator? Knowing the answer is critical for how we reconstruct Iraq. It is not at all unusual for Arabs to detest both their own dictator and a foreign occupier. (See encyclopedia for Israel, invasion of Lebanon, 1982.)

(4) Have we won this war and preserved the territorial integrity of Iraq? We can`t rebuild Iraq if we can`t hold it together. Both the Kurds and the Turks would like to bite off part of northern Iraq. The Bush team claims to be committed to preserving Iraq`s unity, in which case it had better tell both the Turks and the Kurds: "Which part of `no` don`t you understand? You Turks are not coming in, and you Kurds are not breaking away."

(5) Has an authentic Iraqi liberal nationalist emerged from the U.S. occupation to lead the country? Some pundits are already nominating their favorite Iraqi opposition figures to be Iraq`s next leader. My gut tells me the only person who is going to be able to rule Iraq effectively is someone who has lived through Saddam`s reign, not sat it out in London or Washington, and who is ready to say no to both tyranny and foreign control in Iraq. But even if he is an Iraqi exile, the next leader of Iraq has to emerge through some sort of consensual process from within Iraq. If the Bush team intends to force Iraq`s next leader to quickly embrace Israel, if it intends to impose someone who has been dining with Richard Perle, such a leader will never take root.

(6) Is the Iraqi state that emerges from this war accepted as legitimate by Iraq`s Arab and Muslim neighbors? That is very important, both for the viability of whatever Iraqi leadership follows Saddam, and for the liberalizing effect it may have on others in the neighborhood. In the absence of any U.N. endorsement for this war, the successor regime to Saddam will have to legitimize itself by becoming something that Arabs and Muslims will point to and say, "We don`t like how this was done, but we have to admit America helped build something better in our neighborhood." This outcome is crucial.

If you see these things happening, you`ll know that the political ends for which this war was launched are being achieved. If you don`t, you`ll know we`re lost in a sandstorm.




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Da in der WP nichts aktuelles gefunden, ein m.E. guten
Kommentar vom Februar

Napoleonic Fervor


By Robert Kagan

Monday, February 24, 2003; Page A21


BRUSSELS -- Was Napoleon`s defeat at Waterloo a glorious moment in France`s history? In a best-selling account of Napoleon`s final days published two years ago, France`s multi-talented foreign minister, Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin, argues that, yes, even today, Napoleon`s defeat "shines with an aura worthy of victory."

This is something to contemplate as we watch France twirl the globe on its fingertip. The Times of London recently reprinted excerpts of de Villepin`s book, implicitly suggesting that the spirit of Napoleon -- that is, Napoleon at Waterloo -- might well be driving French foreign policy today. Certainly for de Villepin, the spirit of Napoleon still lives and inspires. The foreign minister`s office is adorned with portraits of the Corsican, and the remarkable poet-politician writes in his book, "There is not a day that goes by without me inhaling the perfume of the discreet violet," the flower worn by Napoleon`s loyalists after his escape from Elba. "This Napoleon guides and transcends. He has carried, ever since his fall, a certain idea of France, a superior vision of politics. His gesture inspires the spirit of resistance. . . . Victory or death, but glory whatever happens."

Today France is marching toward another glorious Waterloo, taking on the assembled forces not of Wellington and Blucher but of Blair and Bush. Insofar as France`s goal is to stop the Americans from going to war in Iraq, it is certain to fail, as President Jacques Chirac and de Villepin both know. But even in defeat there are victories to be won.

There is, above all, the victory of a principle. Americans make a serious mistake if they believe France is simply engaged in petty churlishness. Chirac and de Villepin believe they, and ultimately they alone, are defending the European vision of world order against that vision`s most dangerous enemy -- the United States. "In this temple of the United Nations," de Villepin declared at the Security Council a week ago, "we are the guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience. . . . France has always stood upright in the face of history before mankind." The French expect to fail in their effort to prevent war, but they expect the war and its aftermath to bring disaster both for the United States and for those European leaders who have thrown in their lot with Bush. When the dust settles, the French believe, their brave stance will be vindicated before the court of European public opinion.

For France the larger game has always been the struggle for mastery in Europe. The United States may win the battle over Iraq, but who is to say that France will not ultimately win the war to chart the direction of Europe in the years and decades to come? Already France speaks for the vast majority of the European public. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar may have the United States on their side, but at the moment a majority of Blair and Aznar`s constituents are on France`s side. As for the Eastern Europeans, one poll shows that 75 percent of Latvians oppose war in Iraq, too. And while Chirac`s recent undiplomatic spanking of Poles, Czechs and others who dared to support Bush may today seem a self-inflicted wound, Chirac may still succeed in making the "new" Europe think twice before crossing the old.

Americans should not count too heavily on Eastern Europe`s serving forever as a pro-American fifth column in Europe. In coming years, as Czechs, Hungarians, Poles and Romanians become economically and politically enmeshed in the European Union, and as geopolitical insecurities and memories of Soviet occupation, the wellsprings of today`s pro-Americanism, begin to fade, the "new" Europe may come to resemble the Europe of France and Germany. The present idea of "new" and "old" Europe, pleasing though it might be to Americans, may prove inaccurate. Perhaps it is really France that represents Europe`s future, while those trying to preserve the transatlantic relationship represent Europe`s past. That, at least, is what France can hope.

In realizing this great dream, of course, France is prepared to wreak some destruction, as Napoleon did, and even to the very international institutions France claims to cherish. First NATO, which France does not cherish, was brought almost to its knees by France`s opposition even to planning for the defense of Turkey. Now the European Union, which France values highly, has been badly shaken by Chirac`s threats, and at a time, as one senior EU official recently told me, that the fragile institution can ill afford such pressures. Finally, there is the U.N. Security Council, de Villepin`s "temple." Will the international order France seeks be strengthened or weakened if a new generation of Americans becomes convinced that the Security Council is a spineless debating society? Perhaps France is prepared to pull the temple down "in the spirit of resistance" to the American behemoth.

It`s not just a question for Americans to ponder. On a visit to Berlin last week, I found Germans vehemently opposed to war with Iraq but also wondering aloud whether Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been wise to chain German fortunes so closely to France. French leadership is exhilarating, but it can be unnerving to follow a leader whose motto is "Victory or death, but glory whatever happens." This may provide the opening for the United States and its stalwart allies in Europe. Success in Iraq, both during and, just as important, after the invasion, might help keep and attract some support in Europe. Not everyone finds glory in defeat.

The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order."




© 2003 The Washington Post Company Kommentar vom Februar.

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Dazu auch #522 und 523.

And Now a Message from Hermann Goering....
March 26, 2003

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

This is a confirmed quote from Hermann Goering as he was interviewed in his jail cell by a German speaking U.S. Army intelligence officer, Gustave Gilbert, during the Nuremberg trials. The following conversation is from Gilbert`s journal:


"Why, of course, the people don`t want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don`t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."


We aren`t big on tossing around comparisons to the Third Reich, but let`s just say this statement could have just as easily been said by Herr Rove or Herr Rumsfeld, Nein?

After all, since September 11, 2001, when a horrible terrorist attack occurred, we have been subjected to an onslaught of fear-inducing propaganda from our own government. This campaign of fear has been calculated to help achieve partisan political goals on behalf of a rogue regime.

There is no doubt a real case that we might experience another terrorist attack. There is no doubt that we need to work our hardest to protect against such an attack. But this administration has been singularly incompetent in pursuing a war on terror. It covers the tracks of its clumsy, maladroit ineptness with a campaign of fear, waged against its own people.

This isn`t a presidency; it`s a ministry of fear.

Can anyone challenge that we were sold the war based on the philosophy and propaganda strategy described in the above quotations?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

BUZZFLASH NOTE: If you shudder and think BuzzFlash has gone too far by dredging up this quote from one of the leaders of the Third Reich, take this challenge. Re-read the quotations and insert Karl Rove`s name instead of Hermann Goering. Can you really claim that this doesn`t sound like something Rove would say? Can you honestly say that?

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Ist das nicht ein Affront gegen Deutschland? War Kamerun nicht mal eine deutsche Kolonie?

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Hollywood war wieder schneller, eingeschlossen einige Filmfonds, wo Deutsche Steuern sparen können.

Die Guten waten im Blut

Hollywoods Bosse setzen wieder auf den Western - weil das klassische Genre schlichte, große Gefühle erlaubt, weil es Stars wie Kevin Costner optimalen Spielraum bietet und eine Moral beschwört, die in die Zeit passt: Zivilisatorischer Fortschritt lässt sich oft nur mit archaischer Gewalt erzwingen.

Bürgerkriegs-Epos "Gods And Generals": An einem einzigen Tag fanden mindestens 4000 Amerikaner den Tod

Es ist ein weiter Weg nach Osten. Ein Mann, der bei der US-Kavallerie gedient hat, verlädt sein Pferd auf ein Schiff und überquert mit ihm den Atlantik. Ein Scheich hatte ihn herausgefordert: Bei einem Pferderennen, das sich fast 5000 Kilometer durch die arabische Wüste erstreckt, soll der Reiter aus dem fernen Westen gegen die übermächtige Konkurrenz aus dem Nahen Osten antreten. Nach mehreren Monaten, die ihn und seinen Mustang an den Rand der totalen Erschöpfung treiben, geht er als Erster durchs Ziel - ein Cowboy besiegt den Orient.

Die Story klingt, als hätten die Cowboys im Weißen Haus ihrer Phantasie einfach mal die Zügel schießen lassen: Der tapfere Vorreiter der westlichen Welt ist gewiss ein Held, wie er George W. Bush gefällt. Doch den Mann gab es wirklich: Er hieß Frank T. Hopkins, war einer der legendären Pony-Express-Kuriere und gewann auf seinem Mustang Hidalgo 1889 ein Langstreckenrennen gegen die besten Reiter der Beduinen - mit mehreren Tagen Vorsprung.

Die abenteuerliche Geschichte wurde soeben verfilmt: In der Disney-Produktion "Hidalgo" spielt Viggo Mortensen, der auch in den "Herr der Ringe"-Filmen durch das Reich des Bösen galoppiert, den Helden. Dies ist der Stoff, aus dem die Traumfabrik liebend gern Filme macht, und doch entdeckte sie ihn erst jetzt - eine mythische Figur des Westerns ist Hopkins nie gewesen.

Das liegt unter anderem daran, dass die Klassiker dieses Genres - überwiegend entstanden in den dreißiger bis fünfziger Jahren - in der Regel die Eroberung des Westens feierten. Nun aber scheint es, als blicke Hollywood unter dem Eindruck des 11. September lieber in die andere Richtung - nach dem Motto: "Go east, young man!"

Der Film "Hidalgo", der voraussichtlich im Sommer in die US-Kinos kommt, ist nicht der einzige Versuch, die Heroen der amerikanischen Pionierzeit, die seit den sechziger Jahren nur noch gelegentlich auf der Leinwand erschienen, cineastisch wiederzubeleben. Etwa zehn Filme, die sich mit der US-Geschichte zwischen 1836 und 1890 beschäftigen, befinden sich zurzeit in verschiedenen Phasen der Produktion - mit Budgets von bis zu 80 Millionen Dollar.

Das ist eine gewaltige Investition in ein Genre, das seit Jahren träge vor sich hin trabte. Ausnahmeerfolge wie die von Kevin Costner ("Der mit dem Wolf tanzt", 1990) oder Clint Eastwood ("Erbarmungslos", 1992) setzten jeweils nur für kurze Zeit das Verdikt außer Kraft, der Western sei wegen der Wiederkehr immergleicher Motive und der Fixierung auf den schlichten Gegensatz von Schurken und Gerechten hoffnungslos ausgereizt und antiquiert.

Der Einsturz der Twin Towers aber kehrte in den USA in vielerlei Hinsicht das Unterste nach oben: Die Katastrophe hat den Sinn für einfache Gefühle und Helden ebenso neu entfacht wie die Sehnsucht nach einer übersichtlichen Welt, in der die Guten zuschlagen und gewinnen - und mit einem Male wirkt das Western-Genre wieder höchst zeitgemäß.

Die Helden aus Amerikas Pioniertagen sind fast immer mit der Verteidigung ihres eigenen oder der Eroberung fremden Territoriums beschäftigt; sie wollen sich für erlittenes Unrecht rächen und kennen doch die Notwendigkeit von Gesetz und Ordnung; sie möchten ihren Freiheitsdrang ungehemmt ausleben, finden aber nur im Zusammenschluss Sicherheit.

Den Widerstand des Westerners, sich der Gesellschaft und ihren Regeln zu fügen, verkörpert George W. Bush, der texanische Rancher und Trotzkopf der Weltgemeinschaft, geradezu in Reinkultur - auch und gerade wenn er sich anschickt, den Schurken Saddam zu bestrafen.

Der Zivilisationsprozess, der mit der Domestizierung des Individuums einhergeht, kostet im Western stets Blut. So ist es auch in den neuen Filmen dieses Genres, die Hollywood gerade produziert: Die Helden müssen den zivilisatorischen Fortschritt mit archaischen Mitteln erzwingen.

In "Open Range" kämpfen Kevin Costner und Robert Duvall als Viehtreiber gegen einen Farmer, der nach dem Faustrecht regiert. "Der Film erzählt, wie eine von Gewalt geprägte Lebensweise zu ihrem Ende kommt", beschreibt Costner sein neues Werk. "Gleichzeitig handelt `Open Range` von einem Verhaltenskodex zwischen Freunden, der auch die Bereitschaft einschließt, das eigene Leben zu opfern."

So massiv wie seit drei Jahrzehnten nicht mehr kehrt Hollywood in jene Zeit zurück, die für die Nation identitätsstiftend war. Zurück an die "frontier", jene unsichtbare Grenze, an der sie die Werte, auf die sie sich bis heute stützt, blutig erkämpfte - es geht also an die Fundamente des amerikanischen Selbstbewusstseins, das am 11. September nachhaltig erschüttert wurde.

So verfilmt Disney gerade die Schlacht um Alamo neu: Im Jahr 1836 wehrten sich 189 Texaner in einer Missionsstation nahe San Antonio 13 Tage lang gegen eine mexikanische Übermacht von mehreren tausend Soldaten und starben den Opfertod für die Unabhängigkeit ihres Staates. Zuletzt hatte sich John Wayne diesen Stoff 1960 mit hartem Griff angeeignet. "Wir bewundern die Mexikaner", heißt es dort, "auch wenn wir sie töten."

Der Kampf der Texaner ging als Inbegriff des heroischen Freiheitskampfes in den amerikanischen Mythen-Kanon ein - als die Schlacht, die man verlieren muss, um den Krieg gewinnen zu können. Diese Lesart erlaubt Hollywood nun einen flotten Dreischritt durch die Geschichte der USA: Alamo - Pearl Harbor - Ground Zero.

Der Stoff sei wie geschaffen für das neue Bedürfnis der Amerikaner nach Patriotismus, schwärmte denn auch Disney-Chef Michael Eisner, machte über 100 Millionen Dollar für die Neuverfilmung locker und ließ in der Wüste von Texas gewaltige Sets errichten. Doch dann schaute er sich die Drehbuchfassung des Autors John Sayles ("Lone Star") etwas genauer an und entdeckte statt strahlender Helden fast nur Glücksritter und Alkoholiker.

Bei seiner Entzauberung der Ereignisse weiß Sayles die Historiker auf seiner Seite: Der Mythos, dass sich die Männer von Alamo opferten, damit Sam Houston, Oberbefehlshaber der Texaner, Zeit gewann, um die verstreuten Verbände zu einer schlagkräftigen Truppe zu vereinen, hält den neuen wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen kaum noch stand. Viele der Männer in der Missionsstation waren gedungene Söldner, die ein paar Dollar verdienen, aber gewiss nicht ihr Leben verlieren wollten.

"Die Fronten waren nicht so klar gezogen, wie sie bisher im Kino immer dargestellt wurden", sagt Sayles. "Auch innerhalb der verschiedenen Lager gab es Grabenkämpfe. Ich hoffe, dass sich diese Komplexität der Ereignisse, der wir im Drehbuch gerecht werden wollten, auch noch später im fertigen Film finden wird."

Daran muss er nun erhebliche Zweifel haben: Disney engagierte einen neuen Autor für eine weitere Überarbeitung, überwarf sich mit dem Regisseur Ron Howard ("A Beautiful Mind"), dem ein düster-realistischer Film vorschwebte, und reduzierte das Budget um mehr als ein Drittel.

Und doch dürfte das Studio zu spüren bekommen, dass sich der Western nicht so einfach vereinnahmen lässt: Wie seine Helden verfügt auch das Genre selbst über einen ausgeprägten Starrsinn.

Im Western, so heißt es landläufig, könne man an der Farbe des Hutes erkennen, ob ein Mann gut oder böse sei. Doch je älter das - seit über 100 Jahren bestehende - Genre wurde, desto häufiger und zunehmend tiefer verlief die moralische Grenze durch das Innenleben der Helden.

"Es war eiskalter Mord", sagt Bush-Idol John Wayne in John Fords Spätwestern "Der Mann, der Liberty Valance erschoss" (1962), nachdem er einen gesuchten Verbrecher hinterrücks niedergestreckt hat, "aber ich kann trotzdem schlafen."

In diesen kernigen Satz aber mischt sich Wehmut. Denn der "Duke" weiß, dass er seinesgleichen getötet hat: einen Mann, der genauso wild und unbezähmbar war wie er selbst. In der Geschichte des Westerns lernten die Helden ihre Gegner - ob Outlaws, Indianer oder Mexikaner - mehr und mehr zu respektieren, weil sie sich in ihnen wiedererkannten.

In den sechziger Jahren ging die Trennschärfe zwischen Gut und Böse weitgehend verloren - nicht nur im Italowestern, in dem die aus Europa stammenden Helden oft und gern über Leichen gingen.

Genau in der Zeit, als die amerikanische Nation zum ersten Mal das Gefühl hatte, einen ungerechten Krieg zu führen, fiel im Western die letzte Grenze: die zwischen Freund und Feind.

In "Die gefürchteten Vier" - einem der erfolgreichsten Western der sechziger Jahre, der Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts spielt - reiten vier Cowboys unter der Führung Burt Lancasters im Auftrag eines texanischen Ranchers über die Grenze nach Mexiko, um dessen Frau (Claudia Cardinale) aus den Händen von Desperados zu befreien.

Die anfängliche Überzeugung, auf der richtigen Seite zu kämpfen, geht den Helden mehr und mehr verloren, je näher sie ihrem Ziel kommen. "Es ist immer dieselbe Geschichte", sagt Lancaster an einer Stelle des Films. "Die Guten gegen die Bösen. Fragt sich nur, wer die Guten sind."

Am Ende stellen die vier Helden fest, dass sie unter Vorspiegelung falscher Tatsachen auf eine lebensgefährliche Mission in ein fremdes Land geschickt wurden und dass ihr Auftraggeber der wahre Übeltäter ist: Der texanische Bösewicht will den schnauzbärtigen Rebellen, der sich schwer verletzt und hilflos im Wüstenstaub wälzt, einfach abknallen - ein Remake dieses Films ist vorerst wohl nicht zu erwarten.

Als Regisseur Richard Brooks im Oktober 1965 mit den Dreharbeiten dieses Westerns begann, lag die Stärke amerikanischer Truppen in Südvietnam bei knapp über 150 000 Soldaten. Als der Film in die Kinos kam, hatte sie sich verdoppelt. "Die gefürchteten Vier" ist ein später Western und ein früher Vietnam-Film.

Das rebellische Potenzial, das der klassische Western in der zweiten Hälfte der Sechziger entfaltete, entlud sich schließlich 1969 in den Blutbädern von "The Wild Bunch": Sam Peckinpahs nihilistischer Abgesang auf das Heldentum des Westerners führte das Genre an einen vorläufigen Endpunkt. Und in Wahrheit dürfte es hinter diesen Entwicklungsstand kein Zurück mehr geben.

Doch schürt Hollywood tatsächlich Kriegsbegeisterung mit seiner Neuauflage des Genres? Fest steht, dass sich mehrere der neuen Produktionen mit den leidvollen Erfahrungen von Amerikanern beschäftigen, die im Namen der Freiheit in den Kampf zogen. "Gods and Generals", im letzten Monat in den USA angelaufen, rekonstruiert mit der Schlacht von Antietam den blutigsten Tag des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs: Am 17. September 1862 fanden bei Sharpsberg in Maryland mindestens 4000 Amerikaner den Tod.

In "Cold Mountain", den Anthony Minghella ("Der englische Patient") nach einer Romanvorlage von Charles Frazier inszenierte, muss ein verwundeter Südstaatler (Jude Law) im letzten Jahr des Bürgerkriegs in North Carolina durch Blut waten, um sich einen Weg zur Frau seines Herzens (Nicole Kidman) zu bahnen.

Eine Nation, die im Krieg mit sich selbst ist und nur die Sprache der Gewalt spricht, porträtiert Martin Scorsese in seinem Gangster-Epos "Gangs of New York", das in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts spielt und gerade in den Kinos läuft: Die Regeln des wilden Westens galten, so zeigt Scorsese, lange auch im vermeintlich zivilisierten Osten der USA.

Eine originelle Variante des heroischen Schemas bietet "The Last Samurai", der im Dezember in die US-Kinos kommen wird. Darin spielt Tom Cruise einen Veteranen des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs, der in den siebziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts im Auftrag der Firma Winchester nach Japan reist, um dort moderne Kriegführung zu lehren.

Tatsächlich verläuft der kulturelle Transfer dann in die andere Richtung. Der Held lernt einen für ihn neuen Ehren- und Verhaltenskodex kennen und zieht am Ende das Schwert der Kanone vor.

Man darf also hoffen, dass sich das Kino nicht zum Steigbügelhalter einer simplen Glorifizierung der rauchenden Colts erniedrigen lässt: Im Western gehen ideologische Schnellschüsse häufig nach hinten los.

LARS-OLAV BEIER

DER SPIEGEL 11/2003

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Die Zustimmung bröckelt ab.

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

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[Joerver]

!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

[Joerver]

Ich möchte auf Diskussion auf diesen Guardian-Artikel hinweisen.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=10729&mode=nest…


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Bush fiddles with economy while Baghdad burns

Could a faltering dollar and global rebellion against its values presage the decline, and eventual fall, of the American empire, asks Mark Tran

Wednesday March 26, 2003

The war in Iraq is not going as smoothly as the Bush administration would like and the conflict is looking less and less like a walkover by the day.
Yet there can be little doubt that the US, backed by Britain, its loyal junior ally, will eventually prevail. The conflict will bring the US little glory, pitting the world`s most powerful military machine against a dilapidated army, but when American and British troops enter Baghdad, the US will surely cement its status as a hyperpower.

But does the US colossus have feet of clay? It takes a brave soul to argue that America, the world`s largest economy and by far its most potent military power, is about to go into decline, when it is widely perceived as a hyperpower. But Independent Strategy, a financial research company for institutional investors, has made the case in a paper that is making the rounds of big investment banks such as Goldman Sachs.

Independent Strategy believes that the US shows many symptoms of an empire that is cresting. First, it sees deepening mistrust of the US and predicts a rise in terrorism in reaction to US unilateralism.

That is certainly the case with the Bush administration, which has made a habit of tearing up international treaties from Kyoto to the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Iraq is the culmination of the Bush administration`s unilateralist streak, as the White House plunges into an unpopular war in disregard of the UN security council.

Second, Independent Strategy sees trouble ahead for US economic policy. It notes that Mr Bush has boosted discretionary government spending more than at any time since the Vietnam war. Inheriting big budgetary surpluses from the Clinton administration, the Bush White House is heading for record deficits.

True, budget deficits were probably unavoidable as a 10-year economic expansion ran out of steam. But Mr Bush is not helping matters with a $726bn (£462bn) tax cut that, even though reduced by the senate to $350bn, benefits mostly the rich and a war that will add at least $74bn to the books, and probably considerably more.

Third, what was known as the Washington consensus - free market economics and deregulation - has broken down. As Bob McKee, chief economist with Independent Strategy, notes, a populist reaction has taken hold in Latin America, while in Asia, Malaysia has gone its own way economically. Moreover, South Korea and Taiwan never really bought into supply side reform.

"Empires work best when they project power through the successful export of a social model or ideology," argues Independent Strategy. "The rot started when the US failed to project its economic ideology and social model globally. Japan and Europe have long rejected both, at least implicitly, as inimical to their culture and alien to their social contract."

Independent Strategy sees the weakening dollar as the fourth strand in the decline of empire.

"The dollar will go on down because the good empire has the same faultlines as many other empires: unsustainable living standards at the core depend on flows of wealth from the periphery," says Independent Strategy in terms that would not be out of a place in a Marxist textbook. "The US no longer earns the return needed to sustain these flows. The costs of war and unilateralism will increase the thirst for capital, but reduce the return earned by it."

In plain English, America relies on the rest of the world to finance its deficits. The rest of the world was happy to do so when the US economy was strong and returns were high, but investors will put their cash elsewhere if America looks weak economically. America borrows hundreds of millions of dollars from the rest of the world each day to cover its savings gap and, under George Bush, US dependence on foreign capital is set to increase.

The decline of empire thesis is not exactly new. Paul Kennedy, the British historian, wrote the best-selling The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers back in 1988, where he coined the phrase "imperial overstretch". It was a great read, but then the US embarked on a record-breaking expansion that lasted 10 years and saw Wall Street shoot up to over 11,000 points.

But that great economic expansion turned out not to be so great after all, culminating in a wave of financial misreporting and outright fraud at Enron and WorldCom. The twilight of empires can last a long time, but judging from his reckless unilateralism and his economic vandalism, George Bush seems to be determined to do his level best to hasten that decline.

· Mark Tran is business editor of Guardian Unlimited

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the lowe down
George`s little antics
If you stayed up late enough to watch the announcement of the start of the war in Iraq, you might have caught a glimpse of something very unsettling. In an apparent error, the BBC aired coverage of pre-speech preparations, live from the satellite feed coming from the Oval Office.
The fact that the BBC has "profusely and repeatedly apologised" to the White House and that the administration has removed control of feeds from the networks and put it in their own hands as a result of the blunder, should indicate the seriousness of what you were not supposed to see. Ditto the absolute absence of any media coverage of the incident.

The footage was the most disturbing thing on television in some time. There was US President George W Bush, being prepped for his televised declaration of war. It was not the combing of his hair, the only aspect of the coverage reported by any American media outlet (the Washington Post in this case), which was cause for embarrassment; everyone expects that. Rather, it was the demeanour — I would say antics — of the president himself.

Bush, the so-called leader of the free world, was sitting behind his desk going over his speech, as we would expect. But then it got weird. I felt like I was looking behind the curtain, and it was uglier than I ever imagined.

Like some class clown trying to get attention from the back of the room, he started mugging for his handlers. His eyes darted back and forth impishly as he cracked faces at others around him. He pumped a fist and self-consciously muttered, "feel good," which was interestingly sanitised into the more mature and assertive, "I`m feeling good" by the same Washington Post.

He was goofing around, and there`s only one way to interpret that kind of behaviour just seconds before announcing war on Iraq: the man is an idiot.

Most Europeans and many others around the world have assumed this for some time. To have it actually confirmed — beyond a reasonable doubt — on live television, is perhaps a little too harsh to reconcile with our wish to believe we live in a fair, democratic world of which benevolent forces are mostly in charge. I felt sick.

What Americans don`t understand is that Europeans have known this about Bush since he was Governor of Texas. They`ve always known it, because it is so absolutely obvious, that the man who dodged military service, who laughs at death penalty pleas for mercy, who didn`t know where Iraq was two years ago, is less than a fit leader.

And they cannot understand how Americans have been led to the brink of disaster by this talentless scion, this lackadaisical lily-dipper. This idiot.

How can you have respect for a nation that follows such a man? How can you sit by while he and his cronies decimate the constitution, rape the economy, declare real war on an enemy of dubious threat and declare diplomatic war on your best friends?

How do you let his administration systematically disparage and even arrest any dissenters, thereby ensuring they are forever marked for special treatment by the machinations of “homeland security?”

Yes, it`s complicated. You`re at war, we know, even though this "war on terror" might have been better handled as a special operation rather than a public display of hysteria. Bush has supposedly intelligent people around him to help make the tough decisions, even if they`re always attributed to him as if he were some sort of deity.

We are constantly told: "The President will decide that at the appropriate time" or "The President is very concerned about that". Yes, I`m sure he is. But there was no escaping the fact that on Wednesday night, it was a Yosemite Sam impersonator who declared war on a sovereign country and who now calls the shots for all of us.

Slate called him the closest we`ve ever been to a world dictator in a long time, probably since Caesar.

Sometimes, maybe it really is better to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Kevin Lowe
http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pad=34,368,&item_id=29857

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Rich Procter: `How the Democrats won`
Date: Wednesday, March 26 @ 09:42:45 EST
Topic: The Democrats


By Rich Procter

Way back in the Spring of 2003, no one really gave the Democrats much of a chance of re-taking the White House. Dubya was marinating in his "War Bounce," the media were using Preparation H as lip-gloss, and most of the Democratic candidates were consulting their consultants, trying to figure out a way to finesse the war issue to minimize possible future damage.

Then one candidate - the new President - made the decision that won him the election. He fired his consultants. He fired his pollsters. He fired his speechwriters. He decided to tell the truth, no matter what the consequences. Just tell the truth.

First he told the truth about the war.



"The blood of every single American soldier who dies in this war is on the hands of George W. Bush, and his chickenhawk cronies, because this war could have - SHOULD HAVE - been avoided." The Democratic Party was horrified. The wingnut gasbags went to Defcon One - full nuclear attack. The only people who loved what he said were the people who had been waiting for someone - ANYONE - to tell the truth about the extremist wingnuts in the Bush Administration. The people loved it. They were energized. They rallied to him.

"Mr. Bush is not just wrong, he`s DANGEROUS. His Administration is not conservative - it`s THE MOST RADICAL, MOST DESTRUCTIVE ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY. They want to bankrupt the economy so they will have an excuse to destroy every social program that Americans enjoy - Social Security, Medicare - ALL OF THEM. They want to destroy the ability of government to regulate renegade corporations, by de-funding the watchdogs. They smile benignly on billion dollar corporations moving off shore to stiff the taxpayers. They want to wreck the environment by turning its care over to those who most wish to rape and pillage. They say they are good Christians - the ONLY good Christians, chosen by God to run America -- and yet they don`t know simple right from wrong."

The more he told the truth, the more popular he got. "Calling a massive tax giveaway to the rich a `stimulus package` doesn`t make it a `stimulus package.` It makes it a crime against the 98% of Americans who will have to pay more in taxes to make up the difference."

He won the nomination, and immediately became the object of a kind of vitriolic hatred not seen since the darkest days of the Clinton Impeachment. The Bushies had amassed 200 million dollars media war chest, and they bought up every available minute of air time to question this man`s patriotism, his common sense, and his sanity. How did he respond? He went on every cable TV talk show that would have him - and he told the truth.

"George Bush has never run a successful business in his life. He`s never made a profit anywhere. He`s never balanced his books. In his first four years, Americans lost more money than at any time in history. And now he wants four more years to `finish the job`? God help us all!"

Most pundits now believe that the real turning point in the election came in the first debate. George Bush, used to softball questions and limp-noodle opponents, was asked for his greatest accomplishment. "Bringing honor and dignity back to the White House," he said. Instead of letting him get away with this whopper, the Democratic candidate said, "George, you have brought shame to the White House. You`ve destroyed America`s reputation in the world. You destroyed the economy. You`ve broken every promise you made to voters in 2000. Rather than bring us together, you`ve chosen to run the most ferociously partisan Administration since Jefferson Davis. And now it`s going to end, because America wants what you promised but didn`t deliver - peace, prosperity, and a sense of national unity."

One week before the election, Bush announced that, despite a raging civil war in Iraq, every American soldier would soon be coming home. ("Soon" was not defined.) The day before the election, John Ashcroft announced that he had in his possession secret FBI documents that revealed the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. "Desperate lies by desperate men who have been lying for four years," said the candidate.

Despite massive voter fraud in Florida and several controversies surrounding "touch-screen" voting machines, the Democratic candidate won 53% of the vote. In his Inauguration address, he once again told the truth. "The best, smartest thing I ever did was fire all those spin-meisters, and start telling the simple, unvarnished truth. Turns out the American people were hungry for someone who would level with them."

Tom DeLay announced his intention to begin impeachment proceedings, as soon as Justices Scalia and Thomas could create - er, discover appropriate grounds.





This article comes from The Smirking Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com

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Sad Spouts Of Ignorance
Where humpback whales meet the snarling void of war, and human progress takes a bullet
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/



We think we know so damn much.

We think we know cause and effect. We think we know basic systems and human nature and the arc of time, what sort of hellish road we are paving right this minute, all those big colorful maps and arrows and diagrams and missile trajectories on CNN, all the clusters of little green plastic army men pushed around a giant map table by embittered generals.

We think we know what will happen to the collective unconscious, to the soul of the population at large when the scowling GOP war hawks issued the order to rain 3,000 multimillion-dollar warheads down on a bedraggled piss-poor food-starved nation in a single day.

Or when we massacre tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians and lay waste to an entire culture and landscape and history, as a 20-mile-long procession of U.S. troops rumble into Baghdad to kill anything with a turban and an Islamic faith and a dusty 1983 U.S.-Iraq chemical-weapons sales receipt, and call it patriotism.

We think we know all about body counts and nation building, and we think we have some sort of sanctimonious monopoly on the idea of what type of freedom everyone should have, what sort of force-fed democracy everyone really needs, whose self-righteous angry SUV-driving god has the right to bitch-slap which self-righteous angry Koran-reading god, and call it Christian largesse.

We don`t know anything.

I unplugged recently. I was off the snarling media grid, briefly, strangely, beautifully. It was surreal and amazing and jarring. This is when I realized.

There I was on vacation just last week, watching the pods, the families, the processions of humpback whales just off the Hawaii coastline, huge 60-ton male escorts and enormous 40-ton females and their 10-ton newborn calves, every day, whale after whale, pod after pod, a glorious and breathtaking thing, like a gift, a reminder, a slap in the face to the warmongering bilious timbre of now, of Shrub`s cadre of hissing war hawks, of what we think we know.

And they were all spouting and rolling and breaching and slapping the water with their huge dorsal fins, all about birth and mating and migration and jesus goddamn wow they`re big, and humbling, and shocking, as you like to think you`re all plugged in and world wise and media savvy and you might think you know what the planet is really doing at any given moment, deep down, in the meat of it, and of course, you see something like this and you realize, sure enough, you don`t know anything.

But the hawks and fearmongers, they want you to believe you do. They want you to think we are, with this vile needless war, attaining progress, reaching for some sort of truth, bringing the world closer into alignment with what Bush`s sneering Christian god along with Uncle Dick`s economic advisory team deems right and just and lucrative, never mind all the burned bodies and dead children and the massacred thousands and the billions in economy-gutting expenditures. We are making the world better, they actually claim. How sweet. Nothing like 100,000 full body bags to really make the soul glow.

We bought a book on humpback whales to try and understand, to see what those behaviors mean, to see what it was, exactly, we were watching every day, and we read and read and said wow and hmm and isn`t that interesting and we tried to find out why they breached, or why they slapped the waves like that, or why they sang or what the songs might mean. You know, the basics.

Here is what we found out: We read all the science and all the study and all the modern B.S., all our technology and all our sensors and all our collected data, and we closed the book and looked at each other and shook our heads and laughed -- sure enough, no one knows.

Modern science has no clue. Whale songs. Breaching. Slapping the waves with their enormous tail fins, over and over, like a ritual, a call, a play. Some of the biggest most ancient creatures on the planet, timeless and stunning and awe inspiring and once slaughtered nearly to extinction and each and every one karmically and ethically impervious to white angry men puling about war and still we have no idea. We don`t know why they breach, or slap or sing. We don`t even know how long whales live.

And then we have the gall. We have the nerve to think we know how the world works, what the planet needs, how culture operates. We trot out the Constitution when it suits us and point to the Second Amendment as kids shoot each other in schools, and we think we understand how the U.S. was founded on the idea that the life of an Iraqi peasant is as valuable as that of a U.S. Marine, or Shrub daughter, or shuttle astronaut. Ha.

Monarch butterflies haul tiny insect ass 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico (and back) every year, through storms and wind and across mountains and deserts, through conditions most major aircraft would whimper at, landing on the exact same trees every single year to mate, generation after generation. We have no idea how the hell they do it. No idea how they survive the journey, the exact path they take, how they know the exact tree every time, or why, or what it might mean. Just another example. Pure mystery. One of thousands.

Yet we think we are just so damn sure. We are just so sure that we rule the whole planet, that we are the uberspecies, that we have the right to slaughter whomever and whatever we like whenever we like because someone might dare stand in the way of our alleged progress, or our oil interests, or our profits. How did all our oil get under their sand? we ask, not at all jokingly.

I know what the whale-tail slaps are.

They are a reminder. No matter how much we think we know, no matter how many die as a result of Shrub`s vicious war, no matter what sort of self-righteous good we think we`re ramming down everyone`s throat, we are, quite simply, raging deeper into ignorance. We know nothing. And the worst part is, we seem to be learning less with every warhead, every Rummy press conference, every dust-choked reporter and dead soldier. The whales know this. Maybe they`re just waving goodbye.


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Das ist eine australische Zeitung und in diesem Artikel taucht der Begriff Napalm auf.
Die Verwendung von Napalm im Irak wird von der US-Marine bestritten.



`Dead bodies are everywhere`

March 22 2003


There was little initial resistance as the United States Marines swept into southern Iraq early yesterday. One of the first encounters of the ground war was more like a massacre than a fight.

The Iraqi gunners fired first, soon after United States President George Bush announced the attack on Saddam Hussein was under way.

It was a fatal mistake.

The Iraqi artillery unit, preparing for the American invasion, had tested the range by firing registering shots at a likely spot where the American tanks would cross from Kuwait. US radar picked up the incoming shells and pinpointed their source.

Within hours, the Iraqi gunners and their Russian-made 122mm howitzers were destroyed as the Americans unleashed an artillery barrage that shook the ground and lit up the night sky.


"Dead bodies are everywhere," a US officer reported by radio.

Later in the day, the American firepower was turned on Safwan Hill, an Iraqi military observation post a couple of kilometres across the border. About six hours after US marines and their 155mm howitzer guns pulled up at the border, they opened up with a deafening barrage. Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the Iraqi observation post was obliterated.

"I pity anybody who`s in there," a marine sergeant said. "We told them to surrender."

The destruction of Safwan Hill was a priority because it had sophisticated surveillance equipment near the main highway that runs from Kuwait up to Basra and then Baghdad. The attacking forces could not attempt to cross the border unless it was destroyed.

Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of 30 kilometres, opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald. But a navy spokesman in Washington, Lieutenant Commander Danny Hernandez, denied that napalm - which was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 - was used.

"We don`t even have that in our arsenal," he said.

The navy admitted to using napalm as late as 1993 in training exercises on the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico, but the last cannister of a vast US naval stockpile was reportedly destroyed in a public ceremony in April 2001.

When dawn broke on Safwan Hill, all that could be seen on top of it was a single antenna amid the smoke. The marines then moved forward, their officers saying they were determined to push on as quickly as possible for Baghdad.

The first air strike on Baghdad, and Mr Bush`s announcement that the war was under way, appeared to catch US officers in the Kuwait desert by surprise. The attack was originally planned for early today. But the US officers did not seem worried.

Within hours of Mr Bush`s announcement, a vast army of tanks, trucks, bulldozers and heavy guns was surging to positions on Iraq`s border.

Despite the early indications that Iraqi forces were showing little resistance, some US Marine units halted 200 metres inside Iraqi territory last night as they came under fire from anti-tank missiles and rifles. They called in artillery to deal with the threat.

The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement to the Herald:

Your story (`Dead bodies everywhere`, by Lindsay Murdoch, March 22, 2003) claiming US forces are using napalm in Iraq, is patently false. The US took napalm out of service in the early 1970s. We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, and no longer maintain any stocks of napalm. - Jeff A. Davis, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/21/1047749944836.html

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http://www.americaheldhostile.com/
daraus einen Kommentar

Apocalypse Soon
by RB Ham March 24, 2003



The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq may or may not end up being as quick and efficient as was predicted by military analysts. Surprisingly, the Iraqi resistance seems to be stiffening as the campaign drags on. The war itself, however, may not be the most important story in the coming months. What is becoming more and more apparent is that this war is throwing not only international politics into chaos, but is also severely dividing the populace of the western nations into starkly opposing factions. British Prime Minister Tony Blair`s political future seems doomed, given the overwhelming opposition to the war in his country. Not that Blair cares, no doubt a nice, cushy spot awaits him on the board of directors of the Carlyle Group for the services he`s rendered to the "cause". His own party may turf him before the next election.

Massive demonstrations against the war are sweeping the globe. It is clear that this action, taken without the sanction of the United Nation`s Security Council, is viewed by many as illegal, unnecessary and immoral. Declarations by world leaders such as Russia`s Vladimir Putin and Pope John Paul II have condemned the war as unjust and the motives of the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom for using military force are being questioned. Most shockingly, 200,000 people in New York City protested the Iraq War in an unprecedented show of dissent against their country`s leadership. Other demonstrations across the nation may have been smaller but were nonetheless representative of the feelings of many Americans. They feel that the values that America has traditionally stood for are being threatened by the Bush Administration`s headlong rush towards unilateralism. Never before have so many Americans, this soon into a conflict, been so vocal in their opposition. However, the backlash against the peace movement has been shrill and ominously threatening.

The perils of a new American Civil War are no longer just the imaginings of fringe groups on either the left or the right. The dangers of civil strife may very well depend on the actions of the widely disparaged Justice Department being run by Attorney General John Ashcroft. It is important to note that Ashcroft is a Christian fundamentalist who is closely allied to the Christian Reconstructionist movement. Nothing chills me more than contemplating the fact that these people have the chance, through the policies of the Federal Government, to have their agenda realized. Remember this, before you can reconstruct something it is usually necessary to destroy it. Ashcroft is on record as saying that those who oppose the Bush Administration`s policies in their "War on Terror" are "aiding and abetting the terrorists". As the Bushies firmly believe that their War on Iraq is simply an extension of that War on Terror, this implies that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans are potentially in danger of being victims of a new kind of McCarthyism. An official policy of cracking down on dissent may only be a hair`s breadth away. The Sedition Act and the FEMA Detention Camps await Holy John`s orders.

The only thing that may forestall such a nightmare domestic scenario is if the American people can inspire an effective political opposition to the Bush Administration. One must remember that George W Bush attained the presidency through less than savory means. As a matter of fact, a partisan Supreme Court basically selected him to be the President. If this unilateral war doesn`t go well, if Bush becomes more and more vulnerable to criticism, if Martial Law isn`t proclaimed, then there remains a chance that this Government can be ousted through legal and nonviolent means. The word "impeachment" is being heard more and more these days. Last Saturday Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address to the nation, once again listed a litany of reasons why he and his neo-conservative bedfellows belonging to the Project for the New American Century believe this war is necessary. That not one of these excuses, according to world opinion, justifies the current slaughter seems to matter naught. More telling, however, was his proclamation that the "American people will not tolerate an outlaw regime". These words shall echo throughout history, because in the eyes of many within and without the nation, the United States itself is under the tyrannical sway of just such an outlaw regime. If that sentiment is true, then this current outlaw regime may well be on its last legs. It may not appear to be so, this Administration may appear to be unassailable during this time of war. But pride always goes before a fall.

Of course, as noted before about the global opposition to this war, what is even more terrifying to think about are the implications this Iraqi misadventure may have for the world at large. It is already quite clear that the Middle East will soon be in an uproar, for the Muslim world (including Indonesia and Malaysia) views this invasion as an attack on Islam itself. A clash of civilizations. A new Crusade. This is the biggest fear many of us have. In fact, crazed lunatics of all stripes and all religions will probably seize on this current conflict as a justification to further their causes. Islamic extremists couldn`t have received a better gift. And despite the support that most Israelis give to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the Palestinian situation will only become exacerbated because of it. Unless the British and Americans can somehow secure a peace by assuring the creation of a viable Palestinian state that can exist peacefully alongside Israel, I fear an increase in the cycle of violence is a certainty.

It is also not an exercise in rocket science to point out the fact that there is the danger that Iraq may become the next Yugoslavia. Aggressive military leaders representing the Kurds in the North and the Sh`ites in the South are both waiting to step into the power vacuum after the war is over. Turkey is jittery over the implications that a strong Kurdish force may have for the terrorist problems with their Kurdish minority in the south of their country. The recipe for a prolonged and bloody regional conflict is being stirred up as we speak.

Another fear is that the consequences of the war may be like throwing a giant Depleted Uranium tipped wrench into the peaceful working relationship that has developed between the superpower that is the United States and the other two "1A" superpowers Russia and China. Already tensions between Russia and America are at their highest level since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. has formally protested the aid that Iraq has received from certain Russian companies in helping the Iraqi regime work on computer equipment that can jam American electronic signals needed for precise targeting in their aerial bombardment campaign. Russia and China both have vested economic interests in Iraq, and feel that these interests are in dire danger after the war is over. The fact that Iraq is home to the second largest oil reserves on the planet is well noted. The fact that the United States have already publicly announced that private companies such as Haliburton, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney`s old firm, are in line to profit from the rebuilding of Iraq is more than suspicious. Bypassing the traditional UN humanitarian organizations does not sit well with anyone, especially Russia and China.

The only conclusion that one can draw when considering all these aspects of the post-Iraq War world is that, far from securing global peace and stability, this current conflict will only increase the danger of an apocalyptic future. Religious extremists and fanatical military industrialists may find this appealing, but I can assure you that the vast majority of the rest of us do not.

Unfortunately, it may be that our voices will be heard but left unheeded. After all, as Bush himself said, it really doesn`t matter what we think.



Copyright 2001-2003 AmericaHeldHostile.com. All rights reserved.

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Ein Thema heute der Krieg und das Fernsehen

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Vorbereitung für eine Boarddiskussion

[Joerver]

March 25, 2003
A BuzzFlash Reader Offers Her Professional Services to George W. Bush

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

Dear President Bush,

At this time of national crisis, I would like to offer my assistance to you.

As a practicing psychologist for more than thirty years, it has become clear to me that your mental health has been seriously neglected. In the interest of our nation, I would like to offer my services as a psychologist to you on a "pro bono" basis. It would, after all, be for the good of the country.

Of course, it would be presumptuous of me to attempt to diagnose your emotional difficulties without meeting you face to face. However, I believe that I have had sufficient opportunity to observe you to put forth a few hypotheses of "trouble" areas with which you seem to need assistance.

First, and of great concern, is evidence of delusional thinking - a symptom of psychosis. The delusion that seems most evident is that bombing a people into submission is a strong foundation for democracy, and for generating good will in a nation. There is also the delusion that Saddam Hussein poses an imminent threat to the USA. (Or was that just a lie, suggesting psychopathic deviance?)

Another symptom that many people have noted is disorganized and incoherent speech, which, unfortunately, can be another symptom of psychosis. Confused thinking is also a problem for you, as demonstrated by the idea that our reason for going to war is Iraq`s defiance of the UN, yet you are defying the UN by going to war. This suggests rather muddled cognitive functioning.

These symptoms suggest that I would feel that a referral to a psychiatrist for medication might be indicated. However, your history of multiple substance abuse should lead to caution in the use of certain psychotropic medications.

While there are some indicators of psychosis, there are also many signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which include arrogance and grandiosity, as well as a need for unlimited power. There is also a lack of empathy for others, and, in your case, no regard for them at all if they speak another language. You suffer from an excessive need for admiration and a sense of entitlement. Evidence for that includes your refusal to speak before the European Union unless you could be guaranteed a standing ovation. Your actions regarding attacking Iraq in spite of negative world reaction reveal your arrogance in a clear and obvious way.

Emotional immaturity has been in evidence as well. The tendency toward black and white thinking is one sign of emotional immaturity. Statements that divide the world into good and evil, and "you`re with us or against us" reflect thinking typical of a young child. Emotional growth and development is known to be stunted by substance abuse. Could that be what happened with you?

Problems with the truth are also in evidence, as in such statements as "I am a man of peace", "I am a uniter (sic) not a divider" and "I’m hopeful that we can avoid a war." None of these statements enjoy the support of your behavior. While a certain amount of lying is expected from politicians, yours seems to be well in excess of the norm.

Although I have a busy schedule, I am confident that my current patients, in the service of their country, would be willing to change their schedules to accommodate you.

I also need to warn you that I cannot guarantee relief from all the above symptoms, as personality disorders are notoriously difficult to treat. Therefore, in order to pursue your recovery, it might be wise to consider resigning from the stresses of your current position to devote your time to your psychological well being.

Sincerely,

Diana DeVito
Clinical Psychologist

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

[Joerver]

Marokko schickt Affen und Palau Cocusnüsse.

washingtonpost.com
White House Notebook: Many Willing, But Few Are Able


By Dana Milbank

Tuesday, March 25, 2003; Page A07


There must have been shock in Baghdad and awe in Paris last week when the White House announced the news that Palau had joined the "coalition of the willing."

Palau, an island group of nearly 20,000 souls in the North Pacific, has much to contribute. It has some of the world`s best scuba diving, delectable coconuts and tapioca. One thing Palau cannot contribute, however, is military support: It does not have a military.

"It`s rather symbolic," said Hersey Kyota, Palau`s ambassador to Washington, of his country`s willingness to be listed in the 46-member coalition of the willing engaged in the Iraq war. Kyota said the president of Palau, which depends on the U.S. military for its security, on a visit to Washington, "thought it was a good idea to write a letter of support, so he did." Kyota said Palau gamely offered its harbors and airports to the effort, but the offer was graciously declined, as Palau is nowhere near Iraq.

Palau is one of six unarmed nations in the coalition, along with Costa Rica, Iceland, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and the Solomon Islands. Then there`s Afghanistan.

Asked if Iceland would be supplying troops, ambassador Helgi Agustsson gave a hearty Scandinavian guffaw. "Of course not -- we have no military," he said. "That is a good one, yes." In fact, Agustsson added, "we laid down weapons sometime in the 14th century," when the Icelandic military consisted largely of Vikings in pointy helmets. The true nature of Iceland`s role in the coalition of the willing is "reconstruction and humanitarian assistance," Agustsson said, adding that this has not been requested yet.

Therein lies the peculiarity of the coalition of the willing. Some on the White House list, such as Turkey, have been critical of the war and uncooperative. Many of those on the list, such as the unarmed nations above, will do far less than countries such as Germany, which adamantly opposed the war but is defending Turkey from Iraqi missiles. To join the coalition of the willing, a nation need do nothing more than offer "political support" -- essentially, allow its name to be put on the list.

Administration officials have furnished the list to demonstrate, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued, that the current coalition "is larger than the coalition that existed during the Gulf War in 1991." But that 34-member group was an actual military coalition, with all members providing troops, aircraft, ships or medics.

By that standard, there are only about a half dozen members of the coalition in the current war. In addition to the 250,000 or so U.S. troops, there are 45,000 from Britain and about 2,000 from Australia. Denmark and Spain have sent a small number of troops, though not, apparently, for ground combat.

Still, it`s not certain exactly who is participating. Poland, for example, had originally said it would help only in a non-combat role. But the country acknowledged some of its commandos had participated in the attack when the Reuters news agency produced photographs of masked Polish soldiers taking prisoners, scrawling graffiti on a portrait of Saddam Hussein and posing with U.S. Navy SEALs with an American flag.

Despite the contributions of Poland and the others, the firepower in the Iraq war is basically all American and British. The other countries involved spend a combined $25 billion a year on defense, less than Britain by itself and less than one-tenth of U.S. military spending.

That sounds less impressive than the way White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described it last week: "All told, the population of coalition of the willing is approximately 1.18 billion people around the world. The coalition countries have a combined GDP of approximately $21.7 trillion. Every major race, religion and ethnic group in the world is represented. The coalition includes nations from every continent on the globe."

Possibly. But the coalition remainsa work in progress. After initially including Angola in the coalition of the willing last week, the White House removed the country without explanation, as first noted by Agence France-Presse. Angolan embassy officials didn`t respond yesterday to phone calls. With luck, Angola can be replaced by Morocco, if a report yesterday by UPI is to be believed. According to the wire service, Morocco`s weekly al Usbu` al-Siyassi claimed that Morocco has offered 2,000 monkeys to help detonate land mines.

An official at the Moroccan Embassy could not confirm the presence of monkeys in the coalition of the willing.

Staff researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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[Joerver]

McCarthy`s ghost
Democracy is under threat in the United States; anyone who objects to the conflict in Iraq is not allowed to say so

Gary Younge
Thursday March 27, 2003
The Guardian

It`s drive time with WABC`s rightwing talkshow host, Curtis Sliwa, and Bill is on the line from the Poconos in Pennsylvania with a tale so funny he can hardly share it for giggling.

He was carrying an American flag and yelling support for the troops in a delayed St Patrick`s Day parade over the weekend when he saw one woman carrying a sign saying: "No blood for oil".

"She was wearing black and she was an older lady," says Bill. "And then our sheriff saw her and she didn`t have a permit. So they put her in the back of the truck car and hauled her away."

On its own, Bill`s story would be aberrant - the tale of an overzealous legal official and an unfortunate woman in smalltown America. Increasingly though it is becoming consistent. The harassment, arrest, detention and frustration of those who are against the war is becoming routine. Relatives of victims who died on September 11, who are opposed to the war, have been prevented from speaking in schools. Last month Stephen Downs was handcuffed and arrested after refusing to take off a Give Peace a Chance T-shirt in a mall in Albany. He was told he would have been found guilty of trespass if the mall had not dropped the case because of the bad publicity.

As Iraqi civilians and American, British and Iraqi soldiers perish in the Gulf, this war is fast claiming another casualty - democracy in the US. This process is not exclusive to America. Civil liberties have suffered in Britain because of the war in Northern Ireland, and are undergoing further erosion because of the conflict.

But it has a particular resonance here because of the McCarthyite era during the 1950s when those suspected of supporting communism were forced to testify before the Senate to recant their views and divulge names of progressives. Comparisons with McCarthyism are valid but must be qualified. These popular and sporadic displays of intolerance may be gathering pace, but no federal edict has been issued to support them and many who support the war are opposed to them.

Bush has not launched a campaign to derail the Dixie Chicks, the all-American girl band whose CDs were crushed by a mob and whose latest release fell from the top of the charts after one of its singers made an anti-war remark in London. Downs says the officer who arrested him spent an hour-and-a-half trying to persuade his superiors that the case was not worth pursuing. Even Curtis Sliwa told Bill he should "ignore the protesters and get out the flags".

While these popular expressions of intolerance appear sporadic, not all are spontaneous. The rally to smash the Dixie Chicks` CDs and much of the impetus for the boycott of their single came from radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications of Texas, which has close ties with Bush. The company`s stations also called for the pro-war rallies that have cropped up in the past week.

And while they have not received the state`s imprimatur, Bush`s administration has certainly created the climate in which they can thrive.

Under Big Brother monikers like the Patriot Act and Operation Liberty Shield, the state has stepped up the scope of its surveillance and the wiretapping of American citizens and will authorise the indefinite detention of asylum seekers from certain countries. Last year, surveillance requests by the federal government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - originally intended to hunt down foreign spies - outnumbered all of those under domestic law for the first time in US history.

Under a proposed new bill, entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement act, the government could withhold the identity of anyone detained in connection with a terror investigation and their names would be exempt from the Freedom of Information act, according to the centre for public integrity, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the American civil liberties union programme on technology and liberty, told the New York Times that authorities have been demanding records from internet providers and libraries about what books people are taking out and which websites they`re looking at.

The result is a symbiotic relationship between the mob and the legislature, whereby official repression provides the framework for public scapegoating with each gaining momentum from the other.

Most vulnerable are those who are most vulnerable anyway - Arab immigrants and non-white Americans. Men from countries regarded as potential sources of terrorism and who do not have a green card, are now required to be registered, fingerprinted and photographed by the immigration service. Many who have committed no crime but simply have their applications for a work permit pending are routinely arrested. "Basically, what this has become is an immigration sweep," said Juliette Kayam, a terrorism expert at Harvard. "The idea that this has anything to do with security, or is something the government can do to stop terrorism, is absurd," she told the Washington Post.

The growing surveillance compounded by discrimination adversely affects black Americans too. "It places those of us of colour under increased scrutiny and we get caught up in the web of racial profiling," says Jean Bond, of the Radical Black Congress.

The fact that all the incidents mentioned above happened to white, American-born natives is an indication of just how deep the rot has set in. Downs is the chief lawyer in the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Such are the targets of the war on terror.

From the outset Bush has insisted that: "Those who are not for us are against us," and so it follows that anyone opposed to his way of dealing with the terrorist threat becomes the enemy, at home or abroad. Terrorism is the new communism. Even before the first body bags have arrived, the war has already reached the home front.

· Gary Younge appears in J`Accuse Uncle Sam on Channel 4 tomorrow.

[e-mail]


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[M_B_S]

@ Joerver

Mein ausdrückliches Lob an Dich !

Good morning Vietnam


Einfach Klasse

Weiter so !

[Joerver]

Im Endeffekt werden die Probleme in den USA Bush das Genick brechen.
#577 Jeder liebt Lob. Ich mach nichts anderes als Arikel, die mir gefallen, oder die ich nochmals genauer lesen will, einzustellen.
Karikaturen sagen oft mehr als ein ellenlanger Kommentar.
J.


March 27, 2003
Casualties at Home
By BOB HERBERT


WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, as President Bush was asking Congress for the first installment of the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to finance the war in Iraq and its aftermath, the students and teachers at a high school within walking distance of the White House were struggling through their daily routine in a building that has no cafeteria, no gymnasium, no student lockers, not even a fully reliable source of electricity.

A few weeks ago bricks were falling from the facade of the building, which is more than 100 years old.

As we continue the relentless bombing of Baghdad, which the military tells us is the necessary prelude to saving it, it`s fair to ask when the rebuilding of essential institutions like the public schools will begin here at home. (Don`t hold your breath. The money for that sort of thing has completely evaporated.)

"We actually have rooms where the water comes in when it rains," said Sheila Mills Harris, the principal of the School Without Walls, an academically rigorous high school that routinely finishes first or second in the District of Columbia`s rankings.

Laura Bush has visited the school, which has won a series of national honors. But academic honors and a visit by the first lady are, frankly, irrelevant in an era in which social concerns — such as support for public schools and health care, and the need to assist the poor, the hungry and the unemployed — have been forced to the perimeter of public consciousness. Those issues, crucial to our conception of ourselves as a just and humane people, have been devalued and shunted aside by an administration that is committed to an ill-advised, budget-busting war and a devastating parade of tax cuts for the very wealthy.

With our attention riveted on the death and destruction in Iraq, and the continued threat to Americans in the war zone, the other very serious problems facing the U.S. get short shrift. We knew last fall that the proportion of Americans living in poverty had risen, and that income for middle-class households had fallen.

We know that unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, is a big problem. And we`ve known that the states are facing their worst budget crisis since the Great Depression, a development that has led, among other things, to drastic cuts in education aid that are crushing the budgets of local public school districts.

These issues aren`t even being properly discussed. The Bush administration sounds the alarm for war and blows the trumpet for tax cuts, and Congress plunges ahead with the cuts in domestic programs that must inevitably follow. The voices of those who object are effectively silenced by the war propaganda and the fear of seeming unpatriotic.

With attention thus deflected, the administration and its allies in Congress have come up with one proposal after another to weaken programs that were designed to help struggling Americans.

In his budget last month the president offered a plan to make it more difficult for low-income families to obtain government benefits, including tax credits and school lunch assistance. This month, as The Times` Robert Pear reported, the administration proposed changes in the Medicare program that would make it more difficult for elderly people, many of them frail, to appeal the denial of benefits like home health care and skilled nursing care.

The extent to which the most vulnerable Americans are being targeted is appalling. Billions of dollars in cuts have been proposed for food stamp and child nutrition programs, and for health care for the poor.

Collectively, these are the largest proposed cuts in history. Even cuts for veterans` programs are on the table — in the midst of a war!

The administration is actually fighting two wars — one against Iraq and another against the very idea of a humane and responsive government here at home.

At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the war against Iraq will end. Americans will then have the opportunity to look around and be stunned by the fix we`ll be in. We`ll look at the enormous costs of the postwar occupation in Iraq, and at the social and economic dislocation that`s occurring here. And we`ll look at the disaster that the federal budget has become. We`ll be broke, and we`ll ask ourselves, again and again, "What have we done?"



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

Nun ist der Geist aus der Flasche.
Gibt es nur noch 2 Möglichkeiten, aufgeben, weil unsere Gesellschaft zu weich ist für die Grausamkeiten oder Forderung nach bedingungsloser Kapitulation des Iraks, Komme was wolle.
J.

March 27, 2003
Help Iraqis Arise
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


merica can`t take casualties."

That was the first part of the message over the telephone from an Iraqi officer, eager to hedge his bets in case Saddam lost, to a friend in the coalition-held north.

Saddam`s plan is not to defeat the Americans and British in some mother of all battles. That proved a loser last time. Rather, the strategy in Baghdad is to use guerrillas — Baath Party Vietcong — to harass our troops everywhere, in order to demoralize America and achieve a negotiated peace.

He`s no fool. Every U.S. casualty or prisoner is fully reported in America`s media. Television interviewers eager to match the human interest of gutsy frontline journalists exploit the suffering of relatives. Grief-stricken responses make for riveting television and ratchet up calls to stop the war.

Nor can Americans take Iraqi casualties, according to Saddam`s plan. Twelve years ago, Bush 41`s fear of appearing cruel stayed our forces from attacking Saddam`s routed troops on the televised "highway of death." Even now, our concern about inflicting civilian casualties causes us to pull our punch at military targets, despite Saddam`s abuse of women and children as human shields, and use of hospitals and mosques as military supply depots.

That strategy of inviting civilian deaths is also manifest in Saddam`s use of "paramilitaries." His widely dispersed terrorists disguise themselves in U.S. uniforms or civilian clothes, and are assigned to kill not just coalition soldiers but also Iraqi civilians in cities like Shiite Basra who want to welcome the liberators.

Such murderous suppression of Iraqis who want the coalition to end Saddam`s tyranny brings up the second part of the message inherent in "Americans can`t take casualties."

Millions of individual Iraqis still left in Baghdad wonder: Is the coming battle a fight to the finish of the regime or merely the prelude to a negotiation? Should we help the liberators or join the Baath loyalists or just try to hide?

Now we are down to the essence of Saddam`s defense. If he can persuade long-intimidated Iraqis that America`s humanitarian concern about casualties — its own military losses and Iraqi civilian deaths — will lead to a deal, then it will be easier for him to suppress any uprisings. Who would be so foolish to take up arms against a dictator whose regime — even if it will be Saddamism without Saddam — remains in power again to exact vengeance?

Helping to advance Saddam`s purpose of survival — from our view, peace without victory — is the latest Saudi call for negotiation. As the allied army inexorably moves through sandstorms toward Baghdad, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah aids Saddam by echoing the Arab League`s demand for withdrawal with his plea that we return to the Security Council for another round of appeasement.

How should we counter Saddam`s strategy of using killers in civilian clothes to enforce resistance, and his tactic of horrifying television viewers in the U.S. by inviting and inflicting civilian deaths? How do we overcome the terrorized Iraqi population`s fear of an outcome in which Saddam again snatches survival and revival from the jaws of defeat?

The answer is to adopt the proposition set forth by Gen. U. S. Grant in our Civil War, and Roosevelt and Churchill in World War II: declaring irrevocably that the only acceptable end to hostilities is unconditional surrender.

We have not yet done so with imprecise calls for "regime change." Indeed, in hopes of getting Iraqi troops to lay down arms as the war began, we offered "articles of capitulation."[B) Instead, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, meeting today, should emulate their World War II predecessors. They should pre-empt proposals for bombing halts and armistices with a ringing statement about the only way to end the war: by unconditional surrender.[/B]

Change the leaflets and broadcasts. No talks about terms; no amnesties for paramilitary killers; no deals on exile for torturers. Surrender, plain and simple.

Pledge that Saddam`s terrorists — now blocking the distribution of food and medicine — will suffer for such atrocities. Assure Iraqis that Saddam`s Baathist murderers of Iraqi civilians will face certain retribution.

Guarantee that those who rise against Saddam will not only be protected from his thugs now, but also honored later by the liberating force and by the free Iraqi officials certain to take over.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

Bush der Zauberleerling oder sind US-Amerikaner lernfähig.

March 27, 2003
Will Baghdad Fight to the End?
By MARK BOWDEN


ith Saddam Hussein`s Republican Guard dug in on the outskirts of Baghdad and thousands of his most loyal defenders no doubt armed and waiting in the city`s neighborhoods, he might be on the verge of delivering the "mother of all battles" he promised 12 years ago.

He has ceded the majority of his country to the rapidly moving American and British forces, but has left pockets of determined loyalists in cities large and small. These troops, many dressed in civilian clothing, will shoot at coalition forces from densely populated areas, daring return fire that might kill the very Iraqis whom President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain hope to liberate.

It is a strategy both cunning and cruel, and it may work. The outcome will depend in large part on the people of Baghdad, each of whom has a decision to make. What they decide could mean either a quick defeat of the regime or a protracted mess that would amount at best to a Pyrrhic victory for allied troops.

Saddam Hussein is betting that his people will rally around his crack troops. The allies are betting they will betray the dictator and flush out his enforcers. I`m afraid the odds at this point favor Saddam Hussein. Even those Iraqis eager to turn against the regime are still caught between the guns, and won`t dare make a move until they are sure one side has the upper hand. Neighborhood by neighborhood, they will have to decide when it is safe to make their move.

If Saddam Hussein wins his bet, then coalition forces could face fighting reminiscent of the 1993 battle of Mogadishu. There would be important differences, of course. The 150 American troops trapped in the streets of Mogadishu were members of a light infantry unit cut off from backup or supply, without armor, dependent on a small number of helicopters for air support. Allied troops in Baghdad would number in the tens of thousands, with full armor and air support, and, as soon as the coalition manages to buttress its overextended supply line, a huge support system.

But no matter what kind of power can be rolled into Baghdad, if it faces a hostile population, as our troops did in Mogadishu, the scene could turn into a nightmare. Soldiers would be moving in a 360-degree battlefield with obstructed sight lines and impaired radio communications, trying to pick out targets from a civilian population determined to hide, supply and shield the enemy, unable to attack Iraqi firing positions without killing civilians. Even in victory such a battle would outrage the Arab world and fulfill the fears of the war`s critics.

But why would the citizens of Baghdad rally around such a tyrannical regime? After all, Saddam Hussein has turned what was once one of the most prosperous and modern of Arab nations into a destitute state. His terrorist apparatus, modeled on Stalin`s, has tortured, imprisoned and killed hundreds of thousands.

The problem is that each war develops an interior logic. Immediate traumas supersede the larger context, just as the fog of war plays havoc with generals` plans. Allied military commanders have wisely waged a careful air campaign, leaving most of the city`s nongovernment buildings undamaged and keeping civilian casualties low. But every death and wounding — of a child, a sister, a father, a neighbor — no matter how unintentional, creates passionate new enemies whose anger eclipses politics.

And even Iraqis who despise Saddam Hussein can be expected to recoil from a foreign invasion, which wounds national pride. There are reports of Iraqi expatriates who fled the regime now returning to fight for their country. For Iraqis who distrust the United States, it will be a choice between their own local devil and the Great Satan of the world. And Iraqis get their information from the propaganda ministries, which amplify the grief and play upon nationalistic sympathies.

Much of this happened in Somalia. When American forces landed in 1992 to enforce the United Nations humanitarian effort, many were greeted with smiles and gifts from the Somali people. Mohammed Farah Aidid, the most powerful of Mogadishu`s warlords, was not a popular figure, even within his own clan.

But then the United Nations decided to pursue him after his forces began attacking and killing peacekeepers. Clumsy military attempts to capture Mr. Aidid in the summer of 1993 left scores of Somalis dead or wounded and destroyed property. The people of the city quickly soured on their Western saviors, and the warlord`s repeated escapes transformed him into a local hero, the sly Somali David tilting with Goliath. By the time Task Force Ranger arrived in August to apply more skillful tactics to the search for Mr. Aidid, thousands of local citizens were ready to fight in the streets to protect him. The result was the debacle that left 18 Americans dead and ended the humanitarian operation.

I suspect the coalition plan assumed that images of jubilant liberated Iraqis from southern cities, awash in humanitarian aid, would help sway the hearts and minds of Baghdad. So far that hasn`t happened, either because the Iraqi people are less enthralled by this invasion than its planners hoped, or because Saddam Hussein`s enforcers have managed to keep the population in line. There was hopeful news of popular uprisings in Basra, but it was not clear if they were widespread. If there are such happy scenes to report, then it is time to shut down Baghdad`s propaganda machine and give Iraqis a full range of independent reporting about the war.

In the Battle of Baghdad, information will be as important as guns and bombs. But only if the truth is what we hope it will be.

Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down," is national correspondent for The Atlantic.



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Peinlich die Herren

March 26, 2003
Germany fears missing out on postwar orders
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin


German business leaders fear political tensions between Washington and Berlin mean German companies will be cut out of the first phase of contracts for postwar reconstruction.

Hannes Hesse, managing director of the Frankfurt-based VDMA machinery and plant builders` association said: "It is obvious that the initial contracts will go to US and, possibly, British companies. The political climate between the US and Germany is not good, and this makes a difference for our [member] companies."

Diplomatic relations cooled after Chancellor Gerhard Schröder opposed the use of force in Iraq.

Mr Hesse said the US approach of preferring US companies was wrong. "Politics and business should be kept separate - each country should contribute what it can to rebuilding a country like Iraq. But we recognise that politics has the upper hand in such situations."

Germany could contribute directly to Iraq`s reconstruction as many of Iraq`s oil exploration plants and other installations were originally build by German companies in the period before the first Gulf war, Mr Hesse said.

Hans-Jürgen Müller, managing director of the Berlin-based BGA trade association, said German companies would probably also miss out if, at a later stage, the United Nations is involved in allocating reconstruction funds. "We don`t expect Germans to be in senior positions [in an UN administrative authority in Iraq] so contracts for us are less likely."

He said German companies might profit two or three years after the war ended, when private business revived.

Mr Müller said German companies operating in other Middle Eastern countries "may benefit very modestly" from positive spillover effects of Mr Schröder`s anti-war stance.



© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2003.
"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of The Financial Times

[Joerver]

Für alle die es interessiert die Spiegel-Seiten bei der NYT (Jede Woche). Wenn Ihr nicht reinkommt anmelden oder "Bescheid" sagen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/international/europe/25SPI…




http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/24/international/europe/24SPI…

.

[Joerver]

Das Thema

washingtonpost.com
The CNN Factor


By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A21


In Biafra, battlefield resistance collapsed with the speed of air escaping a punctured balloon. In Iraqi Kurdistan, I awakened one morning to learn that the rebellion I had been covering had essentially ended while I slept. The camp cooks had cleared out overnight without saying goodbye. Commanders who had been vowing the night before to fight on quickly followed them down from suddenly besieged mountain posts.

Similar scenes at the end of a half-dozen other conflicts I covered years ago suggest that modern wars end not so much with a bang as with a desperate quick crash. The smell of fear and futility blows in quickly from front lines that are being chewed up by armor, artillery or air power. No dash is quicker than the race for survival.

This is not a prediction that such a scenario will unfold soon in Iraq. By arriving on the doorstep of Baghdad, U.S. forces are most likely to be at the end of the beginning of this war, not the beginning of the end. My point is that time itself is a different, more erratic and more highly compressed commodity when war rages.

We used to speak of "wartime" as duration -- as nationally or internationally shared moments, weeks or years shaped or controlled by the fortunes of fighting armies. But war "time" has become something entirely different in an era when television audiences around the world watch battlefield action as it occurs and are tempted to make instant judgments about the meaning of what they think they are seeing.

Today`s television viewer is an electronically empowered Fabrizio, the hero of Stendhal`s "The Charterhouse of Parma." Fabrizio wanders about the battlefield of Waterloo seeing puffs of smoke and hearing bullets whiz by without knowing anything of the course of the battle or of Napoleon`s impending final loss of empire. He doesn`t know what he doesn`t know. We run the same risk by impatiently mistaking war "time" for finality.

U.S. forces have encountered Iraqi units capable of tactical surprise and also have been hit by an unexpectedly fierce and howling sandstorm. These developments have sparked suddenly pessimistic reporting about the ability of the American forces to endure battlefield setbacks. "Vietnam" and "quagmire" have become instant coverage staples, in question form at least.

That`s the price of an open society, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday. But it is also the other edge of the sword the Pentagon grasped when it decided to let the world media travel with its forces and file live from the battlefield. It was an audacious effort to take advantage of the CNN factor, which carries its own risks and rewards.

The U.S. units in Iraq can rely on surprise less than any fighting force in history. The Iraqis have been able to watch lines of 3rd Infantry Division tanks stretch back beyond the horizon as the tanks and ABC crossed into Iraq, or learn from CNN that the sandstorm has grounded the 101st Airborne`s helicopters. Iraqi intelligence`s best sources are named Sony and Panasonic.

This cannot come as a surprise to the Pentagon`s war planners. In this part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, they are conducting a brave-new-world attempt to use the media not in classic news management terms -- to sway opinion back home or hide facts -- but to convince the Iraqi military that it has no chance. "Give up now before you and a great number of Iraqi civilians die needlessly" is the subliminal message those images flash.

"This was the world`s first $100 billion television commercial," says a business executive I know. "President Bush and his team couldn`t get the message across on al-Jazeera or Egyptian television. This is Uncle Sam`s way of buying airtime to tell Iraq that change in an iron fist is coming."

In this sense the journalistic "embeds" and the media at large are not "a weapon of war" for the Pentagon, as an op-ed writer claimed in the New York Times on Tuesday in egregious overstatement, but a method of trying to avert destruction. It has not worked instantly. But that does not mean it will not eventually, or should not have been tried.

The effect of immediate coverage on the home front is even more problematic. A letter from Stalin and a pension were thought to be enough to console a grieving family in "wartime" Moscow. In the war "time" of modern and impatient America, consolation is a near instantaneous telephone call from Katie Couric or Paula Zahn and airtime to grieve. Progress this may not be.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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America isn`t an imperial nation.

washingtonpost.com
The Gulf of World Opinion


By Robert J. Samuelson

Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A21


The great breach between the United States and the rest of the world over the war in Iraq will not be closed easily -- and this matters. America isn`t an imperial nation. It lacks both the will and the ability to govern the world through political or military commands. Cooperation is necessary in economic affairs, the campaign against terrorism and specific crises: North Korea`s nuclear program, for instance. If world opinion becomes too poisoned, cooperation will be harder; and poison is now flowing.

Abroad, almost everyone considers this war unjust and unnecessary. Even in Britain, 60 percent of adults disapprove of President Bush`s foreign policy, reported an early March poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Elsewhere, disapproval rates approach unanimity: 87 percent in France, 85 percent in Germany, 83 percent in Russia, 79 percent in Spain and 76 percent in Italy. Polls in Asia and Latin America find similar hostility.

Bush partly caused the backlash. To foreign critics, his Rambo-like morality confirms their worst stereotypes of Americans: stupid, incautious and bloodthirsty. It`s also true that the administration never provided overwhelming evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or strong ties with al Qaeda. Either would have quieted many foreign critics. But blaming Bush`s poor public relations is too glib. It absolves foreigners from making the critical connections that Bush has made: that the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction can justify preemptive strikes.

What explains the anti-American fury, particularly in Europe? Simple. It makes people feel good. It gives them a sense of moral superiority. It doesn`t cost them anything. It diverts attention from domestic discontents. It doesn`t require hard decisions or hard thinking. It`s a convenient moral exhibitionism that, on inspection, is full of delusion, shortsightedness and moral hypocrisy.

Start with delusion. Many foreigners wrongly think America`s stated motives cloak raw greed. In a poll late last year, Pew asked whether the United States might invade Iraq because it "believes Saddam is a threat" or because "it wants to control Iraqi oil." Oil, said 76 percent of Russians, 75 percent of French and 54 percent of Germans -- and only 22 percent of Americans. The idea that a country would risk troops and money for anything but selfish gain seems so silly to many other peoples that they cannot grasp it. (Not coincidentally, Russian and French oil companies are favored by Hussein`s Iraq.) Next, shortsightedness. Even if foreigners mistake American motives, they might think that the war will backfire. A devastated Iraq will slip into chaos. The Middle East will be destabilized. These failures are possible, but polls suggest that Europeans -- at least -- doubt they will occur.

In its March poll, Pew asked whether "the people of Iraq will be better or worse off in the long run" if Saddam Hussein is deposed. By a huge margin (79-8), Americans thought "better off." So did the French (73-14), the Germans (71-15), the Italians (61-18) and the Spanish (46-21). Only in two of eight countries polled, Russia and Turkey, did people disagree. Similarly, pluralities in the same six countries (the other two: Britain and Poland) thought the Middle East would be more, not less, stable after a U.S. victory.

Finally, hypocrisy. The anti-American movement condemns war, especially without explicit U.N. approval. These complaints presume that (a) the use of force is usually immoral and (b) only the United Nations (or some other collective body) can provide moral justification. Unfortunately, the assumptions are often backward. Force can be moral; and the United Nations sometimes serves as a device for immoral inaction.

Rwanda is the tragic example. When the genocide against Tutsis began, the United Nations had a "peacekeeping" force there too small to be effective. The U.N. Security Council (with U.S. backing) reduced it. If France or other European nations had quickly dispatched a modest force -- 10,000 to 20,000 troops -- they could have contained the genocide, whose toll is crudely estimated at 800,000. France, a strong supporter of the Hutu government that conducted the genocide, was especially well informed. (France initially sent troops, but only to evacuate its own nationals.) Europe was similarly ineffective in Bosnia and Kosovo. Only after reluctant U.S. intervention did those slaughters stop. Deaths are roughly reckoned at 200,000. Europe`s paralysis produced more carnage in Rwanda and the Balkans than anything likely to occur in Iraq. Yet anti-American street demonstrations dwarf protests against Europe`s own failures. This moralism is selective, superficial and self-serving.

Americans can take scant comfort. Mutual mistrust is rising; the sense of shared moral and political precepts is declining. There is little basis for common ground. Moreover, foreign critics do have one legitimate complaint: The Bush doctrine is maddeningly vague. Far superior would be a consensus among major powers (including China and Russia) that countries suspected of aiding terrorists or building weapons of mass destruction would first be isolated economically and diplomatically -- before the use of military force. North Korea would be a good starting point.

A favorable outcome in Iraq (few casualties, rapid reconstruction, discovered weapons of mass destruction) might promote such a consensus. The Bush administration might improve its public relations. But other possibilities seem more plausible. A quick triumph might intensify foreign fears of U.S. militarism. Or protracted war could breed American isolationism.

Geopolitical power could become more, not less, splintered. This great breach highlights a problem of the post-Cold War world, where nations do not agree on a common threat to unite them. Democratic governments respond to public opinion -- but there is no guarantee that public opinion will be sensible, consistent, self-critical or farsighted.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Combine the neos and CEOs with a president who seems ego-invested in his own provincialism and -- voilà! -- the United States has alienated a planet that has long looked to us as a force for decency in human affairs. In George Bush`s America, however, it`s the bombs that show the human face of our nation, while our statecraft, to steal a line from W.B. Yeats, reveals a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun.

Der ganze Text:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34663-2003Mar…


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Dieses Thema ist den Amis mindestens genauso wichtig wie der Krieg.

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America as Mars, Europe as Venus
Diese These wird von vielen bezeifelt ist aber lesenswert. Wird auch oft in Kommentaren zitiert.

Why We Need Europe

By Stephen Holmes
Issue Date: 4.1.03
Print Friendly | Email Article

Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
By Robert Kagan, Knopf, 112 pages, $18.00
France and Germany`s refusal to accept the Bush administration`s definition of the Iraqi threat has made shockingly visible the decade-long weakening of the Atlantic alliance. Robert Kagan looks behind such wars of words to discover why, after the end of the Cold War, Europeans and Americans "understand each other less and less." Unbelievable as it may sound, his thesis is that Europeans and Americans have trouble coordinating their foreign policies because Europeans are utopian and deluded and Americans are tough-minded and unafraid to look reality in the face. He first advanced this unusual claim in an essay published in the summer of 2002, which he has now updated and expanded into a book. That essay quickly became a sensation among European diplomats and policy-makers. But how did a conservative American polemicist such as Kagan manage to provoke such storms of soul searching among Europeans? He did so partly by suggesting that European nations, despite their endless squabbles, share more values with one another than they share with the United States, an idea that some Europeans, at least, devoutly wish to be true. He also attracted attention by implying that Europe`s own foreign-policy disarray has contributed fatally to the United States` dangerous unilateralism.
While mentioning that "the crisis over Iraq has cast the transatlantic problem in the harshest possible light," Kagan seeks the roots of U.S.-European tensions in the different military postures of the world`s two great economic powers. In his view, "The key difference is less a matter of culture and philosophy than of capability." The premise of his argument here is intriguing: Rather than searching for tools to achieve their pre-established goals, both individuals and states, Kagan believes, unconsciously adapt their desired objectives to their available resources. In short, capabilities create intentions. Because the United States is a military colossus and Europe is a military pygmy, they will never agree about the shape of the dangers they face. Kagan drives his point home with the following folktale:

The psychology of weakness is easy enough to understand. A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative -- hunting the bear armed only with a knife -- is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn`t need to? This perfectly normal human psychology has driven a wedge between the United States and Europe.

This little passage contains the gist of Kagan`s argument. It is not simply that Americans, being armed to the teeth, are willing to venture forth in search of monsters to slay while Europeans, being military weaklings, pusillanimously shun confrontations. It is rather that weak powers routinely fail to take the full measure of actual threats, indulging in the fantasy that looming dangers can be allayed by diplomatic finesse and international law, while strong powers are able to see the floodlit world as a frighteningly dangerous place where freedom will perish if not defended by force.

For their part, Europeans want us to interpret a devotion to multilateralism, diplomacy and international law as a sign of superior morality. But Kagan sees the European fondness for multilateral solutions as a symptom of helplessness, or perhaps as an expression of resentment. Tacitly drawing on Nietzsche`s genealogy of morals, the author argues that Europeans are slyly trying to unman their American allies by employing "strategies of weakness." They hope to hobble the United States by slow-walking it into diplomatic negotiations and international legal regimes. "In what may be the ultimate feat of subtlety and indirection," Kagan writes, "they want to control the behemoth by appealing to its conscience." And, he warns, these devilishly crafty Europeans may even succeed in derailing the United States from sober realism into the pursuit of pacifist illusions, presumably with some help from homegrown Wilsonian idealists and Vietnam-era liberals.

This Euro-liberal attempt to charm the United States into abandoning war as an instrument of foreign policy, Kagan maintains, is a self-defeating folly. Even today, more than a half-century after the destruction of Nazi Germany, Europe`s pampered civilians remain "dependent on the United States` willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics." European leaders, therefore, should simply admit "the vital necessity of having a strong, even predominant America." If Europeans would learn to defer politely to the United States, Kagan expects or hopes that American officials would return the courtesy by avoiding gratuitous put-downs that serve no purpose other than deflating European self-importance.

America as Mars, Europe as Venus
Kagan`s intellectual framework may seem rather unsophisticated, but it does boast a philosophical foundation. Its premise is that a domestic realm built along liberal lines, where force and fraud are repressed and the rule of law prevails, can be stabilized and defended only by a vigorous foreign policy -- where force and even fraud are deployed ruthlessly against unscrupulous adversaries and where laws are respected only when convenient. Kantian dreamers of peace and reason may not know it, but their hyperliberal utopia always depends on a Hobbesian willingness to apply organized violence, without regard to rules, to fend off barbarians at the gate. It is naive to believe that a dangerously turbulent world can be managed by United Nations resolutions, foreign aid, diplomatic negotiations and a deepening of commercial ties.

That Kagan`s argument here has some force will be recognized even by those who strenuously disagree with it. The same cannot be said for the emotionally charged mythology with which he decorates it. Just as prewar German nationalists loved to oppose Helden to Händler (Teutonic "heroes" to English "merchants"), so Kagan enjoys contrasting masculine Americans with effeminate Europeans: "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." Gun-shy Europeans are able to putter around their Kantian garden only because lethally armed Americans are out there patrolling the Hobbesian jungle to prevent the "post-historical paradise" from being destroyed by various ayatollahs, Saddam Husseins and Kim Jong Ils. Kagan brings his gendered interpretation of United States-European Union relations to a surprising culmination when, in his final paragraphs, he reinvents himself as a marriage counselor, urging the quarreling couple to kiss and make up, for their own sake and the world`s.

This is amusing, in its way, all the more so because it is basically unserious. Unfortunately, Kagan`s more sober attempt to trace trans-Atlantic discord to differences in military capacity founders on the experience of the Cold War, when Americans and Europeans agreed on a definition of a common threat even though their military capacities were just as asymmetrical as they are today. Countries that are militarily weak will sometimes defer quietly to allies that are militarily strong. At other times they will strenuously dissent. Capabilities alone, therefore, do not bear the explanatory burden that Kagan places upon them. Moreover, a much simpler explanation suggests itself. Europeans no longer feel that the United States is protecting them from a dangerous threat because the likelihood of a military invasion from the East has disappeared. Without U.S. help, Kagan claims, Europe will be unable to prevent itself from "being overrun, spiritually as well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of `moral consciousness.`" But who, exactly, is about to overrun Europe "spiritually as well as physically"? There may be a good answer to this question, but if Kagan knows, he isn`t telling. Lack of a clear and convincing answer to the "What military threat?" question explains tensions in the alliance more economically than differences in military capacity.

The European Enigma
But even if Kagan were right that different levels of military preparedness necessarily give rise in Europe and the United States to differing assessments of threats, how does he explain the vastly different levels of military preparedness? Europe is rich enough to be a military superpower, so why have European nations been so reluctant to increase their defense spending or even to assemble on schedule their much-discussed rapid-reaction force?

Kagan`s answer to this critical question is a blur, partly because he cannot consistently invoke the objective disappearance of a shared military threat. Perhaps the United States after World War II successfully retired Europe from world history, reprogramming the once-militaristic Germans into harmless merchants and civilians. Perhaps bitter memories of Machtpolitik and chauvinistic militarism have dampened the European appetite for war. Perhaps other Europeans continue to fear that Germany`s homicidal impulses could be reawakened in a remilitarized Europe. Perhaps the successful experience of building the European Union has given the Europeans an illusion that similarly legalistic methods could be used to fashion a new global order. Perhaps Europeans are simply free riders, smartly purchasing domestic tranquility by generous social spending in the expectation that American taxpayers will foot the bill for European security. Perhaps they are simply unable to switch quickly from the posture of territorial defense to which the United States assigned them during the Cold War to a policy of force projection, which is what it would take to compete militarily with the United States today. Or perhaps the European population is simply aging, its animal spirits waning, a process of decay witnessed in zero or even negative population growth. Kagan rehearses these various factors but provides little guidance about how to interrelate or weigh them.

But the real weakness of his argument is something else. However we may explain European criticisms of American policy, it is unreasonable to suggest that the French, say, disagree with U.S. foreign policy because they are pacifists. The French are not busy watering tulips in their walled gardens; they are out there in the "jungles" of the Côte d`Ivoire. Kagan even admits that French and British (and even German) militaries are willing to absorb more casualties than their American counterparts, suggesting again that his contrast between American "men" and European "women" is eye-catching but bogus.

Kagan informs us repeatedly that "the new Europe really has emerged as a paradise ... freed from the laws and even the mentality of power politics." But what Europe is he talking about? Algerian youth in the banlieues of Paris have little experience with the humanitarian softness of the French police. Elected officials in Poland or Hungary will not agree that the new Europe is a realm rinsed free of power asymmetries where all peoples are treated equally under law. One source of Kagan`s comprehensive confusions is his odd tendency to treat law and force as antonyms. He knows that law is useless without enforcement, but he does not think through the implications of this simple truth. Contrary to his repeated claims, moreover, law does not erase asymmetries of power. The pervasive favoritism of every known rule-of-law system suggests that law expresses and stabilizes asymmetries of power. (Because no party is strong enough to rule without a degree of voluntary cooperation, law often stabilizes asymmetries of power by moderating them to some extent.)

This tendency of law to look favorably on the interests of the powerful explains why, from Nuremberg to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, the United States, as the world`s leading power, has been the champion of international law. That would be incomprehensible if law were simply a shackle placed by the weak on the strong. The United States created the current international legal regime and has used it for half a century to its own and its allies` advantage. The current crisis over Iraq came about not because the Europeans were trying to hobble U.S. sovereignty by imposing international law but rather for the opposite reason. Americans could not persuade Europeans in the 1990s to take international law (in the form of UN resolutions) seriously. In other words, the Iraqi crisis itself reveals the hopelessness of a stylized contrast between Europeans living in a Kantian world of reason and rules and Americans living in a Hobbesian world of force and fraud.

The Military Lens
The book`s basic argument keeps crumbling under inspection because it rests on a sleight of hand. Its elementary fallacy lies in a selective application of its theoretical premise. A country`s foreign policy can become unrealistic if specially favored instruments prevent policy-makers from facing up to threats that must be addressed by other means. From this true premise, however, we cannot infer, as Kagan does, that Europe`s meager military capacities make European assessment of threats unrealistic while the United States` formidable military capacities make American assessment of threats realistic. The illusions of the jungle are no less pernicious than the illusions of the garden. Kagan touches on this point when he allows, "The stronger may, in fact, rely on force more than they should." But he does not integrate this insight into his basic argument. Indeed, he devotes no attention at all to the role of irrationality in the making of American foreign policy, even though he knows full well that a missionary impulse pervades Washington`s understanding of the United States` global role, spoiling his clean contrast between realistic Americans and utopian Europeans.

A militarily weak society will typically underestimate problems that cannot be solved by civilian means alone. Just so, a militarily powerful society will typically underestimate problems that cannot be solved by military means alone. Both mistakes are possible and both can be fatal, but Kagan pays attention only to the former. This is why, despite the occasional justice of his remarks about European self-delusion, he comes across more as a Bush-administration apologist than as a foreign-policy analyst. Are Paris and Berlin really more "in denial" than Washington? Do Europeans have a more distorted view of the contemporary security environment than Americans? Kagan thinks so, but he is wrong.

The United States` unrivaled military power is not just a "tool." It is also a warped lens distorting the way the Bush administration defines the direst threats facing the country. Acute problems that cannot be addressed by a unilateral deployment of American military power (such as North Korea`s horrifying slide toward becoming a serial proliferator of nuclear weapons) get much less sustained attention than problems (such as Iraqi noncompliance with UN resolutions) that can be addressed unilaterally and militarily. Oil dependency, underinvestment in foreign-language skills and global warming are three disparate examples of neglected national-security threats that are not made any less acute simply because they cannot be managed by unilateral military force.

Kagan`s talk of American heroes patrolling the Hobbesian world obscures these and other irrationalities that afflict George W. Bush`s foreign policy. An ideological conviction that government is the problem and that laxly regulated private exchanges are the answer, for instance, has seduced the administration into thinking that rogue states are invariably more dangerous than failed states. As a consequence, Washington seems even now to be underestimating the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction entering the clandestine arms market after Baghdad`s centralized control is destroyed by an American attack and before our forces secure an Iraqi territory "the size of California" crisscrossed by well-developed smuggling routes. Deeply held Christian beliefs prevent the administration from grasping the fatal threat posed to the United States by religious certainty. Myopic domestic lobbies, interagency rivalries and Cold War habits of mind all distort the administration`s understanding of the current security environment. And so forth.

Europe`s Relevance
But the most striking and by far the most dangerous misperception afflicting Bush`s approach to foreign affairs concerns the war against transnational terrorism. Kagan asserts that Europe "has had little to offer the United States in strategic military terms since the end of the Cold War." Widely shared inside the administration, this view is based on the premise that the "end of the Cold War did not reduce the salience of military power." Military power is just as central to American security today as it was during the Cold War -- that is what Kagan would have us believe. And after the Cold War, "European military incapacity" means that our former allies have become almost wholly irrelevant to U.S. security. That is the assumption behind this book and, presumably, behind the unfathomably cavalier attitude of the Bush administration toward our European allies.

That this assumption is fallacious is the very least that might be said. The September 11 attacks were partly planned, organized and financed in Europe. The Muslim diaspora communities into which terrorist cells can invisibly blend remain the likeliest staging grounds for future al-Qaeda attacks on the United States. In other words, Europe remains a frontline region in the war against terrorism just as it was in the war against communism. As daily press reports also reveal, the European police have been acting in a perfectly Hobbesian manner, arresting scores of suspected terrorists. In other words, despite his pose as a no-nonsense realist, Kagan has apparently failed to realize the degree to which the contours of American national security have been redrawn since 9-11. The home front and the foreign front have now been disconcertingly blurred. National-security strategy must now operate in a domain where soldiering and policing have become of coequal importance. This profound change helps us understand the erroneous premise of Bush`s foreign policy. In our new security environment, despite the prevailing cliché, the United States is not the world`s only superpower.

The war on transnational terrorism depends essentially on information gathering and policing, and in these respects the Europeans are anything but security pygmies. Their capacities to respond effectively to today`s greatest security threats easily rival those of the United States. Europeans` linguistic skills and cultural knowledge alone ensure that they can make indispensable contributions to U.S. security. They can perform essential tasks of monitoring, infiltration, disruption and apprehension for which our own unrivaled military machine is patently inadequate. Dismissing the "platitude" that the United States cannot protect itself without European help, Kagan announces that "the United States can `go it alone.`" This is apparently the thinking (if you can call it that) behind the administration`s mindlessly denigrating remarks about Europe. True, European leaders can sometimes be hypocritical and foolishly condescending. But let it pass. We cannot afford, for the sake of a frisson, to undermine American security by further poisoning relations with capable allies in a time of unprecedented national peril.

Stephen Holmes
Copyright © 2003 by The

http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/4/holmes-s.html

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Ist es das, was Frau Merkel mit "unvermeidbarer Schadensbegrenzung" meinte. Dann kann ich auch die Herren von der deutschen Industrie in #581 verstehen. Wer zu spät kommt den bestraft das Leben.

Vorausschauende Personalpolitik

Cheneys Ex-Firma im Irak-Fieber

Halliburton ist sich offenbar sehr sicher, vom Wiederaufbau im Irak zu profitieren. Schon vor Kriegsbeginn schaltete der frühere Arbeitgeber von US-Vize-Präsident Cheney im großen Stil Personalanzeigen für Jobs im Mittleren Osten.

New York - Am neunten Februar - mehr als einen Monat, bevor die ersten US-Raketen in Bagdad einschlugen - tauchte in der "Chicago Tribune" ein umfangreiches Stellenangebot auf. Die Halliburton-Tochter KBR Government Operation suchte Spezialisten für den Bau von Kraftwerken, für Wasseraufbereitung, Löscharbeiten, Projekt-Management und für dutzende weitere Sonderbereiche im Mittleren Osten. Auch Stellen in der Wäscherei, Versorgung, Sicherheit, sowie im Flug- und Wetterdienst bot KBR an. Das Unternehmen richtet sich offenbar auf einen längeren Aufenthalt ein.

Halliburton wies direkte Zusammenhänge zum Irak-Krieg zurück. In der Anzeige gehe es nicht um Mitarbeiter für einen speziellen Job, sagte Konzernsprecherin Wendy Hall gegenüber "CNNMoney". Der Konzern mit Sitz in Houston gehört allerdings zu jenen Unternehmen, die vom Irak-Krieg massiv profitieren könnten. Neben vier weiteren Konkurrenten hat sich auch Halliburton nach Medienberichten für den 900 Millionen Dollar schweren Wiederaufbau-Kontrakt der US-Entwicklungsbehörde USAID beworben.

Das Aufbauprogramm sieht vor allem die Rekonstruktion der Infrastruktur vor. Nicht enthalten ist hingegen die Wiederherstellung und Modernisierung der irakischen Erdölindustrie. Nach einer Studie des Baker Institutes wird es 18 Monate dauern und fünf Milliarden Dollar kosten bis die Ölfelder auf dem Förderstand von vor 1991 sind. Auch bei der Vergabe dieses Geschäfts wird Halliburton mitpokern, zumal der Konzern weltweit als der Marktführer im Bau und Betrieb von Gas- und Ölanlagen gilt. Der ärgste Konkurrent, der französische Schlumberger-Konzern hat kaum Chancen, zumal die US-Regierung nach Presseberichten ohnehin US-Unternehmen bei der Vergabe jeglicher Aufbauverträge bevorzugt.

Ein umfassendes Engagement von Halliburton könnte die US-Regierung in Erklärungsnot bringen. US-Vizepräsident Dick Cheney leitete den Konzern, ehe er im Jahr 2000 nach Washington ging. Vom Krieg profitiert Halliburton indes schon jetzt. Die US-Army hat die Tochter KBR mit der Überprüfung und Löschung von Ölquellen-Bränden im Irak beauftragt. Zumindest die Anwerbung der Feuerwehrleute hat sich schon ausgezahlt.




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Alle Rechte vorbehalten
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Wahrheit in Zeiten des Krieges

US admits `8,000 Iraqis captured` claim was false

The US military has been forced to admit the 8,000 Iraqi soldiers they claimed to have captured last week are now battling British forces.



Iraq`s 51st Infantry Division, which has about 200 tanks, is now engaged in the southern city of Basra.

The Pentagon is claiming the confusion is the work of the Fedayeen Saddam - Saddam Hussein`s most trusted paramilitary unit.

The US is accusing it of organising the tactic of posing as civilians and faking surrenders.

Defence Department officials reported on Friday that they had won the surrender of the entire 51st Division, a regular Iraqi army unit deployed in southern Iraq to defend Basra, the nation`s second largest city.

On Saturday, officials backtracked, saying they had only taken a couple of commanders and the rest of the men had "melted away" - a term used for those who laid down their arms and returned home.

On Monday there were reports that one of the "commanders" turned out to be a junior official who misrepresented his rank in hopes of getting better treatment.

Then on Tuesday, British forces reported a tank battle with elements of the 51st outside of Basra. Asked about the confusion, the Pentagon said the division`s equipment was taken over by the Fedayeen and possibly members of Saddam`s Republican Guard, his best-trained troops.

"Some of their equipment may have been used by the Fedayeen perhaps, or other folks that Fedayeen brought with them," a Pentagon spokesman said.


Story filed: 07:09 Wednesday 26th March 2003
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_764618.html

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The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq
By David North
21 March 2003

1. The unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States is an event that will live in infamy. The political criminals in Washington who have launched this war, and the wretched scoundrels in the mass media who are reveling in the bloodbath, have covered this country in shame. Hundreds of millions of people in every part of the world are repulsed by the spectacle of a brutal and unrestrained military power pulverizing a small and defenseless country. The invasion of Iraq is an imperialist war in the classic sense of the term: a vile act of aggression that has been undertaken on behalf of the interests of the most reactionary and predatory sections of the financial and corporate oligarchy in the United States. Its overt and immediate purpose is the establishment of control over Iraq’s vast oil resources and reduction of that long-oppressed country to an American colonial protectorate.
Weiter:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/iraq-m21_prn.shtml

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Zynisch und menschenverachtend

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 27. März 2003, 18:08
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,242341,00.html
PR-Panne

US-Basen im Irak heißen Shell und Exxon

Kritiker, die den Irak-Feldzug vor allem für einen Krieg ums Öl halten, sehen sich durch die neueste PR-Panne des Pentagons bestätigt. Die wenig subtilen Militärs hatten offenbar keine Hemmungen, zwei Armee-Camps im Kriegsgebiet nach großen Ölkonzernen zu benennen.


New York - Einhaltung der Menschenrechte, Beseitigung von Massenvernichtungswaffen und Stärkung der Demokratie sind angeblich die hehren Ziele, welche die US-Regierung im Irak verfolgt.

Umso peinlicher ist, wie sorglos das US-Militär mit dem für die Regierung heiklen Ölthema umgeht. Wie die "New York Times" berichtet, tragen zwei Lager der 101st Airborne Division im Zentral-Irak die Namen von Ölkonzernen. Eines trägt den Titel "Forward Operating Base Shell", ein weiteres heißt "Forward Operating Base Exxon". Kriegsgegner werfen dem Weißen Haus seit Längerem vor, es gehe den Amerikanern bei der Beseitigung von Saddam Husseins Regime einzig und allein ums Öl.

Beide Konzerne zeigten sich überrascht von der unerwarteten Ehrung durch das US-Militär. Eine Sprecherin von Royal Dutch Shell sagte, das Unternehmen unterhalte im Irak keine Einrichtungen. Wie die US-Armee ihre Basen tituliere, sei nicht Shells Angelegenheit. Etwas enthusiastischer äußerte sich Tom Cirigliano von Exxon Mobil . Er hält die Namensgebung nicht für ein politisches Statement: "Ich glaube, die 101st war recht kreativ und benennt Sachen nach Dingen, die sie an die Heimat erinnern. Ich finde das prima."

Das Pentagon versucht, die Sache herunterzuspielen. "Diese Stützpunkte sind normalerweise zur Versorgung mit Treibstoff da - im Grunde handelt es sich um Tankstellen in der Wüste", so eine Sprecherin gegenüber der "New York Times". Klärend fügte die Sprecherin hinzu: "Ob wir oder ob wir nicht jedem einen Vortrag darüber halten, dass man wegen politischer Empfindlichkeiten darauf achten sollte, wie man seine Tankstellen benennt, ich weiß nicht ob das etwas ist, dass man tun sollte oder das getan werden könnte."

Politische Gegner Bushs halten die derzeitige US-Regierung ohnehin für eine Marionette der der Energie- und speziell der Ölbranche. Das Argument ist nicht ganz aus der Luft gegriffen: Vizepräsident Dick Cheney war früher Vorstandschef des Ölausrüsters Halliburton. Sicherheitsberaterin Condoleezza Rice, nach der sogar ein Öltanker benannt wurde, arbeitete lange für Chevron. Der Präsident verfügte über exzellente Beziehungen zu Enron-Boss Kenneth Lay und nannte seinen Intimus schmeichelnd Kenny Boy. Die Energieindustrie war einer der größten Wahlkampfspender Bushs und hat die Energiepolitik der Regierung maßgeblich beeinflusst.

Von Thomas Hillenbrand

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Now, They Talk About Conventions of War?
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
By LINDA S. HEARD

Athens, Greece.

Britain’s ITV showed a small Iraqi boy lying on a stretcher in a Baghdad hospital. He was shrieking from pain caused by burns over more than two-thirds of his tiny body. I could see from the top half of his face, which had escaped the flames, that he had been an exceptionally beautiful infant with huge dark eyes, now stricken with fear.

The reporter said that this angelic looking child was not expected to last the day. This was the first of a juxtaposition of events which brought home to me just how immoral is the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Fighting back a flood of emotion and anger, I was then confronted with the Pentagon press briefing. Its spokeswoman talked about Iraq’s alleged misuse of the Geneva Conventions by its parading five US prisoners of war on television.

How can anyone compare the televising of military service personnel – members of an invading force - being asked their name, rank and age with the tortured screams of that toddler fighting for his life?

Those soldiers knew that their job involved their capture by enemy forces or even the loss of their lives. They are likely to return home a little worse for wear. The child in the hospital isn’t going to see his home again. He isn’t left with the choice whether or not he wants to be a soldier, or a lawyer or a doctor. By the time you read this that child will be dead along with thousands of other victims of Bush’s wish to ‘free’ the Iraqi people.

George Bush and his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have been talking a lot about the Geneva Conventions these days. Not so during America’s invasion of Afghanistan when they dropped their J-Dams and missiles on a compound in Mazar-e-Sherif, killing hundreds of Afghans and Arabs.

There was no talk about the Geneva Conventions when contingents of Arabs and Moslems were flown to Guantanamo Bay, shackled, handcuffed, gagged, hooded and chained to their aircraft seats only to be thrown into chicken coops open to the elements.

There was no mention of any conventions when John Walker Lindt was interviewed while he lay on a stretcher in Afghanistan. Oh, yes. These were ‘detainees’.

They are the disappeared whose lives were not dignified with the title ‘prisoner of war’, except for Lindt, of course, who got special treatment due to his American passport. The others were left to rot without contact with their families and no recourse to legal representation.

Donald Rumsfeld who is the very person, who once said that he doubted that most of them would ever be released, is now bleating in the most hypocritical fashion about the Geneva Conventions.

Rumsfeld says that any mistreatment of the American prisoners of war will be treated as a war crime, but today the southern Iraqi city of Basra is without electricity and water and as the days go past the health of its inhabitants will be at risk. This is a war crime Mr. Rumsfeld. This is a true crime against humanity.

When US soldiers looked on while the Afghan War Lord General Dostum shoved Afghan prisoners into metal containers and left them without water for three days under the sun until most of them died, did Rumsfeld utter the words ‘war crime’. Not at all. Instead, Dostum was rewarded with a place in the Afghan government alongside the American puppet Hamid Karzai.

And has the White House or the Pentagon ever said a world about Israel’s breaches of the Geneva Conventions? Even as 10 per cent of Jenin was demolished, Palestinian refugees used as human shields and ambulances prevented from reaching the sick and injured, the Bush administration stayed silent.

Returning to that same Pentagon briefing, we heard how those Iraqi men who are defending their mothers, fathers, wives and children, defending the soil of their own country, are going to be labeled ‘terrorists’ by the Bush administration if they remove their military uniforms. These men should play by the ‘rules’. They should not be ‘fighting dirty’ as a Sky News anchor keeps accusing them of doing.

While an invading army sends its pilots to drop bombs on heavily populated civilian areas from 30,000 feet, and uses its high-tech weaponry, laser and satellite-guided missiles against a people, who have no serious defense capabilities except their warriors, isn’t it clear just which side is ‘playing dirty’?

If people with tanks surrounded my house, their helicopter gun ships circling overhead and their bullets were screaming through my windows, should I be looking into ancient tomes on international law to see what rules I should follow?

It seems that the Iraqis are supposed to label themselves as combatants, conveniently wearing a recognizable uniform, while fighting using the Queensbury Rules. “Oh sorry, old chap. I really mustn’t thump you in the balls. Please feel free to drop your bombs on my wife and children while I dash off to get my uniform out of the dry cleaners”.

It is evident that Bush and Blair are waging an illegal and immoral conflict. They have ignored the voices of millions around the world; they have ignored the wishes of the United Nations and they have manipulated the truth over and over again in the most cynical fashion.

The President’s men – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz - as far back as 1997 planned this invasion. Iraq is just the first stop, a launching pad from where Bush and friends will re-draw the map of the region to suit their own self-interested agenda.

But they cannot tell us the truth. They cannot tell us that the New World Order, with the United States at its head, is born.

As their forces rush to prevent the oil fires from consuming the black gold, their politicians maneuver to wrest the oil for food escrow account from the hands of the United Nations. As they talk about saving the country’s oil for the future of the Iraqi people, they are doling out multi-million dollars contracts to American companies, poised to offer subcontracts to British firms, to rebuild the infrastructure, which they themselves are in the process of tearing down. Many of those companies are headed by cronies of the Bush camp.

Those who assert that the US administration is working from humanitarian motives should ask themselves why, when the American economy is failing, Bush asks for 75 billion dollars to feed the war effort… and this for a start. What is going to replenish those coffers if not for Iraqi oil? If Bush is suddenly suffused with such a generous humanitarian spirit, then why isn’t more American taxpayer’s money going to Africa, where people are dying of HIV Aids and malnutrition?

Oh, yes. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction with which it is threatening the United States and the world. As we watch the Iraqi army lob less than smart missiles onto the sands of Kuwait and roll around in ancient Russian tanks clutching rusty rifles, does anyone still take this seriously?

In fact, Russia has gone as far as to warn the Coalition that if weapons of mass destruction are suddenly produced to back up their, thus far, unsubstantiated claims, they will be subject to investigation by UN weapons inspectors. The world simply isn’t going to fall for that one. If they want to get away with it, then they will have to be a lot more professional than they were when flourishing the plagiarized intelligence dossier and the forged uranium-related correspondence between Niger and Iraq.

Just recently they have admitted one motive for their sudden interest in disarming Saddam Hussein. America and Britain want regime change in Iraq, a motive, which is not recognized by the United Nations Charter. At first, they were shy about exposing their desire to topple the Iraqi regime. The British Prime Minister denied that this was their aim. Later on, he didn’t even bother to do that. The mask is finally off. When it comes down to a battle between might and international law, might wins.

Now they want to have their war legalized by the UN under the pretext that they want to rebuild Iraq and provide aid and food to its people.

Without this stamp of legality, the hands of the World Bank and the IMF are tied, so now they are attempting to use emotional blackmail on countries like Russia and France who thus far have refused to bend to their will. Both Putin and Chirac have again threatened to use their vetoes if any attempt to render this war respectable is pursued.

Lawyers all over the world are already planning how they can instigate suits against the leaders of the US and Britain for war crimes. The British and the Australians are extremely vulnerable since their countries have both signed up to the International Court and this is part of the reason that Blair is so against any use of cluster bombs or depleted uranium during this conflict, which doesn’t sit well with the Pentagon.

No doubt with the damacles sword of war crimes hanging over him, an Australian pilot recently disobeyed his US commander and refused to drop his deadly payload on a heavily populated civilian area.

The fresh faced teenage American and British troops in theatre have been lied to as well. They were told ‘Enduring Freedom’ would be a walk in the park. They were told the Iraqi people would throw flowers in front of their tanks and armored personnel carriers.

They expected garlands around their necks and trays of welcoming candies from a people delighted to rid themselves of their leader. This has not happened. Instead, they are fighting the dust and the heat, the fear and the bullets and, worse, the cold hatred of those they believed they were coming to save.

Sure, there have been a few orchestrated photo-ops, dutifully relayed by embedded reporters, showing soldiers allowing smiling Iraqi children in Umm Qasr to look through their binoculars. There have been a few smiles of relief from some of the poorest and downtrodden civilians who are glad just to be alive. But this is only the true picture for the more naive among us.

Whatever one thinks of Saddam Hussein, we must surely admire the spirit of the Iraqi people. In Baghdad, they are going about their business as though their city was not being attacked with such ruthlessness, night after night. They are proud of their country, one of the most ancient in the world, and they are determined to protect their families.

The Iraqis are mostly Arabs. Those in the pro-war camp who expected to find a cowed and cowardly people have been sorely mistaken. As Arabs they will never accept an occupying force on their land. The Palestinians haven’t and the Iraqis won’t either. As tribal people, their honor and their dignity will always come first, well before all the consumerist enticements their enemies display before them.

The Coalition of the Cowardly may win this campaign with its military might but it will never win the war. The Iraqis will never forgive and neither will the Arab world, which is just beginning to emerge from its stupor to wonder ‘which of us will be next?’

The Bush administration says that it wants to win hearts and minds. They haven’t a hope in hell. I will never forget the suffering mirrored in the large dark eyes of that tiny child who is no longer with us. Neither will the Iraqis.

Linda S Heard is a specialist writer on Mid-East affairs and can be contacted at: [e-mail]

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Jack Lessenberry: `The insanity, the obscenity`
Date: Thursday, March 27 @ 09:56:04 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism


We are not seeing the real war.

By Jack Lessenberry, Detroit Metro Times

At the moment I am writing this, Steve Martin is handing out the Academy Awards, and highly trained young Americans are dropping vast amounts of bombs on a mostly backward nation, killing women, children and babies.

Our tax dollars at work. The Iraqis are killing some of us too -- they seem to be getting better at it -- and will likely kill a lot more. After one battle in which we pitted our tanks against their pickup trucks, U.S. Army Col. Mark Hildenbrand said: "It wasn`t even a fair fight. I don`t know why they don`t just surrender."

Gee. Do you suppose it could have anything to do with the fact that it is their country and we have invaded it?



Politicians and military men, far more than most mental defectives, seem to be incapable of learning from past mistakes. We attempted to bomb our enemies into surrendering in World War II. When it was over, John Kenneth Galbraith led a major study of the effects of the bombing.

They found, to their surprise, that it had done nothing to shorten the war. We learned nothing from this, and tried it again in Vietnam, with worse results. Bombing does wonders, however, to rally civilians around their governments, no matter how evil.

In the last days of World War II, German civilians defiantly erected banners in the rubble. "Our walls may break, but never our hearts." Playing off that, the dying Nazi regime had a shrewd slogan of its own: "Enjoy the War. The Peace Will Be Terrible."

Fortunately for humanity, that last slogan didn`t come true. There was another difference too. During World War II, nobody doubted they were in a war. Even though no bombs fell on America, there was rationing, and we stopped making cars.

When this war began, I had an urgent call from a noncombatant who wanted to know whether this meant "Will and Grace" wouldn`t be on that night. Fortunately, the terrorists didn`t win, and the war failed to knock off my friend`s situation comedy.

However, it might this week. The media monopoly and the military-industrial complex have created "Target: Iraq!" the ultimate reality TV show. Early on, ratings for the war show have been through the roof, in large part because the Pentagon and the networks have teamed up. They`ve learned a lot since the Gulf War.

Back in 1991, the government was worried about negative publicity of the kind that forced an end to Vietnam. So reporters and cameras were kept well away from the main event. This satisfied nobody, and this time, some public relations genius came up with the concept of "embedding" vast numbers of reporters with military units.

That, coupled with Baghdad`s similarly shrewd decision to let the cameras remain in the capital, gives us the illusion that we are seeing the real war. We are seeing nothing of the kind. To be "embedded" with the military means, literally, to be in bed with them. What those reporters really are reduced to are captive parts of the military PR apparatus. If the colonel doesn`t want stuff shown, it isn`t. Nor have the journalists back in the control rooms been much more penetrating. During the first Gulf War, they told us our spiffy new Patriot missiles were gallantly shooting down the Iraqi Scuds.

Turned out to have been a complete lie. But now we are told that all the bugs have been worked out, and that the Patriots are performing unerringly. Uh-huh. Besides, now Iraqi civilian populations are not in much danger, since nearly all our weapons are "smart" and able to hit the mint mark on a dime from thousands of miles away.

None of the talking heads are challenging that, either, even though several cruise missiles have so far not only missed the mark, but the country, landing in Iran.

If you want to get any sense of balance, find a friend with a satellite dish and go watch Al-Jazeera, the Arab TV network that has been a phenomenon since it was launched in 1996. Today, it is showing an entirely different war.

There you can see a bit of what the collateral damage from our bombing looks like. I suggest you not try this while eating. Incidentally, it is not Iraqi propaganda TV. Al-Jazeera, so far as I can tell, is balanced, but sees the world from an Arab perspective, something we badly need to take into account here.

Any remaining doubt as to the impartiality of our news organizations ought to have been erased on Sunday, when the war started to go a bit badly. The outmatched Iraqi military managed to take five prisoners. They displayed these on TV.

Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld promptly "requested" that our media not air this footage, which has been seen by most of the rest of the world. The fiercely independent American press responded proudly: "Yas`, boss. Sho` nuff."

On Friday night, right after the "Shock and Awe" campaign was launched, National Public Radio`s Tom Gjelten said he found it hard to believe the war could possibly last a week. None of his pals in the media are likely to remind him of that. They are still showing, however, Rummy intoning that the result is a foregone conclusion.

I think I have a tape of his ancestor, Robert McNamara, saying just the same thing about Vietnam. That doesn`t mean Saddam won`t be defeated before long. But when I asked Nasser Beydoun, executive director of the Arab-American Chamber of Commerce, how long he thought the war would last, he said that wasn`t the question.

What we are watching is not the war, he told me, but the Battle of Iraq. The war, in his view, may just be starting, if we continue our present policies.

So while it lasts, enjoy the "war." The "peace" may indeed be terrible.

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times.

Copyright 2003, Metro Times, Inc.

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Michael Moore: `I`d like to thank the Vatican...`
Date: Thursday, March 27 @ 09:55:10 EST
Topic: Liberals And The Left


Michael Moore fesses up to his Oscar day `mistake` -- going to Mass first.

By Michael Moore, Los Angeles Times

A word of advice to future Oscar winners: Don`t begin Oscar day by going to church.

That is where I found myself this past Sunday morning, at the Church of the Good Shepherd on Santa Monica Boulevard, at Mass with my sister and my dad. My problem with the Catholic Mass is that sometimes I find my mind wandering after I hear something the priest says, and I start thinking all these crazy thoughts like how it is wrong to kill people and that you are not allowed to use violence upon another human being unless it is in true self-defense.

The pope even came right out and said it: This war in Iraq is not a just war and, thus, it is a sin.



Those thoughts were with me the rest of the day, from the moment I left the church and passed by the homeless begging for change (one in six American children living in poverty is another form of violence), to the streets around the Kodak Theater where antiwar protesters were being arrested as I drove by in my studio-sponsored limo.

I had not planned on winning an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine" (no documentary that was a big box-office success had won since "Woodstock"), and so I had no speech prepared. I`m not much of a speech-preparer anyway, and besides, I had already received awards in the days leading up to the Oscars and used the same acceptance remarks. I spoke of the need for nonfiction films when we live in such fictitious times. We have a fictitious president who was elected with fictitious election results. (If you still believe that 3,000 elderly Jewish Americans -- many of them Holocaust survivors -- voted for Pat Buchanan in West Palm Beach in 2000, then you are a true devotee to the beauty of fiction!) He is now conducting a war for a fictitious reason (the claim that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when in fact we are there to get the world`s second-largest supply of oil).

Whether it is a tax cut that is passed off as a gift to the middle class or a desire to drill holes in the wilds of Alaska, we are continually bombarded with one fictitious story after another from the Bush White House. And that is why it is important that filmmakers make nonfiction, so that all the little lies can be exposed and the public informed. An uninformed public in a democracy is a sure-fire way to end up with little or no democracy at all.

That is what I have been saying for some time. Millions of Americans seem to agree. My book "Stupid White Men" still sits at No. 1 on the bestseller list (it`s been on that list now for 53 weeks and is the largest-selling nonfiction book of the year). "Bowling for Columbine" has broken all box-office records for a documentary. My Web site is now getting up to 20 million hits a day (more than the White House`s site). My opinions about the state of the nation are neither unknown nor on the fringe, but rather they exist with mainstream majority opinion. The majority of Americans, according to polls, want stronger environmental laws, support Roe vs. Wade and did not want to go into this war without the backing of the United Nations and all of our allies.

That is where the country is at. It`s liberal, it`s for peace and it is only tacitly in support of its leader because that is what you are supposed to do when you are at war and you want your kids to come back from Iraq alive.

In the commercial break before the best documentary Oscar was to be announced, I suddenly thought that maybe this community of film people was also part of that American majority and just might have voted for my film, which, in part, takes on the Bush administration for manipulating the public with fear so it can conduct its acts of aggression against the Third World. I leaned over to my fellow nominees and told them that, should I win, I was going to say something about President Bush and the war and would they like to join me up on the stage? I told them that I felt like I`d already had my moment with the success of the film and that I would love for them to share the stage with me so they could have their moment too. (They had all made exceptional films and I wanted the public to see these filmmakers and hopefully go see their films.)

They all agreed.

Moments later, Diane Lane opened the envelope and announced the winner: "Bowling for Columbine." The entire main floor rose to its feet for a standing ovation. I was immeasurably moved and humbled as I motioned for the other nominees to join my wife (the film`s producer) and me up on the stage.

I then said what I had been saying all week at those other awards ceremonies. I guess a few other people had heard me say those things too because before I had finished my first sentence about the fictitious president, a couple of men (some reported it was "stagehands" just to the left of me) near a microphone started some loud yelling. Then a group in the upper balcony joined in. What was so confusing to me, as I continued my remarks, was that I could hear this noise but looking out on the main floor, I didn`t see a single person booing. But then the majority in the balcony -- who were in support of my remarks -- started booing the booers.

It all turned into one humungous cacophony of yells and cheers and jeers. And all I`m thinking is, "Hey, I put on a tux for this?"

I tried to get out my last line ("Any time you`ve got both the pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, you`re not long for the White House") and the orchestra struck up its tune to end the melee. (A few orchestra members came up to me later and apologized, saying they had wanted to hear what I had to say.) I had gone 55 seconds, 10 more than allowed.

Was it appropriate? To me, the inappropriate thing would have been to say nothing at all or to thank my agent, my lawyer and the designer who dressed me -- Sears Roebuck. I made a movie about the American desire to use violence both at home and around the world. My remarks were in keeping with exactly what my film was about. If I had a movie about birds or insects, I would have talked about birds or insects. I made a movie about guns and Americans` tradition of using them against the world and each other.

And, as I walked up to the stage, I was still thinking about the lessons that morning at Mass. About how silence, when you observe wrongs being committed, is the same as committing those wrongs yourself. And so I followed my conscience and my heart.

On the way back home to Flint, Mich., the day after the Oscars, two flight attendants told me how they had gotten stuck overnight in Flint with no flight -- and wound up earning only $30 for the day because they are paid by the hour.

They said they were telling me this in the hope that I would tell others. Because they, and the millions like them, have no voice. They don`t get to be commentators on cable news like the bevy of retired generals we`ve been watching all week. (Can we please demand that the U.S. military remove its troops from ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox?) They don`t get to make movies or talk to a billion people on Oscar night. They are the American majority who are being asked to send their sons and daughters over to Iraq to possibly die so Bush`s buddies can have the oil.

Who will speak for them if I don`t? That`s what I do, or try to do, every day of my life, and March 23, 2003 -- though it was one of the greatest days of my life and an honor I will long cherish -- was no different.

Michael Moore won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine."

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/
la-oe-moore27mar27,1,1503064.story

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Meinungsumfragen haben viel mit Horoskopen gemeinsam. man muß dran glauben.

Believe your eyes,/sp/not opinion polls
By Daniel Meltzer

March 26, 2003

BRITISH PRIME Minister Tony Blair "brought down the house" (of Commons) a few of weeks ago when he was asked what other nation, besides Britain and the United States, supports an invasion of Iraq.
"Poland," he replied. The laughter in the chamber took nearly a full minute to subside as he looked about him with an expression of, well, shock and awe.

Backing from the Poles for the war against Iraq is credible, if of questionable value. The polls are another matter. Americans would do well to doubt the degree of citizen support for the war being reported here. These numbers are printed and broadcast regularly and accepted as something resembling fact when they are anything but.

Does an overwhelming majority of Americans, as poll figures seem to indicate, believe the president and support the war? Or do the large protest rallies and marches suggest instead that most citizens doubt his motives and oppose what is being called the most radical and arguably the most perilous shift in U.S. foreign policy in half a century -- "preventive warfare" against nations that have neither attacked us nor threatened to attack in the belief that they may in the future?

The results of periodic public opinion polls are routinely regarded as reliable by most news organizations and are disseminated widely. Recently published polls on the subject of Iraq, examined more closely, can be revealed, however (as have been many in the past), as being of dubious credibility and/or accuracy.

A New York Times/CBS News public opinion poll published Saturday in The Times reported that about 70 percent of the American public strongly supports the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The poll was quoted widely in other papers and on broadcast news programs, often positioned to contrast with, or to "balance," well-attended anti-war protests that were taking place across the country and around the world. San Francisco police had arrested more than 1,000 protesters over two consecutive days of street action, and the generally conservative New York Police Department estimated there were more than 125,000 demonstrators Saturday, perhaps an all-time record for anti-war activism in the city.

Not mentioned at all during broadcast reports of the poll, however, and buried inside The Times that day was that its survey`s conclusion was based on interviews with no more than 463 American adults, randomly chosen by computer from various households across the country. Pollsters consistently claim that their samplings, regardless of how minuscule, represent, within a negligible margin of error, the opinions of all Americans.

To put this into proper perspective, bear in mind that the 463 "adults" reportedly contacted by telephone represent an infinitesimal fraction of our population of about 280 million. And yet the clear conclusion suggested in virtually all reports of the poll was that Americans overwhelmingly support the war on Iraq.

Few of us need to be reminded that these same pollsters, who conduct random opinion "sampling" from tiny percentages of willing or compliant Americans, have already botched more than a few pre-election estimates and Election Day exit polls in recent years.

Nor do the published or broadcast survey reports provide the actual wording of the questions that had been posed during the interviews. Pollsters readily acknowledge that the language and nuances of the questions themselves can influence responses.

Perhaps this is just part of the continued numbing, if not dumbing, of America -- a concession by the media to the notion that Americans can and should be told what to think.

As a veteran of national news coverage, I can tell you that from a business standpoint, it has long been valued as a cheap story for the organization breaking the story, in this case The Times and CBS News -- no travel or per diem expenses and virtually cost-free for all of the other papers or broadcasters who will quote it. Bang-per-buck ratio is consistently high.

How should you react to the next random-sample opinion poll thrown at you? To paraphrase the motto of one of our least objective news media outlets: I am reporting this to you, now you decide.


Daniel Meltzer teaches journalism at New York University.


Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

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Messianic unilateralism threatens all

By ANDERS STEPHANSON
Special to Newsday


Stephanson is a professor of history at Columbia University and author of Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right.


Because he thinks he can change the world, George W. Bush has chosen to go to war against Iraq. What began in the wake of September 11, 2001, as a diffuse “war on terrorism” now has escalated into a massively ambitious campaign to reshape the strategic landscape of the world in the forthright interest of the United States. The President has embarked on the greatest shift in US foreign policy since Harry S. Truman announced the Cold War in March 1947.

Gone are the attempts of the 1990s to lead the world by dint of economic ordering, by culture and diplomacy. The Bush administration thinks this is a unique chance to show the world that no threat or even competition is exempt from the forceful exposure to unadulterated US power. If power always combines force and persuasion, the Bush gamble relies starkly on the former.

The current war is not chiefly about “disarming” Iraq. It is even less about preventing terrorism, the threat of which is in fact more likely to increase. The war is about “regime change,” not only in Iraq but in the entire region. It is also, more important, about making sure that others understand in no uncertain terms the full force of the US claim to global rights of intervention. The self-professed idea of preemption is nothing but the reproduction on a much vaster canvas of the old US (self-proclaimed) right to police Latin America, a right claimed (in the Monroe Doctrine, let us recall) in the name of democracy and liberty for everyone.

Such pieties apart, the Bush gamble is framed in the language of messianic Protestantism: The United States is chosen, in fact obliged, by higher authority (certainly higher than the United Nations) to redeem anywhere and everywhere. As the President declared in January, “We are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind.” In carrying out this obligation, he would take “whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary.” His source of authorization is quite clear, for the freedom at stake “is God’s gift to humanity.” America, Bush has said, has “been called to a unique role in human events.”

Such a calling assumes an absolute distinction and difference between the United States and the rest of the world. This conviction explains why the administration has so consistently refused any international treaties that could possibly restrict the absolute US right to sovereign control.

The administration, as Americans have tended to do throughout their history, sees the United States as a crystallization of the world as it ought to be. The real, outside world is inherently inferior, a space to be acted upon. Other places, no matter how close and similar to the United States, can never become equal. Like ancient Rome, the United States is thus a world empire.

The degraded outside world, consequently, can have no right to judge the United States. It makes perfect sense that the United States should have the universal right to act when the world is in need of discipline and punishment.

All of which, not surprisingly, is a source of considerable worry for those potentially on the receiving end. And there is reason to worry. For one thing, there is now an enormous disparity in military power between the United States and the rest of the world. The United States is more important to the outside world than the outside world is to the United States, or so it seems. Like Desert Storm in 1991, this war against Iraq will be watched as a spectator sport. At home, Americans will experience few fundamental changes in their ordinary lives. Terrorism notwithstanding, war for the United States is something that happens elsewhere.

Why, then, call this a gamble? I am not thinking of the fact that war always involves unpredictable friction, but rather of the chances that George W. Bush’s Monroe Doctrine for the world might work in the manner the President intends.

Only if the war is a blindingly spectacular success -- meaning few US casualties; the rapid collapse of the Iraqi regime without extensive destruction and civilian suffering; the discovery of a large presence of weapons of mass destruction; the installation of a decent government that keeps the country together without unending, massive occupation; the continued stability and even liberalization of the hitherto “friendly” Islamic oil states, and a forceful attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue -- would Bush (and British Prime Minister Tony Blair) emerge strengthened and capable of moving on, perhaps, to the next target. The quarrelsome French and Germans would then slowly fall back in line; the Russians and the Chinese would find economic reasons to do likewise.

But the odds for that kind of resounding success are not that great. What would happen then? Let us leave the scenario of disaster aside. A merely middling victory would maintain US interests in the region for the foreseeable future, although the long-term effects are hard to discern. The damage to the larger international order, however, would be serious.

The administration’s messianic unilateralism already has generated a strong counterreaction in the diplomatic game that has been conducted over the Iraqi question since last fall. Secretary of State Colin Powell, probably, managed to convince the administration to acknowledge, if only tactically, the legitimating force of the United Nations. This posture has now been discarded completely. The international goodwill that persisted through the Afghan campaign has evaporated along with it. The administration claims, to be sure, legal authority for the war in UN resolutions; but it is now Iraq, oddly, that could bring the attack to the Security Council as a war of aggression.

More important, anything short of full success would give a great boost to the ingenious attempt (mainly French) to make the United Nations the strategic counterweight to the new US world order. That design has strong underpinnings. The United Nations is unwieldy and often ineffective. It encapsulates, however, the idea of law and legitimacy. In the 1990s, when geopolitical conflict waned, there was an enormous expansion of law or lawlike procedure on an international scale. The United States has always advocated this in principle. But in reality, the United States accepts no potential infringements by the lesser lights of this world and goes along only if the outcome is favorable.

France, Germany and perhaps Russia, in focusing on the United Nations, would be in a position to form a wide political coalition against US supremacy. The United States, by contrast, would have to rely on bribes, cajolery and threats. As shown by the extravagant attempted payoff to the Turks recently in exchange for US troop bases, this is not an economical way of doing things.

Beyond this, messianic unilateralism, even with a band of assorted auxiliaries eager to curry favor, would undermine the struggle against terrorism. The French have been highly effective in terms of intelligence gathering and prevention, the two capabilities one needs above all others to be successful against terrorists. Here the United States needs as much cooperation across borders as it possibly can get -- not less.

George W. Bush is apparently convinced that there will be no security for the United States until evil everywhere has been rooted out and that he has the right to act accordingly wherever and whenever he thinks fit. The war against Iraq shows that he is serious about his unlimited form of imperial rule. He may well succeed in Iraq. But much of the world is now more worried about what Bush might do than about Saddam Hussein’s whereabouts. At no time since the end of the Vietnam war has the world been more politically at loggerheads with the United States. That is not a recipe for security.


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Joshua Micah Marshall: `Practice to deceive`
Posted on Thursday, March 27 @ 09:49:00 EST
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Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks` nightmare scenario--it`s their plan.

By Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly

Imagine it`s six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam`s rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq`s oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.

To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn`t the nightmare scenario. It`s everything going as anticipated.



In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration`s thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard`s Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks` broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.

There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it`s conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks` record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda.

Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn`t a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they`re on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that`s what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.

Moral Cloudiness

Ever since the neocons burst upon the public policy scene 30 years ago, their movement has been a marriage of moral idealism, military assertiveness, and deception. Back in the early 1970s, this group of then-young and still mostly Democratic political intellectuals grew alarmed by the post-Vietnam Democrats` seeming indifference to the Soviet threat. They were equally appalled, however, by the amoral worldview espoused by establishment Republicans like Henry Kissinger, who sought co-existence with the Soviet Union. As is often the case with ex-socialists, the neocons were too familiar with communist tactics to ignore or romanticize communism`s evils. The fact that many neocons were Jewish, and outraged by Moscow`s increasingly visible persecution of Jews, also caused them to reject both the McGovernite and Kissingerian tendencies to ignore such abuses.

In Ronald Reagan, the neocons found a politician they could embrace. Like them, Reagan spoke openly about the evils of communism and, at least on the peripheries of the Cold War, preferred rollback to coexistence. Neocons filled the Reagan administration, and men like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and others provided the intellectual ballast and moral fervor for the sharp turn toward confrontation that the United States adopted in 1981.

But achieving moral clarity often requires hiding certain realities. From the beginning, the neocons took a much more alarmist view of Soviet capacities and intentions than most experts. As late as 1980, the ur-neocon Norman Podhoretz warned of the imminent "Finlandization of America, the political and economic subordination of the United States to superior Soviet power," even raising the possibility that America`s only options might be "surrender or war." We now know, of course, that U.S. intelligence estimates, which many neocons thought underestimated the magnitude and durability of Soviet power, in fact wildly overestimated them.

This willingness to deceive--both themselves and others--expanded as neocons grew more comfortable with power. Many spent the Reagan years orchestrating bloody wars against Soviet proxies in the Third World, portraying thugs like the Nicaraguan Contras and plain murderers like Jonas Savimbi of Angola as "freedom fighters." The nadir of this deceit was the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Podhoretz`s son-in-law, Elliot Abrams, pled guilty to perjury. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush`s father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush White House.

But in the end, the Soviet Union did fall. And the hawks` policy of confrontation did contribute to its collapse. So too, of course, did the economic and military rot most of the hawks didn`t believe in, and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom neocons such as Richard Perle counseled Reagan not to trust. But the neocons did not dwell on what they got wrong. Rather, the experience of having played a hand in the downfall of so great an evil led them to the opposite belief: that it`s okay to be spectacularly wrong, even brazenly deceptive about the details, so long as you have moral vision and a willingness to use force.

What happened in the 1990s further reinforced that mindset. Hawks like Perle and William Kristol pulled their hair out when Kissingerians like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell left Saddam`s regime in place after the first Gulf War. They watched with mounting fury as terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists claimed more and more American and Israeli lives. They considered the Oslo accords an obvious mistake (how can you negotiate with a man like Yasir Arafat?), and as the decade progressed they became increasingly convinced that there was a nexus linking burgeoning terrorism and mounting anti-Semitism with repressive but nominally "pro-American" regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In 1996, several of the hawks--including Perle--even tried to sell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the idea that Israel should attack Saddam on its own--advice Netanyahu wisely declined. When the Oslo process crumbled and Saudi Arabian terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the hawks felt, not without some justification, that they had seen this danger coming all along, while others had ignored it. The timing was propitious, because in September 2001 many already held jobs with a new conservative president willing to hear their pitch.

Prime Minister bin Laden

The pitch was this: The Middle East today is like the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Politically warped fundamentalism is the contemporary equivalent of communism or fascism. Terrorists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction are like an arsenal pointed at the United States. The primary cause of all this danger is the Arab world`s endemic despotism, corruption, poverty, and economic stagnation. Repressive regimes channel dissent into the mosques, where the hopeless and disenfranchised are taught a brand of Islam that combines anti-modernism, anti-Americanism, and a worship of violence that borders on nihilism. Unable to overthrow their own authoritarian rulers, the citizenry turns its fury against the foreign power that funds and supports these corrupt regimes to maintain stability and access to oil: the United States. As Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest"--terrorism. Trying to "manage" this dysfunctional Islamic world, as Clinton attempted and Colin Powell counsels us to do, is as foolish, unproductive, and dangerous as détente was with the Soviets, the hawks believe. Nor is it necessary, given the unparalleled power of the American military. Using that power to confront Soviet communism led to the demise of that totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic (or at least non-threatening) regimes from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait. Why not use that same power to upend the entire corrupt Middle East edifice and bring liberty, democracy, and the rule of law to the Arab world?

The hawks` grand plan differs depending on whom you speak to, but the basic outline runs like this: The United States establishes a reasonably democratic, pro-Western government in Iraq--assume it falls somewhere between Turkey and Jordan on the spectrum of democracy and the rule of law. Not perfect, representative democracy, certainly, but a system infinitely preferable to Saddam`s. The example of a democratic Iraq will radically change the political dynamics of the Middle East. When Palestinians see average Iraqis beginning to enjoy real freedom and economic opportunity, they`ll want the same themselves. With that happy prospect on one hand and implacable United States will on the other, they`ll demand that the Palestinian Authority reform politically and negotiate with Israel. That in turn will lead to a real peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. A democratic Iraq will also hasten the fall of the fundamentalist Shi`a mullahs in Iran, whose citizens are gradually adopting anti-fanatic, pro-Western sympathies. A democratized Iran would create a string of democratic, pro-Western governments (Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) stretching across the historical heartland of Islam. Without a hostile Iraq towering over it, Jordan`s pro-Western Hashemite monarchy would likely come into full bloom. Syria would be no more than a pale reminder of the bad old days. (If they made trouble, a U.S. invasion would take care of them, too.) And to the tiny Gulf emirates making hesitant steps toward democratization, the corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would no longer look like examples of stability and strength in a benighted region, but holdouts against the democratic tide. Once the dust settles, we could decide whether to ignore them as harmless throwbacks to the bad old days or deal with them, too. We`d be in a much stronger position to do so since we`d no longer require their friendship to help us manage ugly regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

The audacious nature of the neocons` plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, "That plan`s just crazy enough to work."

But like a TV plot, the hawks` vision rests on a willing suspension of disbelief, in particular, on the premise that every close call will break in our favor: The guard will fall asleep next to the cell so our heroes can pluck the keys from his belt. The hail of enemy bullets will plink-plink-plink over our heroes` heads. And the getaway car in the driveway will have the keys waiting in the ignition. Sure, the hawks` vision could come to pass. But there are at least half a dozen equally plausible alternative scenarios that would be disastrous for us.

To begin with, this whole endeavor is supposed to be about reducing the long-term threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism that employs weapons of mass destruction. But, to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. Placing U.S. troops in Riyadh after the Gulf War (to protect Saudi Arabia and its oilfields from Saddam) gave Osama bin Laden a cause around which he built al Qaeda. Israel took the West Bank in a war of self-defense, but once there its occupation helped give rise to Hamas. Israel`s incursion into southern Lebanon (justified at the time, but transformed into a permanent occupation) led to the rise of Hezbollah. Why do we imagine that our invasion and occupation of Iraq, or whatever countries come next, will turn out any differently?

The Bush administration also insists that our right to act preemptively and unilaterally, with or without the international community`s formal approval, rests on the need to protect American lives. But with the exception of al Qaeda, most terrorist organizations in the world, and certainly in the Middle East, do not target Americans. Hamas certainly doesn`t. Hezbollah, the most fearsome of terrorist organizations beside al Qaeda, has killed American troops in the Middle East, but not for some years, and it has never targeted American civilians on American soil. Yet like Hamas, Hezbollah has an extensive fundraising cell operation in the States (as do many terrorist organizations, including the Irish Republican Army). If we target them in the Middle East, can`t we reasonably assume they will respond by activating these cells and taking the war worldwide?

Next, consider the hawks` plans for those Middle East states that are authoritarian yet "friendly" to the United States--specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia. No question these are problem countries. Their governments buy our weapons and accept our foreign aid yet allow vicious anti-Semitism to spew from the state run airwaves and tolerate clerics who preach jihad against the West. But is it really in our interests to work for their overthrow? Many hawks clearly think so. I asked Richard Perle last year about the dangers that might flow from the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Mubarak is no great shakes," he quipped. "Surely we can do better than Mubarak." When I asked Perle`s friend and fellow Reagan-era neocon Ken Adelman to calculate the costs of having the toppling of Saddam lead to the overthrow of the House of Saud, he shot back: "All the better if you ask me."

This cavalier call for regime change, however, runs into a rather obvious problem. When the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe fell after 1989, the people of those nations felt grateful to the United States because we helped liberate them from their Russian colonial masters. They went on to create pro-Western democracies. The same is unlikely to happen, however, if we help "liberate" Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The tyrannies in these countries are home grown, and the U.S. government has supported them, rightly or wrongly, for decades, even as we`ve ignored (in the eyes of Arabs) the plight of the Palestinians. Consequently, the citizens of these countries generally hate the United States, and show strong sympathy for Islamic radicals. If free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama bin Laden would probably win more votes than Crown Prince Abdullah. Topple the pro-Western autocracies in these countries, in other words, and you won`t get pro-Western democracies but anti-Western tyrannies.

To this dilemma, the hawks offer two responses. One is that eventually the citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia will grow disenchanted with their anti-Western Islamic governments, just as the people of Iran have, and become our friends. To which the correct response is, well, sure, that`s a nice theory, but do we really want to make the situation for ourselves hugely worse now on the strength of a theoretical future benefit?

The hawks` other response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. "We need to be more assertive," argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." Hopefully, in Boot`s view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying the Saudi`s oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region."

What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there`s a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn`t leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that`s largely responsible for the region`s current dysfunctional politics.

Another potential snafu for the hawks is Iran, arguably the most dangerous state in the Middle East. The good news is that the fundamentalist Shi`a mullahs who have been running the government, exporting terrorism, and trying to enrich their uranium, are increasingly unpopular. Most experts believe that the mullahs` days are numbered, and that true democracy will come to Iran. That day will arrive sooner, the hawks argue, with a democratic Iraq on Iran`s border. But the opposite could happen. If the mullahs are smart, they`ll cooperate just enough with the Americans not to provoke an attack, but put themselves forth to their own people as defenders of Iranian independence and Iran`s brother Shi`a in southern Iraq who are living under the American jackboot. Such a strategy might keep the fundamentalists in power for years longer than they otherwise might have been.

Then there is the mother of all problems, Iraq. The hawks` whole plan rests on the assumption that we can turn it into a self-governing democracy--that the very presence of that example will transform politics in the Middle East. But what if we can`t really create a democratic, self-governing Iraq, at least not very quickly? What if the experience we had after World War II in Germany and Japan, two ethnically homogeneous nations, doesn`t quite work in an ethnically divided Iraq where one group, the Sunni Arabs, has spent decades repressing and slaughtering the others? As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file explains it, the "physical analogy to Saddam Hussein`s regime is a steel beam in compression." Give it one good hit, and you`ll get a violent explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it`s unwise to hand off power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not.

And what if we do muster the courage to allow elections, but the Iraqis choose a government we can`t live with--as the Japanese did in their first post-war election, when the United States purged the man slated to become prime minister? But if we do that in Iraq, how will it look on Al Jazeera? Ultimately, the longer we stay as occupiers, the more Iraq becomes not an example for other Arabs to emulate, but one that helps Islamic fundamentalists make their case that America is just an old-fashioned imperium bent on conquering Arab lands. And that will make worse all the problems set forth above.

None of these problems are inevitable, of course. Luck, fortitude, deft management, and help from allies could bring about very different results. But we can probably only rely on the first three because we are starting this enterprise over the expressed objections of almost every other country in the world. And that`s yet another reason why overthrowing the Middle East won`t be the same as overthrowing communism. We did the latter, after all, within a tight formal alliance, NATO. Reagan`s most effective military move against Moscow, for instance, placing Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, could never have happened, given widespread public protests, except that NATO itself voted to let the weapons in. In the Middle East, however, we`re largely alone. If things go badly, what allies we might have left are liable to say to us: You broke it, you fix it.

Whacking the Hornet`s Nest

If the Bush administration has thought through these various negative scenarios--and we must presume, or at least pray, that it has--it certainly has not shared them with the American people. More to the point, the president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. Franklin Roosevelt said he was trying to keep the United States out of World War II even as he--in some key ways--courted a confrontation with the Axis powers that he saw as both inevitable and necessary. History has judged him well for this. Far more brazenly, Lyndon Johnson`s administration greatly exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gin up support for full-throttle engagement in Vietnam. The war proved to be Johnson`s undoing. When President Clinton used American troops to quell the fighting in Bosnia he said publicly that our troops would be there no longer than a year, even though it was widely understood that they would be there far longer. But in the case of these deceptions, the public was at least told what the goals of the wars were and whom and where we would be fighting.

Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn`t even tried. Instead, it`s focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.

The brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren`t entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals. Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration`s broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn`t true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it`s just a straight-up con.

The same strategy seemed to guide the administration`s passive-aggressive attitude towards our allies. It spent the months after September 11 signaling its distaste for international agreements and entangling alliances. The president then demanded last September that the same countries he had snubbed support his agenda in Iraq. And last month, when most of those countries refused, hawks spun that refusal as evidence that they were right all along. Recently, a key neoconservative commentator with close ties to the administration told me that the question since the end of the Cold War has been which global force would create the conditions for global peace and security: the United States, NATO, or the United Nations. With NATO now wrecked, he told me, the choice is between the Unites States and the United Nations. Whether NATO is actually wrecked remains to be seen. But the strategy is clear: push the alliance to the breaking point, and when it snaps, cite it as proof that the alliance was good for nothing anyway. It`s the definition of chutzpah, like the kid who kills his parents and begs the judge for sympathy because he`s an orphan.

Another president may be able to rebuild NATO or get the budget back in balance. But once America begins the process of remaking the Middle East in the way the hawks have in mind, it will be extremely difficult for any president to pull back. Vietnam analogies have long been overused, and used inappropriately, but this may be one case where the comparison is apt.

Ending Saddam Hussein`s regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets` nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all. Ridding the world of Islamic terrorism by rooting out its ultimate sources--Muslim fundamentalism and the Arab world`s endemic despotism, corruption, and poverty--might work. But the costs will be immense. Whether the danger is sufficient and the costs worth incurring would make for an interesting public debate. The problem is that once it`s just us and the hornets, we really won`t have any choice.

Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, is author of the Talking Points Memo.

Copyright © 2003 The Washington Monthly

Reprinted from The Washington Monthly:
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features/2003/0304.marshall.html

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Recht ohne Hebel

Marcus Hammerschmitt 28.03.2003
Das Spiel mit der Völkerrechtskarte

Seit dem Beginn des neuesten Golfkriegs erfreut sich eine Argumentation großer Beliebtheit, die mit dem Topos argumentiert, dass der Krieg zu enden habe, weil er völkerrechtswidrig ist. Das ist er zweifellos, aber er endet deswegen nicht, und die Beschwörungsformel vom Völkerrecht ist auch sonst problematisch.


Das sich entwickelnde Völkerrecht nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und sein ausführendes Organ, die UNO, hatten die Aufgabe, ein Wiedererstehen der Konstellation, die zum Zweiten Weltkrieg geführt hatte, zu verhindern - genauso wie einen dritten, dessen Möglichkeit sich aus dem Gleichgewicht des Schreckens zwischen nuklear bewaffneten Großmachtblöcken ergab. Nun hatte diese Möglichkeit, wie wir heute wissen, etwas für sich, denn nur weil sie existierte, mussten die beiden Supermächte überhaupt miteinander verhandeln. Dem endlosen Gekakel um die Details diente die UNO sehr gut, abgesehen von den Fällen, die eine ständige Telefonkonferenz der Supermächte ohne große Umwege über das Plenum notwendig machte, wie zum Beispiel die Kuba-Krise ( Granaten auf ein Atom-U-Boot).

Die Anstrengungen der UNO, über ihre Rolle als Mediationsagentur hinauszuwachsen und wenigstens rudimentär als Regierung über den Regierungen zu fungieren, waren zahlreich und in Grenzen auch erfolgreich. Niemand wird wohl leugnen, dass UNICEF, WHO und auch die UN- Friedenstruppen teilweise sinnvoll agiert haben und agieren. Aber die Kernaufgabe der Mediation zwischen den Riesen und ihrem jeweiligen Gefolge erlitt einen tödlichen Schlag mit der Vaporisierung des staatsozialistischen Blocks. Aus machtpolitischer Perspektive völlig folgerichtig sah der verbleibende Riese, die USA, keine Notwendigkeit mehr zur Verhandlung und verhielt sich auch dementsprechend.

Im Kern war die UNO Geschichte, als die Sowjetunion zur Geschichte wurde. Die zunehmende Tendenz der USA zu Alleingängen, vom Rückzug aus internationalen Abkommen bis zum neuesten Golfkrieg, legen davon beredtes Zeugnis ab. Wer jetzt glaubt, eine auch militärisch erstarkende EU solle in machtpolitischer Hinsicht die Sowjetunion als Gegengewicht der USA ersetzen und dadurch weltpolitische Mediation im Sinne des Völkerrechts und der UNO neu begründen, der flirtet erst recht mit dem Desaster: Nichts wäre der Idee einer Verhütung des Schlimmsten durch Verhandlung abträglicher als eine offensive Konfiguration neuer imperialistischer Kerne, die sich untereinander und mit den USA im Endkampf um die Ressourcen der Welt wähnen.

Und die Tatsache, dass das Völkerrecht bei der bestehenden Weltlage keinen Hebel hat, weil die Antagonisten fehlen, ist nicht das einzige Problem. Wie Dominic Johnson in einem bemerkenswerten Artikel in der taz ausgeführt hat ("Das Völkerrecht gilt nicht"), http://www.taz.de/pt/2003/03/25/a0143.nf/text

war ein Völkerrecht, das den Krieg abschaffen wollte, indem es die Souveränität der Staaten zu seinem Kernpunkt machte, ohnehin mit einem schwerwiegenden Makel behaftet - nämlich dem, regelmäßig mit einem anderen "heiligen" Rechtsgut, den Menschenrechten, in Konflikt zu geraten. Interessanterweise macht Johnson das an einem wenig bekannten und diskutierten Beispiel deutlich: dem Ende des Pol Pot-Regimes in Kambodscha, das durch einen Einmarsch vietnamesischer Truppen hervorgerufen wurde.

Vor fast einem Vierteljahrhundert führte ein vom Ausland per Militärschlag erwirkter Regimewechsel zu einer weltpolitischen Krise. Vietnam besetzte zu Weihnachten 1978 Kambodscha und stürzte das Völkermordregime der Roten Khmer unter Pol Pot. Der "freie Westen" war empört, China marschierte in Vietnam ein, der UN-Sicherheitsrat forderte den Abzug aller ausländischen Truppen aus Kambodscha und erkannte die neuen Machthaber nicht an. Treibende Kraft hinter der diplomatischen Schützenhilfe für die kambodschanischen Völkermörder waren die USA, frisch von Vietnam militärisch besiegt und daher fanatisch gegen alles eingestellt, was von Hanoi ausging.


Diese überraschende Diagnose macht die Probleme einer Verabsolutierung des Völkerrechts mit einem Schlag deutlich: Die USA spielten damals aus genau den machtpolitischen Gründen die Völkerrechtskarte, aus denen sie heute am liebsten das ganze Spiel vom Tisch haben wollen, und sie taten das ohne jede ideologische Berührungsangst. Die Sowjetunion massiv durch den Aufbau eines bewaffneten Islamismus zu bedrohen, und danach den Einmarsch der Sowjettruppen in Afghanistan mit allem gehörigen Theaterdonner als völkerrechtswidrig zu verurteilen, war ein anderes Beispiel für diese ausgefeilte Form der Völkerrechtsheuchelei, der sich natürlich nicht nur die USA schuldig machten. Johnson weist zu Recht darauf hin, dass kein Angriff gegen einen "souveränen" afrikanischen Diktator, der in seine eigenen Taschen oder zum Nutzen irgendeiner Kolonialmacht wirtschaftete, völkerrechtlich gedeckt gewesen wäre.

Idi Amin würde seine Souveränität wahrscheinlich noch heute auf das Völkerrecht beziehen, hätte ihn die Armee Tansanias 1979 nicht gestürzt. Das Völkerrecht wirkt aus afrikanischer Sicht extrem abstrakt, um nicht zu sagen, absurd.


Noch absurder sind die Aufrufe der neuesten Friedensbewegung in Deutschland, die deutsche Regierung solle nun endlich offiziell den neuesten Krieg am Golf als völkerrechtswidrige Aggression der USA und ihrer Verbündeten verurteilen. Zwar hält Außenminister Fischer salbungsvolle Reden, die in Tonfall und Duktus denen des Papstes Konkurrenz machen könnten, und selbstverständlich werden als Begründung für die moralische Luftüberlegenheit der Deutschen in diesen Dingen auch wieder die Prüfungen der Vergangenheit bemüht ("Verdun", "Auschwitz), aber mit einer klaren, völkerrechtlich argumentierenden Verurteilung des Krieges gegen den Irak hält er sich verständlicherweise zurück. Der Krieg gegen Restjugoslawien 1999, an dem die jetzigen Friedensstars der Berliner Regierung gerne teilnahmen, war so völkerrechtswidrig, wie er völkerrechtswidriger nicht sein konnte ( Die Bedrohung der kollektiven Sicherheit).

Bezeichnenderweise gab der damalige Bürgerkrieg im Kosovo so wenige Gründe für einen kriegsbegründenden "übergesetzlichen Notstand" her, dass die meisten davon erfunden werden mussten, während das Massakerregime Saddam Husseins viel eher den Part des Bösen in den Scharpingschen Gräuelmärchen von damals hätte spielen können. Zudem ahnt man in Berlin auch, dass man das ohnehin schon beschädigte Völkerrecht in Zukunft auch wieder selbst wird beschädigen müssen, wenn man es mit dem neuen Kampf Deutschlands um einen Platz an der Sonne ernst meint.

Das Völkerrecht gilt nicht. Das zu konstatieren und es zu bejubeln, wie das Richard Perle neulich getan hat, ist zweierlei ( "Dank sei Gott für den Tod der UN"). Oliver Tolmein weist in der Jungle World zu Recht auf die Zivilisierungspotenziale des Völkerrechts hin, auch wenn ihm das Aquarell angesichts der grundlegenden konzeptuellen Probleme etwas zu freundlich gerät. Für den neuesten Golfkrieg gilt, dass er nicht deswegen abzulehnen ist, weil er das Völkerrecht verletzt, sondern weil sich die Befreiungsversprechen, mit denen er begründet wird, schon in Afghanistan als schöne Märchen herausgestellt haben.

Es geht um Geostrategie, nicht um die Belange der Iraker. Für die Zukunft des Völkerrechts gilt: Es wird erst in einer Welt wieder von Bedeutung sein, in der einerseits die Entropie der Macht bedeutend zugenommen hat, während gleichzeitig eine starke übernationale Kraft nicht das Recht der Völker, sondern das des Menschen gegen partikulare (also auch nationale) Interessen durchsetzen kann.

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Ein Notfall der politischen Hygenie. Und Cheney, Rumsfeld?

USA

Pentagon-Berater Perle tritt überraschend zurück

Wegen des kriegskritischen Kurses der Bundesregierung hatte Richard Perle im Herbst den Rücktritt von Bundeskanzler Schröder gefordert. Jetzt musste der Chef des einflussreichsten Beratergremiums des Pentagons selbst seinen Hut nehmen - wegen dubioser Verbindungen zu einem US-Telekommunikationskonzern.

Washington - Als Grund für den Schritt gab der als ausgesprochener "Falke" geltende Perle die anhaltende Debatte um seine Beziehungen zum Pleite gegangenen Telekommunikationsunternehmen Global Crossing an, wie am Donnerstag offiziell bestätigt wurde.

Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld würdigte in einer kurzen Erklärung die Verdienste Perles, der unter anderem auch zu den schärfsten Kritikern der deutschen Haltung im Irak-Konflikt zählt. Zuletzt hatte Perle in einem Beitrag für die britische Zeitung "The Guardian" die Vereinten Nationen für tot erklärt. Er schrieb unter anderem, dass "Sicherheit durch internationales Recht, garantiert durch internationale Institutionen" eine in "intellektuellen Trümmern" liegende "liberale Eitelkeit" sei. Der 61-Jährige war unter dem damaligen Präsidenten Ronald Reagan Pentagon-Abteilungsleiter und wurde beim Amtsantritt von Rumsfeld Leiter des Defense Policy Boards, eines Berater-Gremiums im Verteidigungsministerium. Diesen Posten gab er jetzt nach Schlagzeilen um einen möglichen Interessenkonflikt auf. Er wird aber weiter dem Gremium angehören.

Die Debatte drehte sich darum, dass Perle neben seiner bisherigen Beratertätigkeit im Pentagon auch als Berater von Global Crossing arbeitet. Die Firma bemüht sich bei der US-Regierung um grünes Licht für den Verkauf von 61,5 Prozent Unternehmensanteilen an zwei asiatische Firmen, von denen eine angeblich enge Verbindungen zu China hat. Das Komitee für ausländische Investitionen, dem auch Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld angehört, kann Fusionen verhindern, wenn es der Ansicht ist, dass sie amerikanischen Interessen schaden. Für den Fall eines Zustandekommens des Handels sollen Perle 600.000 Dollar als Belohnung zugesagt worden sein.

Perle wies den Medien zufolge in seinem Rücktrittsschreiben Vorwürfe eines Interessenkonflikts zurück. Er habe sich dennoch zum Rückzug entschlossen, da er das Ministerium zu Kriegszeiten nicht mit der Debatte um ihn belasten wolle.

Das Defense Policy Board, als dessen Vorsitzender Perle jetzt zurücktrat, soll das Pentagon mit unabhängiger Expertise über langfristige strategische Themen versorgen. Unter seinen 30 Mitgliedern befinden sich mehrere amtierende und ehemalige Sicherheitsbeamte und Regierungsmitglieder, wie etwa Ex-CIA-Chef James Woolsey, der ehemalige Vizepräsident Dan Quayle und Ex-Außenminister Henry Kissinger

Rumsfeld, der Perle im Jahr 2001 zum Leiter des Defense Policy Boards machte, akzeptierte dessen Rücktritt, bat ihn aber um seinen Verbleib in dem Gremium. Perle sei ein "exzellenter Vorsitzender" mit einem "tiefen Verständnis unserer nationalen Sicherheit" gewesen, sagte Rumsfeld.

Perle betonte, dass er keinen 600.000-Dollar-Bonus akzeptieren würde, sollte der Global-Crossing-Deal zu Stande kommen. Stattdessen werde er die 125.000 Dollar, die ihm für seine Dienste zugesagt worden seien, den Angehörigen der toten und verwundeten Soldaten des Irak-Kriegs spenden.

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Streit um getötete Briten

Blair in Erklärungsnot

Tony Blair muss sich aus seiner eigenen Bevölkerung Falschaussagen im Irak-Krieg vorhalten lassen. Die Schwester eines an der südirakischen Front getöteten britischen Soldaten wies seine Darstellung zurück, ihr Bruder sei von irakischen Soldaten exekutiert worden.

London - In der Tageszeitung "Daily Mail" sagte Nina Allsopp, die Streitkräfte hätten ihr mitgeteilt, dass ihr Bruder Sapper Lucas Allsopp im Kampf getötet worden sei. Nach Angaben des Verteidigungsministeriums ist Allsopp einer der beiden getöteten britischen Soldaten, deren blutüberströmte Leichen am Mittwoch im arabischen Fernsehsender El Dschasira gezeigt wurden. Am Donnerstag hatte Blair sie in Camp David als "hingerichtete britische Soldaten" bezeichnet.

Die Iraker hätten eine "unvorstellbare Grausamkeit" begangen. Allsopp und Stabsoffizier Simon Cullingworth waren am Sonntag in der Nähe von Basra verschollen. "Wir können nicht verstehen, warum Lügen über das verbreitet werden, was geschehen ist", wurde Nina Allsopp zitiert. "Es ist uns wichtig, dass die Leute die Wahrheit wissen, dass sie wissen, was wirklich geschehen ist."

Aus Blairs Presseamt hieß es, es gebe keine absolute Gewissheit über die Todesumstände der beiden Soldaten. Die Beweise ließen aber die Schlussfolgerung zu. Iraks Regierung hatte am Donnerstag dementiert, dass die beiden Briten als Kriegsgefangene hingerichtet worden seien.




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Freeing Iraqis will not be a single act, but a long process
Expect the remnants of dictatorship to linger

Martin Woollacott in Washington
Friday March 28, 2003
The Guardian

British soldiers called the little town of Wadi Halfa "Bloody Halfway" to express both the fact that it was indeed the midpoint between Cairo and Khartoum and their weariness at the gruelling march to war. Garnet Wolseley, commanding the troops sent to relieve General Gordon in the Sudanese capital, sat down at night in his headquarters, far behind the front, and confessed: "This suspense, this longing for news, drives the blood from my heart; Oh God have mercy on me!" In the event, the British won, at a place called Abu Klea, one of those costly victories which are a sort of defeat. They went on to take Khartoum, 100 miles south, but arrived there 48 hours too late to save Gordon. "My mind keeps thinking of how near a brilliant success I was, and how narrowly I missed achieving it," wrote an anguished Wolseley.

The differences between 1885 and 2003 are many. Today`s senior commanders, including President Bush, are also many miles from the conflict, but suffer no shortage of news. Their information advantage over the Iraqis is far greater than that which the British had over the Mahdi and his warriors. Their superiority in weaponry is of at least the same order. But the similarity is that, while there is no doubt that the Americans and British will win in Iraq, just as there was no doubt back then in the Sudan, they need - or would certainly infinitely prefer - a certain kind of victory. In 1885, the preferred victory had to save Gordon. In 2003, the preferred victory has to save the Iraqi people from the consequences of a savage final battle. Such a fight risks sullying the liberation which is the larger Anglo-American aim, altering Iraqi attitudes to the liberators, and buttressing hostile opinion in the Arab and Muslim world. "Every death and wounding - of a child, a sister, a father, a neighbour - no matter how unintentional, creates passionate new enemies whose anger eclipses politics," Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, the study of the US military experience in Somalia, writes in a gloomy piece in the New York Times. The implication is that the peace could be lost even as the war is won.

The arguments going on in America reflect the importance of this time- and casualty-sensitive aim of liberation, rather than any chance that the war really could go badly in the purely military sense. That is why it is both true that the war is going very well, as the Pentagon keeps saying, and that it is not going as well as it might. Some suggest that not enough troops have been sent, some that American weaponry has not been used to maximum effect, and some that the capacity of the regime to inflict losses and delays on American and British forces was underestimated. Some even hint that the Iraqis are not as ready to be freed as we thought. These last two arguments, which are really about the nature of Saddam`s Iraq, go to the war`s political heart. Yet in the simple form in which they are often stated, they also ignore the complexity of life un der a dictatorship, the dangerous calculations inherent in everyday life, the shadings of collaboration which only the luckiest or strongest can wholly avoid, and the degradation of even some of the best under a tyranny.

Since it is such a bad regime, why have the Iraqis not yet risen to assist their liberators, and how can such a government command a suicidal loyalty from significant numbers of troops? The two questions are connected. The French scholar Phillippe Burrin, explaining the vicious energy of the Milice and other Vichy armed organisations in the last months of the second world war, wrote that their "brutalities and exactions... were unimaginable: the sense of having their backs to the wall fostered a venomous desire to make others pay dearly for the anticipated defeat." This process is surely the one which is inhibiting the expected popular reaction to allied troops in the south of Iraq and will also do so in Baghdad.

Saddam has been a demonic social engineer, building a pervasive apparatus of surveillance and coercion and staffing it with men from the Sunni and Tikriti minorities, from the marginalised tribes, both Sunni and Shia, of the countryside, and from the urban lower middle class. He has never been content with mere loyalty, which must always be cemented by crime, so as to ensure there is no easy way back for his servants into the ordinary community. The system literally encourages not only the crimes inherent in its operation - arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and torture - but also freelance crimes by its servants: crimes of extortion and rape, for instance. And it implicates its men in crimes of both kinds if they fail to implicate themselves.

O ne Iraqi exile has described how the system works to compromise even the lowliest Ba`ath functionaries, men who may be quite decent or at least no more than ordinary opportunists. Soon after taking their positions, they find that some of their neighbours have been arrested, perhaps forced to pay "fines", then told that it was at their instigation. Or they might find themselves offered opportunities of extortion which it would be dangerous to refuse. Thus does evil draw men in. Even outside these ranks, there is complicity of various degrees with the regime. How could there not be? It was necessary in order to survive, for an engineer to do his job or a doctor to run his clinic. Freeing themselves from dictatorship`s net will not be a simple act but a process, even after US and British forces have taken full control. In the limbo which prevails in most communities in southern Iraq, the situation is that Saddam`s men are still around while the new forces are either outside the city or town or nothing more, so far, than traffic on the highway. Using the still partially intact levers of coercion and bribery on both ordinary people and units of the regular army, they have been able to simulate a kind of resistance to the Americans and British, like electricity jerking the limbs of a cadaver. Unfortunately, this life after regime death phenomenon may not be only a problem of the moment, which gives ordinary Iraqis another reason still for caution. The entrenched gang system and the network of corruption could go on after liberation, as a peculiarly dangerous form of organised crime. Serbia shows these perils.

Military rescuers are always resented to some degree, and there is an element of anti-American feeling in Iraq for a range of reasons. But could Iraqi gratitude for liberation be outweighed by resentment at their western rescuers if civilian casualties rise steeply in final battles? Iraqis are not military innocents, but members of a society whose men are conscripted, which has experienced much war and which knows a lot about the effects of their own weapons, including the horrors of collateral damage and friendly fire. Are they neverthless expecting miracles of the Americans? They may well be, if only because the Americans themselves still hope to perform them, and, of course, may yet do so.

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Make war to the camera

John O`Farrell
Friday March 28, 2003
The Guardian

The auditions to be Saddam Hussein`s lookalike must be rather nervous affairs. All of Iraq`s finest impressionists are summoned to the imperial palace, along with make-up artists, prosthetics experts and the proprietor of Moustaches R Us. And then the Iraqi equivalents of Rory Bremner or Robin Williams have to stand before the brutal, vain and famously short-tempered dictator and do their very best parody of him.
"Why are you twitching like that? I don`t twitch!" barks Saddam as the Republican Guards try to suppress their laughter. "We will defeat the American criminals..." continues the impressionist, twitching satirically as the soldiers collapse uncontrollably. "And you are nowhere near handsome enough - why have you got a great big bulbous nose, I don`t have a bulbous nose. We should get Richard Gere to be my lookalike."

With an atmosphere like this it`s no wonder Saddam`s broadcasts end up being such dull affairs. The format is wooden and old-fashioned - with none of the clever camera tricks that western broadcasters have learned. For example, Saddam would surely benefit from having a co-presenter; someone like Judy Finnegan whom he could flirt with on the Breakfast Time sofa before they glanced through next week`s newspaper headlines.

"So, Judy, what is next Wednesday`s Baghdad Times saying?" he could ask with a little wink. "Well, Saddam, they`ve got you leading the victory parade over the vanquished Americans - and very handsome you look too!" And they`d share an affectionate giggle as they cut to their zany weatherman predicting a light south-easterly breeze giving way to huge clouds of oily smoke all over the country.

So, apart from losing the military battle, Saddam is also currently losing the propaganda war. These days military spending is wasted if you don`t have the media back-up to show the conflict from your viewpoint. Alfred Hitchcock maintained that in a thriller the audience`s sympathies had more to do with where you placed the camera than with accepted notions of morality. Film a burglary from the victim`s point of view, following him as he walks nervously down the stairs because he`s heard an intruder, and you are obviously on the homeowner`s side. But if the camera had followed that burglar through the window and then suddenly he`d heard someone coming down the stairs, you`d think: "Oh no, quick, get out!" And in this war it`s the intruders who have the most cameras. The Americans understand the Hitchcock principle all too well, which is why they built an enormous media centre in the middle of the desert almost before they did anything else.

More problematic Hollywood rules also apply, of course. In centuries gone by, not only were the plays and epic poems much longer but the wars were too. But there`s no way our attention span could tolerate a six-year-long war today, not with all the competition from the movie channels and reality TV.

That`s why we now only go to war against really easy opponents, to make sure it`s all over before we start reaching for the remote control. Otherwise they`d have to come up with new ways to keep us all interested - introducing Fame Academy-style phone votes to let viewers decide who wins the mother of all battles. "If you want Saddam Hussein, phone or text the number on your screen and hold for a visit from the CIA..."

As it is, the new concept of 24-hour "slaughter-tainment" that`s hit the airwaves is still compulsive television. The Oscars have had their lowest audience for years because viewers want to catch the ending of the action adventure movie on CNN. Perhaps this branch of showbiz should have its own awards ceremony. Best supporting actor: Tony Blair. Best special effects: the American Air Force. Best editing: award to be shared between all the US news channels.

George Bush would go up to the podium to collect his special award: "I would like to thank my dad, without whom this war would not have been possible." Then there would be a little bit of controversy and the microphone would disappear into the lectern because one or two speakers used the occasion to criticise Hollywood films they`d seen that didn`t quite work for them.

Except that they probably know it was Hollywood that taught them all the rules. America`s point of view is dictated by the "POV" in the movie director`s meaning of the phrase. More westerners would have cried at the close-up human fiction in Saving Private Ryan than shed tears to see real-life explosions lighting up a distant Baghdad.

No wonder the US military was so keen to destroy Baghdad`s main television station this week. Mao said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Now it comes out of the end of whichever gun has the cameras right behind it.

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Blix` Bilanz

"Nichts hätte die USA vom Krieg abgebracht"

Hans Blix, Chef der Uno-Waffeninspektoren, zieht eine bittere Bilanz seiner Arbeit im Irak: Nichts, was er hätte tun oder sagen können, hätte den Krieg verhindert, sagte Blix einer britischen Zeitung.
London/Köln - Die USA hätten "eine eindeutige Garantie gewollt, dass der Irak keine Massenvernichtungswaffen besitzt", sagte Blix der Zeitung "The Guardian". "Ich konnte aber nicht garantieren, dass es Resultate gegeben hätte, auch wenn sie einige Monate gewartet hätten." Auch eine Verlängerung der Inspektionen hätte rückblickend keinen Sinn gehabt, sagte Blix: "Wenn wir gesagt hätten, wir könnten das Problem in drei Monaten lösen, hätten die USA behauptet, wir seien nicht glaubwürdig."

Die Waffeninspektionen hätten nur einen Erfolg gehabt: "Wir haben bewiesen, dass der Aufbau eines professionellen, effektiven und unabhängigen Inspektionsregimes möglich gewesen wäre."

Im ARD-Morgenmagazin sagte Blix, er halte es für unwahrscheinlich, dass die Staatsführung um Saddam Hussein während des Krieges Chemiewaffen einsetzen werde. "Ich kann auch nur Vermutungen anstellen", sagte Blix, "aber meine Meinung ist, dass er sie nicht einsetzen wird, selbst wenn er sie hat". Es gebe viele Zweifler an diesem Krieg in der Welt. Aber bei einem Einsatz von Chemiewaffen durch die irakische Führung würde die Sympathie umschlagen, und viele Menschen würden sagen, der Krieg sei doch gerechtfertigt.

Blix betonte, die Waffeninspektoren seien nach dem Krieg bereit, ihre Arbeit im Irak wieder aufzunehmen."Die Amerikaner und Briten könnten an einer unabhängigen Überprüfung interessiert sein", sagte er. "Aber natürlich würden wir unsere Aufträge vom Sicherheitsrat entgegennehmen. Wir selbst sind interessiert daran, ob der Kriegsgrund - die Annahme, dass dort Massenvernichtungswaffen seien - gerechtfertigt war oder nicht."

Blix erklärte, die Uno-Waffeninspektoren hätten nie behauptet, dass der Irak Massenvernichtungswaffen habe. "Wir haben die Möglichkeit nicht ausgeschlossen", sagte er. Er hoffe, dass man bald die Wahrheit darüber erfahre. Blix bekräftigte, aus seiner Sicht wären ein paar Monate mehr Zeit für die Kontrollen nützlich gewesen. "Ob wir dann die Wahrheit gefunden hätten, weiß ich nicht. Aber dreieinhalb Monate war ein wenig kurz". Er fügte hinzu: "Es hätte eine Chance gegeben, das Problem friedlich zu lösen."

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Nach Perle`s Rückzug ist die UN doch nicht tot.

March 28, 2003
A Role for the U.N. in Iraq`s Future

n his news conference with the British prime minister, Tony Blair, yesterday, President Bush renewed his pledge that the United Nations would have a role in postwar Iraq. But it`s far from clear that the administration is prepared to let the U.N. do more than provide money and approval for Washington`s dictates. The Bush administration went into the war with little international backing. The best — and perhaps only — hope of leaving Iraq with a democratic political structure is by making the rebuilding an international effort.

Mr. Blair, who risked so much to become Mr. Bush`s partner in the invasion, has been arguing vigorously for an international approach to reconstruction.

By accepting a central role for the U.N., Washington can begin to heal the trans-Atlantic rift and restore some of the U.N.`s badly needed authority for future crises. It can also smooth the flow of humanitarian relief to Iraqi civilians and counter perceptions that the United States means to assume Europe`s old colonial role in the Middle East.

As the past week has shown, many in Iraq and beyond do not perceive American and British troops as liberators. This is not surprising given the long history of Western intervention and colonialism in the Arab world. It is not enough for Washington to declare that its intentions are altruistic. It must demonstrate that to a skeptical world.

No matter how well the war goes, it is already apparent that there is a great deal about the Iraqi people the United States does not understand. Once the war is over, the United States needs to remove itself from the center of power in Baghdad without turning the government over to a new strongman. Giving the U.N. a leading role in postwar administration would help. The U.N. should become the overall trustee of Iraqi sovereignty in the period before Iraqis themselves resume control. Within that structure, Washington should retain authority over areas that bear on the security of American troops.

The most urgent need is for the U.N. to restart its oil-for-food program, which had been the principal mechanism for distributing basic goods to the Iraqi population before the invasion. The U.N. officials who run the program were withdrawn from Iraq when the war began. Many could return, once the Security Council passes a new resolution to reauthorize their activities in wartime conditions. The secretary general must also update contracts so Iraqis can get the provisions they so badly need.

The fact that the Security Council has found it difficult to authorize the restoration of the oil-for-food program says a great deal about the tensions and bad feeling over the Iraq situation. But the news yesterday that the Council members were close to agreement was a good sign. Once humanitarian aid is back in place, it will be the Bush administration`s turn to start making concessions.



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Kann eigentlich ein Vize-Präsident aus dem Amt entfernt werden. Cheney hätte es verdient.

March 28, 2003
Delusions of Power
By PAUL KRUGMAN


hey considered themselves tough-minded realists, and regarded doubters as fuzzy-minded whiners. They silenced those who questioned their premises, even though the skeptics included many of the government`s own analysts. They were supremely confident — and yet with shocking speed everything they had said was proved awesomely wrong.

No, I`m not talking about the war; I`m talking about the energy task force that Dick Cheney led back in 2001. Yet there are some disturbing parallels. Right now, pundits are wondering how Mr. Cheney — who confidently predicted that our soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" — could have been so mistaken. But a devastating new report on the California energy crisis reminds us that Mr. Cheney has been equally confident, and equally wrong, about other issues.

In spring 2001 the lights were going out all over California. There were blackouts and brownouts, and the price of electricity was soaring. The Cheney task force was convened in the midst of that crisis. It concluded, in brief, that the energy crisis was a long-term problem caused by meddling bureaucrats and pesky environmentalists, who weren`t letting big companies do what needed to be done. The solution? Scrap environmental rules, and give the energy industry multibillion-dollar subsidies.

Along the way, Mr. Cheney sneeringly dismissed energy conservation as a mere "sign of personal virtue" and scorned California officials who called for price controls and said the crisis was being exacerbated by market manipulation. To be fair, Mr. Cheney`s mocking attitude on that last point was shared by almost everyone in politics and the media — and yes, I am patting myself on the back for getting it right.

For we now know that everything Mr. Cheney said was wrong.

In fact, the California energy crisis had nothing to do with environmental restrictions, and a lot to do with market manipulation. In 2001 the evidence for manipulation was basically circumstantial. But now we have a new report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which until now has discounted claims of market manipulation. No more: the new report concludes that market manipulation was pervasive, and offers a mountain of direct evidence, including phone conversations, e-mail and memos. There`s no longer any doubt: California`s power shortages were largely artificial, created by energy companies to drive up prices and profits.

Oh, and what ended the crisis? Key factors included energy conservation and price controls. Meanwhile, what happened to that long-term shortage of capacity, which required scrapping environmental rules and providing lots of corporate welfare? Within months after the Cheney report`s release, stock analysts were downgrading energy companies because of a looming long-term-capacity glut.

In short, Mr. Cheney and his tough-minded realists were blowing smoke: their report described a fantasy world that bore no relation to reality. How did they get it so wrong?

One answer is that Mr. Cheney made sure that his task force included only like-minded men: as far as we can tell, he didn`t consult with anyone except energy executives. So the task force was subject to what military types call "incestuous amplification," defined by Jane`s Defense Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation."

Another answer is that Mr. Cheney basically drew his advice about how to end the energy crisis from the very companies creating the crisis, for fun and profit. But was he in on the joke?

We may never know what really went on in the energy task force since the Bush administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep us from finding out. At first the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, which is supposed to act as an internal watchdog, seemed determined to pursue the matter. But after the midterm election, according to the newsletter The Hill, Congressional Republicans approached the agency`s head and threatened to slash his budget unless he backed off.

And therein lies the broader moral. In the last two years Mr. Cheney and other top officials have gotten it wrong again and again — on energy, on the economy, on the budget. But political muscle has insulated them from any adverse consequences. So they, and the country, don`t learn from their mistakes — and the mistakes keep getting bigger.






Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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washingtonpost.com
Our Kind of Law


By Michael Kinsley

Friday, March 28, 2003; Page A23


If Daniel Patrick Moynihan hadn`t died this week of complications from a burst appendix, he might have died of embarrassment. Not necessarily over what his country is doing in Iraq but over what his country`s leaders are saying about it. The late senator from New York was a man of policy passions, and one of them was international law. "In the annals of forgetfulness," Moynihan wrote in 1990, "there is nothing quite to compare with the falling from the American mind of the idea of the law of nations." The leading examples of the time were a series of U.S. military adventures in Latin America during the 1980s, which we took less and less trouble trying to justify under our various treaty commitments.

But when it comes to international law, the United States is a forgetful old man whose forgetfulness comes and goes with suspicious convenience. Even as Moynihan`s book "On the Law of Nations" was coming out, President Bush the First was justifying Gulf War I primarily on the basis that Iraq`s invasion of Kuwait was a violation of international law. Grandiose talk from the previous decade about how petty considerations such as international borders should not be allowed to impede the spread of democracy and the flowering of human rights were put aside for the duration. Kuwait is not a democracy. So our justification for driving the invaders out was that international law honors borders no matter what kind of government they protect.

At the beginning of Gulf War II, we forgot . . . we forgot . . . we forgot . . . oh, yes: international law. We forgot international law once again. When the U.N. Security Council would not play ball, we declared that our own invasion of Iraq was justified as a sovereign act of long-term self-defense against potential weapons of mass destruction, by the human rights situation in Iraq and by the hope that removing Saddam Hussein will start a chain reaction of democracy and freedom in the Middle East. Don`t bother us with your petty i-dotting and t-crossing: We`re thinking big here.

But that kind of talk is so very last week. Come to think of it, it was just last week. Today our head`s in a very different space and we`re extremely concerned about violations of international law. Specifically, we`re deeply offended by Iraq`s violations of the Geneva Conventions in showing U.S. prisoners of war on TV. We`re also angry that some Iraqi soldiers are waving the white flag in fake surrenders and violating the rules of war in other ways.

In a war premised on the belief that Hussein is planning to terrorize the world with nuclear bombs and invisible disease spores, and that the niceties can`t be allowed to get in the way of stopping him, it is odd that matters of flags and photographs even come up. We, the United States, are pretty clearly violating the Geneva Conventions ourselves in our treatment of Afghan soldiers we`ve imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and we`ve justified this (to the extent we`ve bothered) with the same "don`t be naive" arguments used for ignoring the Security Council about Iraq. So why are we even raising the issue of international law now? Why do we care?

We care, above all, because we want our soldiers who have been captured to be treated well. We also care because of the propaganda value. International law can help by establishing what exactly those minimal standards of war etiquette are. And even though there are no police to enforce it, international law can also create a fairly powerful incentive to obey the rules it lays down.

How does it do that? By creating a web of rules, each of which is stronger for being part of the web than if it were a single thread dangling alone. Every nation will have rules it cares more about and rules it cares less about. But a vested interest in being seen as obeying the rules -- and in seeing others obey most of the rules most of the time -- can overcome the temptation to break any individual rule when it suits your purposes.

As the only superpower, the United States needs international law less than other nations. We can protect our interests with brute force if we want to, or if we believe that nothing else really matters in the end. What we cannot do is sneer at international law one day and invoke it the next. Nor can we pick and choose among the agreements we`ve signed and expect other countries not to do the same.

This is not a toasty matter of sentiment or expecting others to follow a high-minded example. And it does not depend on perfection. Even domestic law is not an all-or-nothing affair: If most people are law-obeying most of the time, that`s good enough to make the whole system self-reinforcing. The nations of the world still live in something much closer to the state of nature, in which it`s every player for itself. Without cops, informal incentives are both more important and harder to come by. But even among nations, each decision to obey or ignore a particular rule strengthens or weakens all the other rules.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
History and Humiliation


By Shibley Telhami

Friday, March 28, 2003; Page A23


As the battle for Baghdad begins and public opinion in the Middle East is further inflamed, the prevailing view in Washington remains that military victory will fix everything in the end. Two notions drive this view: that the defeat of Saddam Hussein will put the militant forces in the Middle East on the defensive and that the overwhelming exercise of American power will command respect, thus compliance, in the region, even if it doesn`t win hearts. Neither is supported by historical trends.

It is reasonable to argue that forces of militancy in the Middle East went on the defensive after the 1991 Gulf War. At that time, those hoping for radical change in the region had pinned their hopes on the power of states such as Iraq. The sense of Arab vulnerability after the demise of the Soviet Union created a vacuum of power that Saddam Hussein sought to fill. But the defeat of Iraq in 1991 dashed the aspirations of those seeking radical change.

Today militancy in the Middle East is fueled not by the military prospects of Iraq or any other state but by a pervasive sense of humiliation and helplessness in the region. This collective feeling is driven by a sense that people remain helpless in affecting the most vital aspects of their lives, and it is exacerbated by pictures of Palestinian humiliation. There is much disgust with states and with international organizations.

Few in the Middle East believe Iraq has a serious chance in its war with the United States, and pictures of overwhelming American power exercised against an inferior Iraqi army have only reinforced the belief that Iraq is a helpless victim. Unfortunately, the inspirations for overcoming weakness are non-state militant groups, which serve as models that many hope to emulate. The defeat and occupation of Iraq are likely to exacerbate the sense of humiliation and to increase militancy in the region.

It is instructive to look back at similar moments in regional history, when states failed to deliver. The collective Arab defeat by Israel in the 1967 war left Arabs in despair after they had put their faith in the potential of Egypt`s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was non-state militant groups that revived hope for change. Within months independent Palestinian groups emerged and began operating within and outside the region. An episode in 1968 was especially telling. As Israeli forces raided a Palestinian stronghold in the town of Karameh in Jordan, they suffered more casualties than expected, and the operation was seen as a failure. News of the Palestinian success was quickly contrasted with the devastating failure of Arab states. Karameh, which coincidently means "dignity" in Arabic, became a metaphor for restoring regional honor. Within days, 5,000 recruits signed up to join the Palestinian groups in refugee camps.

The notion that the overwhelming exercise of power can achieve peace in areas of protracted conflict is not supported by the modern history of the Middle East. To be sure, power can prevent one`s defeat and inflict significant pain on the enemy, but rarely can it ensure long-term compliance. In its confrontation with Lebanon, Israel`s overwhelming military superiority over the weakest of neighbors has not translated into the power to compel the Lebanese to accept Israel`s terms or eliminate militancy. The Palestinians, after 35 years of occupation, are less resigned to their fate than ever. In fact, studies of conflict and cooperation among different parties in the region show that conflict goes on despite the inequality of power as the weaker party`s threshold of pain increases with every blow. The asymmetry of power is often balanced by an asymmetry of motivation.

Dignity has sometimes been a factor even in the calculations of states, despite significant imbalances of power. In explaining the reasoning for Egypt and Syria`s launching a war against a superior Israel in 1973, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger put it this way: "Our definition of rationality did not take seriously into account the notion of starting an unwinnable war to restore self-respect." It is unlikely that Egypt`s president, Anwar Sadat, would have been able to extend his hand to Israel four years later without having restored his people`s dignity.

Besides the defeat of Iraq in 1991, one reason the militants in the region were put on the defensive was the emergence of a plan that raised hopes for a fair, negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute. That some such plan will be even more necessary after the war with Iraq is clear. The prospects for it are not. It is improbable that Arab-Israeli peacemaking will become the Bush administration`s top priority after the collapse of the regime in Baghdad. Defending thousands of troops in Iraq, maintaining Iraq`s unity, addressing the North Korean challenge, focusing on the economy -- all these will surely be higher priorities. It is certainly possible, though not likely, that Arabs and Israelis will decide to move forward on their own for reasons unrelated to the United States. But it is not possible to imagine that the issue will go away, that the region will deem it less important than before, or that the exercise of overwhelming force will command compliance and reduce militancy -- even if the region is stunned into a temporary lull.

To honor the sacrifice of young American (and British) soldiers, and the many innocent victims in Iraq, we must begin at home by challenging faith in the overwhelming use of force as a primary instrument of foreign policy -- even as we hope for a quick and decisive end to the Iraq war.

The writer is Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland and senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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How the Pentagon`s promise of a quick war ran into the desert sand

Political oversights may have stalled offensive, but Rumsfeld is still urging a faster, riskier attack

Julian Borger in Washington, Richard Norton-Taylor, Rory McCarthy in camp As Sayliyah, Qatar, Luke Harding in Suliamaniyah, northern Iraq and Dan Plesch
Friday March 28, 2003
The Guardian

In early February, just a few weeks before the Iraq war began, a funny thing happened in the corridors of the Pentagon - it went strangely quiet. After a flurry of deployment orders in the new year, sending tens of thousands of soldiers and marines out to the Gulf, the flow of paperwork out of the defence secretary`s office slowed to a trickle.
"There`s not much happening here right now," a slightly bemused senior military officer said at the time.

It now appears that Donald Rumsfeld, standing at his trademark lectern from which he micromanaged the war plans, blocked a request from his field commander, General Tommy Franks, to start moving two heavy divisions to the Gulf. There were already enough forces in the theatre, he argued, according to officials in the Pentagon.

That single decision did more than any other to shape the dilemmas coalition forces are facing now in Iraq, one week into the war. Mr Rumsfeld had promised a war of the kind no one had ever seen before, full of hi-tech surprises and breathtaking special forces raids that would go straight to the core of the regime.

The images from the battlefield, at least for now, have told another, more familiar story - American GIs and marine "grunts" trudging through the mud while an unseen, committed guerrilla force lurks in tropical undergrowth, or in the alleyways of densely packed towns.

This is not Vietnam, and the images are, in that respect, misleading. There is some talk now of the war lasting months rather than weeks, but not even the most downcast pessimist in Washington or London believes this battle will go on for years or that Saddam Hussein will win.

However, there is rising concern among serving and retired military officers with memories of that conflict, that the US may have entered another war with blithely over-optimistic assumptions, and without the forces to do the job.

The heavy armour that Mr Rumsfeld held up in February, the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas and the 1st Armoured Division in Germany, will only begin moving next month. It could take up to five weeks more for them to ship their tanks and other equipment.

The 20,000 soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division held their farewell ceremonies in Texas yesterday, and their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles are already in the Red sea, having been diverted from Turkey. But they will probably not be ready to fight at the frontlines until mid-April. American paratroopers finally opened the northern front yesterday, securing an airfield to which tanks, artillery and armoured cars belonging to the 1st Infantry Division were being flown in last night. It was unclear whether the force being gathered there would ultimately be strong enough to secure the northern oilfields, or even march on Baghdad.

For the time being, it will be up to three US divisions and Britain`s 1 Armoured Division, to carry the war on their shoulders. But the American vanguard of that force, the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Division, has spent a week slogging through sandstorms, mud and near-constant guerrilla attack along the Euphrates valley.

Meanwhile, the US marines` northward push from Nassiriya has advanced about 15 miles until stopped by the Iraqis at Daghara. These forces face continued Iraqi counterattacks on Nassiriya and the bridges across the Euphrates, which are making supplying the advance difficult.

It is unclear whether either the marines or the 3rd Infantry has the resources and energy left to finish the job and take the Iraqi capital. The 101st Airborne Division, which moved the bulk of its helicopters into forward bases in the western desert overnight on Wednesday, is still relatively fresh but it cannot take on the Republican Guard with its Apache assault helicopters alone. An attempt to do just that on Sunday was repelled by intense anti-aircraft fire.

Mr Rumsfeld now faces a dilemma - to raise the stakes or to cut his losses. The former means taking an even bigger gamble: press harder on Baghdad in the hope that the regime will be "decapitated" and the resistance wither. The latter means slowing down, waiting for the 4th Infantry to arrive with its tanks, and methodically weeding out the Fedayeen militia and Ba`ath party enforcers from the southern towns.

Both options offer benefits, but are weighed down with costs and risks. For the time being, it looks as though Mr Rumsfeld, the man who is still dictating the pace of this conflict from his Pentagon lectern, will follow his "forward-leaning" instincts and take the faster, riskier route.

Blitzkrieg

The stakes involved are all the higher since his instincts so far have not paid off. The blitzkrieg approach to the war was built on two assumptions, which have since proved to be misplaced: that the Shia south would rise up immediately and hand such cities as Basra to the coalition; and that President Saddam would give up most of the countryside and adopt a defensive crouch in Baghdad.

It was a fundamental mistake, argues Bob Killebrew, a retired army colonel who helped plan for the last Gulf war.

"It`s always bad to build plans based on the cooperation of the enemy," he said.

In fact, the Shias, having been let down by American promises of liberation once before, in 1991, have decided to sit this war out and watch from the sidelines.

"I think one of the problems here was that so many people in the administration had a very strong political agenda, which was inspired by the Iraqi opposition, and by western mirror-imaging, assuming they want what we want," said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Iraqi military at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Meanwhile, President Saddam has learned the military lessons of the past 12 years, since the last Gulf war, in ways the Pentagon hawks did not anticipate. In particular, he learned from Mohammed Aideed, the Somali warlord who evaded capture in 1993 and lured America`s best soldiers into a bloody trap in the backstreets of Mogadishu. It can be no coincidence that Republican Guard special forces have been turning up in "technicals", pickup trucks with machine guns or anti-tank weapons mounted on the back - exactly the sort Aideed used a decade ago.

Clouding the decision on deployments was a long-running internal Pentagon battle over the army. Since taking up their jobs in 2001 Mr Rumsfeld and his group of civilian reformers have been trying to revolutionise the armed forces, making the navy less dependent on its aircraft carriers and the army on its big tank-heavy divisions.

The decision to use just one such division, the 3rd Infantry, in the starting line-up for the Iraq war, was therefore highly controversial. Infantry officers are convinced that Mr Rumsfeld`s decision to hold back the 1st Cavalry and 1st Armoured divisions and to use airborne troops and marines in their place, was first and foremost a political one, designed to prove a point.

Washington was not alone in its over-confidence. British ministers in private briefings before the war were presented with a picture of the effect of military action against Iraq which, it is now admitted, was far too optimistic.

The briefings were based on reports from the defence intelligence staff and MI6. Right up to the eve of the war, intelligence officials were confidently predicting that there were no Republican Guards or Iraqi special security forces anywhere in the south.

They appear to have been misled, whether deliberately or not, by the senior Iraqi figures with whom they say they were in touch.

Britain also assured Iraq`s worried neighbours that the military campaign would be quick - an outcome they needed in the face of their public opinion.

The hope, say British military officials, was that a brief "shock and awe" bombing campaign would be enough to topple a fragile regime. Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guards, would quickly surrender. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander in chief of British forces, suggested that the most serious problems before US tanks arrived at the gates of Baghdad would be how to cope with large numbers of prisoners of war and the humanitarian needs of a displaced population.

Some of Britain`s military commanders, notably Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, were much more cautious and sceptical. However, though they were consulted on the military plans, they were drawn up by the US.

The first night of bombing - not the promised "shock and awe" but a precision strike prompted by intelligence provided by the CIA - was not planned. What it did, British officials say, was to disrupt the original plan.

In the first few days of the war, British ministers remained over-optimistic. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, proclaimed the port of Umm Qasr captured on Saturday, four days before it actually was.

British military officers, like their American counterparts, admit they were surprised by Iraqi resistance.

President Saddam was not the inflexible general he was made out to be. Specifically, he or his military advisers appreciated the vulnerability of long supply lines as US troops charged towards Baghdad.

For the British and their main objective, Basra, President Saddam sent in "Chemical Ali" - his loyal lieutenant, General Ali Hassan al-Majid - to stiffen resolve, or rather to coerce local Iraqi troops into counterattacks or to stay in the city.

This left British troops with an acute dilemma compounded by the growing humanitarian crisis and lack of food and water: to bomb military and Ba`ath party targets in the city from outside, thereby risking civilian casualties, or enter in force at the risk of casualties among their troops.

British military officials admit they have had to make "adjustments" to their tactical battle plans in the south after encountering stiff resistance in several towns.

Originally the British plan had been to sweep through the southern provinces and to surround and contain Basra and other large towns in the area but not to occupy them. Their task was to rush in humanitarian aid and provide a shield in the south to protect advancing US troops.

British officers have frequently spoken about how they wanted to avoid gritty, urban street fighting which might turn the local population against the whole military campaign.

But rather than surrender en masse, Iraqi forces have put up often fierce resistance, largely driven by paramilitary militias, British officials say. That has required a more aggressive British approach.

"The fact is that we now understand what is going on in Basra to a greater degree than clearly we could have predicted," Air Marshal Burridge said yesterday. "Until you actually see what is happening it is very difficult to make judgments."

Patient

He said that the British army`s experience in Northern Ireland would help in military operations in southern Iraq. The air marshal`s comments suggest much more dangerous urban warfare lies ahead for the Royal Marines and paratroopers now deployed around Basra.

"We have enormous experience in Belfast and we know how fluid these situations can become," said Air Marshal Burridge.

British military commanders say they are prepared to be patient in taking the city, waiting for months if necessary in an operation which, it had been assumed, would take a matter of days.

The 24,000 British combat troops engaged in Iraq are likely to remain in the south where they are still needed. One plan was for the armoured brigade to move north and provide a rear base for the US.

One of the problems is that British forces use different ammunition and even different types of fuel to the US, so they need their own separate supply lines.

The offensive on Baghdad is likely to be an almost solely American affair. The crucial question is whether they have the strength to fight on through three Republican Guard divisions and into the urban warfare of Baghdad without waiting three weeks for significant reinforcements.

"In military terminology, attackers reach their `culminating point` when their supplies and energy are depleted to the point when they can no longer overcome the resistance," Col Killebrew said. "The question now is when do General Franks` forces reach their `culminating point`."

The worst outcome, he argued, would be for the troops in the field to "go on and on until they run out of steam and then face defeat".

In a sign that the Pentagon is beginning to acknowledge the problem it faces, there were reports yesterday that the 2nd Armoured Cavalry, based in Louisiana, had been called into action. But a regiment on its own is unlikely to provide the level of force protection for US supply lines that the field commanders are calling for.

However, bringing units back from the front to fight the Fedayeen in the south while waiting for the 4th Infantry Division to catch up also carries costs. The US would lose the initiative to the Iraqis. Weeks of aerial bombardment would kill more civilians, raising international outrage to new peaks, while back home there would inevitably be talk of a quagmire. Those are high costs for a defence secretary who has made "forward-leaning" his catchphrase.

There were reports yesterday that frontline US infantry near Najaf, the scene of intense exchanges with Iraqi guerrillas this week, were being braced for a poten tially decisive battle with the Medina Division of the Republican Guard somewhere between the holy Shia shrine at Kerbala and the ancient city of Babylon.

Meanwhile, the helicopter-borne brigades of the 101st Airborne in the western desert, are preparing to hit Baghdad`s defenders from above and behind, while special forces and coalition bombers strike at the centres of power.

It is a strategy that is built on an adapted version of the Pentagon`s earlier assumptions. It assumes that the guerrilla fighters are hated by the population and will wither away once orders stop coming from Baghdad.

"When Baghdad folds or falls and people realise there is no central power behind the thugs, the situation will turn," a senior Pentagon official predicted. He said Mr Rumsfeld`s critics were still thinking of the battlefield as linear, whereas the new tactical thinking involved "networks", combining armour, mobile forces striking from all directions and close air support.

In short, the message coming from the Pentagon is full speed ahead. The new tactics will work and the regime will collapse - just wait and see. It has only been a week.

Ironically, it will be up to the army - that bastion of conservatism in Mr Rumsfeld`s eyes - to prove his theories right. The marines may play a supporting role once they have made their way through the waterlogged Tigris valley, but the 3rd Infantry and the 101st Airborne will be at the centre of the fighting in Baghdad.

Col Killebrew says it is an old story. He said: "Between the wars, the army is always accused of being not very bright, and then, when the war comes, it`s the army that wins the fight."

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Don`t touch that dial
Joan Ryan
Friday, March 28, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2003%2F03…


GOOD MORNING. I`m Pat Riotic, your host on the Excess in Broadcasting network. Regular listeners know I am not an angry person. But this morning every red-blooded cell in my star-spangled body is trembling with indignation at what I`ve been hearing and seeing.

You know what I`m talking about, folks: the rightist, conservative traitors who pollute our public airwaves with un-American rhetoric.

Let`s not mince words. Let`s call these so-called talk-show hosts what they are: anti-American subversives. They are extremists who claim to love America but clearly hate it and all it stands for.

Have you listened to this claptrap? They insist everyone in America speak with one voice, and whoever doesn`t fall in step with the government`s version of things is disloyal.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war. This is no time to be undermining the ideals on which this country was founded and for which so much blood has been spilled. We should be demonstrating our support for democractic rights instead of spitting all over them. Yet these right-wing dolts keep spewing their misguided, anti-democratic garbage on radio and television shows, giving aid and sustenance to Saddam Hussein. What could please this tyrant more than seeing Americans demand that dissent be stifled -- thus making our country more like his?

On my way to the station today, I listened to an interview on ABC radio with a pilot from Sacramento named Lumpy. He and his crew risked their lives, quite literally, flying to safety 11 Iraqis who had been injured in battle. One was a baby whose right leg had been blown off. The crew was shot at as they carried the injured to the helicopter, and Lumpy managed to keep the helicopter airborne despite a blinding sandstorm and artillery fire. The incredible effort to save these poor victims of war brought tears to my eyes.

Then I switched to one of these nutso, right-wing shows. The host was saying, "Of course, everyone knows these Iraqis are savages." I wonder what that heroic pilot from Sacramento would think if he heard that Americans back home were saying he is risking his life to save and liberate people who are nothing more than "savages"?

Really, could these simpletons be more out of touch with American values? These are the same anti-democratic dimwits who cheered the rollback of civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. If they like the suppression of fundamental American freedoms so much, why don`t they go live in a country where such freedoms aren`t allowed? Like the old bumper sticker said, "America:

Love it or leave it."

When anti-war protesters carried mock caskets during a recent demonstration,

one right-wing radio host said if the protesters were in Iraq, they`d be in the caskets, so how can they be protesting against our government? This is the twisted logic: The protesters should be so appreciative of their right to free speech that, well, they shouldn`t exercise it.

Our men and women in uniform are fighting and dying to bring democracy to Iraq. They are fighting and dying to preserve what America stands for. Contrary to what the rightist media tell you, it is not anti-American to voice dissent; it is anti-American to suppress it.

That said, I won`t be calling for a boycott of these extremist broadcasters and their sponsors. I won`t be organizing a public burning of their hate- filled books and tapes. As odious as these right-wing dunces are, as offensive as it is to loyal Americans to hear these people openly denounce the very values we are fighting to preserve, they deserve our tolerance, if not acceptance.

Yes, I am angry that they`re trying to undermine my country`s most cherished ideals. But I also understand that every minute they use the public airwaves to spew their idiocy only shows how seriously this country embraces freedom of speech. Even half-wits in headsets get to enjoy its protection.

E-mail Joan Ryan at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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An den Taten sollt ihr sie messen

George Bush during a 2000 debate: "If we`re an arrogant nation, they`ll resent us. If we`re a humble nation but strong, they`ll welcome us...That`s why we`ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom."
George Bush at his inauguration in January of 2001: "[Let them say of us that we are] a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer....We will show purpose without arrogance."
"You can fool some of the people all of the time--and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!" ---George W. Bush (quoting Robert Strauss` joke)
To announce that there must be NO criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President Right or Wrong, is not only Unpatriotic and Servile, but is morally TREASONABLE to the American public."
President Theodore Roosevelt (Republican

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Der Spiegel hat auch schon alte Gefühle wiederentdeckt die Generation Golfkrieg (Tut weh)

A Vietnam-era Dad Talks to His Protesting Son

Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
March 24, 2003

Dear Mark:

First, I want to say how proud I am of your -- and much of your generation`s -- commitment to the values we both hold dear: fair play, civility, social justice, peaceful resolution of conflict. It`s not easy being a young adult in this current crazy world, and I admire the way you`re going about learning how to cope with its vagaries, hypocrisies and criminalities.

As you know well, Mom and I are always nervous about your safety; you and I may not always agree on tactics and strategy in that regard in the growing anti-war/pro-democracy movement, but I`m glad you`re willing to hear me out. So, here goes:

One thing we anti-Vietnam War protesters learned in those `60s and `70s days was that if we talked only to ourselves, we gave the government the perfect opportunity to dismiss and ignore us as but a tiny faction of "scruffy hippies" or "longhaired radicals."

But when we broadened our ranks to include more and more ordinary middle-class, middle-age citizens -- that is, when we toned down our rhetoric against the "bourgeois System" and focused on the actual enemy, the administration`s war policy -- we suddenly found that the government had to take our growing movement more seriously.

These "respectable citizens" had clout, better connections to opinion-shapers, more access to funding, and so on; many of them belonged to the same churches and organizations and clubs as those who possessed some power. Once those defections started to happen, the Movement began to achieve critical mass. (Example: Nixon and his advisers later revealed that when Walter Cronkite, the beloved and trusted CBS News anchor, began to speak out about Vietnam, they realized they had lost the battle for domestic support of that war.)

So what I`m suggesting, obviously, is that today`s anti-war/pro-democracy movement begin to think along similar lines. If we`re just engaging in actions that express our anger or that enhance our group`s particular agenda, Bush&Co. will win the battle for American public opinion -- and thus find it easier to move on their imperial agenda abroad and their police-state repression at home.

But if we are able to involve more and more ordinary citizens -- many of whom have never before marched or even contacted their elected representatives or written a letter to the editor of their local newspaper -- it will be difficult for the Bushistas to marginalize and demonize the protesters as little more than "violent crazies" or "young punks" or whatever label much of the corporate-owned mass-media assigns in order to denigrate the serious political issues being raised.

The rage expressed in the streets on The Day(s) After the war on Iraq began is understandable; even though I disagree with some of the tactics used by you and your friends, I can appreciate where it came from. You say that you all were very angry, and very frustrated, and some of that energy just had to explode out, kind of scattershot. (Note: There always are, in any movement, a few agents provocateurs -- police plants embedded to steer the actions in a more violent, dangerous direction. The aim is to divert attention from the issues raised but also in the hope that the use of violence will scare away the more mainstream folks from joining the next demonstration. So be on the lookout.)

In order to build a more effective, cohesive, broad-based Resistance, we have to be more creative, more focused on being politically effective rather than being emotionally cathartic, more dedicated to the long term fight in front of us rather than the short-term action at the next intersection.

Make no mistake about it. This battle we are in is not just about Iraq or this particular war. It is about a desire on the part of those that have hijacked the American government to create a permanent war machine abroad, and a proto-fascist state at home. The outcome of this political battle will shape America`s, and the world`s, future for the next several decades. The stakes are that high.

The Europeans are well aware of the true nature of the battle. They see America moving aggressively to become the Colossus astride the globe, dictating to everyone else what must be done, and keeping potential economic/political/military competitors in a subservient state. Already, new alliances are beginning to form to combat Bush&Co.`s imperial ambitions.

Did you ever think you`d see the day when France, Germany and Russia would unite on anything? Well, they and a good many other European Union members are in the early stages of developing a kind of alliance that could rival, or at least put up some stiff resistance to, the Americans -- and, if China and Japan were to join in, a mighty force indeed would be amassed.

Let`s talk now about an even mightier force: non-violent resistance. Once that "Soul Force" (to use Mahatma Gandhi`s term) gets rolling and honed to a fine point, nothing can stop it.

Consider what Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez accomplished without succumbing to the temptations of picking up arms. Consider the protesters who by sheer (mostly) non-violent "people power" hastened the end of the dictatorial regimes in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, et al. Not only is non-violence a powerful political tool, but it is, and becomes, a spiritually uplifting force.

And why? Because it changes the interaction. Instead of you reacting to their violence with your violence -- which then leads to more violence, and then to more and so on -- you`ve changed the parameters. Suddenly, they have to deal with you differently, as a human who bears them no ill will even as you confront their power; they often get flummoxed by these new rules of engagement. (One extremely effective way is to be friendly toward the cops -- addressing them by name when possible, offering them food and drink, telling them in conversational tone why you`re protesting, how your concerns may connect to theirs, etc.; the tensions tend to relax, even when arrests are made.)

And, most importantly, the larger public, appreciating the non-violent nature of the protests and raised with a belief in morality and fair play, starts to understand the immorality of their government`s policies and brutalities, and begins more and more to support the protesters.

Just one theorhetical example: Imagine the social impact, and the attendant news coverage, in two different scenarios:

1) Two thousand protesters take over the streets in a major American city, break windows, block freeways, trash a corporate lobby, fight with the cops, etc. The news media highlight photos and footage of the violence, and interview poor people trying to get to work on the buses that were blocked for hours; the political issues behind the protesters` rage is barely mentioned, and often neither is the police violence that sometimes creates or heightens the confrontational mood.

2) Two thousand protesters surround the symbol of their anathema, the federal building (or a major defense-contractor), in a major American city. When told to move or face arrest, they willingly allow themselves to be arrested. Two thousand new protesters surround the federal building (or defense contractor) the next day. And the next. And the next. The news media is forced to handle the story in a different way, especially because "people of substance" -- doctors and lawyers and teachers and soccer moms and civil rights leaders and grandparents and clergymen -- are, in the name of conscience, willing to face arrest (partially because everyone understands that this will be a non-violent action), in order to highlight the issue of the government`s crimes. The serious issues raised by the protesters gets more ink and more currency.

This may sound like a dream, but I truly believe the Resistance can move forward to that kind of scenario, if we play our cards right. If we`re willing to be more creative in our tactics and strategies. If we`re willing to think beyond tried-and-true methods of protesting, with humor and determination. (Just one example: In the Vietnam War days, some of the most effective campaigns involved spilling blood onto Draft Board records, getting arrested and, in effect, taking the government to court in highly publicized trials.) If we`re willing to spend the many weeks and months organizing, planning, organizing, training, organizing -- and organizing.

I`m not trying to pretend that all of this is going to be easy, or without dangers. This Administration is ruthless and has already made clear that it`s willing to wound, to smear, to kill to get what it wants. And local police forces are often the least well-equipped, most overworked, and least monitored in the way they deal with dissent.

But if we want to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the best of what we are in the world, and if we want to help advance humanity another couple of feet along the route to civilized behavior instead of falling back into the old habits of violence and repression -- if we truly desire that future, we can make it happen. Soul Force.

Remember that there is another Superpower out there able to resist the dangerous adventurism of the Bush Administration: us, the burgeoning, worldwide mass movement of those who are joining together and standing up to leaders who, out of the worst of motives, are trying to take humanity in the wrong direction.

So get on a steep learning curve. Read your Saul Alinsky, read Abbie Hoffman, read Robert Moses (Paris), read Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau and Gandhi and Cesar Chavez and Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth and Martin Lee and Frederick Douglas. You don`t have to re-invent the wheel totally. Others have been there and laid the foundations. (How I wish we young New Leftists in the Vietnam era had been more open to listening to the wisdom of the many Old Leftists we consciously ignored.)

So that`s where I`m coming from, Mark. Let`s talk more. And let`s work together to turn this country around.

Love, Dad

Copyright 2003 by Bernard Weiner

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Ein Affe mit Raketen

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR Mar 27 2003

By Paul Routledge


OH, what a dirty war! Now we see, not through a glass darkly, but through the clear window of American power.


SMIRK: George Bush

President George Dubya Bush last night smirked his way through the path to victory in Baghdad. His cruel, self-important conviction shone through a television appearance in Tampa, Florida.

This is the way the world will be - because the Americans say so. Washington`s strategy of "shock and awe" is not only delivered by bombs, but by the power of rich, evil men who have the political power to decide where the world is going.

So much is clear from President Bush, in his smug, arrogant remarks yesterday. The idea that Tony Blair has any real impact on the American big hit is a joke.



SMUG: Grinning Bush shakes hands after his speech in Tampa, Florida

Yet he has to continue to pretend he can influence Washington. It is a worthwhile effort. But let`s not pretend it will ever work.

George Bush has the consummate sense of power derived from his position as leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

He is an ape, but that doesn`t matter - he is an ape with cruise missiles.

Yesterday, at US Central Command HQ in Tampa, Florida, Bush declared: "Nothing - nothing will divert us from our clear mission...Day by day, Saddam Hussein is losing his grip on Iraq. Day by day, the Iraqi people are closer to freedom."



WARBABY: Dubya kisses a tot after his gloating speech

Bush went on to hail the "coalition of the willing", which involved 48 countries in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He said: "Every nation here today shares the same resolve...Czech, Slovak, Polish and Romanian forces - soon to be joined by Ukrainian and Bulgarian forces - are forward deployed in the region, prepared to respond in the event of an attack of weapons of mass destruction. Spain is providing important logistical and humanitarian support."

Bush vowed: "This band of war criminals has been put on notice. The day of Iraq`s liberation will also be a day of justice."



HAIL TO THE THIEF: Bush salutes his fawning alliance

Bush said Iraqi prisoners of war are being treated "according to the highest standards of law and decency". He said all this with a confident smirk. He allowed himself a thicko smile for every sound bite. And why not? He has more than Saddam in his sights.

The multi-million prize of a second term as US president is available, and his campaign to retain power on the back of dead Iraqis is under way. Bush`s rally stank of a re-election campaign. He was greeted with enthusiastic applause by an audience of servicemen who cheered throughout the president`s fiercest address since the war began.

He even had the nerve to laugh as he thanked the Governor of Florida, brother Jeb, for inviting him to Tampa. It was Jeb who inflicted Dubya on the world by fixing the electoral rolls in Miami allowing him to steal the election. The campaigner-in-chief then gloried in the standing ovation before walking into the crowd to shake hands. He even paused to kiss a baby.

For the rest of us in the real world, Bush`s vanity is as dangerous as it is sickening. It also discredits us.

Our Prime Minister stands up in Parliament, as he did yesterday, arguing a military and diplomatic case for the destruction of Saddam`s regime.

He sounds logical and persuasive. He does not convince me, nor a very large part of the British people. But at least he sounds convincing. But that cannot be said of Dubya, the thief leader who took his country and my own into war against the Iraqi people.

The Bush Administration is deeply corrupt. It came to power on a voting fiddle. It emerged from a plot by the oil barons who want the USA to rule the world for profit. And today, we have Tony Blair supping at the table of these disgusting people.

Every minute that he spends in the company of these nasties corrupts him - and my country.

I wonder if Tony Blair ever reflects on this unpleasant reality. This morning, he swans into fresh talks with Bush at Camp David. I wish him well in these exchanges.

But isn`t it time that Britain asserted its proper, historic role in international relations? Every time that our Prime Minister goes to Washington to tug his forelock to George Dubya, it is a matter of shame to us.

Yesterday was a perfect example of why this should not happen. British commanders spoke carefully and quietly of their operations in Iraq. A classic understatement, of the kind that exemplifies our nation.

By contrast, taking their lead from George Bush, the Americans yelled "Victory!" Too soon, brothers, too soon.

The PM says he wants to bring the US into a deal for a new, post-conflict Iraq. He also knows Bush and his hard hats don`t want to know anything about a UN-appointed administration to run Iraq once war is over. The Yanks want a US military junta to run it.

This is bullying. It is wrong, just like the war itself.

It is our task - the duty of the British people - to remind Blair that he represents the UK and not Middle America. Write to him. Call him. E-mail him. Reassert our democratic control over our Prime Minister.

Whatever you think about Tony Blair, he is still OUR Prime Minister, and he should listen to us - not the smirking, cross-eyed fool in the White House.



__________

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Das Rattennest, sie kommen immer wieder.

All in the Neocon Family
Jim Lobe, AlterNet
March 26, 2003
Viewed on March 28, 2003

What do William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, and Robert Kagan have in common? Yes, they are all die-hard hawks who have gained control of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks. But they are also part of one big neoconservative family -- an extended clan of spouses, children, and friends who have known each other for generations.


Neoconservatives are former liberals (which explains the "neo" prefix) who advocate an aggressive unilateralist vision of U.S. global supremacy, which includes a close strategic alliance with Israel. Let`s start with one of the founding fathers of the extended neocon clan: Irving Kristol. His extensive resume includes waging culture wars for the CIA against the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War and calling for an American "imperial" role during the Vietnam War. Papa Kristol, who has been credited with defining the major themes of neoconservative thought, is married to Gertrude Himmelfarb, a neoconservative powerhouse on her own. Her studies of the Victorian era in Britain helped inspire the men who sold Bush on the idea of "compassionate conservatism."


The son of this proud couple is none other that William Kristol, the crown prince of the neoconservative clique and editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. In 1997, he founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a front group which cemented the powerful alliance between right-wing Republicans like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, Christian and Catholic Right leaders like Gary Bauer and William Bennett, and the neocons behind a platform of global U.S. military dominance.


Irving Kristol`s most prominent disciple is Richard Perle, who was until Thursday the Defense Policy Board chairman, is also a "resident scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, which is housed in the same building as PNAC. Perle himself married into neocon royalty when he wed the daughter of his professor at the University of Chicago, the late Alfred Wohlstetter -- the man who helped both his son-in-law and his fellow student Paul Wolfowitz get their start in Washington more than 30 years ago.


Perle`s own protege is Douglas Feith, who is now Wolfowitz`s deputy for policy and is widely known for his right-wing Likud position. And why not? His father, Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist Dalck Feith, was once a follower of the great revisionist Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his native Poland back in the 1930s. The two Feiths were honored together in 1997 by the right-wing Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).


The AEI has long been a major nexus for such inter-familial relationships. A long-time collaborator with Perle, Michael Ledeen is married to Barbara Ledeen, a founder and director of the anti-feminist Independent Women`s Forum (IWF), who is currently a major player in the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and another neo-con power couple -- David and Meyrav Wurmser -- co-authored a 1996 memorandum for Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu outlining how to break the Oslo peace process and invade Iraq as the first step to transforming the Middle East.


Though she doesn`t focus much on foreign-policy issues, Lynne Cheney also hangs her hat at AEI. Her husband Dick Cheney recently chose Victoria Nuland to become his next deputy national security adviser. Nuland, as it turns out, is married to Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol`s main comrade-in-arms and the co-founder of PNAC.


Bob`s father, Donald Kagan, is a Yale historian who converted from a liberal Democrat to a staunch neocon in the 1970s. On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, Donald and his other son, Frederick, published "While America Sleeps," a clarion call to increase defense spending. Since then, the three Kagan men have written reams of columns warning that the currently ballooning Pentagon budget is simply not enough to fund the much-desired vision of U.S. global supremacy.


And which infamous ex-Reaganite do the Kagans and another leading neocon family have in common? None other than Iran-contra veteran Elliott Abrams.


Now the director of Near Eastern Affairs in Bush`s National Security Council, Abrams worked closely with Bob Kagan back in the Reagan era. He is also the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, long-time editor of the influential conservative Jewish publication Commentary, and his wife, Midge Decter, a fearsome polemicist in her own right.


Podhoretz, like Kristol Sr., helped invent neo-conservatism in the late 1960s. He and Decter created a formidable political team as leaders of the Committee on the Present Danger in 1980, when they worked with Donald Rumsfeld to pound the last nail into the coffin of detente and promote the rise of Ronald Reagan. In addition to being Abrams` father-in-law, Norman Podhoretz is also the father of John Podhoretz, a columnist for the Murdoch-owned New York Post and frequent guest on the Murdoch-owned Fox News channel.


As editor of Commentary, Norman offered writing space to rising stars of the neocon movement for more than 30 years. His proteges include former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard Pipes, who was Ronald Reagan`s top advisor on the "Evil Empire," as the president liked to call the Soviet Union. His son, Daniel Pipes, has also made a career out of battling "evil," which in his case is Islam. And to tie it all up neatly, in 2002, Podhoretz received the highest honor bestowed by the AEI: the Irving Kristol award.


This list of intricate, overlapping connections is hardly exhaustive or perhaps even surprising. But it helps reveal an important fact. Contrary to appearances, the neocons do not constitute a powerful mass political movement. They are instead a small, tighly-knit clan whose incestuous familial and personal connections, both within and outside the Bush administration, have allowed them grab control of the future of American foreign policy.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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washingtonpost.com
Hawks on War Against Hussein Stay the Course


By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2003; Page A34


Strong proponents of the war against Iraq yesterday dismissed fresh concerns that the conflict could take much longer and produce more casualties than generally anticipated, expressing continued optimism about the conflict`s ultimate outcome.

These Iraq hawks said they did not have the expertise to challenge the claims of some top military officials that the Bush administration did not adequately prepare for the fight and that excessive concern about civilian casualties is constraining coalition forces. But they maintained that eventually the war would prove a success, and that even a prolonged war could become an opportunity to demonstrate renewed American resiliency and backbone.

"I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties," said William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. "The American people don`t have tolerance for defeat or equivocation."

Kristol said he did not welcome a tougher fight, but, he said, "in a certain way, the willingness to stick it out would be as impressive as" a quick victory, because such toughness would dispute the "core [Osama] bin Laden claim that America is a weak horse," that after suffering 19 casualties in Somalia, "they fled."

Along similar lines, Michael A. Ledeen, author of "The War against the Terror Masters" and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argued at a forum on Iraq earlier the week:

"I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we`re being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we`re winning, I don`t think casualties are going to be the issue."

Yesterday, Ledeen said his main critique of the war so far is not on military matters. Instead, he said, the administration should have treated the conflict as "90 percent political" and 10 percent military, and on that basis, helped create an Iraqi government in exile before the war began to present as a democratic alternative to Saddam Hussein.

The war is a crucial part of the larger fight against terrorism because, Ledeen said, the war on terrorism "is a war of freedom against tyranny, so we have to fight tyranny." On that ground, he argued, "if there is not a democratic government in Iraq in a year of so, we will have failed."

Kristol, in contrast, identified three tests of success or failure: victory over Hussein, discovering weapons of mass destruction and being judged as a liberator.

Several strong proponents of war maintained that victory against Iraq would be swift. Their dilemma now is perhaps best exemplified by Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon`s Defense Policy Board, who in February 2002 wrote in The Washington Post:

"I believe demolishing Hussein`s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: 1) It was a cakewalk last time; 2) they`ve become much weaker; 3) we`ve become much stronger; and 4) now we`re playing for keeps."

Yesterday, Adelman defended his analysis. "I was not being casual," he said, contending that he was rebutting warnings that there would be thousands of deaths, that Scud missiles would rain down on our troops and on Israel, and there would be "an eruption of terrorism. . . . I think those things are refuted."

Adelman said he stands by his 2002 assessment of the pros and cons of an assault on the Hussein government: "Measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America`s war on terrorism."

At the Pentagon, one of the leading architects of the Bush administration`s Iraq strategy, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, argued earlier this week that the people of Iraq will voice their enthusiasm for the attack when they no longer feel threatened.

"It`s a people that is still distinctly terrorized into silence," Wolfowitz said. "The Iraqi people are still not free to speak for themselves. Until this regime is gone, until the fear of Saddam and the other kinds of terrorists are gone, they`re not going to be able to speak."

Wolfowitz dismissed complaints that the war is progressing more slowly than expected:

"Nobody with any knowledge of military matters expected there to be no resistance. If anything is unexpected, it`s the speed of the advance and the relative absence of organized resistance. That there should be resistance, this is a war. One has to expect it. I think to some extent the people who say it`s unexpected really do not understand what this is all about."

Siehe auch
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34283-2003Mar…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/business/28GLOB.html
© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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White House: Bush frustrated with media coverage of war
Officials fault reporters` expectations
From John King
CNN Washington Bureau


WASHINGTON (CNN) --President Bush has "some level of frustration with the press corps" for accounts questioning the U.S. and coalition war plan in Iraq, and he finds it "silly" that such skepticism and questions were being raised just days into a conflict he says is going quite well, according to a senior administration official.

The senior official said Friday that Bush believes the "war is going well" and that Bush had no doubts about the battle plan or frustration with developments on the ground in Iraq.

But the questions and comments are not coming just from reporters. Various news accounts have quoted military leaders and retired military leaders who have raised some questions on how the war is unfolding.

This official declined to comment on remarks from the war`s Army ground commander -- Lt. Gen. William Wallace -- who told The Washington Post in Friday`s paper: "The enemy we`re fighting is different from the one we`d war-gamed against."

But the official said the president and other senior officials at the White House have "some level of frustration with the press corps" for the skeptical and sometimes critical view of the battle plan.

Bush appeared somewhat exasperated Thursday when -- appearing with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a news conference at Camp David, Maryland -- a reporter asked whether the war would take months, as opposed to weeks.

"However long it takes," Bush said, repeating that line as the reporter pressed him on the matter. "That`s the answer to your question, and that`s what you got to know. This isn`t a matter of timetable, it`s a matter of victory. "

At a briefing Friday, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was peppered with questions about the president`s apparent frustration and the progress of the war.

"I think from the president`s point of view, any questions about how long it will last are, of course, are entirely legitimate questions ... The president understands people want to know, but it`s also an unknowable issue. But I do think there is a difference between asking that question and the suggestion that, "Why isn`t it over already?" Fleischer said.

Asked how the president has expressed his frustration, Fleischer replied, in part, "I don`t share every private conversation that I have with the president."

Bush -- who has held a series of events this week highlighting the war effort -- is to deliver a speech Friday afternoon to members of veterans organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.

In that speech, administration official said, Bush plans to encourage Americans to support troops deployed overseas and also to find ways to support their families here at home, many of whom face hardships during lengthy deployments.

Bush then heads to Camp David for the weekend, where he will monitor war developments. Bush`s high-profile week was part of a White House strategy to have the president take the lead in trying to frame expectations for the war.

His remarks Friday will continue that effort by talking about a war of undetermined duration, with significant and dangerous battles to come, and harsh words about the tactics of Iraqi forces in their war conduct and treatment of captured coalition forces.

A senior administration official involved in national security matters spoke Thursday night of a "little sense of deja vu," comparing the skepticism in media accounts and from retired military officers to questions raised early in the military campaigns in Afghanistan and the Serbian region of Kosovo.

At Thursday`s session with reporters, Bush and Blair were planning to take six questions at a brief session with reporters -- three each from U.S. and British reporters. Minutes before the event, it was cut back to two questions for each side, and Bush appeared exasperated with questions about the timetable for the war.

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John Walker Lingh



http://democrats.com/elandslide/petition.cfm?campaign=warcri…

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`oderint, dum metuant` wird schon von Cicero und Seneca zitiert

"I do get a perverse pleasure out of it because, after all, CNN did dump me four years ago, I thought unfairly."

-- veteran war correspondent PETER ARNETT of National Geographic Explorer, reporting for NBC from Baghdad four years after he was forced out of CNN over the "Tailwind" debacle
Hat sich als einziger US-Amerikaner, den ich erlebt habe, für die interessante Diskussion bei `Christiansen` bedankt. Hat damals im 1.Gulf-Krieg durch seine Übertragungen aus Bagdad CNN groß gemacht. Vertritt jetzt eine relativ pacifistische Position.
J.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Geography/Organizations/Nationa…

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Ist nicht ganz` political correctness`

SOMETHING TO OFFEND DAMNED EVERYBODY

1. What`s the Cuban national anthem?
Row, Row, Row Your Boat"

2. Where does an Irish family go on vacation?
A different bar.

3. Did you hear about the Chinese couple that had a retarded baby?
They named him "Sum Ting Wong."

4. What would you call it when an Italian has one arm shorter than the other?
A speech impediment.

5. What does it mean when the flag at the Post Office is flying at half-staff?
They`re hiring.

6. Why aren`t there any Puerto Ricans on Star Trek?
Because they`re not going to work in the future either.

7. What do you call an Arkansas farmer with a sheep under each arm?
A pimp.

8. Why do drivers` education classes in Redneck schools use the car only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?
Because on Tuesday and Thursday, the Sex Ed class uses it.

9. What`s the difference between a southern zoo and a northern zoo?
A southern zoo has a description of the animal on the front of the cage, along with a recipe.

10. How do you get a sweet little 80-year-old lady to say the F word?
Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell *BINGO*!

11. What`s the difference between a northern fairy tale and a southern fairy tale?
A northern fairy tale begins "Once upon a time..." A southern fairy tale begins "Y`all ain`t gonna believe this shit..."

12. My, my, how times have changed. Years ago... When 100 white men chased 1 black man, we called it the Ku Klux Klan; today they call it the PGA TOUR.

13. Why is there no Disneyland in China?
No one`s tall enough to go on the good rides

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Gerade erst reingestellt `Death Conference`
http://home.attbi.com/~wizardofwhimsy/

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The Bushnev Doctrine

by Joseph R. Stromberg

[Posted October 3, 2002]
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1059
The statement given by the Bush administration to Congress and now available online, entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," must be read to be believed. Its historical points are dubious, its economics misleading, and its social theory a heap of dangerous half- or third-truths.

The overriding theme is an arrogant presumption and a near-hysterical assertion of "world mission." This great mission is rooted in a peculiarly American religious heresy, whose language has been taken over by interested power-seekers and state-connected economic interests, who give many signs of actually believing their own propaganda.

Any attempt to come to grips with this intellectual production must involve translation as well as commentary. The memo moves in its own closed-thought world. Every ungrounded abstraction and every argumentative turn therein presupposes peculiar meanings for common words, meanings internal to the text. It is, I suppose, a postmodern imperialist manifesto awaiting its deconstruction.

As befits a manifesto, the structure of the essay is fairly straightforward. The murk is all in the content. The writers proclaim big abstractions allegedly embodied by America. Dangers to those are mooted. There follow long lists of things that sundry U.S. bureaucracies "must" do, though the heavens fall.

The argument is not joined, and the whole thing reads like a campaign tract for a candidate for World President. A strong undertow of amateur Hegelianism runs through the manifesto. Both halves of blatant contradictions are affirmed and then aufgehoben ("overcome") by way of blind faith strengthened by a truckload of "musts."

There is also the matter of language. The manifesto comes burdened with the clotted phraseology and clichés that result from the collision of an immovable Pentagon with an irresistible social science. There are also problems with pronoun reference; "we" and "our" abound, meaning at different times all (decent) Americans, America plus allies and friends, or all enlightened persons in the world. Were it not that compulsory inclusion is the order of the day, many of us might well say, "Include me out." Nonetheless, some translation is possible.

I. Ideology

In the Bushnev manifesto, what C. Wright Mills called "the American Celebration" is back. We learn that the last century saw "a decisive victory for the forces of freedom" and the triumph of "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise." As result, the world`s people "want to say what they think; choose who will govern them; worship as they please; educate their children--male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor." Such values are universally valid and "the duty of protecting these values against their enemies is the common calling of freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages."

The "single model" is of course the United States under its permanent regime, the welfare-warfare state. We defeated "totalitarianism" decisively, even if we adopted many of its methods in the process. We stand alone on the Stage of History.

Happily, the thrice-blessed U.S. holds unprecedented, asymmetrical power but does "not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty. By making the world safer, we allow the people of the world to make their own lives better."

The U.S. "will defend this just peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants." This reiterates Harry Truman`s famous pronouncement that the U.S. would help people who want to live the way we do, go on living the way they want to. But the aspirations of the present management put Truman in the shade.

The Bushnev manifesto is a call for global democratic crusading, as we soon see.

The U.S. wishes to "build a world that trades in freedom and therefore grows in prosperity." Further, "Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person--in every civilization.... The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission"--hitting, here, just the right note of modesty. That we stand for a non-negotiable demand probably explains why U.S. "negotiations" always seem to be a mere prelude to bombing.

And since when has freedom been "a mission" rather than a state of affairs?

We soon hear that "Today, the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs is diminishing." Well, whose doing is that? Blind, impersonal forces, perhaps? Moreover: "In a globalized world, events beyond America`s borders have a greater impact inside them. Our society must be open to people, ideas, and goods from across the globe" [my emphasis]. Why is that, one might well ask, since the selfsame document tells us that our very "openness" is a danger?

Here we meet with one of the grosser contradictions of present U.S. policy: coercive domestic openness combined with a fixed policy of making unnecessary enemies through imperial rule. The problem can be solved by an act of will. Clearly, we can have open borders and make numerous overseas enemies at the same time, provided that we rule the whole world.

Achieving planetary hegemony is so much easier on our rulers than consulting the American people, who have never signed on for literally open borders. And what is a "globalized world" anyway? Is it a world that is more worldlike than usual? Is it a globe that is more spherical than it used to be?

We must not worry, though. The present leadership will turn "this moment of [U.S.] influence into decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty" via "a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests." We (the rulers) will "help make the world not just safer but better." U.S. bureaucrats and bombs--this is implicit--"must stand firmly for…the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property."

"History has not been kind to those nations which ignored or flouted the rights and aspirations of their people," say the manifesto writers. For us, on the other hand, things are different: "America`s constitution has served us well," they say, and now, presumably, the Constitution can return to its museum case. For now, we are "fighting for our democratic values and way of life. Freedom and fear are at war."

We are meeting the challenge: "Every agency of the United States Government shares the challenge." This gladdened my heart no end, as I had feared that the Small Business Administration was not "on the team," as they say.

II. Political-Military Matters
Having set out sundry high principles, the manifesto alludes to "irrefutable proof that Iraq`s designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran." This seems to be less than true, despite Mr. Tony Blair`s recent manifesto. None of this matters, however, since the important thing is that the world`s moral leader, assisted by the "willing," is thought to have leave to attack the immoral at will. In a revealing sentence, the U.S. writers note that "it has taken almost a decade for us to comprehend the true nature of this new threat." Translated, this seems to mean that it has taken the war party 10 years of endless propaganda and maneuver to wheel things into place for a campaign they want, whatever the facts.

To prevail in the proposed struggle, the U.S. "must make use of every tool in our arsenal." Those who aren`t with us are against us, and indeed are "the enemies of civilization." In this crisis, "the only path to safety is the path of action." We have heard all this before.

In the usual Wilsonian paradox, all military action undertaken by the U.S. will be done to "defend the peace" and "to preserve the peace." In a bit of deep thinking, the manifesto asserts that under US leadership "the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war." Translated, this seems to mean that all nations that quit being fussy about their several sovereignty may rely on the U.S. for protection against all violence and sin. Those who don`t cooperate will have their windows broken.

In parts of the manifesto, there is so much discussion of "action" that one wonders if it was written by Futurist artists and national syndicalists. We shall have "innovation in the use of military forces, modern technologies, including the development of an effective missile defense system, and increased emphasis on intelligence collection and analysis." We shall have "[p]roactive counterproliferation efforts." We shall have "[e]ffective consequence management to respond to the effects of WMD use, whether by terrorists or hostile states."

This seems to mean that if serious "blowback" arises, U.S. bureaucracies will call 911 for us.

Clearly on a roll, the manifestoists write: "We will identify and block the sources of funding for terrorism, freeze the assets of terrorists and those who support them, deny terrorists access to the international financial system, protect legitimate charities from being abused by terrorists, and prevent the movement of terrorists` assets through alternative financial networks." You can kiss banking privacy goodbye. I am sure we shall get it back, sometime, in the radiant future.

Even more reassuring, "we must also ensure the proper fusion of information between intelligence and law enforcement." More power and money for the CIA and its allied postconstitutional agencies will keep us safe and warm. On their record, who could doubt it?

All these actions are directed at stopping some "specific threat to the United States," which sounds pretty good, until the sentence continues: "or our allies and friends." That gives the game away. Even these writers could not justify war with Iraq under a "specific threat to the United States," but the added words save the day.

In a bit of Athenian hubris, they continue: "The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just" [my emphasis]. This is very economical. There is no need to waste future historians` time in going through evidence, when these fellows can anticipate the judgment of history for them.

The manifesto stresses the need for jollying allies and friends along, while politely reminding them who is in charge. Their opinions are valued, provided they agree with those of the U.S. leaders. Thus, "[a]lliances and multilateral institutions can multiply the strength of freedom-loving nations.... Coalitions of the willing can augment these permanent institutions."

Mention is made of Canada, NATO, the EU, and other vassals. NATO, in particular, "must build a capability to field, at short notice, highly mobile, specially trained forces whenever they are needed to respond to a threat against any member of the alliance." This is sensible. One never knows when imperial overstretch might set in, and it would be good to have other parties supply materiel and cannon fodder.

Indeed, NATO, having outlived its advertised purpose, must expand and "develop planning processes." It must be transformed, streamlined, and made more flexible. Loyal Asian allies must be rallied. Australia--Australia is "in Asia" now, you know--is on board via the ANZUS Treaty, and Japan and South Korea will do their part.

Conscious of "the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition," the U.S. must get Russia and China in the tent. The former shall enter into the fullness of the WTO and become an adjunct of NATO, if all goes well.

III. Economics

According to the Bushnev Doctrine, "Free markets and free trade are key priorities of our national security strategy." Translated, this amounts to the three-headed triumph of the Open Door, the "universal New Deal" (in Harry Hopkins`s phrase), and a global pork-barrel casino open 24 hours, seven days a week. In a bit of unconscious humor, the manifestarians entitle section VI, "Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade."

These policymakers will ignite many things before they get anywhere near free markets and free trade.

History teaches, they say, that "market economies, not command-and-control economies with the heavy hand of government, are the best way to promote prosperity and reduce poverty." "We will promote economic growth and economic freedom beyond America`s shores," they say. Such disembodied free-market nostrums are, however, mere verbal hiccoughs on the road to a full-fledged neomercantilism.

It turns out there is a crying need for "pro-growth legal and regulatory policies…rule of law and intolerance of corruption…strong financial systems…sound fiscal policies to support business activity; investments in health and education that improve the well-being and skills of the labor force and population as a whole;…and ideas that increase productivity and opportunity."

Evidently, the writers are closer to Karl Polanyi--who saw markets as unnatural orders instituted from above by states--than they are to any real free-market economist. And suddenly, quite a lot of "command-and-control" made possible by "the heavy hand of government" is just the thing to create and institute the free markets we are hearing about.

The U.S. will, for example, spend and regulate to control "greenhouse gases." The Bush administration will "increase spending on research and new conservation technologies, to a total of $4.5 billion--the largest sum being spent on climate change by any country in the world and a $700 million increase over last year`s budget."

Foreign aid, that bête noire of Old Right Republicans, will keep on pouring down "the foreign rat holes" (to use an insensitive Old Rightism). It is true, they say, that "Decades of massive development assistance have failed to spur economic growth in the poorest countries....." But, never mind, "We propose a 50 percent increase in the core development assistance given by the United States. While continuing our present programs, including humanitarian assistance based on need alone, these billions of new dollars will form a new Millennium Challenge Account for projects in countries whose governments rule justly, invest in their people, and encourage economic freedom."

This will of course be managed on a businesslike basis. These are Republicans, you know. In fact, we shall have outcome-based foreign giveaways, so to speak, and shall "insist upon measurable results to ensure that development assistance is actually making a difference in the lives of the world`s poor...."

Then, too, we shall "improve the effectiveness of the World Bank and other development banks in raising living standards...." And how about that "proposed 18 percent increase in the U.S. contributions to the International Development Association (IDA)--the World Bank`s fund for the poorest countries--and the African Development Fund"? In addition, "[e]very project, every loan, every grant must be judged by how much it will increase productivity growth in developing countries" and more aid will be "provided in the form of grants instead of loans."

Economic growth "in Europe and Japan is vital to U.S. national security interests.... European efforts to remove structural barriers in their economies are particularly important in this regard, as are Japan`s efforts to end deflation and address the problems of non-performing loans in the Japanese banking system.... International flows of investment capital are needed to expand the productive potential of these economies" [my emphasis].

Translation: Any remaining barriers to the Open Door for U.S. exports (never mind that the door does not always swing both ways) must be battered down. Japan must somehow re-inflate, so that the game of coordinated international inflation through central banking can return to normal. The bankers are counting on us.

There is much more in the manifesto about U.S.-defined "free trade." The discussion is so intertwined with "seizing initiatives," curing AIDS, priming the IMF pump, and flogging the WTO, that I cannot summarize it all here. One item does stand out, however: "Enforce trade agreements and laws against unfair practices. Commerce depends on the rule of law; international trade depends on enforceable agreements."

Translation: This is mercantilism, you idiots, and the U.S. in its wisdom will license state-supported cartels everywhere in the world, cutting those who cooperate in on the action. No one else may do so. He who lives outside this brave new world is an outlaw.

At this point, one begins to see, off in the distance, John Dewey in a pith helmet, advising a team of defense intellectuals in spiritual communion with Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and W. W. Rostow. Now we must "ecure public health" and promote education and literacy. Thus "[t]he United States will increase its own funding for education assistance by at least 20 percent with an emphasis on improving basic education and teacher training in Africa." The World Bank, it is implied, will move into this area, too. In our spare time, we shall deal with AIDS and undertake "to aid agricultural development."

There are a few other moments of unintended clarity in the manifesto. "Enhance energy security. We will strengthen our own energy security and the shared prosperity of the global economy by working with our allies, trading partners, and energy producers to expand the sources and types of global energy supplied, especially in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, Central Asia, and the Caspian region" [my emphasis]. Yes: all that oil; it really ought to be in the hands of chaps the chaps can trust.
It takes a lot of big government, apparently, to bring those free markets into being.

IV. Big Government Conservatism
To win the rather under-specified war, the U.S. must now take up nation-building, a thing Bush the candidate said would be avoided. This is because "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones." On the face of it, this means that few-to-no states actually threaten us militarily. Absent U.S. meddling, which creates its own monsters, one might think that world rulership is the last thing America ought to take up. It would certainly not be necessary for our very survival.

Since we have meddled and have, unbidden, created enemies, the latter take advantage of weak states on whose soil they can base themselves, so the writers say. Clearly, nothing so boring and bourgeois as giving up meddling would do. Instead, "[o]nce the regional campaign localizes the threat to a particular state, we will help ensure the state has the military, law enforcement, political, and financial tools necessary to finish the task."

We, and our loyal European footmen, "must help strengthen Africa`s fragile states, help build indigenous capability to secure porous borders, and help build up the law enforcement and intelligence infrastructure to deny havens for terrorists." Yes, "porous borders" are very, very bad in Africa, just as they are very, very good in the American southwest.

There is much pro forma belligerence in the manifesto. Thus, the U.S. will "disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations" via "direct and continuous action," "identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders." Further, the U.S. "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists," thereby "denying further sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists by convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities" [my emphasis].

I have underscored "compelling," above, to alert readers that this is a new buzzword especially favored in Air Force journals. It sounds so much nicer than "coercion" or "bombing," don`t you think? Of course, "compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities," as defined for them by a third party--no matter how historically exceptional and noble that party is--suggests that the compelled states are not "sovereign" after all.

But then how could anyone or anything be even fictitiously sovereign without license from the Great Khan in Worldville-on-the-Potomac?

The manifesto brags that "[t]his Administration has proposed the largest government reorganization since the Truman Administration created the National Security Council and the Department of Defense.... [E]mergency management systems will be better able to cope not just with terrorism but with all hazards."

Along with the pro forma belligerence comes some pro forma realism. Thus, the manifesto authors agree, "No doctrine can anticipate every circumstance in which U.S. action--direct or indirect--is warranted. We have finite political, economic, and military resources to meet our global priorities." Further: "The United States should be realistic about its ability to help those who are unwilling or unready to help themselves."

Yes, it is always a hard thing to have boundless, noble objectives and limited resources.

The Bushie manifesto also hands out a few warnings. A word to the wise is said to be sufficient. Thus, the problems between the Israelis and Palestinians must solve themselves forthwith. There is a carrot alongside the stick, however, in that the U.S. will help "a reformed Palestinian government on economic development, increased humanitarian assistance and a program to establish, finance, and monitor a truly independent judiciary." Do right and get your own state.

Israel, too, gets a warning: "Israel forces need to withdraw fully to positions they held prior to September 28, 2000. And consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop." No one should place any substantial bets on how likely it is that Israel will comply with these demands.

After some flattering words in favor of India, the policy paper turns to China. That country must shape up and do it our way, for they will find that "social and political freedom is the only source of that greatness." Right now, China "is following an outdated path that, in the end, will hamper its own pursuit of national greatness"; that is, China is "pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region."

Which is to say: China is behaving like any other large "sovereign" state, but given that the U.S. has ruled local sovereignty and self-defense out of order, any Chinese aspirations for regional power can only be seen as directed at the U.S. The U.S. leaders--pantheists who wish to pervade and subsume the universe--necessarily regard everything not subject to their command-and-control structures as a challenge.

V. Throwing Rocks in Glass Houses

The last item brings us to the unintended hilarities in the manifesto. Some passages fairly leap off the page under pressure of world-historical hypocrisy and internal contradiction. One wonders how official spokesmen for the U.S. government can write such things without wincing. A few samples must suffice.

"The enemy is terrorism--premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents." Dresden, Hiroshima, Amiriya… ?

"Indonesia took courageous steps to create a working democracy and respect for the rule of law." Indonesia also "took courageous steps" in the mid-1960s to install a military dictatorship, which killed off at least 500,000 so-called "communists," and did so with the support of the U.S. during the High Cold War.

"Unrestrained narcotics trafficking could imperil the health and security of the United States...." The U.S. government knows a few things about raising money for special operations in that fashion, but, never mind, that was the Cold War. All is forgiven.

"The United States will make no concessions to terrorist demands and strike no deals with them. We make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them." The U.S. makes concessions to and deals with terrorists every day of the week. The operative distinction is between those who take U.S. orders and those who defy them.

"Today our enemies have seen the results of what civilized nations can, and will, do against regimes that harbor, support, and use terrorism to achieve their political goals. Afghanistan has been liberated...." Yes, of course: "civilized" warfare and "liberation" into the hands of new and different warlords.

"Rogue states... brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers; display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party; are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction... sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands."

This reads like a description of U.S. policy since 1945 until it comes to the phrase about hating the United States. On the other hand, the U.S. government does seem to find the American people quite unsatisfactory, hence its ongoing efforts to reform and re-educate them. Whether these efforts involve "hate," I do not know.

"The presence of American forces overseas is one of the most profound symbols of the U.S. commitments to allies and friends." No comment is possible.

"To contend with uncertainty and to meet the many security challenges we face, the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. forces." Yes, but we already have a presence in Japan and South Korea. Are our farsighted leaders setting their sights on Kamchatka, perhaps?

The Bushian gospel is about the U.S. state and elite. It is about the ruling groups` fears and aspirations, as objectified and projected onto the world, with the world held responsible when U.S. wishes and fantasies are not fulfilled. Calvin Coolidge famously said, and is ridiculed by historians for saying, that "the business of America is business."

The business of the present U.S. leadership is empire. Coolidge--a bad president according to most historians--issued no world-improving manifestoes. Between its ideological mania and its material interests, the present U.S. governing class is leading us into some interesting disasters. The manifesto should be a wakeup call.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph R. Stromberg holds the JoAnn B. Rothbard chair in history at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Send him MAIL and see his Mises.org Daily Articles Archive.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf

[Joerver]

Aus aktuellem Anlass

"George`s Song"
(author unknown)


Sung to the tune:
"If You`re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands"

If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi
And the bank takes back your Audi
And the TV shows are all bawdy,
Bomb Iraq.

If the corporate scandals growin`, bomb Iraq.
And your ties to them are showin`, bomb Iraq.
If the smoking gun ain`t smokin`
We don`t care, and we`re not jokin`.
That Saddam will soon be croakin`,
Bomb Iraq.

Even if we have no allies, bomb Iraq.
From the sand dunes to the valleys, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections;
Let`s look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

While the globe is slowly warming, bomb Iraq.
Yay! the clouds of war are storming, bomb Iraq.
If the ozone hole is growing,
Some things we prefer not knowing.
(Though our ignorance is showing),
Bomb Iraq.

So here`s one for dear old daddy, bomb Iraq,
From his favorite little laddy, bomb Iraq.

Saying no would look like treason.
It`s the Hussein hunting season.
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.

__________________________________________________________________

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

BushCo Wants You Stupefied
Please remain mesmerized by grainy live footage, ignore appalling larger schemes. Thank you
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 28, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/



This is not the time to get complacent and lazy and reactionary and wallow in ennui and sadness and bourbon-fueled fatalism, the sense that all is hurling down the road to hell in a hot Republican-drenched handbasket. Tempting as that is.

This is not the time to be all shrugging and dismissive and think whelp, that`s it then, nothing we can really do anymore, just sit back and watch the carnage I guess, the switch has been thrown and the snarling war machine is churning in high gear and the mass herd is mewling and subdued and misled and aggro and stupefied.

And therefore you can only sit there and guzzle your scotch and go numb and sigh, flip around to see which frantic network has the best video of windblown reporters riding high on U.S. tanks and yelling about food shortages and lack of sleep as they rumble nobly through the desert.

This is not the time to get thoughtless and simpleminded. The trigger has indeed been tripped and we are right this minute slaughtering thousands in Iraq and dozens of US soldiers are being killed by Bush`s "peaceful" order and ooh look, stray bullets and raging dust storms and bedraggled reporters tagging along, all wide-eyed and chaotic and no one really having any idea what, exactly, is really happening.

Shock and awe it ain`t. Grunt and bluster and confuse and choke on dust and realize, bitterly, sadly, holy Christ with a Koran and a $300 billion national budget deficit, this is gonna be ugly, and violent, and long, and fruitless, it most definitely is.

The idea is that you will be more sympathetic. The idea is that by allowing all those stunned reporters such unprecedented access, by embedding them right smack in the middle of the action, amidst select squads of equally wide-eyed, barely-old-enough-to-drink soldiers, the reporters won`t be able to help but be more pro-military, and goodly Americans will feel sympathy and support the troops and, by extension, the entire insane and unnecessary war. Is it working?

And thus Rummy and Shrub can smirk and nod to each other and, quite literally, get away with murder, their PR coup working beautifully, so far, because you don`t see the real action. You no longer see the big picture. You are no longer paying attention.

And they most definitely do not want you to see. No actual dead bodies, no gutted buildings, no burned and decapitated children, no blood, no true bleak horrors of war, just tired soldiers and water trucks and big U.S. tanks rumbling patriotically through the dust toward Baghdad. Go team!

As meanwhile, just outside the purview of the reporter`s grainy video phones, just beyond the jerky shots of video-game night skies and soldiers milling about, military supply contractors are gloating like leeches, Dick Cheney`s old cronies over at Halliburton are cheering like pirates, as they shamelessly snag the multimillion-dollar gov`t contracts to build big tent-cities for our troops and to put out all those nasty oil well fires in Iraq, just like they did in Iraq War I. Oh yes they did. Did you miss that little detail?

Or how about Bush`s corporate pals, literally lining up at the trough for their share of nearly a billion dollars in semi-secret contracts (and as much as $25-100 billion, eventually) to "rebuild" Iraq, which you can hereby translate to mean: install nice puppet government, build a few thousand oil rigs, refurbish a few nice palaces for the twins. To begin with.

Then there`s all those pesky CIA analysts, still grumbling aloud about how ShrubCo has been twisting intelligence reports on Iraq to bolster the war. Did you miss that one?

About how they were particularly mortified when Junior publicly claimed that Iraq was restarting its nuke program, trying to buy uranium from Niger? Claims which were based on, ahem, painfully bogus documents? Whoops. Can`t have that making too many headlines. Hey look! Dust storms and cool tracer bullets over Baghdad! Look! Please?

What about the much-bandied term "coalition forces"? The networks love that term, and Bush loves them using it. Reminder: There are no coalition forces. It is the U.S., Britain, a handful of Aussies. That`s it. That is not a coalition, that`s a rogue clump. The only true coalition is on the anti-war side. Shhh.

This is exactly the time to watch very, very carefully. This is exactly the time to discuss further and passionately, with everyone and anyone, what it is you are really seeing, what it might mean, and, more importantly, what they are omitting.

This is the time to protest harder, to write letters and journals, to think deeply and carefully, to donate to Oxfam and Truthout and FAIR and the like, to rethink what it really means to be an American in the new draconian, power-mad, kill-em-all preemtive-death Bush world order.

This is exactly the time to pay closer attention. To filter and stay infomed and get your info from more than, say, the uber-patriotic, holy goddamn but we love our Shrubster Fox News. Look around. The perspective is there. Activate the filters. Read up.

This is the time to fully feel those karmic blows, the ethical sucker punches, as the ShrubCo doens`t even bother to try and hide the obvious cronyism, the White House actually having the smirking gall to deny that Cheney`s Halliburton connection -- and his lovely $1 mil per-annum stipend for simply being a former Iraq-loving oil exec of the company -- had any bearing on the aforementioned oil-fire contract. Right. Believe that one, do you? I`ve got some prime downtown Baghdad condos to sell you, cheap.

Feel the bludgeoning. Because they figure you won`t even notice. Or care. Look honey, poor hardscrabble Iraqi children looking desperate, and goodly U.S. soldiers delivering fresh water to them. Isn`t that patriotic? Tanking U.S. economy? Deep recession? Intense, almost universal anti-American rage roiling all over the world like a bitter virus? Pay no heed. Just look at the startling pictures. Be mezmerized. Don`t you support our troops? Of course you do. Genius PR, is what it is. One big reality-TV recruitment video.

Remember, this is an administration who truly believes you are insanely stupid. A full week into the war, and still no sign of WMDs? No sign of SCUD missiles, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, or chemical weapons? Oh well.

This is why you cannot be overwhelmed by montage images. The shock and awe is not for Iraq. It`s for you. The shock of all those dusty violent videophone images, awe at how you are seeing a mere raw sliver of the real-time action, live, straight from on the front lines. Are you stupefied yet? Are you waving your flag? ShrubCo certainly hopes so. Because if not, you might actually see what`s really happening.

And god -- Bush`s reborn righteous Christian God, that is -- knows, they can`t have that.


sfgate.com/newsletters.

©2003 SF Gate

[Joerver]

Two children lay dead in the morgue of Al Nur hospital, following a bomb that landed in a busy market in the Al Shula`a district of West Baghdad Friday March 28, 2003, killing dozens, according to local hospital sources, and wounding scores. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

March 29, 2003
Under the Armor

or the first few days of the war, the story belonged to the gadgeteers and their gadgets, to the high-tech tools that now weave the American military into a seamless web of information and destruction. The opening forays last week had all the appearance of a push-button campaign, a laptop conflict that allowed cruise missiles fired from ships in the Persian Gulf to take out specific buildings in Baghdad. When Americans began watching the war, as we now do hour by hour, we witnessed a saga of hardware and software.

But what we`re seeing, especially in the images from Nasiriya and Basra, is an age-old reminder about the reality of war. Under the armor there is still only the flesh and blood and sinew of young soldiers. It makes no difference whether that armor is the shield of an ancient Greek soldier or the electronics jamming of a modern attack aircraft. The history of warfare is the history of young men, and now women, too, experiencing the concussion of combat. And though this war is being waged in ways that would have seemed futuristic even as recently as the last gulf war, there are still scenes playing out that look, as one television general put it, like Okinawa in 1945. The systems that guide artillery fire have changed drastically, but a small cluster of young men gathered around their howitzer still look much as they did even in World War I.

There is a far more atavistic element playing out in this war as well. It`s easy to see the exhaustion that wears down these troops as they move, heavily clad, in a hot sandstorm, for instance. But the emotions that sweep through the soldiers as they take fire and return it are invisible. Every one of them has been trained to do the job in as professional a manner as possible. Part of the purpose of such rigorous training is to keep that internal eye, that memory of who you were before military life and combat, from interfering with the practitioner of warfare.

Of all the technologies that have changed warfare, few have changed it as much as the medical care that soldiers now get in the field. We now take it for granted that a soldier wounded in Iraq will find himself hospitalized within a day or two in Germany. We also take it for granted that none but the most grievous wounds are life-threatening, though in every war before the middle of the 20th century, any wound could lead to death, and disease itself was more likely to kill than enemy fire. Now, from home, we watch those soldiers being carried to a hospital in Germany. They look up from their litters, from someplace they have never known before, and you realize that under the body armor there is still the body, something that has not changed at all since men first went to war.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

March 28, 2003
US-Europe ties sliding into a black hole
By Stephen Fidler


Europhiles in Washington - there are more than you might think - are hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

A profound pessimism has settled over the capital over prospects that rapid repairs can be effected to the transatlantic relationship damaged in the debate over war in Iraq.

The gloom in part stems from the realisation that there are deep divisions over the role of the United Nations in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

France and Germany have so far shown a deep unwillingness to lend any legitimacy to the invasion by endorsing a US-British occupation.

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

They are also pressing for the UN, rather than the military occupiers or someone anointed by them, to be at the centre of transitional government in Iraq.

Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany`s ambassador to Washington said this week that it was essential a UN flag fly over Baghdad.

"It`s important for us but it`s primarily important for you. I believe it would be a historic mistake if those who don`t want to see the UN flag fly anywhere any more will prevail," he told a Washington meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations.

President Bush has conceded an unspecified role for the UN. But his administration - and this view is not limited to its hawks - is not inclined to allow a big role to governments that have obstructed it.

Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution argues that financial arguments that gave the European Union leverage in previous post-war transitions, such as Kosovo, are unlikely to apply here.

Then, the US Congress penny-pinched over aid. With Iraq, he said, US lawmakers "may well say: `We just spent $100bn on this war, what`s a couple of billion more?` "

But the division is not just about the UN, it is also about Nato and other strategic matters. While for France, tension may arise out of a Gaullist idea to challenge the US, for Germany the issues are different.

Mr Ischinger decried the US description of Nato as a "toolbox" out of which the US picks and chooses what it needs for operations.

"I promise you if you decide to do this it will be there, but after you have taken three or four tools out of it, it will be empty," he said.

Europe, he said, had a big stake in some strategic decisions that the US was taking, for example on Europe`s doorstep in a Middle East that the US says it wants to democratise.

Yet transatlantic discussions were not taking place on such strategic issues, he said.

He urged that Europe be "invited into the process of defining and adopting the strategy and not only in the process of implementing the strategy".

Yet the prospects for that seem dim, when even Richard Haass, the Atlanticist who is the outgoing head of policy planning at the State Department, says that "Germany has marginalised itself" by its actions over Iraq.

Other less-strategic reasons for pessimism abound, such as my colleague Guy Dinmore`s report today that the Pentagon is drawing up a blacklist of companies that operate in Iran so as to exclude them from reconstruction in Iraq.

The list is not yet formal US policy, but it emphasises that US-European relations are not exactly top priority at the Pentagon.

A final reason for pessimism has to do with the personality of George W.Bush.

His is an administration for which loyalty seems almost the cardinal virtue.

For those who stand by him, such as Tony Blair, he makes huge efforts. But this character trait has a flipside: retribution for those he views as letting him down - such as Paul O`Neill, the former Treasury secretary, who had his own ideas about taxation and expressed them publicly.

Washington is already amusing itself by imagining the body language at a summit in early June when the leaders of the Group of Eight are next due to meet.

The G8 is split right down the middle - the hosts, France, with Germany, Canada and Russia, arrayed against the US, UK, Italy and Japan. The White House is already preparing a snub. If Mr Bush goes, he will stay over the border in Switzerland.



© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2003.
"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of The Financial Times

[Joerver]

Erst war ich mir nicht sicher, ob dieser Artikel ernst gemeint ist, er ist es.
Verbreitung des Christentums mit Feuer und Schwert? Bonifatius der seine Axt an die Eiche der Ungläubigen legt und dafür erschlagen wird.
Bonifatius Bush Retter der Christenheit? Bei seinem religiösen Wahn wäre dies schon möglich.
J.


Plans Under Way for Christianizing the Enemy

BY MARK O`KEEFE
c.2003 Newhouse News Service



More Mark O`Keefe Stories


Two leading evangelical Christian missionary organizations said Tuesday that they have teams of workers poised to enter Iraq to address the physical and spiritual needs of a large Muslim population.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the country`s largest Protestant denomination, and the Rev. Franklin Graham`s Samaritan`s Purse said workers are near the Iraq border in Jordan and are ready to go in as soon as it is safe. The relief and missionary work is certain to be closely watched because both Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention have been at the heart of controversial evangelical denunciations of Islam, the world`s second largest religion.

Both organizations said their priority will be to provide food, shelter and other needs to Iraqis ravaged by recent war and years of neglect. But if the situation presents itself, they will also share their Christian faith in a country that`s estimated to be 98 percent Muslim and about 1 percent Christian.

"We go where we have the opportunity to meet needs," said Ken Isaacs,international director of projects for Samaritan`s Purse, located in Boone, N.C. "We do not deny the name of Christ. We believe in sharing him in deed and in word. We`ll be who we are."

Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists` International Mission Board, said $250,000 has already been spent to provide immediate needs, such as blankets and baby formula. Much more will follow, along with a more overt spiritual emphasis.

"Conversations about spiritual things will come about as people ask about our faith," said Kelly, based in Richmond, Va. "It`s not going to be like what you might see in other countries where there`s a preaching service held outside clinics and things like that."

Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, is urging caution for the two groups, as well as other evangelical organizations planning to go into Iraq.

"Evangelicals need to be sensitive to the circumstances of this country and its people," said Cizik, based in Washington, D.C. "If we are perceived as opportunists we only hurt our cause. If this is seen as religious freedom for Iraq by way of gunboat diplomacy, is that helpful? I don`t think so. If that`s the perception, we lose."

Graham, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, has been less diplomatic about Islam than his father has been. Two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Franklin Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion" during an interview on NBC, the television network. In his book published last year, "The Name," Graham wrote that "The God of Islam is not the God of the Christian faith." He went on to say that "the two are different as lightness and darkness."

On the eve of the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis last year, the Rev. Jerry Vines, a former denomination president, told several thousand delegates that Islam`s Allah is not the same as the God worshipped by Christians. "And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah`s not going to turn you into a terrorist," Vines said.

Widespread condemnation of those comments followed from other Protestant leaders as well as from Catholic and Jewish groups. The Graham and Vines statements even created a problem for President Bush, who has called Islam a "religion of peace."

Bush, an evangelical Christian himself, has close ties to both Franklin Graham, who gave a prayer at his inauguration, and Southern Baptists, who are among his most loyal political supporters.

Isaacs, who works for Franklin Graham, refused to comment about his boss` views of Islam, except to say, "most of Franklin`s work is to the Muslim world and those are sincere acts of love, concern and compassion."

In a written statement, Graham said: "As Christians, we love the Iraqi people, and we are poised and ready to help meet their needs. Our prayers are with the innocent families of Iraq, just as they are with our brave soldiers and leaders."

Isaacs said Samaritan`s Purse has assembled a team of nine Americans and Canadians that includes veterans of war-relief projects in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Rwanda and Somalia. The teams include a doctor, an engineer and a water specialist.

They will bring resources that include a system that can provide drinking water for up to 20,000 people, material to build temporary shelters for more than 4,000 families, packages of household items for 5,000 families, and kits designed to meet the general medical needs of 100,000 people for three months.

So far, there`s no budget for the effort because it`s so fluid, said Jeremy Blume, a Samaritan`s Purse spokesman, but donors are being asked to help. A Southern Baptist fund-raising drive is under way to help underwrite the cost, Kelly said. Both groups said only private donations have funded their plans thus far, with no government assistance in the works.

Southern Baptists, representing a denomination of 16 million members, have workers in Jordan waiting to help refugees. But so far, few refugees have arrived, perhaps because it`s still too difficult for much of the population to maneuver between warring militaries on their way to the border, Kelly said.

Baptist Men, a national organization devoted to providing disaster relief work, has promised to send volunteers from the United States "on a moment`s notice," Kelly said.

As soon as they gain access to northern Iraq, teams will go, Kelly said, with plans of feeding up to 10,000 or more people a day.

"The hope is that as the war front moves and the situation in the outlying areas improves, we`ll be able to send mobile teams in.

"Our understanding of relief ministries is that anytime you give a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus you`ve shared God`s love in a real physical way. That also raises the question as to why you did that. When people ask you, you explain that it`s because of the love of God that has been poured out into my life and I have a deep desire that you know that same love as well."



(Mark O`Keefe can be contacted at [e-mail])

[xyxo]

So viele zivile Tote hat Bush zur Zeit auf dem Gewissen
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[rightnow]

hi joerver
# `43

immer wieder gab es u. gibt es religiös motivierte kriege-
leider !

ob jüngst in irland: zwischen katholiken - protestanten,
oder im mittelalter die "spanische inquisition" !

besonders letztere zeigt zeitversetzt gewisse parallen zur missionierung durch bush`s pseudoreligion.

um eine parallelität herauszustellen, ist es jedoch nötig,
die "innere entwicklungslogik" aus dem rein innerkirchlichen(damals) in das heutige weltliche (= politisch instrumentalisierte ) herauszuheben u. aufzuzeigen:

damals war eine zeit in der die christenheit zu feldzügen nach jerusalem aufrief in ihren predigten, z..b. durch
bernhard von clairveaux!

so`ne art hl. krieg, legitimiert durch "gott selbst"; stichwortu. gerechtfertigt durch "geistliche", die der "höheren Sprache mächtig waren ": dem latein.

dh., das volk konnte nicht mitreden u. war auf die "fundamentalistische" (verzweckte& instrumentalisiserte "schriftauslegung der geistlichen"
angewiesen: stichwort desinformation; volksverführung !



dies gipfelte in der schrift des sog. "hexenhammers", verfasst durch 2 dominikaner mönche!

dieser "hexenhammer" bildete die "geistige" grundlage zur


inquisition !

(= erzwingen von "geständnissen" durch ein dafür speziell zuständigen kirchlichen gerichts - mit anschliessender verbrennung der "ketzer" (="antiamerikaner", "kritikwer der "us-regierung" ?) auf dem scheiterhaufen.


der jesuit, friedrich von spee (nahe dem heutigen trier), nahm sein wissen der schriftauslegung zu hilfe
(= hirn einschalten, reflektieren, in frage stellen , eigene schlüsse ziehen , u. kam zu dem schluss, dass die inquisition nichts mit gottes wille zu tun hat.

er verfasste eine streitschrift unter einem pseudonym,
um aufzuklären.
dieser aufklärenden schrift -als gegnargument- zum hexxenhammer, ist die beendigung der inquisition zu verdanken !!!

gleich :
auflösung eines fehlgeleiten pseudoreligiösen wahns !


heute hat der "hexenhammer" (=pnac, patriot act I + II,
doctrine der neuen weltordnung...) nicht mehr "warzen im
gesicht", oder schlechte ernte als voraussetzung für die verbrennung, sondern:

- besitz von rohstoffen
- besitz militärischer macht
- wirtschaftliche stärke
- geldkraft
- islamische glaubensnagehörigkeit
- andersdenkende...,
um im gefängnis -ohne gerichtlichen beistand zu landen-
oder sogar als staat insgesamt militärisch angegriffen zu werden (=krieg !)

die heutige sprache ist zwar nicht latein, das "volk" kann selbst lesen -aber es ist immens wichtig "zwischen den zeilen" der ùs-inquistoren`zu lesen, um die desinformation zu entlarven!

vieeleicht kann man ein bisschen den us- filmemacher,
michael moore, mit f. spee damals vergleichen:

er als am,erikaner !!! klärt durch seine schriften (z.b. an presi gbw), filme, öffentliche statements schonungslos auf! (respekt, respekt )


solche menschen braucht amerika, um sich schnellst möglich wieder aus dem geddankengut "der kreuzzüge" zu verabschieden -am besten mit einem neuen presidenten nächstes jahr !



meinungsfreiheit ist lebensnotwendig, um das zusammenleben der verschiedenen kulturen zu ermöglichen!

völlig unnötig ist jedoch:

pseudoreligiös, fehlgeleiteter u. instrumentalisierter


grössenwahn !



ach ja noch was: will man schon den biblischen gott als grundlage nehmen -ohne zu verzerren, dann kann der widerspruch, himmelschreiender !!! nicht sein:

gesunde bibl. aussage ist:

gott will zum eigenständigen leben befreien -gwb, befreit vom eigenständigen leben - für immer = tod!



cu

rightnow

[SchwarzerLord]

DER IRAK ? - DAS SIND WIR !
Offener Brief der irakischen Opposition an die Menschen in Deutschland
Deutschland spricht vom Frieden. - Von unserem nicht. Seit 30 Jahren kennen wir keinen Frieden. Wohl aber zwei Kriege mit Millionen Toten. Das Regime, das wir bekämpfen, hat unsere Menschen mehrfach wie Insekten behandelt und mit Giftgas besprüht. Über 4 Millionen Menschen ins Exil gezwungen. Hunderttausende zwangsumgesiedelt und vertrieben. Allein in Irakisch Kurdistan zerstörte Saddam Hussein 4000 Dörfer. 182 000 Menschen sind spurlos verschwunden. Der unendlich andauernde, nie beendete Terror des Ba`th-Regimes richtete sich nicht nur nach außen, sondern vor allem auch nach innen.

Die unabhängige französische Menschenrechtsorganisation "Alliance Internationale pour la Justice" (AIJ) präsentiert die Liste jener Verbrechen, die im Irak seit Saddams Machtergreifung begangen wurden: Eine Million Tote, also 5 % der Bevölkerung, seien - kriegs- und embargounabhängig - seit 1979 dem Regime zum Opfer gefallen. Weitere 1,5 Mio. Menschen wurden zwangsweise innerhalb des Landes "umgesiedelt". Nicht zu vergessen die gewaltsame Trockenlegung der Marschgebiete des Flüsse-Deltas im Süden, als eines der größten ökologischen Verbrechen moderner Zeit. Dieser Terror ohne Ende findet tägliche Fortsetzung in der Zwangsvertreibung der Kurden in den vom Regime kontrollierten Gebieten nahe Kirkuk. In andauernden Militäroperationen gegen die Schiiten im Süden. Gipfelte allein in den vergangenen drei Jahren in der Enthauptung von mehreren hundert Frauen als angebliche "Prostituierte" und in den staatlich verordneten chirurgischen Amputationen der Zungen sogenannter Staatsfeinde.

Alle diese Verbrechen wurden von Europa und in den Ländern des Westens übersehen, geleugnet und überhört. Keine Friedensbewegung ging deshalb auf die Straße. Nicht einmal als beweisbar wurde, daß deutsche Waffen und Giftgastechnologie zu unserer Vernichtung geliefert worden waren, erhob sich Protest. Keine Delegation von Kirchenleuten oder Politikern besuchte das vernichtete Halabja. Unsere Opfer erfuhren bis auf diesen Tag keine Rehabilitation, oder Entwicklungshilfe. Niemand unterstützte uns bei unserem Kampf gegen die andauernde Diktatur. Gegen Krieg und Unterdrückung.

UNSER KAMPF FÜR DEMOKRATIE UND FRIEDEN

Aus eigener Kraft ergriffen die Menschen im Irak am Ende des zweiten Golfkriegs 1991 die Chance und rebellierten gegen Saddam Hussein. In vierzehn von achtzehn Provinzen des Irak befreiten wir uns. Erst als wir keinerlei äußere Unterstützung erfuhren, konnte der Volksaufstand mit brutaler Gewalt niedergeschlagen werden. Unter den Augen der damaligen Anti-Irak Koalition, die erst die Iraker zum Aufstand aufforderte, sie dann aber nicht unterstützte. Allein in Irakisch Kurdistan hatte die Freiheit Bestand. Das Land konnte weitgehend wiederaufgebaut werden und die Menschen konnten nun ohne Unterdrückung und Verfolgung leben. Jenseits der Diktatur wurden Meinungsfreiheit, soziale Versorgung und Linderung der Not möglich. Exemplarisch für den ganzen Irak wurde bewiesen: Entwicklung und friedliches Zusammenleben sind möglich, sobald das Regime verschwunden ist.

VIELE REDEN VOM FRIEDEN - WIR MEINEN UNSEREN

Noch nie in unserer jüngeren Geschichte waren wir so einig in allen grundlegenden Fragen, die den Irak und seine Zukunft betreffen. Kurden und Schiiten, Assyrer und Kommunisten und sunnitische Oppositionelle haben sich schon zu Beginn der 90er Jahre und vor kurzem erst in London auf ein Programm zur Transformation des Irak verständigt. Das Zweistromland soll ein demokratischer, föderaler und demilitarisierter Staat für alle seine Bürgerinnen und Bürger werden. Ein multiethnisches Territorium für Araber, Kurden, Assyrer, Turkmenen, Yeziden. Ein Land, in dem uneingeschränkt die Menschenrechte gelten sollen, wo alle gleiche Staatsbürgerrechte haben, wo jede Religion frei ausgeübt werden kann. Diese verbindliche Absicht auf einen föderalen Staat im Nahen Osten ist neu und bietet einen Schlüssel zur Neuordnung der Region. Nur Föderationen vermögen in Zukunft die grundlegenden Probleme der Vielvölkerstaaten des Nahen Ostens auf eine friedliche Perspetive für die Region dauerhaft zu lösen.

Seit längerem offerieren wir unsere Perspektiven und längst vorhandenen Programme der Öffentlichkeit und der Regierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Wo sie Nichtbeachtung und Ignoranz erfahren. "Instabilität", hören wir, sei die Folge unserer demokratischen Absichten. Als ob nicht jede geschichtliche Erneuerung immer auch anfangs ein Element der Instabilität hätte? Vom "Flächenbrand" ist die Rede. Als ob nicht gerade die irakische Diktatur der Garant für die Flächenbrände der Vergangenheit gewesen wäre? Der Irak würde in drei Teile gespalten, sagt man, dabei fordert keine einzige der oppositionellen Gruppen eine Separation. Ganz im Gegenteil erklären alle Irakis ihren ausdrücklichen Wunsch, in einem gemeinsamen demokratischen Staat eine neue Assoziation freier Menschen zu bilden. Weshalb in Deutschland diese Furcht vor der Freiheit im Irak?

Im Gegensatz zu namhaften Regierungen dieser Welt weigert sich die Bundesregierung immer noch, uns als legitime Vertreter des Irak zu empfangen. Gegen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen und Geschäfte mit den Repräsentanten der Diktatur aber hat sie nichts. Haben wir die Region seit Jahren destabilisiert, oder Saddam? Ist ihr VETO für den Frieden der Diktatur vielleicht nur eines für ihr Öl?

PERSPEKTIVEN FÜR EINEN NEUEN DEMOKRATISCHEN IRAK

Das Regime Saddam Hussein hat den Beweis längst erbracht: es ist nicht reformierbar. Die alleinige demokratische Perspektive ist der Sturz der Diktatur. Weder Franzosen noch Deutsche haben dazu bisher auch nur einen einzigen Vorschlag präsentiert. Diese Europäer hängen am Alten und favorisieren passiv den status quo des Regimes. Aus ökonomischen Gründen betreiben sie in Wahrheit die Rehabilitierung des Regimes. Auf unsere Kosten - für ihre Geschäfte mit ihrem alten Kunden Saddam Hussein.

Eine solche Rehabilitierung des Ba`th-Regimes, - mit oder ohne Saddam Hussein, - das ist ihre Moral, und nicht unsere. Die Menschen unseres Landes warten voller Verlangen und Sehnsucht auf die Beseitigung der Unterdrückung. Für die Menschen aller Nationen der Region, auch der in Israel und Palästina, gäbe es bei einem Wiedererstarken des Regimes keine wirkliche Hoffnung auf Frieden, Gerechtigkeit und eine menschliche Zukunft.

Wir legen heute unsere Pläne und Programme für einen neuen Irak aller Welt offen vor. Die zugleich zum Schlüssel für eine demokratische Neuordnung des gesamten Nahen Ostens werden könnten.

Wir appellieren an die Bundesregierung, die Medien und die Öffentlichkeit, uns endlich als Partner wahrzunehmen und uns zu unterstützen. Wir erwarten Hilfe bei unserem wichtigen Vorhaben. Das Zeichen setzen wir selber. Unabhängig. Überzeugt. Vereint.

Der Einmischung anderer Länder der Region, insbesondere der Türkei, bedarf es ausdrücklich nicht. Wir begrüßen alle Kräfte, die unsere Ziele und Absichten unterstützen. Gegen jede Bevormundung seitens Dritter sprechen wir uns aus.

Gerade Deutschland, daß in der Vergangenheit maßgeblich an der Aufrüstung des Irak mit chemischen und biologischen Waffen beteiligt war, die unserer Vernichtung dienten, hat eine besondere Verpflichtung gegenüber den Menschen im Irak. Bis heute warten wir auf ein demokratisches Signal der "Meister aus Deutschland".

Einen "Frieden", der nur die Verlängerung des Krieges gegen die Irakerinnen und Iraker bedeutet, benötigen wir nicht. Es ist der immerfort vorkommende Krieg gegen die irakische Bevölkerung, der endlich beendet werden muß.

Von diesem Ziel wird keiner uns abbringen können.

DER IRAK - DAS SIND WIR!

23. März 2003
KOALITION FÜR EINEN DEMOKRATISCHEN IRAK (KDI)

Quelle: http://www.wadinet.de/news/iraq/nw1318_deriraksindwir.htm

[Joerver]

Heute abend kommt auf Pro7 ein Film "The Skulls". Dieser Film beschäftigt sich mit einer fiktiven Uni-Verbindung. Ich weiß nicht, ob der Film gut ist, aber er weist auf die "Skull and Bones" und damit auf die Familie Bush. Hier die Geschichte der "Skull und Bones" aus dem New York Observer:

I Stole the Head of Prescott Bush! More Scary Skull and Bones Tales
by Ron Rosenbaum



What if I told you I’d stolen the skull of Prescott Bush, George W.’s grandfather? Snuck up to the Bush family burial plot in the depths of the night, dug up the coffin, cracked it open, yanked the skull off the skeleton and slipped away with it. How would you react? How would George W. Bush react?

I raise these questions to put in perspective the allegations against George W. Bush’s secret society, Skull and Bones, allegations that link the society and Governor Bush’s grandfather to the practice of grave robbing. I raise these questions to help put in perspective the bizarre-yet-true moment when George W. Bush’s uncle sought to offer the skull of a young child to an Apache tribal official in an apparent attempt to hush up a potential Bush family scandal. Should this skeleton in the Bush closet that was, in fact, part of a skeleton, be an issue in the Presidential campaign?

It seems like the grave-robbing allegation just will not die. A new source has come forward to substantiate a previous allegation involving Bush family patriarch Prescott Bush and to broaden the charge from one skull-snatching to a secret-society-wide Skull and Bones practice. And the source has added a further allegation: license-plate stealing. All of which paints a picture of a grave-robbing, plate-stealing crime spree of the privileged elite. Practices, including those of his own grandfather, candidate George W. should be called upon to disclaim or defend.

The new source, whom I’ll call (what else?) "Deep Skull," came forward in response to my appeal in the pages of The Observer recently ("Inside George W.’s Secret Crypt," March 27.) I had made a public appeal to the women of the legendary Skull and Bones all-girl break-in team. These were the intrepid women who had in the late 70’s slipped illicitly inside the sanctum sanctorum of the blue blood Old Boys network, the forbidding, windowless Egyptian-style crypt on the Yale campus in New Haven which Skull and Bones initiates call "the Tomb."

Two decades ago, one of the all-girl break-in team’s confederates had shown me the pictures taken inside the Tomb during the break-in. And very fetching pictures they were, one of my favorite being a kind of mock pajama party featuring two of the break-in team in Laura Ashley—like nightclothes and one in men’s pajamas clustered around the base of the Skull and Bones grandfather clock, which featured a skeleton hanging inside the glass pendulum case. One bare toe nudging an actual skull.

For strictly journalistic reasons, I was hoping one of these brave women would come forward and supply to me the photos of their successful raid on the crypt of the secret society that has for nearly two centuries shaped the character of the men who shaped the American character. You know the roll call: The pajama-clad ninjas were lounging in a place that had been the secret retreat of Presidents such as William Howard Taft and George Bush; Supreme Court Justices such as Potter Stewart; Secretaries of State such as Henry Stimson; diplomatic mandarins such as Averell Harriman and Robert Lovett; National Security advisers (and Bay of Pigs planners and Vietnam war architects) such as William and McGeorge Bundy; Senators such as Cooper, Chafee, Boren and Kerry, to name just a few; publishing magnates with names like Luce and Cowles; C.I.A. recruits William F. Buckley and William Sloane Coffin. There in the bowels of the Skull and Bones Tomb, to the accompaniment of occult male bonding rituals that involved baring their souls and, some say, their bodies, they’d spill their guts to each other, share their sexual histories together ... and rob skulls together?

That was the question raised again by Deep Skull. She’s a woman who was surreptitiously taken into the Tomb, contacted me, and her story is even more provocative because she was taken into the Tomb by an initiate–an unheard-of breach of the bloodcurdling vows of secrecy the Skull and Bones society demands of its members.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She was taken inside and was not only given a tour but given the secrets, which she has now passed on to me. But before we get to the question of stolen skulls, let me get to the story of the allegedly stolen license plates that I think helps put the grave-robbing charge against George W.’s society (and his grandfather) in context.

In my previous Observer piece on Skull and Bones, I’d spoken of the "the Room with the License Plates of Many States." I’d spoken of it in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way as a kind of corrective to all the grand conspiracy theories that have made the Tomb of Skull and Bones the epicenter of the Hidden Hand that secretly rules the world. My point was that the power of Skull and Bones was far from hidden–it was out there, in your face. I mean, even with the decline of the traditional WASP establishment, they stand a good chance of getting two initiates into the White House in a single decade. My point was also to counterbalance the focus on the deep WASP voodoo, the overlay of exotic and occult rituals that initiates, future presidents, all had to undergo: the stories of the nude mud wrestling, the naked coffin sexual confessionals, the close encounters with guys from Greenwich and Locust Valley dressed up as skeletons–all the mumbo jumbo of crypto-Masonic homosocial (if not homoerotic) bonding rituals.

And so I pointed instead to the photographs the break-in team had shown me of "the Room with the License Plates of Many States," as I dubbed it: "The kind of thing you’d expect to find in some second-tier midwestern frat house. A wall covered with a bunch of license plates. Gee, look at all the places the brothers have been! Get me a brewski!" But now I’m beginning to think I may have underestimated the true significance of the Room with the License Plates of Many States. Now I think it may, in fact, be the key to understanding the Skull and Bones mindset. What changed my mind was my encounter with Deep Skull, who sent me the following missive, some of whose identifying details I’ve removed:

"In the late 1970’s I had a boyfriend who was tapped [for Bones] although he didn’t really fit the profile because he seemed a bit of a loser in the way of a John O’Hara character … Anyway, he took me inside … Alas, I didn’t pay very close attention because perhaps not being a Yalie … I didn’t know what the big deal was, but in regard to the license plate room which was a kind of a foyer or mud room to the right of the entrance I seem to recall that the reason for the plates was that they all bore the numbers 322 [the mythical date of the founding of the Skull and Bones "order," which traces itself to the death of Demosthenes in 322 B.C.], and that it was the obligation of the S&B boys to confiscate such plates when spotted … If I can be of any further assistance feel free to contact me at the above address and phone number."

Needless to say, I did contact her. She is a well-regarded professional whose work has been praised by some well-known cultural figures, and she told me, on condition of anonymity, much more that was fascinating about her penetration of the sanctum of Skull and Bones–but let’s dwell for a moment on the license plates. No, it’s not the Bay of Pigs (we’ll get to the curious Skull and Bones connection to that tragedy in a moment). But it’s more than trivial. It’s a lesson in the immunity that privilege can confer. Say you’re an inner-city kid, not shielded by privilege, who’s sent to jail for a similar "confiscation." It’s not trivial to you.

And come to think about it, what about all those judges, all those lawyers and legislators who pass through the Room with the "Confiscated" License Plates of Many States, the ones who are sworn to uphold the law, the ones who sentence kids to jail for thefts when they’re not protected by the shield of privilege and the padlocked doors of the Skull and Bones Tomb? Skull and Bones is supposed to be the place where the best and brightest of the elite and privileged develop character and breeding. But the practice of "confiscating" plates would suggest it breeds the kind of character with a contempt for the law, except when it’s applied to the transgressions of the lower orders.


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Whose Child Do They Have?

Now let’s examine the controversy over the confiscated skulls to see if what we now know about confiscated plates can illuminate the question of confiscated pates, so to speak.

Consider first the prevalence of death, grave, skeleton and skull imagery at the heart of the psychic bonding ritual that has made Skull and Bones such a powerful influence on people like George W.

The skeletal grave-digging imagery of Skull and Bones was there from the 1832 beginning, imported from Germany by Skull and Bones founder General Alfred Russell, who seems to have adopted much of the iconography and death’s-head philosophy from the German Lodges of Freemasonry. The Germanic influence on Skull and Bones may have extended to some less savory secret societies than the Freemasons. Hitler’s SS was, of course, known for using skull-and-crossbones insignia, which some say derived from the same German Masonic sources–a connection that, according to one report, has not gone unrecognized by the initiates of "the Order." Back in 1989, noted author, editor and raconteur Steven L. Aronson published an essay on Skull and Bones that quoted a member of what seems to be the same all-girl break-in team.

"The most shocking thing," the source told Mr. Aronson, "and I say this because I do think it’s sort of important–I mean President Bush does belong to Skull and Bones … there is like a little Nazi shrine inside. One room on the second floor has a bunch of swastikas, kind of an SS macho Nazi iconography. Somebody should ask President Bush about the swastikas in there."

Out of fairness it’s possible to conceive that what this woman saw was captured Nazi memorabilia rather than a shrine–several secret societies at Yale are said to boast of possessing Hitler’s silverware, for instance. But that does not appear to be the impression this woman got. And so her suggestion–"Somebody should ask President Bush about the swastikas in there"–might be just as relevant to George W., who would know about the nature of the "shrine" she describes.

On Sunday, two days before The Observer went to press, I faxed a detailed summary of the questions raised in this story to Bush press aide Dan Bartlett, and asked for comment by press time, midday Tuesday. No reply was forthcoming.

Now let’s proceed to the relationship between the Bush family and the skull of Geronimo–and the skull of an unidentified child. One of the sensational disclosures Deep Skull made to me, one of the secrets vouchsafed to her by the initiate who took her into the Tomb, was about the role of the skulls that decorate the inner walls of the Tomb.

Once having passed the Room with the ("Confiscated") License Plates of Many States, she said, upon entering the main room of the Tomb, she noticed mantelpieces decorated with "loads of skulls." Human skulls, each bearing a name plate. Her attention was immediately drawn, by her initiate escort, to what she described as a kind of "aquarium-like glass case filled with what looked like turquoise chips" surmounted by a skull. A skull she said was identified by her guide as the skull of a great Native American warrior. She recalled it as Cochise, but says after 20 years that it could well have been Geronimo.

Her initiate guide explained to her, she told me, that in order to prove their mettle and perhaps to bond them in mutual guilt over participation in an illicit act, each class of 15 new initiates to Skull and Bones were required to dig up, to "confiscate," the skull of a famous person and bring it to the Tomb to be enshrined in its skull collection. It makes you wonder what other famous dead people are missing their skulls.

Here’s where the Bush family involvement in the grave-robbing allegation begins. In 1986, someone–a still-anonymous unknown source–sent an excerpt from a privately printed Skull and Bones document to the chairman of the San Carlos Apache tribe in Arizona, one Ned Anderson. The document was entitled A Continuation of the History of Our Order for the Century Celebration. Its author, I have since learned, was Skull and Bones member F.O. Matthiessen, later a Harvard professor renowned for his groundbreaking studies of classic 19th-century American literature. I’ve also learned that the original of the document reposes now in a Harvard library where, under an agreement with Matthiessen’s executors and Skull and Bones, it is not available to the public.

The document is an account of a "mad expedition" by George W.’s grandfather Prescott Bush and two other Skull and Bones men to the grave of Geronimo "to bring to the Tomb its most spectacular ‘crook,’ the skull of Geronimo, the Indian chief who had taken 49 white scalps. … [Prescott] Bush entered and started to dig. The skull was fairly clean, having only some flesh inside and a little hair."

I was recently able to confirm, from a copy of an official Skull and Bones directory (whose provenance I can’t disclose), that in fact George W.’s grandfather Prescott was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, site of Geronimo’s tomb, in 1918 at the U.S. Army artillery training school there, along with Ellery James and Neil Mallon, the other two men mentioned as part of the tomb-raiding party.

Note the language: They say they’ll bring back to the Tomb "its most spectacular ‘crook.’" Which suggests that the Tomb contains an array of other somewhat less spectacular but similarly stolen skulls. In fact, shortly after the Geronimo-skull story appeared in print, and after Ned Anderson, the Apache tribal leader, had enlisted the aid of his senator, John McCain, to try to set up a meeting with then Vice President George Bush, another allegation about a similar raid for "crook" skulls surfaced. A group of men in El Paso claimed to have proof that, back in 1923, five Skull and Bones men put up a total of $25,000 to pay for the acquisition of the skull of Pancho Villa. Mark Singer investigated the El Paso—Pancho Villa skull-robbery allegation for The New Yorker in 1989 and ended up somewhat skeptical, as am I.

But in the course of his highly diverting account of the Pancho Villa skull claim, Mr. Singer lets drop an astonishing detail about the parallel Geronimo skull-recovery attempt: a remarkable report of a face-to-face, indeed face-to-skull, meeting between the Apache tribal representative, Ned Anderson, and representatives of Skull and Bones, including George Bush’s brother Jonathan!

According to Mr. Singer, Endicott Peabody Davison, a lawyer described as a designated spokesman for the Russell Trust Association, the Skull and Bones corporate shell, described the "Century Celebration" grave-robbing document as authentic–but the raid itself "apocryphal." Nonetheless, "in 1986 [Davison] and other representatives of Skull and Bones–among them George Bush’s brother Jonathan–met with Anderson. They brought a skull and offered it to Anderson, but he declined because it seemed not to be the same one he had seen in photographs surreptitiously provided by an anonymous dissident member of Bones. The nose and eye cavities didn’t match. Also Anderson took offense at a document that Davison wanted him to sign, which stipulated that neither the Apaches nor Skull and Bones would publicly discuss the whole business."

I was fascinated by this account: Soon to be President Bush’s brother offering the Apaches a skull their father was said to have stolen! Demanding the Apaches be sworn to silence presumably to protect the Bush family as well as Bones. But looking further into the episode I found an even more extraordinary detail about that face-to-skull meeting: the Skull of the Unknown Child. It appeared in an earlier account of the Geronimo controversy that first ran in 1988 in the Arizona Republic. In it, Republic reporter Paul Brinkley-Rogers reveals another fact about the document the Bush/Bones delegation asked the Apaches to sign: "Anderson called the document ‘very insulting to Indians.’ [He] also said he was confused and annoyed because the document said that Skull and Bones members had submitted the skull to ‘an expert in New Haven’ who determined that the remains were those of a child and therefore ‘cannot possibly be those of Geronimo.’"

Chilling! Now we not only have the mystery of the skull of Geronimo, we have the mystery of the skull of a child. What was George Bush’s brother doing with a dead child’s skull in his hands? (A message left at Jonathan Bush’s number in Connecticut was not returned.)

Chilling as well in its implication of the presumptions of privilege: Hey you naïve Apaches, we don’t have the skull you wanted, but if you sign this document and keep your mouth shut, we’ll give you another skull we happen to have lying around. Treating the Apache like a child.

But meanwhile, I want to know: Who was that child? And how did his or her head end up in the Skull and Bones Tomb?


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My attempt to get further information from the Skull and Bones shell corporation, the Russell Trust Association, resulted in my uncovering a fascinating corporate shell game that led back to the Bay of Pigs. These days any researcher who attempts to track down information from the Russell Trust Association will learn from the corporate filings office of the Connecticut Secretary of State that no such entity exists. This is a bit of a scam. It required some brilliant cross-referencing and close study of the secret Skull and Bones directories on the part of my research associate on this story, Peggy Adler, to discover that the Russell Trust Association changed its name nearly four decades ago and effectively erased its existence from corporate history.

It did so by abolishing itself and then reincorporating itself with the uninformative, anonymous-sounding name "RTA Incorporated." And it chose a very peculiar moment in history to do so. The new papers of reincorporation that erased the century-old Russell Trust Association were filed at 10:15 a.m. on April 14, 1961. Two hours later, at noon on that day, the orders went out to begin the Bay of Pigs operations–the covert C.I.A.-financed invasion of Castro’s Cuba, a bloody fiasco that still haunts us four decades later.

Coincidence? Probably. But then it’s also true that one of the C.I.A.’s masterminds for the Bay of Pigs was a man named Richard Drain, Skull and Bones ’43. And the White House planner of the Bay of Pigs operation was McGeorge Bundy, Skull and Bones ’40. And the State Department liaison for the Bay of Pigs operation was his brother William P. Bundy, Skull and Bones ’39. And the man who filed the reincorporation papers that erased the Russell Trust Association from existence on the day of the Bay of Pigs was Howard Weaver, Skull and Bones ’45W (George Bush’s class), who retired from the C.I.A. in 1959. All of which might lead one to suspect that the Skull and Bones corporate shell had been used as a clandestine conduit of funds for the Bay of Pigs, and then erased from existence to cover up the connection as the invasion got underway.

Still, once again, it’s not any covert connection between Skull and Bones and the Bay of Pigs that’s so shocking and revealing, it’s the overt connection: Whether or not they used the Russell Trust Association as a pipeline, the fact that all these Skull and Bones geniuses devised such a patently idiotic plan in the first place is the scandal. Brave men died because of their elitist secret-society mentality. And then they went on to give us Vietnam. It makes you fear for the future of our country if George W. turns to these types for advice.

In any case, by using the secret new corporate name I was able to learn the identities of the current officers of RTA Inc. But as of press time, neither the president of RTA, retired attorney David George Ball, nor the treasurer, Henry P. Davison, have replied to my requests for further information.

Once again, to put this concern into context: The cover photo of my new book The Secret Parts of Fortune, which reprints my original 1977 investigation plus new revelations from Deep Skull, depicts me on the steps of the Skull and Bones Tomb holding a skull under my arm (see photo on page 13), and a number of people have asked me whose skull it is. If I were to say it was the skull of Prescott Bush, I would imagine everyone in the Bush family would come down on my skull for it. But somehow, the skull of an Apache or an unidentified child in the possession of Skull and Bones is considered just a harmless prank? I don’t think so.

There is a peculiar horror that attaches itself to depriving the bones of the dead of their proper resting place. A horror and a curse. On his own tomb Shakespeare ordered the curse to be carved in stone: "Blest be the man that spares these stones / And curst be he that moves my bones."

I hereby offer my good offices to the Bush family to rectify the situation and exorcise the curse. I’m willing to meet with Jonathan Bush, my old Yale classmate George W., or indeed any member of the Bush family (except maybe Barbara) to arrange for the return of the skull of that poor child to its parents. And give all those other skulls a proper burial.

http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2947
Die ganze Familiengeschichte, auch über die Firmengeschichte:
http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

Die Familie Bush ist eine der wenigen Präsidentenfamilien, die Mayflower Ancestries haben. Die Gefahr ist, wenn man sich zu stark mit den Bushes beschäftigt, daß man in einem Geflecht von Verschwörungen landet, aus dem man nicht mehr rausfindet.
Deshalb auch keine weiteren Links.

[wohans]

@ Joerver

Extremely well done thread!

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

March 28, 2003
Conservatives Tailor Tone to Fit Course of the War
By JIM RUTENBERG


uring the months leading up to war, many conservative commentators and policy makers fanned out across the news media to support the president`s case for a preventive strike against Iraq.

Many of those commentators who argued for the doctrine of a United States-enforced world order, including Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol and Andrew Sullivan, said Iraqis would welcome allied troops as liberators. Others predicted a swift victory against a grossly outmatched and disloyal Iraqi military.

Now, with televised images of Iraqis chanting anti-American slogans, and with Saddam Hussein`s troops fighting back hard, the pundits have returned to the offensive, echoing President Bush`s optimism and denouncing what they see as pessimism in the news media.

There is a range of views among the so-called hawks. Some simply urge patience. Some agree that they may have added to the perception that victory would come easily.

But there have been some unifying themes, most notably that allied progress has been swift and that the news media have been exaggerating the negative.

An article in The Washington Post, in which defense officials were quoted yesterday as saying that the war could grind on for months, has become a rallying point for the conservatives` indignation. Mr. Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard who has been credited with playing an influential role in the White House`s decision to attack Iraq, appeared on the Fox News channel to say that the article "comes close to being disgraceful."

Mr. Limbaugh began his radio program with a harsh critique of the article. "If you read that, you conclude we`re losing this war, that we`ve got no way out, that we are hemmed in and we are hopelessly lost," he said. "Now, I have to say that even I thought it would take the mainstream media more than a week to attempt to undermine the war effort. I didn`t think it would happen this soon."

In an interview today, Mr. Limbaugh said he was trying to raise national morale in the face of what he said was overly negative news coverage. With 20 million listeners a week, he has a sizeable platform.

"I want people to remain optimistic," Mr. Limbaugh said. "I`m not trying to avoid realism. There`s no question that we have had setbacks. But we`re the United States military; there`s no way we`re going to lose this."

A week ago, such comments would have seemed unnecessary. There were comparisons to the United States military campaign in Afghanistan, when crowds in Kabul greeted troops with cheers. That assessment was even shared by some of those opposed to the war, who argued that the real challenge would come after victory.

In one of the most optimistic military assessments, Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration official, wrote in The Washington Post: "I believe demolishing Hussein`s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."

Richard N. Perle, who resigned yesterday as chairman of the Defense Advisory Board, an influential group of unpaid advisers to the Bush administration, expressed similar confidence in several television appearances.

"There may be pockets of resistance, but very few Iraqis are going to fight to defend Saddam Hussein," Mr. Perle said in February on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC.

On Saturday morning the predictions seemed accurate. Troops were advancing unopposed through southern Iraq. Television news showed Iraqis celebrating the arrival of allied troops.

But within a few days images of celebrating Iraqis often seemed out-numbered by images of Iraqis chanting Mr. Hussein`s name, and American military commanders in the field acknowledged that they were surprised by Iraqi resistance.

Some conservatives said they believed the earlier, rosier predictions might have made battlefield situations seem worse than they actually were. During an interview this week, Mr. Kristol, who said he often cautioned against overconfidence, called the optimistic forecasts "unfortunate." Tucker Carlson, the conservative co-host of "Crossfire," who had not made such predictions, called them "glib and stupid."

Mr. Adelman said in a telephone interview this week that he now regretted making his remarks. "I think that the phrase `cakewalk` was too glib," he said. "It was too easy and not applicable to a kind of wartime situation."

He added, "The point that the benefits will overwhelm the costs, I still agree with."

Supporters of the invasion said there was still good reason to believe that Iraqis would welcome the removal of Mr. Hussein, given the misery of the country under his rule.

On Tuesday, Mr. Sullivan wrote, "It seems to me that we may have underestimated the psychological effect of President George H. W. Bush`s brutal betrayal of the Iraqi people in 1991, at the behest of the U.N.

"I also think that we hawks might have underestimated the Iraqis` sense of national violation at being invaded, despite their hatred of Saddam."

Most of the commentators called these minor problems on the way to victory.

They pointed to reports that officers loyal to Mr. Hussein may be coercing crowds to cheer him. And several said that more Iraqis might still celebrate the allied troops` arrival and that the Iraqi military`s resistance could prove short lived. The news media, they said in interviews, have been losing sight of all of this.

Mr. Limbaugh said he blamed the nature of the news business for what he considered to be overly negative coverage. "Four thousand safe plane landings a day doesn`t make news," he said. "It`s the same thing here. I don`t think on balance this is any ideological expression on the part of most press people. They`re oriented toward finding things that go wrong."

Mr. Kristol said he did not think current perceptions would matter at the end of the war.

"All the media stuff doesn`t matter," he said. "In the end, reality matters. No one remembers Day 3 was a good day, Day 4 was bad. Have we been successful in helping create a decent government in Iraq? Reality trumps everything."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

Guns or roses
Where are the flowers garlanding our army of liberation? Why no dancing in the street?

David Aaronovitch
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

So where are my crowds waving flowers? I imagined them, even if I never predicted them, imagined them partly in response to how the Iraqi people were being imagined (or not imagined at all) by others. "If I were an Iraqi," I wrote a few weeks ago, "living under probably the most violent and repressive regime in the world, I would desire Saddam`s demise more than anything else."

Perhaps that was a stupid thing to say, even if it was no more stupid than so many things that have been said on all sides. Stupid, because it was unconsciously designed to iron out the many conflicts in human loyalties and to evade the contradictions inherent in invading a country in order to liberate it. That sentence evokes the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Czech Velvet Revolution, determined crowds gathering to change history. Statues are toppled and everyone but the Stasi or the Securitate or the Mukhabarat is happy. Or maybe the image it suggests is of Paris in 1944, women hugging GIs and an explosion of flags and bunting. People and societies, though, are more complicated than that.

We know from human contacts in Saddam`s Iraq, from exiles, from the people in liberated northern Iraq, from such clandestine survey work as has been possible and from the 1991 rebellions, that opposition to Saddam is no figment of the Western imagination. We can speculate that as long as the regime remains untouched in some areas and partly intact in others, opposition forces will mostly be too frightened to emerge.

It is hard to comprehend just what it is like to live among people who will use you or your children as human shields, press-gang your young sons into suicidal raids, fire mortars at you if you attempt to escape and who undertake peremptory executions in streets and squares. Rise up? Once maybe, not twice.

And then there are the many Iraqis directly compromised by their association with the regime. In his book, Republic of Fear, Kanan Makiya, the exiled Iraqi intellectual, said that to understand the peculiar violence of the Iraqi state, one has to realise that hundreds of thousands of perfectly ordinary people were implicated in it. `Even Saddam Hussein`s torturers and elite police units who do the dirtiest work are, by and large, normal,` he wrote. No flowers there.

But there is something more than all this, something more even than resentment or anger caused by coalition missiles and the sight of dead children being dug out of bombed shops. Within many Iraqis, there must be an intense, almost unbearable ambivalence towards the idea of being freed by an outsider.

It is one thing, after all, to be liberated from someone else, but it is quite another to be liberated from yourself.

An ordinary Iraqi has grown up with the Terror, and very many will have family experiences of death or torture at the hands of the regime or its agents. But they have also been raised with all those images of Saddam: Saddam the wise, Saddam the kind, Saddam the soldier, Uncle Saddam. These are, in a sense, their images, too. You may tell someone to turn left at the train station; an Iraqi may guide a visitor by reference to the giant poster of Saddam with the Kalashnikov.

And, if you are an Iraqi, Saddam represents the only order you know, one that protects you and the beloved motherland (you have been told all your life) from imperialists, Zionists, traitors and Persians. Perhaps, if you were sufficiently gullible, you would blow yourself up for this idea of the nation.

Everyone still in Iraq who is not in prison is somehow complicit. To be alive means that you didn`t protest when they executed your neighbour, or that you came on to the street to shout: "Long Live Saddam!" when the militia told you to. You will have done a hundred things out of fear and the regime will thereby have mixed your blood with its own.

Even those who consciously and bravely oppose Saddam may well harbour an immense resentment against invaders. Last week, I sought out a book written by a Serbian woman called Jasmina Tesanovic. An opponent of Slobadan Milosevic, Tesanovic wrote a diary during the run-up to the Kosovo war and throughout the subsequent bombing of Serbia.

The Diary of a Political Idiot is a collection of those entries and it reveals terror, resignation, courage, hatred of the regime and - very often - a degree of moral confusion about how the war started and who was to blame.

But it is Tesanovic`s attitude towards the liberators that is most interesting. Before a single bomb has dropped, she writes: "We perceive American help as helping the self-image of the American nation. In many ways we, both [as] victims and aggressors, know that Americans are right. We would all like to be Americans, but it`s impossible."

Later on, bombs in the wrong places are seen not as a sign of human frailty, but of a terrifying insouciance. She complains: "Foreigners are deciding our fate without much knowledge or goodwill, but with energy and anger." She adds: "I don`t watch the news anymore. I hate all sides equally." Two feminist friends even tell her that they will take up guns if there`s a ground war and fight, though she doesn`t say against whom. And if an urbane dissident intellectual like Tesanovic can feel this, what may be going on in the slums of Saddam City right now?

All this suggests that, in a war that lasts any length of time, the population can find itself bound up with its hated government in a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Hostage and captor, they both face the power of the liberator together. The minor functionaries of the regime - the corner policeman, the informer, the woman who does the typing for the local Baath party secretary - experience the same explosions. And, unlike the Americans and the British, these people are recognisably your own. They are linked to you.

Intimately linked. It is one of those minor anti-war myths that Saddam and his dictatorship were somehow actually created by the West. Makiya makes no such excuses. "The regime," he wrote more than a decade ago, "is a totally indigenous phenomenon, imposed by no outside force, wholly a product of the culture that sustains it."

In other words, if you are an Arab, you bear some responsibility for it, just as we in the West must do for, say, colonialism. No wonder many Jordanians find it possible to demonstrate against the deaths of dozens of civilians killed by coalition forces, whereas the streets of Amman have been empty through the long years when the Baathists have been killing tens of thousands of civilians. Now, the very act of outside liberation brutally emphasises the shame and weakness of Arab politics.

Things change and wars end. I hope we are at the low point of this conflict, but suspect that there is worse to come. Even so, I believe there will be a post-Saddam Iraq, and that slow flowers can then bloom. For some, there will remain a hatred for what we wagers of war have done, but others will forgive us more easily. At the end of her diary, written after the bombing has stopped but well before the fall of Milosevic, Jasmina Tesanovic, who has cuddled her daughter against the sound of the falling bombs, predicts that things in Serbia won`t go back to the way there were. "So maybe," she says, "it`s been worthwhile."

And then, with foreign troops on their way to Kosovo, she concludes: "I feel fine. I feel less isolated. Let them all come, let our histories mix - anything as long as they don`t build a wall."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Saving the West from busted bunkers
Rebuilding will be needed not only in Iraq but also in the political arena, as Blair struggles to cope with the new world disorder

Andrew Rawnsley, political journalist of the year
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

This week`s prize for stating the bleedin` obvious is jointly awarded to Tony Blair and Dominique de Villepin. "The world order needs to be put back together," says the Prime Minister. The Foreign Minister of France echoes that the Anglo-American experiment in enforced regime change has "shattered" international relations. Well, at least they have finally found something about the war in Iraq that the British and the French can agree on.

Around us lie the scattered shards of international institutions taken for granted for more than half a century. The conflict in the Gulf has shattered them as comprehensively as if they had been targeted by a bunker-buster. The United Nations is an even more screaming contradiction in terms than at most points in its history. The longer and the bloodier is the combat, the more aggravated become the relations between the globe`s leading powers, and the more keenly do smaller countries feel the pressure to take sides. The Russians call for a ceasefire, a demand which they know can only have the effect of angering the Americans. The French cannot bring themselves to say that they hope the coalition forces will win the war, with the same enraging effect on the United States. Even America and Britain, grim comrades in arms, cannot mask increasingly manifest differences of vision about the desired shape of the post-Saddam Middle East.

The continental drift between the United States and Europe has ruptured a European Union which looks like another risible oxymoron. The dream of a common foreign and defence policy is a fantasy for the foreseeable future.

Even more forebodingly, deep impulses have been unleashed on both sides of the Atlantic which will prolong international disorder beyond the duration of hostilities in the Gulf. There is one leader that you never hear saying that the world order needs putting back together. That leader is George W. Bush. For his White House, the war of Saddam is a demonstration to America and to the rest of the planet that the United States is the world order.

For the ascendant unilateralists in the Bush administration, the weakening of the UN and the EU is not to be mourned. For them, these are events to be celebrated. The resignation from a formal position within the Bush administration of Richard Perle, gleeful jigger on what he takes to be the Iraqi grave of the United Nations, only liberates him to make even more public expression of what animates the Bush presidency. Though the American unilateralists claim to have been failed by a Security Council that would not sanctify the war into Iraq, the truth is that they were delighted to be supplied with clinching evidence of their long-developed prejudices about the uselessness of the UN. For this tendency, currently very much in the ascendancy within the Bush administration, the only power with a U in its name that matters is the US of A. Its interests are antipathetic to rivals and constraints whether they come in the form of the UN or the EU.

Washington can tolerate, even be happy, with the Security Council renewing the authority of the Iraq oil-for-food programme. That fits with their view of a UN of much diminished means, a United Nations which is confined to distributing food and maybe health care, the UN as a glorified aid agency, Oxfam wrapped in a blue flag.

One reason that Tony Blair made his hastily-arranged trip to Washington - even at the risk of making himself look like a disappointed supplicant trying to gather crumbs of illusory comfort from under the table of George Bush - was to try to add British weight to the diminishing influences within the US administration which are still battling for America to take a more forward-looking and internationalist view of its interests.

There is a view that a conflict which is proving more difficult and protracted than the war-gamers anticipated will be a salutary lesson to the United States about the perils of unilateralism. The French, in particular, cannot resist drooling over the troubles and trials of the coalition forces. Not for the first time, they misread America. George Bush has just mobilised a further 120,000 American troops for the Gulf as well as sending Congress an invoice for another $70 billion to pay for the war. Even by the standards of her large resources, America is spending dearly in blood and treasure to extirpate the Saddam regime.

The higher the bill, the more reluctant the United States will be to pass the post-Saddam government of Iraq over to an internationally agreed administration. There are practical worries, shared by the British, for American wariness about involving the UN with any speed. The allies do not want to be placed in the position where a weak UN administration constrains their troops from intervening to protect themselves or the Iraqi people.

After his talks with George Bush, Tony Blair mildly remarked that American reluctance to involve the UN was `understandable` because the `US felt let down by its partners in the Security Council`. Translated from diplomatese into plain English, the Washington view can be crudely - but not, I think, inaccurately - summarised as follows: when American fighting men and women have done the dying (oh, yeah, and a few of you Brits too) why should the `cheese-eating surrender monkeys`, the vodka-guzzling double-dealers, the sausage-scoffing fellow travellers and the rest of the `Axis of Weasel` get a bite at post-Saddam Iraq. Especially not the potentially juicy reconstruction contracts which the United States is already pre-banking as its war dividend.

This American stridency meets its mirror image in the French pout that the belligerents ought to pay for their own follies. I describe this posture as French for brevity, but the view is not confined to Paris. Chris Patten neatly summarised the attitude of much of the European Union about contributing towards the reconstruction of Iraq as, `you broke it; you fix it`.

Piggy in the middle is Tony Blair, trying to make his peace with Europe even as he makes war alongside America. Despite it all, the Prime Minister persists in his characteristic belief that these widening and apparently irreconcilable differences can ultimately be melted away with himself as the principal dissolving agent.

He has to be correct that, when we get to the other side of this war, it won`t just be Iraq that needs rebuilding from the foundations. World order will need to be put back together again, the complexity of the task being no excuse for ignoring its urgency. The alternative is an anarchy in international relations, a global swamp in which even the strongest will pay a steep penalty for the chaos. Though they cannot discern it yet, the Americans will ultimately find that a world without rules is a world which will be toxic even for the hyper-power.

Nor is the route to a safer world to be found in the vain ambition entertained most obviously by the French: to create an alliance of the angry, a coalition of the anti-Yankee. The only certain effect of that would be to impel America in a more extremely unilateralist direction.

The very grimness of the times demands from Tony Blair even more copious quantities of public optimism. A victory in Baghdad for the allies will be a defeat for him if emerges from this looking like the sucker who thought he could hitch a right-wing American presidency to his liberal interventionist values, only to find that he was the one being used.

To sustain Mr Blair`s case that both Iraq and the world will be better places for his decision to join this war, the Prime Minister has to believe that Britain made a crucial difference - and he must persuade the British to believe that too.The ever-hopeful Tony Blair said at the end of last week: `I personally think we will get our way through.` Exactly how is not at all bleedin` obvious.

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The tragedy of this unequal partnership
By opting to join the American hard Right, Tony Blair has made the gravest mistake of his political life

Will Hutton
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

Will Hutton argues that, by opting to join the American hard Right, Tony Blair has made the gravest mistake of his political life, one from which he cannot recover.

Blair`s drawn face, with its deepening gullies set in a near permanent hard frown, tells the story. This is the internationalist who is aiding and abetting, however unintentionally, the break-up of the UN system. The pro-European who is the trigger of the most acute divisions in the European Union since its foundation. The wannabe progressive whose closest allies are Washington`s neo-conservatives and conservative leaders in Italy and Spain.

Worse, he is fighting a barely legitimate war that is already a military and diplomatic quagmire, where even eventual victory may not avert a political disaster. He knows his capacity to survive the diplomatic humiliations piled on him by the Bush administration is limited; you cannot long lead Britain`s centre and centre-left from such a compromised position, wounding not only the country`s profoundest interests but torching any linkage with the progressive project. For the first time his premiership is genuinely at risk.

It is a political tragedy, Shakespearean in the cruelty of its denouement. 9/11 accelerated trends in America that had been crystallising since the 1970s and which made the political structures in which successive British Governments have managed simultaneously to play both the American and European cards unsustainable. Blair was confronted with an invidious choice that nobody in the British establishment has wanted to make: Europe or America. Side with Europe to insist that the price of collaboration in the fight against terrorism had to be that the US observe genuinely multilateral international due process - and certainly say No to some of Washington`s wilder aims. Or side with America insisting from the inside that it engaged in its wars multilaterally, and hope to bring Europe along in your wake.

Either choice was beset with risk, but it`s hard to believe that siding with Europe, for all its evident difficulties, would have produced an outcome worse than the situation in which we currently find ourselves: a protracted war with no second UN Resolution, no commitment to UN governance of post-war Iraq, no commitment to a mid-East peace settlement. But Blair misread the character of American conservatism, its grip on the American body politic and its scope for rationality. He continues to do so, the miscalculation of his life.

The rise and rise of American conservatism is neither well documented nor well understood in Britain - but it`s one of the pillars on which I build my case for Europe in The World We`re In*. Ever since the pivotal Supreme Court judgement in 1973 legalising abortion (the Roe v Wade case) which marked the high water mark of American liberalism, it`s been downhill all the way. American conservatism, an eccentric creed even within the pantheon of the western conservative tradition, now rules supreme. Domestically it offers disproportionately aggressive tax cuts for the rich and for business, reforms that shrink America`s already threadbare social contract and a carte blanche for the increasingly feral, unaccountable character of US capitalism.

Internationally it is this philosophy that lies behind pre-emptive unilateralism and the wilful disregard of the UN. American conservatives are bravely willing to use force to advance democracy and markets worldwide - the exemplars of a civilisation the rest of the world must want to copy. No other legitimacy is needed, the reason for the wrong-headed self-confidence that could launch war in Iraq expecting so little resistance. Rumsfeld`s exploded strategy is ideological in its roots. This conservatism is a witches brew - a menace to the USA and the world alike.

The conservative movement has deep roots. It made its first gains in the 1970s in reaction to economic problems at home that it wrongly claimed were wholly the fault of liberals, helped by the reaction of white working class Americans to the application of affirmative action: quotas of housing, university places and even jobs for blacks to equalise centuries of discrimination. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, outlawing the obstacles American blacks had experienced in exercising their civil rights from voting to sitting on juries, he famously joked that he had lost the Democrats the south. He could not have been more prescient; the uneasy coalition between southern conservative Democrats and the more liberal North was sundered - a political opportunity that Ronald Reagan was brilliantly to seize.

This laid the foundations for the conservatisation of American politics, helped by the growing economic power of the south and the west. The new sun-belt entrepreneurs, building fortunes on defence contracts and Texan oil, naturally believed in the toxicity of federal government and the god-given right of employers to cheap labour with as few rights as possible. Put that together with the south`s visceral dislike of welfare, well understood to be transferring money from God-fearing, hard-working whites to black welfare queens, and the need for crime - again understood to be perpetrated by blacks against whites - to be met with ferocious penalties and you had the beginning of the new conservative constituency. Include a dose of Christian fundamentalism, and the building blocks of a new dominant coalition of Republican southerners and middle class, suburban northerners were in place.

What was needed to complete the picture was intellectual coherence and money. America`s notoriously lax rules on political financing allowed the conservatives to outspend the Democrats sometimes by as much four or five times. Yet what opened the financial floodgates was intellectual conviction; a new generation of intellectual conservatives took on the apparently effortless liberal dominance, and beat it at its own game - the realm of ideas. The great right-wing thinktanks - the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute - became the intellectual inspiration of the conservative revival. The rich were virtuous and moral because they worked hard; the poor worthless and amoral because they had not boot-strapped themselves out of poverty. Welfare thus bred a dependency culture, they claimed, and made poverty worse. Taxation was an act of coercion and an affront to liberty. Markets worked like magic; choice was always better than public provision. Corporations spearheaded wealth creation. Conservatism was transmuted into a moral crusade. The rich could back it aggressively both in their own self-interest and America`s.

The capture of universities by the rich and the lack of education for the poor has meant that social mobility in the US has collapsed. American capitalism, in thrall to the stock market and quick bucks it offers, has hollowed out its great corporations in the name of the hallowed conservative conception of share-holder value - the sole purpose of a company is to enrich its owners. Productivity and social mobility are now higher in Old Europe than in the US - despite a tidal wave of propaganda to the contrary. Ordinary Americans are beset by risks and lack of opportunity in a land of extraordinary inequality.

Yet it is internationally that the rest of the world feels the consequences. Even before 9/11 the Bush administration had signalled its intention to be unencumbered by - as it saw it - vitality sapping, virility constraining, option closing international treaties and alliances, whether membership of the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto accords on climate change. It intended to assert American power as a matter of ideological principle; 9/11 turned principle into an apparent imperative in order to guarantee the security of the `homeland`.

There are only two possible rival power centres that champion a more rational approach to world order - in the US a revived and self-confident Democratic party, and abroad an unified European Union. Britain`s national interest requires that we ally ourselves as powerfully as we can with these forces - both of whom are only too ready to make common cause. Blair has done neither. Either he is now a convinced conservative or the author of a historic political misjudgment. Neither the Labour party nor the country can indulge this ineptitude much longer.

· Will Hutton`s The World We`re In, is now available as an Abacus paperback, priced £9.99



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Thank you, President Bush
Online commentary: Leading Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho gives praise to President Bush for the wisdom of his leadership which has united the world in opposition.

Paulo Coelho
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

Thank you, great leader George W. Bush.

Thank you for showing everyone what a danger Saddam Hussein represents. Many of us might otherwise have forgotten that he had used chemical weapons against his own people, against the Kurds and against the Iranians. Hussein is a bloodthirsty dictator and one of the clearest expressions of evil in today`s world.

But this is not my only reason for thanking you. During the first months of 2003, you have shown the world a great many other important things and, therefore, deserve my gratitude.

So, remembering a poem I learned as a child, I want to say thank you.

Thank you for showing everyone that the Turkish people and their Parliament are not for sale, not even for 26 billion dollars.

Thank you for revealing to the world the gulf that exists between the decisions made by those in power and the wishes of the people. Thank you for making it clear that neither Jos¿ Mar¿a Aznar nor Tony Blair give the slightest weight to or show the slightest respect for the votes they received. Aznar is perfectly capable of ignoring the fact that 90% of Spaniards are against the war, and Blair is unmoved by the largest public demonstration to take place in England in the last thirty years.

Thank you for making it necessary for Tony Blair to go to the British Parliament with a fabricated dossier written by a student ten years ago, and present this as `damning evidence collected by the British Secret Service`.

Thank you for allowing Colin Powell to make a complete fool of himself by showing the UN Security Council photos which, one week later, were publicly challenged by Hans Blix, the Inspector responsible for disarming Iraq.

Thank you for adopting your current position and thus ensuring that, at the plenary session, the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin`s anti-war speech was greeted with applause - something, as far as I know, that has only happened once before in the history of the UN, following a speech by Nelson Mandela.

Thank you too, because, after all your efforts to promote war, the normally divided Arab nations, at their meeting in Cairo during the last week in February, were, for the first time, unanimous in their condemnation of any invasion.

Thank you for your rhetoric stating that "the UN now has a chance to demonstrate its relevance", a statement which made even the most reluctant countries take up a position opposing any attack on Iraq.

Thank you for your foreign policy which provoked the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, into declaring that in the 21st century, "a war can have a moral justification", thus causing him to lose all credibility.

Thank you for trying to divide a Europe that is currently struggling for unification; this was a warning that will not go unheeded.

Thank you for having achieved something that very few have so far managed to do in this century: the bringing together of millions of people on all continents to fight for the same idea, even though that idea is opposed to yours.

Thank you for making us feel once more that though our words may not be heard, they are at least spoken - this will make us stronger in the future.

Thank you for ignoring us, for marginalising all those who oppose your decision, because the future of the Earth belongs to the excluded.

Thank you, because, without you, we would not have realised our own ability to mobilise. It may serve no purpose this time, but it will doubtless be useful later on.

Now that there seems no way of silencing the drums of war, I would like to say, as an ancient European king said to an invader: "May your morning be a beautiful one, may the sun shine on your soldiers` armour, for in the afternoon, I will defeat you."

Thank you for allowing us - an army of anonymous people filling the streets in an attempt to stop a process that is already underway - to know what it feels like to be powerless and to learn to grapple with that feeling and transform it. So, enjoy your morning and whatever glory it may yet bring you.

Thank you for not listening to us and not taking us seriously, but know that we are listening to you and that we will not forget your words.

Thank you, great leader George W. Bush.

Thank you very much.

· Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

· Paulo Coelho is a bestselling novelist. His latest novel is Manual of the Warrior of Light, which will be published in paperback in June, and his next novel Eleven Minutes will be published in August.

· The Observer website carries additional online commentary each week, responding to recent pieces to continue the debate and offering additional coverage of the major issues. See Observer Comment and Observer Worldview for this week`s pieces. The Observer`s online commentaries are also trailed in the print pages of the newspaper.


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Odd bods, those Russians
After all the prewar talk about Saddam being the same as Hitler, there has been a change. Now Saddam has been turned into Stalin

Richard Ingrams
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

After all the prewar talk about Saddam being the same as Hitler and those of us who opposed the war being likened to appeasers, there has been a change.

Now Saddam has been turned into Stalin. Baghdad is Stalingrad and the Iraqis are like those gallant Russians who, though they hated the dictator, were prepared to fight to the death against the invading Germans.

It remains to be seen if the Iraqis will do the same. What is wrong with the theory is that the Russians did not hate Stalin at all. On the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1953, the latest opinion polls show that there are still large numbers of Russians who think that Stalin, who ordered millions of their fellow citizens to be shot or put in the Gulag for no good reason, was a thoroughly Good Thing.

It is worth noting that they have the same view of the last tsar, Nicholas II, a vain and intolerant ruler who was more responsible than anyone for the Russian Revolution and the long years of misery that ensued. He is revered by the Russians, many of whom would now like him to be canonised by the Orthodox Church.

None of this is very helpful in analysing the situation in Iraq. All it shows is that the Russians are a pretty rum lot.

The life of Zion
We have been here before. Whenever the Americans embark on their war on terrorism, the war on the Taliban or the war on Iraq, they automatically announce their determination to bring about a peaceful settlement of the Middle East problem.

This time around, we have had Mr Bush`s mysterious `road map` whose existence was revealed just before we went to war. An excited Mr Blair was able to refer to this road map as yet another important concession he had won from the American President in exchange for sending British troops into battle without the approval of the United Nations.

Not for the first time in my life, I shall be accused of cynicism when I predict that once the war is over, which may not be for some time, the road map, which is only produced to keep the Arabs quiet for the duration, will be quietly put back in the glove compartment and forgotten.

I base my prediction partly on the recent appointment by George Bush of Mr Elliott Abrams as his adviser on the Middle East. Abrams is one of many old Reagan hands in the present US administration who was involved in the Iran-Contra arms scandal.

That is by the way. Most of the people in the American administration, from the President downwards, have been involved in scandals of one kind or another. As a fanatical Zionist, Mr Abrams`s views on the Middle East could be politely described as hardline. He even opposed the Oslo peace agreement between Israel and Yasser Arafat.And, as recently reported in The Observer, Abrams is also the author of a book, Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, which criticises those Jews who marry gentiles. In any other context, such opinions would be denounced as racist.

This is the man who now advises Bush on the Middle East. You don`t have to be very clever to see that, if Abrams had a hand in drawing up that road map, as like as not it would show a one-way street ending in a cul-de-sac. So not much use even if it were to be brought out of the glove compartment.

Sun downer
I don`t know who it was who first started to refer to the British Army as `Our Boys`, but whoever it was deserves to be buried alive in molten lava.

It is bad enough that we should have to hear the endless repetition of propaganda phrases from the Government`s Ministry of Truth - `coalition forces` to describe the armies of only two countries, `collateral damage` for the killing and mutilation of innocent civilians` and so on.

These expressions may at least help to remind us that there are large numbers of people from the Prime Minister downwards who are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. `Our Boys`, however, just makes you feel sick.

My hope is that sooner or later the feminist brigade will put a spanner in the works. After all, the British Army in Iraq consists not only of boys but quite a number of girls.

Ms Rebekah Wade, the red-headed scourge of the paedophiles who edits the Sun, ought to be made aware that the expression `Our Boys` is offensive to all those women at the front, not to mention the `loved ones` at home. After all, Wade was recently described as `trailblazer` for women in the Times.

To be fair to these women, and to all its women readers, the Sun ought to alter its slogan to `the paper that supports our boys and girls`. If that is considered too big a mouthful for the simple souls who produce the paper, better still to drop the thing altogether.


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Freddie Kruger ist ein Sandmännchen gegenüber den Gestalten, die bei der Bush Administration auftauchen. In #658 Mr. Elliott Abrams und hier Mr.Garner. Peace and Freedom für den Mittleren Osten.
J.

Man who would be `king` of Iraq

Oliver Morgan on Jay Garner, the hawkish head of the Pentagon agency that will be handling lucrative reconstruction deals

Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

President, viceroy, governor, sheriff. It is difficult to know what to call Jay Garner, the retired US general who will run Iraq if and when Saddam Hussein is deposed.
The `call me Jay` 64-year-old would prefer `co-ordinator of civilian administration`. That`s the bland description of his job heading the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the Pentagon agency preparing to govern Iraq`s 23 million people in the aftermath of war, provide humanitarian support and administer the lucrative business of reconstruction.

Garners credentials are intriguing. He has a fine record in United Nations-backed humanitarian operations, playing a senior role in protecting the Kurds of northern Iraq from Saddam after the 1991 Gulf war in Operation Provide Comfort. Crucially he is now out of khaki, a vital counterpoint to General Tommy Franks, who is likely to act as a US military governor. On the other hand, he is closely linked with the group of hawks centred on US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who gave him his latest job), his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, who are as keen to bypass the UN in the aftermath of war as they were before it.

He appears to share their strong pro-Israeli views. He has been involved in formulating their more controversial defence policies, including the US national missile defence system that has done much to undermine the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. The company he now works for is a missile specialist and makes money from systems deployed in Israel and by coalition forces in Iraq.

With this background, the aid agencies are equivocal about his role. Phil Bloomer of Oxfam says: `Iraqis should run Iraq and in the transition the UN should be in charge, not the US. A worst-case scenario would be to put in charge of Iraqi reconstruction someone from the US or UK who was linked to the arms or oil industries.`

Garner`s view of the effectiveness of the US military in a humanitarian role was made clear during Provide Comfort. The army, he said, was the merciful instrument in shaping future humanitarian operations. But Provide Comfort was carried out under very different circumstances. The war it followed was mandated by UN Security Council resolutions, as was the humanitarian mission.

Today, relations between Garner and the UN appear strained, as was clear at a frosty meeting earlier this month, when he explained his role before departing for Kuwait. `There was no co-ordination or consultation,` said one UN official. `That would be inappropriate from the UN`s point of view because its operations are autonomous; we do not need to consult with the US. But also from the US position, because it is common knowledge that they want to go it alone without the UN.`

Despite movement towards a UN role in reconstruction through a new resolution extending the Oil For Food programme, officials have deep suspicions about US intentions, particularly those of Garner`s friends. `Powell [pro-UN Secretary of State] has already lost the battle,` said one. `It is clear that Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest have the ascendancy and they think, having gone it alone in the war, they should get the benefit of being seen as liberators. Garner is their man. He is a true believer.`

Beyond the strong Pentagon links of an ex-military man, Garner`s political constituency is with the Republican right. His contacts with the Vice President go back to Provide Comfort, when Cheney was defence secretary to the first Bush, while his relationship with Rumsfeld has been sealed through recent close co-operation on missile defence policy.

These links have provoked unease among companies outside the US, which believe that the Americans want to carve up reconstruction contracts among themselves, regardless of any UN role. A subsidiary of Cheney`s old company, Halliburton, has recently secured a deal to put out oil well fires. Halliburton, and Bechtel, another company with strong Republican links, were on a US-only shortlist for a major $900m reconstruction contract that will be overseen by Garner`s office.

After strong lobbying from UK companies, the DTI agency Trade Partners UK managed to get a British secondee into Garners office, and Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt lobbied the US government to include the British.

But contractors say ORHA is not responding to requests for contact. `We have worries about this,` said one. `There is a huge row going on behind the scenes about Halliburton and Bechtel winning deals, and we can`t talk to the people on the ground.`

But there are wider concerns, particularly Garner`s work with Rumsfeld, his commercial activities, and views on Israel. Rumsfeld headed the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which reported to the US Congress in 1998. The Rumsfeld Commission singled out three countries threatening the US with ballistic missile development - North Korea, Iran and Iraq - thus defining the axis of evil that underpins the US`s pre-emptive strategy.

Garner served on Rumsfeld II, which effectively extended missile defence into space. He was involved in the deployment of Patriot missiles in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, and was commander of the US Army Space and Strategic Defense Command from 1994 to 1996.

When Patriot`s effectiveness was questioned at a 1992 congressional hearing, Garner dismissed critics, saying 40 per cent of engagements in Israel and 70 per cent in Saudi Arabia were successful.

However, Ted Postol of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, who gave evidence at the hearing, said: `We believe that these figures are too high, and that it may be the case that zero engagements in Israel were effective. Garner may have been involved in covering up the deficiencies of the system.`

Garner is now commercially involved in the latest version of Patriot, currently deployed in Iraq. He is president of SY Coleman, a missile systems contractor that gives technical advice and support on the running of the programme. Israel is now protected by a new system called Arrow. SY Coleman is involved here too: Garner helped oversee development work, a programme that Postol estimates was 80 per cent funded by the US.

Jack Tyler, SY`s senior vice-president for business development, confirmed it had worked both on Patriot and Arrow. However, he said, there was no procurement, sale or royalty to the company from the systems, only advisory fees.

Tyler dismissed suggestions that Garner was hired because of his defence contacts, saying his role was that of a strategic planner. SY has strong relationships with the then US government. In 1999 it won a Star Wars contract worth up to $365m to provide the US forces with advice on space and missile defence. The SY website lists a series of government logistics and R&D contracts.Meanwhile, SY was bought by another company, L-3 Communications, last year. L-3 is the ninth-largest contributor to US political parties in the defence electronics sector. Last week it was awarded a $1.5bn contract to provide logistics services to US special operations forces.

Garner`s links with Israel are not limited to missile programmes. In October 2000 he put his name to a statement that said that `Israel had exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of a Palestinian Authority`.

The organisation behind the statement was the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which includes Cheney and Richard Perle, another arch-hawk, among its advisers past and present.

Only last week Perle resigned from the chairmanship of a key Pentagon committee advising Rumsfeld, after it emerged that he had struck a deal with bankrupt telecoms company Global Crossing under which he stood to receive up to $725,000. The deal is being reviewed by a government group that includes Defense Department officials.

There is no suggestion that Garner might feel similarly compromised by past association and some find the anti-Garner arguments overstated.

Eric Schwartz of Washington`s respected Council on Foreign Relations think-tank says: `I am not sure this is a US go-it-alone guy. He understands the critical importance of it not being the military doing the nation-building.` Schwartz believes that, after an interim period, the UN will take control of critical issues in Iraq`s future, such as drawing up a constitution and overseeing elections.

It will be for Washington to decide whether the Sheriff of Baghdad wears a US or a UN star. His record suggests he would be equally happy in either. Its how he uses the badge that counts.

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CNN ist unabhängig!!!

CNN`s fair, balanced and very, very thoughtful Aaron Brown interviewed famed peace activist Daniel Ellsberg today, employing his trademark fair, balanced, and highly thoughtful style.

Here is a transcript of the complete interview.


BROWN: Mr. Ellsberg, it`s good to see you again sir.
The Iraqi political strategy is in large part to use the anti-war demonstrations around the world to create political pressure on the coalition governments to stand down, cease fire and stop the war. In that regard, are you playing into the hands of what I think you would even acknowledge is a very bad regime.

ELLSBERG: Certainly a very bad regime. Whose judgment were you just describing, that that`s Saddam`s strategy? I don`t know what his strategy is, do you?

BROWN: Do you, do you dispute that this is a reasonable interpretation of what Iraqi political strategy is?

ELLSBERG: I really don`t know. As a matter of fact it`s clear that the advisors that Secretary Rumsfeld has been advising and relying on, including Richard Perle who apparently just left today, was extremely bad at understanding Saddam. Certainly I don`t pretend to, I haven`t been to Iraq and I guess none of them have.

I have been in combat, and I do have, as a civilian (I was a trained Infantry officer in the Marine Corps) and I do have some sense of how men in the field react, and I imagine that some of that applies to Iraqi soldiers as well as to American soldiers. I doubt very much whether either of them are looking principally at CNN, frankly.

BROWN: Well I hope that soldiers in the field aren`t looking at CNN but I think, it strikes me, Dr. Ellsberg, that we veered a little there. Let me try and re-frame the question. If the Iraqi political strategy is to use the anti-war movement to put pressure on the coalition to cease fire, don`t - whether that`s the case or not -

ELLSBERG: That implies a rather delusional aspect of Saddam Hussein that I don`t have any confidence in. If you really think that Saddam Hussein is relying on reading newspaper accounts or seeing media accounts of people, handfuls of people or thousands of people, lying in the streets, and relying on that to influence, shall we say, President Bush? I didn`t see it happening in getting into this war, and I don`t think Saddam is so foolish as to think that his own safety, as a tyrant in that country, depends on us. So I really think that`s an irrelevant question.

BROWN: Do you not think that the anti-war movement -

ELLSBERG: In fact I think that`s very naive. I think that one who thinks - that goes back - I think that`s just a way, really, of the administration trying to quell dissent in this country. Such theories - and really, they`re theories of Saddam Hussein - are not very good. That`s a great part of the crisis this country is in, right now.

BROWN: Do you think the anti-war movement of this time will be, in any way shape or form successful in the way that ultimately the anti-war movement was in encouraging an end to the Vietnam War?

ELLSBERG: Well really the anti-war movement had it`s effect primarily after months and years of body bags had come home and I pray, I hope that that is not going to be the basis for success - of any kind of - I hope that doesn`t happen, in a word, and I don`t know anyone, in the movement opposing this war, who wants that.

I would be very happy, by the way, to see Saddam leave, dead or alive at this moment, to see all of his troops defect, to se his generals defect as apparently was confidently predicted - that confidence was very foolish - and I think by the way, should undermine Bush`s confidence in the judgment of the people who have been advising Rumsfeld, and think of replacing them, very quickly. I would like to see that but it doesn`t seem to be happening at all. I never was confident that that would happen.

Really I don`t think many people on those streets have very much confidence at all that they will influence President Bush. He doesn`t seem to listen to a majority even, let alone a minority of the people, after all, a majority did not vote for him. I don`t think they expect to be very move - or to move, either Saddam Hussein or George Bush. But I do think that they are speaking to each other, and to the country, and to the world and I think that`s for the good of this country to hear, the world hear, that there are many Americans who feel this war is deeply wrong, and we`re in a crisis.

BROWN: Dr. Ellsberg, I`m sorry to interrupt, thank you for your time and we appreciate your joining us tonight.

Did I mention that Aaron Brown is very, very thoughtful? Fair and balanced, too.

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Noch ein paar Namen der kriminellen Vereinigung


Special Report
Advisors of Influence: Nine Members of the Defense Policy Board Have Ties to Defense Contractors

By André Verlöy and Daniel Politi
Data by Aron Pilhofer


Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors.

RELATED LINKS
Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee members
Corporate Affiliations of Defense Policy Board Members

The board’s chairman, Richard Perle, resigned yesterday, March 27, 2003, amid allegations of conflicts of interest for his representation of companies with business before the Defense Department, although he will remain a member of the board. Eight of Perle’s colleagues on the board have ties to companies with significant contracts from the Pentagon.

Members of the board disclose their business interests annually to the Pentagon, but the disclosures are not available to the public. “The forms are filed with the Standards of Conduct Office which review the filings to make sure they are in compliance with government ethics,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Ted Wadsworth told the Center for Public Integrity.

The companies with ties to Defense Policy Board members include prominent firms like Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton and smaller players like Symantec Corp., Technology Strategies and Alliance Corp., and Polycom Inc.

Defense companies are awarded contracts for numerous reasons; there is nothing to indicate that serving on the Defense Policy Board confers a decisive advantage to firms with which a member is associated.

According to its charter, the board was set up in 1985 to provide the Secretary of Defense “with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy.” The members are selected by and report to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy—currently Douglas Feith, a former Reagan administration official. All members are approved by the Secretary of Defense. The board’s quarterly meetings—normally held over a two-day period—are classified, and each session’s proceedings are summarized for the Defense Secretary. The board does not write reports or vote on issues. Feith, according to the charter, can call additional meetings if required. Notices of the meetings are filed at least 15 days before they are held in the Federal Register.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE
For additional information, visit the Web site of PBS` "Now With Bill Moyers."

The board, whose list of members reads like a who’s who of former high-level government and military officials, focuses on long-term policy issues such as the strategic implications of defense policies and tactical considerations, including what types of weapons the military should develop.

Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at The Brookings Institution, told Time magazine in November 2002 that the board “is just another [public relations] shop for Rumsfeld.” Former members said that the character of the board changed under Rumsfeld. Previously the board was more bi-partisan; under Rumsfeld, it has become more interested in policy changes. The board has no official role in policy decisions.

The agendas for the last three meetings, which were obtained by the Center, show a variety of issues were discussed. The Oct. 10-11, 2002 meeting was devoted to intelligence briefings from the Defense Intelligence Agency and other administration officials. One of the first items on the agenda was an ethics brief by the Office of the General Counsel.

In December 2002, a two-hour intelligence briefing, strategy, North Korea, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were on the agenda. In February 2003, the topics discussed on the first day included North Korea, Iran and Total Information Awareness, the controversial Pentagon research program that aims to gather and analyze a vast array of information on Americans. As the Center previously reported, research for the program is being conducted by private contractors.

Richard Perle, who has been a very public advocate of the war in Iraq, resigned the chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board after being criticized in recent weeks because of his involvement in companies that have significant business before the Defense Department. He did not return the Center’s phone calls.

In a March 24 letter, Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate Perle’s role as a paid adviser to the bankrupt telecommunications company Global Crossing Ltd. The Hamilton, Bermuda-based company sought approval of its sale of overseas subsidiaries from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government panel that can block sales or mergers that conflict with U.S. national security interests. Rumsfeld is a member of the Committee.

Perle reportedly advised clients of Goldman Sachs on investment opportunities in post-war Iraq, and is a director with stock options of the U.K.-based Autonomy Corp., whose customers include the Defense Department.

“Mr. Perle is considered a ‘special government employee’ and is subject to government ethics prohibition—both regulatory and criminal—on using public office for private gain,” Rep. Conyers wrote in the letter obtained by the Center.


Potential conflicts not limited to Perle

Perle, however, is not the only Defense Policy Board member with ties to companies that do business with the Defense Department:

Retired Adm. David Jeremiah, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who served over 38 years in the Navy, is a director or advisor of at least five corporations that received more than $10 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2002. Jeremiah also sat on the board of Getronics Government Solutions, a company that was acquired by DigitalNet in December 2002 and is now known as DigitalNet Government Solutions. According to a news report by Bloomberg, Richard Perle is a director of DigitalNet Holdings Inc., which has filed for a $109 million stock sale.

Retired Air Force Gen. Ronald Fogleman sits on the board of directors of companies which received more than $900 million in contracts in 2002. The companies, which all have longstanding business relationships with the Air Force and other Defense Department branches, include Rolls-Royce North America, North American Airlines, AAR Corporation and the Mitre Corp. In addition to being chief of staff for the Air Force, Fogleman has served as a military advisor to the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council and the President. He also served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Transportation Command, commander of Air Mobility Command, the 7th Air Force and the Air Component Command of the U.S./ROK Combined Forces Command.

Retired Gen. Jack Sheehan joined Bechtel in 1998 after 35 years in the U.S. Marine Corp.

Bechtel, one of the world`s largest engineering-construction firms, is among the companies bidding for contracts to rebuild Iraq. The company had defense contracts worth close to $650 million in 2001 and more than $1 billion in 2002. Sheehan is currently a senior vice president and partner and responsible for the execution and strategy for the region that includes Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. The four-star general served as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic and Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Command before his retirement in 1997. After his leaving active duty, he served as Special Advisor for Central Asia for two secretaries of Defense.

Former CIA director James Woolsey is a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, a venture-capital firm that like Perle’s Trireme Partners is soliciting investment for homeland security firms. Woolsey joined consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as vice president in July 2002. The company had contracts worth more than $680 million in 2002. Woolsey told the Wall Street Journal that he does no lobbying and that none of the companies he has ties to have been discussed during a Defense Policy Board meeting. Previously, Woolsey worked for law firm Shea & Gardner. He has held high-level positions in two Republican and two Democratic administrations.

William Owens, another former high-level military officer, sits on boards of five companies that received more than $60 million in defense contracts last year. Previously, he was president, chief operating officer and vice chair of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), among the ten largest defense contractors. One of the companies, Symantec Corp., increased its contracts from $95,000 in 2001 to more than $1 million in 2002. Owens, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is widely recognized for bringing commercial high technology into the U.S. Department of Defense. He was the architect of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), an advanced systems technology approach to military operations that represents a significant change in the system of requirements, budgets and technology for the U.S. military since World War II. Owens serves on the boards of directors for several technology companies, including Nortel Networks, ViaSat and Polycom.

Harold Brown, a former Secretary of Defense under President Jimmy Carter, and James Schlesinger, who has served as CIA director, defense secretary and energy secretary in the Carter and Nixon administrations, are two others that have ties to defense contractors. Brown, a partner of Warburg Pincus LLC, is a board member of Philip Morris Companies and a trustee of the Rand Corporation, which respectively had contracts worth $146 million and $83 million in 2002. Schlesinger, a senior adviser at Lehman Brothers, chairs the board of trustees of the Mitre Corp., a not-for-profit that provides research and development support for the government. Mitre had defense contracts worth $440 million in 2001 and $474 million in 2002.

Chris Williams is one of four registered lobbyists to serve on the board, and the only one to lobby for defense companies. Williams, who served as a special assistant for policy matters to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after having been in a similar capacity for Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), joined Johnston & Associates after leaving the Pentagon. Although the firm had represented Lockheed Martin prior to Williams’ arrival, the firm picked up two large defense contractors as clients once Williams was on board: Boeing, TRW and Northrop Grumman, for which the firm earned a total of more than $220,000. The firm lobbied exclusively on defense appropriations and related authorization bills for its new clients. Johnston & Associates is more often employed by energy companies; its founder, J. Bennett Johnston, is a former Democratic senator from Louisiana who chaired the Energy Committee.

None of the members with ties to defense contractors responded to requests for comment.

The board’s membership also contains other well known Washington hands, including some who are registered lobbyists. Richard V. Allen, a former Nixon and Reagan administration official, who is now a senior counselor to APCO Worldwide, registered as a lobbyist for Alliance Aircraft.

Former Congressional representative Tillie Fowler joined the law firm Holland & Knight in 2001. She served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives where she was a member of several committees including the House Armed Services Committee and the Transportation Committee. In 2002 she lobbied for such clients as the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the American Plastics Council.

Thomas S. Foley is a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld law firm, which he joined in 2001. He was the U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2001 and was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1989 to 1994, after being a representative since 1965. Foley is a registered lobbyist, but has no defense clients.

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Copyright 2001, The Center for Public Integrity. All rights reserved

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March 30, 2003
Back Off, Syria and Iran!
By MAUREEN DOWD


ASHINGTON —We`re shocked that the enemy forces don`t observe the rules of war. We`re shocked that it`s hard to tell civilians from combatants, and friends from foes. Adversaries use guerrilla tactics; they are irregulars; they take advantage of the hostile local weather and terrain; they refuse to stay in uniform. Golly, as our secretary of war likes to say, it`s unfair.

Some of their soldiers are mere children. We know we have overwhelming, superior power, yet we can`t use it all. We`re stunned to discover that the local population treats our well-armed high-tech troops like invaders.

Why is all this a surprise again? I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didn`t they, like, read about it?

"The U.S. was planning on walking in here like it was easy and all," a young marine named Jimmy Paiz told ABC News this weekend with a rueful smile. "It`s not that easy to conquer a country, is it?"

We will conquer the country, and it will be gratifying to see the satanic Saddam running like a rat through the rubble of his palaces. But it was hard not to have a few acid flashbacks to Vietnam at warp speed.

The hawks want Iraq to be the un-Vietnam, to persuade us that war is a necessary disciplinary tool of the only superpower, that America has a moral duty to spread democracy. This time, we crush the opposition swiftly. This time, the domino theory works in reverse, as repressive regimes in the Middle East fall in a chain reaction set off by a democratic Baghdad. Yet in just a week we`ve seen peace marches, world opinion painting us as belligerent, and draining battlefield TV images.

We saw American commanders expressing doubts about a war plan that the Pentagon insisted was going splendidly while being vague about the body count. "The enemy we`re fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against," Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the Army`s senior ground commander, told reporters. (No doubt, that truthful heads up will earn General Wallace a slap down.)

Retired generals were even more critical of the Rumsfeld doctrine of underwhelming force. The defense chief is so enamored of technology and air power that he overrode the risk of pitting 130,000-strong American ground forces — the vast majority of the front-line troops have never fired at a live enemy before — against 350,000 Iraqi fighters, who have kept their aim sharp on their own people.

The incoherence of the battle plan — which some retired generals say is three infantry divisions short — has made the guts and stamina and ingenuity of American forces even more remarkable.

Rummy was beginning to erase his fingerprints. "The war plan," he said, "is Tom Franks`s war plan." Tommy, we hardly knew ye.

Paul Wolfowitz, Rummy`s deputy, conceded that the war planners may have underestimated the hardiness of the heartless Iraqi fighters.

This admission is galling. You can`t pound the drums for war by saying Saddam is Hitler and then act surprised when he proves ruthless on the battlefield.

In their wild dreamscape, the hawks envision Iraq as the rolling start of a broader campaign to bring other rogue states, like Iran and North Korea, to heel.

But in pursuit of what they call a "moral" foreign policy, they stretched and obscured the truth. First, they hyped C.I.A. intelligence to fit their contention that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked. Then they sent Colin Powell out with hyped evidence about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they were drawing up the battle plan, they soft-pedaled C.I.A. and Pentagon intelligence warnings that U.S. troops would face significant resistance from Saddam`s guerrilla fighters.

In cranking up their war plan with expurgated intelligence, the hawks left the ground troops exposed and insufficiently briefed on the fedayeen. Ideology should not shape facts when lives are at stake.

Asked about General Wallace`s remarks, Donald Rumsfeld shrugged them off, noting that anyone who read Amnesty International reports should have known the Iraqis were barbarians.

Rummy was too busy shaking his fist at Syria and Iran to worry about the shortage of troops in Iraq.

As one administration official marveled: "Hasn`t the guy bitten off enough this week?"



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March 30, 2003
Iraq and the Lessons of Lebanon: `Don`t Forget to Leave`
By ETHAN BRONNER


he central aim of the military operation was to smash the looming terrorist threat, but it was also a stab at refashioning the Middle East by installing a pro-Western government. The first troops in the south took Shiite Muslim towns, where locals were relieved to be rid of an oppressive regime. Some cheered the foreign invaders.

That may sound like a description of the current war in Iraq, but the military in question was Israel`s, the invaded country was Lebanon and the date was 1982. It would be 18 years before the last weary, despised Israeli soldier left. And while there are never exact historical parallels, Israel`s experience in Lebanon — an ambitious invasion that turned into a draining quagmire — is a cautionary tale for the American war in Iraq.

The parallels are striking. Like Iraq, Lebanon was, from its inception, a collection of some of the region`s most sophisticated people and a civil war just waiting to happen. It was carved out of the decayed and defeated Ottoman Empire after World War I and forced together groups that hated one another. After bickering between the British and French — described by President Woodrow Wilson as "the whole disgusting scramble" for the Middle East — the former Turkish territories were allotted in 1920. Syria and Lebanon went to France, Palestine and Iraq to Britain.

In Lebanon, the French selected the Christians as the ruling elite and created deep resentment among Druse, and Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Similarly, the British tapped the Sunnis in Iraq, producing years of discrimination for the Shiites and Kurds. In both countries, the Shiites live as a kind of permanent underclass, largely deprived of power and influence. And in both, meddling by Shiite Iran is a real concern.

Like the American decision to go to war in Iraq, Israel`s invasion of Lebanon started from an asserted desire to end terrorism. In the 1970`s, Palestinian guerrillas set up a ministate in southern Lebanon, near Israel`s northern border. Infiltration into Israel led to wrenching hijackings and hostage-taking. Meanwhile the Palestinians formed political alliances in Lebanon, threatening Christian hegemony.

Some Lebanese Christians pushed for Israeli help, starting in the mid-70`s, but the Labor-led government of Yitzhak Rabin was hesitant. When Menachem Begin of Likud became prime minister, the Lebanese found a more receptive ear and continued their mix of pressure and flattery. By the time Begin was re-elected in 1981, he was strongly influenced by his hawkish defense minister, Ariel Sharon. Even though the border with Lebanon had been quiet for some time, Mr. Sharon told those around him that Lebanon was "at the top of the list" of Israel`s security concerns. A small group of like-minded officials around Begin reinforced this view.

When a Palestinian terrorist shot Israel`s London ambassador in the head in June 1982, the invasion was set in motion. The gunman was from a breakaway group that had nothing to do with Yasir Arafat`s Palestine Liberation Organization in southern Lebanon. But the shooting was the pretext Mr. Sharon needed. Israeli troops pushed through the northern border, smashing P.L.O. bases. Shiites had suffered terribly under the P.L.O.`s cruel and arbitrary rule and they were thrilled to see it broken. Israeli soldiers reported that locals welcomed them by throwing rice.

Things turned nasty for Israel when it helped engineer the election of Bashir Gemayel, a Christian ally, as president. Begin pushed him to recognize Israel as one of his first acts, something he resented terribly. Before much of anything could happen, though, Gemayel was assassinated. Within a week Israelis helped Christian militiamen enter two Palestinian refugee camps, where they carried out a massacre.

The Israelis began sinking in the Lebanese mud. With violence everywhere and no central authority, they couldn`t leave. But their troops` continued presence created more resentment and more violence. To protect its forces, Israel set up stringent security measures, like roadblocks, that prevented locals from moving freely. They quickly learned to hate their new rulers.

Shiite militias, financed and armed by Iran and Syria, had great success in fueling this popular resentment. They would move arms into civilian areas — including mosques. The Israelis, sometimes with dogs, would give chase, infuriating the locals.

It is unclear what plans the Bush administration has for a postwar Iraq. They most likely depend, to some extent, on the course of the war and the threats to security that remain. But the risk of a repeat of Israel`s misadventure is real. Longstanding ethnic resentments are likely to surface quickly. Those who wish to make us the object of fury will be hard at work. Patience with foreign liberators does not have much of a shelf life.

David Kimche, a senior Israeli official during the Lebanon war, is watching events in Iraq with apprehension and bad memories. "We thought we could change the regime in Lebanon," he said. "We thought it was going to be much easier than it was."

Ze`ev Schiff, an Israeli journalist and co-author of a book on the war, said it was Israel`s decision to stay that caused the biggest problems.

"I remember early on, I was in Jezzin in southern Lebanon," he said. "I was talking to an old man, a Shiite, who was very happy about what Israel had done. He grabbed my arm and said, `Don`t forget to leave.` But we did. There is just no such thing as an enlightened occupation."



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Die neue NATO-Front gegen Süden gegen den Islam mit Russland für Frankreich und China signalisiert Zustimmung.
Schöne neue Welt.

March 30, 2003
NATO`s New Front
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


n this time of war, I find it helpful to step back a little. So I went last week to NATO headquarters in Brussels, and, I must say, the view from there was illuminating. What I think I saw were some huge tectonic plates of history moving. Here`s how I would describe it: 9/11 was the start of World War III, à la Pearl Harbor; the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was the initial response, à la the North Africa campaign; the invasion of Iraq was akin to D-Day (I hope it ends as well); and now we are present at the creation of some kind of new global power structure.

At this new historical pivot point, we`re still dealing with a bipolar world, only the divide this time is no longer East versus West, but the World of Order versus the World of Disorder. But here`s the surprise: the key instrument through which the World of Order will try to deal with threats from the World of Disorder will still be NATO. Only in this new, expanded NATO, Russia will gradually replace France, and the region where the new NATO will direct its peacekeeping energies will shift from the East to the South. Yes, NATO will continue to be based in Europe, but its primary theaters of operation will be the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and possibly the Arab-Israel frontier.

No, I haven`t lost my marbles. Here`s what`s going on: Ever since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, individual countries — first Britain, then Turkey, then the Netherlands and Germany — have taken responsibility for providing the 5,700-man peacekeeping force in Kabul. It is a very expensive job for one country and it is very inefficient to be changing brigades every six months, but that was how the Bush team wanted it. It didn`t want NATO getting in the way of its combat troops or nation-building.

But in February, President Bush quietly told NATO`s chief, Lord Robertson, that beginning in August, when the current Dutch-German force is supposed to leave Afghanistan, the U.S. would like to see NATO permanently take over peacekeeping duties there and work alongside U.S. combat troops. If this is approved by NATO, for the first time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be operating outside Europe, in the heart of the Muslim world.

France is fighting this idea, because it wants to see NATO, the anchor of America`s military presence in Europe, wither away. But many key NATO members favor the idea, and what`s really interesting is that the Russians have said they would consider sending a platoon as well, under the NATO-Russia partnership. Even the Chinese have winked their approval. Both of these big powers feel threatened by the disorder coming from parts of Central Asia and the Middle East. If France stands in the way, NATO officials say they will just work around it.

What the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan is "internationalizing" the nation-building process there, because we found we simply could not pull it off alone. Eventually, we will have to do the same in Iraq. That is what Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain came over to tell President Bush this past week. The Bush team keeps arguing that this silly alliance it cobbled together to fight the war in Iraq is multilateral and therefore the moral equivalent of the U.N. Nonsense. Other than Britain, we bought this alliance. Almost every government in it is operating without the support of its people. Fighting this war without international legitimacy is hard enough, but trying to do nation-building without it could be even harder.

Yet, the Bush team is right about one thing. Nation-building in Iraq can`t be done by the U.N. It can`t be done by a committee. So what we will eventually need in Iraq is a credible peacekeeping force that is multilateral, legitimate and still led by the U.S. That will bring us back to NATO, possibly in partnership with some Arab and Muslim armies. This is not your grandfather`s NATO anymore. That NATO patrolled the German-Soviet frontier. This one will be patrolling Kabul and Baghdad.

And while NATO is changing, it may just go all the way. NATO`s chief, Lord Robertson, is retiring this year (a real loss). A favorite to succeed him is the Norwegian defense minister, Kristin Krohn Devold, a woman. So get ready for this CNN headline: "The NATO alliance, for the first time led by a woman and including a Russian platoon, took over peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan today, as a prelude to taking over peacekeeping in Iraq. France refused to participate."

Yes, we may be present at the creation of a very new world, and no, I have not lost my marbles.

Mr. Friedman has been working on a documentary entitled "Searching for the Roots of 9/11" for The New York Times and the Discovery Channel. It will be broadcast April 1 on the Discovery Times Channel at 8 p.m. Eastern time.



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Es gibt doch nichts schöneres als fest gemauerte Vorurteile. Wer soll das alles Lesen. Aber heute ist so viel interessantes dabei.

March 30, 2003
An American Myth Rides Into the Sunset
By SUSAN FALUDI


ORTLAND, Ore. — On the eve of the Iraqi invasion, the president`s advisers were working hard to embed George W. Bush inside the script of the American Western. Rejecting the widespread European frustration with Mr. Bush`s Lone Ranger act, Vice President Dick Cheney used his "Meet the Press" appearance to make clear that the president is "a cowboy" who "cuts to the chase." Mr. Bush`s blunt talk, the vice president told Tim Russert, is "exactly what the circumstances require."

The president has done his part. For some time now, Mr. Bush has been obliging, dutifully working his way through the Western cliché checklist: "smoke `em out of their holes"; "hunt `em down"; "go it alone"; "wanted: dead or alive."

The image being invoked by the president and his posse has deep roots in the American soil. But if Mr. Bush`s cowpoke credentials seem to be all simple syntax and bodacious belt buckle, his policies actually flout the cowboy charter. Teddy Roosevelt, in "The Cattle Country of the Far West," called cowboys "quiet, rather self-contained men." The president`s actions have violated the basic terms of the American Western romance and, thereby, the terms by which we call ourselves Americans. He`s declared war on a foundational national myth.

It`s worth recalling that the cowboy of the myth wasn`t trigger happy and he wasn`t a dominator. He carried a gun to protect himself and his cattle — cattle that didn`t even belong to him. His mission was their safe passage, and by extension, the safe passage of the civilizing society to follow. And his honor was grounded on his civilized refusal to fire first. "Didn`t I tell you he`d not shoot?" says a spectator to a gun fight that didn`t happen in "The Virginian," Owen Wister`s 1902 novel. "He`s a brave man," he adds. "It`s not a brave man that`s dangerous. It`s the cowards that scare me."

"The Virginian" is the urtext of the cowboy myth. Its protagonist, like Wister and Wister`s old Harvard classmate Teddy Roosevelt, was a transplanted Easterner whose manhood was fashioned in the West. "No man traveling through or living in the country need fear molestation from the cowboys," wrote Roosevelt. They "treat a stranger with the most whole-souled hospitality" and "what can almost be called a grave courtesy."

Wister dedicated "The Virginian" to Teddy Roosevelt. Our 20th-century presidents have lived under the sway of its central ethic, and never more so than in the grave buildup to conflict. Understanding the necessity to at least appear to uphold the credo, no matter what the reality, William McKinley took advantage of the sinking of the Maine in Havana harbor, Franklin Roosevelt waited (some say intentionally) until our fleet was destroyed at Pearl Harbor, and Lyndon Johnson contrived the Tonkin Gulf "incident" before entering their respective wars.

One cannot imagine F.D.R., before declaring war on Japan, or even Ronald Reagan before Grenada, pumping a fist and saying of himself, "Feel good" — as President Bush did before he announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Indeed, the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare flies in the face of the humble, reluctant cowboy myth Mr. Bush holds so dear.

Of course, American identity has always contained competing models; even the original frontiersman, the cowboy`s immediate ancestor, had two faces. He was either Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett — that is, either the man who rode into the wilderness to build and nurture a society called Booneville, or the man who ventured out only to collect and count the pelts. In his time, Daniel Boone was the hero at the heart of our myth, the Indian fighter turned homesteader, the war-hating American archetype. As Richard Slotkin observed in "Regeneration Through Violence," his history of the American frontier, for this kind of man "solitary hunting trips are, not ends in themselves, but means to a social end . . . the ultimate creation of a better society." By contrast, Davy Crockett was, as V. L. Parrington, the literary critic, dubbed him, "a frontier wastrel," a rapacious aggressor and "a huge Western joke."

As the nation industrialized, however, Crockett`s heaps of dead pelts became the equivalent of America`s capitalistic might, and his own profile began to rise from pathetic joke to vaunted hunter and Alamo hero. The honored activity was no longer husbandry but dominance.

These two contesting ethics were neatly framed at the close of World War II in the debate over our future. Were we on the threshold of "the century of the common man," a phrase coined by Henry Wallace and represented by Ernie Pyle`s homely soldiers? Or were we on the cusp of "the American Century," defined by Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc., as the nation`s manifest right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit"? Luce`s vision won the day.

In this regard, President Bush`s self-presentation culminates a progression long in the works. We`ve been on the way to becoming a different America for a while.

A little more than a year ago, the old and vanishing American mythology of common-man virtue enjoyed an unexpected comeback — in the aftermath of 9/11. That antiquated ethic returned to infuse our romance with the sacrificial firefighters and police officers, and the average citizens martyred in our national tragedy. Its presence was palpable in the self-image of an ordinary embattled people rising to the occasion in countless ways, as if we were once more "out in some strange night caring for each other," as Ernie Pyle wrote of the G.I.`s he chronicled.

Perhaps that is why so many Americans now feel even more painfully the loss of a myth that, in truth, has been on its sickbed for a generation. As the invasion of Iraq began, a lament could be heard across the political spectrum. A letter in The Times seemed typical: "The president was speaking and I realized that an old and dear friend of mine was gone."

What Americans grieve for is not reality. We`ve carried out regime change before, whether on Chief Sitting Bull or Manuel Noriega. We`ve also waged elective wars, whether in the Dominican Republic or the Philippines. But to call it a myth is not to diminish its importance. Mythologies are essential to defining who we are and, more importantly, who we want to be. We caught a powerful glimpse of our myth`s possibilities, just before its end. Sept. 11 gave us its final spark, like the bright flash that the sun shoots up before it sets for good.

Susan Faludi is author of ``Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.``



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WP heute


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/editorials/

Sunday, March 30, 2003

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Perseverance
Page B06
ALLIED MILITARY and political leaders now are stressing their expectation that the Iraq war may be long, "tough and difficult," as British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it. Since the war began 11 days ago, the more optimistic scenarios of a quick Iraqi collapse have evaporated, and commanders in the field have faced unexpectedly fierce Iraqi resistance in unexpected places and from unexpected sources -- especially from thousands of paramilitary fighters in the south. The Iraqi irregulars have not won any battles, but they have slowed the allied advance on Baghdad and prevented any popular uprising against Saddam Hussein. They also have raised the specter of a protracted and costly fight for the capital and other key cities. Some U.S. and British commanders appear inclined to await the arrival of reinforcements before attempting these assaults; one suggested to Post correspondent Rick Atkinson that a prolonged bombing campaign, deemed unnecessary before the war, should now be undertaken. From outside the theater it`s impossible to judge whether a field officer`s predictions that the war could last past summer and require tens of thousands of additional troops will prove accurate. But if such a commitment is needed to ensure success, the United States should make it.
Taking Rape Seriously
Page B06
THE AIR FORCE Academy announced on Wednesday changes that are serious enough to jolt the institution -- the most drastic of which was the firing of four top officers who presided during the recent rape scandal. Although the leaders were due to leave soon, the dismissals are symbolically important, especially in the case of the chief of cadets, Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III. Gen. Gilbert showed up repeatedly in women`s testimonies as the voice blaming the victim. One woman who says she was raped after a party and then nudged out of the academy after reporting it quoted Gen. Gilbert as saying, "YOU didn`t have to go to that party. YOU didn`t have to drink that night" -- an account Gen. Gilbert did not deny in a recent Post story by Lee Hockstader.

Pony Up or Lose Out
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THE FONDEST hopes of Prince Georgians for a flourishing county -- with improved schools, public safety and economic development -- have been hobbled for years by a property tax cap that leaves the county overly dependent on state generosity. Former county executive Wayne K. Curry and a few other local leaders tried to do away with the voter-imposed limit but couldn`t muster enough supporters among politicians or taxpayers. Now County Executive Jack B. Johnson has sent signals that it`s time to revive the issue, and he has good reason to try: More and more state lawmakers in key positions are making it clear that Prince George`s is not paying its fair share and ought to be called on it.

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Opinion Columns

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A Budget of Dire Consequences
By David S. Broder, Page B07
I am about to conduct class warfare -- not because it`s my ideological preference but because the facts compel it.

Limited War, So Far
By Michael Kelly, Page B07
WITH THE 3RD INFANTRY DIVISION, Iraq -- The war the United States is waging against the regime of Saddam Hussein is a critical test of several related and very ambitious concepts. First it is a test of an evolving military doctrine. This holds that the American armed forces` uniquely massive superiority in weaponry and in observation and communication allows it to conduct war, in a sense, on the cheap: to achieve even very large goals with relatively little force in little time at little cost in American lives.

Iraqis Must Share in Their Liberation
By Kanan Makiya, Page B07
The United States is failing to make use of what should be its most valuable asset in this war: the many Iraqis who are willing to fight and die for their country`s liberation.

Page B07

About Fairness and My Family
By Linda Kaufman, Page B07
Nobody tells you the etiquette for meeting a little boy and deciding whether he will be in your life forever.

The MIA State Department
By Jim Hoagland, Page B07
Jim Baker demonstrated in Operation Desert Storm that war diplomacy is not an oxymoron. But this time around, the Bush administration`s suddenly missing-in-action State Department has yet to deploy a diplomatic strategy that reinforces the president`s justified battlefield aims.

[Joerver]

Wer geht zum Militär. Gegen die Vorurteile.

March 30, 2003
Military Mirrors Working-Class America
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and STEVEN A. HOLMES


hey left small towns and inner cities, looking for a way out and up, or fled the anonymity of the suburbs, hoping to find themselves. They joined the all-volunteer military, gaining a free education or a marketable skill or just the discipline they knew they would need to get through life.

As the United States engages in its first major land war in a decade, the soldiers, sailors, pilots and others who are risking, and now giving, their lives in Iraq represent a slice of a broad swath of American society — but by no means all of it.

Of the 28 servicemen killed who have been identified so far, 20 were white, 5 black, 3 Hispanic — proportions that neatly mirror those of the military as a whole. But just one was from a well-to-do family, and with the exception of a Naval Academy alumnus, just one had graduated from an elite college or university.

A survey of the American military`s endlessly compiled and analyzed demographics paints a picture of a fighting force that is anything but a cross section of America. With minorities overrepresented and the wealthy and the underclass essentially absent, with political conservatism ascendant in the officer corps and Northeasterners fading from the ranks, America`s 1.4 million-strong military seems to resemble the makeup of a two-year commuter or trade school outside Birmingham or Biloxi far more than that of a ghetto or barrio or four-year university in Boston.

Today`s servicemen and women may not be Ivy Leaguers, but in fact they are better educated than the population at large: reading scores are a full grade higher for enlisted personnel than for their civilian counterparts of the same age. While whites account for three of five soldiers, the military has become a powerful magnet for blacks, and black women in particular, who now outnumber white women in the Army.

But if the military has become the most successfully integrated institution in society, there is also a kind of voluntary segregation: while whites and blacks seek out careers in communications, intelligence, the medical corps and other specialties in roughly equal numbers, blacks are two and a half times as likely to fill support or administrative roles, while whites are 50 percent more likely to serve in the infantry, gun crews or their naval equivalent.

Sgt. Annette Acevedo, 22, a radio operator from Atlanta, could have gone to college but chose the Army because of all the benefits it offered: travel, health coverage, work experience and independence from her parents. The Army seemed a better opportunity to get started with her life and be a more independent person, she said.

Specialist Markita Scott, 27, a reservist from Columbus, Ga., called up as a personnel clerk in an Army deployment center, says she is now planning to make a career of the Army. "Oh, yes, I am learning a skill," said Specialist Scott, who is black. "I get a lot of papers that are not correct, and so I know I`m helping the person. It could be making sure the right person is notified in case of an emergency, or maybe I tell them, `You know, if you do your insurance this way, the money will not go directly to the child, but the child`s guardian,` and they say, `Oh, I don`t want it going to my ex.` "

Lt. James Baker, 27, of Shelbyville, Tenn., who is white, enlisted in the National Guard. The Tennessee Guard had no infantry units, so he chose artillery instead. "Artillery is exciting," he said. "I get to blow a lot of stuff up and play in the woods. The Army is the biggest team sport in the world."

Confronted by images of the hardships of overseas deployment and by the stark reality of casualties in Iraq, some have raised questions about the composition of the fighting force and about requiring what is, in essence, a working-class military to fight and die for an affluent America.

"It`s just not fair that the people that we ask to fight our wars are people who join the military because of economic conditions, because they have fewer options," said Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat from Manhattan and a Korean War veteran who is calling for restoring the draft.

Some scholars have noted that since the draft was abolished in 1973, the country has begun developing what could be called a warrior class or caste, often perpetuating itself from father or uncle to son or niece, whose political and cultural attitudes do not reflect the diversity found in civilian society — potentially foreshadowing a social schism between those who fight and those who ask them to.

It is an issue that today`s soldiers grapple with increasingly as they watch their comrades, even their spouses, deploy to the combat zone. "As it stands right now, the country is riding on the soldiers who volunteer," said Sgt. Barry Perkins, 39, a career military policeman at Fort Benning, Ga. "Everybody else is taking a free ride."


The Way It Was
The Vietnam War
And the Draft`s End
The Vietnam War looms large as the defining epoch in the creation of what has become today`s professional, blue-collar military.

It led to the creation of an all-volunteer force, when the Nixon administration, in an attempt to reduce opposition to the war, abolished the draft in 1973.

Because the draft provided deferment to college students, the burden of being sent to Vietnam fell heavily on the less well educated and less affluent. And because of the unpopularity of the war, military service was disdained by many members of the nation`s elite, leading their children to lose the propensity to serve that had characterized earlier generations of America`s privileged.

As a result, the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War looked very different from the professional corps now fighting in Iraq and stationed around the globe.

The 2,594,000 troops who served in Vietnam between 1965 and 1972 were younger, much less likely to be married and almost entirely male, according to a study of Defense Department data by Richard K. Kolb, the editor and publisher of VFW magazine.

The average soldier in a combat unit in Vietnam was 19 or 20 years old and unmarried, Mr. Kolb said. Of the 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam, 61 percent were 21 or younger; of the enlisted men killed, only about 25 percent were married.

"I can only recall one guy I served with who was married, and he was about 30 and a lifer," said Mr. Kolb, who was a 19-year-old radio operator in Vietnam in 1970.

By contrast, the average age of the 28 men killed in the war with Iraq so far is 26, and 8 of the 22 enlisted men who died, or 36 percent, were married.

In the Army, about 25 percent of enlisted men were married in 1973. Today that figure has almost doubled.

Another major difference, of course, is that few women served in Vietnam, and women were not allowed in combat units. Only 7,494 women served in Vietnam, of whom 6,250 were nurses, according to the Defense Department. Of the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam, only eight were women, all of them nurses, and only one is officially listed as killed in action.

There were no female prisoners of war in Vietnam. By contrast, one female soldier has already been captured in Iraq and two others are listed as missing in action. Women are enlisting in far greater numbers today, especially since the Pentagon lifted many of the restrictions on women serving in combat. Fifteen percent of all officers and enlisted personnel are women.

The existence of the draft during the Vietnam War, and the war`s growing unpopularity as the years passed without victory, also created fundamental differences in the makeup of the armed forces. Soldiers tended to enlist for single tours of duty and then go back quickly to civilian life, making for a higher turnover rate and less professionalism than the Pentagon boasts of now. Today, the average enlistee stays about seven years, up from less than two years in 1973.

But Mr. Kolb and other experts say the widespread idea that the Army in Vietnam was made up mostly of draftees is incorrect. In fact, only 25 percent of all American forces in Vietnam were draftees, compared with 66 percent in World War II.

"With me, it was not a question of whether I would enlist, but when," Mr. Kolb said. "I grew up in a small town, and my father and uncles had all served in World War II. Enlisting was what we did in my family."

Among the many myths of Vietnam that persist today, experts say, is that it was a war fought by poor and black Americans, who died in greater proportions than whites.

Although that was true in the early stages of the American ground war, in 1965 and 1966, when there were large numbers of blacks in front-line combat units, Army and Marine Corps commanders later took steps to reassign black servicemen to other jobs to equalize deaths, according to Col. Harry G. Summers Jr. in "Vietnam War Almanac."

By the end of the war, African-Americans had suffered 12.5 percent of the total deaths in Vietnam, 1 percentage point less than their proportion in the overall population, Colonel Summers wrote.

Servicemen from states in the South had the highest rate of battlefield deaths, 31 per 100,000 of the region`s population, Mr. Kolb found. Soldiers from states in the Northeast had the lowest rates, 23.5 deaths per 100,000.

Since the end of the draft, that geographic skew on the battlefield has extended to the services as a whole. The percentages of people from the Northeast and Midwest have dropped, while the proportion from the West has climbed and from the South has skyrocketed — even after accounting for southward and westward population shifts in society at large. For the year ending Sept. 30, 2000, 42 percent of all recruits came from the South.

Over all, Mr. Kolb said, 76 percent of the soldiers in Vietnam were from working-class or lower-income families, while only 23 percent had fathers in professional, managerial or technical occupations.

The disparity created by the Vietnam draft can be seen on the walls of Memorial Hall and Memorial Church at Harvard University, where the names of Harvard students and alumni who died for their country are inscribed. There were 200 Harvard students killed in the Civil War and 697 in World War II, but only 22 in Vietnam.

For Stanley Karnow, the journalist and author of "Vietnam: A History," who began reporting from Vietnam in 1959, the contrast with World War II was personal. When he turned 18 in 1943, he dropped out of Harvard and enlisted in the Army. In 1970, when his son turned 18 and became eligible for the draft, he was also a Harvard student. "We did everything we could to keep him out of the draft," Mr. Karnow said.

Signing Up
Recruiting Office
As Melting Pot

If the nation`s wealthy and more well-educated youth have shunned the military, others less privileged have gravitated toward it.

Compared to their contemporaries in civilian life, the armed forces have a greater percentage of minorities, a higher proportion of high school graduates and better reading levels. As a group, about 60 percent of enlisted men and women are white; they tend to be married and upwardly mobile, but to come from families without the resources to send them to college.

While blacks make up about 12.7 per cent of the same-age civilian population, they constitute about 22 per cent of enlisted personnel. Perhaps most striking is the number of enlisted women who are black: more than 35 percent, according to Pentagon figures, indicating not only that black women enlist at higher rates, but that they stay in the military longer. In the Army, in fact, half of all enlisted women are black, outnumbering whites, who account for 38 percent.

In Chicago Heights, Ill., the Marine Corps recruiting office was filled on Wednesday with the huffs and puffs of more than a dozen fresh young recruits, mostly wearing buzz cuts, doing crunches and chin-ups.

The afternoon workout is a ritual for these newest marines, a gregarious group made up mainly of 17- and 18-year-olds who still have to get fitted for prom tuxes and graduate from high school before shipping out in just a few months. They resemble the American melting pot: Hispanics, blacks, whites, young men and one young woman.

Patriotism and the prospect of getting a chance to go to Iraq, where the action is, played a role in their decisions to enlist, the recruits said. But Lori Luckey, 24, a single mother of three girls, said the main reasons she signed up for the Marines were to get a chance at a career and the opportunity for advancement, to see the world, and to obtain a dental plan and other benefits.

Others, like Myles Tweedy, 18, a high school senior whose baby face is adorned with a goatee, said joining the military was a family tradition. Mr. Tweedy`s father was an infantryman in Vietnam, and his grandfather was in the Army as well. "Now it`s my turn," Mr. Tweedy said. "It`s something I knew I was always going to do."

Jonathan Lewis, 18, who said he enlisted for the benefits, and out of a sense of patriotism, said he figured he had less to fear as a marine in Baghdad than in the streets of Chicago, where he lived for 12 years until his family moved to the south suburbs.

"Being over in Baghdad, you`ve got a thousand people 100 percent behind you," he said. "Around here, who says you can`t be going to McDonald`s and that`s it? Over there, you`re part of everybody, you`re with your friends and family, you`re still safe."

Ms. Luckey has already made plans for her two oldest daughters, 6 and 4, to stay with their paternal grandmother when she leaves in May for 16 weeks of basic training. Her youngest daughter, not yet 2, will stay with Ms. Luckey`s mother.

A corrections officer for six years, she says her job "was just so dead-end." She decided to resign in November and enlisted in the Marines, eyeing not just the benefits but also a fairer chance of advancement.

The Race Issue
Equal Opportunity
On the Battlefield
Though Hispanics are underrepresented in the military, their numbers are growing rapidly. Even as the total number of military personnel dropped 23 percent over the last decade, the number of Hispanics in uniform grew to 118,000 from 90,600, a jump of about 30 percent.

While blacks tend to be more heavily represented in administrative and support functions, a new study shows that Hispanics, like whites, are much more likely to serve in combat operations. But those Hispanics in combat jobs tend to be infantry grunts, particularly in the Marine Corps, rather than fighter or bomber pilots.

"The Air Force is substantially more white, and the officer corps is substantially more white than Latino," said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, which issued a report last week on Hispanics in the military. "So you won`t see Latinos flying airplanes over Iraq."

There are as many explanations for why Hispanics are flocking to the armed forces as there are individuals — but the explanations are not that different.

Specialist Joel Flores joined the Army five years ago on an impulse. Already in his late 20`s, married and the father of two daughters, he was fed up with his sales clerk job at a crafts store in San Antonio, where he had worked for nine years. "They kept passing me up for management," Specialist Flores, 34, said. "I got tired of it."

So one Friday after work he walked into a recruitment office to ask about his options in the military. Two hours later he was signing papers to enlist. "When I saw that first paycheck, it was `Oh my God,` " said Specialist Flores, now an Army cook. His take-home pay was half what he had made at the store.

But he says he does not regret his decision even now, when he is among more than 12,000 troops waiting to depart Fort Hood, Tex., for the war in the Persian Gulf.

Specialist Flores, who was born in Texas to Mexican-American parents and was the first person in his family to join the military, has since re-enlisted. He says he has found a more level playing field in the Army than in the outside world.

He has moved up a few notches, from private to a specialist supervising other cooks, and says he wants to retire after reaching sergeant major. In the Army, he said, "It doesn`t matter who you are if you can do the job."

For many soldiers like Specialist Flores, the military has not disappointed. Some complain about the low pay compared to what they could be making in the private sector, as well as the long hours and the time they spend away from their families.

But they say they have found a more egalitarian and racially harmonious society, one in which prejudice is trumped by meritocracy, discipline and the need to get along to survive.

Sgt. Nathalie Williams, 29, said that in her hometown, Tuskegee, Ala., her closest friends would probably be black, like her. At Fort Hood, they are black, Puerto Rican and white. "You can`t judge somebody by their skin color," she said. "That one person who you don`t like could be the person who saves your life."

Sergeant Williams`s father served in the military, and an older sister is also in the Army. She said she joined the Army in 1992, after graduating from high school, to seek exposure to different kinds of people and travel. A dream came true when she was posted in Hawaii for three years.

But Sergeant Williams, the wife of a nursing assistant and the mother of three children, now faces going to war. Her sister, a staff sergeant, is already in Kuwait.



What Lies Ahead
A New Draft
Or a Warrior Caste?

For those who support a return to the military draft, the question is whether the wealthy and elite of America — the sons and daughters of members of Congress, among others — were meant to serve as well.

Charles C. Moskos, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University who has written extensively in support of a national draft for the armed services, domestic security and civilian service, argues that the military must represent every stratum of society.

"In World Wars I and II, the British nobility had a higher killed-in-action rate than the working class," he said. "Our enlisted ranks resemble the British: they`re lower- to middle-class, working-class, intelligent people, who are joining for both the adventure and economic opportunity. But the officer corps today does not represent American nobility. These are not people who are going to be future congressmen or senators. The number of veterans in the Senate and the House is dropping every year. It shows you that our upper class no longer serves."

Dr. Moskos said the pitfalls of having leaders who do not share in the casualties of war were common knowledge in Homeric times: "Agamemnon was willing to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia," he said. Today`s military recruiters, he said, grasp what the ancient Greeks understood — "that nobody`ll accept casualties unless the elite are willing to put their own children`s lives on the line."

"I once addressed a group of recruiters and asked them, would you prefer to have your advertising budget tripled or see Chelsea Clinton joining the Army — and they all said Chelsea Clinton joining the Army," he said. "That would be the signal that America was serious about joining the military. Imagine Jenna Bush joining the military — that would be the signal thing saying, this is a cause worth dying for."

Dr. Moskos says support for the Vietnam War ended when it became possible for the elite to win draft deferments. Other experts on military demographics dispute this.

James Burk, a professor of sociology at Texas A&M University, acknowledged that few wealthy citizens today choose military service. "But if you say, is the all-volunteer force not representative of the country as a whole, I`d say it`s more representative than the upper class," he said.

Dr. Moskos and others also suggest that the citizen soldier who serves out his term and then returns to civilian life is being replaced by a class, or caste, of career soldiers — even in frontline combat positions that do not require the expertise and experience of years of service. On top of that, experts say, members of the military are far more likely to have parents who served in the armed forces, suggesting that such a caste is self-perpetuating.

"To carry the logic further, why don`t you hire a foreign legion and be done with it?" Dr. Moskos said. "Go out, hire foreigners, say they can join the American military and get a decent salary. Oh, no — maybe Americans should fight for America?"

Those who warn of a warrior class cite a study by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies in North Carolina showing that between 1976 and 1996 the percentage of military officers who saw themselves as nonpartisan or politically independent fell from more than 50 percent to less than 20 percent. The main beneficiary of this shift has been the Republican Party.

"The officer corps has always been more conservative," said Richard H. Kohn, a professor of military history at the University of North Carolina. "But even so, the change there is dramatic."

Dr. Kohn and other scholars worry that with fewer families having sons or daughters in the military, especially among the affluent, and with a high percentage of enlistees coming from military families, a potential cultural and political gap could open up between civilian and martial societies.

"One of my concerns is effective civilian control of the military," he said. "The decline in the number of members of Congress who are veterans is dramatic. Up until 1995 Congress had a larger percentage of veterans than there was in the general population. After 1995 it was less — and that`s after the Republican takeover. That means there is potentially a less knowledgeable, less effective oversight from Congress."

Even among academics, to be sure, those concerns are narrowly felt. "When the troops come back, many of them will get out; they`ll have some memories," said John Allen Williams, a retired Navy captain who is a political science professor at Loyola University Chicago. "A military that self-identified as different from, and possibly superior to, the civilian society it served, with a distinct set of values, and that might be willing to act on them opposed to civilian leaders? The thought that we could have that in this country is just inconceivable."

Both Mr. Burk and Mr. Williams say they support the idea of a draft, though they suggest it could never be enacted in today`s political environment.

Ask a squad of today`s volunteer soldiers whether they like the idea of a draft, and you`ll get a platoon`s worth of answers.

Pfc. Michael Philbert, 18, had just finished basic training on Thursday and was browsing at Ranger Joe`s, a uniform and equipment store outside Fort Benning, with his father and 13-year-old brother. He said a draft was a bad idea.

"It sounds kind of fair," Private Philbert said. "It`s not fair that some poor kids don`t have much of a choice but to join if they want to be productive because they didn`t go to a good school, or they had family problems that kept them from doing well, so they join up and they`re the ones that die for our country while the rich kids can avoid it.

"From the other side, it`s not someone`s fault that they`re born rich or poor. Just because someone is rich doesn`t mean you have to yank them out of the comfort of their life just to get even. And most poor people are glad they had this kind of opportunity. They`re glad they got in."

But Sgt. Barry Perkins, the military policeman at Fort Benning, who has been around the block a few more times than a buck private, said America`s military — and its youth — would benefit from a draft that included both men and women. "If you look at today`s society, teenagers are staying at home, not doing a thing," he said. "They need a productive life. It should be straight across the board. As long as you don`t allow power, money and wealth to influence it, it will be straight across the board — it will be fairer."

Specialist Markita Scott, the reservist from Columbus, Ga., said she thought a draft was unnecessary. "Already with callbacks you can see the morale is down lower," she said. "They`re like, `I had a job.` Just think if you had a whole draft of people who didn`t want to be there. I think of that guy who threw the grenade — you wonder if there would be a lot more like that."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

Die Grafiken zu #668


http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/international/20030330_…

[Joerver]

Terry Jones hat heute nichts Neues.
Ich las eben, daß Wahrheit etwas ist, was jemand für wahr hält. Ist es mit der Freiheit das gleiche.
Let`s make the world a safer place, Tony and George. Let`s bomb. Das ist die WAHRHEIT; Eure Wahrheit.

OK, George, make with the friendly bombs
Observer Worldview
The Bush files - Observer special

Terry Jones
Sunday February 17, 2002
The Observer

To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can`t think why no one has thought of it before. It`s so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn`t be in the mess we are in today.

The moment the IRA blew up the Horseguards` bandstand, the Government should have declared its own War on Terrorism. It should have immediately demanded that the Irish government hand over Gerry Adams. If they refused to do so - or quibbled about needing proof of his guilt - we could have told them that this was no time for prevarication and that they must hand over not only Adams but all IRA terrorists in the Republic. If they tried to stall by claiming that it was hard to tell who were IRA terrorists and who weren`t, because they don`t go around wearing identity badges, we would have been free to send in the bombers.

It is well known that the best way of picking out terrorists is to fly 30,000ft above the capital city of any state that harbours them and drop bombs - preferably cluster bombs. It is conceivable that the bombing of Dublin might have provoked some sort of protest, even if just from James Joyce fans, and there is at least some likelihood of increased anti-British sentiment in what remained of the city and thus a rise in the numbers of potential terrorists. But this, in itself, would have justified the tactic of bombing them in the first place. We would have nipped them in the bud, so to speak. I hope you follow the argument.

Having bombed Dublin and, perhaps, a few IRA training bogs in Tipperary, we could not have afforded to be complacent. We would have had to turn our attention to those states which had supported and funded the IRA terrorists through all these years. The main provider of funds was, of course, the USA, and this would have posed us with a bit of a problem. Where to bomb in America? It`s a big place and it`s by no means certain that a small country like the UK could afford enough bombs to do the whole job. It`s going to cost the US billions to bomb Iraq and a lot of that is empty countryside. America, on the other hand, provides a bewildering number of targets.

Should we have bombed Washington, where the policies were formed? Or should we have concentrated on places where Irishmen are known to lurk, like New York, Boston and Philadelphia? We could have bombed any police station and fire station in most major urban centres, secure in the knowledge that we would be taking out significant numbers of IRA sympathisers. On St Patrick`s Day, we could have bombed Fifth Avenue and scored a bull`s-eye.

In those American cities we couldn`t afford to bomb, we could have rounded up American citizens with Irish names, put bags over their heads and flown them in chains to Guernsey or Rockall, where we could have given them food packets marked `My Kind of Meal` and exposed them to the elements with a clear conscience.

The same goes for Australia. There are thousands of people in Sydney and Melbourne alone who have actively supported Irish republicanism by sending money and good wishes back to people in the Republic, many of whom are known to be IRA members and sympathisers. A well-placed bomb or two Down Under could have taken out the ringleaders and left the world a safer place. Of course, it goes without saying that we would also have had to bomb various parts of London such as Camden Town, Lewisham and bits of Hammersmith and we should certainly have had to obliterate, if not the whole of Liverpool, at least the Scotland Road area.

And that would be it really, as far as exterminating the IRA and its supporters. Easy. The War on Terrorism provides a solution so uncomplicated, so straightforward and so gloriously simple that it baffles me why it has taken a man with the brains of George W. Bush to think of it.

So, sock it to Iraq, George. Let`s make the world a safer place.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

[Joerver]

Minister Struck beschwert sich über Exgeneräle

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Was sagte der Pfarrer zu dem Bauern: Da hilft kein beten, da muß Mist hin.

US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush
They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush.

Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called "A Christian`s Duty," a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.

"I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God`s peace be your guide," says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces.

The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches.

Sunday`s is "Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding".

Monday`s reads "Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics".




© 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Copyright information: http://abc.net.au/common/copyrigh.htm
Privacy information: http://abc.net.au/privacy.htm

[Joerver]

Ich las vorhin im Video-Text B.Becker duscht 3x täglich schreibt das Fachblatt für Hygenie BamS als Geheimnis seines Erfolges. Gesunde Eitelkeit ist die Vorstufe zu einem gesunden Selbstvertrauen. So weit die wichtigen Meldungen.
Ich schätze auch Mr. Bush wird des öfteren duschen, aber ob das hilft.
J.

Blood Remains On the Hands
Jimmy Breslin

March 30, 2003

The least blood, a small squirt when removing a needle, two drops, that`s all, no more than two drops, and suddenly it is everywhere. It remains after all. Wipe and it returns. Look about and it is in two and three places. Wipe those places and the blood does not go away. Two drops appear as a needle comes out and then it is endless.

Blood from the body of a baby bombed to death in Baghdad, blood by the pint, running onto the street as fast as a swift river, has magic in its pure infant cells. Of course you cannot scrub the street clean because the blood from the baby already has covered the street and is in the air.

Blood from a bombed baby in Baghdad goes over the wide choking sands and it crosses mountains and then great land masses and then suddenly, over a channel, it is in Westminster, in London, and people look at the sidewalk and wonder where these large blood spots came from, and the officer on duty in front of 10 Downing Street looks at the door handle and worries, how did this get here without me seeing this and having it cleaned? He has a servant rush to the door with cloth and polish and he wipes the blood and polishes the door handles and then walks off and the guard happens to glance at the door handle and the blood is back, smeared bright new red over the polished handle.

The baby`s blood is off to rush over the ocean, a strange red cloud poised to rain and it floats over the green of the Washington parks and goes down a sloping street to the State Department, where as a man opens a car door for Colin Powell he suddenly notices blood on the door handle and he quickly unfurls a handkerchief and wipes the handle and Powell gets in and the car goes off and the man who held the door is left in the driveway and he sees the red that is still on Powell`s door handle.

When he leaves the car, Powell does not notice the door handle as he touches it himself. The blood red cloud goes over the river to the Pentagon and it suddenly pours on the car that takes Rumsfeld to an appearance, and this time the blood is left on the door handles of both sides. A sergeant wipes. The blood is there when Rumsfeld gets home.

The red cloud then comes down on the White House lawn and it does more than sprinkle, it splashes the helicopter of the president and he strolls out with his wife, his dog and his chesty walk and slight smirk and the wife at his side is smiling, for it is the end of the week and we are good, decent Christian people, God bless us and God bless everybody, and as they are about to get into the helicopter, an Air Force officer rushes up in alarm and says, please, just give us a moment, and he has three people scrubbing so quickly to clean the blood from the helicopter and then Bush and his wife get aboard and they fly off to Camp David, for where else would you go on a weekend, and as they have neglected to have two men hanging out of the windows and inspecting the sides of the craft in midair, nobody can see the blood back on the helicopter.

As they get off at at Camp David, Bush`s hand brushes against baby blood on the plane, as does his wife`s.

At this hour in London, Blair arises in the middle of his long night and goes to the bathroom to try and wash this blood off. He couldn`t do it before he went to bed.

In Washington, Rumsfeld stares at the red splotches on both his hands and Colin Powell calls out that there must be something wrong with the soap because it does not get the blood off his hands.

At Camp David, Bush notices blood on his right hand and he goes to the bathroom to wash it off and he holds his hands under the water and rubs them with a bar of soap and then puts them under the water and he takes them out and holds them out to dry with a towel. He glances at his hands and sees the blood of the dead baby is bright on his fingers. He mutters and washes the hands again.

He will do it again. Again this year and then next year and through all the years because the blood remains forever on the hands.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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Das wird den Amis zu schaffen, Sex ist böser als Terroismus.

Symbolische Aktionen gegen den Krieg

Ernst Corinth 30.03.2003
Transatlantisch versendete deutsche Hühnerknochen, Gehirn-Versteigerungen und Masturbation für den Frieden

Sogar der Nachrichtenagentur AP war es eine Meldung wert. Dann griffen Spiegel-Online und der TV-Sender n-tv das Thema auf. Und auch eine Lokalzeitung in den USA wunderte sich über Hühnerknochen aus Deutschland.


Genau die landeten nämlich Ende vergangener Woche gut verpackt in einem Paket aus Deutschland im Büro der US-Kongressabgeordneten Ginny Brown-Waite. Da die Knochen auf dem langen Postweg nicht frischer geworden waren und also dementsprechend verdächtig rochen, schalteten Brown-Waites Mitarbeiter schnell die Polizei und einen Sicherheitsdienst ein.





Das stinkende Paket wurde dann sofort geröntgt, und als feststand, dass es keine Bombe enthielt, wurde es zur weiteren Überprüfung in ein Labor der University of South Florida gebracht. Gleichzeitig beschäftigte sich das FBI mit der Frage, ob der Knochenversand womöglich gegen ein Bundesgesetz verstoßen würde. Und schließlich konnte das Labor Entwarnung geben, weil es im Paket keine gefährlichen Substanzen, sondern nur übel riechende Hühnerknochen gefunden hatte.

Dennoch darf weiter über den Sinn, den Zweck und über die finsteren Hintermänner dieses Knochenversands spekuliert werden. Vor allem weil nicht auszuschließen ist, dass noch mehr Pakete bei Ginny Brown-Waite eintreffen werden. Oder man lässt das Spekulieren einfach sein und klickt sich mit der Maus auf die Online-Seiten des satirischen Magazins Titanic. Dort ist, nachdem die amerikanische Abgeordnete Brown-Waite die Umbettung amerikanischer Weltkriegs-Toter aus Frankreich und Belgien nach Amerika gefordert hat, kurzerhand die Aktion "The boys are coming home!" gestartet worden:



"Die Amerikaner wollen die Knochen ihrer Soldaten wiederhaben - wir schicken sie ihnen! Graben Sie Ihren Garten um, suchen Sie GI-Reste, schicken Sie sie an die US-Abgeordnete Ginny Brown-Waite (Adresse siehe unten)! Finden Sie keine Knochen, behelfen Sie sich doch bitte mit einigen Hühnchen-, Schweine- oder Rinderknochen, die vom Mittag- oder Abendessen übrig geblieben sind, und versenden diese (vorher abkochen!) - Amerikaner schätzen solche symbolischen Aktionen sehr."



Aber auch das alte Europa liebt symbolische Aktionen. So können Leute, die einfach keine Hühner mögen und dennoch gegen den Krieg sind, zurzeit bei eBay den maßstabsgetreuen Nachbau des Gehirns von George W. Bush ersteigern. Der Denkapparat des Präsidenten ist allerdings nicht besonders groß und innen sogar hohl. Trotzdem wurde bei der ersten Auktion, die mittlerweile vom Netz genommen wurde, 100 Euro geboten. Und wegen dieser enormen Nachfrage soll inzwischen ein deutsches Unternehmen die Bush-Denkkörper bundesweit in Lebensmittelmärkten unter dem Namen "Georges Internes Oberstübchen: True To Original (GIOTTO)" anbieten. Das behauptet zumindest der Hirn-Verkäufer, der den Erlös dieser Auktion Hilfsorganisationen, die sich um die Opfer des Irak-Krieges kümmern, spenden möchte.



Und wer kein Geld für eine eBay-Auktion hat, der kann unter dem Motto "Touch your sack, not Iraq" ja mal für den Frieden masturbieren. Dieser ungewöhnlich entspannenden Friedensbewegung haben sich nach Angaben der Initiatoren weltweit schon 13500 Menschen angeschlossen. Geworben wird für die hehren Ziele mit heiteren Parolen wie "War is shit, rub your clit" oder "Help Hans Blix - whack your dicks", mit einem eigenen "I cum in Peace"-Song und mit so hübsch gereimten Gedichten, dass wir zum Schluss gern aus einem Poem zitieren, das Mister Paul aus Irland verfasst hat:



Mister Bush and Mister Blair
That pair are oh so silly
I think the reason for this war
Is that they`ve got small willies

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Fanning the Flames
Cheney’s Halliburton ties come under increasing scrutiny

By Keith Naughton and Michael Hirsh
NEWSWEEK


April 7 issue — The stock market may be suffering, but Operation Iraqi Freedom has sure been good for business at Halliburton, the Houston oil-services company famous for its former CEO, Dick Cheney.
THE VICE PRESIDENT hasn’t entirely severed his financial ties to the big defense contractor. Even while Halliburton is scoring Army contracts that could top $2 billion, Cheney is still receiving annual compensation from the company he led from 1995 to August 2000, NEWSWEEK has learned.
When Cheney stepped down from Halliburton to run for vice president, he sold his company stock and gave profits from his stock options to charity. But he still had more compensation coming. Rather than taking it in a lump-sum payment of about $800,000, Cheney opted for “deferred compensation,” Wendy Hall of Halliburton tells NEWSWEEK. Cheney chose annual payments of “less than $180,000” from 2001 to 2005, says Hall, which offers a tax benefit. Cheney, through spokeswoman Cathie Martin, contends he has no financial ties to Halliburton because of an insurance policy he took out for the value of his deferred compensation, which means he’ll get paid even if the company goes under. “He has no financial interest in the success of the company,” says Martin, who adds that Cheney has no say in awarding defense contracts. Indeed, NEWSWEEK learned last week that Halliburton is not a finalist for a $600 million reconstruction contract in Iraq.
But some Washington players are questioning the vice president’s ethics. Cheney should “sever all financial ties to Halliburton,” says Larry Noble of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. “I don’t think this passes the smell test.” Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, complained to the Army last week about the contract Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown & Root unit received in early March to fight Iraqi oil fires. The Army secretly awarded Halliburton the contract, which analysts say could be worth up to $1 billion, without receiving other bids. Waxman told NEWSWEEK that Cheney’s ties to Halliburton “raise a red flag.”

Cheney and Halliburton have a long history. While Defense secretary in the first Bush administration, Cheney awarded KBR the Army’s first private contract to manage troop tent cities. During the Clinton years Halliburton lost that contract after KBR came under fire for allegedly overcharging the government. But after Cheney was elected, KBR was again awarded that Army contract and has rung up $1.15 billion so far on the 10-year deal. The Army says it chose KBR for the fires because it was in Kuwait and could work fast. For Cheney, the political flames may just be getting started.

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"The President is sounding less like Wiston Churchill than Jimmy Cagney"

A Plan Under Attack
By Evan Thomas and John Barry, Newsweek


The Abrams M1A1 tank is a magnificent instrument of war. It can move faster across country (more than 40mph) and shoot farther (almost two miles) than any tank ever built.

IN THE FIRST GULF war, its score card against Russian-built Iraqi tanks was, approximately measured, 1,245 to zero. But like a great mythic warrior, the Abrams has an Achilles` heel. It can be killed from behind by a well-placed antitank missile aimed at a small chink in its armor.
TANKS VS. `TECHNICALS`
So far in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the American military has lost two Abrams tanks. The first M1s ever destroyed by enemy fire in battle, they were caught in an ambush of the U.S. Army`s 3/7 Cavalry near As Samawah, on the west bank of the Euphrates River. Two is not a large number, and the Coalition forces have at least 650 tanks in Iraq with more on the way. But U.S. officials are worried about the skill or at least the fanaticism of the guerrilla fighters who sneaked up on the tanks driving a "technical," a jeep, under cover of a sandstorm. More worrisome are the type and the source of the weapon apparently employed, a Russian-made Kornet antitank missile.

The Iraqis have secretly bought as many as a thousand of these lightweight, very powerful, easy-to-use weapons. The sellers, according to Pentagon officials, are Ukrainian arms dealers (who reportedly sent Baghdad some 500 Kornets in January) and possibly some entrepreneurial Syrian generals or the Syrian government itself. Last week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointedly warned the Syrians to stop shipping military equipment, like night-vision goggles, to the regime of Saddam Hussein. The Syrian government, Rumsfeld said, would be held "accountable."


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Less than two weeks into the second gulf war, does Operation Iraqi Freedom risk blowing up into a Middle East war? That scenario, once very remote, is no longer unthinkable. Some neoconservative hawks might even wish a wider war ("On to Damascus!"); more-restrained Bush administration officials dread an inflamed "Arab Street" turning on its pro-U.S. governments--a conflagration that could force regime change in, say, Amman, Jordan, before Baghdad. Barring a sudden collapse of the Baathist regime--still a possibility, senior administration officials insist--the war in Iraq is about to get bloodier. Saddam`s regime is doomed, almost certainly. But at what cost?

Somewhere deep in his network of tunnels and bunkers, Saddam "is convinced he can win," says a top U.S. official. Not by defeating superior American forces on the battlefield, but merely by surviving while Islamic rage builds from Cairo to Islamabad. Saddam was no doubt heartened when a blast ripped through a crowded Shiite marketplace in Baghdad on Friday, killing 58 people and creating bloody images, including a severed head, for the cameras of the ubiquitous Arab cable-TV network, Al-Jazeera. The Iraqis blamed an American bomb; the Americans couldn`t explain the explosion, except to note that Saddam is not above slaughtering his own people and pointing to the infidels. Then on Saturday, the first suicide bomber struck, blowing up four GIs who made the mistake of approaching an idling taxicab in the town of Najaf. Suicide attacks would be "routine military policy," announced Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. "You`ll hear more pleasant news later."

FAILED TALKS
With a show of "shock and awe," American might was supposed to overwhelm the Iraqis and crack Saddam`s regime. Tipped off by a spy in Saddam`s inner circle, the U.S. military tried to kill Saddam and his wicked sons as they slept with a surprise "decapitation" strike on the first night of the war. U.S. officials were engaged in delicate secret talks with some of Saddam`s henchmen to sell out the dictator in order to save their own skins. Those talks appear to have gone nowhere. Saddam is almost surely alive; the spy, according to a knowledgeable source, has been "compromised," meaning that he is probably dead.

Bush administration and military officials insisted that Operation Iraqi Freedom was still "on plan." They pointed out that Coalition forces had seized the rich oilfields of southern Iraq before Saddam could torch more than a few wells; that Coalition forces, in a remarkable feat of arms, had driven some 300 miles into Iraq in less than a week; that U.S. Special Operations Forces were scoring successes in the western --desert and northern mountains. Pentagon officials hinted that a decisive battle to crush Saddam`s Republican Guard on the outskirts of Baghdad was coming soon. The woeful TV chorus of pundits and retired generals lamenting the unexpectedly slow progress of the war was "silly," said President George W. Bush.

Determined to show that President Bush is not "micromanaging" the war like LBJ in Vietnam, his aides pictured the commander in chief as lofty and resolute. When he`s presented with a list of possible targets, his general reaction, says one adviser, is, "I don`t know why you are bringing this to me." Bush insisted that he would not "second-guess" his ground commander, Gen. Tommy Franks. And how long would the war last? "However long as it takes," Bush replied. "It isn`t a matter of timetable, it`s a matter of victory. And the Iraqi people have got to know that, see?" said the president, sounding less like Winston Churchill than Jimmy Cagney.

PUBLIC SUPPORT
If the president seemed a little testy and defensive at times, the press was also guilty of what Rumsfeld described as "mood swings." Pentagon officials noted that during the Afghanistan war in the fall of 2001, the pundits began predicting a "quagmire"--right before the Taliban broke and Al Qaeda fled for the hills. The gloomy press accounts did nothing to shake public support. According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 58 percent of U.S. adults say they would support a military action that lasts for a year or more, and an additional 13 percent would back a war lasting several more months. Three out of four said that the U.S. war plan was well thought out.

Still, the second-guessers included some very high-ranking generals. "The enemy we`re fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against," said Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the Army`s ground commander in Iraq. Because of the fierceness of the resistance and overextended supply lines, the war is going to take longer than predicted, Wallace told reporters. Wallace has a reputation for shooting off his mouth; also, for speaking plainly.

His remarks brought to a boil long-simmering tensions in the Pentagon over the best way to defeat Saddam. The classic American way, favored by most Army generals, is to grind down the enemy with overwhelming firepower. Rumsfeld, however, prodded the war planners for more creative approaches, taking advantage of high technology and using surprise and agility. The result was a compromise: most generals wanted to send at least four armored divisions after Saddam; the plan worked out by Rumsfeld and Franks called for three, the Army`s Third and Fourth Mechanized Divisions and the Marines` First Expeditionary Division, with the 101st Air Assault Division for mobility. The Fourth Infantry Division got hung up when the Turks balked at allowing American forces to use their bases. It is only now arriving at ports in Kuwait.

A FAST-MOVING SWEEP
In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the invasion force (which includes some 45,000 British soldiers) would not need to slowly take and hold ground on the way to Baghdad. Better not to kill a lot of civilians and flatten Iraq just to rebuild it. Rather, the plan called for the fast-moving armored divisions to sweep past cities in the south. The populace, mostly Shiites who hate Saddam and his Sunni Baathist Party thugs, would throw flowers at the Americans and/or rise against their oppressors.

When, instead, GIs began dying in ambushes from Iraqis pretending to surrender, it didn`t take long for Washington officialdom to start leaking exculpatory memoranda. One CIA report made available to NEWSWEEK was titled "Iraq: Potential Risks in Rear Areas." The paper warned of Saddam loyalists attacking American supply lines with "hit and run tactics" using "RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and small arms." The document was widely distributed at the Pentagon, though one intelligence official acknowledged that, given Washington`s strange hothouse ways, the paper might have been more carefully read at the top if it had been stamped TOP SECRET instead of merely SECRET.

The Saddam Fedayeen ("Martyrs of Saddam," whom CENTCOM`s PR officers prefer to call "death squads") are right out of an Islamic version of "The Sopranos." Recruited from Iraqi jails, their duties have included pulling women off the street to be raped by Saddam`s son Uday and cutting the tongues out of Iraqi citizens deemed to be disloyal. Little wonder that few people have thronged the streets to cheer their Western liberators. According to CENTCOM briefers, a woman who had been waving a white flag and warning U.S. troops of dangerous areas was later found hanging from a lamppost. In the besieged city of Basra, Saddam`s enforcers opened fire on about a thousand citizens who were fleeing the city, possibly to look for food and water.

LEARNING FROM SOMALIA
Saddam apparently prepared for the American invasion "by watching `Black Hawk Down`," says former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution. "And I mean literally." Saddam`s irregulars have adopted tricks from the Somali guerrillas who killed 18 GIs in the battle of Mogadishu in October 1993, including firing from behind groups of women and children. Some of their borrowed tactics have been less effective. Attacking a Bradley fighting vehicle or an Abrams tank with machine guns and RPGs mounted on Jeeps and SUVs is, generally speaking, a suicide mission.

Saddam`s military successes can be overstated. At the outset of the invasion, the motto of the Marines was "one more day closer to home," says a senior administration official. After a few casualties from ambushes and fake surrenders, "you have a bunch of really pissed-off Marines," says this official. Breathless press reports of intense fire fights notwithstanding, casualties remain low, certainly given the scale of the operation and measured against historic norms. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but it appears that after nine days of combat perhaps 18 U.S. soldiers had been killed by enemy fire (friendly fire claimed 2 more and 11 died in accidents; 7 are prisoners of war, and 15 are missing). World War II claimed 297 American lives a day, or 12 an hour.

Saddam will try to increase the American death rate, possibly by ordering his commanders to use bio-chem weapons. The Butcher of Baghdad is said to believe that Americans have a low tolerance for casualties. It is true that the Clinton administration pulled out of Somalia after taking casualties in the battle of Mogadishu, and that in 1999 the United States fought a war in Kosovo (mostly waged by pilots flying no lower than 15,000 feet) without losing any lives. Senior military officers understand--ably do not like to risk their men. But there is considerable research to show that the American people have a fairly high tolerance for casualties in war--as long as the war ends in a clear victory.

FAVORABLE TERRAIN
The decisive step toward victory in Iraq, say military officials, will be to crush Saddam`s elite Republican Guard. At least three Guard divisions are massed outside Baghdad, facing the American invaders. In `91, the Americans used air power and their superior armor to badly maul some of these same Republican Guard divisions. But it is often overlooked that several of the Guard battalions stood and fought and then made an orderly retreat, living to fight again another day. This time, the Iraqi armored divisions will be fighting on more-favorable terrain: not desert tabletop, where they are exposed, but hidden under trees, alongside farmhouses--and mosques, schools and hospitals in the Euphrates River Valley. The Medina Division may choose to hole up in Karbala, a city with ancient Islamic religious significance.

Once more studying "Black Hawk Down," the Iraqis drove off an initial attack by Apache helicopters last week. As the American choppers zoomed in, Iraqi militiamen called ahead, house to house, by mobile phone. The hail of small-arms fire from rooftops shot up some 30 Apaches and brought down one. Learning from the ambush, the 101st Airborne used different tactics, including diversionary feints and better use of air support, to stage a raid by about 40 Apaches on the Medina Division later in the week. Fewer choppers took fire; on the other hand, the results--at most four Iraqi tanks destroyed--were not overwhelming.

The Third Infantry Division, one spearhead on the multiprong drive to Baghdad, paused for a few days last week to let its supply line catch up. Food and water ran low at times; some troops were reportedly on reduced rations. (The supply requirements of the Coalition forces are vast: 15 million gallons of gasoline a day and 26 Olympic-size swimming pools of water.) Sheer exhaustion wore down troops who were on the move for three days straight, then hunkered down through sandstorms and harassing enemy attacks. The sandstorm, packing 50-mile-an-hour winds, slowed the air onslaught for a couple of days. But now Air Force, Navy and Marine carrier jets are working over the Republican Guard divisions outside Baghdad, seeking to "degrade" their combat capability by at least 50 percent.

HARD TO KILL
It is troubling to note that in Gulf War I, Operation Desert Storm set the same goal of degrading the Republican Guard divisions by 50 percent--and fell far short. Over 43 days of the war, some 5,600 sorties were flown against some 1,522 tanks. Analysts later concluded that only about one quarter was destroyed. This time around, the Americans have more-precise weapons, but heavily armored tanks, dispersed, disguised and well protected in earth berms, are simply hard to kill.

CENTCOM commanders are now looking for the right moment to strike the Republican Guard, weighing the relative strengths of the facing armies. "They`re looking for harmonic convergence," said one Pentagon official. But they cannot wait too long. There is a risk that the Republican Guard will slip back into Baghdad so that Saddam can wage a massive street brawl against the invaders.

Already awaiting the Americans inside the capital city are Saddam`s Special Re--publican Guard, about 30,000 troops, and his praetorian guard, the 5,000-man Special Security Organization. Many of these men are what Rumsfeld calls "deadenders."

Still, the risks of urban warfare have been somewhat exaggerated, says Brookings`s Pollack. An expert on the Iraqi military (and an author of the CIA`s study of the 1991 war), Pollack estimates that the Americans could lose hundreds--but not thousands--of men in Baghdad. It is true that street fighting cuts down on the Americans` technological edge. It is harder for American forces to stand off and fire radar- or GPS-guided precision weapons. Low-flying helicopters are vulnerable to RPGs, as "Black Hawk Down" vividly demonstrated. But the Ameri-cans have studied earlier urban bloodbaths and learned from the mistakes of others, like the Russians who rushed into snipers` nests and cross-fires in the Chechen capital of Grozny. The Americans are likely to be more deliberate, moving sector by sector, seeking to identify and destroy "critical nodes," like headquarters units. Baghdad is a mostly Shiite city. The CENTCOM planners are hoping that the Shiite locals will turn on the Sunni oppressors. Of course, that was the hope in Basra, too, and so far British forces--well trained in urban warfare from Northern Ireland--have been unable to gain control of Iraq`s largest southern city (Basra`s population is 1 million; Baghdad`s is 5 million).

TOO EASY ON BAGHDAD
The biggest risk in urban fighting is that civilian casualties are likely to spike up in the Battle for Baghdad. The Americans have gone to extraordinary lengths to spare the lives of Iraqi citizens. Some air-power advocates grumble that the initial phases of the shock-and-awe campaign went too easy on the Iraqi capital. Unlike the air raids in the first gulf war, Operation Iraqi Freedom did not turn off the lights and water in Baghdad or blow the bridges. Iraqi state-run TV stayed on the air. The hope was that a new Iraqi government would announce the demise of the old after a few days of bombing. Instead, a growing parade of Baathist officials took to the airwaves to rally the troops.

In the air war against Saddam, targets are picked to minimize what is euphemistically called "collateral damage." Precision weapons can now be aimed in ways to make a wall fall one way, but not another (or to hit a target under a bridge without taking out the bridge). Air-war planners have a computer program they have nicknamed "Bug Splat," which allows them to measure the precise impact of bombs.

Even so, protecting the lives of American soldiers fighting street to street may call for unpleasant trade-offs: loosening the rules of engagement to allow soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later, while picking bombing targets with fewer scruples about who might be inside. The longer this goes on, the more ugly footage for Arab TV, the more anger in the Arab Street.

DELICATE DISCUSSIONS
Last Wednesday, CIA officials gave a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill about the rising tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the Arab world. Particular emphasis was placed on Jordan and Egypt. As agency officials discussed the depth of hatred for U.S. actions, the senators fell silent. There were delicate discussions about the uncertainty, if the war was protracted, of "regime stability." After the briefing, "there were senators who were ashen-faced," said one staff member. "They were absolutely depressed." Much of what the agency briefed would not have been news to any close watcher of the BBC or almost any foreign news broadcast. "But they [the senators] only watch American TV," said the staffer. Most of the senators had been led to believe that the war would be quick and that the Iraqi populace would be dancing in the streets. It is hard to know the true level of discontent in the Arab world, and whether it can turn into revolution. But an extended and increasingly bloody Iraqi war is a risky way to find out.

With Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Tamara Lipper and Leslie Bishop in Washington, Kevin Peraino and Arian Campo-Flores in Iraq, Rod Nordland in Kuwait and Martha Brant in Doha, Qatar




© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

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`Liberation` is not freedom
Iraqis mistrust the intentions of the West, and a history of failures supports their attitude

Avi Shlaim
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

The fierce resistance that British and American troops have encountered must have come as a very unpleasant surprise to Tony Blair and George Bush. They assumed Saddam Hussein was so unpopular and isolated that the Iraqi people would welcome the troops as liberators and help them to overthrow his regime.

But the popular uprising has not materialised. However much they detest Saddam`s regime, a great many Iraqis view the coalition forces as invaders rather than liberators. Our leaders gravely underestimated the force of Iraqi nationalism.

Blair and Bush seem unaware, or only dimly aware, of the crucial role Iraqi history plays in shaping popular attitudes to the conflict. Iraqis are not an inert mass whose sentiments can be switched on and off to serve the agenda of outside powers.

They are a proud and patriotic people with a long collective memory. Britain and America feature as anything but benign in this collective memory. Blair has repeatedly emphasised the moral argument behind the resort to force to depose an evil dictator. Over the past century, however, Britain rarely occupied the high moral ground in relation to Iraq.

The US has even less of a claim on the trust and goodwill of the Iraqi people after its calamitous failure to support the popular insurrection against Saddam and his henchmen in March 1991.

Iraq was only one element in the victors` peace which was imposed on the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I without any reference to the wishes of the people. Iraq`s borders were delineated to serve British commercial and strategic interests.

Originally, Iraq was made up of two Ottoman provinces: Basra and Baghdad. Later, the oil-bearing province of Mosul was added, dashing hopes of Kurdish independence. The logic behind the enterprise was summed up by one observer as follows: `Iraq was created by Churchill, who had the mad idea of joining two widely separated oilwells, Kirkuk and Mosul, by uniting three widely separated peoples: the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shias.`

The man hand-picked by Britain to rule over this unwieldy conglomerate was Faisal, a Hashemite prince from Arabia and one of the leaders of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks.

After the French evicted Faisal from Syria and put an end to his short-lived kingdom, Britain procured the throne of Iraq for him as a consolation prize. It cleared his path by neutralising opposition, deporting the leading contender and organising a plebiscite in which 96 per cent of the people were implausibly said to have voted for Faisal as king.

The 1921 settlement not only sanctioned violent and arbitrary methods: it built them into the structure of Iraqi politics. Its key feature was lack of legitimacy: the borders lacked legitimacy, the rulers lacked legitimacy and the political system lacked legitimacy.

The settlement also introduced anti-British sentiment as a powerful force in Iraqi politics. In 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gailani led a nationalist revolt against Britain which was put down by force. In 1958, as a direct result of its folly over Suez, Britain witnessed the defenestration of its royal friends in Baghdad in a bloody military coup.

In 1980, Saddam attacked Iran. During the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War, Britain and its Western allies increasingly tilted towards Iraq. The Scott inquiry of 1996 documented the Thatcher Government`s duplicitous record in selling arms to Iraq and in providing military credits.

A billion pounds of taxpayers` money was thrown away in propping up Saddam`s regime and doing favours to arms firms. It was abundantly clear Saddam was a monster in human form. Britain did not manufacture this monster, but it turned a blind eye to the savage brutality of his regime. Britain also knew Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because Western companies sold him all the ingredients necessary.

Saddam was known to be gassing Iranian troops in their thousands in the Iran-Iraq War. Failure to subject Iraq to international sanctions allowed him to press ahead with the development of weapons of mass destruction.

In March 1988, Saddam turned on his own people, killing up to 5,000 Kurds with poison gas in Halabja. Attacking unarmed civilians with chemical weapons was unprecedented. If ever there was a time for humanitarian intervention in Iraq, it was 1988. Yet no Western government even suggested intervention. Neither was an arms embargo imposed on Iraq.

In 1990, Britain belatedly turned against Saddam only because he trod on our toes by invading Kuwait. He had a point when he said Kuwait was an artificial creation of British imperialism. But Iraq`s other borders were no less arbitrary than the border with Kuwait, so if that border could be changed by force, the entire post-World War I territorial settlement might unravel.

The main purpose of the Anglo-American intervention against Iraq was not to lay the foundation for the `New World Order` but to restore the old order. The fact that the UN explicitly authorised the use of force in Resolution 678 - `the mother of all resolutions` - made this an exercise in collective security and gave it legitimacy in the eyes of the world, including most Arab states.

On 28 February 1991, Papa Bush gave the order to cease fire. Britain was informed of this decision but not consulted. The declared aims of Operation Desert Storm had been achieved: the Iraqi army had been ejected from Kuwait and the Kuwaiti government was restored. But Saddam kept his deadly grip on power.

After the ceasefire, Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, only to betray them when they did so. When the moment of truth arrived, Bush recoiled from pursuing his policy to its logical conclusion. His advisers told him Kurdish and Shia victories in their bids for freedom may lead to the dismemberment of Iraq.

Behind this theory lay the pessimistic view that Iraq was not suited for democracy and that Sunni minority rule was the only formula capable of keeping it in one piece. Once again, the Iraqis were the victims of cruel geopolitics.

In order to topple Saddam, it was not necessary for the allies to continue their march to Baghdad, my hometown. It would have been sufficient to disarm the Republican Guard units as they retreated from Kuwait through the Basra loop. This was not done. They were allowed to retain their arms, to regroup and to use helicopters to ensure the survival of Saddam and his regime. The Kurds in the North were crushed and fled to the mountains. The Shias in the South were crushed and fled to the marshes.

In calling for Saddam`s overthrow, Bush Snr evidently had in mind a military coup, a reshuffling of Sunni gangsters in Baghdad, rather than establishing a freer and more democratic political order. As a result of his moral cowardice, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Saddam stayed in power and continued to torment his people, while Kuwait remained a feudal fiefdom.

A quick, decisive war was followed by a messy peace. Few wars in history had achieved their immediate aims so fully and swiftly, yet left behind so much unfinished business. The war`s aftermath was a reminder that military force, when used to tackle complex political problems, is merely a blunt instrument.

The war also demonstrated that Americans are better at sharp, short bursts of military intervention than at sustained political engagement aimed at fostering democracy in the Middle East.

This inglorious history of Western involvement in Iraq goes a long way to explaining why the Iraqi people are not playing their part in our script for the liberation of their country. This is why Blair, in his press conference last Tuesday, was so anxious to persuade ordinary Iraqis that this time Britain is determined to overthrow Saddam.

He directed his appeal particularly at the Shia Muslims who make up 60 per cent of Iraq`s 24 million people. `This time we will not let you down,` he pledged solemnly. But it is naive to expect mere words to erase the bitter legacy of the past.

Given their own experience of oppression by Saddam and betrayal by the Western powers, it is only natural that ordinary Iraqis prefer to let the two sides fight it out among themselves.

· Avi Shlaim is professor of international relations at Oxford University and author of `The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World`.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Counterpunch ist ein Online-Magazin geschrieben und herausgegeben in Kalifornien, bevor mir jemand vorwirft ich mache mich über die mangelnden Geografiekenntnisse der US-Amerikaner lustig. Der Autor soll auch Amerikaner sein.

"My Empire for a Map!"
Circumventing the Globe
By BEN TRIPP

It has come to my attention that some Americans are concerned Iraq might bodily invade the United States unless all of Iraq’s women and children are killed. This seems about as likely as the Anaheim Angels winning the World Championship, but stranger things have happened. Upon enquiry about this and other concerns said citizens of our Great Nation have waxed fretsome o’er, I realize there is a common thread to these alarums (aside from bone stupidity): Americans don’t know their geography. I am not an expert on the subject, although able to locate most of the continents as long they’re clearly marked, but I may be able to help allay some of the fears which grip this nation as its armed forces hack their way through distant lands.

First, picture the Earth itself (that’s the large, heavy thing you’re standing on). Let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s spherical, or in other words the shape of a basketball. Not a football, which is a symmetrically tapered ovoid. Now let’s pretend that if you stand on one spot on the surface of this sphere (and let’s face it, standing in two spots requires a virtuoso), there will be a spot on the opposite side of the sphere which we can call the ‘far side of the Earth’ because it is on the far side of the Earth. Are you with me, people? Praise Jesus. So now we have in our tiny brains a mental picture of a plump object with a front and back and no corners- sort of a globe. All that is required now is to locate the land masses known as continents because they are shaped like continents (from the Latin ‘Ländernamen’, meaning ‘flabbergast’) and that protrude from the moist areas known as oceans. The continent directly beneath you if you’re in North America is called ‘North America’ primarily to distinguish it from Europe, which isn’t. South America is to the south of North America, or the west if there’s something wrong with your compass. Try moving farther away from the large electromagnet.

Now if you’re in North America, and the sun is setting (perhaps you’d better wait until this occurs, just to make absolutely sure we get this right… is it setting? Now!) the place where the sun touches the horizon is more or less West. The place it rises, which I won’t ask you to wait for although certainly you can if you want, is East. Have we got this firmly fixed in our minds? What really matters is West and East, in terms of politics of even date. So follow your finger –I did tell you to point in the direction of East, didn’t I?—and pretend your finger wiggles right across the Atlantic Ocean (which is the ocean to America’s East, or right-hand side). The first thing your finger will reach, assuming it’s not devoured by a perspicacious fish halfway across, is a bit of land called Europe. This is where cheese comes from, and also England, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, and Hans Blix. You can’t miss it. Europe is about a quarter of the way around the Earth from America. Not far enough, maybe, but it’s one hell of a swim.
Now if you were to go straight south from Europe, you would notice eventually a large land mass that some people call ‘Africa’, because the afro hairstyle originated there and ‘Africa’ sounds a little bit like ‘afro’.

Unfortunately for Americans, most people in Africa are black, have AIDS, or both. On top of that there are elephants and things wandering around there, and deserts, and a country called ‘Niger’, which sounds kind of rude. So we’ll forget all about Africa for the time being- just like the American government. This is geography for white people. Most black people already know where Africa is. What’s important is this: right where Europe and Africa don’t connect is the Mediterranean Sea, and if we follow that intrepid finger southeast (it has turned southeast by now, drawn by the rich mysteries of Africa but frightened, vulnerable) we discover a far less impressive sea called the ‘Red Sea’ on account of it’s blue. If the Mediterranean separates Africa from Europe, the Red Sea separates Africa from the ‘Middle East’ or ‘Near East’, so called because it’s not as far as some East, such as the Far East for example, but is somewhat in the middle of the areas considered to be easterly. If you’re in China, it’s actually to the west, which is why men start so many wars: nobody knows where they are, and they sure as hell aren’t going to ask for directions. Better to just kill everybody and then say, “We’re here!”

The Middle East is where the present troubles are centered, if we don’t consider the imminent nuclear attack by North Korea trouble, which apparently we don’t. The Middle East is below Russia, to the left of China, and above Africa. Got that? Maybe you should do a little sketch.

Iraq is a Middle Eastern country. It is located pretty much in the middle of the Middle East, which is easy to remember; Afghanistan, which you may recall we carpeted with exploding tax dollars recently, is not next to Iraq. But it is much closer than North America. The country between Iraq and Afghanistan is Iran, and boy are they sweating it right about now. Saudi Arabia, which is where the terrorists actually came from, is directly south of Iraq. This part of the world, just to put it in perspective, is about halfway around the sphere or globe from America, latitudinally speaking (ask your mother) although if you want to be completely safe you will move to the island of Rapa in the South Pacific, which is on the opposite side of the world from Iraq. The chances of Iraq invading our shores is extremely slim, partially because there are a dozen nations, an ocean, and 6,000 miles between Baghdad and Hackensack, NY; and partially because all the Iraqis will soon be either dead or too hungry to travel more than a few hundred feet before they swoon.

Iraq left in smoking ruins, we continue to follow our finger eastward, and now we cross Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the northernmost bit of India before arriving in Tibet, which was pummeled a long time ago, and is part of China, which keeps on happening for ages and ages. By now we’re so far around the world that we’re actually headed for California, which my Confederate readers may be interested to learn is a country to the West of the United States. Right after China is a peninsula of land in what I am very embarrassed to report is called the Yellow Sea, although it is in fact a similar shade to the Red Sea. This peninsula contains North and South Korea. North Korea is to the North, and it has missiles with which it can ostensibly reach North America via a secret route called the North Pole, or in other words while we’re facing East they sneak up on us from the Northwest, probably disguised as Santa Claus. After Korea you’re in Japan, and then there’s bugger all for 5,500 miles except water. This water is called the Pacific Ocean because it is in the Pacific.

So there we are, all the way around the globe with our finger a little battered by the trip but otherwise intact, having made three fascinating discoveries:

1. We are very, very far away from all the naughty countries we fear,

2. The Kurds are once again screwed, and

3. We still don’t know where Australia is.

Ben Tripp is a screenwriter, cartoonist and political satirist. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

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[Indexer]

#680

Du glaubst doch nicht im Ernst, dass im bible belt, der Heimat der Dubya - Wähler, jemand auf Deine Wahnvorstellung von einem globe hereinfällt.

[Joerver]

#684 Muß man denn überall Satire draufschreiben, wo Satire drin ist. Unter dem Artikel ist eine E-Mail Adresse, kannst Dich gerne dieser bedienen und dem Autor eine Mail schreiben. Man antwortet auch.
J.

Hier die URL

http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp03292003.html

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How many bodybags can we take?
In this media age, politicians set the acceptability threshold too low

Peter Preston
Monday March 31, 2003
The Guardian

The first 10 dead are flown into Brize Norton. We see their coffins coming off the plane, draped in the flag, pavilioned in the rituals of sorrow. There will be - are already - others to follow. But how many? What, in the terms of this dismal trade, is "acceptable" - and what wholly unacceptable? Questions of humanity, morale, politics - and much more besides.

Set a few benchmarks. On the bright morning of July 1 1916, after seven days of the heaviest shelling in history, a softening-up process designed to bring shock, awe and wholesale disintegration, 100,000 British and Empire troops from 11 divisions rose to their feet and, bayonets ready, solemnly advanced through "no man`s land" towards the German lines.

But Douglas Haig`s war-gaming didn`t quite work out. The Germans, neither shocked nor awed but safe in unexpectedly deep concrete bunkers, suddenly scrambled up to their machine gun posts. By nightfall on that single most awful day, there were 57,470 British casualties, 19,240 of them fatal. Welcome to the Battle of the Somme.

Or take benchmarks closer in time. How many military men and women died in the second world war? Some 280,000 British, 400,000 Americans, 1.5 million Japanese, 3.5 million Germans - and you may put Soviet losses at 10 million. Korea? The US lost 27,704. And so, because every US commentator inevitably heads that way, to Vietnam. Americans killed in action were 47,378 (roughly a fifth of Vietnamese military deaths); 1,536 Americans died in the Tet offensive (against 7,764 Vietnamese). Some historians, lumping in civilian deaths north and south, calculate that about 13% of Vietnam`s population died one way or another during that war.

We can, maybe, begin to glimpse what would be wholly unacceptable to the White House - or anyone else. Ceilings of ultimate horror. And, for contrast, we can construct a historically acceptable floor from Desert Storm 13 years ago: 400 dead US soldiers (only 150 of them killed by Iraqis). Twelve days of "Iraqi Freedom" haven`t got us anywhere near that yet - but many days of such freedom fighting are to come.

All manner of variables affect the acceptability calculation. There`s public opinion at home. Is it united or divided? There`s cost and duration. But, since Jack Straw is throwing an uncharacteristic wobbly, lashing out at television channels and wondering what they`d have made of Dunkirk (where 68,000 British were killed or wounded in nine days) we need to remember weapons of mass communication, too.

Start with expectations, great or small, because they matter hugely. If you didn`t like Gulf war one and argued against it, warning that tens of thousands of soldiers or civilians "might/would" die, then the outcome did your credibility no good. You found yourself cast as Jonah, less likely to be listened to next time. So it was again in Afghanistan. Now, though, the expectations game cuts two ways.

There have been prior warnings of a "long, hard struggle" - much in the spinmeister mode of Mayor Livingstone`s long, hard months before his congestion charge worked properly. Wham-bam, thank you, Ken. Everybody, in fact, expected the "cakewalk" which Donald Rumsfeld`s old chum, Kenneth Adelman, was so sure of. How does that affect the acceptability of more clinical pre-war estimates, putting American Gulf and Panama casualties together (because of an added urban guerrilla equation), and extrapolating? It ratchets eventual American and British losses up - hypothetically - to 5,000. It says Saddam`s losses can reach 10,000.

This is the crudest, cruellest bit of cost non-benefit analysis, but there for the generals when they make their plans and there again for the politicians when they sanction them - 5,000 body bags topweight? Part of the budgeting for war.

I`ve no idea what the figure in the pre-planning stage was. If it chimed with the breezy confidence of other plans, then it might have been much less than 5,000. But that was then - and this is now. No cheering Iraqi crowds, no mass defection yet. Expectations unfulfilled. So the death toll - however tiny on any historical comparison - may seem worse than expected. Worse, too, the cameras and reporters gathered to chronicle easy victory, inevitably give added weight to the toll of uneasy struggle.

That`s Jack Straw`s beef. That`s one vicious variable. That`s how Vietnam comes floating back across the years.

Unacceptability 2003 is a campaign not going quite as smoothly as you were led to expect. Unacceptability 2003, prospectively, is yet another and another cargo of coffins heading into Brize Norton. More pomp, more grief, more footage. There`s no need to wonder why the politicians are worried. They set their acceptability thresholds too low and now, in a macabre way, we have to live with them - and hope for a best case outcome.

But there is a more durable lesson here for a Pentagon pondering future conflicts. What the heart sees, the heart grieves. Hi-tech is more than weaponry. It is satellite and digital, the chance for the rest of us to watch for ourselves. And we are not to be taken for granted.

Casualties, a pre-Piers Morgan Daily Mirror reported from the Somme, were "light". The "general situation was favourable". You`d never have guessed, when the campaign ended on November 13 1916, there would be 12km of muddy ground gained and over 600,000 allied casualties to mourn. Still, expectations can always be adjusted to fit. As one divisional commander said: "It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined vigour, and its assault only failed of success because dead men can advance no further."

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Bombs and biscuits
Every Iraqi child is now an unwitting participant in this obscene war. And every one of us is morally implicated

Madeleine Bunting
Monday March 31, 2003
The Guardian

After the bombings, the ambushes and assaults, the newsreaders` voices lighten as they reach the humanitarian aid slot in the story running order. The images of bloodied limbs and bombed buildings are replaced by jostling crowds being roughly corralled by British troops distributing bottles of water. This is the battle for hearts and minds, we are repeatedly told. The crude attempt at manipulation beggars belief: whose heart and mind are won by such images of angry desperation? Certainly not the Iraqis, bewildered by the invader who has deprived them of the water in the first place, who kills their children and then throws them the paltry solace of one bottle - enough to last one person a couple of hours.

Humanitarian experts believe the amount of aid needed to support the 16 million Iraqis dependent on aid is 32 times the pitiful cargo the Sir Galahad finally delivered last week. The enormity of this dwarfs the capacity of the one port of Umm Qasr, a tight funnel for both the huge military and humanitarian supplies now needed. The well-being of an entire population is now the legal responsibility of the Americans and the British, as Kofi Annan reminded them, and the prospect of them being able to meet it is fanciful. No, the real hearts and minds the Americans and the British are hoping to win by this grotesque charade are those of their domestic audiences at home, and then the global audience watching this war. The aim is to reassure supporters and dampen protests. So far, it seems at least to be having some success at home; British public opinion rallies behind its brave squaddies as they throw the boxes of water into the outreached hands.

The issue of aid and how it`s being played on our television screens reminds us what this war is all about. Not oil, not weapons of mass destruction, but a demonstration of US power, necessary after 9/11 to impress appropriate fear and respect in the hearts and minds across the globe - in Europe as much as in the Middle East. The assumption was that Iraq offered a suitable stage for this performance - not too dangerous or too strong and with some oil booty thrown in. The media would convey the two crucial lessons which the American administration believed the world needed to be taught: of the terrifying technological prowess of American weaponry and the benign nature of the Pax Americana.

Only 12 days in and the war has failed to demonstrate either of these. Firstly, the "shock and awe" has failed. The most sophisticated military machine in the world got bogged down in sandstorms and rain; the prospect dawns of a bloody and protracted urban guerrilla war in which much of America`s cleverest weaponry could prove useless. America is not invincible after all, its room for manoeuvre severely restricted by the need to win Iraqi allies and avoid totally destroying the second of its lessons - the benign bit.

This was supposed to be a war of liberation, but the Iraqis are now going to have to be "forced to be free", a delusion which will cost thousands of lives. The Camp David press conference last week was the most obscene piece of political theatre I have ever seen: when has a British prime minister so publicly murdered his own integrity? Not because of the quavering voice berating Saddam`s depravity for the alleged executions of British soldiers. That was bad enough, but it was the grimness with which Mr Blair declared to the Iraqis, "we will liberate you. The day of your freedom draws near," which sent shivers of horror down the spine. The reaction of intense fear was reinforced by the blatant contradiction of his words when juxtaposed with images of burning cities and bloated bodies in the desert. Wrenching the concept of freedom out of all normal usage to justify violence was a plague of the 20th century, beloved of totalitarian dictatorships. Now the poison of political leaders who declare black is white is infecting a new millennium; President Bush promised this Iraqi adventure was intended to make the "world more peaceful," a ludicrous claim across a Muslim world convulsed with anger.

So America is well on the way to losing the peace as the inherent contradictions of this war of liberation become apparent: you can`t instill fear and respect at the same time, you can`t bomb and hand out biscuits. And this is where the future becomes truly frightful because there`s no way back, and if America and Britain are not going to be welcomed and loved on the streets of Basra and Baghdad, they will make themselves feared instead. Here, the logic of war takes grip and choices narrow. This war has to be won, and in the end the US will use any means necessary to do so - dragging its British ally with it into a bloody mess. In 1939, did the British ever imagine they could commit the Dresden atrocity? War corrupts all of its participants.

Already, the pressure is evident on Britain`s army in the plaintive comment of Major Charlie Lambert of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards: "When people don`t play by the rule book, it is easy to make things very difficult for a much larger force which does play by the rules." At one point will American and British niceties about avoiding civilian casualties be relaxed as an unaffordable luxury? At what point will the nerves of frightened soldiers tautened by ambushes and suicide attacks - smiling peasant one moment, terrorist Fedayeen the next? - turn ordinary decent men into monsters?

The coalition forces will give up on the rules while Saddam Hussein has never abided by them anyway. Like anyone who has been cornered, he will in his desperation resort to anything - and all he has now are the lives of his people. He`s used them cheaply many times before and now with 24/7 global media coverage, their blood is his most potent pawn, and he won`t hesitate to spend it freely in urban warfare as shields, bombers, even targets. It will be grotesque, and it doesn`t require a complicated understanding of moral reasoning to grasp that we will bear some responsibility for the atrocities he may commit in defending his country and regime. It is we who have invaded a sovereign nation, and there has always been a legitimate principle of self-defence.

In the 20th century, civilians became the greatest casualties of war but they were still collateral damage; in this first major war of the 21st century, the nightmare scenario is that the last vestiges of a distinction between combatant and civilian disintegrates. Every child is an unwitting participant in the battle, their dull reproachful eyes from hospital wards become Saddam`s most lethal weapon.

So we sit in our armchairs confronted with painful moral ambiguities which we either ignore (it`s too depressing so we switch channels) or against which we can only helplessly rail. We`ve done our marching, but it`s made no difference, we are still morally implicated. Will our children be apologising to the Iraqi people a generation hence? Will they ask us how we could ever have let this happen? And will our defence - we did what we could but we had families to care for, work to be done - stand up to their scrutiny?

I have never before written a column in which I so fervently wanted every one of my fears to be proved unfounded. For every word of it to be wrong.

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The toll of announced casualties in Iraq as of 5 p.m. eastern time on Sunday:

KILLED CAPTURED OR MISSING
U.S. 33* 25*
BRITAIN 23†
IRAQ N.A. 4,000*

Sources: *U.S. Department of Defense; †British Defense Ministry

March 31, 2003
How Precise Is Our Bombing?

Iraq`s claim that American bombs or missiles killed many civilians in Baghdad neighborhoods last week may or may not be true. It is always possible, as American military leaders suggest, that damage was caused by Iraqi air defense missiles falling back to earth or by explosives set off by the Iraqis themselves for propaganda purposes. But whatever the case, the widely publicized civilian deaths have generated anger at the United States and sympathy for Iraq in many nations. The incidents inevitably raise the question: How precise are our much-touted precision weapons?

Daily briefings by the Central Command typically feature dramatic films that follow precision-guided bombs as they hit their targets. In one amazing surgical strike, a bomb was able to destroy a military vehicle hiding under a bridge without destroying the bridge itself. Other films show bombs hitting their targets while adjacent buildings are left intact. These are impressive achievements, but they are presumably among the most successful strikes of the day. The Central Command never shows films of any bombs that missed, nor does it issue statistics on what percentage of the munitions went astray.

American commanders are without doubt taking extraordinary steps to limit collateral damage. The Army`s Third Infantry Division has a team of lawyers along to advise on whether targets are legitimate under international conventions — and a vast database of some 10,000 targets to be avoided, such as hospitals, mosques and cultural or archaeological treasures. In the daily aerial bombardment of Baghdad, allied commanders insist that they choose targets carefully to minimize collateral damage, use only the most appropriate munition and approach the target from the safest direction at a time of day chosen to limit civilian exposure.

Yet accidents are bound to happen. The electronic packets that turn dumb bombs into smart bombs with the help of signals from global positioning satellites can always conk out, or the fins that maneuver the bombs can malfunction. Errors can be made in entering the coordinates of a target. The accuracy of laser-guided munitions can be degraded by pilot fatigue or poor visibility. Iraqi jamming equipment may also have disrupted the satellite signals used to guide cruise missiles and many bombs despite allied claims to the contrary. Some cruise missiles have clearly gone wildly off course. Two fell in eastern Turkey, two landed in Saudi Arabia, and three reportedly hit Iran. A guided bomb aimed at a bridge hit a bus carrying civilians because the pilot hadn`t noticed the vehicle in time.

The allies deserve credit for conducting the most surgically precise bombing effort in the history of warfare, and they are surely right to let the world know how much care they are taking. But there is a downside to the incessant boasting about the surgical accuracy of the attacks. It raises expectations that every bomb will hit its target — and outrage around the world when one doesn`t.




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Kann man solche Vergleiche ernst nehmen oder will man nur die Ideen der Bush-Verwaltung unterstützen? Deutschland als Modellversuch.

March 31, 2003
Learning Not to Love Saddam
By PAUL BERMAN


Last September, a group of 32 Iraqi exiles met in Britain under the auspices of the State Department to compose a document they would title "Report on the Transition to Democracy in Iraq." The report — it is a full-size book, in a ring binder — was written in English and Arabic and submitted in December to a meeting of Iraqi exile leaders who hoped to form the new government. The exiles never did establish solid relations with the Bush administration, and their report attracted very little attention. Yet it ought to be regarded as one of the crucial documents of the present crisis. Certainly it raises one extremely important point for the future.

The report states flatly, "The practice of politics in Iraq has been dead for 35 years." There have been no political parties apart from the Arab Baath Socialist Party. There have been no organized opposition groups inside the country, no public dissenters, not even a well-known persecuted dissident. Many ordinary people have been implicated in some way with the crimes of the regime. Totalitarianism in Iraq has been, in short, of the darkest hue. Thus the report recommends that, after the fall of the Baathists, Iraq ought to undergo a process similar to the de-Nazification of Germany after World War II — a process of "de-Baathification."

This recommendation implies a rather controversial point: that Iraq today can usefully be compared to Germany of 60 years ago, an Arab country to a European one. Some observers scoff at any such comparison. And yet the Iraqi exiles, persisting in their view, called for a liberal democratic Iraq in the European and American style. Some people find that notion unrealistic as well, pointing out that Iraq has had no experience with democracy. But a few words can be said on the exiles` behalf.

Modern totalitarianism arose in Europe in the years after World War I. It took different forms — Fascist, Communist and Nazi. But the movements shared a number of traits: apocalyptic and paranoid ideologies, a total police state, a taste for murder. Other versions of that same totalitarianism arose in Arab and Muslim countries in precisely those years.

One of the Muslim variations eventually emerged as the Islamist radicalism of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and other movements. A second version evolved into Saddam Hussein`s Baath dictatorship. The European inspiration for those movements is not too hard to detect, especially in the case of the Baath, which got started in 1943 in an atmosphere of ardent sympathy for the fascist Axis.

Kanan Makiya, an expatriate Iraqi intellectual and a main author of the transition report, described in his book "Republic of Fear" how these European movements influenced Islamic radicalism philosophically and organizationally. There was, for instance, the model of the Hitler Youth for the pan-Arabist Futuwwa Youth of the 1930`s, which, Mr. Makiya pointed out, pioneered a paramilitary culture "as if presaging the Baath militas" in later years.

I need hardly point out that these Baath militiamen are precisely the fighters who have delayed the allied march to Baghdad and who threatened to inflict more damage through suicide bombings in the style of the one over the weekend. They are a cruel and terrifying irregular force with real roots in Iraq— even if some of those roots lead back to the fascism of Europe in earlier times.

The Baath Party imposed its dictatorship on Iraq in 1968, that most revolutionary of years. And the Baathists created a new political culture that in its look and feel — and in its black-clad militias — plainly had more in common with the totalitarianism of Europe than with Ottoman traditions.

But then, if Iraq`s dictatorship resembled the totalitarianism of the European past, why shouldn`t its future likewise resemble, at least in a few traits, Europe`s happier experience in more recent years? The Iraqi exiles` report recommends precisely such a future. And with that purpose in mind, the report invokes the de-Nazification precedent in Germany.

De-Nazification was a vast campaign. The Allies occupied Germany in 1945 and banned the Nazi Party. They made something of an effort to restore property to people who had been pillaged by the dictatorship. Nazi Party members were brought before tribunals, which exonerated some of them, subjected others to criminal prosecutions and banned still others from future public positions.

The de-Nazification campaign imposed reforms on German education and culture. The old Nazi textbooks were withdrawn, and new ones were written. Germany`s political culture was given a new shape and texture. To be sure, the success of de-Nazification depended mostly on the active enthusiasm of the Germans themselves, who turned out to be ardent in their desire for change. And the results were, all in all, splendid — even if, 58 years later, the challenges of de-Nazification have not entirely disappeared from the German landscape.

It is true that in Iraq today circumstances are in some respects more dire than in Germany long ago. The Iraqis, lacking any political experience from the last decades, will bring minimal democratic skills to the task. A great deal will therefore depend on the American and British occupiers once they have overthrown the Baath regime. The occupiers will certainly need experienced and skillful allies. Only, who could those allies be?

The Germans of today would be ideal. The Baath Party does owe something to the worst aspects of the German political tradition, and Germans might be able to speak to Iraqis on that point. Germans are the world`s leading experts on de-totalitarianization, having gone through the process twice: with de-Nazification and then with East Germany as it emerged from Communism. But it may be that, owing to the mutual recriminations between the German leaders and Washington, Germany will choose to keep its knowledge to itself, and the Iraqis will have to make do without. But then, if Germany and other countries decline to lend a hand, who will rise to the occasion?

The "Report on the Transition to Democracy in Iraq" includes one small item that should attract the attention of many people outside the American and British governments. The report calls for educational reform on the model of de-Nazification — for new textbooks and for the use of computers and the Internet in education. And the exiles added an intriguing point: "All independent education institutions that had previously existed in Iraq, such as the British Council, the American Jesuits, Alliance Française should be encouraged to resume their activities."

This invitation from the Iraqi exiles underlines a further aspect of de-Nazification, which their report does not mention. During the years of struggle against Nazism, Washington performed many tasks excellently, and ignored others almost entirely. Those other activities were performed instead by independent institutions of American life. Our universities welcomed a large number of German scholars, humanitarian organizations offered help, and trade unions rushed to support their German counterparts. These were not government efforts, yet they should count as part of the larger effort that added up to de-Nazification.

This kind of nongovernmental effort could certainly take place in Iraq during the coming months and years — involving universities, foundations, human rights groups, professional guilds, unions and other groups. A lot could be done even without guidance from the Bush administration or the participation of other countries. Or so we might imagine — with a glance at the Iraqi exiles` report and at the history of de-Nazification in Germany, many years ago.

Paul Berman is author of the forthcoming ``Terror and Liberalism.``



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Wenn sich das rumspricht.

Three British soldiers sent home after protesting at civilian deaths

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday March 31, 2003
The Guardian

Three British soldiers in Iraq have been ordered home after objecting to the conduct of the war. It is understood they have been sent home for protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians.
The three soldiers - including a private and a technician - are from 16 Air Assault Brigade which is deployed in southern Iraq. Its task has been to protect oilfields.

The brigade includes the Ist and 3rd battalions of the Parachute Regiment, the 1st battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, a Royal Horse Artillery regiment, and a reconnaissance squadron of the Household Cavalry.

The three soldiers, based in Colchester, Essex, face court martial and are seeking legal advice, defence sources said yesterday.

The Ministry of Defence said it was not prepared to comment on individual cases. It said it had "no evidence" to suggest the soldiers had been sent home for refusing to fight.

Soldiers could be returned home for a number of reasons, including compassionate and medical, as well as disciplinary grounds, defence sources said.

But it is understood that the three soldiers have been sent home for complaining about the way the war is being fought and the growing danger to civilians.

The fact that they are seeking legal advice makes it clear they have been sent home for refusing to obey orders rather than because of any medical or related problems such as shell shock.

MoD lawyers were understood last night to be anxiously trying to discover the circumstances surrounding the order to send the soldiers home.

Any refusal of soldiers to obey orders is highly embarrassing to the government, with ministers becoming increasingly worried about the way the war is developing.

It is also causing concern to British military chiefs who are worried about growing evidence of civilians being killed in fighting involving American soldiers around urban areas in southern Iraq.

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
Obstinate Orthodoxy


By Fred Hiatt

Monday, March 31, 2003; Page A13



As the United States fights a war with few allies alongside it, one version of how President Bush alienated the world has jelled into a kind of orthodoxy. Even before beginning his Iraq diplomacy last fall, according to this story line, Bush had doomed his chances by arrogantly thumbing his nose at the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. If he had maintained Clinton administration commitments to these and similar multilateral ventures, other nations would have accepted U.S. leadership on Iraq.

It would be wonderful if that were the whole truth, because it would mean that ending America`s isolation wouldn`t be all that hard. Get a president who travels to Paris a little more, quotes scripture a little less and returns the nation to a mainstream acceptance of international law, and the problem would go away.

Unfortunately, the problem is deeper-seated. And nothing makes that clearer than to remember that -- the orthodox story line notwithstanding -- President Clinton in his way also thumbed his nose at the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol and the ABM Treaty. He just didn`t do it as arrogantly -- or, Bush partisans would say, as honestly.

It is true that Vice President Al Gore flew to Japan to take part in the final, grueling negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and that he was much applauded for taking such a political risk. It is true that Gore signed on to the treaty, which committed the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels by the year 2012, even as India and China assumed no commitments whatever.

But Gore didn`t really mean it, he explained when he returned to Washington. The administration did not intend to submit the treaty for Senate ratification. Even as it signed the document one year later, it called it a "work in progress"; the signing, The Post explained at the time, was "a largely symbolic act." Beyond promising that new technologies would reduce greenhouse gas emissions without causing any economic pain, the administration never put forward a plan to reach Kyoto targets.

When it came to the International Criminal Court, Clinton was as worried as Bush about exposing American soldiers to international jurisprudence. He was dissatisfied with concessions his negotiators extracted in the final treaty; he complained about its "significant flaws." But again he signed it anyway -- to "reaffirm our strong support for international accountability," he said. Then he said he wouldn`t submit the treaty for Senate ratification and would recommend that Bush not do so either.

Clinton was committed to the ABM Treaty with Russia, the primary purpose of which was to outlaw national missile defense. But Clinton also spent much of the last two years of his presidency unsuccessfully trying to persuade the Russians to redefine the treaty precisely to permit national missile defense. "One way or another," Clinton`s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, told his Russian counterpart, according to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, "NMD was almost certain to proceed."

The Bush people entered office full of righteous indignation at these hedges. Signing treaties that you didn`t believe in, salvaging treaties that you intended to undermine -- these struck the Republicans as classic Clintonian attempts to keep everyone happy, to offend no one, to kick problems into the future for someone else to deal with. They vowed to bring straight talk to foreign policy, and they did. Bush not only disavowed the ICC, he pressured other countries to follow suit. He junked Kyoto without bothering to offer anything in its place. He walked away from the ABM Treaty. And he made a lot of people angry.

One conclusion is that straight talk isn`t always the wisest course in diplomacy. There may be times when fudging to avoid conflict and working toward consensus is better than forcing confrontation. Bush seemed at times to offend gratuitously, beyond what honesty demanded. He could, for example, have said that while he agreed with Clinton about the impracticality of the Kyoto Protocol, he also agreed that global warming was a concern. He hardly bothered.

But it`s also fair to ask whether Clinton`s fudges would not sooner or later have proved untenable. It wasn`t for lack of sincere diplomacy that Clinton failed to persuade Russia to bless U.S. national missile defense, or Europe to modify Kyoto or the ICC. Nor did he manage to win U.N. approval for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Kosovo.

In each case, the refusals had to do with foreign fears of America`s unique place in the world, with resentment of its status as lone superpower, unrivaled in military and economic might. Clinton was more eager than Bush to assuage that resentment, but he was hardly more willing to shackle America`s economy or cede judicial control over its troops abroad to do so. To misremember the history now understates the challenge America faces in the world, especially after Iraq, no matter who is president.

[e-mail]



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

#604 Washington Monthly,Marshall:Practice to..

washingtonpost.com
Hawks and Hornets


By William Raspberry

Monday, March 31, 2003; Page A13


There is this interesting notion that while it is quintessentially American to debate matters of grave importance, once the decision is made, the debate should be over.

Sometimes it makes a good deal of sense. One hears hardly a word of debate over the outcome of the 2000 presidential election -- even though less than half of the American electorate voted for the guy who wound up in the White House. The Supreme Court decided and the debate ended. Similarly, most Americans have little taste for debating the war in Iraq. The president has decided and further debate seems pointless -- even unpatriotic and dangerously divisive.

I suppose I am inclined to that view. But what are we supposed to do -- what are we supposed to think -- when we suspect that our desire for national solidarity is being exploited in quite cynical fashion?

To get to the point: What if we believe we are being manipulated into supporting positions we don`t believe in -- positions we believe will be harmful to our long-term national interests?

Maybe I read too much. I`ve just been looking at articles by Seymour Hersh in the March 17 issue of the New Yorker and by Joshua Micah Marshall in the April issue of Washington Monthly and feeling more than slightly used. Hersh`s piece, on the personal financial implications of Richard Perle`s involvement as an adviser on defense policy, is disturbing enough, though it stops short of accusing Perle of anything worse than having a tin ear for the appearance of conflict of interest.

Marshall`s piece disturbs in a quite different way. His thesis, in a nutshell, is that far from ignoring the things some of us fear will result from our venture in Iraq -- radicalization of the Arab world, new waves of terrorism, transformation of the conflict into a species of religious warfare -- the administration`s hawks are actually counting on such an outcome.

"In their view," he writes, "invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination [would be] an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East."

Not because they are hopelessly monomaniacal but because they see it as essential to an effective war on terrorism.

There are, basically, two views regarding the source of anti-American terrorism in the Arab world. The first was articulated by retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar in testimony last September before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The problem, he argued, is that the Muslim world does not trust us. "They believe the U.S. government has acted unilaterally, sometimes as a bully, sometimes has used other nations for its own interests and abandoned them when the objective has been achieved. And most important, they believe the U.S. has unjustly supported Israel over the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.

"At the end of the day, the war on terrorism will be won only when we convince 1 billion Muslims that we are, in fact, a just society; that we do support peace, justice, equality for all people; that in fact we really are the `City on the Hill.` "

On the other hand, the administration`s plan, says Marshall, is "to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism."

The problem is not that this second view is wrong (though I have no doubt that it is dangerously so) but that its adherents have consciously avoided letting it become part of the public debate. Instead, they have sold a sort of incrementalism-without-retreat by which we have only to accept the necessity of getting rid of Hussein to wind up supporting the radical realignment of the Middle East.

We accept the Iraqi invasion out of patriotism and conviction, then accept the need to do something about the resultant anti-American assaults elsewhere in the world because we have to. I mean, if Hezbollah targets American citizens, or if Egypt and Syria prove unable to control their radicals, are we just supposed to let it happen? The time for debate will be over.

Marshall likens the strategy to whacking a hornet`s nest in order to get the hornets out in the open and force a showdown. You can have a spirited debate over whether such a strategy ought to be supported.

"The problem," he says, "is that once it`s just us and the hornets, we really won`t have any choice."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

Da bahnt sich ein großer innenpolitischer Konflikt an:
`The Bush Administration cannot be the social activist abroad and the social Darwinist at home.`

washingtonpost.com
Social Activism For Iraq


By Harold Meyerson

Monday, March 31, 2003; Page A13


"We have an obligation . . . to put food and medicine in places so the Iraqi people can live a normal life," President Bush told the nation last week.

That`s great. I just hope the Iraqis can get the medicine without having to join an HMO.

In his appropriation request to Congress, Bush asked for several billion dollars in humanitarian aid for what is now war-torn Iraq. The requests for future appropriations to rebuild Iraq when the shooting war is done have yet to come. Surely these are requests that Congress must honor: When we tear up a place, we have an obligation at absolute minimum to put it back in order.

And yet, this is an administration that is singularly ill-suited to the rebuilding of Iraq, because it is so stunningly indifferent to the rebuilding -- or even the maintenance -- of the United States. The administration has all but acknowledged that it has failed to rebuild Afghanistan, but it insists that Iraq will be different.

I doubt it. Except in matters of national security, this is the most resolutely anti-government administration since the rise of the New Deal. Ronald Reagan`s pales alongside it. It has already enacted a $1 trillion-plus tax cut and now proposes to do it again, in wartime. If the president`s advisers truly believe such a cut stimulates the economy (the first cut stimulated a net loss of roughly 2 million jobs), this is even more of a faith-based administration than it has let on. In fact, the chief goal of these cuts is to reduce government`s capacity to meet public needs.

And that`s just the beginning. The administration still would like to privatize Social Security, and it is promoting a Medicare "reform" that would force seniors into private HMOs in order to receive adequate prescription drug coverage. It has been utterly indifferent to the plight of state governments, which are everywhere cutting back on medical care, raising average school class sizes and increasing taxes to cope with the worst budgetary crisis in 60 years.

Yet at the same time that it is rolling back public services here in the United States, the White House means to roll them out in Iraq. It won`t work. On this question, the Bush administration is a house divided against itself. It cannot be the social activist abroad and the social Darwinist at home. The American public will not long support the securing of a postwar Iraq while medicine, education and other social goods are increasingly rationed by the dollar in the States.

Indeed, it was only when this nation was at its most generous at home that it could afford to be at its most generous -- and strategically smart -- abroad. The Marshall Plan, which rebuilt the economies of Western Europe in the years after World War II, marked a commitment of U.S. resources that this nation never approached at any other time in its history. In the plan`s first year, 1948-49, the United States devoted $5.3 billion to European reconstruction -- in a total budget of just $36 billion. That amounted to more than 2 percent of our gross national product. Today, our total foreign aid amounts to 0.1 percent of our gross domestic product.

How could the American people have committed so much of their wealth to the reconstruction of foreign lands? Anti-communism explained part of that commitment, but far from all of it. The truth is that Americans in the Roosevelt-Truman era were accustomed to, and supportive of, massive government efforts to promote the general welfare. From 1935 to 1941, for instance, Roosevelt`s Works Progress Administration had employed 8 million Americans -- as many as 3.3 million at one time -- in public jobs. That came to 7 percent of the entire workforce. During World War II, the scope and legitimacy of government endeavor reached an all-time high.

Once upon a time, the neoconservative authors of the current war understood this link. Today it`s these neos -- from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol -- who are most committed to a years-long project of rebuilding Iraq. Many of them got their start in politics three decades ago, working for Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Washington state Democrat who was a hard-line Cold War hawk and an avid supporter of such New Deal-type programs as universal health insurance. In the intervening decades, however, most of Jackson`s onetime acolytes have repudiated the domestic half of his agenda. In 1993 Kristol wrote a famous memo urging the Republicans not to compromise with Bill Clinton on his universal health insurance plan but rather to kill it outright lest it breed a new generation of Americans who counted on the government for their well-being. The same Bill Kristol, of course, has been possibly the single most influential war hawk on Iraq and now counsels a commitment to the long-term reconstruction of that nation.

Scoop Jackson would have told him that you can`t distribute medicine in Basra while making it unaffordable in Baltimore. Only a nation that feels secure at home will string a safety net abroad, which is why the economics of the Bush administration spell a grim future for both America and Iraq.

Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

#659 aus dem Observer von Gestern

Der US-General a.D., der den zivilen Wiederaufbau des Post-Hussein-Irak leiten soll

Florian Rötzer 31.03.2003
Die US-Regierung schickt einen pensionierten General ins Feld, der ausgerechnet Direktor eines Rüstungsunternehmens für elektronische Systeme auch von Raketen ist, mit denen der Irak bombardiert wird

Die US-Regierung und das Pentagon sehen sich trotz mancher Rückschläge und zunehmenden Opfern in der Zivilbevölkerung weiterhin auf der Siegerseite. Nur verwandelt sich der Blitzkrieg allmählich in einen Feldzug, der bis zum Sommer dauern könnte. Sollten bei den Stadtkämpfen noch mehr Menschen sterben und unter Bombardements leiden, so werden die Menschen zwar ein Ende des Kriegs begrüßen, aber nicht unbedingt ihre "Befreier" willkommen heißen. Die Etablierung einer amerikanischen Militärherrschaft ist insofern möglicherweise für eine Übergangszeit ganz realistisch. Sie eröffnet aber auch lukrative Geschäfte für die heimische Wirtschaft. Für den Wiederaufbau vorgesehen ist ein Vertrauter von Rumsfeld und Cheney, ein pensionierter General, der in der Rüstungsindustrie tätig war. Seine Firma liefert Raketen, die auch im Irak eingesetzt werden und so zynischerweise die Voraussetzung für Wiederaufbauleistungen durch Zerstörung schaffen. So verdient man doppelt am Krieg.






Kriege zerstören nicht nur und vernichten Werte, sie schaffen auch direkt Profite für Firmen und manche Berater, wie man an Richard Perle unlängst sehen konnte, und machen freien Platz für einen Neuaufbau, von dem viele profitieren können. Besonders im Irak mit seinen reichhaltigen Ölressourcen ist der Einsatz hoch, geht es um Zig-Milliarden Dollar und Folgegeschäfte, wenn die Wirtschaft erst einmal wieder floriert und das Land wie zu Beginn der 90er Jahre wieder eine relativ wohlhabende Gesellschaft werden. Die Schäden, die einen Wiederaufbau ermöglichen, werden durch die gegenwärtige Bombardierung geschaffen, stammen aber auch noch vom ersten Krieg 1991, von dem sich die Wirtschaft des Irak aufgrund des Embargos nie erholt hat.






Die Vereinten Nationen sollen außen vor bleiben


Noch zumindest will die US-Regierung bestimmen, wie der Übergang zu einer irakischen Regierung vonstatten gehen soll. "We didn`t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future", erklärte etwa Außenminister Powell, während Ari Fleischer, Sprecher des Weißen Hauses, zu verstehen gab, dass Deutschland und Frankreich mit Geld den angerichteten Schaden mit den USA wieder richten könnten. Die UN soll war humanitäre Hilfe leisten und den Wiederaufbau fördern, aber möglichst keine Kontrolle besitzen. Vorerst wurden vom Sicherheitsrat unter dem Hinweis, dass die Besatzungsmacht verpflichtet ist, die Versorgung der Bevölkerung sicherzustellen, Gelder des von der UN verwalteten Öl-für-Lebensmittel-Programms für die nächsten 45 Tage freigegeben. Zusätzlich fordert die UN für die Versorgung der Menschen Spenden in Milliardenhöhe.

Nachdem US-Präsident Bush beim letzten Treffen auch Tony Blair von der Notwendigkeit einer Militärregierung überzeugen konnte, wird die "zivile" Verwaltung unter dem Militärkommando personell bereits von der US-Regierung mit ehemaligen Diplomaten und Militärs aufgebaut. Chef der "zivilen "Verwaltung, der das am 20. Januar 2003 beschlossenen "Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance" leiten wird, ist der ehemalige US-General Jay Garner. Wie so viele andere in der US-Regierung reicht seine Karriere weit zurück in den Kalten Krieg, aber er hat auch bereits unter Bush sen. und Cheney nach dem Irak-Krieg 1991 im Rahmen von "Operation Provide Comfort" als ein Kommandeur die Schutzmaßnahmen für die Kurden im Nordirak, gegenwärtig die Hauptverbündeten der Koalitionstruppen im Land, geleitet. Garner hält sich bereits in Kuwait auf und wird nicht nur die humanitäre Hilfe, sondern auch den geldschweren Wiederaufbau organisieren. Man geht von bis zu 100 Milliarden Dollar aus.


Das Schachern um den milliardenschweren Kuchen beginnt


Präsident Bush hat für sein beim Kongress eingereichtes Kriegsbudget 2,4 Milliarden Dollar für humanitäre Hilfe und Wiederaufbau vorgesehen. Die ersten amerikanischen Gelder von USAID in Höhe von 600 Millionen US-Dollar fließen nur amerikanischen Firmen zu, von denen einige aufgefordert wurden, sich für den Auftrag zu bewerben ( Die Gewinner des Krieges). Das Schachern um die Zeit danach hat begonnen. Auch wenn 600 Millionen noch kein gewaltiger Auftrag sein mögen, so haben die Unternehmen, die als erstes in den Irak gelangen, die besten Chancen, sich auch andere Aufträge im zerstörten Öl-El-Dorado zu sicher. Das lässt Ängste in der Koalition der Willigen entstehen, zu kurz zu kommen. Die britische Regierung geriet bereits unter Druck der eigenen Wirtschaft und forderte von der US-Regierung, auch am weiteren Aufbau beteiligt zu werden (ein diesbezügliches Versprechen könnte möglicherweise auch der Grund sein, warum Blair nach dem Treffen mit Bush umschwenkte und plötzlich von einer Militärregierung unter Franks überzeugt war).

Zunächst sollte Halliburton, dessen Direktor zufällig der jetzige US-Vizepräsident und frühere Verteidigungsminister Cheney zwischen 1995 und 2000 war, den Auftrag erhalten erhalten. Doch nach dem Bekanntwerden des politisch-militärisch-wirtschaftlichen Filzes, aufgrund dessen zur Schadensbereinigung schon Richard Perle vom Posten des Leiters des Defense Policy Board zurücktreten musste ( Erosionserscheinungen in der Bush-Regierung), scheint man vorsichtiger geworden zu sein und hat Halliburton schon einmal ausgeschlossen. Einen kleineren Vertrag hatte Halliburton bereits letzte Woche erhalten, die brennenden Ölquellen zu sichern.

Jay Garner hatte mit Operation Provide Comfort schon einmal der US-Regierung in einer misslichen Lage ausgeholfen. Bekanntlich wurden Schiiten und Kurden angesichts der Niederlage der irakischen Truppen von den USA aufgefordert, sich gegen das Regime aufzulehnen und es zu stürzen. Kurden und Schiiten begannen auch den Aufstand, wurden dann aber von den Alliierten alleine gelassen, die auch nicht nach Bagdad vorrückten, sondern sich wieder aus dem Land zurückgezogen hatten. Husseins Streitkräfte unterdrückten die Aufständischen brutal und blutig, so dass es zu einer UN-Sicherheitsresolution kam, die zum Schutz der Menschen im Nordirak aufrief. Im Rahmen von Operation Provide Comfort wurden zwischen April und Juli 1991 Flüchtlingslager aufgebaut, die Menschen mit Hilfsgütern versorgt und eine Sicherheitszone zum Schutz eingerichtet.


Fest verworben mit der Rüstungsindustrie


Garner ist eng mit dem konservativen Pentagon-Lager der gegenwärtigen Bush-Regierung verwoben und hat sich stark für die Einführung und die Entwicklung des teuren Raketenschutzschilds gemacht, das auch ein Lieblingskind von Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld war und ist. Während Operation Desert Storm war er die zum Schutz von Israel aufgebauten Patriot-Raketenabwehrstellungen zuständig und später die mangelnde Zuverlässigkeit des Patriot-Systems verschleiert. Zwischen 1994 und 1996 hatte er das Army Space and Strategic Defense Command geleitet, zuständig auch für das nationale Raketenabwehrsystem (NMD).

Unter der Leitung vom Rumsfeld saß Garner in dem Komitee, das den Bericht "Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat" (1998) verfasste. Hier wurde bereits die später von Bush als Achse des Bösen bezeichneten Länder Irak, Iran und Nordkorea als neue Bedrohung aufgeführt, da sie neben den alten Feinden China und Russland bald Langstreckenraketen haben würden, die mit Massenvernichtungswaffen ausgestattet sein können und mit denen sie die USA erreichen könnten. Der Bericht forderte zwar nicht ausdrücklich die Weiterentwicklung des auch im Pentagon unter Kritik stehenden Raketenabwehrschilds, aber er sollte dafür das Rüstzeug in Form eines akuten Bedrohungsszenarios liefern. Seit 1983, als Ronald Reagan das Star Wars Projekt ausrief, war die für die Rüstungsindustrie interessante Raketenabwehr ein Lieblingsprojekt der Republikaner. Die zweite Rumsfeld-Kommission, in der Garner ebenfalls saß und deren Bericht 2001 vorgelegt wurde, machte sich direkt für das NMD stark ( Pearl Harbor im Weltraum), das auch zu einem wichtigen Bestandteil der Verteidigungspolitik von Rumsfeld unter Bush wurde. Hauptnutznießer sind Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon und TRW.

Was aber den "zivilen" Leiter des Hilfs- und Wiederaufbauprogramms, der für den Übergang von der Militärregierung zu einer demokratischen irakischen Regierung und von einer staatlich gelenkten Wirtschaft zum Kapitalismus verantwortlich ist, in Misskredit bringt, ist nicht nur die Frage seiner Kompetenz. Vornehmlich geht es dabei um seine Funktion als Präsident von SY Technology, das u.a. die Software für Raketen und Raketenabwehrsysteme entwickelt, beispielsweise für Patriot- oder Arrow-Systeme. Das Unternehmen profitiert auch vom NMD. Letztes Jahr kam der Verdacht durch einen ehemaligen Mitarbeiter der Missile Defense Agency auf, dass das Pentagon wegen der guten Beziehungen zu Garner der Firma ohne Ausschreibung einen 100 Millionen Dollar Auftrag zugeschanzt habe.

SY wurden 2002 von L-3 Communications gekauft, Garner aber leitete diese weiter. L-3 hat durch Krieg und steigenden Rüstungsetat den Umsatz im letzten Quartal 2002 gegenüber 2001 fast verdoppeln können. Mit den Präzisionsraketen, deren Elektronik von SY stammt, werden nun die irakischen Städte bombardiert, die Garner später wieder aufbauen soll. L-3 hat erst letzte Woche einen Auftrag über 1,5 Milliarden vom Pentagon erhalten, um für die Logistik der Spezialeinheiten zu sorgen.

Garner hat auch enge Beziehungen zum Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Mit 20 anderen pensionierten US-Militärs hatte er im Oktober 2000 kurz nach Beginn der Intifada einen Brief - "Friends Don`t Leave Friends on the Battlefield" - unterzeichnet, in dem das Vorgehen Israels unterstützte wurde, das seitdem immer weiter eskalierte. Auch deswegen hat die Ernennung unter Arabern Erstaunen und Ablehnung hervorgerufen.

[xyxo]

Die Gesichter der "Freiheit" :
http://www.whitehouse.org/iraq/faces.asp

[Joerver]

We`ll Win War, But Not The Rebuild
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, March 31, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/sorensen/



God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.

That, as most of you know, is the Serenity Prayer, famous for its use by Alcoholics Anonymous.

It should be applied to our war in Iraq.

The war is one of those things we cannot change. So people who originally opposed it, people like myself -- and the anti-war demonstrators -- have a Hobson`s choice: Either accept it, or continue to howl at the moon.

Looking at the bright side, the war will put an end to Saddam Hussein and his horrific tyranny over the Iraqi people. If that had been the true goal of the war, and we had organized it in an adult fashion -- with broad international cooperation -- I would have been for it all along.

So now we have to deal with the horrendous surprises Saddam might be about to spring on us, we have to count the caskets being unloaded at Dover Air Force Base and, in the end, we have to try to piece together an Iraq that the whole world will be proud of.

My instincts tell me we`ll have the surprises and the body count, but the rebuilding job will end as a disaster.

Already, it looks like we plan to do it on the cheap. When it comes to helping others, the present administration suddenly becomes aware that our nation is on the verge of financial ruin.

We`re out of money, we spend more than we take in and there`s no improvement in sight.

On the contrary, our nation`s economy, and the world economy, just keep getting worse and worse. The only significant new job sector created during the Bush administration is security: local, national and world. The only expanding industry other than that is what we call "defense," producing war materials.

We really don`t have the money to rebuild Iraq. And already we`re squabbling with the United Kingdom and the United Nations over who will control Iraq`s oil sales after the shooting stops, if it ever does.

Our nation`s leaders, starting with George W. Bush, are not exactly famous for their eagerness to help those in need.

But these are the people on which the world will have to rely when it comes time to rebuild Iraq.

Add to that the conflicting passions in the Middle East, and a showcase Iraq seems like an impossibility.

To begin with, most Islamic Arabs don`t want us over there. They don`t just consider us an annoyance. Much more than that. We`re the devil incarnate, as far as they`re concerned. That`s not a good start for a happy relationship.

Then there`s the unsolvable problem of Israel. Led by Ariel Sharon, the Israelis are not likely to become loving neighbors anytime soon. Bush`s fantasy that he can shove his "road map" peace agreement with the Palestinians down Israel`s throat is a pipe dream. And the Palestinians and their Arab cousins are not likely to soon forgive more than 50 years of humiliation at the hands of Israel, and buy whatever deal Bush offers.

As long as we continue to send more money to Israel than to any other nation, the Arabs in the region are not likely to see us as a fair and impartial arbiter.

Then there are the other ruling monsters in the region, some of which are on our hit list, others of which are our best buddies.

How will we convince the Islamic Arabs that we love them when we`re in bed with other dictators who, like Saddam, rule by murder and torture?

Those other dictators don`t want a free Iraq to succeed. A working democracy in a sea of dictatorships will terrify those guys. That`s the last thing they want in their midst.

We in the United States tend to pooh-pooh the idea that Saddam is perhaps the most popular man in the Arab world. How could that be, we wonder? How could such a monster be widely loved?

Well, for one thing, he never sucked up to the U.S. the way other Arab leaders have. He thumbed his nose at the U.S. before, during and after the Gulf War, and that enhanced his mystique.

But even before the first Gulf War, Saddam was a hero in the Middle East. Sure, he was a sadistic monster, but in that respect he was just one of many.

More important, he westernized Iraq. Women in Iraq wear Western clothes, work in important jobs and even hold public office. American films and American music are commonplace in Baghdad. Until the Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions, Iraqis under Saddam enjoyed a better standard of living and more freedom than did their neighbors.

So when we get rid of Saddam, we`ll be getting rid of a regional hero. We can get away with that if, in rebuilding, we do it right. The Iraqis will forgive us if we help them build a greater Iraq and a better life for them. So will their neighbors.

But if we don`t -- and I fear we won`t -- we`re likely to end up with more trouble than we know how to cope with.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and liberal iconoclast. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].

©2003 SF Gate

[Joerver]

Peter Lee: `How to lose a war in a week`
Posted on Monday, March 31 @ 09:48:42 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Peter Lee

George Bush has been surprised that major elements of the Iraqi army do not share his privileged personal perspective on combat duty--that it should be avoided at all costs--and dismayed that that he has lost the battle for the hearts and minds of a skeptical world in just one week.

The cock-ups of the last week have revealed America as a clumsy, self-deluded giant led astray by faulty judgement and questionable competencies. Instead of the omnipotent, omniscient colossus striding over the recumbent but grateful Iraq to lead the world into the 21st century, the neocon Moses stepped on the global stage, tripped on its own shoelaces, and fell flat on its face.

Amazingly, after sneering at Clinton`s humanitarian interventions, Bush repackaged the Iraq invasion (after political and diplomatic and logical mis-steps too numerous to catalogue) as the liberation of the Iraqi people. Needing a feel-good TV-friendly war, he used Enron-style creative accounting to discount the dangers and exaggerate the benefits, burdening American troops with a battle plan that put them on the wrong side of the asymmetric threat equation for the first time since Somalia.



Our forces, instead of implacably eradicating an outgunned Third World army with our overwhelming advantage in military technology and material, kicked off the war with Shock and Awe Lite and found themselves strung out along a highway leading to Baghdad with people throwing bombs at them instead of flowers.

In a cringe-inducing human-interest story, Iraqi refugees shared their food supplies with hungry Marines down to one MRE a day.

The onus for the military miscalculations that necessitated downshifting the mighty invasion juggernaut into "Park" for a few weeks while an extra 100,000 troops rush to Iraq will rightfully and delightfully descend on the well-padded shoulders of "Dummy" Rummy Rumsfeld. Colin Powell is probably sniggering with exaggerated sympathy as he moves over to make room for Rumsfeld in the Washington doghouse.

But the real question that needs to be pursued by our ferocious and tenacious media is not whether our foolishly optimistic and criminally deceitful administration sold the war as a cakewalk.

The question is, since we were fighting a war of choice, why did we choose to start it now, when considerations of public opinion, diplomacy, international law, and simple military prudence all screamed at us to wait and think it over?

The most vivid recollection of the run-up to the war is not the dismissive confidence of Bush`s war party, which they are now endeavoring so mightily to explain and expunge. It was Bush`s imperial impatience, his ostentatious frustration, his thin-lipped "Saddam has bamboozled the UN for 12 years and this can`t go on any longer" petulance. As we bulldozed over the U.N., our allies, and the undecided towards the invasion, the airwaves were full of Bush`s Ming the Merciless tirades trumpeting his inexorable resolve, climaxing with his short-circuiting of the UN inspection process, his ultimatum to Saddam, and the statement that the United States would go to war "at a time of our choosing", which turned out to be right away.

Bush stamped around in fury like a demented Rumpelstilskin until the floor collapsed and plunged us all into war.

We invaded Iraq not because its terrorist activities demand extreme and urgent measures (hey, that`s Pakistan). Or because its weapons of mass destruction pose an immediate threat to our nation`s safety (sorry, North Korea). Or because declining to relieve extreme human suffering under the regime would expose our nation to the unacceptable accusation of moral indifference (Kurdish Turkey, maybe. Iraq, no.).

And it`s hard to believe that our military readiness, morale, and death-dealing capability, however prematurely and irresponsibly deployed, would have wilted irrecoverably in the heat of an Iraq spring.

We went to war ten days ago because George Bush didn`t want to wait any longer.

Not long enough to engage with U.S. and world opinion and make a plausible case for war as the last but only option. Not long enough to let the weapons inspectors do their jobs. Not long enough to grease the wheels at the UN with a little well-considered conciliation and compromise with our traditional and natural allies. Not long enough even to cut a deal with the Turks and open up a northern front that it looks like we desperately need.

We went in because we didn`t want to wait a minute longer. We were ready even if the rest of the world wasn`t.

But it turns out we weren`t ready either. What happened?

Maybe our nation`s SUVs drove America into war. Bush couldn`t bear the idea of Saddam thumbing his nose at us while American voters fumed as gas prices marched closer to three bucks a gallon. But on a more exalted plane, it was probably Karl Rove`s urgent whispering that the financial markets/the economy/the re-election were being crippled by uncertainty over the war.

Well, we did get our one-day 3% bounce before the indexes resumed their flaccid descent.

But with the overly precipitous rush to war, its very premise--that the genius of George Bush and his handlers had somehow discovered a new kind of war was more effective, humane, and beneficial than the traditional avenues of diplomacy, multilateralism, and the United Nations he so arrogantly scorned--is discredited by Bush`s botched execution. The triumphant march to Baghdad escorted by jubilant Iraqis has failed to materialize and all we hear is the sullen roar of angry Arabs and a disgusted world.

For $75 billion (just the downpayment, of course), and the thousands of lives disrupted, blasted, or cut short all we get is the same old I kill you before you kill me war humanity has been fighting for 5000 years.

Not too much of a bargain when you think that the inspection regime could have bottled up Iraq at a cost of about $80 million dollars and a few cases of sunburn.

The idea that the unaided "wisdom", "foresight", and "prudence" (were ironic quotation marks ever so deserved?) of George Bush is necessary or sufficient to direct our mighty armies towards goals that are just, beneficial, or even achievable has been dealt a fatal blow. Hopefully, the idea that pre-emptive/preventive war unilaterally pursued is anything other than the last and worst option will be buried with it.

The Iraq debacle reveals that wars of choice too easily become the playthings of opportunistic politicians and manipulative ideologues. Benefits are exaggerated, risks are minimized, and the facts of war and the logic of peace are twisted to suit a secret and self-serving agenda.

The decision to go to war with Iraq was not the expression of our national resolve. It was the toxic product of the ambition and self-delusion of a cynical neocon junta and the credulity of a morally and intellectually adrift president.

The American military`s humanitarian nightmare will soon be over. Our force will pick itself up and dust itself off. Our commanders will not allow their undersized and overextended strike force to be lured into a premature battle with the Republican Guard divisions enticing them on the southern approaches to Baghdad. Saddam for his part will have to swallow his disappointment that the Mesopotamian rope-a-dope gambit that destroyed the armies of Greece and Rome in the deserts of Iraq came up short. He is probably hoping for some more providential sandstorms that will allow him to redeploy the Medina Division, perhaps back into Baghdad and the relative shelter of its civilian population, before it is destroyed. We will hunker down and let the bombs fly until there is nothing between us and the capital except rubble and red puree.

Our military is going to go back to its traditional job of bombing anything that makes the enemy`s life worth living and fighting for into flinders, erring brutally on the side of caution in ruthless pacification sweeps, and trapping conventional troops in exposed positions and obliterating them before they even have the chance to frame the choice between defiance and surrender. Hearts and minds and Hershey bar photo ops can be left to Paul Wolfowitz when he comes to stage-manage the hollow made-for-TV triumph that will celebrate the conquest of Iraq.

The military victory will re-establish the prestige of American arms and the efficacy of American terror. But Bush`s war against history, reason, decency, the international system, and world opinion is already lost. All that`s left is to finish the killing, raise the U.S. flag for a brief, valedictory moment on the rubble of the neocon`s hopes and dreams for a new American empire, declare "victory" and go home.

Yes, Bush got his war...and lost it within a week. And if we are lucky, it will destroy him.

Copyright 2002 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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consortiumnews.com

Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down

By Robert Parry
March 30, 2003

Whatever happens in the weeks ahead, George W. Bush has “lost” the war in Iraq. The only question now is how big a price America will pay, both in terms of battlefield casualties and political hatred swelling around the world.

That is the view slowly dawning on U.S. military analysts, who privately are asking whether the cost of ousting Saddam Hussein has grown so large that “victory” will constitute a strategic defeat of historic proportions. At best, even assuming Saddam’s ouster, the Bush administration may be looking at an indefinite period of governing something akin to a California-size Gaza Strip.

The chilling realization is spreading in Washington that Bush’s Iraqi debacle may be the mother of all presidential miscalculations – an extraordinary blend of Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking with a “Black Hawk Down” reliance on special operations to wipe out enemy leaders as a short-cut to victory. But the magnitude of the Iraq disaster could be far worse than either the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba in 1961 or the bloody miscalculations in Somalia in 1993.

In both those cases, the U.S. government showed the tactical flexibility to extricate itself from military misjudgments without grave strategic damage.

The CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion left a small army of Cuban exiles in the lurch when the rosy predictions of popular uprisings against Fidel Castro failed to materialize. To the nation’s advantage, however, President John Kennedy applied what he learned from the Bay of Pigs – that he shouldn’t blindly trust his military advisers – to navigate the far more dangerous Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

The botched “Black Hawk Down” raid in Mogadishu cost the lives of 18 U.S. soldiers, but President Bill Clinton then cut U.S. losses by recognizing the hopelessness of the leadership-decapitation strategy and withdrawing American troops from Somalia. Similarly, President Ronald Reagan pulled out U.S. forces from Lebanon in 1983 after a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines who were part of a force that had entered Beirut as peace-keepers but found itself drawn into the middle of a brutal civil war.

The Bush Strategy

Few analysts today, however, believe that George W. Bush and his senior advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have the common sense to swallow the short-term bitter medicine of a cease-fire or a U.S. withdrawal. Rather than face the political music for admitting to the gross error of ordering an invasion in defiance of the United Nations and then misjudging the enemy, these U.S. leaders are expected to push forward no matter how bloody or ghastly their future course might be.

Without doubt, the Bush administration misjudged the biggest question of the war: “Would the Iraqis fight?” Happy visions of rose petals and cheers have given way to a grim reality of ambushes and suicide bombs.

But the Bush pattern of miscalculation continues unabated. Bush seems to have cut himself off from internal dissent at the CIA and the Pentagon, where intelligence analysts and field generals warned against the wishful thinking that is proving lethal on the Iraqi battlefields.

Secretary Rumsfeld has emerged as the principal bully in enforcing Bush’s dangerous group think, a pattern that dates back to the war in Afghanistan when senior generals feared disagreeing with Rumsfeld. In one telling, though little-noticed passage in Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Bush asks Gen. Tommy Franks for his opinion, only to have Franks defer to Rumsfeld.

“Sir, I think exactly what my secretary thinks, what he’s ever thought, what he will ever think, or whatever he thought he might think,” said Franks, who is now commander of U.S. forces fighting in Iraq.

So, instead of recognizing their initial errors and rethinking their war strategy, Bush and his team are pressing forward confidently into what looks like a dreamscape of their own propaganda. At least from their public pronouncements, Bush and his aides continue to insist that their pre-war judgments about the Iraqi civilians wanting U.S. “liberation” were correct, with the people kept in check by fear of Saddam Hussein’s “goons” – as Fox News likes to report – or “death squads” – as Rumsfeld says.

Once Saddam is killed, this latest reasoning goes, the Iraqi people will begin celebrating like some Mideast version of the flying monkeys in “The Wizard Oz,” who were transformed into happy creatures once the Wicked Witch of the West was dead. However, there is little empirical evidence to support Bush’s deferred rosy scenario of thankful Iraqis.

Saddam as Martyr

It would seem at least as likely that even success in killing Saddam would not stop Iraqi resistance and indeed could deepen the hole that Bush is digging.

Remarkably, in the first week and a half of the war, Bush has managed to make the unsavory Saddam into a cult-like hero across the Arab world. His death would make him a martyr. Even Arabs who disdain Saddam and his brutality take pride in the fact that Iraqis are standing up to the military might of the United States, the world’s preeminent superpower.

Among the many historical facts that Bush may not know is that Arabs have bitter memories of how Israel crushed a coalition of Arab armies in the Six-Day War in 1967. Already Saddam has held out against the Americans and British for a longer period than that. Plus, the bravery of Iraqi fighters – some of whom have charged into the teeth of fearsome American firepower – is stirring Arab nationalism.

In a region where Palestinian teenagers have been strapping bombs to themselves to kill Israelis – and now some Iraqis appear to be adopting similar tactics to kill Americans – there is little reason to believe that eliminating Saddam will somehow make Iraq submissive to U.S. authority.

While the Bush administration once talked about administering Iraq for a couple of years after victory, that timetable was based on the pre-war assumptions that the war would be a “cakewalk” and that the Iraqi population would welcome U.S. troops with open arms. After that easy victory, a U.S. proconsul administration would weed out Saddam loyalists and build a “representative” government, apparently meaning that the U.S. would pick leaders from among Iraq’s various ethnic groups and tribes.

However, now, with civilian casualties rising and a U.S. “victory” possibly requiring a blood bath, the timeline for the post-war “reconstruction” may need lengthening. Instead of a couple of years, the process could prove open-ended with fewer Iraqis willing to collaborate and more Iraqis determined to resist.

Grim Prospect

A long occupation would be another grim prospect for American soldiers. Given what’s happened in the past 11 days, U.S. occupation troops and Iraqi collaborators can expect an extended period of scattered fighting that might well involve assassinations and bombings. U.S. troops, inexperienced with Iraqi culture and ignorant of the Arabic language, will be put in the predicament of making split-second decisions about whether to shoot some 14-year-old boy with a backpack or some 70-year-old woman in a chador.

In retrospect, it should be clear that the only way for Bush’s military strategy to have worked was for the bulk of the Iraqi army to throw down its weapons in the first few days, at least in the southern cities. Mass surrenders and easy victories outside Baghdad might have convinced the Arab street and world opinion that the invasion had popular support or at least acquiescence inside Iraq.

A quick discovery of Iraqi chemical or biological weapons also might have buttressed the U.S. and U.K. strategy by showing that Saddam’s regime was in defiance of the United Nations. The Security Council`s majority would have looked naïve in thinking that inspections would work. But neither development materialized.

Once the “shock and awe” bombing failed to crack the regime and Iraqis showed they were willing to fight in southern Iraqi cities – such as Umm Qasr, Basra and Nasiriya – where Saddam’s support was considered weak, Bush’s initial war strategy was shown to be a grave mistake.

The supposedly decisive “shock and awe” bombing in the war’s opening days amounted to TV pyrotechnics that did little more than blow up empty government buildings, including Saddam’s tackily decorated palaces. The U.S. had so telegraphed the punch that the buildings had been evacuated.

Bush also rushed the invasion without the full U.S. force in place. Once Turkey balked at letting the Army’s Fourth Division use Turkish territory to open a northern front, Bush had the option of delaying the war by a month to transfer the division’s armor and equipment to Kuwait. That also might have helped the U.S. diplomatic position by giving the U.N. more time to destroy Iraqi medium-ranged missiles and hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

`Feel Good`

But Bush, the self-described “gut player” who had pronounced himself tired of the diplomatic games, lurched ahead. Before his TV speech announcing the start of the war, he pumped his fist in the air and exclaimed about himself, "Feel good!"

The new watchword was a “rolling start,” which meant that the invasion would begin before a full complement of U.S. forces was in place. So, American generals, who had wanted 500,000 troops and then settled for a force half that size, were told to launch the war with only about half of that lower number available.

There were doubters, but they were ignored. Before the war, one seasoned military analyst told me that he didn`t believe the aerial bombing would be as decisive as the administration thought, and he worried that the slimmed-down U.S. force would leave only about 20,000 front-line infantry troops to match up against a far bigger Iraqi army. The Americans also would be fighting in a foreign terrain. The risks, he said, were enormous, but his cautionary advice was unwelcome inside the gung-ho White House.

After the war began, these skeptics saw their warnings borne out. Faced with stiff resistance across Iraq, the U.S. forces found their supplies lines stretched and under pressure. There were too few forces to protect the convoys that were bringing not only armaments north for the siege of Baghdad, but also necessities such as bottled water for the troops.

Now, as the official optimism continues in Washington, the military options are getting grimmer by the day in Iraq. One strategy is for U.S. troops to wait for reinforcements before attacking Baghdad. Another choice is to begin the offensive against the Iraqi capital with renewed hope that the Iraqi army will finally crack and Hussein’s government will disintegrate.

For the short term, the U.S. military thinks it might get lucky by slipping special-forces teams into Baghdad with the goal of killing or capturing the Iraqi leadership. That, of course, is the “Black Hawk Down” strategy of 1993, which was built around using raids by American special forces to kill or capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his top lieutenants.

Though this strategy conceivably could work in Iraq, it carries the same risks that U.S. forces encountered in the streets of Mogadishu when the “Black Hawk Down” raid went awry and Americans rushed reinforcements to save stranded Americans. Such maneuvers would be even more dangerous in Baghdad.

Global Opposition

The other principal option available to Bush – a siege of Baghdad – carries its own risks, especially as anger seethes throughout the Arab world. Arab populations, including large segments of the educated elites, are demanding a more aggressive anti-U.S. response from Arab and Islamic leaders. That could take the shape of oil boycotts or even military intervention.

Rumsfeld’s warnings to Syria and Iran on Friday to stay out of the Iraq conflict startled some in Washington, who feared that either the defense secretary was spouting off again or that he might know something about the potential for a widening conflict.

Washington also is witnessing a precipitous decline in U.S. standing with the rest of the world. For instance, in Spain, whose government is part of Bush`s "coalition of the willing," 91 percent of Spaniards oppose the U.S. invasion, according to the latest polls.

The U.S. economy also could be dealt another body blow. While pro-war Americans are busy pouring French wine into the sewers and ordering "freedom fries," they don`t seem to realize that trade wars can cut two ways, with many in the world now urging boycotts of Coca-Cola, McDonald`s restaurants and other American goods.

Bush’s other vulnerability is domestic, that the American people might catch on to how thoroughly he has bungled the Iraqi crisis.

Over the past several months, despite escalating rhetoric from his team about the potential dangers posed by Iraq, Bush could muster only four out of 15 votes on the U.N. Security Council, causing him to withdraw a resolution to authorize war. It was a diplomatic defeat of historic proportions, though the embarrassing vote count was barely reported by a U.S. news media that was excitedly turning its attention to the impending war.

War Boosters

Since the war began March 19, the cable news channels have been Bush’s most reliable handmaidens as they compete to demonstrate greater “patriotism” than the other networks.

While still insisting that it’s news is “fair and balanced,” Fox News has taken to broadcasting stirring sequences of American and British soldiers being interviewed about the war while a harmonica soundtrack in the background plays the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Fox also describes the Iraqi government’s militia fighters as “Saddam’s goons” and has adopted Bush’s preferred phrasing for “suicide bombings” as “homicide bombings.” While denouncing the Iraqis for showing pictures of U.S. POWs, Fox continues to show footage of Iraqi POWs being paraded before U.S. cameras.

Fox’s super-patriotic tone apparently has helped it outpace its chief rivals, MSNBC and CNN, in the ratings war.

Though lagging, MSNBC and CNN have not trailed Fox by much in pitching their own news in the glow of red-white-and-blue righteousness. Like Fox, MSNBC uses a logo that superimposes the American flag on scenes of Iraq. CNN has adopted Bush’s name for the war -- “Operation Iraqi Freedom” -- as the subtitle for much of its coverage, even when the scenes show Iraqis being rounded up and handcuffed.

The major TV networks also have swapped professionalism for jingoism as their high-priced anchors wallow in the first person plural of the war, describing what “we” are going to do to Saddam. “One of the things that we don’t want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we’re going to own that country,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw explained on March 19, the opening night for “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Eleven days later, with heavy fighting still ahead before the U.S. government can claim to “own” Iraq, the slanted U.S. media coverage continues to stunt the debate among the American people and inside the U.S. government. Bush and his aides are insisting that this truncated debate be maintained by saying that anything other than military victory is unthinkable. Only by charging ahead can the United States find a way out of the darkening tunnel.

`Big Muddy`

The administration’s so-called “forward-leaning” strategy is an extension of the logic that led to the war. It started when U.S. forces were first shipped to the Persian Gulf region. That was necessary, the administration said, to show resolve and force Saddam to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

The administration then argued that once the U.S. troops were in place, there was no realistic choice but to use them. Otherwise, Saddam would thumb his nose at another Bush and America would lose credibility.

Now, the argument holds, that since the troops have been committed to battle, any result that leaves Saddam in power would be a humiliation to Washington and embolden other dictators around the world.

Here the historical analogy is closer to the Vietnam War during which Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon argued that a U.S. military withdrawal would have dangerous strategic consequences, touching off falling of dominoes across Southeast Asia. That logic led to a deepening U.S. military commitment in Vietnam and the expansion of the war beyond Vietnam’s borders. Only after a decade of bloody fighting did Washington painfully negotiate a withdrawal from the conflict.

In Iraq, Bush is demanding that the American people follow him into this new “big muddy” and that having taken the first steps into the swamp there’s now no choice but to press on. As a person who has never had much interest in history or other cultures, Bush may be only dimly aware of the worrisome historical precedents surrounding the trail he has chosen.

As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd observed wryly, “I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didn’t they, like, read about it?” [NYT, March 30, 2003]

Unwittingly, Bush may be applying all the wrong lessons from America’s worst military disasters of the past 40-plus years. He’s mixing risky military tactics with a heavy reliance on propaganda and a large dose of wishful thinking.

Bush also has guessed wrong on the one crucial ingredient that would separate meaningful victory from the political defeat that is now looming. He completely miscalculated the reaction of the Iraqi people to an invasion.

More and more, Bush appears to be heading toward that ultimate lesson of U.S. military futility. He’s committed himself – and the nation – to destroying Iraq in order to save it.

While at the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s, Robert Parry broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra Affair. His latest book is Lost History.




Back to Front

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STEVE LOPEZ POINTS WEST
The War`s Dirty Secret: It`s About Changing United States, Not Iraq
Steve Lopez

March 30, 2003

Much to her surprise, the federal government is promising to do everything Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters has spent years fighting for.

Education for the neediest souls will be transformed, quality health care will be guaranteed, damaged roadways and bridges will be rebuilt, and millions of dollars will be spent to spur new business.

Waters just never figured the beneficiaries would be residents of Iraq.

A few weeks ago, when I spent several hours with her in Washington as the start of the war approached, Waters had begun to fear the worst.

"I`m very worried about the long-term impact," she said, predicting that as the cost of the war grows, states, counties and cities will get stiffed.

Waters wasn`t talking about the weeks and months ahead, but the years and decades to come. The cost of the war and rebuilding Iraq, she said, could drastically limit what government can do.

The effort to turn Iraq into a democracy, in other words, is making the U.S. less of one. Our opposition party has disappeared, corporate interests dictate public policy, and the feds may be rummaging through your e-mail.

There`s a dirty secret no one has told you, and here it is: This war is not about changing Iraq, it`s about changing America.

Unless you`re lucky enough to be an investor in one of the corporations that will win multimillion-dollar contracts to rebuild Iraq, you may be hurting when the cost of the war and a new era of deficit spending put even more of a drag on the economy.

If you don`t earn enough to hit the jackpot on President Bush`s proposed tax cuts, you`re just going to have to fend for yourself. The whole idea is to train you to expect less and to feel patriotic about it.

If things get really bad, you can always move to Iraq.

"I think it`s terribly arrogant and overly ambitious for this president to think he can invade that country, turn it into a democracy, and use American taxpayer dollars to build an infrastructure that still is not built in some parts of this nation," Waters said.

"In addition to that, he wants to go ahead with tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country."

To clarify, Waters isn`t against sending American dollars to other countries.

"I believe in foreign assistance, and I think the richest nation in the world should certainly help our neighbors in other parts of the world," she said. "But I dislike the idea that we tear up Iraq first, bombing it to smithereens, and then we go back and put in the water systems, the health-care facilities and the other things we`ve torn up."

Last week, Waters and the rest of the country got the first bill for Operation Iraqi Freedom when the president asked Congress for $74.7 billion to cover war-related costs. Empire-building isn`t cheap.

"That`s probably going to underwrite about one month`s cost of the war," said Waters. "And it`s just the tip of the iceberg."

Waters got nervous when she saw Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney`s former company, grab one of the first rebuilding contracts before we`d even begun knocking things down. To help prevent a feeding frenzy by corporations with political connections, Waters introduced two amendments.

The first would have put a four-year hold on the awarding of military contracts to companies that helped draft the Iraqi war policy or employed high-level administration officials.

It was shot down like a sputtering Scud.

Waters went back to the drawing board and came up with a softer amendment.

"This time I just said, `OK, let`s say the person who`s worked for that company in the last four years can`t do the negotiating. He`d have to recuse himself from that discussion.` Now that`s as simple as it can get, and they voted against that one, too."

One night last week, I called Waters` Capitol Hill office at 9 p.m. her time and she answered the phone herself, having just returned from a House session.

"I was on the floor for an hour, helping educate people about the cuts being made to veterans` programs," she said.

So let`s review.

We`re asking 200,000 troops to risk life and limb in Iraq, and the White House and Congress are preparing a welcome-home party by slashing veterans` benefits.

Last week, I visited the Veterans Affairs dorms in West L.A., where I met a Vietnam vet who was wounded six times. He had a brace on his leg and shrapnel scars from head to toe, and he`d finally given up on his fight for enough disability pay to live on.

When I walked away, patients were calling out to me, saying there`s no hot water for showers.

Things are not looking good for the future veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

By Waters` count, current budget proposals would trim $15 billion from veterans` programs -- something`s got to cover those big tax cuts -- over the next 10 years.

And that`s if there are no unforeseen costs in the rebuilding of Iraq.

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Blair has one final chance to break free of his tainted fealty
US idealism of the Kennedy era has given way to rampant imperialism

Hugo Young
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian

America hasn`t always been like this. "The US will never start a war," the president said. "We do not want a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just."

This would not be "a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war". The time was June 1963, and John F Kennedy was talking "about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave, but the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women. There is no single key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts".

Kennedy could speak these words 40 years ago, and find an audience that believed them. They articulated a credible ideal, infused with internationalist generosity. Lurking beneath the horrors of today, that ideal still in some places exists. There are Americans who believe this is what is going on as their country takes command of the new world order. American democracy and freedom will make the world a better place, as the world will soon understand. Some suppose the end of Saddam will produce Iraqi democracy, which will set up a liberal model for the Middle East, which will begin to settle every problem in the region.

What we`re learning is that this is fantasy at every level, beginning with the official rhetoric. Not a trace of Kennedy`s internationalism has ever crossed the lips of George Bush. During the cold war, Kennedy could sincerely conjure up visions of peace which Bush, as leader of the hegemon, positively rejects. In place of peace as the product of many nations we have a marginalised UN, its legitimacies scorned, its existence challenged by officials close to the heart of power in Washington. It is inconceivable that Bush would make a speech disclaiming the merits of a Pax Americana.

The neoconservatism out of which he comes revels in such a Pax, or at least the illusion of it. Whether on arms control, environmental regulation or international criminal law, Americana has unilaterally ruled. The ideology of national interest, for the most part, trumps even a pretence that what Washington does might have selfless consequences for the good of the world. Unchallengeable military power, instead of generating magnanimity, has produced only a more righteous determination to use it.

It`s true that this coexists with an ideology of democracy. From top to bottom, Americans do believe democracy is good for everyone, even if some may have to wait for it longer than others. But here comes the crux of the American dilemma. Even if we`re prepared to grant the existence, deep in American purposes, of more idealism than is usually admitted, its fulfilment has become unattainable. America`s understanding of the world has become so self-centred, and its reputation so corrupted, that its ability to export liberal democracy either by example or by force now looks to be non-existent.

The Iraq war is one proof of this. Whether or not Bush and Co thought Saddam`s army would collapse, they certainly believed that the majority of Iraqis would show simple delight at the prospect of liberation. This has not happened, and now looks entirely remote rather than being a merely temporary offshoot of Saddam`s reign of terror. What Iraq is experiencing is invasion and bombing, which, as the people see it, destroys their security and challenges their self-respect: factors that Americans, wedded to the superiority of their own system, cannot comprehend.

What Iraqis see, and the world along with them, is a hegemon going about its business of domination, and barely any longer interested in why it is hated for doing so. Its motives, to put them no lower, are compromised. If it doesn`t want the oil for itself, it doesn`t want any other country - Russia, France - to have any either. If it doesn`t want the burden of reconstructing Iraq itself, it resists any similar power for the UN or the EU. Under the guise of advocating democracy, it works to preserve its dominance in all respects. Its interests must be paramount. Its system and no other must prevail, irrespective of culture, history and the rights of sovereign nations.

What Kennedy said of communism, in the same 60s address, could be transposed, with uncanny accuracy, to Americanism today. "The communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others," he contended, "is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured." The role reversal may not be exact. World terrorism has to be factored into the equation. But as a verdict on Bush`s America, this picture of political and economic imperialism rampant helps explain why a peaceful new world order seems out of reach.

There is only one Kennedyesque figure in the Bush entourage, and his name is Tony Blair. Blair, at a moral level, is fired by something of the same imperialism. He is the great intervener, proud, even now, to say that if Bush had held back from intervening in Iraq he would have been pushing him in that direction. An extraordinary, revealing confession to hear at this dire and misbegotten time.

But at least Blair`s motives are not compromised. Like Kennedy he sees the role of power as being to work, sometimes, for nationally disinterested purposes. He`s an internationalist visionary, albeit a naive one. He believes he was put on earth to make it a better place, in ways that have little to do with the power or riches of his own country.

This, however, makes him look the more forlorn. It marks one more divide between him and the mighty ally whose armed fig leaf he has allowed this country to become. He is tainted, much as he might dislike it, by American political strategies. Around the world, he is seen the way Bush`s neocons are seen, even though many people, especially in Europe, are mystified about how and why he allowed this to happen. He has been sucked into their power games, their world view, and their grotesque insensitivity to the interests and judgments of other nations.

He has, maybe, one final chance to break free of this fealty. The next test is over who does construct the political authority in postwar Iraq. Blair believes, allegedly with passion, that it has to be the UN. Looking at the scale of the problem, most people would agree that internationalisation is the only way. Does our leader have the nerve to speak and vote with Kennedy, not Bush?

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A national sullenness
Matthew Engel
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian

When war broke out, the mood in the country that started it was one of delight. One newspaper issued a special edition with the headline "The Blessing of Arms" and said: "It is a joy to be alive. We have wished so much for this hour." Counter-opinions were muted. In the legislature a few members were heard to mutter: "This incompetent diplomacy! This incompetent diplomacy!" And one diplomat was heard to wail to a colleague that everyone was against them. "Siam is friendly, I am told," the other replied.

This is, of course, another of those sneaky historical intros. The paper was the Alldeutscher Blaetter, and the quotes are in The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman`s classic account of the slither to war in 1914. This was the book President Kennedy read just before the Cuba missile crisis; he recommended it to all-comers as a caution against pride and bad judgment leading nations to disaster.

George Bush`s last-known relevant hardcover reading was Supreme Command, by one Eliot Cohen, an argument in favour of political leaders imposing their own will on the generals. This book may not weather as well as the Tuchman. Indeed, it has hardly survived the past week.

As in 1914, war has brought a new reality that has defied predictions. For instance, on the home front, there is still an extraordinary absence of patriotic display. In our neighbourhood, where hundreds of stars-and-stripes were unfurled after September 11, I have counted just two flags on private houses, excluding those that are always there - balanced by one "War Is Not The Answer!" placard. Reports from elsewhere are patchy, with one flag-maker in supposedly bellicose North Carolina describing sales as "fairly normal".

Equally, there is no surge of opposition. The polls show headline support for the war running steadily enough, but that seems to mask a great national sullenness. There is no point in arguing about it any more (there wasn`t much point in the first place). And whichever side of that argument one was on, there is now only one realistic road out, and it lies through Baghdad. In many places, the flags have been replaced by yellow ribbons, the symbol of hope for imprisoned heroes. Everyone wants the prisoners released.

And even the rose-vision goggles worn by so many American journalists cannot mask the uncomfortable facts from the front. The most telling moment may have come late last week, when the first reports came in of starvation in Iraq - not among the Iraqis, but among the US marines, down to one meal a day because the supply lines were so stretched. And this is going to plan, is it?

We don`t need embedded reporters to convey what the mood must be in hungry marine units. But there are intriguing fragments suggesting distinct unease in other unexpected quarters too. More than 200,000 National Guard and reserve forces are now on active duty. These are working people who expected to express their spirit of service with a little weekend soldiering or crisis assistance. But the demands of homeland security and successive wars mean that some are having one-year tours extended to two. These are people who will often lose money, sometimes their jobs, perhaps their families - and, of course, occasionally their lives. Some are getting restless.

A nd the bereaved families - or even just vulnerable ones - are not necessarily inclined to glum acquiescence either. This war has never been popular in the black community, which provides a disproportionate quantity of the armed forces (particularly when compared to the number of family members of senior government officials and warmongering columnists). Private Howard Johnson of the 507th Maintenance Company had been very excited about going to Iraq: he was killed in an ambush last week. "I don`t feel it was necessary," said his mother, Gloria.

With the number of dead on all sides approaching a thousand, many more will be feeling the same. How this mood develops will depend hugely on whether the days and weeks spread to months and years. What I think we can already say with certainty is that the notion of Iraq as some sort of prelude to the Bush regime mopping up everyone else who disagreed with them has now receded, with distinct consequences for the US`s future attitude to the world. Their next glorious adventure will be a much, much harder sell.

It was summed up most succinctly by Larry Wilcox, a letter-writer to the Los Angeles Times: "Thanks to Bush and his war agenda, we`ve learned that the Tigris runs through Iraq, and the Hubris runs through the White House."

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It will end in disaster
The US and British governments have dragged us into a mess that will last for years

George Monbiot
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian

So far, the liberators have succeeded only in freeing the souls of the Iraqis from their bodies. Saddam Hussein`s troops have proved less inclined to surrender than they had anticipated, and the civilians less prepared to revolt. But while no one can now ignore the immediate problems this illegal war has met, we are beginning, too, to understand what should have been obvious all along: that, however this conflict is resolved, the outcome will be a disaster.

It seems to me that there are three possible results of the war with Iraq. The first, which is now beginning to look unlikely, is that Saddam Hussein is swiftly dispatched, his generals and ministers abandon their posts and the people who had been cowed by his militias and his secret police rise up and greet the invaders with their long-awaited blessing of flowers and rice. The troops are welcomed into Baghdad, and start preparing for what the US administration claims will be a transfer of power to a democratic government.

For a few weeks, this will look like victory. Then several things are likely to happen. The first is that, elated by its reception in Baghdad, the American government decides, as Donald Rumsfeld hinted again last week, to visit its perpetual war upon another nation: Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, North Korea or anywhere else whose conquest may be calculated to enhance the stature of the president and the scope of his empire. It is almost as if Bush and his advisers are determined to meet the nemesis which their hubris invites.

Our next discovery is likely to be, as John Gray pointed out some months ago, that the choice of regimes in the Middle East is not a choice between secular dictatorship and secular democracy, but between secular dictatorship and Islamic democracy. What the people of the Middle East want and what the US government says they want appear to be rather different things, and the tension between the two objectives will be a source of instability and conflict until western governments permit those people to make their own choices unmolested. That is unlikely to happen until the oil runs out. The Iraqis may celebrate their independence by embracing a long-suppressed fundamentalism, and the United States may respond by seeking to crush it.

The coalition might also soon discover why Saddam Hussein became such an abhorrent dictator. Iraq is a colonial artefact, forced together by the British from three Ottoman provinces, whose people have wildly different religious and ethnic loyalties. It is arguable that this absurd construction can be sustained only by brute force.

A US-backed administration seeking to keep this nation of warring factions intact may rapidly encounter Saddam`s problem, and, in so doing, rediscover his solution. Perhaps we should not be surprised to see that George Bush`s government was, until recently, planning merely to replace the two most senior officials in each of Saddam`s ministries, leaving the rest of his government undisturbed.

The alternative would be to permit Iraq to fall apart. While fragmentation may, in the long run, be the only feasible future for its people, it is impossible, in the short term, to see how this could happen without bloodshed, as every faction seeks to carve out its domain. Whether the US tries to oversee this partition or flees from it as the British did from India, its victory in these circumstances is likely to sour very quickly.

The second possible outcome of this war is that the US kills Saddam and destroys the bulk of his army, but has to govern Iraq as a hostile occupying force. Saddam Hussein, whose psychological warfare appears to be rather more advanced than that of the Americans, may have ensured that this is now the most likely result.

The coalition forces cannot win without taking Baghdad, and Saddam is seeking to ensure that they cannot take Baghdad without killing thousands of civilians. His soldiers will shelter in homes, schools and hospitals. In trying to destroy them, the American and British troops may blow away the last possibility of winning the hearts and minds of the residents. Saddam`s deployment of suicide bombers has already obliged the coalition forces to deal brutally with innocent civilians.

The comparisons with Palestine will not be lost on the Iraqis, or on anyone in the Middle East. The United States, like Israel, will discover that occupation is bloody and, ultimately, unsustainable. Its troops will be harassed by snipers and suicide bombers, and its response to them will alienate even the people who were grateful for the overthrow of Saddam. We can expect the US, in these circumstances, hurriedly to proclaim victory, install a feeble and doomed Iraqi government, and pull out before the whole place crashes down around it. What happens after that, to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, is anyone`s guess, but I think we can anticipate that it won`t be pleasant.

The third possibility is that the coalition forces fail swiftly to kill or capture Saddam Hussein or to win a decisive victory in Iraq. While still unlikely, this is now an outcome which cannot be entirely dismissed. Saddam may be too smart to wait in his bunker for a bomb big enough to reach him, but might, like King Alfred, slip into the civilian population, occasionally throwing off his disguise and appearing among his troops, to keep the flame of liberation burning.

If this happens, then the US will have transformed him from the hated oppressor into the romantic, almost mythological hero of Arab and Muslim resistance, the Salah al-Din of his dreams. He will be seen as the man who could do to the United States what the mujahideen of Afghanistan did to the Soviet Union: drawing it so far into an unwinnable war that its economy and its popular support collapse. The longer he survives, the more the population - not just of Iraq, but of all Muslim countries - will turn towards him, and the less likely a western victory becomes.

The US will almost certainly then have engineered the improbable chimera it claims to be chasing: the marriage of Saddam`s well-armed secular brutality and al-Qaida`s global insurrection. Even if, having held out for many weeks or months, Saddam Hussein is found and killed, his spirit may continue to inspire a revolt throughout the Muslim world, against the Americans, the British and, of course, Israel. Pakistan`s unpopular leader, Pervez Musharraf, would then find himself in serious trouble. If, as seems likely in these circumstances, he is overthrown in an Islamic revolt, then a fundamentalist regime, deeply hostile to the west, would possess real nuclear weapons, primed and ready to fire.

I hope I`ve missed something here, and will be proved spectacularly wrong, but it seems to me that the American and British governments have dragged us into a mess from which we might not emerge for many years. They have unlocked the spirit of war, and it could be unwilling to return to its casket until it has traversed the world.

· www.monbiot.com.


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What would change my mind on Iraq?
David Aaronovitch
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian

All week my pacific alter ego has been sitting on my shoulder and whispering a harsh question in my ear. "Your war. How long does it have to go on, how expensive does it have to be, how many have to die, before you admit it`s a mad failure?"

By the weekend I could scarcely bring myself to look at the news bulletins. A much-loved friend emailed me from 12,000 miles away and (more or less) told me I was a lunatic. Others have informed me that I am a cunt. The last one to use this word has just revealed (after a pithy correspondence) that he now intends to work for the Liberal Democrats at the next election. That should make their canvassing more exciting than usual.

The question stands. This war for me has always been a fine judgment call, a choice between deeply shitty alternatives (my big argument with some in the anti-war campaign has been their belief that there are - or were - No-Die options in Iraq). Agnostic on the threat of weapons of mass destruction (though believing that Saddam would develop them if permitted to), sceptical on alleged Iraqi links with new Osama bin Laden-type groups, it finally came down to the lesser of these three evils: Saddam unchained; a "contained" Saddam plus sanctions and endless inspections; invasion and no Saddam. In the end, I chose the latter.

Even so, there has always been the possibility of a war that was worse even than another 20 years of Saddam, Uday, Qusay, Chemical Ali and Dr Germ. And there have been moments in the past few days when I have wondered whether we aren`t fighting it.

It is the war of Saddam`s Vicious Circle. Iraqi Fedayeen and Republican Guards "embed" themselves in the civilian population, fighting in civilian clothes, basing themselves in built-up areas, and sometimes using suicide tactics. Their presence deters any nascent uprising. The invaders take longer to reach their objectives and use more force in order to do so. They also treat ordinary Iraqis as though they are a threat. Aid can`t get through or is delayed, which increases local hostility and resistance, which in turn further holds up aid, makes Saddam`s survival seem possible, and stiffens resistance from elite and irregular forces. To gain a victory, more risks have to be taken with bombing, and many more civilians are killed, thus inflaming Arab and Muslim opinion. The war eventually ends with huge civilian loss of life through direct military action and lack of food, water and medicines. Or, worst of all, ends with all that plus the precipitate withdrawal of coalition forces.

So how many is too many, and how long is too long? What, when children are dying, constitutes enough?

This is not just a question for current pro-invasion people, but also for those who argued for war but only with a second UN resolution, and also those who have said "arm the Kurds" or "support uprisings". A second resolution would have made us feel more legitimate, might have made Saddam a few per cent more likely to have thrown in the towel and could even have supplied the venture with a few French troops. But it`s hard to see how it would have changed anything at all on the dying front. And supporting uprisings without using air power or ground troops would be to condemn Iraqi dissidents to another bloody defeat.

Kosovo was, most of us agree, "worth it". Worth it even though we hit the train on the bridge at Leskovac, killing 10, and the refugee convoy at Prizren in Kosovo which slaughtered more than 70. "Worth it" to both Robin Cook (then foreign secretary) and me. As was the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 or, in Afghanistan, the infamous missile attack on the gun-toting wedding party.

If this sounds callous, my answer is that we make choices like this all the time. Except no one rushes to the scene of motorway crashes to report on how an ill-timed phone-call, speeding, or pre-drive joint has left body parts scattered along the fast lane of the M6. We know it, but you still couldn`t get 500 people to London to call for the end of the motor car. In Kosovo the scenes from the border justified our actions to us at a time when the action seemed most pointless and brutal. Right now, there are no pictures from Baghdad of the summary executions and the beheadings; Rageh Omar has not been taken to see those. Yet. But if we could see inside those buildings and speak to some of the families of victims, the calculation might change.

So far, compared to most wars and to Saddam`s own peace-time action, civilian casualties in Iraq have not been heavy (though God knows they have been heavy enough). Nor, by historical standards, have we lost many military personnel (though I wouldn`t want to say so to a mother who has just heard that her 19-year-old son is dead near Basra). To put this into some kind of context, each year about 250 members of the US armed services die in accidents unconnected with combat when on duty. Those too are tragedies. We put up with them.

So it is a matter of scale and outcome. The Iraqi figure for civilian deaths is around 500 at the moment. No one knows how many Iraqi soldiers have died. Would 5,000 dead civilians be too many to justify war? Or 5,000 coalition soldiers? Of course, if operative chemical and biological weapons are found (or used), plus any evidence of a link between those weapons and terrorist groups, then a very much higher casualty level might be deemed to have been worth it. I doubt, however, that they will be used and that such a link will be discovered. As of today the advance seems to have resumed.

But you cannot easily answer in an actuarial manner. How do you balance this many dead civilians against the thousands still to be killed in Saddam`s prisons or in his suppression of rebellion? This many soldiers versus the thousands still to die as the regime (at some future date) implodes? This much terrorism provoked, versus this much democracy encouraged?

So, whatever the amount of death and mayhem, it could be years before anyone on either side of the argument can credibly claim vindication. Although, as the voice whispers, if Donald Rumsfeld really is an idiot, Tony Blair really is a fantasist and I really am a cunt, it could be only weeks.


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Alas, Babylon*

By John Kaminski
Online Journal Contributing Writer

March 29, 2003—It would be comical if the very president whose whole pretext for existing were predicated on hyping up the U.S. military to unnecessarily scary levels turned out to be the loser who revealed to the world that American defenses were nothing but disoriented kids—no match for desert tough guys—plus mighty machines that don`t work in bad weather and a sleazy symphony of finely tuned money-consuming BS that was usually false.

It would be comical . . . except for all those Iraqi children lying in bloody pieces strewn on streets of mud brick desert villages and baby-faced U.S. GIs lying face down in sandstorms, not photographed and uncounted by American TV networks—"We don`t want to upset the public with gory details!" Funny how the U.S. death toll on Arab TV is much higher than reported by CNN or NBC.

It would be comical if America lost a war to a country that didn`t have any planes, any steel-spewing smart bombs (which the U.S. is now dropping in civilian neighborhoods to ensure innocent people will be killed for years to come), or any million-dollar missiles that can be fired from hundreds of miles away, thereby assuring the brave commandos doing the firing that they won`t have to see tears gushing from the eyes of mothers watching blood gushing from the mouths of their children.

It would be comical if the good old USA lost a war to a bunch of ridiculously ordinary people many Americans disparagingly call ragheads—comical in the eyes of God, comical in the eyes of a world which has seen America go berserk with power and give its soul away to men who have no idea what a soul is.

It would be comical—and a well-deserved twist of fate—if America had to pay Iraq to let its troops go home.

But we jump ahead of ourselves. The fate of Iraq—and the world—still hangs in the balance. The sandstorm still rages. America`s premeditated murder of a sovereign people has yet to be either completed or thwarted.

Let us take a moment, as Americans concerned with our future, to calculate whether it would be better for America to win this so-called war or to lose it.

If all goes according to Washington`s plan and America wins this so-called war as it planned it would, then Americans are in for just about the same treatment for themselves as was accorded the Iraqis, although with perhaps fewer bombs and more mandated vaccinations (some ingredients of which, of course, will remain secret).

An exhilarated Bush will railroad passage of PATRIOt Act II through his android Congress, and the last vestiges of the U.S. Constitution will be permanently erased. What a real pain that Bill of Rights has been to businessmen over the years!

Freedom of speech will be the last to go, rubbed out with military tribunals, which can hand out death penalties on 2–1 votes with no appeals. Already the state of Oregon is considering life in prison for peace protesters. Those remaining inhabitants of the dog cages at Guantanamo will be quickly eliminated to make room for newly convicted domestic dissenters.

All remaining environmental laws will be permanently revoked, the United Nations will be disbanded as the irrelevant institution it is, and new babies will be inserted with computer chips containing their Social Security numbers and econo-genetic classifications, something that will forever separate them from the children of politicians who go to Andover and Yale.

These are some of the things Bush will accomplish at home after he wins the war in Iraq. You as an American may now calculate if these new developments are desirable.

But before you do, consider the alternative: what if Bush loses the war in Iraq, or if conditions prove to be so intractable as to create some kind of negotiated stalemate?

Bush brings the troops home and almost immediately gets impeached for recklessly endangering the security of the nation and needlessly squandering the lives of thousands of young Americans, all on the basis of proven lies that the American media were too chicken and too unprincipled to challenge him about.

Hell, didn`t those judges just rule that Fox media wasn`t required by law to tell the truth in that case of the Florida reporters? Those judges are going places, either way, probably to the Supreme Court if Bush wins, and straight to jail if Bush loses.

Wouldn`t it be great if all his judicial appointees were impeached along with him as dishonest shills of big business? That just might fix the court system.

But another thing happens if Bush loses this war, and it might just happen regardless of the outcome.

I`m talking about World War III. It`s not just a metaphor anymore. We are tiptoeing along the edge of the nuclear volcano as I speak, and I`ll tell you why.

When Bush finally pushed the button and went into Iraq without any legitimate provocation—only the lies he tried to tell that were rejected as fantasy at the United Nations—he opened the gates of Hell.

If the U.S. can invade Iraq for no honest reason, why can`t North Korea do the same to the United States? They have much more legitimate provocation to point to than the United States ever had in regard to Iraq, in either war. The U.S. has threatened them repeatedly, and now Japan is launching a new spy satellite.

North Korea has every reason to believe this is a provocation against them. They have every right, according to what the United States has just done in Iraq, to attack both Japan and the United States preemptively, to protect their country from what genuinely looks like will be the use of weapons of mass destruction against them in the future.

They have a more legitimate reason to attack us than we had to attack Iraq.

Will they ask that the United Nations send weapons inspectors into the United States to check for weapons of mass destruction? North Korea has every right to ask this, in fact, a much more pressing right, a more legitimate reason to ask the United Nations to do exactly that than the U.S. ever did have or ever will have in its hysterically falsified case against Iraq.

Plus . . . with the United States faltering as badly as it is in the sandstorms of Mesopotamia, with all the stories of "coalition" (ha!) forces shooting each other on a frighteningly regular basis, with the repeated failure of U.S. missiles to hit their targets and U.S. equipment breaking down under adverse conditions—plus all those phony, pre-determined outcome missile tests the U.S. has conducted in the past few years and other U.S. military exercises that were rigged to impress Congressional funders—how long do you think it`s going to be before other countries start to notice that maybe the U.S., for all its braggadocio, isn`t all that tough?

Some of them might think, hmm, maybe those missiles won`t really work, and even if they do, they won`t really hit anything important.

See, this is the really bad scrape Bush has gotten us into. If we make much more of a spectacle of ourselves than we already have, other nations around the world are going to begin to believe that U.S. defenses are all talk and no real action, that is to say, no real danger to anyone with some toughness, guile, and a couple of long-range missiles that actually work.

This is what I talked about at the top, about Bush shooting his mouth off about toughening up the military in order to get elected, and impressing millions of timid, white-haired phonies enough to vote for him. (Let`s skip the vote scandal this time around.)

How ironic that it was all talk and no action. How ironic that all these astronomical military expenditures really just went to executive bonuses for his Carlyle Group and Halliburton friends, and then how all the military tests were rigged by these same fools and their lackeys, so that Americans have a puffed-up defense budget for an inexperienced fighting force with weapons that have made plenty of money for their manufacturers but don`t work reliably.

What happens when some hicktown tough guy from rural Eurasia has a couple of long-range missiles and figures he can get away with a free shot?

Or worse, that the collective of nations calculates America is so undependable and so hard-hearted that it`s worth taking a shot to stop this maniacal menace named George W. Bush, who bears a truly startling resemblance to Adolf Hitler.

Either way would be World War III and none of us would get to talk about after it happened.

That`s where Bush`s preemptive war has brought us on this fateful day in March 2003—right to the very brink of nuclear Armageddon, where one false move torches the planet.

This would all be comical—except for that.

*"Alas, Babylon" is the 1959 sci-fi classic by Pat Frank in which two brothers use the phrase as a coded message to indicate the nuclear holocaust, so feared in those early days of the Cold War, had actually begun. And it has in the year 2003, as the U.S. has already begun anew its barbaric radioactive poisoning of Iraq through the use of cancer-causing uranium-tipped bullets and shells.

John Kaminski, a writer who lives on the coast of Florida, is the author of "America`s Autopsy Report," soon to be published by DandelionBooks. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Die letzten Montagen von TBHpolitoon

http://www.geocities.com/tbhpolitoon/Page26.html

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Man wartet auf den Absturz. Regime change in den USA

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April 1, 2003
The Death of Innocents

t wasn`t supposed to be like this. The Bush administration had envisioned a different kind of invasion in Iraq, one that would flood the Arab world with pictures of American soldiers feeding hungry people and giving medical attention to sick children. Instead, billions around the globe are seeing and hearing reports that women and children were gunned down yesterday while riding in a civilian van at an American checkpoint.

This is just what the Iraqi commanders have in mind when they send soldiers disguised as noncombatants to fire on unsuspecting American troops. The killing of the soldiers is an incidental benefit. The real goal is to turn the Americans against Iraqi civilians and cause them to behave like a hostile occupying army rather than the friendly liberators we had envisioned.

It happens all the time when troops are fighting in areas full of civilians, mixed in with terrorist insurgents. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam was not the result of bad intentions, but of the fury of frightened young American men who were no longer able to distinguish between innocent civilians and hostile forces. The great hatreds between common people and military authority that existed for so long in Northern Ireland, and that exist now in the West Bank, have all been fanned by the same phenomenon. When troops wonder whether a man standing in his own doorway is harboring a sniper, or if a van full of women and children is a van full of suicide bombers, each side quickly learns to distrust, fear and finally hate the other.

Yesterday in southern Iraq, American soldiers fired into a van filled with women and children, killing seven. The van was approaching a military checkpoint near an area where a car bomb had recently exploded, killing four soldiers.

The authorities said that the van had ignored all the soldiers` attempts to bring it to a halt, and that the shooting had been justified. They promised to investigate.

Those reassurances are important to Americans but will mean very little in the Arab world, particularly if such scenes become routine. If that happens, the political war for Iraq could be lost even before the military one is won.



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April 1, 2003
Speaking With the Enemy
By WALTER CRONKITE


nder the Constitution, giving "aid and comfort" to a wartime enemy can lead to a charge of treason. So far as I know no one has yet suggested that Peter Arnett be charged with that capital offense. But it seems that Mr. Arnett hangs by a rope of his own weaving.

Mr. Arnett, of course, is the former reporter in Baghdad for NBC and National Geographic who was fired for giving an interview to state-controlled Iraqi television. In the interview he criticized the American military effort and praised the morale of the Iraqi people and the cooperation of Iraq`s information ministry — this latter despite the fact that many American correspondents have been ejected from the country and, indeed, two of them are missing, last heard from in Baghdad.

There is no excuse for Mr. Arnett`s lack of judgment, and he has apologized for it. However, journalists — especially those who have had to deal with foreign governments at times of extreme tension — will recognize a motivation in his acceptance of the interview. They can recognize it without excusing it.

There is an adage concerning a reporter`s dealings with the secrecy that surrounds most government activities, not only here at home but to a greater extent in countries that do not share the American concept of freedom of the press. The adage is this: A reporter is only as good as his sources.

Clearly Mr. Arnett, in granting the interview, was cozying up to sources he depended on for, first, their tolerance of him in Baghdad and, second, any information he could get: about Iraq`s military posture, its claims of combat successes and techniques, and the morale of its populace.

In this regard, Mr. Arnett was a valuable correspondent in the enemy`s capital. As long as he pleased and even seemed to sympathize with his Baghdad sources, he was permitted to broadcast to America. It is even conceivable that his inside look was of some value to our own military.

Mr. Arnett was an honored reporter for The Associated Press in Vietnam; he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage. He earned respect from his colleagues for his extraordinary courage and daring and for his knowledgeable dispatches. His admired modesty suffered somewhat after he became a TV reporter and won acclaim for his bravado in staying in Baghdad in 1991 to report for CNN. He even said in his interview last weekend that if U.S. war planners had listened to his more recent broadcasts they would have known of the strength of the Iraqi Army and the devotion of the Iraqi people.

His long experience makes it all the more difficult to understand how he could have been so grossly irresponsible in granting that interview. He besmirched his reputation, offended a nation and lost his job — justifiably so — even though he will still report for The Daily Mirror in Britain.

But Mr. Arnett`s firing is more than a personal setback. With him gone from the airwaves, Americans have lost an eye on Baghdad that had proved a valuable addition to our knowledge of a mysterious enemy.




Walter Cronkite was anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

Giving Iraqis a Lifeline
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


EAR BASRA, Iraq


This landscape is a cross between a "Mad Max" movie and Dante`s "Inferno." The highway is littered with the carcasses of Iraqi tanks, artillery and trucks, while jittery British 20-year-olds use their tanks to create a checkpoint on the edge of Basra. Iraqi snipers down the road use machine guns and mortars to plink periodically at the tanks as families of Iraqi refugees trudge steadily by with sacks of possessions slung over their shoulders, the sky behind them an apocalyptic black with smoke from raging oil fires.

The ordinary Iraqis here seem more pragmatic than many of the American officials deciding their fate. While ideologues in Washington offer sweeping judgments about what Iraqis want, many Iraqis seem less dogmatic and are willing to suspend final judgment until they see an answer to this question: Will the invasion make people`s lives better?

Unfortunately, many Iraqis here are growing angry because so far our invasion has made their lives incomparably worse. They have lost food, drinking water and security. In every swamp or fetid pool of water, families are filling plastic containers with the sewage-tainted filth that is the closest they can now get to water.

"It would be O.K. if the invaders brought us water," said Munshid, a young man from Basra who, like others, did not want his full name used. "But so far they bring only thirst."

"The Americans are treating us like animals," a 35-year-old Basra resident named Muhammad complained, adding: "The soldiers are destroying the pictures of our president, and that`s all they`re doing."

One former army officer who was fleeing Basra with his wife and six children scoffed when I asked whether the invasion would bring improvements later. "I don`t see any good result of it," he said with a tinge of bitterness.

It`s no good for us to protest that this anger is premature and that the situation will improve. This anger is throbbing now, and it`s as much of a threat to our invasion as suicide bombings. Yet the popular mood, at least here in the south, could turn around if the U.S. could just make life better. Most Iraqis I talk to don`t seem passionately for or against the invasion; they just don`t want their babies to die of sickness from filthy water.

That`s why we desperately need to accelerate humanitarian efforts now, not after the war is over. Granted, it`s a challenge because of a Catch-22: to distribute aid, we need security, and it`s difficult to achieve security as long as people are outraged at the lack of assistance. But so far we have provided less aid and security in the areas we control than Saddam used to, and if this continues it will undermine our entire mission.

I realize there are no easy answers. I saw a soldier going through a farmer`s crate of tomatoes at a checkpoint, spoiling many of them, and I wondered whether that was necessary. But a little later, an Iraqi told me of a man who had hidden an AK-47 at the bottom of a crate of tomatoes, and I now hope that the troops search every crate of tomatoes carefully.

One obstacle to aid is that southern Iraq is still far too dangerous, even for those immensely courageous ambassadors of civilization known as aid workers. Even the U.S. marines accompanying the convoy of Kuwaiti food trucks I entered with asked for a heavier military escort to travel in broad daylight just a couple of miles from the Kuwaiti border to a British base (this was in the town of Umm Qasr, which we supposedly secured 11 days ago).

At the base, three fellow journalists and I covered our Kuwaiti license plate with duct tape and roared off on our own toward Basra. We careered along the nearly deserted highway at 90 miles an hour, passing burned-out skeletons of vehicles and whizzing past occasional pedestrians, like one man who had hiked 10 miles one way to buy eggs for his family in Basra. Public opinion here is difficult to gauge, but my guess is that we still have some hope of winning popular acceptance if we can make lives better, and do it soon, so parents can get eggs for their children without hiking all day through a war zone.

On the scene of one firefight near Basra, I picked up a couple of empty tank shells for my sons because they are in awe of tanks. I need to explain to them, though, that here in Iraq it will take more than tanks to win this war. It will take security, fresh water — and eggs.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[goldmist]

Hi Joerver, habe hier auch was aktuelles

Britischer Abgeordneter verlangt Abzug der Truppen und

ruft Soldaten zur Befehlsverweigerug auf !


MP urges troops to disobey orders
7.18AM BST, 1 Apr 2003

Antiwar Labour MP George Galloway has defended an interview in which he branded Tony Blair and George Bush as "wolves" for committing the "crime" of military action against Iraq.

In an interview for Abu Dhabi TV, the Glasgow Kelvin MP questioned why Arab countries were selling oil to the coalition forces, and accused Mr Blair and Mr Bush of lying to the armed forces about the likely length of the war.

Mr Galloway is standing by his comments, arguing that the war is illegal - and urged British soldiers to refuse to obey "illegal orders."

In the television interview Mr Galloway said: "Even if it is not realistic to ask a non-Iraqi army to come to defend Iraq, we see Arab regimes pumping oil for the countries who are attacking it.

"We wonder when the Arab leaders will wake up. When are they going to stand by the Iraqi people?"

Turning his attention to Mr Blair and President Bush, he went on: "They have lied to the British Air Force and Navy when they said the battle of Iraq would be very quick and easy.

"They attacked Iraq like wolves. They attacked civilians."

He added: "It is better for Blair and Bush to stop this crime and this catastrophe. It is time for them to return to the UN Security Council and give diplomacy a chance."

His comments were condemned by armed forces minister Adam Ingram.

"Are there no depths to which George Galloway will not sink? I am sure such disgraceful comments will be rightly condemned the length and breadth of this country."

Mr Galloway explained: "The wolves are Bush and Blair, not the soldiers. The soldiers are lions led by donkeys, sent to kill and be killed."

The MP rejected suggestions that his interview amounted to an act of treachery, and denied that it would incite Arabs to kill British troops

He said: "As for being a traitor, the people who have betrayed this country are those who have sold it to a foreign power and who have been the miserable surrogates of a bigger power for reasons very few people in Britain can understand."

He added: "Given that I believe this invasion is illegal, it follows that the only people fighting legally are the Iraqis, who are defending their country.

"The best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders "




http://www.itv.com/news/2105567.html

[Joerver]

[goldmist]

[goldmist]

....

Depleted uranium ( DU) / abgereichertes URAN ** DANGER**

Published on Monday, March 31, 2003 by the Miami Herald
Our Servicemen`s Health in Danger
by David Weintraub

The casualty rate among our servicemen fighting the war in Iraq might be far greater than anyone expects. A growing body of evidence appears to demonstrate that Americans were misled about the full scope of deaths and injuries to U.S. troops in the first Gulf War and that a similar tragedy is likely in this war.

The source of many of these casualties may not come from Iraqi firepower or chemical and biological weapons, but from the after-effects of U.S. armaments. When the desert dust cleared from Operation Desert Storm`s record-breaking 100-hour ground war in 1991, American casualties amounted to 147 killed and 457 wounded. However, the long-term damage is just beginning to surface.

NUCLEAR-WASTE BULLETS

Of the 700,000 U.S. troops sent to the Persian Gulf, Department of Veteran Affairs statistics indicate that almost 10,000 have died since the first Gulf War, almost 200,000 have filed claims for medical and compensation benefits and more than 150,000 were granted service-connected benefits.

Col. David Hackworth, one of America`s most decorated officers, says that the Gulf War conjures up the worst memories of Vietnam, where soldiers were forced to fight a two-front war against the Viet Cong and against the Pentagon`s use of deadly chemicals. He is disgusted that Gulf War vets are getting the same runaround that Vietnam vets faced for more than 20 years in the Agent Orange debacle. He worries that the current war with Iraq will be devastating on U.S. servicemen.

No one knows the harm done to Gulf War vets better than Dr. Doug Rokke, a U.S. Army major and former director of the Pentagon`s Depleted Uranium Project after the 1991 Gulf War. According to Rokke, tens of thousands of troops were exposed to Depleted Uranium or DU, a benign name for uranium-238, the waste product of nuclear reactors and weapons. DU is a bad marriage between two unsavory partners: the nuclear industry, which needed a home for nearly one billion tons of hazardous waste, and the U.S. military that desired cheap and effective munitions. They created DU by molding nuclear-waste tailings into bullets and bombs.

Because of DU`s high density, it makes a perfect armor-penetrating weapon that destroys tanks, armored personnel carriers and underground bunkers. When DU hits its target, it creates a firestorm of uranium dioxide dust, leaving microscopic fragments that float through the air, carried by the wind for miles.

MANY VETS HAVE CANCER

Based on his research, Rokke discovered that when DU is inhaled, it ravages the lungs and wreaks havoc in the body, destroying vital organs and immune systems. Rokke called for an immediate ban on DU, costing him his career. His exposure to DU may cost him his life. Of the 100 men Rokke had working under him, 30 have died and the rest suffer from cancers and immune-deficiency symptoms similar to many Gulf War veterans.

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, former head of nuclear medicine at a Veterans Ad ministration medical facility, discovered that Gulf War vets treated at his hospital showed classic symptoms of radiation exposure. Yet when he tried to investigate a link between DU and his patients` disease, he came under intense scrutiny, ultimately finding his 18-year career abruptly terminated.

But his duty to his patients drove him to continue his research, discovering life-threatening levels of DU in Gulf veterans 10 years after the war. Those tested demonstrated a significant presence of DU caused by inhalation of uranium dust.

Depleted uranium munitions are playing key roles in Iraq, where the Pentagon`s Abrams tanks and A-10 fighter jets are being used, exposing our troops once again to the serious consequences of our own devices -- quite possibly for periods of time far greater than in the first Gulf War.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME

If our brave men and women are placed in harm`s way unnecessarily, their only hope may be that we, the people, respond by accepting our duty to protect and defend the interests of our soldiers. We can put our heads in the sand and allow this unjustified war to continue, notwithstanding its potentially staggering consequences to our servicemen, or we can enlist our own constitutional authority by supporting our troops in the only meaningful way possible -- bringing them home immediately.

After another war on Iraq, who will defend our veterans when they return, their healthy lives left behind on the desert sands of the Middle East?

David Weintraub is an attorney in Miami.


http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0331-02.htm

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
Democracy Delayed


By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A15


In about a week, the Bush administration has done in Iraq what the Johnson administration took more than a year to do in Vietnam: opened a credibility gap. This one is about "the plan," which the Bush administration describes as both "brilliant" and on schedule. As anyone can see -- and as some field commanders keep saying -- it is neither.

By rank, I rose no higher than Pfc. in the Army, so my inclination is simply to (smartly) salute my superiors and accept what they say. Nevertheless, I wonder about a timetable that increasingly threatens one of the stated goals of this war -- to bring the manifest blessings of democracy to the entire Arab world. By the time we get around to doing that, the regimes we want reformed may well be history -- and replaced by ones that are at our throat.

Last winter in Europe I met with an important Arab leader who, like George Bush, wanted Saddam Hussein gone -- but he wanted him gone quickly. Anything else -- a war that dragged on -- could cause lots of trouble. Television pictures of dead Iraqi civilians, the destruction of Baghdad, the natural desire to root for the underdog and the already virulent hatred of the United States might prompt the storied "Arab street" to rise and threaten moderate regimes throughout the region.

I know, we`ve heard that before. But "before" was before the United States was so universally reviled as the protector of not only Israel but also the regimes hated by Islamic militants -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Even Turkey has turned out to be a dicey proposition. Public sentiment ran so strongly against the United States that Ankara decided to mostly sit out this war. It has cost us dearly.

Right now, assurances that pro-American regimes in the Muslim world will weather the current trouble sound uncomfortably similar to assurances that Hussein`s regime would instantaneously collapse and "Welcome Yanks" banners would flap from every window in Iraq. The longer the war goes on -- the more Fridays anti-American mullahs sermonize at their mosques -- the greater the danger to pro-American regimes. The fact remains that moderate Arab and Islamic leaders are now scared. They fear their own people.

So if, as Don Rumsfeld and others say, the U.S. effort remains on schedule, then the question is why was this the schedule in the first place? In other words, wouldn`t it have been better to keep the diplomatic effort going -- the additional month asked for by the six swing votes on the Security Council -- so when war came, it came swiftly? An additional month would have meant that all U.S. forces would have been in the region, ready to go. As it is, the 4th Infantry Division still is not in place.

The answer is that the Bush administration really believed that the war would be brief -- that "shock and awe" would work, that southern Iraq would rebel and that some clear-thinking person close to Hussein would "exile" him with a bullet.

None of that has happened . . . yet. Maybe that`s because Iraqis are afraid of the goons in their midst, maybe they are waiting to see the outcome of the war, or maybe -- just maybe -- they hate the United States as much as they do Hussein, but fear him more. Even after the U.S.-led coalition wins -- and it will surely win -- what has happened so far suggests that keeping the peace is going to be more difficult than expected. It just could be that administering Iraq after the war is going to be as expensive and dirty as some recently rebuked Pentagon planners suggested.

Lyndon Johnson`s credibility gap turned out to be a mortal wound. He became such a polarizing figure that he limited himself to one elected presidential term. It is too soon to say that Bush is Johnson redux. Certainly the war in Iraq is nothing like the war in Vietnam. But what the two wars are beginning to have in common is a bristling arrogance coupled with an insistence that everything is going according the plan.

There`s almost certainly light at the end of this tunnel -- but the tunnel is clearly longer than expected.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[goldmist]

.....
Are Independent Journalists Being `Executed` By the Bush Administration?
....


by Cheryl Seal
Mt. Vernon
(No verified email address) Current rating: 35
30 Mar 2003
The number of casualties among independent journalists in Iraq is higher, percent-wise than ANY OTHER GROUP in the war zone.
Are Independent Journalists Being `Executed` By the Bush Administration?

Since the war started, a total of at least half a dozen journalists have been killed - an outrageously high percentage of casualties - the highest for any single group of people in the war zone, from the civilian support personnel to the soldiers themselves. It seems way, way beyond coincidence that most of the fallen journalists are non-embedded writers dedicated to telling the truth. The latest death is British reporter (Channel 4, ITN) Gaby Rado, covering the action in Northern Iraq. Rado died under mysterious circumstances in a "fall" from a hotel roof. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2900379.stm Not long before, fellow ITN journalist Terry Lloyd was killed in Iraq by `friendly fire` from Allied forces. Lloyd was one of the "unilateral" reporters, travelling freely around the war zone, as opposed to being "embedded."

A Frightening Overview:

MARCH 11: British veteran Journalist Kate Adie warns that US. plans to target independent journalists. (story on Adie`s interview on an Irish radio station: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8238

MARCH 30: As of this date, at least 5 independent and/or non-embedded journalists in Iraq have died from car bombs, friendly fire or mysterious accidents or have mysteirously disappeared.

FALLEN HEROES

DEAD or presumed dead:

Gaby Rado, ITN journalist, in northern Iraq from mysterious fall from roof
Terry Lloyd, ITN journalist in southern Iraq - "friendly fire"
Fred Nerac, ITN cameraman "" "friendly fire"
Hussein Othman, ITN translator "" friendly fire
Paul Moran, 39 Freelance cameraman with the Australian Broadcasting Corp., no. Iraq - car bomb

INJURED (partial list)

Daniel Demoustier, ITN cameraman - friendly fire
Eric Campbell, ABC correspondent - friendly fire

MISSING:

Matthew McAllester, journalist, Newsday, Baghdad
Moises Sama, cameraman, Newsday, Baghdad

These two newsfolk were declared missing as of March 25 from Iraq after being ordered to leave. Their hotel room was completely cleaned out, no word left. Here`s the story from Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/ny-bzjour0328,0,5484723.story?coll=ny…

There are two alternative theories here:

1. They were killed by the Iraqi government: This is the story that is being heavily implied by US government sources, because the Iraqis officially expelled them. But why "pre-announce" an execution and thus clearly draw the world`s outrage? This isn`t the Saddam regime`s style. They would have been more likely to arrest and "try" the reporters very publicly as "spies," levying highly-publicized, specific charges.

2. The two were real journalists who had acquired information that would be damaging to US/UK interests. They were intercepted on their way out of Iraq, or even in Syria, and murdered to prevent them from filing these stories.

I am putting my money on theory 2, especially as McAllester has written extensively on the plight of Iraqi children in the wake of UN sanctions and received the full accreditation of the Iraqi government to write on Iraq just a few months back.

Here`s a story from Newsday (3/30) that offers more evidence of the menacing attitude of US military official toward independent-minded journalists: "Four journalists, two Israeli and two Portuguese, trailing coalition troops in Iraq, were arrested by American soldiers and expelled from the country after a harrowing period of custody in which they said they were mistreated and accused of being Iraqi spies." http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/iraq/ny-wojour303198…

Meanwhile, back home, in the safety of their comfy studios and dressing rooms, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, George Will, Katie Couric, Dan Rather, et al, continue to promote the war and disseminte propaganda with a callous disregard for the safety of American troops or the honor of their nation.

Meanwhile, the courageous, honest - and honorable - reporters in the war zone must be wondering: "Who`s next?"

See also:
http://newsinsider.org
http://democrats.com

http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/3521

....

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Winning the Hearts and Minds of Americans: The Battle for Democracy in Our Homeland

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

First in a Series of BuzzFlash Editorials

Part I: The "Infallibility" of America`s God King

He`s done it again. The man who oversaw the launching of a war that is costing the lives of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians is escaping blame for undermining democracy at home and abroad.

Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer are already successfully disseminating the notion that Bush was misled about how quickly the war would be won.
If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon coated president, George W. Bush is the God-coated president.

After all, one of his fundamentalist Christian armies of God has distributed leaflets to our soldiers in Iraq urging them to pray everyday not for themselves, but for their God-chosen leader, George W. Bush.
Earlier in March, BuzzFlash posted a five-part series entitled, "Bombing His Way Into the Jaws of Armageddon." The central thesis to our editorial feature was that Bush -- and key figures in his placement on the throne such as Antonin Scalia -- sees himself as a divinely appointed ruler, similar to "God Kings" such as Louis IV.
In this context, Bush is perceived as "infallible." That is why as our soldiers die and are wounded, they are asked to pray for HIM on a daily basis.

Already, initial blame for the stalled Iraq war is falling on Donald Rumsfeld. We heartily agree that he should be tarred and feathered for putting the lives of our soldiers unnecessarily at risk. (Although they will "win" this war eventually, probably by using some of those "tactical" nuclear weapons that they have bragged about.) But the key cheerleader for launching a war for political purposes has been the usurper sitting in the White House, the man who loves death too much, George W. Bush.

In two BuzzFlash editorials, we`ve described how the Bush Cartel is using the Iraq war to achieve a multiple number of political objectives
We would like to reiterate a few of the key self-serving goals:

1) Create a new economic market (in colonial times called a "concession") for campaign contributors, who will then drop even more money in the GOP coffers.

2) Create conditions for more terrorism and upheaval in order to advance a radical agenda to occupy a large swath of the Middle East
3) Ensure the Bush Cartel`s election in 2004 by diverting attention from the domestic economic mess and social unrest created by two years of incompetent, extremist leadership.

4) Pass radical, fringe legislation under the cover of war when few Americans will notice.

5) Dismantle governmental programs for the elderly, veterans, middle class and the poor using the excuse that the money is needed to support wars to fight terrorism (and, in turn, give much of this money to campaign contributors in "privatized" military contracts).

6) Use the resultant terrorism and chaos that the endless wars unleash to further dismantle our sacred Constitutional freedoms and rights at home, thus moving our nation in the direction of a one-party dictatorship

Yet, magically, as if by divine right, Bush is never held accountable for any of this. He has sent our young men to die in battle in Iraq, just as he and Dick Cheney let other young men die in their places in Vietnam while they enjoyed drinking binges at home. And he is going to let others take the heat for the Iraq fiasco.

Part of the problem is that Bush`s staff plays a wily game of portraying Little Caesar as an involved CEO on the one hand, but then claiming he is a president who only involves himself in the major decisions, not the details, on the other hand. The second image is being trotted out now, with the White House claiming that Bush was never told about the true ability of Saddam`s forces and that he didn`t know that Rumsfeld cut back on the number of forces that we deployed in Iraq.

What idiocy. What nonsense.

George W. Bush is at the epicenter of the moral, ethical, and criminal corruption of this administration. If Clinton was hounded into impeachment over oral sex, how can Bush escape unscathed for betraying a nation and the world?

How did we ever come to enter this parallel universe where no one is willing to say that we have Fredo Corleone running our government and that crimes have been committed against this nation, including the ongoing use of strategically created terrorist alerts and duck-tape farces to cow Americans into submission? Isn`t it a crime to scare a nation half-to-death to achieve political goals and launch a politically motivated war?

How did we get to the point that we have a media that daily bombards us with Orwellian dispatches and images that are crafted in the Pentagon and White House offices of disinformation?

How did we ever get to the point that the Democratic "Opposition" leadership has voluntarily had its tongue cut out about the true purposes of this war? This includes such luminaries as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, who have joined the ranks of Stepford Wife supporters of Bush`s multipurpose political Iraq attack?

How can the daily outpouring of lies from this administration, even when they are unmasked, make no dent on the image of Bush`s "infallibility" nurtured by the White House and disseminated by the corporate press?

If Bush were a Democrat, he would have been impeached a year ago and then indicted, prosecuted and sent to jail.

So, why are we at a point where a disastrous war sold, packaged and launched on the basis of lies, disinformation, propaganda, greed, bullying, bribes and madness, should be continuing with the press and the Democrats not blaming the CEO of the criminal enterprise who has caused the deaths of our soldiers by putting them unnecessarily at risk?

The answer lies in a six-fold strategy championed by those individuals who have propped up the reign of the Madness of King George:

1) Disciplined control over the image of King George.

2) Control over television news through the status quo interests of the corporately owned media.

3) Unrelenting bullying, threats, smearing and intimidation of anyone who gets in their way.

4) Use of lies and truth as equally valid propaganda currencies.

5) Selling Bush and the war as "branded" products.

6) Understanding that the Democrats won`t aggressively challenge their assault on democracy in America; in fact, they will generally support it because they are too cowed to speak out.

How has Karl Rove, the real most powerful man in America, accomplished this? How does Bush escape any blame for the daily lies, ongoing betrayal and being the front man for the most radical, extremist agenda this nation has ever seen? How does Bush get away with saying things that you would think were nutty if a drunk said them to you in a bar?

BuzzFlash will be exploring these and others questions in a series of editorials: "Winning the Hearts and Minds of Americans: The Battle for Democracy in Our Homeland."

We hope you get as much out of the series as we will in writing it.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/03/31.html

[Joerver]

Honesty: The Worst Policy
When Telling The Truth Will Get You Fired From The Networks

Doug Ireland is a New York-based media critic and commentator.


When NBC -- which is owned by General Electric, a prime military-industrial complex contractor -- decided to fire Peter Arnett for the thought crime of plain speaking, it was undoubtedly responding both to pressure from the White House (which accused Arnett of "pandering" to the Iraqis) and to the imperatives of its MSNBC ratings chase against the gung-ho, pro-war frothers of Fox News.

What provoked Arnett`s defenestration? In an interview he accorded on Sunday to Iraqi television (which an MSNBC spokesperson initially described as a "professional courtesy"), Arnett allowed as how media reports of civilian casualties in Iraq "help" the "growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another plan."



"The Americans don`t want the independent journalists in Iraq."



Of course, these are rather commonsense observations of the sort that can be read daily in the pages of our newspapers, and which even find their way onto U.S. television. Yet when NBC snatched the mic from Arnett`s hands, on Monday morning CNN `s Jeff Greenfield rushed to endorse the veteran war correspondent`s firing. Greenfield dismissed the notion of an anti-war movement whose challenge was "growing" -- as if the millions who have taken to the streets of major U.S. cities and the some 5,000 American civil disobedients who have so far been voluntarily arrested in "die-ins" and other nonviolent forms of political action -- part of the rising crescendo of protest on a scale not seen since the Vietnam war -- were not energized by the heart-rending accounts of civilians shredded by American bombs and bullets in an unnecessary and obtusely-run war.

Greenfield accused Arnett of pro-Iraqi "propaganda." Well, Jeff, one should never judge a book by its reader -- and Arnett`s matter-of-fact account of the effects of reports on civilian casualties revealed nothing not already known to your average news consumer, both here and abroad. Take Dexter Filkins` dispatch in the March 29 edition of The New York Times:


At the base camp of the Fifth Marine Regiment here, two sharpshooters, Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, 28, and Cpl. Mikael McIntosh, 20, sat on a sand berm and swapped combat tales. The marines said they had little trouble dispatching their foes, most of whom they characterized as ill-trained and cowardly. "We had a great day," Sergeant Schrumpf said. "We killed a lot of people.... We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?" [In one incident], he recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. "I`m sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."
The firing of Arnett is just one more example of the way in which the White House and Pentagon propaganda machines are trying to stifle independent reporting. Take the following account from Newsday, the respected large-circulation newspaper on Long Island, on how four reporters were arrested by American soldiers and expelled from the country after a harrowing period of custody in which they said they were mistreated and accused of being Iraqi spies.

The reporters -- Boaz Bismuth of the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Dan Scemama of Israel`s Channel One television, and Luis Castro and Victor Silva of Radio Televisao Portuguesa -- had been traveling independently of the Army when they were detained at gunpoint on March 25, 62 miles from Baghdad. "It was really unpleasant," Bismuth was quoted as saying on one of Israel`s main Hebrew-language news Web sites. "The Americans don`t want the independent journalists in Iraq."

The need for reporting by newsgatherers like these who are not "embedded" in the invasion is all the greater because U.S. television has been largely a megaphone for the invaders.

The homegrown TV nets have been oh-so-reluctant about showing to the American public the footage of civilian casualties which the rest of the world sees daily. Well, I`ll give you a salient fact that you don`t hear from the little screen`s unquestioning American anchors: Baghdad is a city of children, for half of its population are kids under 15. Let me repeat: half of the 5 million-plus people in the city to which we are now laying siege are children. And they are dying, often unremarked. Like 14-year-old Arkan Daif, a boy who was "like a flower," as his father told The Washington Post` s Anthony Shadid. In a moving March 31 report, Shadid noted that that this boy, and the pair of cousins (both minors) killed with him, were buried in a "funeral [that] went unnoticed by a government that has eagerly escorted journalists to other wartime tragedies. Instead, Daif and his two cousins were buried in the solitude of a dirt-poor, Shiite Muslim neighborhood near the city limits." And how many more Arkan Daifs are dying anonymously in the eight other large Iraqi cities now encircled -- and about to be assaulted -- by the U.S./British invaders? We do not know, because there are hardly any reporters there. But the Iraqi civilians know.


Let me repeat: half of the 5 million-plus people in the city to which we are now laying siege are children.



War in the streets of the city of children that is Baghdad is "too awful to contemplate," as The Times of London`s excellent Simon Jenkins pointed out in a must-read March 28 piece entitled "Baghdad will be near impossible to conquer." Jenkins sobering analysis of the urban warfare to come underscores why the American forces have been greeted not with welcoming smiles but with fear, distrust, bullets and suicide bombs: "Baghdad is not Kuwait or the Falklands. The captive Iraqi boy who was asked why he fought so overwhelming a foe merely muttered, `It`s my country.` The answer was worth a dozen Tomahawks."

(Speaking of the insistence by Rummy and the parroting CENTCOM briefers on the "precision" of our weapons, it now appears that those thousands of Tomahawks we`ve been firing from our ships in the Persian Gulf have been plopping down all over the place in Saudi Arabia, our "ally" -- to such an extent that the Saudis asked us to stop launching them until we could find out why. Asked about this on Sunday, the happy-face CENTCOM spokesman finally acknowledged a structural failure in the Tomahawk`s guidance system, and said the Navy was "working on it quite a bit." Just a bit late for the civilians who`ve been the missile`s unintended victims, wouldn`t you think? And the rather startling admission didn`t make American TV`s summaries of the press conference.)

To comprehend why Iraqis who have little love for Saddam have no confidence in America`s promises that this a "war for democracy," it is necessary to understand the history of U.S. relations in Iraq and the region for the last decade and a half -- neatly traced in a superb, heavily documented article by University of Richmond history professor Robert Blecher for the Middle East Report Online (Blecher also rightly calls attention to how "the drive to war could not have succeeded" without the assistance of establishment intellectuals and journalists like Fouad Ajami, Bernard Lewis and The New York Times` Tom Friedman).

And, as if to confirm the worst fears of the hapless Iraqis and their Arab neighbors, Bush has now named as the future military governor of Iraq a retired general named Jay Garner. The Observer on Sunday`s Oliver Morgan revealed that the military-industrial company Garner has worked for until now, missiles systems contractor SY Coleman, has been making a lot of money from the technology used in the war on Iraq -- and has both financial ties to the Israeli military and political ties to the Israeli right as well. Sponsored by the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Perle cabal of hawks with whom he is closely linked, Garner is just one more hugely important reason why the American anti-war movement must insist that post-war Iraq be administered by the United Nations. And the fact that it was a British paper which uncovered the political significance of his background ought to shame the American news honchos who failed to assign someone to do so.

But, as the French man of letters Paul Valery once wrote, "Politics is the art of making people indifferent to what should concern them." And that`s also the meaning of the firing of Peter Arnett.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7524/view/print

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Wie die Koalition der Willigen zerbröselt

45 Länder, so hatte es die US-Regierung verkündet, unterstützten den Krieg in Irak. Angesichts der blutigen und unberechenbaren Entwicklung distanzieren sich jedoch immer mehr europäische Regierungen von dem Krieg. Andere melden sich verärgert zu Wort, weil sie den Krieg nie wollten, aber dennoch auf der Liste auftauchen.

Hamburg - Bilder von toten Zivilisten, Berichte über einen schleppenden Vormarsch, Debatten zur vielleicht falschen Kriegsstrategie: Der Konflikt am Golf ist unpopulär beim Volk und die Zustimmung für London und Washington sinkt in dem Maße, in dem die Verluste zunehmen. Zahlreiche europäische Regierungen kommen nun in Bedrängnis.

Silvio Berlusconi, der italienische Ministerpräsident, hat seinen politischen Rückzug aus dem Krieg bereits eingeleitet, bevor auch nur der erste Schuss gefallen war. Der Italiener war zwar einer der Unterzeichner des englisch-spanischen Briefes, den Tony Blair und José Marìa Aznar Wochen vor dem Krieg als Unterstützungskampagne für die USA initiiert hatten. Das hatte allerdings keine konkrete militärische Unterstützung von italienischer Seite zur Folge. Vergangene Woche hatte Berlusconi, so schreibt der britische "Independent", arge Mühe mit seinen Landsleuten. Er wollte ihnen klar machen, dass der Aufmarsch von 1000 US-Fallschirmspringern im Nordirak, die eigentlich in Italien stationiert sind, nicht das Versprechen breche, wonach italienische Basen nicht für direkte Angriffe gegen Saddam Hussein benutzt werden sollten.

Dänemark, das den Krieg unterstützt, musste sein sowieso schon kleines militärisches Engagement auf Druck der Opposition reduzieren. Immerhin hat sich ein U-Boot derMarine auf den Weg zum Golf gemacht. Die Niederlande, deren Regierung den spanisch-englischen Brief zur Unterstützung der Irak-Politik der USA nicht unterzeichnet hatte, der Sache aber wohlgesonnen gegenüberstand, haben ein militärisches Engagement ausgeschlossen: aus Sorge, die laufenden Koalitionsverhandlungen zu gefährden.

Länder, die eine noch härtere pro-amerikanische Linie fahren, haben innenpolitisch derzeit große Schwierigkeiten. José Marìa Aznar, Ministerpräsident von Spanien, der 9000 Soldaten für humanitäre Aufgaben in den Irak geschickt hat, ist unter enormen Druck der heimischen Opposition geraten. In Polen führten Fotos, die polnische Soldaten posierend neben US-Soldaten zeigen, einen Stimmungsumschwung herbei. Auch wenn die Regierung in Warschau ein enger Unterstützer der USA bleibt, zeigen Meinungsumfragen, dass nur 20 Prozent der Bevölkerung für eine Beteiligung eigener Truppen an den Kämpfen sind.

Der große Druck aus der Bevölkerung hat einige Regierungen sogar gezwungen, ihre Haltung zu ändern. Irland etwa hat zwar den Amerikanern den Shannon-Flughafen bereitgestellt, den Krieg aber nicht gutgeheißen.

In den früheren kommunistischen Ländern Europas, von Donald Rumsfeld als Koalition der Willigen bezeichnet, herrscht eine zwiespältige Stimmung. Eine mögliche Erklärung dafür ist, dass der englisch-spanische Brief, den drei Beitrittsländer unterzeichnet haben, und eine folgende Erklärung, die zehn osteuropäische Staaten unterschrieben haben, zu keiner aktiven Beteiligung verpflichtete. Einige Regierungschefs schlossen sich der Formulierung an, dass eine harte Haltung Saddam Hussein zwingen könnte aufzugeben. Mehr aber auch nicht.

In anderen Ländern hat sich die Stimmung gewandelt. In Tschechien, das zu den Ländern auf Washingtons Liste gehört, wurde der spanisch-englische Brief vom scheidenden Präsidenten Václav Havel unterzeichnet. Sein Nachfolger, Václav Klaus, warnte davor, dass eine mit Gewalt installierte demokratische Regierung im Irak ein gefährlicher Präzedenzfall werden könnte.

Zahlreiche Länder boten logistische Unterstützung für den Krieg an, weil die Verweigerung dessen einen diplomatischen Bruch mit Washington zur Folge gehabt hätte. Diese Nuancen hat das Pentagon jetzt ausgeräumt, indem es seine Vorstellung von einer "breiten Unterstützung" vorgestellt hat. Da wurde zum Beispiel Kroatien als Teil der Koalition der Willigen präsentiert, weil es seinen Luftraum und seine Fliegerhorste für zivile amerikanische Flugzeuge geöffnet hat. Aber Stipe Mesi, Kroatiens Präsident, hat den Krieg als rechtswidrig angeprangert, weil es keine Uno-Legitimation gebe. Auch Slowenien hat dementiert, dass es den Konflikt unterstütze.




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Erfolg auf ganzer Linie

Florian Rötzer 01.04.2003
US-Präsident Bush sucht mit den immer gleichen rhetorischen Versatzstücken die Nation hinter seinem Krieg zu halten

Die Kriegsplanung steht unter Kritik. Der schnelle mediengerechte Vormarsch auf Bagdad, die Höhle des Bösen, ist vorerst zum Stillstand gekommen. Das Regime, das wie ein Kartenhaus zusammenstürzen sollte, wenn die Truppen von Bush mit dem Zerstörungsspektakel von Shock-and-Awe einfallen, zeigte unerwarteten Widerstand. Zivile Opfer vermehren sich, gerade auch in Folge des ersten Selbstmordanschlags. Präsident Bush sucht die Öffentlichkeit trotzdem mit der frohen Botschaft zu überzeugen, dass alles gut ist und man stetig vorankomme.


Bei seiner Rede auf dem Stützpunkt der Küstenwache in Philadelphia zeigte sich Bush wie immer gerne als Kriegsherr: rhetorisch und in Form seiner Kleidung. Auch wenn bei seiner Ankunft die Proteste unüberhörbar waren, so fand seine Rede wie so gerne in geschütztem, kritiklosem Territorium statt. So liebt es der Präsident, der eigentlich auch eine kritische Presse nicht schätzt und daher Pressekonferenzen mit der Möglichkeit, Fragen zu stellen, möglichst vermeidet.



Für die nicht im Staatsdienst stehenden US-Bürger hatte der fürsorgliche Präsident gleich am Anfang einen Rat, wie sie sich für Amerika engagieren könnten: Beobachten oder bespitzeln der Mitbürger, lautet sein Vorschlag. Man kann auch helfen, irgendwie besser vorbereitet zu sein. Und schließlich die Devise, die die Iraker, die gegenwärtig bombardiert werden und sich nicht sicher fühlen können, gerne hören werden: "Sie können einen Nachbar so lieben, ebenso wie Sie selbst geliebt werden mögen." Das ist Reziprozität, Tit for Tat.

Aber es geht eigentlich um Wichtigeres, nämlich dass amerikanische Bürger, "unterstützt von einer starken Koalition", darum kämpfen, "ein gefährliches Regime zu entwaffnen und ein unterdrücktes Volk zu befreien". Und in der kurzen Zeit lief alles bestens. Die Truppen haben "brillante Leistungen" erbracht und "uns" stolz gemacht. In nur 11 Tagen haben sie nämlich den größten Teil des westlichen und südlichen Iraks unter ihre Kontrolle gebracht (auch wenn es hier eigentlich bis auf die Städte keinen großen Widerstand gab). Man hat wichtige Brücken besetzt, die Ölfelder geschützt, eine Nordfront eröffnet, eine "fast vollständige Lufthoheit erreicht" (die man allerdings auch schon vorher hatte) und verteilt "Tonnen an humanitärer Hilfe". Auch wenn noch viele Gefahren in der Zukunft warten, geht der Fortschritt so voran, wie er dies sollte: "Wir nähern uns Bagdad immer mehr. Tat für Tag nähern wir uns dem Sieg."

Nach dem Sieg ist der Tyrann gefallen, der mit "Terrorwaffen" den Terror gefördert hat. Die Menschen im Irak werden dann jubeln (auch wenn sie dies jetzt im Süden noch nicht tun). Der Sieg wird natürlich die "Forderungen der Vereinten Nationen und der zivilisierten Welt" einlösen (selbst wenn viele dies jetzt noch nicht begreifen). Die Iraker kämpfen jetzt überwiegend, so Bush, weil sie dazu von den "Todesschwadronen" gezwungen werden. Und dass relativ wenig Freude über die Befreier zu sehen ist, verdankt sich einzig dem Umstand, dass diejenigen, die Freude zeigen, kaltblütig ermordet werden. Ansonsten sind sie an Angst und Misstrauen durch die lange Herrschaft gewohnt. Doch Bush gibt eine Verheißung: Wir kommen - und damit die Befreiung!

"We`re coming with a mighty force to end the reign of your oppressors. We are coming to bring you food and medicine and a better life. And we are coming, and we will not stop, we will not relent until your country is free."


Inzwischen werden die Menschen von den Befreiern weiter durch Bombardements gefährdet und bis zum Beweis des Gegenteils als mögliche Gegner betrachtet, wodurch auch, wie eben geschehen, einmal ein Bus mit Frauen und Kindern von Schüssen sicherheitshalber durchsiebt werden kann. Auf der anderen Seite werden diese Menschen als Geiseln und Schutzschilde benutzt. Terrorisiert wird die Bevölkerung durch beide Kriegsparteien. Wohin die Sympathien letztlich gehen werden, ist offen. Dass bei einem längeren Krieg mit vielen Opfern durch Bombardierung und Häuserkampf sowie einer anschließenden militärischen Besatzung das Land für längere Zeit mindestens ähnlich zerrissen bleibt wie jetzt Afghanistan, dürfte jedoch klar sein.

Bush versucht, wieder einmal das Kernstück der Kriegsrechtfertigung - Terrorismus und Irak - zusammen zu bringen. Während das "untergehende Regime" versuchen kann, "Terror zu unseren Küsten" zu bringen, könnte das "globale Terrornetzwerk" seinerseits beginnen, Angriffe zu starten. Doch so, wie die USA die Terroristen einen nach dem anderen erledigt, wird man auch das Irakregime beenden und gleichzeitig Zuhause den Schutz der Grenzen und der Infrastruktur verstärken: "This nation is determined", scheint der Slogan zu sein, um die Menschen von der Handlungskraft der Regierung zu überzeugen, weswegen ihn Bush gleich mehrmals wiederholt.

Es ist nämlich so, versichert Bush den US-Bürgern, dass "Amerika" nach den Angriffen am 11.9. eine Entscheidung getroffen habe, die nun von Bush nur umgesetzt wird: "Wir werden nicht warten, bis unsere Feinde zuschlagen, bevor wir zurück schlagen. Wir erlauben es Terroristen und Terrorstaaten nicht, Pläne zu schmieden und stärker zu werden, während wir nichts tun." Es wird alles nur gemacht, um die USA besser zu schützen, zahllose Leben in der Zukunft zu schützen und eine große Gefahr für alle "freien Nationen" zu eliminieren.

Von diesem Präsidenten mitsamt seinen Beratern ist nicht zu erwarten, dass eine Diskussion über die Strategie stattfinden kann oder öffentlich auch nur Zweifel zugelassen werden. Das Vorgehen wird verordnet, jede Spur von Zweifel gilt als Verrat. Dass gerade der Versuch, eine möglichst hohe Sicherheit durch das Schließen der Grenzen, die Überwachung der Bürger und das Führen von präventiven Kriegen zu erreichen, zu größerer Unsicherheit und zur Verbreitung von Massenvernichtungswaffen führen könnte, kommt selbstverständlich in der kriegerischen Siegesbotschaft des obersten Kriegsherrn nicht vor, dessen wirkliche Beweggründe schleierhaft und wahrscheinlich eine Mischung aus Obsession, Machtbesessenheit, Ödipuskomplex und Beeinflussung eines wenig intellektuellen Geistes durch erfahrene Autoritäten sind. Bush jun. wird vermutlich dennoch eher als sein Vater in die Geschichte eingehen. Nicht weil er für mehr Sicherheit gegenüber Terroristen und Schurkenstaaten gesorgt und die Verbreitung von Massenvernichtungswaffen verhindert hat, sondern weil er der alten Weltordnung mit der Rhetorik aus der Zeit des Kalten Kriegs den letzten Schups gegeben hat, durch den sie allmählich in sich zusammen fällt und Platz für etwas Neues macht, das sich noch nicht ausmachen lässt.

Jetzt ist es nicht nur mit dem Kommunismus zu Ende, sondern auch mit der seligmachenden Ideologie von Freiheit und freier Marktwirtschaft. Neue, aber flüchtige "Achsen" entstehen, Massenvernichtungswaffen verbreiten und asymmetrische Konflikte mehren sich. Und ob wir wollen oder nicht, so wird der Kampf der Kulturen das Geschehen auf der Weltbühne bestimmen. Die von den Konfliktparteien angeführten Gründe muss man nicht Ernst nehmen, wohl aber die Konsequenzen

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HOME OF THE FREE: ARNETT JOINS MIRROR Apr 1 2003


THE reporter sacked by American TV for telling the truth about the war is joining the Daily Mirror.

Veteran newsman Peter Arnett was axed by NBC yesterday accused of being a Saddam stooge. He told state-run Iraqi TV the conflict was not going to plan because of fierce resistance and said his Baghdad reports "help those who oppose war".

He joins the Mirror on the day it was revealed that 8,700 bombs have rained down on Iraq in 12 days, including 3,000 missiles over the weekend.





OUTSPOKEN: Live from Baghdad

After his sacking, Pulitzer Prize winner Arnett said: "I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologise for it. I have always admired your newspaper and am proud to be working for it."

The New Zealand-born journalist was vilified across the US for an interview in which he said: "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan. Clearly, thewar planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. In my TV commentaries I`d tell the Americans about the Iraqi forces and their willingness to fight.

"President Bush says he is concerned about the Iraqi people. But if Iraqi people are dying in numbers, then American policy will be challenged very strongly."

Arnett, 68, added that there was growing opposition about the conduct of the war.

He said: "Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the US. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy."

On Sunday, NBC praised the reporter for risking his life to deliver news from Baghdad.

The station said of the Iraqi TV interview: "He answered their questions out of professional courtesy. He saw it as purely analysis."

But the furious White House said Arnett spoke from "a point of complete ignorance".

They day after backing him, NBC cut him loose.

Yesterday Arnett said on NBC: "I want to apologise to the American people. It was clearly a misjudgment talking to Iraqi TV.

"I`m not anti-war. I said what we all know about this war. But I`ve created a firestorm and for that I`m sorry."

Asked about his future, he joked: "There`s a small island in the South Pacific I`ll try to swim to. I`ll leave."

Arnett was one of the few TV journalists in Baghdad. He said: "The Iraqis let me stay because they see me as a fellow warrior. They know I might not agree with them. But I`ve got their respect."

The reporter, the first Western journalist to interview Osama bin Laden and the last to interview Saddam Hussein, was accused of peddling pro-Iraqi propaganda while covering the 1991 Gulf War.

But he gained much of his prominence for reporting the last conflict with Iraq for CNN.

His Pulitzer Prize came for reporting in Vietnam in 1966 for the Associated Press.

THIS WAR IS NOT WORKING

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Steady support for war
Despite bad news, nationwide polls show unchanged 70% backing U.S. action in Iraq
Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/01/…


Washington -- As public expectations about the war in Iraq rise and fall with chaotic accounts from the battlefield, American support for the war has not wavered since the fighting began nearly two weeks ago.

Numerous surveys conducted in the past several days, including two released Monday, indicate that about seven of 10 Americans support the war with Iraq. The number is almost identical to results from polls taken 10 days earlier, when the attack began.

The 24-hour news cycle has offered a roller-coaster view of the war`s conduct. Yet graphic images of American and Iraqi casualties, dramatic reports of fierce resistance, persistent second guessing of the Pentagon`s battle plan and coverage of large peace marches have "hardly had any effect on overall support," said pollster Steven Kull of American Public on International Issues.

"The public is like that," Kull added. "They are always more stable than the media."

Public opinion experts said the findings were consistent with attitudes during other wars and provide President Bush a window of many months before Americans lose patience. Opposition to the Vietnam War did not peak until that conflict was more than 10 years old, and tens of thousands of Americans had been killed.

Even as Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials were hinting at a swift war relatively free of casualties last month, Kull`s polling found that most Americans expected a far more risky undertaking.

"They really didn`t buy it," Kull said. When his PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll asked respondents in February how many American casualties they expected, the median response was 1,000.

"People realized that we were taking a very dramatic step, and they are likely to hold their opinions for some time now," said pollster Mark Baldassare, director of the Public Policy Institute of California.

"Clearly people are in the process of calibrating their expectations about how long this is going to go on, but in a broad sense, Americans have remained as committed to the course that we`re on today as they were the day it started," Baldassare said.

The perpetual reporting of battlefield victories and setbacks has contributed to a much less stable view of how successfully the war is being waged. During a 48-hour period 10 days ago, when pictures of American POWs were broadcast and the first reports of casualties came in, a Gallup poll found that the number of respondents who believed the war was going "very well" plummeted from 53 percent to 34 percent.

In the first days of the war, the Gallup poll found that 68 percent of the respondents believed the war would be over within three months. A poll conducted over the weekend found that number had fallen to 38 percent.

Yet throughout the peaks and valleys, the same pollsters found that the number of respondents who support the war remained constant at about 70 percent.

The PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll results suggest that support for the war may be more wide than deep. Kull estimates that about 40 percent of Americans are firmly behind the war, and about 20 percent strongly oppose it. The remaining 40 percent support the war either out of deference to the president or a sense of patriotism.

"That group is pretty soft, and pretty responsive to counterarguments," Kull said. At the same time, barring a terrorist attack or another catastrophic event -- which he says could tug public opinion in either direction -- he does not see support for the war ebbing for some time.

Curiously, the survey of 795 adults conducted during the weekend and released Monday found great pessimism over the consequences of war, rejecting the Bush administration`s rationale for fighting.

More than half the respondents said the risk of terrorism would rise after the war, as compared with just more than one in five who said the risk would be lower. By large margins, a plurality of respondents said the war would worsen worldwide Muslim attitudes toward the United States and make it more likely that Iran and North Korea would develop their own nuclear weapons.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted over the same period found wide disparities among demographic groups.

White Americans favored the war by a 78 percent to 20 percent ratio, while African Americans opposed the war, 68 percent to 29 percent. After race, the biggest factor was party affiliation. Among those who identified themselves as Republicans, 93 percent said they favored the war, compared with just 53 percent who identified themselves as Democrats. Support among those with a high school education or less stood at 72 percent, compared with 60 percent for those with a postgraduate degree.

No surveys on the Bay Area`s attitudes toward war have been published, but several pollsters said that despite the region`s reputation as a center for anti-war sentiments, they doubted that results would differ dramatically from the rest of the country.

A poll conducted by Kull in February found Californians more opposed to the war than those from Texas, but less so than those in Illinois.

"California is less supportive (than the country as a whole), no question," said Kull, who grew up in the East Bay and the Peninsula.

"If you did a poll in the Bay Area, I`m sure it would be different from the rest of the nation," Kull said, "but it would probably not be near as dramatic as people would assume."

E-mail Marc Sandalow at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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Verstimmung im Bush-Team

Grabenkämpfe im Weißen Haus

Von Michaela Schießl

Erst kritisieren die Militärs öffentlich Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld, dann zeigen sich die Republikaner besorgt über den Kurs des Präsidenten, und nun geraten auch noch die Hauptakteure im Weißen Haus aneinander. Bushs Kriegsmaschinerie gerät ins Stocken.

Berlin - Die Situation entbehrt nicht einer gewissen Ironie. Gleich nach Kriegsbeginn, da war sich die US-Regierung sicher, werden irakische Soldaten scharenweise zu den Befreiern überlaufen und Saddams Regierung werde auseinander brechen. Nun aber, nach zwei harten Kriegswochen, ist es eher George Bush, der sich mühen muss, seine Leute beisammen zu halten. Der Ärger begann, als der Vormarsch auf Bagdad ins Stocken geriet. Schonungslos offen beschwerten sich die Kommandeure über die missratene Kriegsstrategie des Verteidigungsministers. Rumsfeld habe nicht auf die Generäle gehört, sondern stur seine Vision von einer kleinen High-Tech-Armee verfolgt. Die Invasion habe mit viel zu wenig Soldaten begonnen - und zu allem Überfluss auch noch den falschen.

Rumsfeld habe damit die Truppe in Gefahr gebracht. Ein Kommandeur in Kuweit verglich den Pentagon-Chef gestern schon mit Robert McNamara, der den USA den Vietnamkrieg eingebrockt hat. Der hatte ebenfalls die politischen und militärischen Gegebenheiten des Feindes völlig falsch eingeschätzt. Und ein Oberst sagte der New York Times: "Rumsfeld wollte einen Billigkrieg. Nun hat er ihn." So ist die Forderung der Militärs nach einem radikalen Wechsel der militärischen Strategie vor allem so zu übersetzen: Zivilist Rumsfeld soll sich endlich aus dem Kriegshandwerk raushalten.

Republikaner zweifeln an den Falken

Der Unmut über den Kriegsverlauf hat auch die Republikanische Partei erreicht. Die "Washington Post" meldet, dass die "Grand Old Party" hinter den Kulissen einflussreiche Mitglieder zum Präsidenten geschickt hat. Sie sollen Bush überzeugen, dass er denkbar schlecht beraten wird vom Falkentrio Rumsfeld, dessen Stellvertreter Paul Wolfowitz und Vizepräsident Dick Cheney. Deren Ratschläge seien falsch, würden amerikanische Langzeitinteressen eher schaden als nützen und die Zusammenarbeit mit den Verbündeten und den Internationalen Organisationen nur weiter erschweren.

Zu allem Unglück seien die mächtigen Drei auch oftmals über Kreuz mit dem Außenminister Colin Powell - dem Mann also, der das Vertrauen des Militärs besitzt. Von 1989 bis 1993 Oberbefehlshaber des US-Militärs, hat Powell nach wie vor enge Vertraute im Pentagon - eine Tatsache, die Rumsfeld nicht gefallen kann.

"Schwarzer Kanal" zwischen Powell und den Generälen

Schon streuen seine Mitarbeiter, es gebe einen "schwarzen Kanal" zwischen Powell und den Generälen, von denen sich viele mit Rumsfeld überworfen haben. Offen jedoch kann der exzentrische Verteidigungsminister Powell nicht angehen: Vater Bush hält schützend die Hand über ihn. "Ich kann es nicht ertragen, wenn Powell kritisiert werde, egal von welcher Seite", ließ Bush senior gestern warnend wissen. Ein deutlicher Schuss vor Rumsfelds Bug.

Nach außen streitet Powell jeden Verdacht auf Dissonanzen ab. Als Außenminister sei die Verteidigung nicht mehr seine Baustelle, sagt er in die Mikrofone. Hinter den Kulissen aber zieht der Chefdiplomat die Fäden.

So ist der nun geforderte Strategiewechsel nichts anderes als eine Rückkehr zur Powell-Doktrin - eine Strategie des 1991 Golfkrieges: klare Ziele, lang anhaltende Luftangriffe, gefolgt von der Invasion zahlenmäßig starker Bodentruppen, alles durchgeführt mit weitreichender internationaler Unterstützung.

Diese Doktrin wischte Rumsfeld kurz nach Amtsantritt vom Tisch: sie sei dem Denken des Kalten Krieges entsprungen und nicht mehr adäquat. Der willensstarke Haudegen setzte lieber auf eine kleine Hightech-Streitmacht und die "Schock-und-Schrecken"-Strategie: Mit extrem starken Luftangriffen das feindliche Regime lähmen, demoralisieren und zur Aufgabe zwingen.

Breitseite gegen Wolfowitz

Als Powell am Freitag gefragt wurde, ob er verstimmt über die Abkehr von seiner Doktrin, sagte er: "Ich kann Ihnen versichern, die Generäle und Admirale wenden genau diese Doktrin jetzt an. Ich weiß es, ich habe sie ja ausgebildet." Rumsfeld erwähnte er mit keinem Wort.

Eine Breitseite auf seinen Lieblingsgegner Wolfowitz konnte er sich indes nicht verkneifen. Der Hardliner, der nie eine Uniform getragen hat, gilt unter Powell-Getreuen als jemand, der den Irak als rein akademisches Problem betrachtet und die militärischen Realitäten nicht versteht. Befragt nach den Kriegsopfern antwortet Powell: "Das ist der Preis, den man für einen Krieg zahlen muss. Und der wird nicht von Intellektuellen bezahlt sondern von wunderbaren jungen Amerikanern, die ihrem Land dienen und an die gute Sache glauben."

Viele Republikaner teilen Powells Auffassung - das Misstrauen gegenüber den Scharfmachern an der Seite des Präsidenten wächst. Gespannt würde beobachtet, so ein einflussreiches Parteimitglied, ob dieser Präsident etwas aus dieser schlechten Beratung lernt. Anzeichen hierfür, Konsequenzen gar, sind bislang nicht zu erkennen. Bush gebe sich wie eine Sphinx, ihm sei nicht anzumerken, wie er zu den Spannungen innerhalb seines Regierungsteams steht, verriet einer seiner Mitarbeiter der "Washington Post". Auch bei seiner gestrigen Rede in einer Kadettenschule war von Bush kein böses Wort über seinen umstrittenen Verteidigungsminister zu hören. Allerdings auch kein gutes.




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US draws up secret plan to impose regime on Iraq

Brian Whitaker and Luke Harding in Sulaimaniya
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian

A disagreement has broken out at a senior level within the Bush administration over a new government that the US is secretly planning in Kuwait to rule Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned.

The government will take over Iraq city by city. Areas declared "liberated" by General Tommy Franks will be transferred to the temporary government under the overall control of Jay Garner, the former US general appointed to head a military occupation of Iraq.

In anticipation of the Baghdad regime`s fall, members of this interim government have begun arriving in Kuwait.

Decisions on the government`s composition appear to be entirely in US hands, particularly those of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. This has annoyed Gen Garner, who is officially in charge but who, according to sources close to the planning of the government has had to accept a number of controversial Iraqis in advisory roles.

The most controversial of Mr Wolfowitz`s proposed appointees is Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, together with his close associates, including his nephew. During his years in exile, Mr Chalabi has cultivated links with Congress to raise funds, and has become the Pentagon`s darling among the Iraqi opposition. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is one of his strongest supporters. The state department and the CIA, on the other hand, regard him with deep suspicion.

He has not lived in Iraq since 1956, apart from a short period organising resistance in the Kurdish north in the 1990s, and is thought to have little support in the country.

Mr Chalabi had envisaged becoming prime minister in an interim government, and is disappointed that no such post is included in the US plan. Instead, the former banker will be offered an advisory job at the finance ministry.

A senior INC official said last night that Mr Chalabi would not countenance a purely advisory position. The official added: "It is certainly not the INC`s intention to advise any US ministers in Iraq. Our position is that no Americans should run Iraqi ministries. The US is talking about an interim Iraqi authority taking over, but we are calling for a provisional government."

The revelation about direct rule is likely to cause intense political discomfort for Tony Blair, who has been pressing for UN and international involvement in Iraq`s reconstruction to overcome opposition in Britain as well as heal divisions across Europe.

The Foreign Office said last night that a "relatively fluid" number of British officials had been seconded to the planning team.

Last week Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, told Congress that immediately after the fall of President Saddam`s regime, the US military would take control of the Iraqi government.

His only concession was that this would be done with the "full understanding" of the international community and with "the UN presence in the form of a special coordinator".

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Einer der härtesten Artikel gegen Bush

Berating the Generals
The Siege of Washington
By WAYNE MADSEN


March 25, 2003 may serve as a crucial turning point in American history. On that day, George W. Bush displayed his increasingly erratic and irresponsible behavior before America`s top military leadership. The friction between Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on one hand and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the other was evident at the afternoon Pentagon press briefing. This reporter had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers at a swank reception for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai a few months after U.S. troops launched Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Myers demonstrated that he is an affable individual and not one to bask in the conceitedness of constant media attention.

Trailing the pompous Rumsfeld into the briefing room, Myers` jaws were tight and his lips were pursed as he stared straight down at his notes during Rumsfeld`s opening statements. I was in the military long enough to know when someone has either just been chewed out or has had it out with his superiors. It doesn`t matter if you`re wearing four stars on your shoulders or one stripe on your sleeves, the telltale signs are always same.

Myers, on two occasions, appeared to differ with Rumsfeld. One was on the issue of Iran`s conduct during the war. Myers said Iran had done nothing to make him unhappy. Rumsfeld, however, chastised Iran for supporting and training Iraqi Shia militia in Iraq. In a few days, Rumsfeld obliquely warned both Iran and Syria of the potential for U.S. retaliation against them. When Myers was asked about Iraq`s possible use of chemical weapons, the general responded that no such weapons had yet been used. Rumsfeld indicated that he expected Iraq would use chemical weapons and warned that there was a retaliatory plan to deal with such an occurrence.

The gulf between Rumsfeld and his neo-con advisers is now wider than both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Add to this the increasingly nasty and un-presidential demeanor of George Bush. Pentagon insiders report that Bush, in a not-too-rare Hitleresque moment, used his March 25 visit to the Pentagon to berate the Joint Chiefs for the conduct of HIS war. Moreover, Rumsfeld did nothing to defend his generals and admirals from such a verbal beating by a draft dodging and often AWOL member of a posh and cozy Texas Air National Guard unit. Rumsfeld, from the outset of his Pentagon stint, treated his generals and admirals like dog crap. They were not even invited to Pentagon planning meetings. These were reserved for Rumsfeld`s coterie of neo-con gargoyles like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, outside and well-paid "consultants," and wet-nursed GOP political hacks.

Bush, who fancies himself a "born-again" Christian, is actually a foul-mouthed and erratic alcoholic. For example, the "pretzel" incident had nothing to do with a pretzel. While watching a football game at the White House, the "leader of the free world" got so drunk he fell right on his face and blamed it on his inability to remember his mother`s missive about chewing all one`s food before swallowing. Such alibis and ruses are the trademarks of drunks. During the presidential campaign Bush called a New York Times reporter a "major league asshole." In 1986, a clearly drunk and disorderly Bush told The Wall Street Journal`s Al Hunt, "You fucking son of a bitch . . . I saw what you wrote. We`re not going to forget this." The rich frat boy was irate about an article Hunt wrote about Bush`s father. Time magazine is reporting that during a March 2002 briefing for three senators by Condoleezza Rice, Bush poked his head into a White House meeting room and bellowed, "Fuck Saddam. We`re taking him out!"

But for Bush to vent his spleen on America`s military leadership defies logic and clearly demonstrates that he is mentally unfit for his office. Never mind the fact that Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, was harangued by Rumsfeld and his chickenhawks for suggesting not enough troops were provided for the invasion of Iraq. The head of the U.S. Army`s V Corps, Lieutenant General William Wallace, said of Iraqi forces, "the enemy we`re fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against." Score two for the generals and nothing for the neo-con draft dodgers who planned this idiotic war.

Richard Perle, the ethically-challenged former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and virtual agent for the Russian-mafia dominated Likud government of Israel, got it completely wrong in the hours leading up to the war when he suggested, along with a pathetic Iraqi opposition capo, that U.S. troops would be met with "flowers and candy" upon entering Iraq. Obviously, Perle`s military experience does not permit him to distinguish between flowers and candy and bullets and mortar rounds. It is a shame that Rumsfeld still can`t pry his lips from Perle`s backside. After Perle resigned as chairman of the advisory board amid a financial scandal involving personal war profiteering, Rumsfeld praised him and asked him to remain as a board member.

The fact of the matter is that Bush, Rumsfeld, the other war makers in the administration, and their political allies in Britain, Denmark, Australia, and Spain, are all dangerous megalomaniacs. On March 30th, Rumsfeld continued his deception by claiming on Fox "News" that Bush`s war coalition has expanded to 66 countries. This is a bald-faced lie. Some of the countries on the list published by both the White House and Pentagon claim they are not members of any coalition and never have been. The list is false propaganda. It is worthy of Joseph Goebbels

Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop said the State Department told him his country had been listed by mistake. But Slovenia remains on Bush`s coalition list. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Allan Kemakeza, said his country was erroneously listed as a member of the coalition. But the Solomons, which don`t even have a military, remains on the White House list.

The White House and Pentagon lie purveyors include Croatia in their coalition but Croatian President Stipe Mesic has condemned America`s war on Iraq as "illegitimate." The White House claims the Czech Republic is a coalition member but the country`s president, Vaclav Klaus, said that anyone who thinks democracy can be imposed on Iraq is "from another universe." Klaus means that people like Bush, Tony Blair, Rumsfeld, and the other neo-Crusaders are just plain nuts. Indeed they are.

U.S. ambassadors in Canada, Norway, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica, and New Zealand have publicly condemned the host governments for failing to support the U.S. war on Iraq. Such behavior in modern times is unprecedented. Bush heralds Tonga`s accession to his pitiful coalition but continues to lose the support of major countries like Italy, Norway, and South Korea. Also, Bush just can`t understand why the "Grecians" and "East Timorians" are opposed to his unlawful war.

As U.S. troops began to get bogged down in Iraq with heavy Iraqi resistance and sporadic supply lines, forcing the down to one meal ration a day instead of three, U.S. Marines were handed a pamphlet called a "Christian`s Duty." The Marines were exhorted to pray for Bush, his family, and his staff and then mail in a pledge form to Bush to prove that such prayers were rendered. I cannot even begin to fathom a young American military man or woman, risking life and limb on an Iraqi battlefield for U.S. oil companies, being asked to pray for the likes of Ari Fleischer, Andy Card, or John Ashcroft. It rates about a "10" on the puke meter.

But I have a better idea for our brave troops who are being mishandled by the crowd that incrementally seized unconstitutional power between January 20, 2001 and in the weeks after September 11th. Instead of being forced to offer prayers for Bush and his cabal, their commanders should seek a pledge of their support for a military action to return the United States to its people.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, armed with enough support from their subordinate commanders, troops, and civilian staff, could place a team of Delta Force commandos and armor on the South Lawn of the White House and in front of the North Portico on Pennsylvania Avenue. Using large loudspeakers designed for use in civil action campaigns like the ones currently taking place in Umm Qasr, Basra, and Safwan, Iraq, the Delta Force commander would instruct the Secret Service to exit the White House and lay down weapons. Five minutes should be sufficient. They should then secure the "football" and the military officer who maintains it. The football is actually a large briefcase that contains the nuclear firing codes and it would have to be quickly separated from the madmen in the White House.

Bush, Cheney, Card, Rove, Fleischer, Rice, and the rest should then be taken into custody and transferred to a remote facility like Wackenhut`s large detention center in Kern County, California, which was originally designed to hold American political prisoners and anti-war protestors.

The Joint Chiefs should quickly name a transition Executive to plan for new presidential elections. Executive authority could be vested in the man who received the majority of votes in the 2000 election. Al Gore would be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. In the interest of national unity, Gore would be asked to pledge not to seek re-election in the upcoming presidential election, which should be held no later than nine months from his inauguration.

Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter could be named as co-Vice Presidents (it would be constitutional since neither ever served two full presidential terms). These one-time political adversaries are also the best of friends. Although the Joint Chiefs would also have to remove Rumsfeld and his war hawk advisers, Bush Cabinet members (sans Ashcroft and Tom Ridge) who pledged to support the transition government could remain in office pending new elections. However, in all likelihood, many of the Bush appointees would probably be too embarrassed to remain in any official capacity. Washington, DC has a huge reservoir of talented people who could assume Cabinet and other governmental functions - there are a number of ex-senators, representatives, ambassadors, and cabinet members who could step up to the plate during such a national emergency transition.

The first act of the new Defense Secretary would be to extricate U.S. and allied troops from the Iraq morass. The new Secretary of State would be charged with trying to help stabilize the Persian Gulf region, seeking widespread international support for a new Iraqi administration with the help of the United Nations but without an Anglo-American occupation force. The UN and Red Cross should facilitate the repatriation of refugees and prisoners of war. The autonomy of the Kurdish zone in northern Iraq should be internationally guaranteed. The European Union should apply pressure on Turkey not to take advantage of new transitional governments in both Washington and Baghdad.

The new State Department leadership would fan out across the world to reassure allies, friends, and potential adversaries that America once again adheres to multilateralism, international law, and collective action by the UN, NATO, and other regional bodies. Fences would have to be quickly mended with France, Germany, Russia, Canada, and Mexico. The war against Al Qaeda should continue with a primary focus on the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Both countries should be warned that the "business as usual" policies of the Bush regime will not be continued. The new administration would warn that the bankrolling of Al Qaeda in any form will be considered an act of war against the United States. Saudi assets in the United States should be identified for possible seizure in the event of non-cooperation. Pakistan should be required to bring to justice military and intelligence officers who have aided Al Qaeda.

In the United States, special care would have to be taken in appointing a new Secretary for Civil Defense (the new name for the Department of "Homeland Security"). This individual would have to be committed to the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land status quo ante to September 11th. His or her first steps would be the dismantling of Bush`s surveillance web. Gone would be the Total Information Awareness program, the Freedom Corps, "Tips" programs, invasive airline passenger profiling, government "data mining," routine wiretaps, "First Amendment Zones," and unlawful detentions. Back would be the writ of habeas corpus, the unhindered right to an attorney, open government, the right of peaceful assembly, and the right to vote without intimidation. New would be the real and well-funded coordination of public safety across federal, state, county, and municipal lines.

Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith would join their fellow war criminals in Kern County. The new administration should ensure that photos of the inmates in their bright orange coveralls are transmitted around the world. Post-Bush regime America would demonstrate that America`s democracy is unshakable and resilient.

As for Congress and their responsibilities, this doesn`t really matter. Congress abrogated its constitutional responsibilities long ago. They could continue to voice their opinions, because that is all they are - opinions. But knowing how vapid and pimp-like most members of Congress are, they would probably quickly support the military`s actions and the transition government. After all, why irritate the military when they could pump a few more military contracts into a member`s district? That`s all that motivates these so-called "representatives of the people."

But contingencies should be made to handle some congressional troublemakers. The Kern County detention facility could add people like Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, and Zell Miller to their inmate roster. Others, like John McCain, Arlen Specter, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, Steny Hoyer, and Dick Gephardt, should be offered an Air Force ride to a retirement place of their choice.

The Supreme Court is the only institution that would be problematic. But international law would trump the Supremes in this case. The Kern County detainees would eventually be turned over to the International Criminal Court for trial. The temporary administration`s first action would be to adhere to the treaty setting up the international court in The Hague. The new administration could also argue before the Supreme Court that the 25th Amendment could not be properly invoked since a significant number of Cabinet members were too mentally unstable or incompetent to properly vote on declaring both the President and Vice President as being mentally incapable of carrying out their duties.

Although military coups often obliterate democratic rule, there have been a few cases when the military has stepped in to return a country to democratic rule or protect a democratic government from an anti-democratic rebellion. Portugal in 1974, Spain in 1981, and the Soviet Union in 1990 serve as cases in point.

An American Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which would be named by President Gore, would look into what Bush and his cronies really knew about the September 11th attacks and whether they allowed them deliberately to occur in order to seize unconstitutional power, who was responsible for the anthrax attacks on the Democratic leadership of the Senate and the media, i.e., the attempted assassinations of the Democratic Majority Leader and the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeb Bush`s malfeasance in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, the alleged profiteering of George H. W., Marvin, and Neil Bush in post-September 11th Middle East business deals, and the role of The Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Enron, and others in disastrous pipeline politics in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission should also be empowered to direct the new Attorney General to bring criminal charges against criminal conspirators. For example, if there was one shred of evidence that anyone in the Bush regime had advance knowledge of the September 11th attacks, treason charges should be brought against the conspirators.

Our Founding Fathers established the blueprint for such an action to remove Bush and his criminals and gangsters from office. Let us remember these words from Thomas Jefferson:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government ... it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future."

And these from Abraham Lincoln:

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

Amen.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.

Madsen can be reached at: [e-mail]

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Letzte Woche hatte sich Hersh Perle vorgenommen, der hatte ihn dafür einen Terroristen genannt. Zum Ende der Woche mußte Perle zurücktreten. Diese Woche ist Rumsfeld dran und man kann nur das beste hoffen.
In #736 wird die Internierung und Absetzung der gesamten Bush Administration gefordert und als höchste Strafe eine Anklage vor dem Den Haager Gerichtshof. Und es sind alles Autoren, die auch für die größten Zeitungen schreiben.
J.



OFFENSE AND DEFENSE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.
Issue of 2003-04-07
Posted 2003-03-31
As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was anger in the Pentagon. Several senior war planners complained to me in interviews that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers, who had been chiefly responsible for persuading President Bush to lead the country into war, had insisted on micromanaging the war’s operational details. Rumsfeld’s team took over crucial aspects of the day-to-day logistical planning—traditionally, an area in which the uniformed military excels—and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He thought he knew better,” one senior planner said. “He was the decision-maker at every turn.”

On at least six occasions, the planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans—the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003—he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. Rumsfeld’s faith in precision bombing and his insistence on streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. “They’ve got no resources,” a former high-level intelligence official said. “He was so focussed on proving his point—that the Iraqis were going to fall apart.”

The critical moment, one planner said, came last fall, during the buildup for the war, when Rumsfeld decided that he would no longer be guided by the Pentagon’s most sophisticated war-planning document, the TPFDL—time-phased forces-deployment list—which is known to planning officers as the tip-fiddle (tip-fid, for short). A TPFDL is a voluminous document describing the inventory of forces that are to be sent into battle, the sequence of their deployment, and the deployment of logistical support. “It’s the complete applecart, with many pieces,” Roger J. Spiller, the George C. Marshall Professor of military history at the U.S. Command and General Staff College, said. “Everybody trains and plans on it. It’s constantly in motion and always adjusted at the last minute. It’s an embedded piece of the bureaucratic and operational culture.” A retired Air Force strategic planner remarked, “This is what we do best—go from A to B—and the tip-fiddle is where you start. It’s how you put together a plan for moving into the theatre.” Another former planner said, “Once you turn on the tip-fid, everything moves in an orderly fashion.” A former intelligence officer added, “When you kill the tip-fiddle, you kill centralized military planning. The military is not like a corporation that can be streamlined. It is the most inefficient machine known to man. It’s the redundancy that saves lives.”

The TPFDL for the war in Iraq ran to forty or more computer-generated spreadsheets, dealing with everything from weapons to toilet paper. When it was initially presented to Rumsfeld last year for his approval, it called for the involvement of a wide range of forces from the different armed services, including four or more Army divisions. Rumsfeld rejected the package, because it was “too big,” the Pentagon planner said. He insisted that a smaller, faster-moving attack force, combined with overwhelming air power, would suffice. Rumsfeld further stunned the Joint Staff by insisting that he would control the timing and flow of Army and Marine troops to the combat zone. Such decisions are known in the military as R.F.F.s—requests for forces. He, and not the generals, would decide which unit would go when and where.

The TPFDL called for the shipment in advance, by sea, of hundreds of tanks and other heavy vehicles—enough for three or four divisions. Rumsfeld ignored this advice. Instead, he relied on the heavy equipment that was already in Kuwait—enough for just one full combat division. The 3rd Infantry Division, from Fort Stewart, Georgia, the only mechanized Army division that was active inside Iraq last week, thus arrived in the Gulf without its own equipment. “Those guys are driving around in tanks that were pre-positioned. Their tanks are sitting in Fort Stewart,” the planner said. “To get more forces there we have to float them. We can’t fly our forces in, because there’s nothing for them to drive. Over the past six months, you could have floated everything in ninety days—enough for four or more divisions.” The planner added, “This is the mess Rumsfeld put himself in, because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.”

Plan 1003 was repeatedly updated and presented to Rumsfeld, and each time, according to the planner, Rumsfeld said, “‘You’ve got too much ground force—go back and do it again.’” In the planner’s view, Rumsfeld had two goals: to demonstrate the efficacy of precision bombing and to “do the war on the cheap.” Rumsfeld and his two main deputies for war planning, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, “were so enamored of ‘shock and awe’ that victory seemed assured,” the planner said. “They believed that the weather would always be clear, that the enemy would expose itself, and so precision bombings would always work.” (Rumsfeld did not respond to a request for comment.)



Rumsfeld’s personal contempt for many of the senior generals and admirals who were promoted to top jobs during the Clinton Administration is widely known. He was especially critical of the Army, with its insistence on maintaining costly mechanized divisions. In his off-the-cuff memoranda, or “snowflakes,” as they’re called in the Pentagon, he chafed about generals having “the slows”—a reference to Lincoln’s characterization of General George McClellan. “In those conditions—an atmosphere of derision and challenge—the senior officers do not offer their best advice,” a high-ranking general who served for more than a year under Rumsfeld said. One witness to a meeting recalled Rumsfeld confronting General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, in front of many junior officers. “He was looking at the Chief and waving his hand,” the witness said, “saying, ‘Are you getting this yet? Are you getting this yet?’”

Gradually, Rumsfeld succeeded in replacing those officers in senior Joint Staff positions who challenged his view. “All the Joint Staff people now are handpicked, and churn out products to make the Secretary of Defense happy,” the planner said. “They don’t make military judgments—they just respond to his snowflakes.”

In the months leading up to the war, a split developed inside the military, with the planners and their immediate superiors warning that the war plan was dangerously thin on troops and matériel, and the top generals—including General Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, and Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—supporting Rumsfeld. After Turkey’s parliament astonished the war planners in early March by denying the United States permission to land the 4th Infantry Division in Turkey, Franks initially argued that the war ought to be delayed until the troops could be brought in by another route, a former intelligence official said. “Rummy overruled him.”

Many of the present and former officials I spoke to were critical of Franks for his perceived failure to stand up to his civilian superiors. A former senator told me that Franks was widely seen as a commander who “will do what he’s told.” A former intelligence official asked, “Why didn’t he go to the President?” A Pentagon official recalled that one senior general used to prepare his deputies for meetings with Rumsfeld by saying, “When you go in to talk to him, you’ve got to be prepared to lay your stars on the table and walk out. Otherwise, he’ll walk over you.”

In early February, according to a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld appeared at the Army Commanders’ Conference, a biannual business and social gathering of all the four-star generals. Rumsfeld was invited to join the generals for dinner and make a speech. All went well, the official told me, until Rumsfeld, during a question-and-answer session, was asked about his personal involvement in the deployment of combat units, in some cases with only five or six days’ notice. To the astonishment and anger of the generals, Rumsfeld denied responsibility. “He said, ‘I wasn’t involved,’” the official said. “‘It was the Joint Staff.’”

“We thought it would be fence-mending, but it was a disaster,” the official said of the dinner. “Everybody knew he was looking at these deployment orders. And for him to blame it on the Joint Staff—” The official hesitated a moment, and then said, “It’s all about Rummy and the truth.”



According to a dozen or so military men I spoke to, Rumsfeld simply failed to anticipate the consequences of protracted warfare. He put Army and Marine units in the field with few reserves and an insufficient number of tanks and other armored vehicles. (The military men say that the vehicles that they do have have been pushed too far and are malfunctioning.) Supply lines—inevitably, they say—have become overextended and vulnerable to attack, creating shortages of fuel, water, and ammunition. Pentagon officers spoke contemptuously of the Administration’s optimistic press briefings. “It’s a stalemate now,” the former intelligence official told me. “It’s going to remain one only if we can maintain our supply lines. The carriers are going to run out of jdams”—the satellite-guided bombs that have been striking targets in Baghdad and elsewhere with extraordinary accuracy. Much of the supply of Tomahawk guided missiles has been expended. “The Marines are worried as hell,” the former intelligence official went on. “They’re all committed, with no reserves, and they’ve never run the lavs”—light armored vehicles—“as long and as hard” as they have in Iraq. There are serious maintenance problems as well. “The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements come.”

The 4th Infantry Division—the Army’s most modern mechanized division—whose equipment spent weeks waiting in the Mediterranean before being diverted to the overtaxed American port in Kuwait, is not expected to be operational until the end of April. The 1st Cavalry Division, in Texas, is ready to ship out, the planner said, but by sea it will take twenty-three days to reach Kuwait. “All we have now is front-line positions,” the former intelligence official told me. “Everything else is missing.”

Last week, plans for an assault on Baghdad had stalled, and the six Republican Guard divisions expected to provide the main Iraqi defense had yet to have a significant engagement with American or British soldiers. The shortages forced Central Command to “run around looking for supplies,” the former intelligence official said. The immediate goal, he added, was for the Army and Marine forces “to hold tight and hope that the Republican Guard divisions get chewed up” by bombing. The planner agreed, saying, “The only way out now is back, and to hope for some kind of a miracle—that the Republican Guards commit themselves,” and thus become vulnerable to American air strikes.

“Hope,” a retired four-star general subsequently told me, “is not a course of action.” Last Thursday, the Army’s senior ground commander, Lieutenant General William S. Wallace, said to reporters, “The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against.” (One senior Administration official commented to me, speaking of the Iraqis, “They’re not scared. Ain’t it something? They’re not scared.”) At a press conference the next day, Rumsfeld and Myers were asked about Wallace’s comments, and defended the war plan—Myers called it “brilliant” and “on track.” They pointed out that the war was only a little more than a week old.

Scott Ritter, the former marine and United Nations weapons inspector, who has warned for months that the American “shock and awe” strategy would not work, noted that much of the bombing has had little effect or has been counterproductive. For example, the bombing of Saddam’s palaces has freed up a brigade of special guards who had been assigned to protect them, and who have now been sent home to await further deployment. “Every one of their homes—and they are scattered throughout Baghdad—is stacked with ammunition and supplies,” Ritter told me.

“This is tragic,” one senior planner said bitterly. “American lives are being lost.” The former intelligence official told me, “They all said, ‘We can do it with air power.’ They believed their own propaganda.” The high-ranking former general described Rumsfeld’s approach to the Joint Staff war planning as “McNamara-like intimidation by intervention of a small cell”—a reference to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and his aides, who were known for their challenges to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War. The former high-ranking general compared the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Stepford wives. “They’ve abrogated their responsibility.”



Perhaps the biggest disappointment of last week was the failure of the Shiite factions in southern Iraq to support the American and British invasion. Various branches of the Al Dawa faction, which operate underground, have been carrying out acts of terrorism against the Iraqi regime since the nineteen-eighties. But Al Dawa has also been hostile to American interests. Some in American intelligence have implicated the group in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which cost the lives of two hundred and forty-one marines. Nevertheless, in the months before the war the Bush Administration courted Al Dawa by including it among the opposition groups that would control postwar Iraq. “Dawa is one group that could kill Saddam,” a former American intelligence official told me. “They hate Saddam because he suppressed the Shiites. They exist to kill Saddam.” He said that their apparent decision to stand with the Iraqi regime now was a “disaster” for us. “They’re like hard-core Vietcong.”

There were reports last week that Iraqi exiles, including fervent Shiites, were crossing into Iraq by car and bus from Jordan and Syria to get into the fight on the side of the Iraqi government. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. Middle East operative, told me in a telephone call from Jordan, “Everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq. Not Saddam. They’ve been given the high sign, and we are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties a day and they die by the thousands, they’re still winning. It’s a jihad, and it’s a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war.” There were press reports of mujahideen arriving from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Algeria for “martyrdom operations.”

There had been an expectation before the war that Iran, Iraq’s old enemy, would side with the United States in this fight. One Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, has been in regular contact with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or sciri, an umbrella organization for Shiite groups who oppose Saddam. The organization is based in Iran and has close ties to Iranian intelligence. The Chalabi group set up an office last year in Tehran, with the approval of Chalabi’s supporters in the Pentagon, who include Rumsfeld, his deputies Wolfowitz and Feith, and Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Chalabi has repeatedly predicted that the Tehran government would provide support, including men and arms, if an American invasion of Iraq took place.

Last week, however, this seemed unlikely. In a press conference on Friday, Rumsfeld warned Iranian militants against interfering with American forces and accused Syria of sending military equipment to the Iraqis. A Middle East businessman who has long-standing ties in Jordan and Syria—and whose information I have always found reliable—told me that the religious government in Tehran “is now backing Iraq in the war. There isn’t any Arab fighting group on the ground in Iraq who is with the United States,” he said.

There is also evidence that Turkey has been playing both sides. Turkey and Syria, who traditionally have not had close relations, recently agreed to strengthen their ties, the businessman told me, and early this year Syria sent Major General Ghazi Kanaan, its longtime strongman and power broker in Lebanon, to Turkey. The two nations have begun to share intelligence and to meet, along with Iranian officials, to discuss border issues, in case an independent Kurdistan emerges from the Iraq war. A former U.S. intelligence officer put it this way: “The Syrians are coördinating with the Turks to screw us in the north—to cause us problems.” He added, “Syria and the Iranians agreed that they could not let an American occupation of Iraq stand.”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030407fa_fact1

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Kein Aprilscherz. Ist schon ungeheuerlich, was hier behauptet wird. Die Story ist nicht neu. Eine der berüchtigten Verschwörungstheorien oder mehr?

The Greatest Story Never Told
Are American elections fixed? Don’t ask the mainstream media.

By Ernest Partridge
Co-Editor, "The Crisis Papers."
March 31, 2003


“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.”
Thomas Paine

It doesn’t matter who casts the ballots.
What matters is who counts the ballots.
Joseph Stalin

Доверите но проверите (Trust, but verify)
(Ronald Reagan’s favorite Russian proverb)



Imagine the following election procedure:

Paper ballots are marked, in secret and deposited by the voters in sealed ballot boxes. (So far, so good).



The ballot boxes are then delivered to the offices of a private firm, which is publicly known to be a supporter of and contributor to one of the political parties.



Upon receipt of the ballot boxes, the doors are locked and no one other than employees of that firm is allowed to inspect and validate the counting.



The ballots are then destroyed, after which the results are announced.



The firm’s favorite candidate is declared the winner. The final results vary radically from pre-election polls.


Sounds like a Soviet “election,” doesn’t it? Like something that a dictator might dream up to assure himself a lifetime office. But surely, such a “fix” is too transparently and shamelessly obvious for anyone to think he could get away with it.

And yet this scenario is an exact analogy, in all relevant respects, to the “computer screen” voting system that has been rushed into use, following the fiasco of the 2000 presidential election.

Consider:

There are, in all, thirteen manufacturers of electronic voting machines, of which two, ES&S and Diebold, are predominant. Both are owned and operated by individuals with right-wing political views, who are heavy contributors to the Republican Party.



ES&S and Diebold machines use “proprietary” source codes (i.e., not available for public inspection and analysis), and leave no “paper record” of their tallies.



“Exit polling,” a reliable validation method which has proven to be much more accurate than pre-election polling, was “withdrawn” soon after the polls closed in the November 2002 election. Voter News Service (VNS), a consortium owned by the major cable and broadcast TV networks, reported that the system “collapsed,” due to “technical problems.”



In a comparison of the polling and results of nineteen 2002 election races (by www.scoop.co.nz), fourteen showed a post poll swing to the Republicans (many far outside the margin of error), two showed a swing to the Democrats (all within the margin of error), and three were “close to correct.” If the pre-election poll predictions had been correct, the Democrats would now control the Senate.



“The state where the biggest upset occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its elections with the most electronic voting machines.” (The “swing” to the Republican was from 9-12 points). (Scoop). }


Finally, and most significantly: Does all this suggest that “the fix was in”? Perhaps. Is there any way of knowing this? Absolutely not: The exit polls were cancelled, there is no independent record (e.g., on paper) of the ballots, and the machines and their software are not available for inspection.

In sum, writes Thom Hartmann:

You’d think in an open democracy that the government – answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders – would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You’d think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You’d think there would be a paper trail of the vote which could be followed and audited if there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagree with computerized vote counts.

You’d be wrong.


So is it possible, just possible, that the electoral “fix” is in, and that as a result nothing short of a revolution will ever budge the Republican Party from control of the Congress and the White House? In other words, is it not conceivable that our “democracy” is more than “threatened” – it is in fact finished, done for, kaput? And we are not even aware of it?

This issue of ballot integrity – the very heart of a democratic politics – should be the number one political issue in the United States today.

And yet, this issue is totally absent from the mainstream media. I can testify that I have not heard or read a word about it on television, the radio, or the commercial press.

Have you?

It seems that the studies and reports of this potentially ultimate betrayal of our democracy, are confined to the progressive internet. (For “gateway” to this issue, see “Electoral Integrity” at this site).

Meanwhile on the progressive internet (while it lasts!) the optimists hopefully predict that the Bushistas will be thrown out of office in 2004. On the other hand, the pessimists suspect that due to “national emergency” the 2004 election will be cancelled.

But if our worst fears about the betrayal of our franchise are true, both speculations are moot. Why should those who own the ballot boxes and who program the “proprietary” software (meaning, “those who count the votes”), fear, much less cancel an election when they control the outcome? Of course there will be an election following which George Bush and his Republican Congress will be proclaimed “the peoples’ choice” – a result which will be predetermined by those damnable “black boxes” – “the peoples’ will IN, and Garbage OUT.”

Only an aroused public can prevent this – a public demanding investigation by the media (fat chance!) and/or the Congress or state legislatures.

We can well imagine the rebuttals to these concerns: “Aw, c’mon! These are paranoid ravings! Surely you can’t believe that our national elections are fixed and that our national leaders are not fairly and honestly elected?

Well, perhaps our critics are right. The ballot boxes, and hence our elections, are 100% copasetic. But, given the nature of the technology, how can we know this? Moreover, and fundamentally, don’t we have a right to verifiable guarantees that our votes, all of them, will be counted?

If our elections are to be fair races, then neither party should have any objections to the adoption of rigorous validation procedures, most notably (a) random inspection of computer voting machines after the election, (b) publication of the software code, and (c) paper “receipts” given to each voter to inspect upon completion of his voting, to be then deposited in a “backup” ballot box.

“Backup” validations procedures, most notably a preservation of paper ballots, have been implicit in our elections from the very founding of our republic. Until now, that is.

These methods for protecting our fundamental citizen rights to free and fair elections are simple, straightforward and compellingly obvious. Accordingly, if any political party or faction objects to such validation procedures, especially if supporters of that party manufacture, own, program and control those machines, we should immediately become suspicious and demand accountability.

Again, perhaps the condition of our franchise is entirely benign and our fears are unfounded. But we are entitled to more than the word of the partisans who own and control the machines.

It is up to the citizens to demand legislation that mandates accountability and validation in our elections. And if our senators and congressmen do not support such legislation we must then insist that they explain their opposition.

While we demand action at the federal level, we must at the same time take the issue up with the states. Best case: find a state government with a Democratic Governor and legislature, and insist that they launch an investigation. If they hit “paydirt,” then their discoveries will have immediate application to the nation as a whole.

Candidates defeated in questionable elections should file suit, and then use the weapon of legal “discovery” to full advantage.

We must demand investigations of the election of 2002, including a thorough technical examination of the computer voting machines and their software. Simulated machine-generated voting distortions should be attempted and studied (e.g., software which converts 50/50 input to 60/40 output). Error detection programs must be required in the software.

Finally, we must insist that unless these and the aforementioned safeguards (e.g., paper receipts) are met, unconfirmable balloting must be outlawed outright.

This is all so simple, so obvious, so fundamental to the integrity of our (alleged) democracy.

So why do we hear nothing about this in our Congress?

Why are the media silent about this issue?

Causes one to wonder and to harbor dark suspicions, doesn’t it?


Copyright 2003, by Ernest Partridge

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/

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Der Tag ist da

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Anderswo werden solche Leute ganz einfach als Wirtschaftskriminelle bezeichnet. FDR nicht FDP

Jobs for the FDR boys
Paul Foot
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

FDR are familiar initials in US politics. They used to describe an often-re-elected president (Roosevelt) who occasionally showed some concern for the poor and unemployed in his country. Now the initials stand for the Friends of Donald Rumsfeld, something very different. If you are an FDR today you look forward with great glee to a US victory in Iraq.

Jay Montgomery Garner, 64, a devoted FDR, keen supporter of Israeli policy and a lieutenant-general into the bargain, was rung up by his friend Donald in January and asked if he would like to take over something called (George Orwell would have loved the name) the Iraq Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Mr Garner, who is described as "soft-spoken, humble and efficient", accepted the job with alacrity. Among his new duties will be handing out contracts, mostly to other US firms, for rebuilding Iraq. No one could be better qualified.

Mr Garner is "on leave" from a firm called L3 Communications which recently won a $1.3bn contract to provide "logistical projects" to US special operations forces. He is president of SY Technology which makes systems for missiles. He will know everything about the capability of other US firms run by other FDR - notably Halliburton, a huge construction firm that still pays generous sums to its former chief executive, vice-president Dick Cheney, and has already been shortlisted for contracts for rebuilding Iraq after that country has been obliterated by the forces under Cheney`s and Rumsfeld`s command.

Another FDR has had a bad week. He is the former president of the defence policy board, Richard Perle. British television viewers know that he, too, is soft-spoken, and no doubt efficient, though whether he is humble is less clear. Last week, Mr Perle offered his resignation as chairman of the US defence policy board to "prevent his situation from interfering with the government`s war effort". His relevant interests include a $750,000 contract with the bankrupt US-based giant Global Crossing to help it overcome US defence department objections to its sale to a Chinese company; a partnership in the quaintly named Trireme Partners that invests in Homeland Defence; and a directorship of the British-based Autonomy Corporation, which has won a large US government security contract.

Mr Rumsfeld was very sad to receive his friend`s resignation, and softened it by allowing Mr Perle to stay on the defence policy board. Perhaps he was moved by Mr Perle`s touching offer to contribute his fee from Global Crossing to families of US soldiers killed in the war he so enthusiastically supports.

But suppose these families` loved ones are not killed, but gravely wounded, what then? While President Bush, a keen FDR, cheerfully procures another $50bn for the war effort, the House of Representative`s budget committee, controlled by FDRs in the Republican party, voted recently to cut $20bn from the war veterans` budget over the next 20 years, and the Bush administration cut $172m from "impact aid" programmes for school funding of military personnel. Even Mr Perle`s donations are unlikely to make up for such cuts.

Two questions occur to me. First, by what conceivable flight of arrogance do Mr Rumsfeld and his wealthy friends dish out contracts to each other for the reconstruction of a country over which they have, at the moment at any rate, no control? Even if their forces are victorious, is the regime change they have in mind simply a shift from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the dictatorship of US corporations?

Second, how on earth did we British become involved in this whole ghastly business? How did nice, sanctimonious Mr Blair with his psalms and his cliches become so dedicated to the war of the US corporations that he throws British troops into the charnel house?

There have been many answers to this intriguing question. Some point to Blair`s fascination with his adoration in the US, others to the heavy involvement of British military intelligence and arms companies with their counterparts in the US. All these explanations have some force. My own goes back to the Tory election victory of 1992 and the hysterical reaction of younger Labour leaders facing the prospect of a whole political life without office. For Tony Blair, not yet Labour leader, the problem was too much ideology in the Labour party, and "the differences between right and left which have lost all meaning". He couldn`t see the difference between right and left then, and now he can`t see the difference between even the mildest principles of collective responsibility and a monstrous war carried out by the far right in the interests of Halliburton and the FDR.

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Dieser Krieg ist unamerikanisch

Emperor George

What has become of American values and idealism? All swept away in this thoroughly un-American war

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

This war is un-American. That`s an unlikely word to use, I know: it has an unhappy provenance, associated forever with the McCarthyite hunt for reds under the beds, purging anyone suspected of "un-American activities". Besides, for many outside the US, the problem with this war is not that it`s un-American - but all too American.
But that does an injustice to the US and its history. It assumes that the Bush administration represents all America, at all times, when in fact the opposite is true. For this administration, and this war, are not typical of the US. On the contrary, on almost every measure, they are exceptions to the American rule.

The US was, after all, a country founded in a rebellion against imperialism. Born in a war against a hated colonial oppressor, in the form of George III, it still sees itself as the instinctive friend of all who struggle to kick out a foreign occupier - and the last nation on earth to play the role of outside ruler.

Not for it the Greek, Roman or British path. For most of the last century, the US steered well clear of the institutions of formal empire (the Philipines was a lamentable exception). Responsibility was thrust upon it after 1945 in Germany and Japan. But as a matter of deliberate intent, America sought neither viceroys ruling over faraway lands nor a world map coloured with the stars and stripes. Influence, yes; puppets and proxies, yes. But formal imperial rule, never.

Until now. George Bush has cast off the restraint which held back America`s 42 previous presidents - including his father. Now he is seeking, as an unashamed objective, to get into the empire business, aiming to rule a post-Saddam Iraq directly through an American governor-general, the retired soldier Jay Garner. As the Guardian reported yesterday, Washington`s plan for Baghdad consists of 23 ministries - each one to be headed by an American. This is a form of foreign rule so direct we have not seen its like since the last days of the British empire. It represents a break with everything America has long believed in.

This is not to pretend that there is a single American ideal, still less a single US foreign policy, maintained unbroken since 1776. There are, instead, competing traditions, each able to trace its lineage to the founding of the republic. But what`s striking is that George Bush`s war on Iraq is at odds with every single one of them. Perhaps best known is Thomas Jefferson`s call for an America which would not only refuse to rule over other nations, it would avoid meddling in their affairs altogether. He wanted no "entangling alliances". If America wished to export its brand of liberty, it should do it not through force but by the simple power of its own example. John Quincy Adams (before Bush, the only son of a president to become president), put it best when he declared that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy". Could there be a better description of Washington`s pre-emptive pursuit of Saddam Hussein?

The Jeffersonian tradition is not the only one to be broken by Operation Iraqi Freedom. Last year the historian Walter Russell Mead identified three other schools of US foreign policy. Looking at them now, it`s clear that all are equally incompatible with this war.

Those Mead calls Hamiltonians are keen on maintaining an international system and preserving a balance of power - that means acknowledging equals in the world, rather than seeking solo, hegemonic domination. So Bush, whose national security strategy last year explicitly forbade the emergence of an equal to the US, is no follower of Alexander Hamilton. Jacksonians, meanwhile, have always defined America`s interests narrowly: they would see no logic in travelling halfway across the world to invade a country that poses no immediate, direct threat to the US. So Bush has defied Andrew Jackson. Woodrow Wilson liked the idea of the US spreading democracy and rights across the globe; banishing Saddam and freeing the people of Iraq might have appealed to him. But he was the father of the League of Nations and would have been distressed by Washington`s disregard for the UN and its lack of international backing for this war.

Which brings us to a key un-American activity by this Bush administration. Today`s Washington has not only broken from the different strands of wisdom which guided the US since its birth, but also from the model that shaped American foreign policy since 1945. It`s easy to forget this now, as US politicians and commentators queue up to denounce international institutions as French-dominated, limp-wristed, euro-faggot bodies barely worth the candle, but those bodies were almost all American inventions. Whether it was Nato, the global financial architecture designed at Bretton Woods or the UN itself, multilateralism was, at least in part, America`s gift to the world. Every president from Roosevelt to Bush Senior honoured those creations. Seeking to change them in order to adapt to the 21st century is wholly legitimate; but drowning them in derision is to trash an American idea.

The very notion of unprovoked, uninvited, long-term and country-wide invasion is pretty un-American, too. When it thinks of itself, the US is a firm believer in state sovereignty, refusing any innovation which might curb its jurisdiction over its own affairs. Hence its opposition to the new international criminal court or indeed any international treaties which might clip its wings. Yet the sovereignty of the state of Iraq has been cheerfully violated by the US invasion. That can be defended - the scholar and former Clinton official Philip Bobbitt says sovereignty is "forfeited" by regimes which choke their own peoples - but it is, at the very least, a contradiction. The US, which holds sovereignty sacred for itself, is engaged in a war which ignores it for others.

The result is a sight which can look bizarre for those who have spent much time in the US. Americans who, back home, resent even the most trivial state meddling in their own affairs are determined to run the lives of a people on the other side of the planet. In New Hampshire car number plates bear the legend, Live Free or Die; a state motto is Don`t Tread on Me. If a "government bureaucrat" comes near, even to perform what would be considered a routine task in Britain, they are liable to get an earful about the tyranny of Washington, DC. Yet Americans - whose passion for liberty is so great they talk seriously about keeping guns in case they ever need to fight their own government - assume Iraqis will welcome military rule by a foreign power.

Talk like this is not that comfortable in America just now; you`d be denounced fairly swiftly as a Saddam apologist or a traitor. The limits of acceptable discussion have narrowed sharply, just as civil liberties have taken a hammering as part of the post-9/11 war on terror. You might fall foul of the Patriot Act, or be denounced for insufficient love of country. There is something McCarthyite about the atmosphere which has spawned this war, making Democrats too fearful to be an opposition worthy of the name and closing down national debate. And things don`t get much more un-American than that.

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April 2, 2003
Warring Tribes, Here and There
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

The president and his war council did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance in Iraq. And they really did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance at home.

But you can`t have transformation without provocation.

This was a war designed to change the nature of American foreign policy, military policy and even the national character — flushing out ambivalence and embracing absolutism.

As two members of the pre-emptive Bush doctrine`s neo-con brain trust, Bill Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, argued in a book-length call for battle, "The War Over Iraq": "Well, what is wrong with dominance, in the service of sound principles and high ideals?"

So it should not be a surprise that the troubled opening phase of the war has exacerbated territorial and ideological fissures in the administration and the Republican Party.

Democrats are muter than mute. But a dozen days of real war in the desert has turned the usually disciplined Bush crowd into a bunch of schismatics: there is internecine warfare between the "hold out a hand" Bush I team and the "back of the hand" Bush II team. There`s a feud between Donald Rumsfeld and some of his generals and ex-generals, and animosity between the Pentagon — where Rummy, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith spin schemes for intimidating the world and remodeling the Middle East — and the State Department. Colin Powell and his deputies wince as old alliances shatter and the Arab world seethes, and mutter that there had to be a way to get rid of Saddam without making everyone on the planet despise America.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that moderate Republicans were trying to do an intervention with the president to show him that hawks were giving him "bum advice."

The article was clearly referring to the Bush I realpolitik crowd of James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and Mr. Powell and his acolytes at State. These pals of Poppy Bush are alarmed that the Hobbesian Dick Cheney — who has been down in his undisclosed locations reading books about how war is the natural state of mankind — the flamboyantly belligerent Rummy and the crusading neo-cons have mesmerized the president with their macho schemes.

"There is a behind-the-scenes effort by former senior Republican government officials and party leaders to convince President Bush that the advice he has received from Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz . . . has been wrong and even dangerous to long-term U.S. national interests," The Post said.

One former senior Republican official noted: "The only one who can reach the president is his father. But it is not timely yet to talk to him." This raised the odd specter of the president`s being dragged off from running a war and taken to Kennebunkport for a Metternichian outing in the family cigarette boat. Mr. Scowcroft and Mr. Eagleburger could pin W. down while Bar steered and Poppy explained the facts of international life.

The Oedipal struggle of the Bushes — a father who was an ambassador to the U.N. and an envoy to China, a globe-trotting vice president and an internationalist president, and a son who was a Texas governor with little knowledge of the world — was bound to be aggravated by an invasion of Iraq not sanctioned by the U.N.

Here was a son acting to correct his father`s "mistakes" in the first gulf war, when his father did not think he had made a mistake, but rather a great contribution to history.

The neo-cons egged on 43 to war in Iraq by writing, as Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kaplan did, that 41`s foreign policy was "defective" and that Bush senior had urged Iraqi Shiites and Kurds to revolt and then, afraid that Iraq would break up, turned "a blind eye" when they did that after the war and were slaughtered by Saddam.

When the Iraqi Shiites did not greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and hugs last week, as the hawks had promised, the stung warriors once more blamed Bush 41. "We bear a certain responsibility for what we didn`t do in 1991," a senior U.S. military commander at Central Command in Qatar told reporters. "We let them down once. We`re not going to do it again."

Bush 43 is busy trying to do something his dad thought he`d done. The title of Bush 41`s book: "A World Transformed."






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`You can force people to go out and welcome a foreign leader, but you can`t force them to smile.

April 2, 2003
Come the Revolution
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


AIRO

To read the Arab press is to think that the entire Arab world is enraged with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and to some extent that`s true. But here`s what you don`t read: underneath the rage, there is also a grudging, skeptical curiosity — a curiosity about whether the Americans will actually do what they claim and build a new, more liberal Iraq.

While they may not be able to describe it, many Arabs intuit that this U.S. invasion of Iraq is something they`ve never seen before — the revolutionary side of U.S. power. Let me explain: for Arabs, American culture has always been revolutionary — from blue jeans to "Baywatch" — but American power, since the cold war, has only been used to preserve the status quo here, keeping in place friendly Arab kings and autocrats.

Even after the cold war ended and America supported, and celebrated, the flowering of democracy from Eastern Europe to Latin America, the Arab world was excluded. In this neighborhood, because of America`s desire for steady oil supplies and a safe Israel, America continued to support the status quo and any Arab government that preserved it. Indeed, Gulf War I simply sought to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy and the flow of oil. Once that was done, Saddam was left alone.

And that is why Gulf War II is such a shock to the Arab system, on a par with Napoleon`s invasion of Egypt or the Six-Day War. But different people are shocked in different ways.

To begin with, there is the shock of Arab liberals, still a tiny minority, who can`t believe that America has finally used its revolutionary power in the Arab world. They are desperate for America to succeed because they think Iraq is too big to ignore, and therefore a real election there would shake the whole Arab region.

Second is the shock of those Arabs in the silent majority. They recognize this is the revolutionary side of U.S. power, but they see it through their own narrative, which says the U.S. is upsetting the status quo not to lift the Arab world up, but rather to put it down so it will submit to whatever America and Israel demand. That`s the dominant theme in the Arab media: this war is simply another version of colonialism and imperialism. Al Jazeera uses the same terms for U.S. actions in Iraq as it does for Israeli actions in the West Bank — Iraq is under U.S. "occupation," and Iraqis killed are "martyrs."

As Raymond Stock, a longtime Cairo resident and the biographer of the novelist Naguib Mahfouz, remarked, "People here, particularly the chattering classes who watch the Arab satellite channels, are so much better misinformed than you think. The Arab media generally tells them what they want to hear and shows them what they want to see. There is a narrative that is deeply embedded, and no amount of embedded reporting from the other side will change it. Only a different Iraq can do that."

But there is a third school: Egyptian officials, who are instinctively pro-American but are shocked that the Bush team would use its revolutionary power to try to remake Iraq. Egyptian officials view this as a fool`s errand because they view Iraq as a congenitally divided, tribal country that can be ruled only by an iron fist.

Whose view will be redeemed depends on how Iraq plays out, but, trust me, everyone`s watching. I spent this afternoon with the American studies class at Cairo University. The professor, Mohamed Kamel, summed up the mood: "In 1975, Richard Nixon came to Egypt and the government turned out huge crowds. Some Americans made fun of Nixon for this, and Nixon defended himself by saying, `You can force people to go out and welcome a foreign leader, but you can`t force them to smile.` Maybe the Iraqis will eventually stop resisting you. But that will not make this war legitimate. What the U.S. needs to do is make the Iraqis smile. If you do that, people will consider this a success."

There is a lot riding on that smile, Mr. Kamel added, because this is the first "Arab-American war." This is not about Arabs and Israelis. This is about America getting inside the Arab world — not just with its power or culture, but with its ideals. It is a war for what America stands for. "If it backfires," Mr. Kamel concluded, "if you don`t deliver, it will really have a big impact. People will not just say your policies are bad, but that your ideas are a fake, you don`t really believe them or you don`t know how to implement them."

In short, we need to finish the peace better than we started the war.






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washingtonpost.com
Time to Heal the Breach


By David S. Broder

Wednesday, April 2, 2003; Page A17


Even as the war continues in Iraq, a broader and ultimately more important political struggle is underway in Washington over the future government of that country -- and of America`s relations with the world.

"This is the big one," Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me. And there are many other serious students of international relations who share that view and are taking up positions in the battle.

Two things are clear. When Saddam Hussein`s regime is defeated -- and everyone hopes that will be soon -- the American-led and American-dominated military forces will have the responsibility for security in Iraq for some indefinite time -- months, if not years. And the United Nations must have an equally important role in supervising the delivery of food, medicine and other humanitarian assistance to the battered people of Iraq. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously last week to prepare for that responsibility.

What remains in doubt is the character of the civil administration that will manage the transition to an eventual post-Hussein government that will be representative of the Iraqi people.

Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter of Nebraska, both well-regarded if not widely known voices on international affairs, last week quickly collected the signatures of 42 colleagues on a bipartisan letter urging the Bush administration to seek U.N. involvement in creating a new Iraqi government.

Their move parallels the unanimous passage last week by the Senate of a resolution, written by Biden and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana, welcoming the participation of "other nations and key international organizations in the reconstruction and administration of Iraq."

The messages from Capitol Hill are aimed at influencing what Kind called "a raging debate" inside the Bush administration. The immediate question is whether postwar Iraq will be run by an American viceroy or a U.N. official. But the larger question is whether superpower America will seek to heal the breach with longtime allies that blocked U.N. action against Saddam Hussein, or walk away from the world body and seek to manage future conflicts with its own "coalition of the willing."

The Pentagon, which holds the upper hand in that debate because it is calling the shots in the war, already has designated a general to take over at least temporarily in Baghdad. Biden, who is blunt in his appraisal of the stakes, told me that he thinks Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are "seeking a twofer. They want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and break the grip of the United Nations."

Kind is slightly more tactful in his description, but said that, judging from his sources in the State Department, "This is the issue of the day. It will affect our relations with the Arab nations and the rest of the world for decades to come. And it has a direct bearing on our security. As powerful as our military is, if we`re seen as the occupying power in a Muslim country, it makes us more vulnerable to terrorism."

Biden, in a Senate floor speech, said an international structure is needed in Iraq, not just to reduce the threat of retaliatory attacks on the United States but also to spread the huge financial burden of rebuilding that country and "to repair the damage that has been done to the U.N., to our alliances and international cooperation" by the decision to launch this war over the opposition of France, Germany, Russia and many other countries.

Any new government in Iraq, Biden said, needs "the imprimatur of the international community. The last thing we need to do is look as though we are putting in a puppet government."

As is often the case, no one is quite certain where President Bush stands in this debate. The hard-liners inside and outside the administration -- the same people who pressed for taking on Saddam Hussein -- are arguing that the United Nations showed its true colors when it refused to enforce its own ultimatum to Iraq, so the hell with it. But Bush`s staunchest ally, Britain`s Tony Blair, the State Department and now a significant group of internationalists in Congress who supported the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq all are pressing Bush to invite the United Nations and other countries to share the postwar duties in Iraq.

Looming ahead are the global war on terrorism, challenges from nuclear threats in North Korea and Iran, and the bloody impasse of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. For the United States to go it alone would be a fateful decision.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Ein Thema das in diesem Zusammenhang nicht vergessen werden darf.

washingtonpost.com
For Israel Lobby Group, War Is Topic A, Quietly
At Meeting, Jerusalem`s Contributions Are Highlighted

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A25


This week`s meeting in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has put a spotlight on the Bush administration`s delicate dance with Israel and the Jewish state`s friends over the attack on Iraq.

Officially, Israel is not one of the 49 countries the administration has identified as members of the "Coalition of the Willing." Officially, AIPAC had no position on the merits of a war against Iraq before it started. Officially, Iraq is not the subject of the pro-Israel lobby`s three-day meeting here.

Now, for the unofficial part:

As delegates to the AIPAC meeting were heading to town, the group put a headline on its Web site proclaiming: "Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq." The item featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the "Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" is being used "by U.S. soldiers in Iraq."

At an AIPAC session on Sunday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom proclaimed in a speech praising Secretary of State Colin L. Powell: "We have followed with great admiration your efforts to mobilize the international community to disarm Iraq and bring democracy and peace to the region, to the Middle East and to the rest of the world. Just imagine, Mr. Secretary, how much easier it would have been if Israel had been a member of the Security Council."

A parade of top Bush administration officials -- Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns -- appeared before the AIPAC audience. The officials won sustained cheers for their jabs at European opponents of war in Iraq, and their tough remarks aimed at two perennial foes of Israel, Syria and Iran.

The AIPAC meeting -- attended by about 5,000 people, including half the Senate and a third of the House -- was planned long before it became clear it would coincide with hostilities in Iraq. And organizers tried to play down the emphasis on Iraq, dedicating only one of its 12 "forums" during the conference to the war. "This is not about Iraq," said AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. "This is about going to Congress and lobbying for the Israeli aid package."

The reason for the sensitivity is clear. Internationally, anything that links Israel to the current war could alienate friendly Arab states by suggesting that the war is driven by Israel`s interests. At home, the embrace of the war by an organization of influential Jews could fuel anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, though polls have indicated that American Jews are less likely to support the Iraq war than white Americans of other faiths.

Despite the meeting`s script, AIPAC attendees found the subject of the war impossible to avoid. Powell talked about Iraq. Rice talked about Iraq. In the hallways, everyone talked about Iraq.

"If a widget maker were having a convention, the talk would be about Iraq," said Nathan Diament, a lobbyist for orthodox Jews and a participant in the conference. "It`s not what this meeting is all about, but it`s the context."

When Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Leon S. Fuerth, the former foreign policy adviser to Al Gore, sat down with Burns for a session yesterday titled "the Future of the Middle East," the subject was almost exclusively Iraq.

Kirk said the war would be "longer and more expensive than we think," and noted efforts the U.S. military had made to defend Israel. When Fuerth wondered whether there is too much "happy optimism" about Arab democracy, Kirk won cheers and an ovation for rejecting the charge. "God willing, we`re going to have a great victory in Iraq," said AIPAC`s Steve Rosen, the moderator.

AIPAC also promoted Israel`s involvement in the Iraq war, though it has not been acknowledged by the administration. Citing the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, AIPAC reported on its Web site that the U.S. Army is using Israeli-made Hunter and Pioneer drones, computer systems and Popeye air-to-surface missiles. AIPAC and Israeli officials at the conference said that while such weapons are being used in the Iraq war, they were not provided by Israel specifically for it.

Eyal Arad, who has served as a campaign adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said in an interview at the conference yesterday that his country, which attacked an Iraqi nuclear facility two decades ago, was pleased to honor the Bush administration`s request to keep a low profile in this conflict.

"We don`t need to shout, `We`re pro-American,` " Arad said. "We are."

The Bush administration was somewhat ambivalent about tying itself to AIPAC and Israel. Though it sent several officials to the meeting with strong pro-Israel messages, there were efforts to keep things low-key. The White House insisted that yesterday`s speech by Rice, though delivered to a room with 2,000 people, be "off the record."

"I`m not making this up!" AIPAC`s Rosen said to his guests while serving as host at a later session. "All these people were part of an off-the-record discussion."



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Wider still and wider

American tactics are helping Saddam

Leader
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

Threatening the neighbours is hardly the best way to rally Muslim support, or at least to elicit Muslim and Arab understanding, for America`s cause in Iraq. But in recent days, senior Bush administration figures have gone out of their way to warn Syria, Iran and others of unspecified unpleasant consequences should they in any way interpose themselves between Washington and its objectives.
Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld initiated this ill-considered trend, claiming that Damascus was supplying military technology to the Iraqi army. He offered no public evidence to support his allegation, basing his information on US intelligence - a branch of the federal government whose assessments and predictions are daily shown to be less and less intelligent. Mr Rumsfeld`s rumblings were quickly echoed by the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, whose capacity for objective thought appears to diminish steadily the longer she remains in office. Then, more surprisingly perhaps, Colin Powell took up the cry. "We are demanding more responsible behaviour from states that do not follow acceptable patterns of behaviour," Mr Powell said. Singling out President Bashar Assad`s government (which is fiercely critical of the US-led invasion), he warned that "Syria bears the responsibility for its choices and for the consequences". Note the imperative use of the verb "demand". This grammatical mood seems suited to Washington`s present imperial mindset. Note, too, the phrase "acceptable behaviour". Is it possible that Paul Wolfowitz`s dream has come true and the US already believes it is the Middle East`s arbiter and overlord? And if Iran and Syria and others refuse to bow the knee, will they be invaded, too, with Britain loyally tagging along? These American delusions are dangerous.

Widening regional destabilisation was one of the reasons why so many people and nations opposed this foolish war. By issuing such provocative threats, even if they are essentially pre-emptive, the US behaves recklessly. The Iraqi regime must be delighted. It is already doing its level best to portray the conflict as one between the entire Arab "nation" and the US, between Islam and the west, between the righteous and the "Zionists". Its call for Arab volunteers appears to be having some success. Its resort to suicide bombings, or "martyrdom operations", creates an entirely deliberate, emotive association with the Palestinian intifada.

Iraq`s guerrilla tactics, increasingly indistinguishable in the American military mind from terrorism, are leading to ever more frequent, unacceptable civilian deaths at the hands of US soldiers unaccustomed and untrained for unconventional warfare. This in turn is intensifying the broad sense of outrage across the Arab and Muslim world and with it, a regrettable sense of solidarity. As the west`s forces lay sacrilegious siege to the holy city of Najaf, as Shia clerics issue fatwas enjoining the faithful everywhere to rise up and repulse the "infidels", as Islamic Jihad sees an opportunity to spread its twisted creed of horror and rejection, as Israel`s defence force gives handy tips to American commanders about how to attack and occupy Arab communities, and as George Bush stands up in Philadelphia and mouths crass platitudes about liberating Iraq even as his bombs rain down, little wonder that the Arab street cries out for vengeance. A wonder, in this context, that retaliatory terrorist attacks on western civilian targets have not yet begun.

This steady radicalisation of Muslim opinion, this broadening polarisation and alienation of the Arab and western spheres is exactly what Tony Blair and others in Europe strove to prevent when the US "war on terror" was launched after September 11. Pro-western, so-called moderate Arab regimes also greatly fear what may yet ensue, not least Saudi Arabia. Egypt`s president, Hosni Mubarak, glumly predicts the war will produce "100 Bin Ladens". He may well be right. The US could not find a clear link between Iraq and al-Qaida. Now by its own woeful blunderings, it is creating one.

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Es gibt doch immer eine Lösung: Subcontractor

Posted on Wed, Apr. 02, 2003

Cheney`s former firm wants Iraq work only as secondary contractor
LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney`s former company is interested in Iraq reconstruction work, but declined to bid for a primary contract under a State Department procedure open to only a few experienced firms.

Halliburton Co. said its KBR subsidiary "remains a potential subcontractor for this important work." Since secondary contractors do not have to submit bids, the Houston-based company bypassed a system that became controversial after revelations that the main contenders made substantial political donations - mostly to Republicans.

Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton from 1995-2000. Officials of the Houston-based company would not say whether the decision not to bid was related to questions of favoritism.

Subcontractors are chosen by the winning bidders, although State`s Agency for International Development would be aware of the companies chosen.

The head of USAID, as the agency is known, has defended the expedited procedure as the only way to begin reconstruction as soon as the fighting in Iraq ends.

The KBR subsidiary (Kellogg, Brown & Root) already has business in Iraq under a previous Defense Department contract to extinguish oil well fires. The company hired subcontractors Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. and Wild Well Control Inc., both also from Houston, to handle the firefighting work.

Contract controversy began before the fighting started, when USAID sent a detailed "request for proposals" to a handful of companies for construction work that that could total up to $600 million over 21 months. The construction contract is one of eight solicitations for work in postwar Iraq.

Agency officials said they were prohibited by law from identifying the invited firms, but The Wall Street Journal said they included KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary; Bechtel Group Inc.; Parsons Corp.; Louis Berger Group and Fluor Corp., two companies that have joined together for this effort, and Washington Group International.

The Center for Responsive Politics, an organization that tracks political donations, said the companies and individuals associated with them have made $3.5 million in contributions from 1999 to 2000, with two-thirds going to Republicans.

Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explain the selection of KBR for the oil fires contract.

"The only rationale offered ... is that the contract work involves the implementation of a contingency plan for extinguishing oil well fires," Waxman wrote the Corps. "It is not clear, however, whether any other companies were asked to submit similar plans."

Bathsheba Crocker, who works on Iraq reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "If you separate out the Cheney issue, it makes a lot of sense" to choose a firm with postwar reconstruction experience. "But at the same time, you can`t separate out the Cheney issue as a political matter."

Andrew Natsios, the USAID administrator, has defended the fast-track contracting system that is designed to circumvent a normal bidding process that takes six months. He said speed was essential to rebuild deteriorated schools, water systems, hospitals and other buildings, and the invited bidders already possessed the necessary security clearances.

In a column Monday in USA Today, Natsios denied any cronyism or favoritism.

"If you need a surgeon, a lawn service, a real estate agent or a college, you seek out the names with the reputation for quality and the ability to get the job done," he wrote.

The multinational firms have handled reconstruction projects after conflicts in Bosnia and Haiti, Natsios said.

"We want to quickly show the world, especially Muslim countries, that we care about the Iraqi people and are ready to use our tax dollars to improve their lives," Natsios said.

He also addressed a budding controversy over whether the United States would monopolize the reconstruction work.

"Up to 50 percent of the work may be subcontracted to U.S. and foreign firms," he said.

The role of non-U.S. firms in rebuilding Iraq has generated its own controversy.

President Bush and others in his administration believe there should be a U.S.-run military and administrative transition toward democracy.

France and Russia are championing a U.N. role, and the French - worried they could be shut out of postwar business deals - are drawing up plans to win their firms some of the reconstruction business.

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Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair, Straw entry banned to Church of Nativity



BETHLEHEM, April 01 (Online): The Church of Nativity, widely believed to be the birth-place of Jesus Christ, decided to ban entry each of the US President George Bush, his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw the privilege of visiting this sacred place, which is one of the holiest Christian shrines.

The move came in protest of "the aggressive war these leaders have waged against Iraq," top Clergy of the church said.

The Church Parishioner Father Panaritius made the decision public at a massive protest demonstration organized by Orthodox institutions in front of the Church of Nativity.

"They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever," the parishioner said.

End.

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Texas: Schaf ja, Mann nein. Deshalb Cattle Country.

Is Sodomy Patriotic?
Where naughty gay sex in Texas meets the rigid U.S. Supreme Court. Hide the children
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/



And then there`s the one about the surly Bush-lovin` U.S. Supreme Court, soon to be deciding whether a gay Texas couple violated that state`s law by having consensual homosexual sex in the privacy of their own home without first taking the necessary precaution of moving the hell away from homophobic big-haired gul-dang panty-bunched Texas in the first place.

Or at least hanging some blackout curtains and barricading their front door with iron bars against homophobic neighbors and lawmakers and Bible-groping pro-family Texas zealots who apparently still think good sex means a bottle of Jim Beam and 30 seconds with a belt sander.

What, too harsh? Let`s look. Texas is one of 14 -- count `em, 14 (down from 25 not so long ago) -- states that still have anti-sodomy laws on the books, four of which (like Texas) specify homosexual acts in particular, laws that make it a crime -- often a felony -- for gay couples to engage in oral or anal sex.

Anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, because it`s just wrong, an abomination against God and beer and sports and whatever, big scary threat to marriage and family values and the sanctity of "Touched By an Angel" reruns. Or something.

Here`s the rub: As recently as 1986, the Supremes, to much derision and general scorn, upheld an older, 1976 ban on sodomy in Texas, thus making it a crime to have consensual anal or oral sex with your same-sex lover, but not with your hetero partner. Or with an animal. It`s true. Sheep: legal. Gay lover: illegal. Now you know why they call it cattle country.

The current case, Lawrence and Garner vs. Texas, could reverse that inane 1986 decision. Maybe.

Lest we begin to think we are the land of the free and home of the libidinously brave. Lest we begin to think our sexually bewildered nation doesn`t still harbor elements of snarling puritanical fundamentalist thinking, not really all that different in tone and pitch and implied hatred than, oh, say, Iraq. Or Saudi Arabia. Or the Taliban. You don`t think so? Look again.

After all, there is a fine line between a Taliban "freedom fighter" beating a woman for displaying an ankle in public and a macho frat guy in Arkansas who would crush the skull of a gay man who accidentally flirted with him in a bar.

Fine line between the Islamic zealots who want the world purged of the "Great Satan" and the innumerable Bible zealots in the flyover states who wish everyone in San Francisco if not the entire state of California would all be gassed by terrorists and get AIDS and die. And those are the polite e-mails.

Naturally, as with anything related to sexual mores and uptight religion in the U.S., irony and hypocrisy are rampant. The term "sodomy" itself, for one thing, has gone through as many definitions as a Texas Republican has trophy wives.

"Sodomy" has, at various times, meant everything from mutual masturbation to sex in the wrong position to bestiality, sex without intent to procreate or just plain ol` hetero sex between a man and a woman.

Basically, "sodomy" has been used to refer to just about any sexual act, save maybe "the GOP Special," a.k.a. three grunting minutes in the missionary position right before NASCAR. The negative homophobic connotation to the term is relatively new, actually, and what with the Catholic Church going one ugly step further and tossing priests and young boys into the definition`s mix, well, good ol` sodomy may never recover.

Which might seem to bode ill for San Francisco and other sexually progressive and enthusiastic cities, places where happy consensual sodomy not only isn`t a crime, it`s an art form, a cultural revolution, a point of pride.

Hell, you can take classes. You can attend workshops and buy wondrous insertable silicone thingies and pluglike doodads at friendly boutiques and no one blinks an eye just don`t tell your mother. Sodomy here isn`t just an act, it`s a way of life. Our motto: Keep sodomy free, or the terrorists win.

Of course, we`re all going to Hell. Alas.

Do we even need to mention that each and every one of those 14 anti-sodomy states voted for Bush? Or that these are the states that tend to be the most homogeneous, the least diverse, the least culturally dynamic? Pretty much a given.

But let`s be even clearer: There is a very direct correlation between those who find unusual or otherwise naughty or kinky or open or delicious sexual practices to be a direct insult to a whiny uptight God and/or family values, and the current aggro attitudes of a nation at war.

To put it another way, those who are staunchly pro-war and pro-Bush and pro-guns and pro-violence and anti-outsider tend to be desperately fearful of the different, the openly sexual, the carnally adventurous. This is, after all, the basis of the conservative platform. Gays are an abomination. Women and minorities in their place. Don`t ask, don`t tell. Nothing new there.

But as we storm into a poor, repressed nation in the name of justice and power and our smirking inarticulate president`s born-again God, killing hundreds (soon to be thousands) of Iraqis in the process, it`s good to be reminded just what sort of values we are, ostensibly, fighting to inflict upon the world.

Is now a good time to mention how many psychologists and sex therapists believe that a great many of the world`s ills, including war, are in part fueled by thwarted or otherwise repressed sexual desires among its manly leaders?

Dictators and warmongers and fear suckers and Dick Cheney -- it is safe to say they turn to a love of power and money and ego strutting because of sexual rejection and lack of virility and decent orgasm? Too much of a stretch to point out how many of the most violent, turbulent or unstable nations in the world tend to be the most sexually repressed? Think about it.

The good news is, the few states that do still have sodomy laws on the books rarely, if ever, enforce them. Despite Ashcroft`s famous bilious homophobia and ShrubCo`s anti-choicism and the general terrified puling of God-fearing outlets like the fun-lovin` Family Resource Council, such blatantly discriminatory laws are slowly vanishing, becoming less and less relevant. No one in recent memory, for example, has received the maximum 20-year prison sentence for committing gay fellatio in Oklahoma. Otherwise, they`d have no football teams.

But what isn`t disappearing quite so fast is the hatred, the misinfo and the mind-set that inspire such laws in the first place. No matter which way the Supremes decide in the Texas case, the fact remains that we reside nowhere near the moral polar opposite of our fundamentalist enemies. In fact, with the Bush/Ashcroft/Cheney axis of cultural evil, we remain much more similar to our foes than we may want to believe.

All of which makes the ultimate irony even more, well, ironic. The truism remains: Those who fear and tremble and fret and clutch their Bibles and their ideologies the most when sodomy is mentioned are the very ones who could, of course, most benefit from it. As the saying goes, it`s not just a punch line, it`s a fact.


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Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

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Can Bush Handle Panel’s Questions?
by Joe Conason



The people in charge of the United States government, up to and including the President, are firm believers in the concept of accountability. So they always say, and there is no reason to doubt them—as long as someone else is being held accountable. How our leaders feel about being held accountable themselves has been illustrated once more, as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States prepared for its first public hearings a few blocks from Ground Zero.

For more than a year, the Bush White House resisted and sabotaged the work of the 9/11 commission, as it is more commonly known. Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have all warned members of Congress against an independent investigation, claiming that its work would interfere with the war on terrorism. When that argument crumbled, and Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman pushed a commission into existence, the President appointed Henry Kissinger, the dean of deception, as its chair. And ever since public outrage forced Mr. Kissinger to step aside last summer, the administration has sought to deprive the commission of the money needed to complete its mission.

Of course, White House spokesmen have insisted all along that the President supports the commission. They said that even as the paltry $3 million provided for it dwindled away, and even as their budget negotiators nickel-and-dimed the commission last week over its tiny portion of the administration’s $75 billion supplemental budget request.

Having approved a swift appropriation of $50 million to investigate the Columbia shuttle disaster, the White House turned down the request by 9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean for an additional $11 million. Instead, the former New Jersey governor, a loyal Bush Republican, was forced to accept only $9 million. He didn’t deserve that humiliation, which only casts additional doubt on the administration’s commitment to the truth.

It offends decency that the Republicans, who were only too happy to spend upward of $30 million investigating Whitewater, suddenly pull the purse strings tight for a probe into the deaths of 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the planes hijacked by Al Qaeda. (These are the same Republicans telling us not to worry too much about the yawning federal deficit.)

Against that discouraging backdrop, representatives of the bereaved families who have fought to learn the full story behind the Sept. 11 attacks made themselves heard at the old Custom House in Bowling Green on March 31. Along with a few of the police officers and firefighters who suffered horrendously that day, the family members recounted some of the many stories of loss and survival now so familiar to us. Amid the gasps and tears, they also brought another message to the commissioners: resist the cover-up.

Specifically, the family members and the broader public want to know who was responsible for the intelligence and bureaucratic errors that enabled the terrorists to strike—and they want those officials held accountable. Said the courageous Stephen Push, whose wife died on the plane that hit the Pentagon and who speaks for the Families of Sept. 11: "I think this commission should point fingers. I’m not suggesting that you find scapegoats, but there were people—people in responsible positions—who failed us."

To Mr. Kean’s credit, he didn’t attempt to contradict that unvarnished insight. "There is no doubt that government failed to do its job," he acknowledged. The problem that he and his fellow commissioners now confront is the same problem that almost prevented them from convening their first hearing. "Government" is not just an abstraction, but a concrete entity composed of individuals with personal and partisan interests at stake in this investigation’s outcome. At the top sit the President and his advisers, on whose watch this disaster occurred.

From the first days following the attacks, even as politicians of both parties rallied behind President Bush, conservative propaganda has tried to focus blame for the terror assault’s success on his predecessor. That alibi fit perfectly with the continuing Clinton obsession of the Republican right, whose motives are suspect. Still, there were surely mistakes that should be laid to the Clinton administration, particularly with regard to airline-security measures that were recommended by former Vice President Al Gore and never implemented.

But there is also much to be explored about the actions—and inaction—of the Bush administration during the nine months that led up to Sept. 11. And there is much to be explained by the President, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice and other officials about the severe warnings they ignored while pursuing other agendas.

While Mr. Kean has few visible qualifications for the duty he has undertaken, other members of the commission possess the experience and skills needed to uncover the truth. Should they fail, all of them will indeed be held accountable. That is what those sad, angry families showed up to tell them.

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: [e-mail].

back to top
This column ran on page 5 in the 4/7/2003 edition of The New York Observer.


Joe Conason is the author of
The Hunting of the President:
The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton

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Freedom under attack
By Sally T. Grant

April 2, 2003

THROUGHOUT OUR history, the government has chosen to suppress individual liberties whenever it wages war.
From the government`s perspective, free speech and open inquiry are unfriendly companions to war because they are used by dissenters to challenge the government`s use of violence as its preferred instrument of foreign policy.

During the Civil War, for example, President Lincoln arrested 13,000 draft resisters and Southern sympathizers in open defiance of a Supreme Court ruling while several pro-Southern newspapers were shut down and their editors jailed.

World War I brought Woodrow Wilson`s use of the Espionage and Sedition Acts to censor the foreign-language press and bar it from publishing anti-war sentiments. About 2,000 people were prosecuted under the act, including Charles Schenck, who served 10 years in prison for distributing pamphlets claiming that the military draft was illegal.

Cold War anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s saw Americans jailed simply for studying the works of Marx and Lenin.

And now, during these troubled times, we see history repeating itself. Well before President Bush moved troops into Iraq, his administration chose fear as its political currency.

After Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft warned against questioning his unprecedented moves to expand his power, telling a Senate committee, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer infamously warned Americans to "watch what they say."

The warnings intensified as Mr. Bush embarked on war, with Republican leaders accusing Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of virtual treason for suggesting that war represented a presidential failure of diplomacy.

Though history is repeating itself today, this time it is doing so with a new and more dangerous twist: Many of the government`s First Amendment violations are deliberately hidden from the public. Largely unreported in the press, these infringements are happening with a "velvet glove" rather than with the billy clubbing of war protesters that we saw in the 1960s.

Dissent has been squelched under the USA Patriot Act, which overrides existing privacy laws to authorize FBI visits to libraries and bookstores to investigate the reading habits of citizens, while the librarians and bookstore owners are barred from revealing the search.

Robust debate has been stifled whenever the government uses its new, unprecedented powers to monitor confidential attorney-client conversations, conduct secret military tribunals for accused terrorists, tap phones, read private e-mail and investigate individuals` medical and financial records.

Mr. Ashcroft chilled speech when he discarded long-standing restrictions on domestic spying by law enforcement so that now the FBI can freely infiltrate mosques, churches and synagogues, even if it has no evidence that a crime might be committed -- practices that CBS 60 Minutes` Andy Rooney has warned are "how dictatorships get started."

When dissent is suppressed, this country suffers an immeasurable loss. Public expression of sincere and deeply felt disagreement with government policies is one of the highest forms of patriotism and the lifeblood of a democracy.

So the time has come for freedom-loving Americans to pick up the torch. The ACLU, which was founded during World War I to defend citizens facing deportation for opposing that war, is enlisting volunteer attorneys to represent political dissenters. In the noblest tradition of the profession, these lawyers will defend the free speech rights of even those with whom they disagree. The Constitution will be their client.

As they pick up the torch, they can take heart from an unlikely source -- a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued during the dark days of World War II. Penned by Justice Robert Jackson, it upheld the right of Jehovah`s Witness children not to salute the flag on religious grounds and affirmed the role of dissent in our democracy.

"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much," said the court. "That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of [freedom`s] substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."


Sally T. Grant is the president of the Board of Governors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.



Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

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Hotel in Basra, in dem sich das Büro von al-Dschasira befindet, wurde beschossen

Florian Rötzer 02.04.2003
Wird das Problem des störenden Senders wieder nach der schon in Afghanistan vom US-Militär praktizierten Methode gelöst?

Wie schon während des Afghanistan-Krieges, als al-Dschasira als einziger Sender in Kabul eine Vertretung hatte und Bilder von Bombardierungen, aber auch Videos mit Bin Laden senden konnte, stieß der Sender aus Katar auch im Irak-Krieg durch seine Berichterstattung auf Kritik seitens der US-Regierung. Und möglicherweise hat man nun das Problem wieder mit derselben Methode zu lösen gesucht, wie man auch sonst politische Probleme angeht: militärisch.


Im Afghanistan-Krieg verirrte sich eine amerikanische Präzisionsbombe und traf ausgerechnet das Büro von al-Dschasira in Kabul. Der Sender hatte nicht nur Bilder von amerikanischen und britischen Kriegsgefangenen gesendet, was die Militärs der Alliierten gar nicht mochten ( Krieg der Bilder), die aber ungeniert zulassen, dass wie heute Bilder von irakischen Gefangenen um die Welt gehen, die gezwungen werden, sich nackt auszuziehen. Die Reporter von al-Dschasira, die sich in Basra aufhielten, hatten auch schnell eine der ersten Propagandalügen der Alliierten widerlegt, dass in Basra ein Aufstand stattfinden soll ( Fallen der Propaganda). Und dann wurden auch noch schreckliche Bilder von verletzten und getöteten Erwachsenen und Kindern gezeigt, die den Bombardements zum Opfer fielen.

So macht man sich nicht beliebt und erntet man den Vorwurf, ein Sprachrohr des irakischen Regimes zu sein. Der Korrespondent des Senders wurde aus der Börse in New York ausgeschlossen, dann folgte auch noch ein offenbar gut angelegter Angriff auf die arabische und die eben erst eröffnete englischsprachige Website, die tageweise nicht mehr erreichbar waren. So wurde verhindert, wer dies auch immer gemacht haben mag, dass die Menschen aus aller Welt andere Informationen aus einem unterschiedlichen Blickwinkel erhalten konnten ( Zensur im Internet). Jetzt startet der Sender sicherheitshalber überdies einen SMS-Nachrichtendienst.

Aber das hat alles noch nicht gereicht. Anscheinend wurde jetzt, wie der Sender berichtet, das Hotel, in dem sich die Mitarbeiter von al-Dschasira in Basra aufhielten, heute Vormittag beschossen. Das Hotel sei direkt von der Artillerie der Alliierten mit vier Granaten getroffen worden. Verletzt wurde niemand. Die Mitglieder des Fernsehteams waren die einzigen Gäste im Hotel.

Ein Sprecher des Senders sagte, dass man dem Pentagon alle wichtigen Informationen über seine Reporter mitgeteilt habe, die über den Krieg berichten. Dazu hatten auch die Adressen der Redaktionen in Basra, Mosul und Bagdad gehört. "Es ist nicht klar, ob der Beschuss ausschließlich auf das Sheraton-Hotel gerichtet gewesen ist", sagte ein Mitarbeiter des Senders, der die Situation als "sehr gefährlich" schilderte. Das zumindest ließe auch eine andere Interpretation zu.

Auch in Afghanistan waren die US-Militärs über den Ort des Redaktionsbüros informiert. Vermutlich wird man auch jetzt wieder wie bei anderen Bombardierungen sagen, bei denen es zivile Opfer gegeben hat, dass man dem Vorfall nachgehe, aber nichts Genaues wisse. Und dabei dürfte es auch erfahrungsgemäß bleiben. Als in Bagdad beispielsweise vor kurzem ein Markt bombardiert worden war, reagierte man im US-Hauptkommando so, dass man von einer Bombardierung nichts wisse und dies vermutlich irakische Luftabwehrraketen gewesen seien ( Die andere Seite). Heute wurde eine Geburtsklinik in Bagdad getroffen. Es soll wieder Tote und Verletzte gegeben haben. Das Zentralkommando in Doha gab die übliche Mitteilung an die Presse:


"US Central Command is continuing its investigation into an allegation that Coalition aircraft bombed a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad, Iraq earlier today. Central Command officials are reviewing targeting data for Coalition air missions around the time of the alleged incident. Additional information will be released as it becomes available. Coalition forces target only legitimate military targets and go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian facilities."


Dass nur "legitime militärische Ziele" angegriffen werden, dürfte mit jeder Bombe, die - wie immer auch - daneben geht, stärker bezweifelt werden. Auch ansonsten ist der Umgang mit Journalisten auf der Seite der Alliierten nicht so ganz viel anders als auf der des irakischen Regimes, von dem man nichts anderes erwartet. Die Organisation Reporter ohne Grenzen rügt den Umgang der alliierten Truppen mit den Medienvertretern:




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Viele Journalisten sind unter Beschuss geraten, andere wurden festgenommen und mehrere Stunden lang verhört, und manche wurden von den Koalitionstruppen misshandelt, geschlagen und gedemütigt. Überdies wurde das Informationsministerium zweimal bombardiert, obwohl sich in ihm, wie jeder weiß, die Büros internationaler Medien befinden.
Robert Ménard, Generalsekretär der Reporter ohne Grenzen

Besonders über das Verhalten gegenüber den nicht-eingebetteten Journalisten zeigte sich Ménard besorgt und forderte das Militär zu einer internen Untersuchung auf. Er verwies u.a. auf den Fall der Gefangennahme von zwei israelischen und zwei portugiesischen Journalisten am 25. März. Obgleich sie Presseausweise mit sich trugen, wurden sie bedroht, misshandelt und 36 Stunden festgehalten.

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Englands Kommentaroren sind sehr besorgt um den Gesundheitszustand des MR. BLAIR. Ist das eigentlich ansteckend. Der Zustand von Mr. Bush soll auch besorgniserregend sein.
J.

Is the prime minister losing his marbles?
Catherine Bennett
Thursday April 3, 2003
The Guardian

In a bold advance on the now familiar "inside the mind of" format, the political commentator Matthew Parris this week asked "whether Tony Blair may now have become, in a serious sense of that word, unhinged".

Although, in orthodox psychiatric circles at least, the word unhinged has yet to be allocated any "serious sense", Mr Parris makes a fairly persuasive case. The prime minister, he points out, is inconsistent. He has acquired a peculiar, "slightly cracked" demeanour. He alludes to secret sources of information. He is wild-eyed. He engages, with deranged optimism, in projects that are manifestly doomed. Etc. (For some reason there is no mention of the clinching symptom: he is prosecuting a war that Mr Parris considers stupid.)

And yet, as the late Roy Porter pertinently asked in his anthology of madness, "What is reason? What is madness? Where lie the dividing lines? And who can discern and police them?" Or to put it another way; you don`t have to be mad to work in Downing Street, but it helps.

A psychiatrist friend warns me that before anyone moves to get Blair sectioned, it might be wise to get a second opinion from someone trained to administer a test called the "mini mental state examination" (MMSA). Naturally, Blair`s procedure would require one or two modifications. Instead of asking him to name the prime minister (to establish healthy "orientation"), for instance, one might want to ask him something more demanding, such as the identity of one of his backbenchers. (Blair`s career also rules out quite a few routine supplementaries, such as "Are there people you don`t know who are talking about you?" In normal circumstances an affirmative answer is considered quite worrying.)

Assuming Blair can spell "world" backwards, name a pen and a watch, write a simple sentence, count backwards in sevens and follow a three-stage command, he is likely to sail through the rest of his examination, but one senses that this may not be enough to reassure those who share Mr Parris`s fears that their premier is a dangerous lunatic. Obviously you could get full marks in the MMSA and still be quite mad. The five-minute test does not begin to cover the more bizarre aspects of Blair`s behaviour, from his recent decision to dress entirely in purple, to the question of his incoherent behaviour. How can this career European have exiled himself from Europe? How can this devoutly observant would-be Catholic countenance a war denounced by his adopted spiritual leader? Why does the man who has offered affecting funerary tributes to Princess Margaret and Frank Sinatra not meet the coffins of young servicemen whom he sent to their deaths?

Looking through Porter`s Faber anthology, the first explanation to suggest itself is "the frequent and immoderate use of tea", as William Pargeter described it in 1792. As everybody knows, mugs of tea are to Blair as essential a prop as erect machine guns are to Iraqi information officers. And tea, Pargeter explains, is a dire and "inflammatory" substance, "every active instrument of health is mutilated and maimed - our bodies become enervated - our intellectual faculties impaired, and the date of life abridged ..."

On reflection, though, Blair would also have been drinking a lot of tea in the days when he promised to lead us to the heart of Europe. For the same reason, we can probably rule out any link between Blair`s current difficulties and his long-standing religious enthusiasm.

Which leaves us with multiple personality disorder: a syndrome identified towards the end of the 19th century. In The Dissociation of Personality: The Hunt for the Real Miss Beauchamp (1978), Morton Prince related how this sufferer "may change her personality from time to time, often from hour to hour, and with each change her character becomes transformed and her memories altered". It followed that the patient "at one moment says and does and plans and arranges something to which, a short time before, she most strongly objected, indulges tastes which a moment before would have been abhorrent to her ideals, and undoes or destroys what she had just laboriously planned and arranged". If Blair is, as Mr Parris suggests, "unhinged" to a similarly disabling degree, there are some compensations. Unlike the gullible, cynical and incompetent, insane people are not held responsible for their actions.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers

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Pentagon plans for worst nightmare

Urban warfare Lessons of other battles, from Hue to Mogadishu, do not bode well for street fighting in Baghdad

Oliver Burkeman in Washington, Stuart Millar, and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Thursday April 3, 2003
The Guardian

American and British military tacticians rarely tire of invoking the name of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher of war, credited with laying the groundwork for everything from "decapitation strikes" to the policy of "shock and awe". But as coalition troops push north for an assault on Baghdad, through stubborn opposition from the most highly trained of Saddam Hussein`s fighters, it is another aphorism of Sun Tzu`s that may be ringing in the ears of their commanders. "The worst policy," he wrote, brooking no argument, "is to attack cities."
There is nothing encouraging about the list of bloody, high-casualty urban entanglements that strategists on both sides of the Atlantic have been scrutinising for lessons they might apply if drawn into a street-by-street fight for the Iraqi capital. From Stalingrad, Manila and Seoul to Beirut, Grozny and Mogadishu, the history of what the US marines call Mout - military operations on urbanised terrain, known to the British as Fibua, for fighting in built-up areas - is one of massive civilian and military casualties with incendiary effects on public opinion back home.

The Pentagon`s gravest nightmare in Baghdad would be what is coming to be known as a "mega-Mogadishu", hundreds of times worse than in 1993, when rebel fighters triumphantly dragged the corpses of American servicemen through the Somali capital, prompting a humiliating US withdrawal. Its own bible on the topic, the 150-page doctrine for joint urban operations, published in September, reminds readers of the bloody, drawn-out battle for the central Vietnamese city of Hue in 1968 which resulted, after four weeks, in the US seizing control of just seven city blocks. And there are troubling reminders of conflicts in Beirut and Lebanon, where battling forces sometimes fought room-by-room for control of individual hotels and apartment blocks.

"Nearly all operations in urban areas take significantly longer than expected," the doctrine warns. In training exercises in the swamps of Louisiana, where the marines have built a mock city to practice urban combat, soldiers playing the enemy routinely "kill" or "injure" 60% of the invading force.

"The Iraqis have chosen to try to fight in an urban area because they can - it`s the one area where our advantages are somewhat negated," said Colonel Gary Anderson, a retired US marine who fought in Somalia and has trained soldiers for urban combat.

The narrow streets of Baghdad would render useless much of the advanced technology championed by Donald Rumsfeld, while bringing into sharp focus the coalition`s political need to avoid major civilian casualties. It would be, as one US colonel put it, like a knife fight in a phone booth.

The biggest advantage the Iraqi forces will have is a relatively intimate knowledge of the "unseen battlefield" inside homes and buildings, on rooftops and beneath the streets. "It`s no secret that our intelligence-gathering capabilities are very limited [in Baghdad]," said Colonel Randy Gangle, who, as director of the Centre for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, a marines thinktank, has devised much of the forces` urban training. To attempt to counter this, marines in Baghdad are expected to deploy the Dragon Eye, a hand-launched miniature airplane with a 45in wingspan that can peer around corners.

American strategists freely acknowledge that they are borrowing much of their thinking this time round from the British, with the experience of three decades in Northern Ireland and 10 years of peacekeeping from the Balkans to Africa.

The British model views the city not as single military objective, but as a series of bite-sized chunks, perhaps as small as a single building or a street. After the first chunk is taken, forces move in to consolidate their control, setting up strongholds used as launchpads for the attack on the next chunk. At the same time, it is essential to build relationships with the local population in the chunks already taken.

"It`s very much like viewing the city as a chessboard," said Garth Whitty, a retired lieutenant-colonel and now a defence analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "You move into one square, you hold it and you use it as a base to move on to the next square. You have to be patient."

Col Gangle said gathering intelligence to counter the Iraqi regime`s tactic of basing military command points among civilians was already happening in Iraq. "The key is starting to develop intelligence from the population - patrols can go in, and clan destinely talk with people and say, `We don`t want you to expose yourselves, but we do want you to tell us who the bad guys are, and we`ll go deal with them.` As people begin to realise that they can provide information without repercussion, the effect will grow exponentially. It`s not this room-by-room, building-clearing thing that we used to do."

The benefits of firepower are limited: blasting buildings with artillery or air strikes may take out any enemy positions, but it also creates debris which has to be negotiated and which offers cover for enemy forces. This means urban warfare is infantry-intensive. "It`s rifles and bayonets stuff," one senior British trainer said. Troops "get tired fighting at this sort of intensity. It`s not just physically exhausting, it`s mentally exhausting."

In Iraq, there will be one major difference from previous urban warfare situations: the stated objective of minimising civilian casualties. "You have immediately changed the rules to your disadvantage because you have to be more selective about targets but also you subject your people to greater danger," Mr Whitty said.

The controversial alteration to US rules of engagement seen outside the cities of Iraq - where troops are cleared to fire on approaching civilians if they cannot make them halt and fear a suicide attack - would be much more fraught inside Baghdad. "It`s one thing to have a defensive position and say, `You may not come any closer,`" said Col Gangle, "but it`s a different scenario when you`re patrolling a city and people are coming into close contact all the time."

In this chaos, it will be virtually impossible for commanders to keep track of everything going on on the ground, so the British approach is to devolve command to the lowest possible level. Tactical decisions on the ground will be taken by the patrol commanders, usually corporals or lance corporals. "The principle is intent," Col Gangle said. "You expect, even if you lose contact, your subordinates to continue to operate within your intent."

But some British military experts argue that the Americans may be less prepared for this kind of structure, since their training focuses on implementing a gameplan decided by senior officers.

"The British troops will have got their heads around what is expected of them before they hit the ground," said John MacKinlay, a former senior British officer and now a research fellow at Kings College`s centre for war studies. "The American GI, by contrast, will have been brought up in a total war machine."

The disastrous consequences of getting it wrong were illustrated in the Russian military`s attempts to take the city of Grozny in 1994 and 2000.

General Alexander Vladimirov, vice-president of the Association of Military Experts and an infantry specialist, said Russian experiences during Grozny`s first assault in December 1994 showed how vital it was to properly reconnoitre the city before an assault, using scale models based on satellite photographs. "Our reconnaissance was absolutely ineffective in Grozny in 1994," he said. "We did not work out where the enemy had placed the snipers, machine guns and RPGs. I think the same thing will apply to Baghdad." The failed first operation against Grozny led to its carpet bombing in January 1995.

For the second siege, five years later, a humanitarian corridor was left open so the population could flee. "We warned them to get out," said Gen Vladimirov, and "honestly told them we would flatten the city. We waited for a long time."

And yet despite extensive planning by the Russian army, based on their past mistakes, Russian assault groups were still cut to pieces as they entered Grozny in 2000 by rebels targeting their tank columns, picking off vehicles one by one.

· Babylon, 5th century BC

According to Greek historian Herodotus, Persian forces under their king Cyrus captured Babylon in 539BC by diverting the Euphrates and entering the city`s 350ft-high walls through the river bed while its inhabitants were busy holding a festival.

Seventeen years later, the Persian king Darius required a more dramatic ploy to retake Babylon when its inhabitants rebelled against his rule. A Persian called Zophyrus came up with a drastic plan. After cutting off his own ears and nose and lacerating his body, he went to the Babylonians and told them Darius was responsible for his injuries, then volunteered to help them defend the city.

With Zophyrus` help the Babylonians repelled assaults on three of the city`s five gates. But this was all part of the ploy to make them trust him. When the real Persian assault was launched on the fourth and fifth gates, Zophyrus let Darius`s forces in and the city was taken.

· Stalingrad, 1942

After a month of intense fighting in September 1942, the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army seized control of 90% of Stalingrad. But on a frontline on the banks of the Volga, the defence of the city was fierce, with Red Army troops and civilians fighting from fortress-like concrete buildings.

While the Germans were bogged down the Soviets secretly built up forces around their flanks. In November a counteroffensive was launched which, within five days, sealed off the Germans inside the city. By the time the 6th Army surrendered on January 31 1943, 200,000 of its number had been killed.

· Berlin, 1945

More than 70,000 Red Army soldiers were killed in the final battle for Berlin, but the 90,000 defenders and the civilian population bore the brunt of the horror.

After the Wehrmacht`s 9th Army was massacred in a forest south of Berlin as it retreated to defend the capital, more than 1 million Red Army soldiers, equipped with 6,000 tanks and 40,000 artillery pieces, punched their way into the city. Though the Germans put up resistance using bazookas against the vulnerable tanks, the result was a foregone conclusion.

On April 30, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, and by May 2 the Reichstag had fallen and Berlin surrendered.

· Hue, Vietnam, 1968

The North Vietnamese army captured Hue, 45 miles south of the demilitarised zone, in a surprise attack during the Tet offensive in January 1968. As the former imperial capital, the city was of enormous cultural significance.

This, and the city`s South Vietnamese population, made the Americans reluctant to bombard the North Vietnamese positions. In their bid to retake the city, the US became embroiled in some of the most intense street fighting of the war. After three weeks, air strikes and artillery shelling were eventually used to repel the North Vietnamese force, but not before an estimated 10,000 people had been killed and many of the city`s historic buildings destroyed.

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April 3, 2003
The Best Way Into Baghdad
By YAGIL HENKIN


ERUSALEM — With American forces beginning their assault on Baghdad, their commanders would do well to take a close look at the hard-learned lessons of Israel`s experience with urban combat.

Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli antiterrorist strike last spring, generated plenty of controversy, but it also supplies a good model for military tactics. After a series of Palestinian suicide bombings, the Israel Defense Forces entered several densely populated West Bank cities, including Nablus and Jenin. Within just a week, Israel gained control of each of them.

Twenty-nine Israeli soldiers were killed in these battles, all but six of them in the battle for the Jenin refugee camp. Although the number of Palestinian deaths is, of course, hotly debated, the Israeli estimate is 132 killed in Nablus and Jenin. Compared with casualty figures from urban combat in recent years — such as the fighting in Chechnya, where Russia`s army lost at least 1,500 soldiers during its first assault on Grozny — these numbers are astonishingly low.

Urban combat is the most difficult type of offensive warfare, because defensive troops have advantages that can offset an attacker`s superior force and technology. Not only are the defenders familiar with the terrain, they often have time to set up mines, position snipers and organize ambushes. And while the advancing ground troops are supported by tanks and armored personnel carriers, the defending army can neutralize air and artillery support by "hugging" the advancing troops — engaging them at close range, which increases their risk of casualties from so-called friendly fire.

In addition, invading soldiers must maintain a particularly high level of awareness: not only can snipers and other attackers engage them from the front, back or side, but they may also hide on the upper floors or roofs of buildings occupied by civilians, or even in the sewers below. The inevitable smoke and fire make finding targets that much harder: every shot can hit a civilian, and every mortar shell destroys someone`s home.

This confusion is all the greater when the defending forces exploit the civilian population. As American troops discovered in Umm Qasr and Nasiriya, Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries do not hesitate to dress like civilians and mix with the population. Moreover, to create a pretext to denounce American "aggression," they shot from behind residents, then waited for American troops to return fire.

While air power and precision-guided munitions might seem to be the logical alternative to the chaos of urban combat, they are rarely sufficient to win a war. You can obliterate the enemy from above, but you can`t hold the ground without foot soldiers and heavy armor. Thus an American victory requires ground troops to enter Baghdad, where they will encounter first-hand the complicated conditions of the urban battlefield. Nevertheless, as the Israeli experience in the West Bank shows, the obstacles need not be insurmountable.

In Nablus, the Israeli Defense Force achieved its most remarkable success — taking control of the city`s casbah, a densely populated maze of narrow alleys and old stone buildings — in just a few days. Israeli forces used no artillery, and despite estimates predicting dozens of casualties, sustained just four.

The key to success was a sort of "planned unpredictability." Instead of using conventional linear tactics — taking the outskirts of the town first, then systematically clearing every house — Israeli forces simultaneously attacked from many directions. They used a technique known in military jargon as swarming, in which many small units, moving in zigzag patterns and other seemingly random formations, infiltrate to the middle of the city and attack from the inside out. Units constantly disappeared, only to re-appear in completely different places, attacking from new angles that kept the defenders disoriented and unable to dig in.

The swarming tactic, of course, isn`t a magic cure for the problems associated with urban combat. It is a nightmare for the staff officers trying to coordinate the various units, and it is extremely difficult for the fighters themselves to keep abreast of the big picture. Yet American forces, which have more communications technology than even the Israelis, are surely capable of engaging in unconventional fighting tactics. Furthermore, Iraqi forces are not well coordinated and, long out of contact with the outside world and recent military history, would likely be hard pressed to understand what a swarming force is trying to accomplish, let alone confront it.

Israeli experience, as well as Marine Corps studies since 1996 of war games based on urban combat, also shows that most casualties in urban fighting occur when soldiers move along the city streets, exposed to enemy fire. Therefore when Israel took the casbah in Nablus, soldiers moved through holes they cut or blasted in the walls between attached houses. Israeli snipers positioned themselves in the tallest buildings and worked closely with troops at the street level to identify targets and confound their enemies` expectations. As one Palestinian fighter said afterward: "The Israelis were everywhere: behind, on the sides, on the right and on the left. How can you fight that way?"

There are also important lessons to be learned from Israel`s battle in the Jenin refugee camp. That part of the operation made worldwide headlines after the Palestinians gave reports of 500 of their own dead and indiscriminate Israeli destruction — claims that the United Nations has since dismissed. Ironically, it was Israel`s reluctance to storm Jenin in full force, as well as its commitment to protecting Palestinian lives and property at almost any cost, that resulted in more Israeli and Palestinian deaths and more destruction of property than would otherwise have occurred.

In an effort to avoid civilian casualties and bad publicity, Israel refrained at first from using bulldozers and tanks in the camp. Only after 13 of its soldiers were killed in an ambush did the defense forces put bulldozers to widespread use. Since the battle was already under way, however, this was much less precise and far more ruinous than had the Israelis gone into battle full-force from the outset.

American military planners would do well to keep this in mind, even as members of the public and the news media condemn any hint of "excessive" force.

Ultimately, urban combat is always a dirty business, no matter what the weaponry and tactics at an army`s disposal. But as Israel`s experience indicates, with the right tactics, victory can be achieved and casualties minimized.


Yagil Henkin, a military historian, is fulfilling his reserve requirement as a researcher with the Israeli military.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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washingtonpost.com
After the War




Thursday, April 3, 2003; Page A22


THE WEEKEND before the war started, President Bush signed on to a statement with British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledging to "work in close partnership with international institutions, including the United Nations," in postwar Iraq and to seek a Security Council resolution to "endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration." Yet a secretive Pentagon-led group is already far advanced in plans to unilaterally install a postwar regime dominated by Americans and Iraqi exiles -- one that would effectively exclude not only the United Nations but also European and Middle Eastern allies whose support will be essential to stabilizing the country. Even the State Department`s nominees would be shut out by Defense Department leaders who talk of leaping from military rule to an interim Iraqi government in 90 days with the help of the American officials who would run Iraqi ministries. This narrow approach could compound the diplomatic damage of the war and expose the United States and its soldiers to large and unnecessary risks.

Few dispute that a U.S. military administration will be needed immediately after the conflict, and administration officials are right that Iraq should be turned over to Iraqis as quickly as possible. The problem with the Pentagon`s emerging approach is that it would structure this supposedly limited military regime in such a way as to concentrate control over the subsequent political transition in U.S. hands, effectively limiting international participation to providing a nominal blessing or working in a subordinate technical capacity. It would make virtually inevitable an Iraqi transitional government dominated by the small group of exiles long favored by the Pentagon. Some administration officials appear to believe they can impose this scheme over the protests of allies but still count on U.N. humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping contributions that would allow an early withdrawal of most U.S. troops.

The Security Council`s failure to follow through on its own resolutions on Iraq and the irresponsible obstructionism of allies such as France might seem to justify that course. Yet Mr. Bush rightly pledged to seek the repair of alliances and of the United Nations after the war, and the Pentagon`s plan would surely deepen the rifts. Even a parting with Britain could not be ruled out; Mr. Blair has made U.N. involvement in postwar Iraq the centerpiece of his own political strategy. An isolated United States might find little help in feeding or policing Iraq`s 23 million people, while being condemned across the Middle East as an occupying power. The Pentagon`s Iraqi friends could quickly come to be regarded as quislings and puppets. U.S. forces could find themselves the targets of resistance and terrorism, while any hope of postwar progress on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement could disappear.

A better model is readily available. Mr. Blair is proposing that the United Nations convene a conference to decide on the formation of a transitional government -- like the one that led to an Afghan administration after the ouster of the Taliban. The United States inevitably would have a major influence in shaping that administration, just as it did the Afghan regime, but the U.N. umbrella would give the process far greater legitimacy. It would also open the way for international participation in reconstruction and peacekeeping, as in Afghanistan, and allow for U.N. as well as American technical help in rebuilding institutions. It could provide a platform for repairing U.S. relationships with countries such as Germany; even France, which has threatened to obstruct Security Council agreement on a postwar administration, has signaled its willingness to work with the British formula. Mr. Bush said, on that prewar weekend, that he understands "incredible international cooperation" is needed to manage the threats of the 21st century. Postwar Iraq may determine whether the United States regains that cooperation -- or embarks on a dangerous unilateral course.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Für die Dummies und Rummies: Achtung Satire

Bush Gives Iraqis 48 Hours to Dance in Streets
April 1, 2003
By Mike McArdle

New York Times
Bush Gives Iraqis 48 Hours to Dance in Streets
By Alex Byrdman

President Bush, evidently growing impatient with the pace of the Iraqi liberation and the attitude of the Iraqi citizens, has issued a new ultimatum, only this time it`s to the Iraqi people themselves.

"I`m a patient man" said the President at a hastily called news conference, "but there are limits to my patience. We`ve been bombing the daylights out of these people for a more than week and I haven`t seen a single one of them dancing in the streets to celebrate their liberation."

"We have pursued the liberation of Iraq at great cost to America in terms of lives and treasure and as yet the Iraqi people have thus far refused to welcome us in the manner that Richard Perle and William Kristol have assured me that they would. We`ve shocked. We`ve awed. We`ve knocked down their buildings and blown up those little marketplaces that they shop in. We`ve even tried a decapitation. We done the things that all good liberators do and not only have these ungrateful people refused to overthrow Saddam they haven`t danced, they haven`t put any rose petals in the streets. Nothing. In fact they`ve even been shooting back at us and thus further delaying the hour of their liberation. I don`t know what else we could have done to win these people over but the time for patience is running out. I`m tired of trying to win the hearts and minds of people who refuse to see that a ten year occupation by the infidel is a good deal for them, for their children and for a sizable number of American corporations."

"In view of these circumstances I feel that I have no choice but to tell the Iraqi people that they must dance in the streets and express their jubilant gratitude to me and our troops within 48 hours or face the most serious of consequences. I have ordered a mass air drop into the city of Baghdad. We will be supplying little American flags for the people to wave, flowers to throw at our soldiers, and for those whose dancing skills are rusty after years of Saddam`s oppression we are dropping dance videos in both VHS and DVD format. Those who have no electricity due to the bombing can share a video with someone who does. But there will be dancing and there will be celebration in Baghdad or there will be a high price to pay. I`ve said from the start that the Iraqi people are not our enemy but now the choice is theirs. They either dance or they`ve seen the last of Mr. Nice Guy. God picked me to be the liberator of the Iraqis and He wants to see some dancing."

The President allowed no questions but several of the stunned reporters said that they heard him mutter "level the place" under his breath as he left the podium. At his regular press briefing later in the day Ari Fleischer said that the President has been under a good deal of stress since the start of the war and may need to visit his ranch in Crawford, Texas to deal with an emergency buildup of brush. When asked by Helen Thomas whether the President was feeling underappreciated Fleischer said that despite rejections by Frenchmen, Germans, Russians and now Iraqis the President was holding up well and would be personally supervising the flag, flower and video drop which would be commencing within the hour.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Presidential Quarantine
Why Bush can`t leave America -- and why that matters

By Jeremy Mayer
Web Exclusive: 4.1.03

George W. Bush is under an international quarantine. It is not security concerns that prevent him from going overseas, nor is it the unseemly appearance of leaving the White House while our troops fight along the Euphrates. Rather, Bush can`t leave America because his policies are intensely unpopular in almost every country on earth.

What country could this president visit that wouldn`t immediately erupt into massive civil unrest? A Bush visit to Western Europe would make 2001`s violent anti-globalization demonstrations in Genoa look like a tea party.

This explains why British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush`s only real ally in this war, came to Washington instead of hosting Bush in London. It also explains why a few weeks ago Bush met with Blair and the leaders of Spain and Portugal in the Azores. By meeting at a U.S. airbase on an isolated archipelago with a population roughly equal to that of Akron, Ohio, Bush avoided the anger in the European streets. Although the Portuguese prime minister welcomed our president to "Europe," the sad truth is that Bush will not be welcome in the real Western Europe for months, if not years.

Some might say that the effective quarantine of an American president does not matter. After all, it has happened before, and with little apparent long-term effect. In the summer of 1960, as Japan debated a new treaty with the United States, leftist and pacifist forces launched demonstrations so vast that then-President Dwight Eisenhower canceled plans to visit. Similarly, in 1958, Vice President Richard Nixon`s trip to South America met with such violent outrage that a warship was sent in case extraction by force became necessary. The extreme hostility to America`s foreign policy in Japan and South America eventually subsided.

But this is different. The center of the rage is Western Europe, historically the home of America`s closest allies. American presidents have often been greeted by cheering throngs of Europeans, as when Woodrow Wilson went to Paris in 1919. Trips to Europe produced some of the modern presidency`s greatest moments, from John F. Kennedy`s "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech to Ronald Reagan`s eloquent elegy to the boys of D-Day. Even when the visit of an American president sparked demonstrations, it was clear to all concerned that the vast majority of the populace supported America`s role in the world.

Today, as an ominous boycott of American products spreads, it is obvious that the anger at America is deep and extends far beyond Western Europe.

Bush`s quarantine involves almost all of the Middle East, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and even some Asian countries. Polls in some Eastern European nations suggest less intense opposition to America, but those countries are geographically close to Western Europe -- a presidential visit to Bucharest would likely attract hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from Germany and France. A trip to a less stable nation, such as Egypt or Pakistan, could severely weaken or even bring down the host government.

The world`s citizens are so helpless in the face of America`s military supremacy and unilateral foreign policy that the only way they can express their anger is through civil unrest and boycotts. Even a visit to America`s neighbors, Mexico or Canada, would produce scenes of unprecedented anti-American demonstrations.

And those images would matter here at home. In 1960, Kennedy used the anti-Nixon demonstrations abroad to argue that the nation was losing stature in the world. A foreign trip by Bush now would reveal to the average American in pictures -- so vivid that even FOX News couldn`t spin them away -- just how bitterly our policies are opposed around the globe.

Once the war is over and the occupation begins, reporters will start to ask why our president isn`t traveling anymore. Karl Rove will have to think of a place to send him. Outside of Israel or Afghanistan, the choices will be slim. Of course, Bush could safely go to a country where the government uses brutality to stop demonstrations. Which means that it has come to this: The American president, who once symbolized the value of freedom to many people around the world, can now only visit countries where dissent is crushed.

So what`s it going to be, Mr. President: Havana or Beijing?

Jeremy Mayer is a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University and the author of 9-11: The Giant Awakens.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

IRAQI QUICKSAND EDITION
Gee, that little war was easy, just like we told everybody. Now it`s on to Iran, North Korea and... Wha!! They`re fighting back? No fair!
C.W.
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Bush.... Steadfast, but his war cluelessly flings open the gates of hell, making any sort of victory Pyrrhic.

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Blair... British P.M. can actually explain this thing coherently. He`s Churchill to Bush`s Red Buttons.

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Cheney.. Tells "Meet the Press" just before war, "We will be greeted as liberators." An arrogant blunder for the ages.

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Rumsfeld Taking fire from TV retired generals for flawed war plan. And how did you miss the fedayeen?

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Wallace. Top general honest enough to admit U.S. misjudged the enemy. But bosses not honest enough to admit he`s right.

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Blogs... Internet diarists, both here and abroad, offer fresh, feisty angles. Beats Aaron Brown every time.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
Hier sieht es besser aus:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/744311.asp

Erklärungen:
Newsweek: Bush as “Red Buttons”
and Cheney as “Arrogant”

A particularly vicious “Conventional Wisdom” box in this week`s Newsweek with President Bush assigned a down arrow because “his war cluelessly flings open the gates of hell” and Vice President Cheney also getting a down arrow for once suggesting that “we will be greeted as liberators,” a forecast Newsweek denounced as “an arrogant blunder for the ages.”

In awarding Tony Blair an up arrow for how he “can actually explain this thing coherently,” the magazine couldn`t resist a shot at Bush: “He`s Churchill to Bush`s Red Buttons.”

The MRC`s Ken Shepherd first alerted me to the slant of the box usually composed by Newsweek`s Jonathan Alter. From the April 7 Newsweek, the full list of “Conventional Wisdom” items, starting with this up top summary of the week: “Gee, that little war was easy, just like we told everybody. Now it`s on to Iran, North Korea and... Wha!! They`re fighting back? No fair!”

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

USA Today ist die einzige überregionale Tageszeitung.

Strain of Iraq war showing on Bush, those who know him say
Wed Apr 2, 5:51 AM ET

Judy Keen USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The public face of President Bush at war is composed and controlled. On TV and in newspaper photos, he is sturdy and assured, usually surrounded by military personnel. But those choreographed glimpses of Bush`s commander-in-chief persona don`t tell the whole story. Behind the scenes, aides and friends say, the president`s role is more complicated and his style more emotional.

People who know Bush well say the strain of war is palpable. He rarely jokes with staffers these days and occasionally startles them with sarcastic putdowns. He`s being hard on himself; he gave up sweets just before the war began. He`s frustrated when armchair generals or members of his own team express doubts about U.S. military strategy. At the same time, some of his usual supporters are concerned by his insistence on sticking with the original war plan.


Interviews with a dozen friends, advisers and top aides describe a man who feels he is being tested. As might be expected from loyal aides, they portray the president as steady, tough and up to the task, someone whose usual cheer has shifted to a more serious demeanor. Their observations yield a rare inside look at how the president functions in a crisis.


Friends say the conflict is consuming Bush`s days and weighing heavily on him. ``He`s got that steely-eyed look, but he is burdened,`` says a friend who has spent time with the president since the war began. ``You can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. I worry about him.``


Bush is juggling a lot more than projecting the image of a confident commander in chief. He`s a prosecutor who quizzes military officials about their backup plans when things go awry on the battlefield. He`s a critic who sees himself as the aggrieved victim of the news media and second-guessers. He`s a cheerleader who encourages others not to lose faith in the war plan. He`s a supervisor who manages the competing views and egos of top advisers.


The president reads newspapers first thing in the morning, flipping through some of them while he`s still in the White House residence instead of waiting for clippings assembled by aides. Through the day, he regularly watches war coverage on the nearest TV, which is in the private dining room next to the Oval Office. He knows when heavy bombardments of Baghdad are scheduled and sometimes tunes in to see them.


As he consumes media accounts of the war, Bush has noted criticism coming even from some people he believes should be his allies. He was stung last year when Brent Scowcroft, his father`s national security adviser, wrote a newspaper column questioning the necessity and wisdom of going to war. Similar complaints continue, and some people outside the administration are pressing current Bush advisers to urge him to retool his war plan. The president`s aides say he`s aware of those efforts but ``discounts`` them.


News coverage of the war often irritates him. He`s infuriated by reporters and retired generals who publicly question the tactics of the war plan. Bush let senior Pentagon officials know that he was peeved when Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the Army`s senior ground commander in Iraq , said last week that guerrilla fighting, Iraqi resistance and sandstorms have made a longer war more likely. But Bush has told aides that he wants to hear all the news from the front -- good and bad.


He has a special epithet for members of his own staff who worry aloud. He calls them ``hand-wringers.`` Two days after combat began, he has said acidly, some people were already asking ``how the unconditional surrender talks were going.``

`Do you need to see him?`

Bush makes a point of managing the balance of power in his inner circle. Secretary of State Colin Powell receded from the headlines once the war began, but Bush keeps him near. The president seeks second opinions about military strategy in regular private meetings with Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War. There`s another reason Bush keeps Powell close: to signal to the hawks on his team that he values the secretary of State`s more cautious approach to diplomacy and war.


Bush`s schedule still includes meetings on matters unrelated to the war, many of them on the economy, but the meetings are shorter now. Fewer aides receive permission from chief of staff Andy Card to see the president. ``Do you need to see him or do you want to see him?`` Card asks them.


Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time, says Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a close friend who talks with Bush every day. His history degree from Yale makes him mindful of the importance of the moment. He knows he`s making ``history-changing decisions,`` Evans says. But Bush doesn`t keep a diary or other personal record of the events that will form his legacy. Aides take notes, but there`s no stenographer in most meetings, nor are they videotaped or recorded.


It`s widely assumed that one reason Bush wants to rid the world of Saddam Hussein is to complete the mission his father, former president George Bush, began in 1991. The senior Bush led a coalition to eject Iraqi troops that had invaded Kuwait, but knowing that the U.N.-backed alliance was formed solely to liberate the country, he decided against going on to Baghdad to remove Saddam from power. People who know both men say this war isn`t about vengeance. ``It`s not personal,`` one Bush aide says.


Rather, the president`s passion is motivated by his loathing for Saddam`s brutality, aides say. He talks often about his revulsion for Saddam`s use of torture, rape and executions. He is convinced that the Iraqi leader is literally insane and would gladly give terrorists weapons to use to launch another attack on the United States.


The thought of another assault on the United States horrifies Bush. Aides say he believes history and heaven will judge him by his ability to prevent one.


Officials don`t want Saddam`s fate to become the only measure of the war`s success. They realize now that it was a mistake in the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks to make al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden the embodiment of the war on terrorism.


But Bush was elated when he was told there was a chance to kill Saddam on the eve of the scheduled start of the war. On March 19, he made a last-minute decision to launch airstrikes on a Baghdad bunker where U.S. intelligence agents had just learned Saddam was spending the night. For days, he grilled aides for information about the Iraqi leader`s fate and was dismayed when intelligence officials concluded that Saddam had survived.

Studies battle maps

Sept. 11, 2001, and the assault on al-Qaeda that followed, created a wartime rhythm in the White House that continues today. Bush, who was drilled in corporate style while earning his MBA at Harvard, prefers his days to be structured.

They are now built around war updates. Bush receives a report on overnight developments by phone at 6 a.m. from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. After an 8 a.m. intelligence briefing, he conducts a National Security Council meeting for 30 minutes to an hour. Afterward, he meets privately with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a half-hour or so. Bush and Rumsfeld usually talk by phone at least twice later in the day.

In the first days of the conflict, the president`s aides said he was leaving the details of war planning to his generals. Then, fearing that he might seem too uninvolved, they began describing him as interested in all the specifics.

That`s how the White House message has shifted, but the bottom line is that Bush is an active manager and defender of the war plan. He and Rumsfeld spread out maps of the war zone in their meetings. Bush wants to know where U.S. troops are, where they`re headed, what weapons are being used and how the enemy is faring. He rebukes and then bucks up aides who question the tactics, pace or human costs of the war.

Rumsfeld was Richard Nixon`s ambassador to NATO and a White House chief of staff and Defense secretary for Gerald Ford. He won`t compare Bush with those presidents, but he likes the way his current boss operates. ``He thinks things through, but when he makes a decision, he makes it, and he doesn`t go back and worry about it,`` Rumsfeld says.

Bush advisers say he will revise the war plan if he becomes convinced that it`s not working. He doesn`t think that`s necessary now, they say. Still, even some of Bush`s allies say privately that they wish the president would be a little less certain and more willing to reassess decisions. He encourages everybody in a meeting to speak up, he says. But when aides or advisers voice misgivings about the direction of the war -- and some have -- Bush generally admonishes them not to be impatient.

``He sees the ebb and flow, expects it,`` Rumsfeld says. When things go badly, the Defense secretary says, Bush will say something ``if he sees it may be adversely affecting someone`s attitude.`` The president will remind them that they had all agreed on the plan knowing that setbacks were inevitable. Rumsfeld says Bush has reminded aides that ``this is something that we weighed and considered.``

Bush is not an expert on military tactics, but he`s getting an education from Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was an Air Force combat pilot in Vietnam.

In briefings, Rumsfeld says, Bush ``will frequently say `Excuse me` and then bore in on something: `What about this? What about that? If this occurs, what would be the approach you take?` . . . In probing, he also pushes, pushes people to think about things that he does not know whether or not they have thought through.``

Rumsfeld says Bush was equally involved in the planning before the first missiles fell on Baghdad. Because he knew what was coming, Rumsfeld says, the president was prepared for complications, mistakes and losses. ``There is nothing that has surprised him that I know of,`` Rumsfeld says.

Rx for anxiety: Prayer, exercise

When an aide asked Bush recently how the war with Iraq has changed him, the reply was curt: ``We`ve been at war since Sept. 11.``

People who know Bush well say the burdens of war take a toll on him. His wry humor, which generally punctuates his relationships with his aides, largely evaporates in times of great stress. He can be impatient and imperious.

On March 17, before he delivered a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam, Bush summoned congressional leaders to the White House. They expected a detailed briefing, but the president told them he was notifying them only because he was legally required to do so and then left the room. They were taken aback, and some were annoyed. They were just as surprised by his buoyant mood two days later at another White House meeting.

At a news conference Thursday at Camp David with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush couldn`t contain his annoyance at a reporter who asked if the war might last for months. ``However long it takes,`` Bush said sharply. ``That`s the answer to your question, and that`s what you`ve got to know.``

Bush isn`t usually a worrier, but aides say he spends a lot of time stewing about the families of the slain, the safety of POWs and the flow of humanitarian aid into Iraq.

Bush copes with anxiety as he always has. He prays and exercises. Evans says his friend has a placid acceptance of challenges that comes from his Christian faith.

``He knows that we`re all here to serve a calling greater than self,`` Evans says. ``That`s what he`s committed his life to do. He understands that he is the one person in the country, in this case really the one person in the world, who has a responsibility to protect and defend freedom.``

Bush has imposed an almost military discipline on himself. Even though he`s as lean as he was in college, he decided just before the war that he was unhappy with his running times, which were slowing from his preferred pace of 7.5 minutes or less per mile.

So Bush gave up his one indulgence: sweets. It worked; he`s losing weight and improving his time.

When Bush doesn`t find time to run three or four miles a day, he still works out. He uses an elliptical trainer, lifts weights and stretches. Exercising regularly, he says, gives him time to think, improves his energy and helps him sleep.

He also carves out time for family and friends. He still goes to bed by 10 p.m. and has asked his wife, Laura, to stay close to home. His daughter Barbara and his college friend Roland Betts, a New York business executive, also were with him at Camp David the first weekend of the war. He talks several times a week with his father and mother. He still tells a joke or teases an aide occasionally.

The president`s friends and family fret about him, but advisers say the pressure doesn`t seem to be getting to him. ``He`s not one of those people who blows with the wind,`` Rumsfeld says. ``He has a very good inner gyroscope, a stabilizer that keeps him centered.``

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Faith-based War Plan Encounters Reality
by Gene Lyons
Ignorance is not the problem in the world.
It`s the things people `know` that aren`t so.
--Will Rogers


So what if President Junior doesn`t know squat? It wasn`t supposed to
matter. Bush had "moral clarity," we were told, unlike certain ex-presidents
whose heads were stuffed with useless information, rendering them womanish
and indecisive. The purity of his motives uncluttered by geography or history
and unsullied by reason, Junior was the political equivalent of a child evangelist.
"I`m not a textbook player," Bush boasted to the Washington Post`s Bob Woodward.
"I`m a gut player. I rely on my instincts."

Even so, Bush started carrying around a book called "Supreme Command:
Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime," by Eliot Cohen, a Johns
Hopkins historian. Cohen protests that the media over-simplified his message.
Even so, its symbolic import was unmistakable: war is too important to be left
to generals. Great wartime leaders like Lincoln, Churchill and Clemenceau
overruled timid military men who are too risk-averse, always fighting the last war.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the neocon hawks talked Junior into a
"faith-based" plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It was going to be a cakewalk.
Vice President Dick Cheney said the conflict would be over in weeks; Saddam`s
vaunted Republican Guard would refuse to fight.

Richard Perle, the ubiquitous ideologue who resigned as chairman of the
Defense Policy Board due to the appearance of war-profiteering, described
the Iraq as "a house of cards" which "will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, another architect of the great game
of "Risk" to which America has committed its lives and fortunes, told the VFW
that "the Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of
France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."

Barely two weeks into the war, the alibis and finger-pointing have begun.
"[A]ccording to three senior administration officials," Knight-Ridder`s Warren
Stroebel reported, "President Bush`s aides did not forcefully present him with
dissenting views from CIA and State and Defense Department officials who
warned that U.S.-led forces could face stiff resistance in Iraq." One said,
"as a result, almost every assumption the plan`s based on looks to be wrong."

The Pentagon appears to be in all but open rebellion. According to Seymour
Hersh in the The New Yorker: "Several senior war planners complained that
...Rumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers, who had been chiefly
responsible for persuading President Bush to lead the country into war, had
insisted on micromanaging the war`s operational details. Rumsfeld`s team took
over crucial aspects of the day-to-day logistical planning-traditionally, an area
in which the uniformed military excels--and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the
senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. `He thought he knew better,` one senior planner said. `He was the
decision-maker at every turn.`

"On at least six occasions, the planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his
deputies were presented with operational plans--the Iraqi assault was
designated Plan 1003--he insisted that the number of ground troops be
sharply reduced. Rumsfeld`s faith in precision bombing and his insistence on
streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the
ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. `They`ve got
no resources,` a former high-level intelligence official said. `He was so
focused on proving his point-that the Iraqis were going to fall apart.`"

The Washington Post reports similar misgivings. Evidently, the administration`s
deep thinkers saw Iraq as a kind of geopolitical demonstration project, like a
new strain of soybeans planted alongside a busy highway. Instead, what`s being
demonstrated, Robert Baer, a former CIA Middle East hand told Hersh, is that
"everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq.
Not Saddam.... [W]e are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties
a day and they die by the thousands, they`re still winning. It`s a jihad, and it`s
a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war."

Retired soldiers agree. General Merril A. McPeak, former Air Force Chief of Staff
1990-94, told the Portland Oregonian that "if we sent the 3rd Infantry up there naked,
by themselves, because somebody assessed that they`d be throwing bouquets at us,
that`s the worst thing you could say about political leadership."

Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, who commanded an armored division in Gulf War I, warned
the AP "we`ll be camping on the outskirts of the city [Baghdad] for years."

Meanwhile, Marines in Iraq are being given a pamphlet called "A Christian`s
Duty," with tear-out prayer cards to mail to the White House. One says:
"Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to
do what is right regardless of critics."

I`ll bet they`re going over really big.

http://www.bartcop.com/040203lyons.htm

[CheapThrill]

[Joerver]

This limited edition Christian soldier can be yours for only $19.95.
He`s dressed head to toe in desert camouflage, and he carries the most adorable assault rifle.
His most endearing feature is his blissful smile, which indicates his eagerness to die to increase
the profit margins of Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and of course, the royal Bush family.

Show your patriotism, and buy this figurine today.


"What does that mean? - does Poppin` Fresh make pretzels?"

[Joerver]

James Higdon: `Things that God told me`
Posted on Thursday, April 03 @ 10:01:13 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By James Higdon

Yes, it`s true. That being that BartCop refers to as "the imaginary being" talks to me almost every day. I`d say every day, but I`m sure there are some days we`ve missed. I won`t go into great detail about how these conversations occur. Let me just say that as a man of some faith, God and I have developed a relationship over time. We don`t spend a lot of time discussing the Bible. It`s ancient history, and has too many translations to serve as anything more than anecdotal value. I won`t go into a lot of detail about what God and I talk about. Frankly, it`s personal. But I will tell you some things, because I think it`s important.

I`ve been reading more and more lately that George W. Bush believes that he has been called by God "to defend freedom." You might be interested to know that God says, first off, that Bush has never made that claim to his inner circle. It is a Carl Rove invented fiction to keep the vicious followers of the witch doctors (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson) on board. George W. Bush has never even talked to God when God is willing to listen, because he only asks for things that God would never grant. For that matter, the same is true of Falwell and Robertson.



The naked truth is that God only grants one thing to an individual, and that is peace of mind. God`s eternal gift to man is the ability to think and reason, and when an individual uses those gifts to the best of one`s ability to do so, God will grant comfort in the knowledge that all available avenues have been explored, and the best course of action has been taken. You might be interested in knowing that God has granted Bush no such comfort. In fact, God has never granted Bush any peace of mind because of Bush`s near complete inability to use God`s gifts.

You see, violence is antithetical to God`s gifts. God understood that mankind did not have the physical stamina nor strength to compete in the violence of nature with many of the rest of His creatures, so He gave man the ability to find nonviolent solutions to problems. On this basis, even though God would never bad mouth one of his creations to another creation, I might suspect that God views Bush as one of his larger disappointments. But I would be wrong. Bush is not a disappointment because he serves a larger purpose. Bush is a problem for whom the rest of us must find a nonviolent solution. He`s our problem because we`ve never taken the care to make sure that Bush received proper therapy. Bush is not God`s problem, and God will take no action regarding Bush or the war in Iraq.

I am sorry to report that the prayers for the safety of our troops will go unanswered. But that is true for the Iraqi soldiers, citizens, and the like as well. God understands the need for soldiers because he understands the need for self-defense. He did, after all, ingrain us with a very strong sense of self preservation. But whether or not a soldier acts to defend his homeland, the soldier`s life or death depends on the rest of us. It is God`s view (and I suspect that He`s right; after all, he is God) that a soldier, by design, is limited in the free will to make choices, and thereby is merely an agent for the rest of us. In battle, whatever a soldier does, both good and bad things, belong to the rest of us. If our agent commits an heroically compassionate act, it belongs to the rest of us. If our agent commits a war crime, it belongs to the rest of us. And to be brutally honest, since we sent our soldiers into a situation where their presence could reasonably inspire Iraqis to commit war crimes, we will own those crimes as well.

God makes no distinction about Muslim or Christian, Jew or Buddhist. Whatever traditions or associations that man adopts in an attempt to bring oneself closer to God is not important. It is not important if one is agnostic or atheist. God will grant no more nor less than peace of mind to any individual, whether they believe they have more coming, or less, based on dedication, or lack thereof, to any tradition or group. I suspect, actually, that God has more of an affinity for atheists who use their ability to think and reason to further the dignity of their fellow man than for a pious church goer who believes his traditions and associations are his ticket to Heaven. As an example, BartCop is an avowed atheist, but God really likes him and recognizes BartCop`s ability to think, the depth of his compassion, and his constant struggle to understand more than he does. On the other hand, God doesn`t hate anybody so he doesn`t hate Jerry Falwell, but I will tell you that God has shed more than a few tears over Falwell`s thoughtless flock of sheep, who have decided to let an unthinking man do all of their thinking for them.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. There is no Heaven, and there is no Hell. As it is not really relevant here, I`ll avoid the discussion of the afterlife, but suffice it to say that, for the most part, folks enjoy their punishments and rewards in real time. I think it is important to say that we often must use our ability to think and reason to distinguish reward from punishment. But it is an imperative that we can only support our troops, and thereby save ourselves, by recalling our agents and preventing them from committing violence in an act of aggression.

I think it would also be helpful to point out that God does not side with one nation over another. While God does take note of the many fences we use to divide ourselves, he does not make preference. God sees what is going on in Iraq as His children killing each other. God also views both George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein equally as His children. He assigns no greater good nor evil to either of them. Nor does he assign them any greater shame than to the rest of us. They are, after all, merely immature and challenged individuals who the rest of us have mistakenly allowed to achieve too high a level of leadership. Granted, we never elected by majority either one of them, but we allowed the conditions that created them. For instance, it may be true that George W. Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court, but we allowed the religiously insane, and reason challenged Antonin Scalia (as well as others) to be promoted to the Supreme Court in spite of a clear procedure to prevent it. When Scalia (who`s sworn duty is to uphold the secular, democratic/republican based constitution) openly argues that Democracy is poisoning man`s relationship with God, and describes the death penalty as God`s vengeful hand, one would think that as thinking and reasonable people we could have managed to draw those views out of Scalia at a confirmation hearing somewhere, and voted against his inclusion on the Supreme Court.

God once told me that arrogance is the great disguise of those who lack the ability to think and reason, and that the disguise should be easily penetrated by those with these same abilities intact. When you think of the presence of arrogance surrounding an empty vessel of reason, think of Bill Bennett, think of Michael Savage, think of Ari Fleicher, Britt Hume, Dick Cheney, Tim Russert. Can you see through the disguise? Of course you can. God has never lied to me.

He has also told me that we, each of us, has to the power to create our very own Heaven or Hell on Earth. We also have the ability to create them for others, and others have the ability to create them for us. God told me that the one suggestion he has ever made that has been handed down over history intact is the "golden rule." It`s been misnamed over time. It is not a rule at all, but a suggestion for our own survival which we can either embrace or dismiss. With our proclivity to dismiss it, God is truly impressed that we have survived for so long. God notes, however, that the number of Hells on Earth certainly outnumber the Heavens. God tells me that he has been told by more than one Republican that if He doesn`t like it, He can pack his bags and leave the planet. Did I tell you that God has a sense of humor?

He also has a sense of irony. He notes that the richly arrogant and intellectually challenged that make up the current American regime, seek to control the planet by taking claim to the rotted waist of creatures that once controlled the world, but lacked the reasoning ability to adapt to its changes.

But the long and the short of what God told me is that a group of young men just killed a family-a human family of flesh and blood and reason, seeking only safety from the fighting-by decapitating them with machinegun fire. The family is dead, so nothing can be done for them. But we propose to show support for these young men by saying, "This is a war to insure our safety by threatening and perpetrating savagery on the rest of the world. Be proud of the memory of the killing you have done to further that goal."

My sense of reason tells me there is no sense in that. Best to leave any violence that may ever become necessary to issues of self-defense. We best support our troops by preventing them from developing memories that will create a Hell on Earth to last a lifetime. How many of the men that we "supported" in Vietnam have been living in that Hell? God told me flat out that I was right in that assessment. He granted me my peace of mind. I hope that you have come to the same conclusions, with or without any help from God. I hope you will convince others to work for peace. God told me that it`s alright to say that if they do, He will be on their side.

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Wachsender Unmut bei Iraks Nachbarn

Harald Neuber 04.04.2003
Nun sind auch Syrien und Iran im Visier Washingtons, die Erweiterung der Front ist wenig erstaunlich und provoziert harsche Proteste in der Region

Kurz vor Beginn der zweiten Kriegswoche steckt die anglo-amerikanische Allianz nach wie vor im Wüstensand Iraks fest und trifft trotz mancher Erfolge beim Vorrücken auf Bagdad weiterhin auf harten militärischen Widerstand. Dessen ungeachtet wird in Washington die Front bereits erweitert. Auch Syrien und Iran, erklärte US-Außenminister Colin Powell unlängst wenig sensibel, handelten tendenziell gegen die Interessen der USA und hätten - eine Beibehaltung ihrer Außenpolitik vorausgesetzt - mit Konsequenzen zu rechnen. Die syrische Regierung erwiderte die diplomatische Breitseite aus Washington entsprechend. In Damaskus sprach sich Außenminister Faruk al-Shar offen gegen die Invasion in Irak aus. Er würde es nicht bedauern, wenn die Truppen der Allianz eine Niederlage erlitten.






Die neuen diplomatischen Frontlinien wurden keineswegs unerwartet eröffnet, verfolgen die Regierungen arabischer Staaten doch seit Jahren mit wachsender Unruhe den Ausbau der militärischen US-Präsenz in der Region. Ein Blick auf die programmatischen Schriften heute führender US-Politiker bestätigt die Sorgen. Bereits im September 2000, ein Jahr vor den Terroranschlägen in den USA, hatte die drei Jahre zuvor ins Leben gerufene rechtskonservative Politikstiftung "Projekt für ein neues amerikanisches Jahrhundert" ( PNAC) unter der Federführung des heutigen Vizepräsidenten Dick Cheney einen Plan unter dem Titel "Amerikas Verteidigungsmittel umgestalten: Strategien, Kräfte und Ressourcen für ein neues Jahrhundert" verfasst. Beteiligt an der Ausarbeitung waren damals auch Jeb Bush (Bruder des Präsidenten und heute Gouverneur von Florida), Donald Rumsfeld (heute Verteidigungsminister), Paul Wolfowitz (heute Stellvertreter Rumsfelds) und Lewis Libby (heute Dick Cheneys Staabschef).





Die Lektüre des Dokuments gibt einen Ausblick auf Kriegsverlauf und Situation nach dem Krieg. "Selbst wenn Saddam von der Bühne abtreten sollte", hieß es, sollten die Militärbasen in Saudi-Arabien und Kuwait dauerhaft und auch gegen den Widerstand in den Regierungen der Anrainerstaaten erhalten bleiben. Begründet wurde dies damit, dass "der Iran eine ebensolche Bedrohung amerikanischer Interessen darstellen kann wie der Irak".


Neustrukturierung des Nahen Ostens


Damit bekommt auch die von US-Präsident George W. Bush angekündigte "Neustrukturierung des Nahen Osten" eine neue Bedeutung. Mit jedem neuen Kriegstag wird deutlicher, dass die Invasion in Irak erst den Beginn einer weitreichenderen Strategie darstellt, die die Regierungspolitik Washingtons bestimmt. Bei den Protagonisten des PNAC gelten die Präsidenten Carter und Clinton als halbherzig, von ihnen werden seit jeher "militärische Lösungen" zur Durchsetzung US-amerikanischer Interessen favorisiert. In dem Strategiepapier setzten die Autoren ihre Hoffnung auf ein "katastrophales Ereignis, wie ein neues Pearl Harbor". Das Ereignis trat bekanntlich am 11. September 2001 ein.

Der Druck auf die Staaten der Kriegsregion wächst vor diesem Hintergrund von innen und außen. Unter ihnen lassen sich drei Gruppen unterscheiden. Zum einen gibt es die US-Partner Israel und Kuwait. Daneben deckt die anti-amerikanische Gruppe um Irak einen nicht unerheblichen Teil des nahöstlichen Territoriums ab. Staaten wie Iran, Libyen und Syrien nehmen seit Beginn des zweiten US-Irak-Krieges eine deutliche Position gegen Washington und London ein, weil sie nach einem Triumph der Allianz nicht nur von der irakischen Ölzufuhr abgeschnitten sein wären, sondern auch von neuen US-Stützpunkten im besiegten Land bedroht würden. Seit George W. Bush im vergangenen Herbst die neue Sicherheitsdoktrin vorstellte, sind Präventivkriege wie in Panama oder Grenada schließlich keine Ausnahme mehr, sondern die Regel.

Die bislang neutralen Staaten wie Ägypten und Jordanien hingegen werden sich positionieren müssen. So hatte Jordaniens Staatsführung lange versucht, die Stationierung von US-Truppen im eigenen Land zu verbergen. Inzwischen musste Amman zugeben, "mehrere hundert US-Soldaten" im Land zu beherbergen, Experten sprechen von bis zu 6.000 US-Militärangehörigen in dem Anrainerstaat Iraks. Islamische Organisationen verurteilten das als "unentschuldbar" und organisierten in den vergangenen Tagen Massendemonstrationen in mehreren großen Städten des Landes. Die Lage ist von Tag zu Tag angespannter, zumal arabische Nachrichtensender ständig die Bilder ziviler Opfer ausstrahlen, die von staatlichen und US-amerikanischen Sendern zurückgehalten werden. Der US-Senatsabgeordnete John Rockefeller bezeichnete die Protestbewegungen als "inzwischen so groß, dass sie eine ernsthafte Gefahr für die jeweiligen Regierungen darstellen".

Harald Neuber, Amman

http://www.newamericancentury.org/defense-100602.htm

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Unhappy endings

The Downing Street dream factory paints a hopeful postwar future. But everyone else sees potential disaster

Polly Toynbee
Friday April 4, 2003
The Guardian

The world is upside down. The three left-of-centre dailies - the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror - are all the most hostile to the Labour government`s war, while the rightwing press largely urges it on. This is a wretched state of affairs for those who wish this government well, watching it plunge headlong into what looks like a serious error. Europe is fractured, other alliances and friendships lost, leaving Britain marooned with George Bush. Colin Powell`s sweep through Old Europe yesterday delivered a direct snub to any serious role for the UN rebuilding Iraq. The background roars from the president`s stomach-churning speech in North Carolina were a display of patriotic histrionics to appal the world.
Yet what if it does end well and Tony Blair proves right after all? Those who oppose the war can only hope to eat their words: nothing wrong with humble pie. So let us examine the government`s scenario for everything going right. At the moment, it goes as follows.

Republican Guard battalions have melted away under catastrophic bombardment. Stout resistance remains and Baghdad may not fall in a day but it will not be Stalingrad. There is no great hurry - Basra is the patient way to take towns, gradually. The regime will fall with fewer British and US losses than in any conflict in history: civilian deaths will be proportionate. Rolling news deceives with its hungry demands for a new Band of Brothers episode every hour, but war doesn`t work like that. All in all, the government sounds calmly certain that all will be well. Since we know nothing, let`s assume all will be tolerably well.

It was always the aftermath that was in doubt - in Iraq and in the world. How believable is Blair`s version? He promises to persuade the US that it cannot rule Iraq alone. The US needs the UN not just for humanitarian aid, but for reconstruction. The US needs the UN for money, for legitimacy and to avoid inflaming the Arab world. "Iraq for the Iraqis," Blair promises. As for the French and Germans, they will see the error of their ways and hasten to rebuild good relations with the US: it will start with a meeting like the UN-sponsored Bonn conference that determined Afghanistan`s postwar settlement. Britain will prove it is again a strong bridge between the US and EU. Then Bush will head off down the roadmap to peace in Palestine, while Iraq holds free elections, the Arab world sees a beacon of democracy in their midst and the world is a safer place.

All that would be excellent. The only trouble with the Blair vision is that it is exceedingly difficult to find anyone anywhere who believes it will happen - certainly not the White House. That is not their vision at all, as Powell made brutally clear yesterday. They have done the fighting, so why hand the peace over to the French and Russians on the security council?

The UN can do humanitarian, but not a single US soldier will wear a blue hat. Instead General Jay Garner and his battery of 24 Pentagon-approved Americans will run every ministry, with a tame Iraqi exile each. Contracts will not be awarded by a UN fair procurement process: why give the French or Russians anything? A new Iraqi government will be US and Israel-friendly: what happens when the Iraqis don`t vote that way is just blanked out of their minds.

It gets worse. John Bolton, assistant secretary of state, visiting the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs in London, was already musing publicly on a coming pre-emptive strike on Iran. Russia is building Iran a nuclear capability that could give it weapons within months, he said. Better to knock it out first - a necessity as soon as it is spoken. For Iran faced with Iraq as a US satellite on one side with Israel`s nuclear power on the other will respond to this pincer threat. The director of the Royal Institute listened to Bolton aghast. US conviction that a free Iraq will spread light and freedom all about it is not shared by those who know the region.

Nor does most of Europe believe in Blair`s happy ending. Indeed, Powell killed it in Brussels yesterday. Since it has taken until now for the Germans and French finally to say in public that they hope Saddam will lose the war, there is hardly a close rapprochement on either side. Here the Blair-bridge vision halts.

The postwar landscape looks bleaker by the day, international law fractured, the UN bust. The only optimism comes from triumphalist White House hawks or from the Downing Street dream factory - though their visions are quite different. Elsewhere it is hard to find observers who feel anything but alarm at what is yet to come. Look back at Afghanistan, controlled by warlords still, severely underfunded and under-policed, all reconstruction money still spent on basic feeding, a place forgotten as the world moves on. Will Iraq fare much better?

There is one streak of hope on the grey horizon, though Blair may not see it that way. There is a chance now that the shock of schism may shake Europe into a new unity. All Europe, Britain included, is agreed that Iraqi reconstruction must be done under UN auspices - and that means what it says. This unity of purpose offers Britain`s best chance to get back inside a newly purposeful Europe, with its own progressive mission as upholders of multinationalism and international law.

Powell offered only a dim UN role: an appointee would act as "the UN`s eyes and ears" on a US-run interim Iraq administration. No amount of diplomatic verbiage can obscure the difference between a genuine UN operation and a nominal one. Chirac having taken the high moral ground on the war, to enormous approval in the polls, will not endorse a fix. Nor will the Russians or Germans - nor can Blair now. Unless the White House has a remarkable conversion, this gap looks unbridegable and the prime minister will soon be confronted again with that choice he never means to make - the choice between the Atlantic and the Channel. It is crucial that this time he jumps back with Europe to support the UN.

Right across Europe there is a new sense of purpose, as people wake up to their new responsibilities now they have let go of the American umbrella they have idled under lazily since the war. When Joschka Fischer, a Green minister in an instinctively pacifist nation, can announce that Germany must at last help build a European defence strategy, then a stronger Europe may be in sight. The French and Germans are not calling it a "counterweight" to the US, but less aggressively, simply "a weight".

Wars are political milestones: the EU trauma over Iraq could now forge a stronger Europe, better connected to its peoples, who have stood almost unanimously against the war. But it depends on Blair choosing Europe. In the grim uncertainty this war will leave in its wake, the world will need the EU as a strong and independent voice as never before. Those on the left who have hesitated over Europe should see now that the game has changed.

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Operation Iraqi Invasion, By the Numbers


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By: Jackson Thoreau - 04/02/03



NOTE: This is a variation of a question-and-answer piece on the relationship between Iraq, the U.S., Europe, and military campaigns circulating through cyberspace. I set it up as an easier-to-read numerical column and added a few items of my own. The numbers speak for themselves.


Percentage of the world`s population living in the U.S.: 6.
Percentage of the world’s energy resources used in the U.S.: 30.
Rank of Iraq among countries in the world for the largest oil reserves: 2 [behind Saudi Arabia].

Military spending, worldwide: $900 billion.
Percentage of worldwide military spending by U.S.: 50.
Percentage of worldwide military spending by Iraq: 0.0015.

Percentage of Iraq`s military capacity U.S. claimed it destroyed in 1991 Persian Gulf War: 80.
Percentage of Iraq`s post-1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction the UN claimed to have discovered and dismantled by 1998: 90.
Percentage of U.S. military spending that would ensure basic necessities to everyone in the world: 10.

Number of Americans who have died in wars since World War II: 92,212.
Number of people living outside U.S. who have died in wars since World War II: 25 million.

Years that Iraq has had chemical and biological weapons: 20.
Number of U.S. and European corporations that supplied Iraq with materials and knowledge to make chemical and biological weapons since the early 1980s: 150.
Number of Western nations that condemned Saddam Hussein in 1988 immediately after he used gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 to kill an estimated 5,000 people: 0.
Number of pounds of Agent Orange and other herbicides U.S. dropped in the Vietnam War: 100 million.

Value of worldwide weapons trade: $800 billion.
Percentage of weapons dealt by U.S. companies worldwide: 50.

Estimated number of Iraqi civilian deaths in the 1991 Persian Gulf War: 35,000.
Estimated number of retreating Iraqi soldiers buried alive by U.S. tanks in 1991 War: 6,000.
Estimated number of Iraqi civilian deaths Pentagon predicted in the 2003 war: 10,000.
Estimated number of Iraqi civilian casualties in the 2003 war so far: 800.
Percentage of Iraqi civilian deaths that are children: 50.

Tons of depleted uranium left in Iraq and Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War: 40.
Percentage increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994: 700.

Number of years the U.S. has engaged in air strikes on Iraq: 26.
Pounds of explosives U.S.-led coalition dropped on Iraq in 1991 Persian Gulf War: 177 million.
Pounds of explosives U.S.-British pilots dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999: 20 million.
Estimated pounds of explosives U.S.-British pilots have dropped on Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Invasion in March 2003: 200 million.

Years Iraq has lived under economic sanctions imposed by the UN: 12.
Iraqi child death rate in 1989 [per 1,000 births]: 30.
Iraqi child death rate in 1999 [per 1,000 births]: 131.
Number of Iraqis estimated to have died through 1999 due to UN sanctions: 1.5 million.
Percentage of them children: 50.

Number of UN inspections conducted in Iraq in November-December 1998: 300.
Number of those inspections with problems: 5.
Number of UN weapons inspections conducted in Iraq in 2003: 500.
Number of UN resolutions Israel violated through 1992: More than 65.
Number of UN resolutions on Israel that U.S. vetoed between 1972 and 1990: More than 30.
Number of UN weapons inspections Israel has ever allowed: 0.

Number of nuclear warheads U.S. has: More than 10,000.
Number of nuclear warheads Israel has: More than 400.
Number of nuclear warheads Iraq has: 0.

Number of countries known to have nuclear weapons: 8.
Number of countries that have used nuclear weapons on another country: One [ the U.S.].



Jackson Thoreau, a contributing writer for Liberal Slant, is co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. The 110,000-word electronic book can be downloaded at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html or at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html Thoreau also co-authored a book on Dallas history from the perspective of African-Americans, civil rights advocates, and others.


Find more articles by Jackson Thoreau in the Liberal Slant Archives
http://fp.enter.net/~haney/jt040203.htm

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April 4, 2003
Gun, Germs and Stall?
By PAUL KRUGMAN


ver the last two weeks, nobody has been paying much attention to economic news; even the ups and downs of the Dow have reflected reports from the battlefield, not the boardroom. But the economic news is quite worrying. Indeed, the latest readings suggest that our recovery, such as it is, may be stalling.

Actually, the recovery can`t officially stall since it hasn`t officially begun: the committee that rules on such matters still hasn`t declared the recession that began in March 2001 over. There are good reasons for the committee`s hesitation: while G.D.P. started growing in late 2001, the job situation — which is what matters to most people — has more or less steadily worsened. In particular, fewer people are working now than were employed a year ago. Since the working-age population continues to rise, jobs have become steadily harder to find.

Still, the latest data suggest that the rate at which things are getting worse is accelerating. In February, payroll employment fell by 308,000 — the worst reading since November 2001. Some analysts suggested that number was a fluke, distorted by bad weather, but yesterday there were two more worrying indicators: new claims for unemployment insurance jumped, and a survey of service sector companies suggests that the economy as a whole is contracting.

Now what? Ever since hopes of a rapid recovery faded last summer, the economy has seemed balanced on a knife-edge. Pessimists like Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley warn that the U.S. is near its "stall speed": growth so slow that consumers, nervous about a weak job market, cut back on spending and send the economy into a tailspin. Yet optimists keep expecting businesses, anxious to update their technology, to resume large-scale investment and create a robust recovery. Both outcomes are still possible, but it seems increasingly likely that consumers will lose their nerve before businesses regain theirs.

Optimists now place their faith in the supposed salutary effects of victory in Iraq. The theory is that businesses have been postponing investments until uncertainty over the war is resolved, and that once that happens there will be a great surge of pent-up demand. I`m skeptical: I think the main barriers to an investment revival are excess capacity, corporate debt and fear of accounting scandals. (The revelations about HealthSouth suggest that there is still plenty of undiscovered corporate malfeasance.) I also wonder whether victory in Iraq will mark the end of uncertainty, or the beginning of even more uncertainty. Are we on the road to Damascus (or Tehran, or Yongbyon)?

Meanwhile, there`s a new concern: macroeconomic recovery may fall victim to microbe economics.

Serious people know that germs pose a far greater threat to mankind than terrorism, and readers of books like William McNeill`s "Plagues and Peoples" and Jared Diamond`s "Guns, Germs and Steel" know microbes have been the downfall of many a civilization. SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome, a new virus from Guangdong Province in China — doesn`t look like a civilization-killer, and probably isn`t nearly as bad as the 1918-19 influenza virus. But experts fear it may be too late to prevent a global SARS pandemic — that is, it may be too late to stop the virus from spreading throughout the world. And the bug is already having major economic consequences: fear of the disease has paralyzed much business in Hong Kong and has led to a drop in air travel worldwide.

Even if SARS doesn`t become widespread here — and that`s not a safe bet — it can do a lot of damage to our own economy because the world has grown so interdependent. Consider this: the most likely engine of a vigorous U.S. recovery would be a renewed surge in technology spending, and Guangdong is now the workshop of the information technology world, the place where a lot of the equipment that we would expect businesses to buy if there was an investment boom — for example, components for wireless computer networks — is assembled. The virus is already hampering production, not so much because workers have become sick as because Taiwan-based managers and engineers are afraid to visit their plants. The result may be to stall an investment recovery before it starts.

The war has monopolized everyone`s attention, including mine. But other things are happening, and you shouldn`t be shocked if the economic news turns awful.






Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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April 4, 2003
Iraq`s Not Vietnam
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


MM QASR, Iraq — Let`s be clear: Iraq will not turn into another Vietnam.

I keep getting doleful e-mail from Vietnam vets drawing the comparison, but it`s false. Sure, bloody street fighting in Baghdad may lie ahead, even after a couple of days of breathtaking coalition advances. But the U.S. will easily win this war — expeditiously by historical standards (remember that just four years ago, President Clinton required 78 days of airstrikes to subdue the Serbs and protect Kosovo).

Yet if this isn`t Vietnam, neither is it the Afghanistan campaign, where we were hailed as liberators. I was in Afghanistan during that war, and the difference is manifest. Afghans were giddy and jubilant, while Iraqis now are typically sullen and distrustful — and thirsty.

And that`s our biggest long-term problem. For all the talk about our forces being short of armored divisions, or our supply lines being stretched so taut that marines were down to one meal a day, those are tactical issues that will be forgotten six months from now. The fundamental and strategic challenge is that so far many ordinary Iraqis regard us, as best I can tell, as conquerors rather than liberators.

Vice President Dick Cheney said on "Meet the Press" on March 16 that "we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." And Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said of the Iraqis in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on March 11: "Like the people of France in the 1940`s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not come as a conqueror."

It`s too early to know definitively what Iraqis think, and for now, the signals are mixed, with jubilation in Najaf and anger in many other areas. Iraq these days is almost as varied, tribal and polarized a society as the U.S. (a California bumper sticker declares, "Regime change starts at home"). All in all, most Iraqis seem watchful and ambivalent, as reflected in this conversation I had near Safwan with a Shiite farmer in his 40`s.

"Money was O.K. under Saddam," he said. "Freedom was not so good. As a people, we were doing O.K. before the invasion. But the war upsets our lives. It brings destruction."

"Do you think the aftermath of the war will bring improvements?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Only God knows."

"So do you think Saddam is a good president or a bad president?"

"Saddam is a good president." Long pause. "Well, maybe not good. So-so."

Fear of Saddam explains some of the reticence (half the Iraqis I`ve asked have said Saddam will win the war), but you also see nationalism fermenting in Iraqis who proclaim that they will fight U.S. occupation the way Palestinians fight Israeli occupation. The risk is not that America will lose the war, but that it will never fully establish a peace. Already the coalition-controlled south is, particularly after dusk, a Hobbesian world of banditry and anarchy. One Arab expert dourly suggested to me that Iraq could emerge as "another Lebanon."

Yet even if many Iraqis are suspicious now, there`s hope of bringing them around. Consider Germany and Japan in 1945, when initial attitudes toward Americans were ferocious. One of my best Japanese friends was born in 1945, and his father wrote from the field to instruct his mother to kill the baby if the American brutes landed in Japan. As for Germany, the first significant German city occupied by the Americans was Aachen, and there the U.S. troops initially could not find a single German sympathetic to the Allies.

Sensitivity and diplomacy managed to turn around public opinion in Japan and Germany, and it`s reassuring that the coalition has shown such sensitivity in its march on Baghdad and its patient siege of Basra, which could be a model for the siege of Baghdad. But this administration wages war better than it wages diplomacy, and the Pentagon`s apparent plan to make an Iraqi leader out of Ahmad Chalabi, whose support lies along the Potomac rather than the Tigris or Euphrates, is emblematic of the administration`s Attila-the-Hun brand of diplomacy, which risks antagonizing the world and alienating the Iraqi people themselves.

So today the paramount question is not whether we will win this war, but whether we can persuade ordinary Iraqis to accept our victory. The Iraqi jury is still out. The danger is not that Iraq will turn into another Vietnam but that after our victory, it could turn into another Lebanon or Gaza.

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washingtonpost.com
Bombs Bring Only Pain and Terror


By Joanne Grady Huskey

Friday, April 4, 2003; Page A21


I am horrified as I read in the newspapers about the Iraqi families who have been bombed in their homes by the United States and who are reeling from the shock. I am immediately thrust back to the moment in 1998 in Nairobi, Kenya, when I was in the basement of the U.S. Embassy with my two small children and we were bombed by al Qaeda cohorts of Osama bin Laden.

I remember the moment of impact when I was thrown to the floor in darkness, stunned by a phenomenon I had never before witnessed, just as Iraqi mothers and fathers are stunned today. I remember searching desperately for my children on the floor in that dark basement, screaming to find out if they were alive. I remember finding them and holding them, while all around me people who were wounded were calling out. I remember stumbling to find my way out of the embassy, crawling through the rubble and confusion and fire. I remember the fear and the feeling that this is what hell must be like. I remember burying my friends and mourning our loss, as Iraqi families are doing today. I remember that I, like those in Iraq now, just didn`t understand.

How could such an act of inhumanity happen, I wondered in my sorrow and confusion. The Iraqi people, caught in their own homes while minding their own business, must be asking the same question.

My conclusion after being attacked in Nairobi was that we Americans had every obligation to bridge the gap of misunderstanding and to try to communicate and learn about the anger directed at us. Being the wife of a diplomat, I felt that diplomacy was needed more than ever, to open up dialogue and find resolution to our conflicts with people in Muslim nations. I felt that not only formal diplomacy but also informal diplomacy, the kind that I and other Americans living abroad pursued every day, was of utmost importance if we were ever to begin to find a way toward solutions to our misunderstandings. We had to meet and know each other and begin to talk.

After the attacks on our nation on Sept. 11, 2001, we could either have learned a lesson -- that we desperately need to work with other nations to find a way to understand each other -- or we could have taken revenge, using the same tactics that were used against us.

Our president, who himself has never lived in another country, decided that the way to stop all this terror and anger directed at our country is to bomb Iraq. Rather than expanding our diplomatic efforts, we stopped them, in favor of bombing. We resorted to bombs and military attacks in an all-out effort to stop the hatred against our people.

But I am certain that bombs only exacerbate anger and pain and confusion and terror, and it grieves me to see that we are doing to other innocent people exactly what was done to us in 1998. You are wrong, Mr. President, if you think this will heal the anger against us. You are wrong, Mr. Rumsfeld, if you think you can bomb away terror. You are wrong, Mr. Cheney, if you think this will all be over soon.

As a member of one family that survived a bomb, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart: Bombing will never be the solution. Do you think the Iraqi families you are bombing today are going to get up and thank you and want to know more about our great country? You are wrong.

The writer lives in Bethesda.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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[Joerver]

Bush draws stark contrast in war
But some challenge his `good-vs.-evil` viewpoint
Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Friday, April 4, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/04/MN30…



Washington -- President Bush left no room for subtlety as he spoke to 12,000 cheering Marines on Thursday, characterizing the enemy as murderers, cowards and thugs, and praising U.S. forces for their kindness, valor and goodness.

The president`s speech, his longest since the fighting began, was in many ways typical of a wartime commander in chief: consoling family members of fallen soldiers, pledging complete victory and boosting the morale of fighting men and women.

At the same time, Bush`s words -- broadcast live throughout much of the world -- displayed the stark, black-and-white lens through which he views the conflict, possibly complicating the nuanced diplomacy that is central to the mission`s success.

At a time when the United States is trying to gain the trust of Iraqi residents and build support among skeptical allies for an international rebuilding effort after the war ends, many see Bush as unwilling -- or unable - - to look beyond his uniquely American perspective.

"He consults allies, but he does whatever he wants to do," said Giampiero Gramaglia, deputy editor of the Italian news agency ANSA, in comments typical of many Europeans. "Italians do not understand why it must be black and white. It makes it sound like Americans are naive . . . or not sincere."

Bush used part of his 25-minute speech at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to declare the nation`s unwavering intention to finish off Saddam Hussein`s regime.

"The course is set. We`re on the advance. Our destination is Baghdad, and we will accept nothing less than complete and final victory," he said.

The president accused Hussein`s regime of using civilians as shields, torturing fellow countrymen and executing prisoners of war. Then he compared that behavior with the actions of the U.S. and British troops.

"In stark contrast, the citizens of Iraq are coming to know what kind of people we have sent to liberate them," Bush continued. "American forces and our allies are treating innocent civilians with kindness and showing proper respect to soldiers who surrender."

Recounting a photograph of a U.S. Marine carrying a wounded Iraqi to safety, Bush said: "That is a picture of the strength and goodness of the Marines. That is a picture of America."


ENTHUSIASTIC `OOO-RAHS`
The phrase drew enthusiastic "ooo-rahs" from the gathered Marines.

Yet such words and simplistic comparisons ring hollow to many around the world who have spent the past 15 days watching graphic videos of heavily armed Americans storming Iraq and exploding buildings in Baghdad.

"War is hell for everybody," said Natalie Loiseau, a spokesman for the French Embassy in Washington. "But, for sure, we would not express our position in the same way."

Others were less diplomatic.

"All you have to do is look at the skyline of Baghdad. It`s crazy," said Marshall Windmiller, professor emeritus of international relations at San Francisco State University.

"The forces of good versus evil?" Windmiller said. "People are going to be frightened that this guy is a religious fanatic, that he`s waging a religious crusade."

As Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded a diplomatic mission though Europe aimed in part at healing the rift over the war and negotiating an international approach to a post-war Iraq, some fear Bush`s resolute words will widen the dispute.

"When you make so many people angry . . . and so many intellectuals think the U.S. is off its rocker, it makes (diplomacy) more difficult to sell," Windmiller said.


`COWBOY DIPLOMACY`
Bush`s "cowboy diplomacy" has long been viewed as a strong point by some and a weakness to others. His call for Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" after Sept. 11, 2001, verbalized the anger of many Americans but made it harder to claim victory over the Taliban when bin Laden apparently escaped U.S. forces.

His phrase "axis of evil" during his 2002 State of the Union Address to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea struck some as cleverly Reaganesque, yet raised questions about why the United States has initiated a war against one member and not the others.

"Other countries have had problems with the president`s rhetoric long before this war started," said Casimir Yost, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

Yost said he did not believe Bush`s strong words Thursday would surprise many around the world or further set back his diplomatic mission.

"That`s the language of war," Yost said. "Diplomacy is what you do before the war, and after the war. But during the war, you send an unmistakable message to the enemy that we`re serious about what we`re doing."

Others predicted it will confirm stereotypes of the United States as unbowed to world opinion.

"It makes Bush look out of touch," Gramaglia said of Bush`s description of the war. "Italians, others, understand that there is lots of gray. Why doesn`t the president see that?"

E-mail Marc Sandalow at [e-mail].

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Bringing aid and the Bible, the man who called Islam wicked

Evangelists Fears that US Christians will inflame situation

Matthew Engel in Washington
Friday April 4, 2003
The Guardian

It could only happen with an American invasion. Poised behind the troops, waiting for a signal that Iraq is safe enough for them to operate in, are the evangelical Christians - carrying food in one hand and the Bible in the other.
All the groups, generously funded by American churchgoers, are likely to do a magnificent job in offering water, food, medical help and comfort to a traumatised population. But they are causing alarm among Muslims, who fear vulnerable Iraqis will be cajoled into conversion, and Christians, some of whom warn that the missionaries will be prime targets in an unpacified Iraq.

Muslim worries have been heightened because the man leading the charge into Iraq is the Rev Franklin Graham, who delivered the invocation at President Bush`s inauguration, the son of Billy Graham and a fierce critic of Islam. He is on record as calling it a "wicked, violent" religion, with a God different from that of Christianity. "The two are different as lightness and darkness," he wrote.

He runs an organisation called Samaritan`s Purse, whose workers are in Jordan, waiting to move into Iraq. It has a strong record of charitable help built up over more than 30 years, but its official aim is clear: "The organisation serves the church worldwide to promote the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Of late, Mr Graham has avoided inflammatory statements and declined to speak to the Guardian. He did, however, write an article for the Los Angeles Times yesterday designed to mollify his critics, insisting that Samaritan`s Purse will offer help to Iraqis without religious strings attached. "Sometimes the best preaching we can do is simply being there with a cup of cold water, exhibiting Christ`s spirit of serving others," he said.

Ibrahim Hooper, of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations was unimpressed, saying the groups involved were "despicable and deceitful". Of Mr Graham, he said: "This guy has repeatedly stated that Islam is intentionally cruel. I fail to see how such a person can be a positive influence in a Muslim country. Humanitarian relief is just a cover. Their basic motivation is conversion. These groups train workers to go in under the guise of relief to convert people away from their faith.

"I know this because I`ve been on their training courses. There`s a technique known as contextualisation. You never say directly you`re Christian. You take chairs out of the church to make it look like a mosque. You grow a beard. You dress your wife in Islamic attire. They know they`re not welcome."

Also moving into Iraq are the Southern Baptists, the second largest religious group in the US after the Catholics and the most powerful component of the Christian conservative movement. They are perhaps the strongest pro-Bush, pro-Iraq war and pro-Israel political force in the US.

Their coordinator in Oklahoma, Sam Porter, insists that humanitarian aid is the prime objective of the Iraqi relief operation; the church has 25,000 trained volunteers who help in disaster relief in the US and elsewhere.

But he added: "If someone says `Why would you to come to Iraq to serve in an impoverished, war-stricken country?` we would say it was because of the love that the Lord Jesus Christ put in our hearts. If a country opens up for evangelical missions to go there, we go. We believe strongly that Jesus Christ is the son of God and we intend to proclaim that."

Some Christian commentators are alarmed that missionaries blundering into an unstable country of which they know little would be in danger. Three Baptist missionaries were shot and killed in Yemen last December by a Muslim extremist, who said he did it because "they were preaching Christianity in a Muslim country".

One evangelical writer, Richard Mouw, of beliefnet.org, warned the groups: "We must do this with a genuine desire to serve human needs. If this is viewed as a pretence for evangelism it will only hurt the Christian cause, and perhaps further endanger the lives of the 600,000 Christians in Iraq."

Jonathan Bonk, editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, says that many strong evangelicals cannot separate their charitable work from spreading their faith. "It`s not a crafty attempt to proselytise. It`s an earnest attempt to share what they hold most dear. That`s true of all the proselytising religions, including Islam.

"The difficulty in Iraq won`t be because the evangelists are Christian, but because they`re western. If they aggressively evangelise, that`s a problem. But they`re going to be in danger whether they say anything or not. As symbols of the west, and what the west represents, they are targets."

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Who Cares About Dead Iraqis?
Body counts, Rummy`s plan, and the grisly stuff they don`t want you to see
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 4, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fgate%2Farc…



Dang that pesky collateral damage. Darn those brutal civilian deaths. Hundreds and hundreds of `em, bloody decapitated mutilated bombed-out burned-out women and children and families, over there in Iraq.

Just another irritating little side effect, doncha know, of forcibly liberating a people who didn`t really ask to be liberated and who are pretty much getting reamed from both ends and aren`t exactly rushing out into the streets by the grateful thousands, as we had expected (except, finally, some in Najaf -- whew!) to toss flowers at the wide-eyed and confused U.S. troops and our well-armed Christian God and His almighty Starbucks franchises.

What happened there, anyway? Just bad PR? Someone miss a memo? Did no one tell them we are the Great Liberator, the bringer of peace and calm and nice big oil conglomerates that will soon help them "manage" all their hundreds of billions` worth of delicious natural resources? Haven`t they seen the joy and happiness we have brought to Afghanistan? Oh wait.

Please believe it`s not happening. Please ignore the actual data, the brutality, focus instead on the patriotism and the soothing sound of the war drum and the idea of liberation, as opposed to, you know, invasion. We don`t want you to see. We don`t want you to know. And we certainly don`t want to make it easy for you to find out.

The U.S. military doesn`t even "do" body counts. They actually said as much. Don`t keep track of those dang dead civilians. We`ve got a repressed Islamic rubble-strewn nation to annihilate, they say, and a puppet government to forcibly install afterward and a whole hell of a lot of petrochemical companies lining up. We`re a little busy.

And we`ve got lots and lots of sturdy and young and mostly poor mostly patriotically deluded U.S. troops to put in harm`s way in the name of power and oil and Rummy`s black-eyed sneer, many of our own troops dying from our own brilliantly termed "friendly fire," and what, you think we have time to keep track of how many foreigners we sort of accidentally blow up? Please.

Hell, a few dozen families, especially mothers and children, get themselves decapitated by a U.S. missile striking a civilian market -- hey, that`s not our fault, is it?

After all, if Saddam hadn`t been so downright evil in the first place, we wouldn`t have to be invading his country and blowing up everything and killing children in the name of freeing them, and none of this would`ve happened, now would it? Beautiful is the logic of the Great Liberator. All hail.

Except that yes, it would have happened anyway, somehow, some way, because Dick and Rummy and Wolfie and about a dozen other ultra-conservative power-mad hawks had been planning and begging for this war for years. Yes, years. Before ShrubCo. Before 9/11. Before WMDs and Dick`s defibrillator and Shrub embarrassing and humiliating this nation on a global scale, daily.

They had a plot all along. Oh yes they did. Overthrowing Iraq was to be merely the first step to forcibly restructuring the entire Middle East in the image of the U.S. and its corporate power interests. Their motto: First Iraq, then total power gluttony and empire expansion and big-ass cigars for everyone. More or less.

Way back in 1997, Dickie and Rummy and friends got together and drew up a vile little plan, called it the Project for the New American Century, and it included lots of info about nailing Saddam and reshaping the Middle East, along with a few other pesky countries, for good measure. According to ABC News, 18 neo-conservatives signed on to the plan. Ten of them are now in Bush`s Cabinet.

And the plan was ugly and violent and military thick and war happy and it only needed a catalyst to kick it into gear, which 9/11 awkwardly provided, and a president other than too-smart Clinton to give it the smirking thumbs-up. And, lo and behold, BushCo illegally steals the presidency, and, boom -- here we are. Empire expanding, Iraqis dying. Neat! We are on plan.

The Iraqi civilian body count, at the moment, stands at somewhere between 600 and 800, so far, and climbing fast, and we haven`t even finished annihilating downtown Baghdad yet, and guerrilla warfare is expected to last into the summer, so you can bet that number will jump exponentially in the days and weeks to come and you can bet that no one in the major media will really talk much about it or report on it or even show you the real pictures.

Especially not that, especially not the pictures, no horrific and grisly scenes of bombs falling on civilian markets, or homes, or schools. No shots of dead women and shredded limbs and crushed children`s skulls, almost no actual blood at all. Amazing, isn`t it? What a nice, clean war we are inflicting. How thoughtful we are.

Instead, we get scruffy journalists riding in tanks. We get grainy patriotic videophone shots of soldiers marching through dust, soldiers donning gas masks, soldiers clutching Bibles, soldiers looking absolutely dumbfounded and sad and forcibly patriotic as deep down they wonder just what the hell we are really doing over there and why they hell they can`t just come home.

Oh wait, right, Saddam, big bad guy who supposedly is killing his own people with chemicals we sold to him, who has all these nasty WMDs we still can`t find, who is supporting terrorists we can`t verify and that even the CIA denies exist. Oh right, him.

The current coverage almost makes you think all those civilian deaths aren`t really happening, that we aren`t really killing hundreds, soon to be thousands, of innocents, that the scowling generals and sneering Ari Fleischer must be right when they stand up there and say we`re trying to minimize civilian deaths, trying to bomb and crush as gently as possible.

All claiming that a trifle of collateral damage is just an unfortunate side effect, making it sound like we broke a couple dishes while cleaning up after dinner. Whoops gosh sorry about your dead family, there there now, here have some money.

No, it`s not easy to find the truth, to see the real numbers or to see the true pictures of war. But there are some honest reports trickling out. Ghastly scenes of a brutalized people. A handful of reporters actually reporting on something other than troop movements and food supplies. But you have to really look.

And there are pictures. True images of war available. You need a steel stomach and hardened nerves to view them, but they are, in a way, required viewing, something almost everyone should see, especially those who wave flags and think we are so righteous and good and helpful.

You won`t see them on CNN, or on GOP-lickin` Fox News, or even on this Web site. It`s just too much. But if you want to know what Bush`s little war is really inflicting, you might want to take a look. Here`s just one site, from New Zealand, that`s collected a number of such grisly images from foreign presses. Also includes photos of dead U.S. soldiers. Warning: Graphic content. Warning: Perspective altering. Warning: Breakfast ruining.

scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=warimages

Oh sure they`re all brutalized. Or dying. Or mutilated. Or burned. Or bleeding. Or emotionally devastated at the loss of their entire families to a U.S. attack.

Sure they`re all, you know, dead. But hey, at least they`re liberated. All hail.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

Subscribe to Mark`s deeply skewed, mostly legal Morning Fix newsletter.
Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

©2003 SF Gate

[Joerver]

Endlich die Lösung für die kampfwilligen Internet Krieger



Aufruf zur Freiwilligen-Division Angela


Wir sind es müde, mitanzusehen, wie unser Land in einem Sumpf kollektiver Feigheit versinkt.

Wir haben nicht vergessen, was wir unseren amerikanischen Freunden verdanken.

Und wir sind beunruhigt von den vielen freiwilligen Kämpfern aus der arabischen Welt, die sich versammeln, um Saddam Hussein in Bagdad vor seiner gerechten Strafe zu beschützen.

„Es fehlt nicht an Zeit, sondern am Willen.“ (Angela Merkel)

Wir müssen ein Zeichen setzen. Wir stehen an der Seite der wenigen Deutschen, die es wie Angela Merkel wagen, in diesen Zeiten eine aufrichtige, aber unpopuläre Meinung zu vertreten. Wir sind bereit, auch im Angesicht des Feindes unsere Ernsthaftigkeit zu beweisen.

Wir fordern alle mutigen deutsche Frauen und Männer zwischen 16 und 48 dazu auf, sich mit uns als Freiwillige an der Seite der Amerikaner hier einzuschreiben.

Die Bewerbung aller Freiwilligen geht an Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld mit der Bitte, die gesamte Mannschaft als Freiwilligendivision Angela in die Organisation der US-Armee einzugliedern und in den Irak zu führen.

Die Bewerbungen werden vertraulich behandelt, um unsere Kämpfer und ihre Familien vor Übergriffen zu schützen.

Wir haben die Zeit, und wir haben den Willen !

Raas Karl van der Staaten


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Formular zum Eintritt in die Deutsche Freiwilligen Division Angela


Name.......................... Vorname
Geboren/Jahrgang:......männlich.......weiblich

Strasse......PLZ.....Wohnort....... E-Mail Telefon Handy

Nächster Bahnhof oder Flughafen:
Blutgruppe (optional)
ich habe nicht gedient.........ich habe gedient
im Rang als
Aktive Mitglieder der Bundeswehr dürfen leider erst teilnehmen, wenn sich das politische Klima in Deutschland entscheidend geändert hat.

Mit absenden dieser Email erkläre ich:

Ich besitze die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit;
Aus Sicherheitsgründen ist ein gültiger Personalausweis/Reisepass notwendig.

Ich bin in einer physischen Verfassung, die es mir erlaubt, auch Strapazen in großer Hitze durchzustehen.

Ich bin volljährig bzw. habe das Einverständnis beider Elternteile, an der Front zu kämpfen.

Ich stimme mit Angela Merkel darin überein, das der Irakkrieg „mit möglichst geringem Blutzoll zu Ende geht“.

Ich sehe mich bedauerlicherweise dazu gezwungen, Kollateralschäden in Kauf zu nehmen.

Ich bin ein prominenter CDU-Politiker/in und möchte nicht in die kämpfende Truppe eintreten, aber bin dafür bereit, die Schirmherrschaft der Freiwilligendivision Angela zu übernehmen.

Ich will oder kann am Irakkrieg leider nicht teilnehmen.
Ergänzungen/Bemerkungen


Die Division besteht bereits aus....interessierten Freiwilligen.
Anmeldeformulare unter:
http://www.germannews.com/division.htm

.

[Joerver]

Halliburton is "Making a Killing" on the War

Dear friends:

As Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld warn Americans today that we could be in for a long war, as they go to Congress seeking more and more funding for the war, and as newspapers report this week that firms in favor with this Administration have been pre-contracted to rebuild Iraq, please consider the non-partisan report on private military corporations engaged to support, and in some instances, fight in US wars abroad, prepared by the respected Center for Public Integrity http://www.publicintegrity.org (See the website for exactly who CPI is and for details on how this report was compiled and by whom):

Chief among these PMCs is Kellogg Brown Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, which VP Cheney served as CEO between 1995 and 1999. But keep reading.

Special Report
Making a Killing: The Business of War
(WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2000) -- Amid the global military downsizing and increasing number of small conflicts that followed the end of the Cold War, governments have turned increasingly to private military companies – a recently coined euphemism for mercenaries – to intervene on their behalf. A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has identified at least 90 such companies worldwide. The ICIJ investigation also uncovered a small group of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East that have profited from war commerce. Read more in ICIJ’s 11-part series. >>

Excerpts from the report, Making a Killing: The Business of War:

In 1992, the Pentagon, then headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave Brown & Root an additional $5 million to update the report. Brown & Root (now called Kellogg Brown & Root, or KBR) is a subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, which Cheney, the U.S. vice president, headed as CEO from 1995 to 1999. Brown & Root was also awarded contracts in 1995 and 1997 to provide logistical support in the Balkans, where the U.S. military has been enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace accord that ended the war in former Yugoslavia. Those contracts mushroomed to $2.2 billion worth of payments over five years, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Brown & Root is hardly the only PMC that raises questions about the revolving door. Frank Carlucci, who served as defense secretary in the waning years of the Reagan administration, was chairman of BDM when it acquired Vinnell; he is still chairman of the Carlyle Group, a merchant banking firm that owns BDM and counts a plethora of former government officials, including former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of state, James Baker, and his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Richard Darman, as consultants, advisors, and executives. During Carlucci’s tenure at BDM, the company greatly expanded the number of contracts it had with the U.S. government; by 1994, the company had revenue of $774 million, up from the $295 million the company grossed in 1991, the first full year that the Carlyle Group owned the company.

Wall Street has noticed the booming business of both foreign and domestic PMCs. Security companies with publicly traded stocks reportedly increased in value at twice the rate of the Dow Jones industrial average in the go-go 1990s.

A September 2000 GAO report (PDF) found that effective oversight of Brown & Root’s contract in the Balkans was impaired by the government’s confusion about its authority over the contract and insufficient training of Army auditors, among other things. The report also found that although the Army had a process in place to review Brown & Root’s requests for "new work" or additional services – which comprised more than 90 percent of the fees paid under the contract – the requests were approved but not routinely reviewed. Between 1996 and 2000, the GAO estimated that Brown & Root collected more than $2.1 billion in additional costs, which nearly doubled the amount agreed to in the original contract. Brown & Root called the GAO criticisms "subjective opinion."

See this page for a list of special reports that should be "must-reads" for all Americans.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/index.asp?L1=30&L2=0&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

This is bad. But it is only a piece of the iceberg.

The Bush Administration controls the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, and most of the appellate the courts.

It controls the US media through the FCC (busily eliminating barriers to monopoly ownership of the airwaves, etc.) and through connections with corporate entities like Clear Channel Communications (See CHANNELS OF INFLUENCE By Paul Krugman, The New York Times, March 25, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/opinion/25KRUG.html)

It is poised to unleash the greatest threat to civil liberties since the Revolution, in the form of the successor to the Patriot Act. This bill includes the infamous capacity to strip a US citizen of citizenship on the basis of membership in organizations not favored by Bush. (See: Breaking News, http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/lewis.html)

It is handing the nation`s commonwealth -- the environment -- to the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

It has virtually bankrupted the federal government`s capacity to fund domestic programs of any kind.

It has placed virtually the entire burden of taxation on WAGE-EARNERS, absolving corporations and the investor class.

It wages war for profit.

It lies compulsively and denies Americans the constitutionally guaranteed right to hold our government accountable. (See online histories of Karl Rove, the Svengali/Goebbels of the 21st Century, http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen1101.html)

Please tell me where are our people of principle who will not tolerate turning America into a one-party dictatorship? Where are Americans whose patriotism and loyalty is to the Constitution, not to any president? Is there no one who can stop this madness?

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/04/04_halliburton.h…

[Joerver]

April 4, 2003
American Companies Adjust to Anti-American Fervor
By STUART ELLIOTT


TH the recent surge in petition drives, demonstrations, even physical attacks that equate brands born in the United States with imperialism or militarism, advertisers are confronting perhaps the most sustained anti-American feelings abroad since the Vietnam War.

For marketers like the Northwest Airlines division of the NWA Corporation, which introduced a redesigned look for its fleet of airplanes yesterday, the current conditions were carefully considered.

In developing the new look, "we led off with the idea that this is a time for a conservative brand strategy in a conservative world, a sobered America," said John Diefenbach, partner at TrueBrand in San Francisco, a consulting company.

The graphic overhaul, in which the letters "NWA" are played up more than the Northwest name, represents a balance, Mr. Diefenbach said, in that "NWA is more global than Northwest, but at the same time it`s about being a very proud American company that represents the American heartland" from its headquarters in Minneapolis.

The changes at Northwest are indicative of shifts being studied by United States-based corporations with multinational businesses in the wake of backlash over the war in Iraq.

For instance, the Adbusters Media Foundation in Vancouver, British Columbia, which fights what it considers the overcommercialization of culture, is organizing a protest called Boycott Brand America; a petition on its Web site (www.adbusters.org) had almost 36,000 signatures as of yesterday. And the Qibla Cola Company in Derby, England, which is selling its soft drink as a Muslim alternative to Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola with a campaign carrying the theme "Liberate your taste," urged consumers yesterday to boycott American brands sold globally.

"It`s an incredible challenge," said Christie Nordheim, assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. "The fortunes of these companies hinge on the fortunes of the Bush foreign policy."

"Until now, American brands have reaped the benefits of being associated with America," she added. "Now, they`re suffering the consequences."

• As a result, marketers are scrutinizing everything that represents them internationally, from ads to package designs to promotions.

"Some of our companies have made adjustments to accommodate the current environment," said Richard Detweiler, a spokesman for the Frito-Lay International and Pepsi-Cola International divisions of PepsiCo in Purchase, N.Y., after taking steps "to protect employees, first and foremost, and assets."

Mr. Detweiler declined to discuss specific changes being made by the companies, which sell products under locally based brand names in addition to American names like Fritos and Pepsi-Cola.

Ms. Nordheim differentiated between marketers under fire for their "American-ness," which include the McDonald`s Corporation, and those like the Procter & Gamble Company, which "are more embedded in the countries in which they operate."

Clearly, those most closely associated with the American way of life "are going to suffer the greatest harm," Ms. Nordheim said.

At McDonald`s, Walt Riker, a vice president in Oak Brook, Ill., said that while the company was "very recognized" for the American values and lifestyles that inspired its products, "we are absolutely decentralized."

"Our operations in 118 countries around the world are run by locals who know what`s best for their markets," Mr. Riker said. "McDonald`s France is a shining star in the McDonald`s system because it`s run by smart national management that knows France a lot better than Oak Brook, Ill., does."

The French operators of McDonald`s have worked hard to distinguish themselves from their United States parent, offering unique menu fare, designing the restaurants to look different from the American stores and even establishing a brand identity for McDonald`s as "McDos." They also run campaigns stressing the local nature of their operations.

"These are messages run periodically in local countries," Mr. Riker said, "that remind people that while McDonald`s is an American brand, it`s a brand that stands for local ownership and local jobs."

Similar messages are increasingly being delivered by the overseas divisions of other marketers based in the United States.

"Boycotts hurt the local economy, the local bottlers, the local employees" in the more than 200 countries outside the United States in which Coca-Cola products are sold, said Kelly Brooks, a spokesman for the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta.

"We have acknowledged that boycotts have had an impact on our business in general, without being specific," he added. "And any changes in advertising or marketing would be made locally, based on situations in particular countries."

At Procter & Gamble, said Gretchen Mutchnick, a spokeswoman in Cincinnati, "though our headquarters is in the United States, we`ve worked really hard to establish strong local roots in each country in which we operate, and we will continue to do that." Procter has operations in more than 80 nations.

Several multinational marketers with American heritage have sold products abroad for so long from so many indigenous offices that they are widely perceived as locally based rather than American icons.

"Yes, we`re an American company and we know we`re on some boycott lists, but we haven`t found it to be much of an issue for us," said Jack Kennedy, general manager for strategic communications at the H. J. Heinz Company in Pittsburgh.

"In the United Kingdom, people say we`re a British company because we`ve been there more than 100 years," he added. "And our products are not always sold under the Heinz name; in Italy, we sell Plasmon, the leading baby-food brand that just celebrated its centenary."

The Gillette Company, which sells products in 200 countries and territories, has operated overseas for nearly 100 years, said Eric Kraus, a spokesman in Boston, so in countries like France and Germany, "we are very much a part of the local culture, the local fabric." Gillette also benefits from selling brands under non-American names like Braun, the German appliance maker.

•
Local ties developed overseas over the course of a century by the Ford Motor Company are the reason that "so far this hasn`t been an issue with us," said Jennifer Flake, a Ford spokeswoman in Detroit.

Of course, dislike for products with American identities was not born out of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those with long memories can recall the outcries against "Coca-Colonialism" in the 1950`s and 1960`s that were spawned by Communist attacks against capitalism and the resentment of colonial nations before they were freed from the control of American allies like Britain or France.

Such protests even became part of the American popular culture, as seen in the 1961 Billy Wilder film "One, Two, Three," a cold war comedy that lampooned the influence of United States business culture abroad as symbolized by Coca-Cola.

"As a cultural historian, I`d have to say, This too shall pass," said James B. Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

"Thirty years ago, people burned effigies or U.S. flags to express outrage," Mr. Twitchell said. "Now, destroying the Golden Arches is an act of rebellion."

"If I were with one of these companies, I`d do absolutely nothing," he added, "because calling attention to it only exacerbates it."

Besides, said Marc E. Babej, president at Reason Inc. in New York, a marketing strategy company, "people in Arabic or European countries protesting against American brands were not likely to love America, or be the biggest buyers of those brands, in the first place."



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Why Bush is just a bolshevik
Alexander Chancellor
Saturday April 5, 2003
The Guardian

I have rather unpleasant memories of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the anarchist leader of the 1968 student revolt in Paris. As "Danny The Red", a sociology student at the University of Nanterre, he became world famous for his part in the May uprising that came close to toppling President Charles de Gaulle.

Mr Cohn-Bendit was 23 years old at the time, and I was 28, just appointed to serve in Rome as the Italian bureau chief of Reuters News Agency. On my way to Italy to begin my new job, I stopped for a night in Paris, where I got tear-gassed in the Boulevard St Michel and felt quite ill for a week as a result of Danny The Red`s troublemaking. Then, about a year later, he suddenly appeared at the Reuters office in Rome. There was a story he wanted us to carry on the Reuters news service (I can`t remember what it was about, only that it redounded to his own greater glory). And to encourage us to do as he wanted (which we didn`t), he arrived at the office with two arrogant young henchmen, also veterans of the Paris street-fighting.

Nevertheless, with the courtesy I considered due to an international celebrity, I invited him into my little private office overlooking the Piazza di Spagna to discuss his proposal. This involved him walking through the main editorial room, in which he individually urged each member of staff to resist exploitation. Since it was four o`clock in the afternoon, I asked Mr Cohn-Bendit and his companions if they would like a cup of tea - an offer received with merciless Gallic derision. The three of them then took over my desk and made a succession of telephone calls to Paris while I stood helplessly by, feeling pathetically English and middle class. When eventually they left without a word of thanks, I felt a strong hope that I would never set eyes on any of them again.

But now, 35 years later, I suddenly find myself becoming rather a fan of Mr Cohn-Bendit. Since 1999, he has been a member of the European Parliament as leader of the French Greens. And as a passionate European federalist and eloquent opponent of the war in Iraq, he was recently invited to debate the war in Washington with one of America`s chief hawks, Richard Perle, who until his resignation last week was top adviser to the Pentagon on defence policy.

Actually, he is still a leading adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, but has resigned as chairman of the defence policy board because of foreign business ties that appeared to depend, to some extent, upon his influence with the US defence department. He remains, however, one of the chief advocates of the new American doctrine of attacking other countries before they attack you.

In the debate, Mr Cohn-Bendit caught my attention by accusing the US of "revolutionary hubris", which is exactly what I thought he was guilty of when he visited my office in Rome all those years ago. As a self-proclaimed revolutionary himself, he sees the Bush administration as cast in the same mould. "Recently, your government has been behaving like the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution," he told Mr Perle. "You want to change the whole world. Like them, you claim that history will show that truth is on your side.

"Like every revolutionary, you have good ideas, but your problem lies in the means you want to use to realise them... Suddenly, you want to bring democracy to the world," Mr Cohn-Bendit went on. "After the war, you will neglect Iraq and shift your attention to Syria, then Saudi Arabia. Because you are Americans, you have the biggest army in the world: you can do anything you want. This is revolutionary hubris."

Perle did his best to refute these claims. America was not an aggressive, imperialist power, he said. Baghdad would be liberated, not by a US general, but by the Iraqi opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi. "We will leave both governance and oil in their hands," he continued. "We will hand over power quickly to give Iraqis a chance to shape their own destiny. The whole world will see this. And I expect the Iraqis to be at least as thankful as French president Jacques Chirac was for France`s liberation."

"Oh, come on! It`s not true," retorted Mr Cohn-Bendit. He does not believe that America will be content to leave the Iraqis to their own devices. Nor does he believe that America will be willing, in future, to deal with Europe as an equal partner.

On both points, I suspect that he is right.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Hearts, minds and bodybags

Iraq can`t be a Vietnam, pundits insist. Those who were there know better

James Fox
Saturday April 5, 2003
The Guardian

In Vietnam in 1972 there was a hearts and minds programme called chieu hoi to entice the population in the south to rally to the government. The late Gavin Young of the Observer quipped: "I think the Americans have bitten off more than they can chieu hoi ." Is this the case with Iraq if, whatever happens in Baghdad, liberation turns to occupation and resistance?
To lose the hearts and minds, which the Americans have surely done so far in Iraq, would surely be to lose the war, whatever the strategic results. But don`t whisper "Vietnam", and certainly "quagmire", the word with which the Iraqis daily taunt the Americans. To do so in print has invited the reflex denial that the topography - desert versus jungle - is different and not good for guerrilla war; that Vietnam took 10 years to lose and we`ve been here two weeks. One historian wrote last week that the Iraqis were not "politicised as the Vietnamese were by the Vietcong", a startling observation given the evidence of recent days. Nationalism, patriotism and fatwas from the Arab world are surely enough. Iraqi strategists, according to one Arab editor, study Vietnam constantly. And they talk of it too. Not only will 100 Bin Ladens be unleashed by this struggle, they say, but "100 Vietnams". "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles," Tariq Aziz told the Institute of Strategic Studies before war began. Yesterday Iraq`s information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, talked of turning Iraq into "another Indochina". Has Baghdad become a mini Ho Chi Minh trail of hidden tunnels and arsenals?

George C Scott, as General Patton in the eponymous film, hisses: "Rommel, you sonofabitch, I read your book". The key book for the Iraqis was written by General Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant architect of the war against the French and the Americans. It was published in English in 1961, under the title People`s War, People`s Army, long before the US war in Vietnam hotted up. Though full of partyspeak, it shows how easy it is to hold up and demoralise a hugely superior army that has a long supply convoy. Giap exploited what he called "the contradictions of the aggressive colonial war". The invaders have to fan out and operate far from their bases. When they deploy, said Giap, "their broken-up units become easy prey". First harass the enemy, "rotting" away his rear and reserves, forcing him to deploy troops to defend bases and perimeters.

"Is the enemy strong?" wrote Giap. "One avoids him. Is he weak? One attacks him." There will never be enough troops to hold down the scattered guerrilla forces. General William Westmoreland, commander of US forces in Vietnam, estimated that he would have needed 2 million troops to "pacify" the country. At the peak of the war he had half that number. You can apply the principle to Baghdad or the country beyond - the topography matters less than the principle. Commanders talk of their puzzlement at Republican Guard units "melting away" after the onslaught of last week. Are they preparing a trap?

It was astonishing to read of the surprise on the part of the military at the Iraqis` methods. The commander of the Desert Rats said that their "terror tactics" were "outside the rules of war", although anyone who has attended a war knows there aren`t any rules. Hue was the last pitched battle fought by the Americans during the 1968 Tet offensive. In that battle, 5,000 Vietcong infiltrators climbed out of their civilian clothes in the city to reveal their North Vietnamese uniforms. General Westmoreland complained that Tet "was characterised by treachery and deceitfulness" - the same outrageous methods Bush speaks about today.

The Americans were surprised and outraged by the Vietnamese tactics right to the end, consistently underestimating the North Vietnamese army`s strength and determination. I remember the shock in 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a fierce barrage far from its bases with deeply dug-in 130mm guns south of the demilitarised zone. Giap had stockpiled massive underground arsenals.

The Iraq campaign has swiftly changed from a "hearts and minds" operation of liberation to one of winning the war. The Anglo-American forces have not won the cooperation of the local population that is so vital for military-political control. From the Iraqi point of view, since you can`t win, the only real weapon is the demoralisation of the enemy, keeping the war going as long as possible and uniting the population against them. Mark Franchetti reported vividly last weekend on frightened marines shooting up any taxi that moved, describing the fresh-faced soldiers he had met a few days ealier turning into scared, demoralised killers - echoes again of the Vietnam era.

Giap wanted to wage a protracted guerrilla war of attrition and mount a parallel political offensive aimed at the US democratic system, which would not bear for ever a long, inconclusive war. The Iraqis are doing the same. What took years to build up in the US during the Vietnam war - scepticism and finally widespread opposition - could happen in just weeks with the help of 24-hour television. Now the actual speed and success of the war will come down to whether the Americans are prepared to kill civilians more or less indiscriminately, as Saddam does and Giap did before him. If it is a question of televised bodybags versus civilians, the civilians will have to go.

Finally, there is the Giap maxim: "War without politics is like a a tree without a root." At the moment, the coalition politics stink. It is impossible for Rumsfeld, and perhaps also Tony Blair, to understand how insulting it is to be told what "liberation" is by a superpower you have reason to distrust. The doctrine forgets how instructed Iraqis are with a deep sense of their history, as were the Vietnamese and as are the Palestinians, now coming to fight in Iraq because they fear they may be next.

I remember, too, in Vietnam in 1972 the anger among the South Vietnamese - even when facing defeat - at being denied a hand in their own destiny. The sentiment was eloquently put by one Iraqi in Basra last week: "Even if I do not support Saddam, I do not want the invasion. They want to change the system but this is not the way. This way there will be only death, the death of children and women."

Maybe the Iraqis who simply want to defend their country out of patriotism should be taken at their word; that Baghdad is indeed the first quagmire they advertise. It can`t be besieged because that would lose any final support for the coalition cause. In house-to-house fighting it will take, according to one military expert, a battalion to clear one office block; the battle could last many weeks or even months. If air strikes are used, it will kill many civilians and wreck any last hope of cooperation.

"What if they get to Baghdad and nobody`s home?" asks Dan Plesch, senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, "if they`ve all melted away to the towns set in the marshes of the Tigris?" With or without Saddam, the guerrilla war then extends to the country beyond and then perhaps to the whole Arab world, whose united desire at the moment, according to Egypt`s leading newspaper, is to see the "invincible" US defeated, in whatever cause.

· James Fox reported from Vietnam for the Sunday Times in the early 1970s. He is the author of White Mischief and The Langhorne Sisters

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What they say / What they mean
Will Durst - WorkingForChange

04.03.03 - ONAWAY, MICHIGAN, WHICH GOT SNOW LAST NIGHT. AND MORE IS EXPECTED TONIGHT. I`M NOT SURE THIS WHOLE GLOBAL WARMING THING IS WORKING OUT AS PLANNED. UP HERE THEY LOVE SPRING SO MUCH, THEY SAVE IT FOR JUNE.

What They Say: Liberate.
What They Mean: Overthrow.

WTS: The actions of the anti-war protestors are giving solace to the enemy.
WTM: The price of freedom is freedom.

WTS: The Coalition of the Willing.
WTM: The Coalition of the English Speaking. Except for Canada.

WTS: Our intelligence communities are confused that civilians didn`t welcome the invasion.
WTM: What do you mean we`re not fighting the French? What`s the deal with all the berets then?

WTS: We don`t even believe Saddam is alive, since he hasn`t been seen in over two weeks.
WTM: Come out, come out, wherever you are.

WTS: I`d like to see the face of the elite Republican Guard after they witness our "Shock and Awe" campaign.
WTM: I`d like to see the face of the elite Republican Guard after they witness our continuing series of "Shock and Awe" campaigns.

WTS: We will find and destroy Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction.
WTM: We will find them, even if we don`t find them. If you know what I mean.

WTS: Don`t worry Shiites; we won`t abandon you.
WTM: This time we really mean it. Really. Why would we lie again?

WTS: We`re going to need billions in humanitarian aid in order to rebuild the Iraqi state.
WTM: And we`re going to finance it with a huge tax cut.

WTS: We will never forget the people of Iraq.
WTM: The same way we never forgot the people of umm, what`s their name, you know, next to Pakistan, oh yeah, Afghanistan.

WTS: The vast majority of Saddam`s oppressed army will raise their arms in surrender.
WTM: Well, they raised their arms. About as high as their shoulders.

WTS: We will hunt Saddam Hussein down like the rat he is.
WTM: Just like the rat Osama bin Laden still is.

WTS: President Bush does not possess a love of detail.
WTM: Like if Reagan and Quayle had a kid.

WTS: This war is not about religion.
WTM: Unless your religious leaders lay pipeline.

WTS: Our incursion will resemble a surgical strike.
WTM: Courtesy of an HMO near you.

WTS: We are bringing freedom to the Iraqi people.
WTM: Whether they want it or not.



© 2003 WorkingForChange.com


URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14775&CFI…

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Hinweis auf einen guten unabhängigen Cartoonisten empfehlenswert:
http://www.bendib.com/

.

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Secretary of State Colin Powell gets good press. He`s often portrayed as a war hero, a diplomat, a moderate, who lends balance to the Bush administration. He`s a white media darling. However, Powell`s actual record in foreign affairs contradicts the good-cop image. Powell has always been a militarist seeking to extend U.S. corporate power through force of arms, with or without U.N. support.

Colin Powell was a key player in the Iran-Contra scandal. As top deputy to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Powell supervised the army transfer of 4,508 TOW missiles to the CIA, missiles that became part of the illegal arms-for-hostage swap with Iran. Powell promoted illegal CIA-Contra attempts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. In defiance of the World Court, he supported the Contra terrorists when they were killing thousands of civilians. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell led a brutal invasion of Panama. On the first day, when hundreds of civilians died, Powell declared: "We have put a shingle outside our door saying, `Superpower lives here.`" Three thousand Panamanian civilians - the same number that died on 9/1l - were bombed and gunned down in Panama City.

There is nothing moderate or reasonable about Colin Powell`s approach to the First Amendment during wartime. Along with then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Powell played a decisive role in creating a new system of military control of the press in wartime. When the air war began in Iraq in 1991, Powell and General Norman Schwarzkopf fed carefully selected footage to Washington.

In an essay on the "limitations imposed on reporters on the battlefield," Pulitzer Prize author Patrick J. Sloyan wrote: "Under rules developed by Cheney and Powell, journalists were not allowed to move without military escorts. All interviews had to be monitored by military public affairs escorts. Every line of copy, every still photograph, every strip of film had to be approved - censored - before being filed. And these rules were ruthlessly enforced."

Under Powell directives, the administration "produced not a single picture or video of anyone being killed. This sanitized, bloodless presentation by military briefers left the world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death." Powell`s victory over the compliant press may be his greatest conquest of all.

Powell`s Propaganda Challenged

In September 1995, Colin Powell conducted a national tour to promote his autobiography, "My American Journey."

In "Target Iraq: What the news media didn`t tell you," media critics Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich recount an incident that took place in San Francisco. As Powell praised U.S. military invasions abroad, a middle-aged man, hunched in a wheelchair, shouted from the back of the room: "You didn`t tell the truth about the war in the Gulf, General." Powell ignored the interruption. He continued to speak about the glory of the wars that brought him fame: "It is very rewarding to see this change in attitude toward the military."

The man in the wheelchair was Ron Kovac, author of "Born on the Fourth of July." Struggling to be heard, he raised his voice: "I want the American people to know what the General hid from the American public during the Gulf War. They hid the casualties. They hid the horror. They hid the violence. We don`t need any more violence in our country.... We need leaders who understand the tragedy of using violence in solving our problems."

Regarding the issues of race, Powell is duplicitous. He supports affirmative action. Far more important, however, is Powell`s support for world empire, international white supremacy. Powell`s ascendancy is associated with the suffering and deaths of thousands of innocent people of color - civilians in Grenada whose psychiatric hospital was bombed; the Black Panamanians who lost their lives in Panama City; half a million Iraqi children killed by air raids and years of sanctions. When asked about the number of Panamanians killed by U.S. intervention, Powell said: "It isn`t a figure I think about."

Under the Bush doctrine, countries of color, nations of the Third World, have no sovereignty, no rights, which the Anglo powers are bound to respect.

Colin Powell is hardly a moderate . He`s a hawk with smooth talons.


Paul Rockwell is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He may be contacted at [e-mail]



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April 5, 2003
The Rural Opposition: Protesting Where Everybody Knows Your Name
By JODI WILGOREN


ARMONY, Minn., April 3 — When Eva Barr called the county courthouse to ask about a permit for an antiwar protest, the clerk on the other end of the line went silent.

"Well, I don`t know that I`ve ever dealt with such a phone call before," Ms. Barr, 36, recalled the clerk saying after a while. "I don`t even know who to ask."

That was in January, when Ms. Barr concluded that "it`s not exclusively for urbanites to be opposed to the established order" and decided not to drive an hour to Rochester, or two to the Twin Cities, to wave a sign.

Instead, she and a band of protesters calling themselves Rural Peacemakers have spent Saturday mornings since then tromping around this corner of southeastern Minnesota, where cattle outnumber people and yellow ribbons are far more visible than "Stop War" bumper stickers.

In what old-timers say are the first street marches in these parts — other than on Memorial Day — the protesters paraded past the marquee proclaiming "United We Stand" outside Harmony AgriServices and the "Support the Troops" signs in the pharmacist`s window in this village of 1,081. They marched through the downtowns of Canton, population 343; Chatfield, 2,394; Mabel, 766; Rushford, 1,614; and Spring Valley, 2,518. Nine people stood in Preston, population 1,426 and the county seat, the weekend before the war began, and a crowd of 81 descended on Feb. 15 on the artsy hamlet of Lanesboro, 788, where a church potluck followed the march.

"We`re just little fishes in little ponds — all you can do is speak out, speak up," Peggy Hanson, 52, a Lanesboro City Council member, said at Chat & Chew. "A person`s a person, no matter how small.`

"Ever read about Horton?" Ms. Hanson added, citing Dr. Seuss. "The Whos, they just made this noise, but somebody heard them. We`re like Whos in Whoville."

It is one thing to speak up in a large crowd in a big city and quite another to do it amid the farm fields. The antiwar movement here has already learned that politics are intensely personal in communities where people do not pass each other without waving and the woman at Harmony`s Village Square restaurant recognizes the voice of the caller ordering a pizza.

The anonymity of chanting among several hundred thousand in New York or San Francisco is unavailable on Lanesboro`s Parkway Avenue, where Lydia O`Connor, whose son-in-law is in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, stood silently writing down names as the protesters passed. Some small-business people who say they oppose the war have not joined the marches, they say, for fear of alienating customers; others who have protested report receiving nasty looks and letters.

In Ely, a town of 3,724 in northern Minnesota, the City Council passed an antiwar resolution and then rescinded it 10 days later after the mayor was deluged by 200 calls.

So while Rural Peacemakers has helped link like-minded individuals from across Fillmore County, it has also left an unspoken tension in the quilting circles and coffee-shop dice games where people stick to safe gossip, avoiding difficult issues.

"That`s the difference between city and country — there are always consequences, social, political and economic consequences, to what you do here," said Peter Denzer, 82, a potter who lives near Rushford. "When you protest in Washington, D.C., when it`s over, it`s over. Here it stays with you. We see our fellow protesters all the time. We live with them. And we live with the people who see us."

Which is why Ms. Hanson, who owns a bed and breakfast, took the "Say No to War With Iraq" sign off her lawn after the missiles started falling on Baghdad.

"I don`t want Lydia to have to drive by my house and see that sign," she said of Mrs. O`Connor. "I don`t want to make her daily life any more difficult than it already is."

But Mrs. O`Connor`s husband, Joe, who retired after 26 years in the Army, said he could not help but feel insulted by the "War is Good Business — Invest Your Son" sign that Frank Wright — Ms. Hanson`s companion, who makes wooden spoon sculptures — has in his studio.

At big-city demonstrations, Mr. O`Connor said, you see placards; at small-town protests, you see faces.

"When you stand up for an issue in a small town — was it Aristotle who said every action has a reaction?" Mr. O`Connor said over beers at the Lanesboro American Legion Post No. 40, which has 109 members. "Once hostilities start up, you`re responsible as a citizen to think about more than just your views. You`ve got to think about your neighbors."

The Rural Peacemakers are echoed by pockets of protest in the nation`s small towns, but they represent a small minority, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which showed that the strongest support for the war was in rural areas, where large percentages of people have relatives deployed in the Persian Gulf region. In the poll, 82 percent of rural residents approved of the invasion, compared with 69 percent of city dwellers.

The small thread of dissent along the country roads here has roots in the upper Midwest`s farmer-labor populism that has long questioned international entanglements. But it also reflects the growing rift between natives and newcomers — anyone without grandparents in the cemetery — as this area, like others, tries to revive the dying farm economy with tourism, drawing artists and telecommuting yuppies.

Consider Harmony, about 17 miles south of Lanesboro: "so small we don`t even have a town drunk so we all have to take our turn," according to Myron Scheevel, 67, one of a dozen men who took part in a dollar dice game at Harmony House, the local cafe. As the story goes, the town got its name when residents were bickering over various options and an elder banged a gavel to quiet them, demanding, "Let`s have harmony."

Joy and Bob Johnson, who have lived in Harmony since the early 1970`s, used to distribute 10-page political pamphlets through the window of the A & W drive-through they owned, so no one was surprised to see them leading the local peace march.

Mrs. Johnson, 69, said that when she invited the women in her Monday kaffeeklatsch to join her on Saturdays, they always had something else to do. But that might just be the Harmony way of disagreeing.

"I think it`s a joke," Ada Austin, a farm owner, said of the protests. "We`ve got our boys over there."

Referring to the Johnsons, John Ryan, a retired hog buyer, said, "When you`ve got a Republican regime, we`ve got some hard-core Democrats that protest anything."

Fillmore County, in which Harmony is located, voted 49 percent for Al Gore in 2000, 46 percent for George W. Bush and 4 percent for Ralph Nader. But the legislators who represent the area in St. Paul and Washington tend to be conservative.

Elton Redalen, a retired Republican legislator and state agriculture secretary, comes from a family that has farmed here for six generations. Every Memorial Day, Mr. Redalen, 77, takes his American flag and marches through Lanesboro. So when he heard about the Rural Peacemakers, he took his flag and planned a counterdemonstration.

"I needed to make sure that when the story was written that it wouldn`t only be the anti-Bush, antiwar protesters," he explained.

"I don`t hate them, I love them," he added of the peace demonstrators. "We live here. We have to get along with them."

In New York and San Francisco, rallies supporting and opposing the war compete for crowds and scream at each other across police cordons. Not in Lanesboro. Mr. Redalen, carrying his flag, and Mr Wright, with a "Wage Peace" sign, walked arm in arm at the head of the line, down Parkway Avenue and to the Lutheran church, where Mr. Redalen led those gathered for the potluck in a prayer.



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Die Terrortubbies eine Flash-Animation. Viel Spass.


http://cagle.slate.msn.com/mondo/MondoTerror.asp


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Der Hass auf die USA wächst"
Interview ADELBERT REIF
taz: Herr Kermani, Ihre Reportagen aus Ägypten, Pakistan, Israel, Palästina sowie dem Iran haben durch den Angriff auf den Irak eine besondere Aktualität erlangt. Was bedeutet dieser Krieg aus der Perspektive der Länder dieser Region?

Navid Kermani: Es sind viele verschiedene Szenarien denkbar, auch solche, nach denen der Irak innerhalb relativ kurzer Zeit eine prowestliche, halbwegs demokratische Regierung bekäme. Diesen Szenarien stehen freilich eine große Anzahl anderer, weit weniger optimistische gegenüber. Sollte sich der Krieg über einen längeren Zeitraum hinziehen und die Zahl seiner Opfer auf irakischer Seite hoch sein, dann wird das die Unruhe in den arabischen Ländern erheblich steigern. Gruppen, deren Zweck im gewaltsamen Kampf gegen amerikanische und israelische Ziele liegt, werden beträchtlichen Zulauf erhalten. Das wiederum wird eine Gegengewalt auslösen und die Spirale von Gewalt und Gegengewalt, wie wir sie in den letzten zwei, drei Jahren im israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt beobachten können, globalisieren.

Wie real schätzen Sie diese Gefahr ein?

Darin sehe ich eine reale Gefahr. Und sie stellt zugleich eine Gefahr für unsere eigenen Rechtssysteme im Westen dar. Denn wir sollten uns keinen Illusionen hingeben: Wenn es hier in Europa in rascher Folge zu zwei oder drei großen Terroranschlägen kommt, dann werden wir feststellen, wie leicht das Fundament von Toleranz und Rechtsstaatlichkeit auch auf diesem Kontinent zu erschüttern ist. In dem Augenblick nämlich, da sich unsere Gesellschaft konkret bedroht fühlt, sich kollektive Ängste in ihr ausbreiten, wird die Bereitschaft steigen, "Sondermaßnahmen" beliebiger Art zu ihrem Schutz zu akzeptieren und ideelle, rechtliche, moralische Errungenschaften aufzugeben, für die sie jahrhundertelang gekämpft hat. Das hat das Beispiel der USA nach dem 11. September bereits gezeigt.

Und wenn der Krieg ein rasches Ende findet?

Selbst ein schneller und halbwegs glimpflicher Verlauf des Krieges im Irak dürfte schwerwiegende Folgen nach sich ziehen: In einem solchen Fall würde das die strategischen-militärischen Ambitionen der gegenwärtigen Administration in Washington zweifellos bestärken und sie zu weiteren kriegerischen Unternehmungen ermuntern. Man muss nur studieren, welche Vorstellungen neokonservative Denker bereits seit den frühen Neunzigerjahren - seit dem Ende der bipolaren Weltordnung - entwickelt haben.

Also eigentlich, seit es keine tatsächliche Bedrohung mehr gibt?

Natürlich kann von einer realen "Bedrohung" Amerikas durch die Staaten der Region des Mittleren Ostens keine Rede sein. Man muss von einer Bedrohung durch den Terrorismus sprechen, aber die wird durch die jetzige Politik der Vereinigten Staaten gerade nicht gemindert, sondern auf dramatische Weise erhöht. Die Staaten, um die es geht, sind teilweise schlimme, verachtenswerte Diktaturen, deren Ende für sich betrachtet ein Segen wäre. Aber sie sind keine Bedrohung - jedenfalls nicht für den Westen. Wenn sie jemanden bedrohen, dann die Zukunft ihrer eigenen Bevölkerung.

Gilt das auch für den Irak?

Der Irak liegt sowohl militärisch wie psychologisch vollkommen am Boden. Die bloße Vorstellung, dass Länder wie Iran, Syrien, Pakistan oder wer sonst noch alles auf der "amerikanischen Agenda" steht, eines mehr oder weniger fernen Tages das Schicksal des Irak erleiden, hat für die Zukunft etwas außerordentlich Bedrohliches an sich. Der Status quo ist nicht gut, aber es wäre denkbar und wünschenswert, statt des Angriffskriegs andere Szenarien zu entwickeln, um mittelfristig zu einer Demokratisierung der Region beizutragen. Im Augenblick ist es doch so, dass die Vereinigten Staaten Diktatoren entweder massiv unterstützen oder sie militärisch zu bekämpfen drohen - Partner oder Schurke, dazwischen gibt es nichts. Zwischen diesen beiden Optionen gäbe es aber eine Menge Platz für Politik.

Wie schätzen Sie die Möglichkeiten der europäischen Regierungen ein, die imperiale Ordnungspolitik der USA zu bremsen?

Es ist gut, dass die Europäer es versuchen, aber ich glaube nicht, dass sie den USA wirklich Einhalt gebieten können. Da vertraue ich schon eher auf die Selbstregulierungsmechanismen innerhalb der amerikanischen Gesellschaft. Denn schließlich handelt es sich bei dem politischen System der Vereinigten Staaten um eines, das, so imperial orientiert es auch sein und so verbrecherisch es im Einzelnen immer wieder gehandelt haben mag, letztlich auf einer demokratischen, aufklärerischen Tradition beruht. Darüber hinaus war es immer so - eine der vielen verwirrenden und zugleich interessanten Paradoxien des Landes -, dass die Vereinigten Staaten ihren eigenen langfristigen Vorteil ziemlich brutal verfolgten und zugleich nach innen einen Ausgleich der verschiedenen Interessen des Landes herbeizuführen vermochten. Deshalb sind sie schließlich so mächtig geworden. Amerika ist durch eine ganz eigene, verrückte, aber erfolgreiche Mischung aus Pragmatismus und Idealismus gekennzeichnet.

Kann man angesichts des gegenwärtigen Geschehens tatsächlich von Idealismus sprechen?

Man darf das idealistische Moment nicht unterschätzen, jedenfalls nicht in der breiten Öffentlichkeit. Gefährlich werden könnte der gegenwärtigen Regierung der pragmatische Zug innerhalb der amerikanischen Gesellschaft. Die gegenwärtige Politik Washingtons ist politisch, in Bezug auf die Sicherheit und ökonomisch hochgradig gefährlich für die Vereinigten Staaten. Das wissen sehr viel mehr einflussreiche Leute, als die Wirklichkeit von CNN und Fox TV es uns glauben macht. Heute sehen wir, dass der Widerstand gegen die so genannte Bush-Doktrin nicht nur aus den weit links stehenden Kreisen erwächst, nicht nur aus der "außermedialen" Opposition, sondern gerade auch aus den Altkonservativen und sogar bis hinein in höhere Militärränge. Das zeigt, dass sich an diesem Grundelement der amerikanischen Gesellschaft nichts geändert hat. Auch die Tatsache, dass der Krieg gegen den Irak kurzfristig keine positiven Auswirkungen auf die amerikanische Wirtschaft zeitigt - abgesehen von einigen kriegsrelevanten Industrien, mit denen die politischen Führungsspitzen der Vereinigten Staaten auch noch verbandelt sind -, sondern ihr stattdessen Gefahren bringt, wird sich über kurz oder lang innenpolitisch niederschlagen.

Rechnen Sie mit zunehmendem Widerstand der amerikanischen Bevölkerung gegen die Kriegspolitik der Bush-Administration?

Ich fürchte, solange der Krieg im Irak andauert, werden sich die Amerikaner aus "patriotischen Gründen" um die jetzige Regierung scharen. Und damit das so bleibt, wird Bush weitere Krisen in der Region initiieren. Denn solange das Feuer brennt, wärmt es auch. Das heißt, die Regierung Bush kann mit relativ breiter Unterstützung der amerikanischen Bevölkerung rechnen, solange es ihr gelingt, eine Art von Ausnahmezustand aufrechtzuerhalten, jedenfalls solange die Bevölkerung den Eindruck hat, dass die Situation zwar gefährlich ist, die Regierung sie aber unter Kontrolle hat. Ein militärisches oder humanitäres Fiasko würde dem natürlich einen Strich durch die Rechnung machen. Ähnliches spielt sich im israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt ab: Seit dem Amtsantritt von Scharon wird dieser Konflikt gezielt am Leben erhalten. Sobald einmal zwei oder drei Wochen lang Ruhe herrschte, führten die Israelis so genannte Liquidierungen auf palästinensischem Gebiet durch, was dann den palästinensischen Terror immer wieder neu entfachte. Auf diese Weise wird der Gewaltmechanismus durch extremistische Politikansätze am Laufen gehalten.

Welche Bedeutung messen Sie Israel im nah- und mittelöstlichen Konfliktkomplex bei, insbesondere unter dem Aspekt seiner engen Bindung an die USA?

Wir haben es hier mit einem der langfristig verheerendsten Aspekte dieses Konfliktkomplexes zu tun. Für die neokonservativen Denker und Strategen der USA spielt Israel eine eminent wichtige Rolle. Viele von ihnen sind selbst Juden. Doch entstammen sie nicht dem bekannten liberal-jüdischen Spektrum, das Israel zwar immer unterstützt, sich insgesamt aber einem Ausgleich mit den Palästinensern nicht verschließen würde. Diese Leute sind als Verfechter einer radikalen, extremistischen Politikauffassung hervorgetreten, die nicht an einen Ausgleich glaubt, sondern nur an die eigene Macht. Es hat also nichts mit dem amerikanischen Judentum in seiner Gesamtheit zu tun, sondern es ist eine radikale Minderheit. Aber in der Außenwahrnehmung - und speziell im Nahen Osten - wird das nicht unterschieden. Dort glaubt man, Opfer einer "jüdischen Verschwörung" zu werden.

Und was folgt aus einem solch fatalen Verdacht?

Die Folge ist ein Anwachsen antijüdischer Tendenzen und Stimmungen: Amerika wird zunehmend mit einer proisraelischen, jüdischen Politik identifiziert. Wenn sich die amerikanische Politik in so starkem Maße über Israel definiert, wie es bei den neokonservativen Denkern zu beobachten ist, dann wird der Boden zerstört, auf dem Verständigung und Kooperation zwischen Israel und den Arabern wachsen könnten. Die gegenwärtige amerikanische und die israelische Politik erscheinen mir wie ein konzertiertes Programm zur jahrzehntelangen Aufrechterhaltung des Nahostkonflikts sowie zur Förderung und Ausweitung des Terrorismus.

Ohne Zweifel kommen die ordnungspolitischen Pläne der USA einer politischen Entmündigung der Länder in der Region gleich. Wie werden die betroffenen Staaten und ihre Gesellschaften darauf reagieren?

Selbstverständlich ist das zu erwartende Anwachsen des Terrorismus eine Reaktion darauf. Schon allein deshalb, weil politisch so schwach formierte Gesellschaften einem militärischen Vorgehen gegen sie politisch nichts entgegenzusetzen haben. Insofern bietet der Terrorismus, auch wenn er letztlich keine Änderung oder Umkehrung der eingetretenen Verhältnisse zu bewirken vermag, ein Fanal. Mittelfristig - und möglicherweise sogar langfristig - dürfte die von Washington anvisierte "Neuordnung der Region" den Charakter einer Art von Besatzung annehmen mit allen daraus resultierenden Folgen. So wird man sich als Westler, auch als Europäer, eines Tages vielleicht nicht mehr so frei wie bisher in den Straßen von Kairo, Teheran oder anderen Städten dieser Region bewegen können, weil die Feindschaft der Menschen gegenüber dem Westen in einem beängstigenden Maße zunehmen wird. Anfänge lassen sich bereits beobachten, wie verschiedene Morde, speziell an Amerikanern, dokumentieren.

Wird also Samuel P. Huntingtons These vom "Clash of Civilizations" Wirklichkeit werden?

Ich gehöre nicht zu den Anhängern von Huntingtons Theorie, aber ich halte auch den so genannten interkulturellen Dialog für kein sehr kluges Paradigma, weil es Entitäten behauptet und zementiert, die in der Realität so eindeutig nicht existieren. Die Gesellschaften sind nämlich sehr viel mehr ineinander verflochten, und die Linien ziehen sich sehr viel mehr durch die Gesellschaften hindurch, als es oft den Anschein hat. Zu wem gehören etwa die säkularen Mittelschichten und Intellektuellen im Nahen Osten? Oder: Zu wem gehören die vielen Christen im Nahen Osten, die muslimischen Bürger Europas? Wie ist der scharfe Antiamerikanismus in Lateinamerika oder Fernost einzuordnen? Hat die christliche Rechte in Amerika nicht viel mehr gemein mit dem islamischen Fundamentalismus als mit den säkularen Ideen der Aufklärung, zu denen sich Menschen mit den unterschiedlichsten religiösen und kulturellen Hintergründen bekennen? Sind die türkische und die iranische Reformbewegung, die sich eine echte Demokratisierung und Einbettung der Religion in ein säkulares Staatswesen wünschen, nicht näher an Europa, als es das Amerika von George W. Bush ist? Die jetzige Krise zeigt doch ganz deutlich, dass es "den" Westen nicht gibt. Und genauso wenig gibt es "die" islamische Welt. Die Linien verlaufen mitten durch die Kulturen. Insofern stellt sowohl das Paradigma vom "Clash of Civilizations" als auch das positiv gedeutete vom "Dialog der Kulturen" eine Karikatur dar.

Dennoch bestimmen sie das politische Denken - und Handeln …

Genau darin liegt das Problem, dass sich diese Paradigmen, wenn auch als Phantasmen, in politisches Handeln umsetzen. Da mögen die gesellschaftlichen Realitäten so kompliziert und so ineinander verwoben sein, wie sie wollen - in der Weise, wie Politik bestimmt wird, spielen dann solche Kategorien wie "der Westen", "der Islam" usw. in den Köpfen der Menschen eine verheerende Rolle. Wenn Italiens Regierungschef Silvio Berlusconi von der "Eroberung des Islams durch den Westen" spricht oder Ussama Bin Laden den Angriff auf "den Westen" proklamiert, dann fühlt sich die jeweilige Öffentlichkeit natürlich herausgefordert und reagiert entsprechend. Die Anschläge vom 11. September waren offensichtlich als Angriff nicht auf einen einzelnen Staat, eine einzelne Regierung, sondern als Angriff auf "den Westen" gedacht, und so wurden sie in der westlichen Welt denn auch verstanden, wobei "der Westen" mit dem "christlichen Westen" gleichgesetzt wurde. Dass auch Muslime ein Teil dieses Westens sein könnten, kam offensichtlich niemandem in den Sinn.

Würden Sie die gegenwärtige Politik der USA im Nahen und Mittleren Osten als neokolonialistisch bezeichnen?

Sie hat neokolonialistische Züge, einschließlich des Topos von der Zivilisierung der Barbaren. Allerdings war es auch im früheren Kolonialismus nicht so, dass sich die von ihm betroffenen Gesellschaften massiv dagegen gewehrt hätten. Die muslimischen Gesellschaften und ihre Eliten reagierten sogar auffallend schwach auf diese Herausforderung, und so verlief die kolonialistische Ära aus westlicher Sicht relativ glatt. Sie ging zu Ende, nicht weil der Widerstand in den Kolonien so stark wurde, sondern weil sich zu Hause die Ermattung, die wirtschaftliche Erschöpfung und das Desinteresse an den Kolonien verstärkten. Auch die jetzige neokolonialistische Herausforderung durch die USA dürfte nur geringfügigen Widerstand auslösen. Denn nach wie vor sind die muslimischen Gesellschaften und Eliten schwach. Eher wird es zu einer Überforderung der Vereinigten Staaten kommen, weil selbst deren militärische und ökonomische Ressourcen begrenzt sind und die Amerikaner sich fragen werden, was sie denn da draußen, in Ländern, deren Namen die meisten kaum auzusprechen vermögen, zu suchen haben.

Nun haben Sie aber gerade die Schwäche und militärische Ohnmacht der muslimischen Gesellschaften als wesentliche Ursache des Terrorismus identifiziert. Müssen wir auf ein Anwachsen der terroristischen Gewalt gefasst sein?

Die unmittelbare Antwort der Schwachen wird unter anderem im Anwachsen von Fundamentalismus und Terrorismus bestehen. Dies ist keine selbstbewusste Antwort, sondern eine, die ihren Ursprung im eigenen Versagen hat. Die Möglichkeiten, durch terroristische Aktionen dem Gegner eine hohe Zahl von Menschenopfern abzuverlangen, sind allerdings heute beträchtlich größer als Ende des 19. und zu Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, als die Briten und Franzosen den Nahen Osten beherrschten. Sollte die jetzt von den USA eingeschlagene Politik, die extremistisch zu nennen ich mich nicht scheue, über die jetzige Amtszeit von George W. Bush fortgesetzt werden, wird die Welt binnen kürzester Frist an einer großen Wegscheide angelangt sein mit prekären Auswirkungen auch auf den gesamten Westen. Diese Auswirkungen werden uns dann möglicherweise so lange beschäftigen, wie uns der Kalte Krieg zwischen Ost und West beschäftigt hat.

Das heißt, das Konfliktpotenzial erhöht sich auf unabsehbare Zeit …

Es erhöht sich, es divergiert. Am Ende könnten weite Teile der Welt nicht mehr beherrschbar sein, und man wird sie sich selbst überlassen. Ich vermute sogar, dass nicht einmal Europa und Amerika vollständig als "Ghetto" aufrechtzuerhalten sein werden, sondern es wird zu Ghettobildungen selbst innerhalb dieser Kontinente kommen. Manchen Schilderungen zukünftiger Welten aus Science-Fiction-Filmen meiner Jugendzeit sind wir inzwischen in der Realität schon ziemlich nahe gekommen.

In Ihrem Buch schreiben Sie vom Versagen der Kultur des Islam, die sich ohne Zweifel in ihrer tiefsten Krise befindet, seit es sie gibt. Wird sich an dieser "Krankheit des Islam", um mit Abdelwahab Meddeb zu sprechen, Ihrer Meinung nach in absehbarer Zukunft etwas Entscheidendes ändern? Gibt es Anzeichen für ein "neues Denken" in der islamischen Welt?

Solche Tendenzen sind in der Tat feststellbar. Aber diese Entwicklung wird nicht einheitlich verlaufen. In einigen Ländern werden sich diese Tendenzen stärker ausbilden, in anderen werden sie schwächer sein. Das hängt von sehr vielen, auch äußeren Faktoren ab. Entweder erneuern sich die Orthodoxien grundlegend, oder sie verlieren jedwede Relevanz. Im Grunde haben sie ihre Relevanz bereits verloren. Denn der Terrorismus ist durchaus als Reaktion auf den Verlust dieser Relevanz erklärbar. Die Orthodoxien - speziell in der arabischen Welt - sind nicht mehr in der Lage, den Menschen vernünftige Antworten auf die gegenwärtigen Probleme zu geben. Eine Antwort auf die Irrelevanz der Orthodoxien ist unter anderem der so genannte Fundamentalismus, der gerade nicht von den Orthodoxien stammt, wie im Westen oft fälschlicherweise angenommen wird, sondern in Laienkreisen entstanden ist. Ich sehe durchaus Ansätze für ein "Umdenken", oder ein "neues Denken" einschließlich konkreter politischer und gesellschaftlicher Reformen. Wenn man diese Ansätze auf die günstigste und effektivste Art behindern oder zunichte machen möchte, dann geschieht das mittels der gegenwärtigen amerikanischen Politik. Wenn westliche Politiker davon reden, den Islam "erobern" zu wollen, und damit drohen, ein islamisches Land nach dem anderen mit Krieg zu überziehen, dann sind das nun einmal keine guten Voraussetzungen für die islamischen Gesellschaften und ihre Theologien, sich selbst in Frage zu stellen, die eigene Kultur zu kritisieren und neu zu denken.

taz Nr. 7023 vom 5.4.2003, Seite 3-4, 615 Interview ADELBERT REIF

[Joerver]

The mood changes as the marine invasion gains momentum

James Meek outside Baghdad
Saturday April 5, 2003
The Guardian

For years, the story of the Republican Guard has been told as an epic in waiting, the story of an elite, well-equipped, motivated force, loyal to Saddam Hussein, outgunned by the US, no doubt, but ready to force America to fight and slog and shed blood if it tried to take Baghdad.
In the cold light of yesterday morning, in a furrowed field by a shelled school building not far from the capital, the reality could be seen and heard.

Three members of the Republican Guard`s feared Medina Division sat hunched and miserable among a larger group of prisoners; their uniforms were newer, they seemed marginally more aware of what was going on around them, but otherwise they were every bit as beaten and pitiable as the thousands of regular army soldiers captured by the US Marines in their rapid march from invasion to Baghdad.

"God only knows what I`ll do now," said one of the guardsmen, a corporal, Dawi Hussein Mohamed. "I wish I was a bird and I could fly to my family."

The apparent collapse of the Republican Guard was matched yesterday by the visible collapse of popular Iraqi belief in the possibility of Saddam`s survival.

As the marines` 1st Division poured towards Baghdad along the Highway 7 dual carriageway yesterday, preceded by a rolling storm of artillery shells, cluster bombs and missiles, Iraqis by the road - predominantly young men - cheered, waved and gave the thumbs-up sign.

Until yesterday, their enthusiasm for the invaders could have been interpreted as caution in the face of an unknown occupier. Yesterday there was no doubt: they knew Saddam was finished, and they were glad. For the first time, Iraqis could be seen mocking the images of President Saddam which hang at key points along the dusty roadside - Saddam the suited statesman, Saddam the Bedouin, Saddam the general. One youth picked up a stone and hurled it at a mural of the dictator. A larger than life statue of Saddam stood partly destroyed, only two legs and half the body still standing.

The marines had put entire days into their invasion timeline for taking the Republican Guard to pieces on the way to Baghdad. Instead, they ended yesterday at the edge of Saddam City, the mainly Shia neighbourhood at the east of the capital. The guard had atomised.

The three prisoners admitted they were guardsmen only after an Arabic translator working for the marines noticed that they had torn off the shoulder patches which identified their units. From one soldier`s shoulder red threads protruded where he had ripped the badge off in a hurry.

It has been widely assumed that the guards have been subjected to nightly bombing raids, but Mohammed said it had taken just two hours of air attacks on Thursday morning on his unit, the 10th Brigade of the Medina Division, to rip it apart physically and psychologically.

The brigade had been stationed close to civilian areas in the town of Dorrah, south of Baghdad, trying to use its trees as cover for armoured vehicles, Mohamed said. "The Americans started bombing at 9am. They destroyed tanks and other armoured vehicles and a bridge was bombed. The bombing came as a surprise. People were in their houses when the attack happened and they fled into the streets. People were driving cars with their families and mostly the planes were dropping cluster bombs. It shook the people very hard.

"With these cluster bombs they hit buses and cars. When the bombs started people went in their cars, fleeing, and the cluster bombs hit their cars. Some people went under the bridge, then they came and blew up the bridge too."

Another one of the prisoners, a private, Muslim Mahdi, interrupted. "No, they hit military people," he said. "They were targeting military cars." Mohamed continued: "I went to a trench when the bombs started. I was in the trench and over me was death." Twenty five tanks were destroyed and two fuel tankers, he said.

Mohamed, a driver, jumped into his truck and fled with his two comrades. They went through Baghdad and were heading south to where their families were when they were captured. "The 10th all ran away to Baghdad," said Mohamed.

Mahdi said he had heard that US forces would treat Republican Guards harshly, so he tore off his shoulder patches.

They were still in uniform, but were already making their transition to civilian life. "It`s a relief," said Mahdi, of his capture, of the collapse of the guard, of the end of the regime. "It`s like a weight off my chest."

Yet Mohamed spoke of how difficult it would be for Iraqis of his generation - they are all in their early 20s - to think themselves out of the tyranny inside their heads. Asked what he thought about Saddam, he said: "He`s my father, he`s my president. We didn`t understand him properly. We grew up with him around so we don`t know anyone else but him."

By late last night, the marines, including the unit with which the Guardian was travelling, were arrayed around the eastern and northern fringes of the capital, controlling movement in and out.

The road to Baghdad was thick with smoke, some from fires the Iraqis started to try to confuse US sensors, many from burned out military vehicles, mostly trucks and artillery pieces, struck from the air.

Conspicuous by their absence, despite the apparent collapse of the guard, were their most modern tanks, the T-72s. Even if the regime has managed to squirrel them away somewhere, however, it seems too late to use them to make a difference - just as much of Saddam`s air force was flown to Iran during the 1991 Gulf war, which preserved it but rendered it militarily useless.

Signs of a new irregular enemy, or the perception of one, were to be seen yesterday afternoon at a position held by the marine`s 5th regiment as they waited for the order to go forward. Troops captured a man alleged to be a Sudanese "jihadist" - one who had come to Iraq to fight against the US on religious grounds.

The man, looking frightened and with his hands bound behind his back, was driven away for interrogation on the bonnet of a Humvee. Marines on the scene gave few details but said he was one of two "jihadists" they had captured.

Any overlap of the invasion of Iraq and America`s proclaimed war on terror would be a disturbing development, whether it was real or in the minds of the invaders.

Shortly after the Sudanese man was taken away, there was an incident at the position when sentries challenged a group of men in an approaching car. The marines shouted at the men in English and the men, confused and alarmed, got out of the car and ran away. A few minutes later, the marines destroyed the car with .5 calibre machine gun fire. It burst into flames. They had not searched it. They did not speak each other`s language.

[Joerver]

Bomb Saddam. Noch eine Flash-Animation


http://politicalhumor.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=…

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Ben Roberts: `An Easter egg hunt for weapons of mass destruction`
Date: Saturday, April 05 @ 08:55:48 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism


By Ben Roberts

Forget about your unpleasant cares and worries of the day. About war, about the concern for safety, and the worry over your job and financial well being. You are once again a child at Easter time, at an Easter Egg hunt in your neighborhood, or possibly at the White House annual Easter Egg hunt. What a great time you had. The painstakingly dyed colorful eggs have been surreptitiously `hidden` by the adults, and you are let loose as part of a horde of kids to `find` them. Makes you want to smile just thinking about it, and wish you could be exiled in that pleasant nostalgic world of memories for a while. Okay, you have a minute of silent pleasant reflection before we return to our real distressing world of the present.

This past Monday was April Fool`s Day. A day for playing harmless jokes and tricks on others. The Bush Administration are the ones playing the jokes, which are anything but harmless. The butt of the jokes are Americans, the Iraqis, and the world. Americans have had a joke played on them by being conned into a war that they were told would make them safe, by relieving Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. The joke is that American citizens are not any safer now that Iraq has been attacked. In fact, our nation has been placed under an elevated code orange, meaning we are at increased danger.



As regards weapons of mass destruction, US forces have yet to find any such weapons. If we are to believe Bush`s `pictures` of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction sites during his United Nations appearance last year, or Colin Powell`s intelligence `photos` there this year, American forces should have immediately waded into a sea of weapons of mass destruction. They have not. The joke is on us. Bush must be grinning as he mutters under his breath, `Suckers!` But not only Bush. Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney must also be guffawing at the joke they have played on us. Both men assured us that the war would be quick. Cheney went so far to tell us that Iraq`s premier fighters, the special Republican Guard, would actually step aside in the face of advancing US forces. That has not happened. Good for Cheney. A lengthy war translates into more Iraqi infrastructure contract work and money for his former employer, Halliburton. Since he reportedly still receives compensation from them, their increased financial fortunes go hand in hand with his.

The common pious terms `Operation Iraqi Freedom,` and `Iraqi resources belong to the Iraqi people,` that we keep hearing, is nothing short of a joke the Bush Administration is attempting to play on the Iraqi people as it relieves and frees them of their resources. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair went as far as stating in a meeting to his Parliament that `British soldiers are giving their lives for Iraqi people.` What a joke. Is this man hallucinating, or does he still think the world is made up of dolts he can play practical jokes on with plagiarized documents? Iraqi resources are a gold mine, and that is why we are there. Why do you think US forces quickly grabbed the southern oilfields? We keep hearing that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves. They fail to tell us that, when and if the as yet untapped and inexhaustible Majnoon oilfields were to come online, Iraq would be the world`s number one producer of oil in the world, eclipsing Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. The United States will not, under any circumstances, allow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or his people to oversee such unimaginable wealth and power. That is why US post war plans for Iraq calls for numerous ministries with an American heading each one, and Iraqis serving as advisers.

Another huge financial boon in Iraq is the billions to be had by whoever gets to build that country`s communications system. Specifically the antiquated phone system. The Associated Press carried a story this weekend about a group of peace activists who took a harrowing road trip as they fled out of Baghdad headed for Jordan. Along the miles and miles of highway, and especially around Ar Rutbah, an Iraqi town at the Jordanian border, they noticed for some strange reason that, along with the attacked and burned out cars, the telephone poles had also been destroyed by American fighter planes, and littered the highway. Not strange when you think about it. The more the phone system is deliberately destroyed the bigger the contract to guess who? An American firm. These terms `Iraqi freedom` and `the Iraqi resources are for the Iraqi people,` are one big April Fool`s joke this Administration is attempting to play on the unsuspecting Iraqis.

So we are wise to their April Fool`s jokes. But we still have to contend with the Easter Egg hunt. The BBC radio reported yesterday that both Hans Blix and ElBaradei, top UN inspectors for chemical weapons and nuclear weapons respectively, are furious that the US government has approached a number of their people wanting them to be part of an American effort at finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Can you believe this? These are the same investigators who were there and did not find any weapons. They were berated by the Bush Administration as being incompetent when they turned up nothing. Now the US wants to hire them for their skills so that they can `find` such weapons? Don`t be too taken aback. Here`s how the scenario will go down:

These individuals will be in the employ of the US to `find` weapons of mass destruction. To regain any semblance of respectability in the world, after having invaded Iraq, the US has to `find` these weapons. To repair its relations with Europe, the EU, and NATO, the US has to `find` these weapons. To gain the upper hand over France, Germany, and Russia and say `I told you so,` the US has to `find` these weapons. To convince the world that its so called war on terrorism and dangerous pre-emptive strike policy is sound, and worthy of moving onto the next axis member on the list, the US has to `find` these weapons. To convince American citizens that the $75 billion being requested of them for starters for the war on Iraq, is worth it in making them safe, the US has to `find` these weapons. And `find` them they will. The stakes are too high not to. (See the insightful, well written article at SmirkingChimp by Lisa Walsh Thomas titled Demons of Necessity: Why WMD Will be Found, and dated April 1, 2003).

It will boil down to an Easter Egg hunt by adults paid to `find` Easter Eggs. In this case the eggs will be the prized weapons of mass destruction. They will have no problems `finding` them because there will be no problems `placing` them. Consider this. Our military has assured us that they have control of something in excess of 80% of Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld tells us this constantly. Sounds good. Spectacular military accomplishment. It also means that such control allows the US military to do anything it wants in Iraq. So they will have an Easter Egg hunt. They will be the adults surreptitiously placing the weapons of mass destruction over all Iraq. In a wadi here. In a cave there. In the barren desert way out there. In the swamp right here. Its easier than you think. Remember the US and Britain sold Iraq the technology for these weapons in the first place. So knowing what to `place` is no problem. Good. The stage is set. Now we let loose the hordes of `children` for the spectacular Easter Egg hunt. Only these are not children. These are adults, who will be paid by the US to `find` these prizes. They are weapons inspectors. They are professionals. `Finds` by them are the only way the US can claim any legitimacy in this undertaking. But since they will be paid by the very government that stands to benefit from their `finds,` how much legitimacy can there really be in such an exercise? There is a saying that goes like this: `If you sup with the devil be sure to use a long spoon.` One would hope that any of those UN inspectors willing to facilitate the Bush Administration`s `search` for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, have in their possession long spoons. For their sake. For the Iraqis sake. For US citizens sake, and for the world`s sake.

Ben is a newsletter editor, freelance writer and published author. His previous articles include: *George Bush vs Robin Hood (CounterPunch.com 11-4-02, SmirkingChimp.com 11-5-02), Underestimating George Bush`s Intelligence (CounterPunch.com 11-13-02,Trinicenter.com 11-15-02), *Is Bush A Good Role Model For Our Children? (SmirkingChimp.com 11-29-02), *Bush War On Iraq: A Case of a Drowning Man Grabbing At Straws (SmirkingChimp.com 12-11-02) and, *United States Foreign Policy: A Comedy of Errors (SmirkingChimp.com and Rense.com 1-2-03). He can be emailed for a more comprehensive listing of his articles. His book Jackals of Samarra, can be found at www.iUniverse.com, and at all the major Internet book outlet sites. Be prepared for a surprise reading this action adventure novel set in the Gulf, as today`s news headlines seem to be ripped right out of its pages. Definitely a case of life imitating art. Ben can be contacted by email at: [e-mail]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=10874

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Privatise this war!

John O`Farrell
Friday April 4, 2003
The Guardian

The following article is reprinted from the journal of the Washington Freedom Association, which has been hugely influential in shaping George Bush`s foreign policy due to its uncompromising far-right Republican outlook in easy-to-read large print.
The war is now two weeks old and it seems incredible to many of us on Capitol Hill that Saddam Hussein has not yet surrendered. Has his translator not explained to him exactly what George Bush said? That "Baghdad will endure bombardmentalisation". That "the Iraqi people must be freed from this tyrannosaurus regime". What bit of "non-conditional capitulisation" does Saddam not understand?

The Washington Freedom Association is of the opinion that our foreign policy and the principles of free enterprise must go hand in hand. Yet we are permitting this war to be pursued by federal government instead of outsourcing the operation to American private companies. War pursued by central government necessitates higher levels of federal taxation and is thus incompatible with the very freedom for which American service personnel are risking their lives.

"Free enterprise warfare" would not only result in an army unfettered by federal bureaucracy, but by fielding an army employed by a US corporation rather than a nation state, troops would not be impeded by excessive petty international regulations such as the Geneva convention.

A number of private companies have put in tenders to the state department to take over the running of the Iraq war. Our finest supermarkets already have large supplies of guns and ammunition on their shelves; Exxon has extensive experience in laying waste to large areas of countryside; Enron is looking for new spheres of influence; and there are many more companies that so enthusiastically share the president`s vision of freedom that they contributed to his election campaign.

To pilot the idea of "free market forces", a small squadron of privatised vehicle immobilisers from the Bronx was dispatched to secure strategic bases in Iraq. Admittedly, early reports of this operation were disappointing. Although a number of key bridges, power stations, etc were neutralised, it seems the clampers were destroying infrastructure in the wrong country. Reports from Iran indicate that significant levels of hostility were provoked. However, the former traffic officers were then able to bring all their experience to bear, refusing to enter into dialogue or even make eye contact with the so-called "victims", impassively filling out their paperwork before handing them a form explaining how to appeal against allegedly erroneous carpet bombing.

Teething problems are to be expected, of course, but by outsourcing military operations the secretary of defence will be freed up to concentrate on the more appropriate diplomatic work of central government, extending full spectrum dominance across the globe.

It is not sufficient that the UN has been sidelined while there remain countless international organisations operating independently of American interests and security. It has come to our attention, for example, that every four years an event known as the "soccer world cup" takes place, in which American teams have been denied the freedom to field a team reflecting superior economic and military strength. Instead, Fifa has unilaterally decided that the US may only field 11 players; the same number permitted to third world countries such as Brazil and France.

Like the UN, Fifa cannot be permitted to dictate the rules of engagement where American participants are involved, and English president Toby Blare has promised he will back a rule change permitting a quarter of a million US soccer players on the field at any one time. Similarly, the Miss World competition will no longer be permitted to allow winners from non-compliant nation states. France will only be allowed to enter a man.

This will be a world in which opponents of liberty will be rendered inoperable. Enemies of free speech will be silenced. Iraq will be just the first country to benefit from the opportunity of reconstruction by US companies. Saddam knows that our democratic ideals will not permit us to see his son installed as Iraqi leader. George Bush is against this and so was George Bush Snr when he was president. He cannot be permitted to cling to power without the democratic backing of his people. Saddam Hussein that is, not George Bush.

· Gary T Bush is the nephew of the president and owns an emergent enterprise opportunity taking over the executions of prisoners in private penitentiaries in Texas and Florida garytbush@executions_r_us.com

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Gun sales stop at state Wal-Marts
Investigation found chain sold firearms to convicted felons
Robert Salladay, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Saturday, April 5, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/05/MN30…


Sacramento -- Wal-Mart, the nation`s largest seller of guns, agreed Friday to immediately halt the sale of firearms at its 118 California stores after an investigation by Attorney General Bill Lockyer found numerous violations of state gun laws.

Lockyer said six Wal-Mart stores inspected by his office in the Central Valley and Sacramento had violated state laws 490 times, including two incidents where guns were sold to convicted felons. Along with numerous paperwork errors, some guns were released before background checks were finished or fingerprints were taken.

The state Department of Justice had threatened to shut down Wal-Mart`s California gun sales by Monday if they didn`t voluntarily stop selling firearms. Late Friday, after the company complied, Lockyer issued a statement praising Wal-Mart for acting "promptly and responsibly."

But the fact that state investigators were able to find nearly 500 violations during one-day visits to a handful of Wal-Mart stores suggested a systemic problem was occurring statewide, Lockyer spokeswoman Hallye Jordan said. The inspections began March 18.

"Public safety is severly jeopardized when gun dealers provide firearms to people who are prohibited from possessing, much less purchasing them," Lockyer said in the statement.

Wal-Mart, based in Arkansas, said it would immediately begin working on a new training program for its California workers to comply with the law. The company, the largest retailer in the world, only sells rifles and shotguns in its California stores.

"We want to assure ourselves through special training sessions that we will do a better job of adhering to all of the California regulations with regards to the sales of rifles and shotguns," said company spokesman Tom Williams. "We want to be a responsible retailer."

Wal-Mart and Lockyer`s office will negotiate a time when the retailer can begin selling guns again in California.

The California inspectors focused on Wal-Mart stores in Turlock, Merced, Los Banos, Madera and two in Sacramento. The worst violator appeared to be the Los Banos store, where inspectors found 180 violations on a single visit March 25, according to Lockyer`s office.

The Los Banos store handed over firearms twice to convicted felons, including a convicted spouse abuser and another convicted of felony drug charges. The guns have since been recovered, Lockyer`s office said, along with several others uncovered during searches.

A required scanner needed to process identification cards was missing at the store, resulting in 45 violations. The store failed to obtain a fingerprint from gun buyers 54 times and twice illegally delivered a firearm to someone during the 10-day waiting period, Lockyer`s office said.

State law also prohibits handing over guns to people if they haven`t picked up their firearm within 30 days of buying it, even if they pass the background check. Some of the stores were nevertheless ignoring this monthlong window and giving guns to buyers, Lockyer`s office said.

"We do these inspections from time to time," said Jordan. "They just kept going to Wal-Mart stores and finding these violations. We don`t believe they are isolated. We believe it`s a systematic problem."

Wal-Mart was praised by gun-control groups last year after it toughened its rules nationwide on gun sales. Store managers were instructed to stop selling guns to people left in limbo by unfinished or delayed background checks, a policy stricter than current federal law.

The policy came about after a study by Americans for Gun Safety, a gun- control group in Washington, D.C., produced a report showing that 10,000 convicted felons and others were sold firearms by various retailers while background checks were pending or delayed.

Gun-control groups said they were surprised by Lockyer`s inspection, especially since Wal-Mart appeared to take a responsible position last year.

"The real worry here is the California Department of Justice has found the tip of the iceberg that stretches all the way across the country," said Luis Tolley with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "When the largest gun seller in the country was found to have hundreds of violations in just a few weeks, that is extremely dangerous and worrisome."

E-mail Robert Salladay at [e-mail].

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The fight yet to come
Another struggle is gripping Washington - the one that will shape the future of Iraq. Bush`s inner circle is fighting to gain his ear, and the result of this contest will have an impact even greater than that of the war

Ed Vulliamy in New York and Kamal Ahmed in London
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer

At Hillsborough Castle near Belfast tomorrow, President George W Bush will sit down with Tony Blair to discuss phases two and three of the conflict in Iraq. With confidence growing that the military campaign is coming to a conclusion, all eyes are refocusing on the political aftermath. If the coalition of the willing thought the military campaign was difficult to plan for, the opportunity for elephant traps ahead is growing.

Already there is talk of splits and tensions. The US Defence Department, under Donald Rumsfeld, would like an American-dominated interim administration. Colin Powell and his staff at the State Department realise that a broad coalition of international interests and the United Nations will need to be involved. Condoleezza Rice, Bush`s National Security Adviser who speaks daily to Tony Blair`s foreign policy chief, Sir David Manning, has also promoted a `UN-endorsed` route allied to ultimate American leadership. Each is playing a game of cat and mouse, a feint here, a jab there, to try to ensure that their scheme comes out on top.

The British Government insists that there is still a huge amount to negotiate and almost all issues `are up for discussion`. The subject will form the spine of the Blair-Bush summit, with Blair insisting both on the involvement of the UN and fewer unilateral announcements about the future of the country from, according to senior government sources, `some elements of the Bush adminstration`. The Pentagon`s list of people who could run the interim administration, including the hardline hawk and former CIA head, James Woolsey, which was revealed in leaked documents last week, brought signs of exasperation from this side of the Atlantic.

`It was a convenient leak,` said one Whitehall official. `They put their names out and then it`s up to everyone else to debate that plan rather than other options. But that is all it was, an option. Nothing has been settled.`

Phase two comes in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. Under American and British military command, civil servants from both countries will `run` Iraq after what is described as a `regime collapse`. That adminstration will then lead to phase three, the interim administration under Jay Garner, the retired general in charge of reconstruction. Last night it was reported that Garner was planning to move into Umm Qasr, the Iraqi port, to start work on phase three.

One Pentagon source claimed that the plans were in place and those who opposed the war will be sidelined. `It is America`s own plan, to enact as we see fit, with our coalition allies,` said the official. `France wants a postwar role? They`ve got to be kidding.`

America entered the war aiming to install a military government purge the remnants of Saddam`s regime, supervise an interim period during which a new government would be nurtured, then hand over to the Iraqi administration.

In addition to urgent aid and reconstruction, the US envisages maintaining a massive standing army, paying salaries to two million civil servants, rebuilding the Iraqi army and oil industry, and keeping the country running under US military administration.

In memoranda to the White House last week, Rumsfeld proposed that an interim government composed of Iraqi exiles under US tutelage should be installed in areas of the country under US control, even before fighting has concluded. The administration would report to General Tommy Franks, the military commander in Iraq, and, in turn, to his boss, Rumsfeld.

The establishment of an embryonic government while the war continues will be discussed early this week by Bush, with Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, CIA director George Tenet and Powell - said by sources to be backing UN involvement in the reconstruction of Iraq.

A colony of potential US administrators has assembled in waiting, along a stretch of Kuwaiti seaside villas, speaking well or not-so-well of the man regarded as the real architect of the new order, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy to Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, or `Wolfowitz of Arabia` as he`s been dubbed.

But Washington itself is riven over these arrangements, with hostility again spilling over between Powell and Rumsfeld, as in the lead-off to war. The infighting has been so acrimonious that - The Observer is told - Garner has even told associates he has considered resigning before he has begun.

The debates are over the role - or not - of the United Nations, and the part that Iraqi exiles are to play. Pentagon sources tell The Observer that they are determined to sideline the UN and to impose the Rumsfeld plan. `This war proceeds without the UN,` said one official. `There is no need for the UN, which is not relevant, to be involved in building a democratic Iraq.`

UN official Shashi Tharoor said that the body was keen to join the humanitarian relief effort and participate in governing the country, but only if mandated by the Security Council.

However, many relief organisations - including Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontiers - have said they will refuse to operate under such arrangements. Thirteen leading non-governmental aid groups have sent a letter to George Bush urging him to `ask the UN to serve as the humanitarian coordinator for Iraq`.

The immediate crisis facing any new Iraqi administration will be a humanitarian one, but the US insists that the relief effort will take place under military supervision. Tharoor said that under international law, `the responsibility for protecting civilians caught up in war or conflict falls on the belligerents.

`But if the Security Council entrusts us with a portion of this task, we shall not be found wanting. However, the last thing we need is another poisoned chalice - we have had enough of those.`

He points to the three recent precedents in which the UN has taken over post-conflict situations - East Timor, Kosovo and Afghanistan - `each of which is unique. They are different models, and there is room for a fourth model.`

In practical terms, that could mean a reversal of the pre-war chemistry on the Security Council, with the US opposing motions by France or Russia for a UN mandate, or it could mean a French veto of US plans to deploy the UN under military rule.

Meanwhile, the Americans lay their plans regardless, with some controversial names emerging for the postwar government. Woolsey is a controversial figure, principally for his proximity to those who harbour fervent ideological commitment to unchallenged US power in the region and the world.

Speaking to a group of college students in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Woolsey described the war in Iraq as the onset of the `Fourth World War` (the third being the Cold War), saying: `This Fourth World War, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us.`

He claimed the new war faces three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the `fascists` of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists such as al-Qaeda.

`As we move toward a new Middle East,` he said, `over the years and, I think, over the decades to come...we will make a lot of people very nervous. Our response should be, "Good! We want you nervous. We want you to realise now, for the fourth time in 100 years, this country and its allies are on the march."`

Woolsey was a member of the Project for the New American Century, a forum that laid out plans for global, unchallenged American power. He now sits on the powerful Defence Policy Board, a hawkish semi-official ideological body that advises the Pentagon.

The man entrusted to broadcast the new order to Iraqis over television and radio airwaves will be Robert Reilly, who, as head of Voice of America, relayed information to the communist bloc during the Cold War.

The Observer has also learnt the identity of the person who will be the new viceroy of Baghdad: Barbara Bodine, former ambassador to Yemen, known for a mixture of her expertise in the region and fervent hostility to a politically organised Muslim world.

Baghdad will be one of three administrative areas, the others being territory around Mosul in the North and Basra in the South `the same provinces with which the Turkish Ottomans ruled what is now Iraq for four centuries`.

Within Washington, there is also bitter disagreement over the position of exile groups as opposed to Iraqis still living in their country, whom the State Department wants to be nurtured into a government.

The State Department favours keeping military rule with the present Iraqi government apparatus largely intact while a number of Iraqis living under Saddam can be nurtured and until elections can be held.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, counters that there are too few people left in the Iraqi regime who can be trusted, and - having studied the de-Nazification of Germany - wants a restructuring of government departments and a purge of the Baath party and bureaucratic apparatus, with exiles assuming an early role.

Controversy especially surrounds the exiled Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, a banker, former aristocrat in the monarchist Iraqi regime overthrown in the Fifties, and since convicted in absentia in Jordan for fraud and embezzlement.

Chalabi is backed by friends in the Pentagon to head the formation of a provisional government. But he is suspected by the State Department and CIA, which believe that he has little chance of rallying support in Iraq after nearly half a century in exile. The CIA severed its relationship with Chalabi after the INC was unable to account for millions of dollars in covert US aid.

As a result, Chalabi is currently slated for a position on an advisory council of exiles, with which he has declared himself dissatisfied. However, Pentagon sources tell The Observer that his position is `under review; he may yet play a very important and senior role`.

A leading role for the INC would dovetail with information from sources telling The Observer that the list of Iraqi exiles to be invited into government is being drawn up by the number three at the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, working directly to his immediate superior and longtime friend, Wolfowitz.

Feith is a pivotal member of the neo-conservative group, having worked with fellow-hawk Richard Perle on a paper for the Israeli Likud Party in 1996, urging a `clean break` with the peace process.

`It looks like we are on the verge of further alienating allies,` said one State Department official, `and it looks like we are going to do exactly what we promised we would not - take small groups of exiles with limited influence in Iraq and bring them in as the bulk of a transition government.`

One senior former diplomat in Baghdad and elsewhere in the region told The Observer: `There are no serious Arabists left in the government now; only those who have been telling the White House what it wants to hear. The dragons have taken over`.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Was sind die Kämpfe auf Schlachtfeldern gegenüber den Kämpfen der Medien.

Media goes over the top with a torrent of hate mail
Peter Preston
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer

Which Fleet Street editor is `the toast of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys at the Groucho Club`? And which ex-editor delivers `tedious and bitter rants` while wearing `embarrassing toupees`? Spring will be a little hate this year.

But put aside Piers Morgan of the Mirror and Andrew Neil, formerly of the Sunday Times , trading unfriendly crossfire. There`s a bigger question lurking beyond. We keep hearing lectures about the problems of `winning the peace` once this is all over. But how on earth do you win the media peace while so many livid, fulminating hacks stage the mother of all verbal battles?

There`s the infamous Hoon-Blunkett offensive. David Blunkett lambasts a false `moral equivalence` in some British reporting of our side and their side, Blair and Saddam. He targets `those of a progressive, or liberal bent`. Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon aims a supporting salvo at Robert Fisk of the Independent. Was Fisk duped by Machiavellian Iraqis when he found civilian death in Baghdad marketplaces? `The allegation is that because a piece of cruise missile was handed to the journalist it somehow proved it was caused by coalition forces.`

Poor, gullible Fisky? The Independent naturally stands by its man and his `proud record of reporting what he sees` - not what he is told by politicians who manufacture `miserable attempts to brush aside unwelcome truths`. But does a comradely press stand by the Indy ? Dream on. The Telegraph `s moral rottweiler, Mark Steyn, promptly savages a `Saddamite buffoon still panting his orgasmic paeans to the impenetrability of Baghdad`s defences`.

Does this seem a stupid, uncivil war to get sucked into at a moment when Ross Benson is vividly informing Mail readers that `All Iraq has left is men to pour into the allies` mincing machine?` Of course. But then, some of most futile conflicts going are journalist against journalist.

Take Peter Arnett, late of CNN and NBC, who told Iraqi TV that `Pentagon planners have clearly misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces`. A statement betraying `complete ignorance`, said the White House. NBC `stood by its man` for roughly 18 hours, before giving him a free transfer to the Mirror (and Greek and Belgian TV). `Fired for telling the truth!` snorted Piers. But examine the surrounding flak.

John Podhoretz in the New York Post called his interview `treason`. Janet Daley in the Telegraph said Arnett was, `in the most straightforward sense, offering aid and comfort to the enemy`. The Baptist Press New s wanted his passport cancelled. Rupert Murdoch`s Fox News concocted an attack-dog ad against its cable news rival. `He spoke out against America`s armed forces; he said America`s war against terrorism had failed; he even vilified America`s leadership. And he worked for MSNBC ... `

So, who`s winning the loathing campaign? The lower echelons of the Empire Rupert has some wonderful haters. The Post hates the New York Times. It dissected a Times front page, story by story, and labelled the result `News by Saddam`. It hates the `vermin` of Iraq, the `euro-weasels` of Brussels, the failed, irrelevant UN. It even quite despises Murdoch`s London Times for printing damp little pieces about British public opinion based on one interview with a `market gardener`.

Pity the poor old Sun, with only George Galloway to hate on the home front (`Traitor! - the MP for Baghdad Central`). `A relationship like Divine Brown`s with Hugh Grant` pronounces Mr Justice (Richard) Littlejohn. `George, send your writ to: Sewage Dept, The Gutter, Wapping, London`. An address to cut out and keep.

But at least there is always Jacques Chirac to kick around abroad. What, an apology for the desecration of a British war cemetery? A so-sorry from `Jacques the Worm`? What `nauseating hypocrisy` from this Pinnochio clone? And here comes Simon Heffer, marching in step for the Mail against this `slimy, hypocritical crook`.

It is reasonable, perhaps, to wonder how much of this hating is real and how much Their Master`s Voice. But that can`t disguise the tides of true venom swilling free.

Some of it is familiar stuff. Beware the new `Frankish Empire` writes Barbara Amiel in the Telegraph . It`s taking over `where the Soviet empire left off - without the gulag, but all the more dangerous for being less blatant and brutal`.

Some may be purely professional. Is Correlli Barnett, in the Mail , Britain`s `greatest living military historian` - or is that John Keegan in the Telegraph? Barnett certainly appeared to be spot on seven months ago in a `Mail Memo to Saddam` outlining a war strategy he`s followed step by step through weeks one and two. Keegan, by contrast, can`t see any strategy left by week three. Unless Saddam`s armies turn up pronto, `this war will fizzle out for lack of an enemy`.

Some of the vituperation, though, reaches pitches of bitterness which can only betoken sincerity. See Matthew Parris in the Times diagnosing `the Madness of King Tony` in grim clinical detail. See Nick Cohen (of this parish) taking a New Statesman cleaver to Andrew Murray of the Stop the War Alliance: `A living fossil from the age of European dictators is heading the biggest protest of the new century.` See our great farceur , Tom Sharpe, writing an incensed open letter to Tony Blair which ends `yours in despair and disillusionment`.

See Polly Toynbee in the Guardian denouncing this `world upside down - the three left-of-centre dailies are all the most hostile to this Labour government war, while the right-wing press largely urges it on`. See Peter Hitchens (the rabidly right-wing frère Hitch) writing letters to confirm he`s anti-war, while brother Christopher (the left-wing one) is the pro-war voice for Piers.

Upside down, inside out. It is the unpredictability of the thinking and the alliances which makes this a visceral war to read about, never mind watch. It seems to grip writers personally and put them to a test of passion, disgust or exhilaration. `Opponents of the war have been desperate to find failure or atrocity, but neither has emerged`, editor Moore of the Telegraph tells editor Morgan by email. Not since Franco ...

And one last question. Here`s a New York Times quote from a Marine who had shot at an Iraqi soldier in a civilian crowd and watched a woman fall instead. `I`m sorry`, said the Marine, `but the chick got in the way.` Now, how does that make you feel?


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Iraq bidder`s apartheid past
Conal Walsh and Oliver Morgan
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer

Fluor Corporation, the US building firm tipped to land a massive reconstruction deal in postwar Iraq, is facing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit claiming that it exploited and brutalised black workers in apartheid-era South Africa.

Lawyers acting for thousands of victims of the racist regime are to file a detailed suit in the US this week, which includes the claim that Fluor hired security guards dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes to attack unarmed workers protesting against poor pay and conditions.

The action comes at an awkward time for Fluor, one of five firms controversially invited by the US government to bid for a $600 million contract to rebuild Iraqi roads and public buildings. John Ngcebetsha, a lawyer for former employees, said: `This company has a long history of human rights violations in South Africa. It cares nothing about the societies in which it works and its involvement in Iraq would be disastrous.`

Fluor denies all the allegations. Meanwhile, it has emerged that Jay Garner, the retired US general who will oversee Iraqi reconstruction, is facing legal action over his activities while president of a defence company, SY Technology (now SY Coleman).

Lawyers acting for rival DESE Research claim Garner lent his weight to senior officials at the Space and Missile Defence Command, where he previously worked, to deny DESE a research contract on a system for attacking enemy satellites. DESE`s lawyer, Howell Riggs, also claims that Garner received a `payoff` from successors at the defence command in the form of another lucrative contract. That deal was later cancelled.

Riggs said: `We are investigating Garner`s role in the denial of a contract to DESE in September 2001 and whether he has engaged in a conspiracy to deny DESE work. We expect to file a suit against him and SY Technology or its successor soon.`

No one at SY Coleman was available for comment.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Einige gute Toons von Clay Benett:
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/slideshows/pulitzer/s…

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Wehrdienstverweigerer

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April 6, 2003
Watch Out for Hijackers
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


AMALLAH, West Bank — The State Department has been upset about how the Arab media have been portraying the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Personally, I don`t see what the problem is. As far as I can tell from watching the Arab satellite networks there`s only a one-word, actually just a one-letter, difference in how they report the war and how U.S. networks report it. CNN calls it "America`s war in Iraq," and Arab television calls it "America`s war on Iraq."

What a difference a letter makes. As I have traveled around the Arab world watching this war, I`ve been thinking a lot about that one letter. It contains an important message for President Bush: Beware of hijackers.

Saddam Hussein`s regime will soon be finished, and the moment for building the peace will be upon us. As soon as it arrives, there will be people who will try to hijack this peace and turn it to their own ends. Mr. Bush must be ready to fend off these hijackers, who will come in two varieties.

One group will emerge from the surrounding Arab states — all the old-guard Arab intellectuals and Nasserites, who dominate the Arab media, along with many of the regimes and stale institutions, like the Arab League, that feel threatened by even a whiff of democracy coming from Iraq. These groups will be merciless in delegitimizing and denouncing any Iraqis who come to power after the war — if it appears that they were installed by the U.S.

That means the U.S. has to move quickly to create a process where moderate, but legitimate, Iraqi nationalists can emerge to start running their country, and U.S. forces can recede into the background. We have only one chance to make a first impression in how we intend to reshape Iraq, and we must make a good one. America somewhat underestimated the resistance it would meet when it invaded Iraq; it should not now overestimate how much time it has to rule Iraq, with U.S. generals, before meeting political resistance.

The Egyptian playwright Ali Salem, a courageous Arab liberal, told me in Cairo the other day: "To my fellow Arab pen carriers, I say, `Do not hasten to denounce them,` " meaning Iraqis who will work with the U.S. to rebuild their country. " `Do not resort to these ready-made accusations that such Iraqis are "agents" of the Americans because it will take us nowhere. It will only blind our eyes to our real problems and diseases, which is the need for development and human rights. Don`t stick your pens in the Iraqi wheel.` "

But to the Americans, Mr. Salem said, " `Please defend America the idea — defend it — because we are working to embody this idea — to make it stretch across the whole planet. Do not occupy our land under any slogan. It`s hard, I know it`s hard. [But] if there will be an American general presiding over Iraq [for long], it will be bad for us Arab liberals and for you.` "

The other hijackers are the ideologues within the Bush team who have been dealing with the Iraqi exile leaders and will try to install one of them, like Ahmad Chalabi, to run Iraq. I don`t know any of these exiles, and I have nothing against them. But anyone who thinks they can simply be installed by America and take root in Iraqi soil is out of his mind.

Mr. Bush should visit the West Bank. It is a cautionary tale of an occupation gone wrong. It is a miserable landscape of settlements, bypass roads, barbed wire and cement walls. Why? Because the Israeli and Palestinian mainstreams spent the last 36 years, since Israel`s victory in 1967, avoiding any clear decision over how to govern this land. So those extremists who had a clear idea, like the settlers and Hamas, hijacked the situation and drove the agenda.

Mr. Bush needs to approach the Iraq peace with the same single-minded focus with which he approached the war. I went to Ramallah to visit the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, a man steeped in what it takes to produce legitimacy in an Arab milieu, and I asked him what Mr. Bush should focus upon. "Focus on the process," he said, "not on a specific person. Iraqis must have confidence in the process. It must be seen as legitimate and fair."

Israel has been trying to get rid of Yasir Arafat for years, but it was a legitimate process, managed by the Palestinian legislature, that last month produced the first legitimate alternative: the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.

No, this is not going to be easy. Because the ideal Iraqi we are looking for is one who will say no to Saddam Hussein, no to Nasserism, no to tyranny and no to any permanent U.S. presence in Iraq.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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The Battle of Baghdad
`Ever so slowly, the suburbs were turned into battlefields`
By Robert Fisk
06 April 2003
The Iraqi bodies were piled high in the pick-up truck in front of me, army boots hanging over the tailboard, a soldier with a rifle sitting beside them. Beside the highway, a squad of troops was stacking grenades as the ground beneath us vibrated with the impact of US air strikes. The area was called Qadisiya. It was Iraq`s last front line. Thus did the Battle for Baghdad enter its first hours, a conflict that promises to be both dirty and cruel

Beside the highway, the Iraqi armoured vehicle was still smouldering, a cloud of blue-grey smoke rising above the plane trees under which its crew had been sheltering. Two trucks were burnt out on the other side of the road. The American Apache helicopters had left just a few minutes before I arrived. A squad of soldiers, flat on their stomachs, were setting up an anti-armour weapon on the weed-strewn pavement, aiming at the empty airport motorway for the first American tanks to come thrashing down the highway.

Then there were the Iraqi bodies, piled high in the back of a pick-up truck in front of me, army boots hanging over the tailboard, a soldier with an automatic rifle sitting beside them. Beside the highway, a squad of troops was stacking rocket-propelled grenades beside a row of empty shops as the ground beneath us vibrated with the impact of American air strikes and shellfire. The area was called Qadisiya. It was Iraq`s last front line.

Thus did the Battle for Baghdad enter its first hours yesterday, a conflict that promises to be both dirty and cruel. Even the city`s police force was sent to the front, its officers parading in a fleet of squad cars through the central streets, waving their newly issued Kalashnikov rifles from the windows.

What is one to say of such frantic, impersonal – and, yes, courageous – chaos? A truck crammed with more than a hundred Iraqi troops, many in blue uniforms, all of them carrying rifles which gleamed in the morning sunlight, sped past me towards the airport. A few made victory signs in the direction of my car – I confess to touching 145km an hour on the speedometer – but of course one had to ask what their hearts were telling them. "Up the line to death" was the phrase that came to mind. Two miles away, at the Yarmouk hospital, the surgeons stood in the car park in blood-stained overalls; they had already handled their first intake of military casualties.

A few hours later, an Iraqi minister was to tell the world that the Republican Guard had just retaken the airport from the Americans, that they were under fire but had won "a great victory". Around Qadisiya, however, it didn`t look that way. Tank crews were gunning their T-72s down the highway past the main Baghdad railway yards in a convoy of armoured personnel carriers and Jeeps and clouds of thick blue exhaust fumes. The more modern T-82s, the last of the Soviet-made fleet of battle tanks, sat hull down around Jordan Square with a clutch of BMP armoured vehicles.

The Americans were coming. The Americans were claiming to be in the inner suburbs of Baghdad – which was untrue; indeed, the story was designed, I`m sure, to provoke panic and vulnerability among the Iraqis.

True or false, the stories failed. Across vast fields of sand and dirt and palm groves, I saw batteries of Sam-6 anti-aircraft missiles and multiple Katyusha rocket launchers awaiting the American advance. The soldiers around them looked relaxed, some smoking cigarettes in the shade of the palm trees or sipping fruit juice brought to them by the residents of Qadisiya whose homes – heaven help them – were now in the firing line.

But then there was the white-painted Japanese pick-up truck that pulled out in front of my car. At first, I thought the soldiers on the back were sleeping, covered in blankets to keep them warm. Yet I had opened my car window to keep cool this early summer morning and I realised that all the soldiers – there must have been 15 of them in the little truck – were lying on top of each other, all with their heavy black military boots dangling over the tailboard. The two soldiers on the vehicles sat with their feet wedged between the corpses. So did America`s first victims of the day go to their eternal rest.

"Today, we attack," the Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, was to announced an hour later, and he reeled off a list of Iraqi "victories" to sustain his country`s morale. Seven British and American tanks destroyed around Basra, four American personnel carriers and an American aircraft destroyed near Baghdad. At the airport, the Iraqis "confronted the enemy and slaughtered them". Or so we were told.

Well, an Iraqi friend of mine who lives near the airport told me that he had seen a tank on fire, a tank with a black "V" sign painted on its armour. The "V" is the American symbol of "friendly force", intended to warn their pilots from bombing their own soldiers by mistake. So this must have been an American tank.

But Mr Sahaf`s optimism got the better of him. Yes, he told journalists in Baghdad, Doura was safe, Qadisiya was safe. Yarmouk was safe. "Go and look for yourselves," he challenged. Ministry of Information officials were ashen-faced. And when foreign correspondents were bussed off on this over-confident adventure, they were turned back at the Yarmouk hospital and the ministry buses firmly ordered to carry reporters back to their hotel.

But an earlier 35-minute journey around the shell-embraced suburbs proved one thing yesterday: that the Iraqis – up till dusk at least – were preparing to fight the invaders. I found their 155mm artillery around the centre of the city, close to the rail lines. One artillery piece was even hauled up Abu Nawas Street beside the Tigris by a truck whose soldiers held up their rifles and shouted their support for Saddam Hussein.

And all day, the air raids continued. It gets confusing, amid the dust and smoke, all these new targets and new pockets of ruination. Was the grey-powdered rubble in Karada a building yesterday, or was it struck last week? The central telephone exchange had taken another hit. So had the communications centre in Yarmouk. And then I noticed, along the front line where the Iraqi soldiers were preparing to become heroes or "martyrs" or survivors – the last an infinitely preferable outcome to the sanest of soldiers – how small craters had been punched into the flowerbeds on the central reservations.

Ever so slowly, the suburbs of Baghdad were being turned into battlefields.

[Joerver]

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Die Autoren sind Senatoren des Kongresses.Das sind Positionen mit denen man leben kann.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) is a Republican member of the committee.

Winning the Peace


By Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Chuck Hagel

Sunday, April 6, 2003; Page B07



The war in Iraq is still on, but it`s not too early to think about what the United States should do to win the peace that will follow. There may be difficult days ahead, but we are confident in the rightness of our cause, the skill of our soldiers and the certainty of our victory.

Last December we traveled to northern Iraq and visited key allies in the Middle East. Nearly every leader we met stressed the importance of gaining international legitimacy for our efforts in Iraq. The best way to build such legitimacy is by involving our key allies and international organizations -- starting with the United Nations -- in securing and rebuilding Iraq.

Yes, our decision to use force in Iraq produced deep divisions among our Security Council allies. Nonetheless, America need not and cannot take sole responsibility for the challenges of a postwar Iraq. And we must not allow the U.N. Security Council and our Atlantic allies to become casualties of war. There are five main reasons for this.

First, building an Iraq that is secure, self-sufficient, whole and free will require tens of billions of dollars over many years. While Iraq`s long-term economic promise is good, its short-term prospects are bleak. Iraq`s annual oil revenue, in the first years after Saddam Hussein, is projected to be no more than $15 billion. Iraq is saddled with U.N. sanctions, an estimated $61 billion in foreign debt and approximately $200 billion in reparations claims through the U.N. Compensation Commission. Experts who testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put the price tag for post-conflict security, humanitarian assistance and reconstruction at $20 billion to $25 billion per year over 10 years. The United States should not bear this burden alone.

Second, a military occupation, even temporary, that includes only American and British soldiers could fuel resentment throughout the Middle East, bolster al Qaeda`s recruitment and make Americans a target for terrorists everywhere.

If the military mission stretches for several years, the failure to include other countries will compound these problems and turn us from liberators into occupiers. We need to make the peace in Iraq the world`s responsibility, not just our own.

Third, if the United States alone selects and seats a new Iraqi government, even an interim one, that will call into question the government`s legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people, the region and the world. Iraqis who have lived through the brutality of Hussein`s rule should be given the time, space and support to choose their own leaders and to develop the institutions of a stable, representative government. We should work with other countries to help them achieve that.

Fourth, we need to place Iraq in a regional context. We support President Bush`s commitment to restart the Middle East peace process. True security for Israel and a better future for Palestinians can be achieved only through a lasting settlement. Our "Quartet" allies -- Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- have worked with us to draft a road map out of the current impasse. In addition, we need to take real steps toward a new, inclusive approach to security in the Persian Gulf that builds confidence and prevents future conflicts.

Fifth, many around the world, even longtime allies, question our motives in Iraq. They wrongly believe we are driven by commercial interests or imperial designs. We have to convince them otherwise or risk a further erosion of those alliances and institutions essential to American security and global cooperation for more than 50 years. That would undermine our interests, because it becomes increasingly difficult to contend with multiple threats to our security alone -- including the unfinished war on terrorism, the dangerous nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, and the spread of infectious diseases such as SARS. Making friends and allies who opposed the war our full partners in Iraq`s peace can go a long way toward repairing the hard feelings that have emerged in recent weeks.

In short, we must internationalize our policies for rebuilding a postwar Iraq, even as we retain full control on the security side, ideally with the involvement of NATO, the EU and countries in the region. The best way to do that is through a new U.N. resolution authorizing the necessary security, humanitarian, reconstruction and political missions in a post-conflict Iraq.

As we were told by our allies in the region in December and in subsequent meetings, securing the United Nations` endorsement would give political cover to leaders from allied countries whose people oppose the war, allowing them to justify their participation -- including financial participation -- in building the peace. It also would open the door to NATO, the European Union and the World Bank.

Without the United Nations, it would be difficult for governments and international organizations to buck strong public opposition and join the effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq.

By refusing to disarm, a defiant Saddam Hussein made the fateful choice between war and peace. We must make sure that in winning the war, we also win the peace.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) is a Republican member of the committee.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Russia`s Politics of Anti-Americanism


By Masha Lipman

Sunday, April 6, 2003; Page B07


MOSCOW -- As the war in Iraq was beginning, Russian President Vladimir Putin sharply condemned the U.S.-led operation as unwarranted, unjustifiable and a bad mistake. He warned against the "rule of the fist" and strongly criticized violations of the principle of state sovereignty.

Two weeks later his tone has changed dramatically. Taking a pragmatic approach to foreign policy, he firmly stated that Russia would continue its political cooperation with the United States. He emphasized the importance of economic and trade ties with America. Putin said he understands his people`s emotions regarding the war in Iraq and "partly shares them -- especially after watching TV reports from the battle areas." But, he added, "emotions are a bad adviser in decision-taking."

This change of tone illustrates a tricky balancing act that Putin and other Kremlin policymakers are forced to attempt.

On the one hand, Putin seems to be fully determined to integrate Russia into the world economy. He opted for this course after 9/11, and he has not deviated from it. Nor is he opposed to the idea of using military force, bombing cities or inflicting civilian casualties: His three-year conduct of the war in Chechnya provides abundant evidence of that.

Yet on the other hand, the Russian president has to deal with anti-American sentiment among the public and parts of the elite. The public may remain relatively passive -- there have been no street protests to speak of -- but polls show strong antiwar, or anti-American, feelings. Never under Putin`s rule has the percentage of Russians taking a negative attitude toward America been so high: It has even exceeded the peak reached under Boris Yeltsin at the time of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia. The media have generally assumed an anti-American tone, and an interactive vote on a popular Sunday news show yielded an astounding result: Eighty percent of the relatively liberal audience said they hoped Iraq, rather than the United States, would win the war.

Given Russia`s weak civil society, policymakers, including the president, can ignore the public easily enough. But once in a while public opinion in Russia becomes important. This occurs, of course, around elections.

The parliamentary election is scheduled for December, and the campaign has already begun. The competition, just as it was four years ago, will be between the Communists and the pro-Kremlin party, created, guided and controlled by the Kremlin. The Kremlin manipulators need nothing short of a solid victory over the Communists, having come in about 1 percent behind them in 1999. Unless they do significantly better this time, Putin`s much-vaunted stability and claims to economic progress will be seen as not having made much of a difference.

Right now the situation does not look good for the pro-Kremlin party: The most recent national poll put its popularity rating at 21 percent and that of its Communist rivals at 31 percent. The Communists are not missing the opportunity to capitalize on anti-American feeling. Anti-American rhetoric, which portrays the United States as an evildoer seeking to destroy Russia, has an irresistible appeal for their constituency. Putin`s aides in charge of the pro-Kremlin party are fully aware of this, as well as of the broader public frustration over American hegemony.

Before the war, the Kremlin pursued a policy of playing down the U.S. standoff with Iraq so as to keep a lid on the public`s anti-American feelings. But as soon as the operation started, and war images began appearing on TV, this was no longer an option.

The tough statement Putin made right after the beginning of the war immediately unleashed a wave of fierce anti-American rhetoric from conservative elites, who after 9/11 had learned to withhold their opinion and would not dare challenge Putin`s pro-American position. Both chambers of the Russian Parliament passed angry resolutions denouncing the war in Iraq. Though in no way binding on the Kremlin, these resolutions are important as reflections of prevailing sentiment.

But as this sentiment grew, so did Kremlin concern that it might interfere with the urgent need to repair relations with the United States, damaged after Russia`s refusal to support the war in Iraq. Efforts have been made to calm the mood and send a signal to both the media and the conservatives not to be deluded by Putin`s earlier statement: The president is still firm on his course to integrate with America. These efforts were made somewhat easier by the expectation that the war may soon be over, raised by the fast advance of the U.S. forces and their concentration around Baghdad. Since Putin made his statement calling for pragmatism, the tone of the media has become softer.

In Russia anti-American sentiment is not very deep. It derives not from any profound cultural hostility but rather from frustration over the loss of superpower parity with the United States. Even now at the height of bad feeling toward America, most of those polled believe the pre-war relations between the two countries will be resumed. But the new rift between Russia and America has become rather wide, and the new surge of anti-American feelings will take a while to subside. This promises to be a tough job for the pragmatic, Westernizing wing in Russia`s political establishment.

Masha Lipman, a Russian journalist, writes a monthly column for The Post.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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281 Verwundete sind nach Landstuhl gebracht worden. Das sind viele für die bisherigen gemeldeten Zahlen an Verwundeten.
Ich hoffe nicht, dass die USA noch ein böses Erwachen wegen der Opferzahlen erlebt.
Falls die russische Homepage Recht hat sind die Zahlen viel höher, anderseits wie könnte das Militär 100-200 Tote mehr verheimlichen, ohne dass es die Angehörigen bemerken.
J.

Area surgeon aids troops
Boulder man operated on recently rescued POW in Germany

By Lisa Marshall, Camera Staff Writer
April 5, 2003

Friday morning: 57 dead; 16 missing; 7 captured.

The daily White House press briefings and fuzzy real-time TV reports fall far short of conveying the brutality of war, says Boulder neurosurgeon Gene Bolles.

Bolles spent Thursday hunched over an operating table at Germany`s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, repairing the broken back of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital this week. The 19-year-old soldier will require aggressive rehabilitation, Bolles said, but is expected to recover well — one success story in a war full of tragedy.

"It really is disgustingly sanitized on television," said Bolles, who has spent the last 16 months as chief of neurosurgery at Landstuhl, the destination for the war`s most wounded soldiers.

As of Friday, 281 patients had been brought to Landstuhl since Operation Iraqi Freedom started, and plane-loads are arriving regularly.

"We have had a number of really horrific injuries now from the war. They have lost arms, legs, hands, they have been burned, they have had significant brain injuries and peripheral nerve damage. These are young kids that are going to be, in some regards, changed for life. I don`t feel that people realize that."

Bolles, 66, had a private practice in Boulder for 32 years before taking the job at Landstuhl. The U.S. military was short on neurosurgeons after Sept. 11, 2001 — having scaled down its medical staff in response to a shrinking troop population in the `90s — and was looking for an experienced civilian doctor willing to work as a contractor for a few years, said Lt. Colonel Bill Monacci, consultant to the Army Surgeon General for neurosurgery.

Bolles, a self-described "pacifist," found his patriotic juices flowing in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, so he postponed his retirement and took the job to help out with Operation Enduring Freedom, the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

"I was looking for any way to help out," said Bolles. "Not to fight a war necessarily, but to help out."

He is one of only a handful of civilian doctors among the mostly military staff at Landstuhl, the largest military hospital outside the United States. Until this week, he was the only neurosurgeon, taking anyone with back, neck, spine or head injuries.

While Monacci said he thinks the number of wounded has been relatively low given the scope of the war, Bolles has handled an increasingly heavy workload exceptionally well, he said.

"It is a tough situation. He probably thought it was going to be a bit of a slow-down from his practice, but I imagine it is a little busier than he planned for," Monacci said

Bolles said despite media images that may lead the public to believe otherwise, he and the other doctors at Landstuhl have been busy for months.

Before the war began, the hospital already had treated 300 U.S. soldiers from Kuwait and surrounding areas, wounded in car accidents, windstorms and during training exercises. A brutal sandstorm landed five soldiers on Bolles` operating table. The wind blew a tent pole through the skull of one soldier and toppled heavy equipment onto another, fracturing his spine, he said.

Still affected by the carnage he saw as a division flight surgeon during the Vietnam War, Bolles said he is particularly troubled by the injuries he has seen coming from Operation Iraqi Freedom, a war he doesn`t necessarily support.

"I am opposed to any war," he said. "I am doing what I am doing because I am a doctor, not because I have a political agenda."

He spent three hours in the operating room one morning last week removing bullet fragments, blood and brain matter from two young soldiers who each had been shot in the head. One will recover nicely, Bolles said; the other will have permanent neurological damage.

Another of his patients, wounded in a grenade battle, died on the operating table.

"These are young children; 18, 19, 20 with arms and legs blown off. That is the reality," said Bolles.

Lt. Col. John Ogle, a Longmont emergency room doctor and flight surgeon for the National Guard, agrees that the public is not always given an accurate count of military injuries. But he says that is because an accurate number is often hard to come by: What exactly constitutes wounded?

"I would not call the war coverage sanitized," he said. "Everybody knows that there are casualties over there, mostly Iraqi. What has not been stressed enough is what it was like in the previous 12 years of Saddam`s regime."

As things heat up on the battlefield, Bolles` workload is getting heavier.

Soldiers arrive daily in C-141 transport planes after the eight-hour flight from Iraq: 46 on Friday, 39 today, 38 on Sunday, 25 on Monday.

To brace for the flood of patients, the hospital has doubled its capacity to 322 beds and called up 600 medical reservists, including two more neurosurgeons. Bolles admitted four new patients Friday and was preparing to go back into the emergency room that night.

"The feeling here originally was, this is going to be over in a couple days," Bolles said.

His work is rewarding: He recently received a letter from a soldier who suffered a severe brain injury in a bomb blast in Afghanistan a few months ago. He`d recovered well and is getting married.

Working on the recently rescued Pfc. Lynch, who is not much older than Bolles` own daughter, was particularly rewarding, yet troubling.

"Nineteen years old and she`s out there carrying a big gun," he said.

His assignment with Landstuhl should expire within a year or two, but Bolles has no plans to retire. Instead, he`s looking into signing up with the relief agency Doctors without Borders.

"I could feel just as needed if I were in Iraq taking care of the people there who needed my services," he said.

Copyright 2003, The Daily Camera. All Rights Reserved.

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Ein Vortrag von Antony Zinni, vormals Bush`s Nahost vermittler.

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20030404/pdf/1025897.pd…

[Joerver]

Islam-Führer

"Die Tür zum Heiligen Krieg ist offen"

Die höchsten islamischen Geistliche rufen immer offener zu Selbstmord-Attentaten gegen die Alliierten im Irak auf. Unter ihnen ist auch Mohammed Sajjid Tantawi, der religiöse Führer der Sunniten. Beobachtern zufolge ist nach der Einnahme Bagdads mit einem Anstieg solcher Anschläge zu rechnen.

Kairo - Nach Ansicht von Tantawi, Großscheich der Al-Azhar-Moschee in Kairo, sind alle Beteiligten am Irak-Krieg gleichermaßen Verbrecher. Hussein, weil er sein eigenes Volk unterdrückt und ermordet habe. Die Amerikaner und Briten, weil sie die Ehre des Irak verletzt hätten. Und die Führung von Kuweit, weil sie im Kampf gegen ein arabisches Land ein nicht-arabisches Land zu Hilfe gerufen hätten.

Einen Kreuzzug will der Sunniten-Führer in dem Irak-Krieg nicht erkennen. Dazu hätten sich zu viele christliche Nationen und Religionsführer gegen die Invasion ausgesprochen - unter anderem auch Papst Johannes Paul II. Dieser hatte sich am Sonntag erneut für ein Ende der Gewalt im Irak ausgesprochen. "Möge Gott dafür sorgen, dass dieser Konflikt bald zu Ende geht und einer neuen Zeit des Vergebens, der Liebe und des Friedens Platz macht", sagte er bei seiner wöchentlichen Ansprache.

Tantawi, der auch eine der wichtigsten islamischen Universitäten leitet, ist dagegen überhaupt nicht friedlich gestimmt. "Selbsmord-Attentate sind nach islamischem Gesetz erlaubt", sagte er am Samstag. Er scheute sich auch nicht, seine Glaubensbrüder offen zu solchen Aktionen aufzurufen: "Wer immer in den Irak gehen will, um dem irakischen Volk zu helfen, die Tür ist offen. Und ich sage, die Tür zum Heiligen Krieg ist offen."

Schon eine Woche zuvor hatte sich der syrische Großmufti, Scheich Achmed Kaftaro, für Selbstmord-Attentate ausgesprochen. Nach islamischem Recht ist Selbstmord als Verbrechen geächtet, zur Verteidigung des eigenen Landes oder anderer Muslime jedoch erlaubt.

Der Anführer der Schiiten in Libanon, Scheich Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, rief außerdem am Samstag dazu auf, einer von den USA eingesetzten Regierung im Irak Widerstand entgegenzusetzen: "Wir müssen uns gegen jeden Mann wehren, den Amerika als Gouverneur einzusetzen versucht". Damit reagierte Fadlallah auf die Ankündung der USA, in Kürze Pläne für eine Interimsregierung vorzulegen.

Radikale Moslemgruppen und selbst ernannte "Gotteskrieger" rüsten nach Ansicht von Dia Raschwan, Politologe am Kairoer Al-Ahram-Zentrum für politische und strategische Forschung, schon für die Zeit nach dem Sturm auf Bagdad. Bereits jetzt sind nach irakischen Angaben rund 6000 Araber in der irakischen Hauptstadt, die zu allen Opern bereit seien. Viele Tausend "Freiwillige" mehr werden es sein, wenn Briten und US-Amerikaner erst die Kontrolle über das Zweistromland übernommen haben, meint Raschwan.

Abdel Moati Bajumi, Mitglied des islamischen Forschungszentrums der Al-Azhar-Universität, rechnet ebenfalls mit einem Anstieg von Selbstmord-Attentaten, sobald die irakische Hauptstadt eingenommen ist: "Bagdad ist ein besonderes religiöses Symbol. Das war die Hauptstadt des islamischen Kalifats während der Abbassiden-Zeit in den Jahren 750 bis 1258. Die Umstellung und ein Angriff auf die Stadt wird Osama bin Laden und al Qaida neue Legitimität geben". Und kein islamischer Führer könne danach mehr eine gegen die USA gerichtete "Antwort" verurteilen, so Bajumi.


© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet AG

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War and Occupation
The Future of the World?
By RON JACOBS

As the battle for Baghdad (or perhaps the siege of Baghdad) begins to take shape, we are left to wonder what lies ahead. It`s looks pretty likely that the US`s overwhelming killing machine will eventually destroy the regime, either by destroying most of Iraq or by making life so miserable for the Iraqis that the military will surrender. The occupation, however, is certain to be a different matter. Once Hussein is gone from power, there are bound to be several factions vying for power in Iraq. Amongst these various factions will be the occupying forces of the United States military. Iraqis intent on revenge for years of sanctions, support of the Hussein government, and other US misdeeds are bound to exact some kind of punishment on the Americans. Whether or not that revenge actually organizes itself into some kind of resistance force is another question, which is currently unanswerable from this vantage point.

If one looks at recent (and current) military occupations, there is one common denominator: popular resistance. In Palestine that resistance has run the gamut from non-violent protest and direct action to suicide attacks and military action. In Kosovo and other regions of the former Yugoslavia, the scenario was pretty much the same. In Chechnya, the resistance has been more organized and, consequently, much more like what we consider to be a war. In other words, the military power has shifted from the occupier to the resistance and back again. In Afghanistan, it seems that the Chechnya model is beginning to formulate itself.

Reading Iraqi history, we find this little note regarding the British occupation of the Iraqi nation during the 1920s-"Churchill believed that the country could be cheaply policed by aircraft armed with gas bombs, supported by as few as 4,000 British and 10,000 (colonial) Indian troops" (from Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939, David E. Omissi, 1990). Churchill was wrong. The Iraqis eventually drove the British from the country. The US strategists are saying today that they don`t believe they will need to capture or kill the entire Hussein government before they can occupy the country. Indeed, certain news agencies are reporting that some members of the administration don`t even believe that Baghdad needs to be controlled. This type of thinking is reminiscent of the British imperial arrogance that brought down their empire. Need I say more?

It is too early to speculate what truly lies ahead for the GIs in Iraq (and those on their way), but I think it is safe to say their job will continue to be bloody and dirty. One can only hope that those who have moral qualms about occupying another country at gunpoint will act on those qualms and refuse to serve. One also hopes that the opposition we have created to the war will continue to protest as the occupiers attempt to impose their will on the Iraqi people. Besides the occupation, one can be relatively certain that the administration will continue its plans to make war on other countries that oppose its plans for conquest.

Come Senators, Congressmen, Please Heed the Call, Don`t Stand in the Doorway, Don`t Block up the Hall

The antiwar movement cannot roll over. The fact that a bloody war is being fought in Iraq (and elsewhere) despite our incredible opposition around the world does not mean that we have failed. It only means we have not fought hard enough, nor have we reached enough of the world`s people. Furthermore, it means we must expand our reach, our tactics and our strategies to make the movement against war and occupation a movement that no government can ignore. In the US, this means that every presidential candidate must take a position on the war and occupation and answer for that position at the polls. Every Senator and Congressman who voted for the war and its funding must pay for it at election time. This is not just a question of right vs. wrong. It is a matter of life and death. The cost to the politicians must be such that they will oppose this war or lose their jobs.

Politicians may not be good for much, but they do serve as useful foci for raising the issues that need to be raised. Antiwar folks who are electorally inclined must run for office. The rest of us must organize, march, sit-in, and do whatever else to make the war and occupation a major issue in the political life of America. Citizens of other countries should take comparable actions in their nations. Even though the diplomatic battles in the UN before the war began were largely the result of differing commercial interests in Iraq and the Middle East, they would not have widened to the point they are currently at without the pressures applied by the antiwar protests. The fact that the antiwar movement was able to widen the fissures between the large capitalist nations is a victory of sorts. One hopes the space created by this split among these governments can be filled by those of us who honestly oppose Washington`s wars and the economics that drives them.

The man in line for the main administrator of Iraq`s postwar occupation government, Ret. General Jay Garner, is a public supporter of the Israeli policy of expansion and an executive (currently on leave) of the defense contractor L-3 Communications. His job in Iraq will be to help "introduce a capitalist system where there`s been central-control socialism since the 1960s," according to Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation. As any student of right wing think tanks knows, this foundation supports the Sharon government in Israel and the expansion of US corporate power around the globe via military force. The other countries in the Middle East are very interested in Iraq`s future. After all, it could very well be their own. Iran and Syria are under increasing threats from the US. Saudi Arabia is in disfavor with the current administration in Washington, and Jordan and Egypt find themselves stuck between their allegiance to US aid and the anger of their people over the US presence in the region. If the occupation succeeds in Iraq, one can be pretty certain that US hawks will want to attempt a similar scenario elsewhere, beginning with those countries currently in Bush and Rumsfeld`s "axis of evil."

The scenes of death and destruction we are seeing from Iraq will pale besides those that could come from the future wars of the madmen and women in Washington, DC. We have no choice but to oppose their occupation and their wars. They must be stopped.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.

He can be reached at: [e-mail]

[Joerver]

One boy`s war... bathed in blood of his family
His father. His mother. Two sisters. A brother. And an uncle. All dead. That was the price of war for 15-year-old Omar when the vehicle he was riding in failed to stop at a US checkpoint five miles from Baghdad. Even the Marines were weeping in sympathy

James Meek in Iraq
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer

Was it worth it? For Omar, a 15-year-old orphaned by US Marines on Friday night, his shirt and trousers saturated with his parents` blood, the answer was no. For Corpsman Thomas Smith, a few days short of his 22nd birthday, exhausted and unbelieving after a day and night of mayhem which had seen three Marines killed, himself almost among them, the answer was yes.

For the senior Iraqi commander, dead in the dirt at the side of the road next to the white Toyota in which he had tried to escape, who knows? The second hand on his watch was still ticking, but the hour and minute hands had stopped at 2 am.

US intelligence sources quickly identified the man as the operations officer of the Special Republican Guards.

If George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein have anything in common, it is that the lives of Omar, Smith and the Iraqi officer are petty cash in their grand accounting of the balance of war. They cannot smell the dead rotting in the heat along the route of the Marines` final charge to the gates of Baghdad; there is no way to make them look Omar in the eye as he stares through his tears at the embarrassed, awkward foreigners who shot his mother and father. The boy did not know whether to be enraged or engulfed in sobbing, so he was both, and neither would help him.

Here, at a crossroads five miles east of the Iraqi capital, Marines shot dead eight civilians and injured seven more, including a child who was shot in the face. All the civilians were travelling out of Baghdad on Friday night in vehicles which, the Marines say, refused to stop when challenged - in English - and, when warning shots were fired, accelerated.

Fearful that they were being attacked by suicide bombers, the Marines shot to immobilise the vehicles. Result? Besides Omar`s father and mother, two of his sisters, one brother and an uncle were killed when the bus and truck in which they were travelling were punctured by gunfire. The children were aged three, six and 10.

Aleya, Omar`s aunt, walked barefoot through shattered windscreen glass yesterday and climbed into the cab of the truck, which was being repaired to make it roadworthy. She was close to hysterics and past caring about minor physical pain. `People cry for one dead person. Who am I going to cry for?`, she screamed through her weeping.

Omar held up his clothes, dyed a hideous purple-brown colour with the blood in the night. His features kept twisting into the face of the about- to-cry. At one point he scampered to the edge of the road to lift the blanket over the face of his father before the Marines led him away.

In the end the corpses, including one the Marines had begun to bury, were carried by the Iraqis and the Marines to the back of the truck for the family to take away and inter. When Aleya went with a medic to change the dressing on the badly shot-up face of Omar`s baby brother, Ali, she confided that she had seen one of the Marines weep in sympathy at the family`s grief.

The driver of one of the civilian vehicles claimed that they did stop. But Corporal Adam Clark, one of the Marines manning the checkpoint, his face strained and pale and his hands sealed in stained rubber gloves, said: `We gave them warning shots. A lot of them. And they didn`t stop. That first truck right there just about ran over our forward troops.

`It`s not a good day when you carry dead people out of vehicles. What can you do?`

Another of the Marines, Lance Corporal Eric Jewell, said: `We didn`t know what was in that bus. It may sound bad, but I`d rather see more of them dead than any of my friends... Everyone understands the word `stop`, right?`

The checkpoint lay beside a row of dusty down-at-heel shops. Some had their padlocks shot off - it was not clear by whom - and their shelves were half empty. The Marines had not seen shops for weeks, and a little shopping, as much souvenir-hunting and curiosity as looting, was going on. A Marine walked past with a cardboard box that clinked with glass inside, but a string of plastic garden chairs, prized commodities in a war of movement and encampments in desolate places, had not been touched.

In the heat and dust of morning yesterday the crossroads seethed with tanks, armoured troop carriers, Humvees, trucks, and sunburned, weary troops who had fought their way there. Near by a military compound had been reduced to smoking black ash. Thousands of brass cartridge cases glinted on the road where armoured vehicles had dumped the waste of the night`s fighting.

These were the units - thousands of infantry, tank crews and supporting arms making up what the Marines call 5th Regimental Combat Team (5RCT) - which had run the gauntlet of Iraqi ambushes along Highway 7 north to Baghdad.

Corpsman Thomas Smith, a Marine medic from New York with a passing resemblance to David Beckham, sat in the driver`s seat of his ambulance, still stunned by the experience of the previous 24 hours. He had just finished scrubbing the blood out of the back.

`I was having a rough day. We must have taken about 20 casualties last night,` he said. This included Iraqi civilians injured at the crossroads. `The whole floor was covered in blood. There was guys vomiting blood. There was blood on the seats. All the stretchers were full of blood. There`s one stretcher we had to put down here where the Marines won`t see it, because we can`t get the blood off. At one point we had about six guys in here.`

Corpsman Smith, the ambulance driver and the unit`s doctor were driving north towards Baghdad on Friday in a convoy when they ran into what officers variously described as one long ambush and six separate Iraqi `killing zones`. There was a torrent of fire from rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank launchers and small arms.

Normally Iraqi ambushes wait until heavily armoured vehicles like tanks have gone past before targeting the thin-skinned vehicles like trucks and Humvees. This time, however, they hit the exter nal fuel tank of an M1 tank, and the crew bailed out. The tank could still be seen on the road yesterday, a charred wreck distinguishable only by its shape from the numerous burned-out Iraqi tanks, a reminder that even the most fearsome US armour is not invulnerable.

Smith found himself in the midst of a bloody firefight. The ambulance driver was shot through the window and hurt his hand. Smith was hit in the chest but his flak jacket saved him from injury. The torn fabric over the damaged protective plate where the bullet bounced off can be clearly seen.

Smith took over the driving, the driver sitting in the passenger seat. Then the driver got shot through the other hand. Rockets and bullets were flying across the road in both directions. `I didn`t think we were going to make it,` said Smith. `Thank God for the Cobras [Marine helicopter gunships]. They came in and took everything out with their missiles. It was a nice little fireworks show.`

Lt-Col Mike Oehl, a tank battalion commander, said he had lost three men, with nine injured. "I think we quelled most of it, but it was a pretty substantial ambush.

`Every time you lose somebody it`s disappointing but... when you consider there are maybe 900 in a battalion, we`ve lost three.`

Close by, a Humvee with a bullet hole through its windscreen and shot-out tyres was being towed away. The running board was thick with dried blood, just the same nasty colour as the blood of Omar`s parents. A Marine lieutenant died on Friday in the vehicle. He was standing up through the hatch in the vehicle`s roof when he was shot in the head.

Sergeant Dwight Gray, a 30-year-old reservist in the same unit as the lieutenant, said it had been the dead officer`s first mission after he was brought in to replace a lieutenant injured earlier by rocket-propelled grenade fire.

Like other Marines, he is not stopping to mourn yet. `It`s part of the game - you`ve got to keep your head and stay focused,` he said. `What I tell my troops is we`ll deal with that when it`s over. Right now I`d rather not know who`s lost, who`s died."

After the battalions reached the crossroads on Friday night and things seemed quiet they came under fire again - from inside Baghdad. The Iraqis fired three 120mm rockets. The Iraqis seldom get to fire more because within minutes the position they fire from is located by US radar and Marine artillery can then rain their computer-targeted shells down on it.

The observer was driving towards the crossroads on Friday night when the Marine artillery was firing: the guns ripped open the night with a crack that shook windows and the path of the shells could be seen in white stars sailing upwards in a soft parabola, the remnants of `wrap-arounds`, small rockets which make shells travel further.

But the Iraqi rockets which hit 5 RCT on Friday night, though they did no damage, unnerved the Marines. `It sounds like someone holding up a piece of one-inch metal next to your ear and tearing it like a sheet of paper,` said one officer.

The Marines are regrouping and reorganising now for what may be a difficult and dangerous assault on Baghdad, or a cruise into the city - or a long siege. Nobody, not even Tommy Franks, can know what will happen inside the capital, but if it comes to a fight it will be warfare such as the US has not seen for decades. There will be much blood in the ambulances of those whose injuries do not greatly trouble the sleep of the great.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Flash Animation. Lexicon der neuen Begriffe:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=…

.

[Joerver]

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH
202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111
FAX: [phone]

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am GEORGE WALKER BUSH, son of the former president of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush, and currently serving as President of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to an account requiring maximum confidence.

I am writing you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance in acquiring oil funds that are presently trapped in the republic of Iraq. My partners and I solicit your assistance in completing a transaction begun by my father, who has long been actively engaged in the extraction of petroleum in the United States of America, and bravely served his country as director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

In the decade of the nineteen-eighties, my father, then vice-president of the United States of America, sought to work with the good offices of the President of the Republic of Iraq to regain lost oil revenue sources in the neighboring Islamic republic of Iran. This unsuccessful venture was soon followed by a falling-out with his Iraqi partner, who sought to acquire additional oil revenue sources in the neighboring emirate of Kuwait, a wholly-owned U.S.-British subsidiary.

My father re-secured the petroleum assets of Kuwait in 1991 at a cost of sixty-one billion u.s. dollars ($61,000,000,000). Out of that cost, thirty-six billion dollars ($36,000,000,000) were supplied by his partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other persian gulf monarchies, and sixteen billion dollars ($16,000,000,000) by German and Japanese partners. But my father`s former Iraqi business partner remained in control of the republic of Iraq and its petroleum reserves.

My family is calling for your urgent assistance in funding the removal of the President of the Republic of Iraq and acquiring the petroleum assets of his country, as compensation for the costs of removing him from power. Unfortunately, our partners from 1991 are not willing to shoulder the burden of this new venture, which in its upcoming phase may cost the sum of 100 billion to 200 billion dollars ($100,000,000,000 - $200,000,000,000), both in the initial acquisition and in long-term management.

Without the funds from our 1991 partners, we would not be able to acquire the oil revenue trapped within Iraq. That is why my family and our colleagues are urgently seeking your gracious assistance. Our distinguished colleagues in this business transaction include the sitting vice-president of the United States of America, Richard Cheney, who is an original partner in the Iraq venture and former head of the Halliburton oil company, and Condoleeza Rice, whose professional dedication to the venture was demonstrated in the naming of a Chevron oil tanker after her.

I would beseech you to transfer a sum equaling ten to twenty-five percent (10-25 %) of your yearly income to our account to aid in this important venture. The internal revenue service of the United States of America will function as our trusted intermediary. I propose that you make this transfer before the fifteenth (15th) of the month of April.

I know that a transaction of this magnitude would make anyone apprehensive and worried. But I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. A bold step taken shall not be regretted, I assure you. Please do be informed that this business transaction is 100% legal. If you do not wish to co-operate in this transaction, please contact our intermediary representatives to further discuss the matter.

I pray that you understand our plight. My family and our colleagues will be forever grateful. Please reply in strict confidence to the contact numbers below.

Sincerely with warm regards,

George Walker Bush

Switchboard: 202.456.1414
Comments: 202.456.1111
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

[old_hag]

http://www.drparsons.fsnet.co.uk/georg.html

[Joerver]

Ich kannte den noch nicht.

Bush`s White House Tour

Before the inauguration, George W. was invited to a `get acquainted` tour of the White House.

After drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked President Clinton if he could use his personal bathroom. He was astonished to see that the President had a solid gold urinal!

That afternoon, George W. told his wife, Laura, about the urinal. "Just think," he said, "when I am President, I`ll have my own personal gold urinal!"

Later, when Laura had lunch with Hillary at her tour of the White House, she told Hillary how impressed George had been with his discovery of the fact that, in the President`s private bathroom, the President had a gold urinal.

That evening, Bill and Hillary were getting ready for bed. Hillary turned to Bill and said, "Well, I found out who peed in your saxophone."

[Joerver]

Noch 2 und ein Gedicht, weil heut Sonntag ist.

God and the Village Idiot

One day God was hanging out at the Pearly Gates with St. Paul.
"I need to find someone to run for president," he said after a while.
Attentive to his boss` needs, St. Paul started naming off a few qualified candidates.
"Nah, I want that guy," he said pointing to a drunken Texas governor pissing off a balcony.
"You`ve got to be kidding," said St. Paul, "Not only is he dumber than a box of rocks, he`s got drinking and drug problems."
"I don`t care," said God, "This is the guy."
Perplexed, St. Paul asked: "What is the problem, Lord, art thou angry with the Americans?"
"No," said God, "I made a bet with the Devil that I could get a village idiot to run for president."
"But won`t that work in the Devil`s favor, oh Lord?" Paul asked.
"That`s all right," said God, "he`ll never take Florida."


Der Nächste:

Bush Goes For A Jog

George Bush was out jogging one morning along the parkway when he tripped, fell over the bridge railing and landed in the creek below.
Before the Secret Service guys could get to him, three kids, who were fishing, pulled him out of the water. He was so grateful he offered the kids whatever they wanted.
The first kid said, "I sure would like to go to Disneyland." George said, "No problem. I`ll take you there on Air Force One."
The second kid said, "I really need a new pair of Nike Air Jordan`s." George said, "I`ll get them for you and even have Michael sign them!"
The third kid said, "I want a motorized wheelchair with a built-in TV and stereo headset!!" George Bush is a little perplexed by this and says, "But you don`t look like you are injured." The kid says, "I will be after my dad finds out I saved your ass from drowning!"


Und das Gedicht:

The Texas Hillbilly

(Sing along to the tune of Beverly Hillbillies)

Come and listen to my story `bout a boy named Bush.
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he drove all about.
But that didn`t matter `cuz his daddy bailed him out.
DUI, that is.
Criminal record.
Cover-up.
Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can`t spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin` out with student folk.
And that`s when he learns how to snort a line of coke.
Blow, that is.
White gold.
Nose candy.
The next thing you know there`s a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom."
Let the common people get maimed and scarred.
We`ll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard.
Cushy, that is.
Country clubs.
Nose candy.
Twenty years later George gets a little bored.
He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord.
He said, "Now the White House is the place I wanna be."
So he called his daddy`s friends and they called the GOP.
Gun owners, that is.
Falwell.
Jesse Helms.
Come November 7, the election ran late.
Kin folks said "Jeb, give the boy your state!"
"Don`t let those colored folks get into the polls."
So they put up barricades so they couldn`t punch their holes.
Chads, that is.
Duval County.
Miami-Dade.
Before the votes were counted five Supremes stepped in.
Told all the voters "Hey, we want George to win."
"Stop counting votes!" was their solemn invocation.
And that`s how George finally got his coronation.
Rigged, that is.
Illegitimate.
No moral authority.
Y`all come vote now.
Ya hear?

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."
--Tom DeLay, to Congress


"I`m nuts about tax cuts."

[Joerver]

!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

[Joerver]

Ich habe nicht geglaubt, dass man sich so sehr mit der Verohung des Soldaten im Kriege beschäftigt.
Man ist vom Vietnamkrieg vorgewarnt, wo es zu diesem Truthahn- oder Trophäenschießen gekommen ist.


The difference between warriors and terrorists
Shannon E. French
Sunday, April 6, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ar…


Since 1998, I`ve been teaching a course on "The Code of the Warrior" at the U.S. Naval Academy. My students and I study the warriors` codes of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Celts, medieval knights, Zulus, Native Americans, Chinese monks and Japanese samurai. We talk about how the purpose of a code is to restrain warriors, for their own good as much as others`. The essential element of a warrior`s code is to set limits on what warriors can and cannot do if they want to continue to be regarded as warriors,

not murderers or cowards. For the warrior who has such a code, certain actions remain unthinkable, even in the most dire or extreme circumstances.

Some might fear that encouraging young warriors to study the warrior traditions of the past will lead them to become Rambo-like or to embrace outrageous bigotries and out-of-date ideals.

The world is no longer arranged in such a way that conflicts are likely to arise among evenly matched great powers. Today`s privileged warriors increasingly find themselves pitted against adversaries who fight without any rules or restraints, and are likely to employ methods rightfully viewed as horrific and appalling, such as terror attacks on civilian populations and the use of chemical and biological weapons.

In the spring following the attacks of Sept. 11, and the start of President Bush`s "war on terror," I asked students to write essays detailing exactly why they are different from terrorists. Midshipmen were to spell out how the roles they intended to fill as future Navy and Marine Corps officers are distinct in morally relevant ways from that of, say, an al Qaeda operative.

Here is a segment of one student`s argument: "It is wrong to kill innocent people even if it does further the cause of the United States. There are rules to war. . . . We learned in Naval Law [class] about the Law of Armed Conflict and the Rules of Engagement. There are targets that are acceptable and have `military value` and targets that are simply killing for the sake of killing. Terrorists see targets of military value as too difficult to strike. They do not have the means to strike these targets. They instead will take out the easy targets for shock value."

Terrorists do not see themselves as murderers. They believe that they are warriors -- "freedom fighters" struggling against their "oppressors."

But what distinguishes warriors from murderers is that warriors accept a set of rules governing when and how they kill. They must learn to take only certain lives in certain ways, at certain times and for certain reasons. Otherwise, they become indistinguishable from murderers. Individuals can fight for an objectively bad cause or a corrupt regime and still be warriors. But there can be no honor in any conflict for those who believe they have no moral obligation to restrain their behavior in any way.

It is unlikely that those who have been bewitched by the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and others like him feel no revulsion at the thought (or in the act) of killing unarmed, helpless civilians. Rather, it is more probable that they are persuaded that any apparent pricks of conscience they may feel are not the screams of their precious humanity hoping to be heard but rather their human weakness battling against their will to perform their sacred duty. They would therefore consider it a triumph of will to carry out the charge to kill without mercy or discrimination.

In "The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle," J. Glenn Gray, a U.S. veteran of World War II, brings home the agony of the warrior who has become incapable of honoring his enemies and thus is unable to find redemption. Gray describes how the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers (including the torture and murder of prisoners of war and wounded GIs) in the Pacific theater during World War II led Allied soldiers to view their enemies as unworthy of humane treatment. Otherwise unthinkable actions, such as collecting enemy body parts as "trophies" (a practice that also occurred in the Vietnam War) and refusing to accept surrenders, became acceptable within some Allied circles.

Gray`s conclusions match those of psychologists Jonathan Shay, author of "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character," and Lt. Col.

Dave Grossman, author of "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." Veterans who believe that they were directly or indirectly party to immoral or dishonorable behavior (perpetrated by themselves, their comrades or their commanders) have the hardest time reclaiming their lives after the war is over.

It is easier to remain a warrior when fighting other warriors. When warriors fight murderers, they may be tempted to become like the evil they hope to destroy. Their only protection is their code of honor. The professional military ethics that restrain warriors -- that keep them from targeting those who cannot fight back, from taking pleasure in killing, from striking harder than is necessary, and that encourage them to offer mercy to their defeated enemies and even to help rebuild their countries and communities -- are also their own protection against becoming what they abhor.

It is not just "see the whites of their eyes" frontline ground and Special Forces troops who need this protection. Men and women who fight from a distance -- who drop bombs from planes and shoot missiles from ships or submarines -- also risk losing their humanity. What threatens them is the very ease with which they can take lives.

As technology separates individuals from the results of their actions, it cheats them of the chance to absorb and reckon with the enormity of what they have done. Killing fellow human beings, even for the noblest cause, should never feel like nothing more than a game played using the latest advances in virtual reality. Modern warriors who dehumanize their enemies by equating them with blips on a computer screen may find the sense that they are part of an honorable undertaking far too fragile to sustain.

It is important for warriors to show respect for the inherent worth and dignity of their opponents. Even long-distance warriors can achieve that by acknowledging that some of the "targets" they destroy are in fact human beings,

not demons or vermin or empty statistics. Once that thin line between warrior and murderer has been crossed, the harm to the individual who crossed it may be severe.

The warrior`s code is the shield that guards our warriors` humanity. Without it, they are no good to themselves or to those with whom and for whom they fight. Without it, they will find no way back. I have dear friends currently in harm`s way. They are our pilots, surface-warfare officers, submariners, Navy SEALs and Marines. Come May, more of my students will join them. When and if they go into combat, I want them to be able to return from war intact in body and soul. I want all of them, every last one, to come back with their shields.

Shannon E. French is an assistant professor of philosophy at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of the new book, "The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present,` ( Rowman & Littlefield.) A version of this piece ran in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

[Joerver]

April 5 — Patrolman Jose Soto humps the overnight beat in the Bronx. A stocky guy with a dusting of razor burn on his bald head, Soto is soft-spoken and deliberate. He calls men he’s just met “Sir.”

A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, he was on vacation in North Carolina. In the airport, Soto ran into a group of Marines fresh out of Camp Lejeune. “I was just hit with a chill, all these guys, 18 and 19,” Soto says, gently rocking from side to side in the hallway of the 52nd Precinct’s station house. “Just this sense of deja vu. That was me. I grabbed them, and we got in a little prayer circle, bowed our heads. And I just said I hope they all stay safe.”

As American and British forces push into Baghdad, the entire country is riding a roller coaster of real-time broadcasts from Iraq. Veterans of the first Persian Gulf War are watching the news with their own unique range of emotions. Some find themselves obsessively glued to cable news deep into the night. Others can’t watch and get physically ill at the sight of desert combat. Many feel guilty they’re not fighting this battle, guilty that they weren’t allowed to finish off Saddam Hussein a dozen years ago; many more worry that their counterparts this time around don’t have the manpower and might in place to do the job. Finally, a surprising number of vets are talking out publicly against this conflict, questioning both the war’s rationale and whether American troops are adequately prepared for chemical or biological attacks. The Missouri-based Gulf War Veterans Association, a group formed to publicize gulf war syndrome, is even taking a vocal stand opposing the current conflict.

In the Bronx, it’s coming up on midnight, and Soto, a veteran of the Army’s 82d Airborne Division, is talking with Eric Figueroa, a wiry and intense foil to Soto’s even demeanor. Figueroa’s also a cop in the Bronx, and he’s another 82d vet from the gulf war. “We’re finally back there,” Soto says, talking about Iraq. “And I think we should have been back there a lot earlier.”

It’s definitely time we finished the job,” Figueroa says quickly. When the order to retreat came through, the 82d was about 150 miles south of Baghdad, among the most forward of allied troops. Figueroa and Soto, who were fighting alongside—and trading berets with—French soldiers, thought there was a chance they’d push on through to the Iraqi capital.

“It’s real hard to watch from the sidelines,” says Anthony Swofford, the author of the acclaimed gulf war memoir “Jarhead.” “Hell, if we’d gone on these poor guys wouldn’t be dying right now. We had a bigger force, and an already devastated opponent.”

At the American Legion Hall in Levittown, N.Y., Kurt Miller and Mike Kilbride, former Marines both, talk about why they weren’t allowed to topple Saddam. “The rules of engagement are always politically dictated,” Kilbride says, his eyes glued to the TV showing CNN behind the bar. “And our rules were we there to liberate Kuwait. Period,” Miller says. More to himself, Kilbride murmurs, “It sucks being on the sidelines,” he says, echoing Swofford and drinking from his Diet Coke.

A question floats across the bottom of the TV screen: WILL THE IRAQIS FIGHT AGAINST SADDAM? “No, they will not rise up,” Kilbride says. “They don’t know whether we’ll help them out. This time, we need to do it alone. “It’s going to be a lot harder than it was when we were there.”

Several hundred miles to the south, in North Carolina, Douglas Waddell isn’t sure he even knows why he was in the gulf a dozen years ago. Waddell suffers from a range of illnesses he attributes to gulf war syndrome. “Watching the bombs make me kind of lose it,” he says. “I have post-traumatic stress.” Waddell feels the American political establishment set itself up for the current conflict. “It’s like an operation for cancer,” he says of the first gulf war. “We took out part of the leg but left the cancer there. Of course we’re back. But I think it’s about oil. If we really wanted to get Saddam, we would have done it the last time.”

Waddell is one of a growing number of vets who say American troops could be decimated by a biological or chemical attack. “Our gas masks didn’t work, our training was for s—t,” he says. “It’s no different now.”

Back in the Bronx, Eric Figueroa is preparing to head back out on patrol. As part of the countywide task force, he jumps from hot spot to hot spot, as it were, going from knife fights to drug deals gone awry. He’s been working 12-hour days, from 6 at night to 6 in the morning. One of his responsibilities is to help with security at the antiwar protests that are bubbling up around the city. “They seem ignorant to me,” he says. “But that’s part of what America is.

“I’m watching the TV religiously. And it upsets me. I feel like I’m sitting here not doing my part.” Figueroa and Soto are both in the Reserves and know the likelihood they’ll get called up increases with each day of battle.

Figueroa and Soto are good soldiers. They salute and don’t question orders. But as the night drags on, they show hints of their frustration. “Why do it the first time if we’re not gonna do it right?” Figueroa asks. “It’s like, you do a project in your house and you’re cheap about it. It’s gonna fall apart. And then you’re going to need to go in and do it right.”

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

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To Europe, via Baghdad, and reading the wrong map

Blair underestimates the scale of both US ambition and European defiance

John Stevens
Monday April 7, 2003
The Guardian

The talk is of roadmaps. Not the roadmaps of war, or of downtown Basra and Baghdad, but of peace. There are several of them and two, at least, may be clearer in a few days. First, there is the prime minister`s old favourite, brought out like the plans for a post-property windfall, or post-lottery win, or post-retirement continental dream holiday: the roadmap for Britain joining the euro. This is the itinerary that only three weeks ago Denis MacShane, the minister for Europe, told us went via Baghdad. By this bizarre remark he meant, one assumes, that the prime minister`s dogged facing down of public opposition to our going to war alongside the Americans would be such a proof of his persuasive powers, and that the war itself would be so successful, that the government could look with confidence towards fighting and winning a referendum on the single currency. It might no longer be, as hitherto advertised, this year, but the day would still surely come in this parliament.
Well, on Wednesday, in the course of his Budget speech, the Chancellor is due to make clear that his much-vaunted five economic tests, or at any rate three of them, have not been met. Although this will be presented as not ruling out the possibility of revisiting the issue next year, it will, in reality, mark the collapse of Blair`s ambition to be the prime minister who presides over the momentous step which places our nation in Europe and not across the Atlantic.

For it is inconceivable, following the monumental bust-up of recent weeks, that it will be possible to persuade the British people to merge our economic and political future with the French and the Germans without a radical rejection of our present pro-American policy. This could only be undertaken by a new prime minister. The euro is the archetypal "old", "core" Europe project. Equally, it is inconceivable that the French and the Germans, whose agreement, it is often forgotten, on the exchange rate and other matters is necessary if Britain is to join the euro, will be prepared to deal with Blair. For the first time since mid-1974, when Harold Wilson called a referendum on our membership of the EEC which he was confident would be lost, this country could be on the way out of the process of European integration. Iain Duncan Smith has already sensed the moment: be prepared for renewed Tory talk of "re-negotiation" of our relationship with the EU and of the superior attractions of our joining the North American free trade agreement (Nafta).

The prime minister, I am sure, has not wanted all this. And he still seems to believe he can overcome the massive obstacles to getting closer to Europe, which his own errors of policy have created, and save what he used to see as his place in history. He thinks, wrongly, that the French and the Germans do not now have their own roadmap for a dramatic deepening of the European core. He is in denial about the decision to keep to the current timetable for the Constitutional convention, which is a clear indicator of their intentions, including their readiness to employ new institutions or arrangements, separate from the present treaties. He is in denial about the meeting scheduled for April 29, at which they will discuss the creation of a new European defence identity involving Russia. He comforts himself, like Mrs Thatcher and John Major used to, that none of these schemes will come to anything, that some sort of a United States of Europe is more of a dream now than ever. That he is "winning the argument" because he has the support of the new member states. And, like them, he has utterly underestimated the persistent power of that dream in Paris and Berlin.

His more immediate hopes, however, rest on the second of the current roadmaps of peace: for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This, he fancies, rather than the form of the post-war regime in Iraq, will be the way to re-connect "old Europe" to the US. This great prize of peace in so intractable a dispute will justify his choice to go with Bush rather than Chirac and Schröder over the last six months. It, too, is an itinerary of dreams, something underlined by it being presented, at the end of this week, in Belfast. For Blair is not just underestimating the European federalists. He is underestimating the American, Republican right fundamentalists as well.

In the design for the Middle East that President Bush has initiated by launching the war against Iraq, the security of Israel is a central factor, alongside the security of the US against weapons of mass destruction and the security of Gulf oil reserves. Though the administration speaks of a "two-state solution", suggesting that they accept the present parameters of the debate over Palestine, they are, in fact, thinking far more radically. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and their supporters have long concluded that no existing Arab government can be trusted to make a permanent peace with Israel.

They are therefore planning not just to topple Saddam Hussein, but President Assad, and even the Jordanian, Saudi and other Gulf monarchies. They wish to create a new Arab nation state, comprising all these countries, democratic, progressive, secular, which will no longer seek balm for the pains of internal oppression and injustice in the war against the Israeli arch-enemy. One that will consent to a Biblical Israel, with the Palestinians finding their home in present Jordan, but with the proviso that East Jerusalem should become a multi-faith, international city.

One cannot criticise the force of the analysis behind these proposals. No Arab government can be regarded as good for its people. No Arab state has a legitimacy beyond the sorry legacy of Mister Sykes and Monsieur Picot, the bureaucrats who ushered in the post-first world war carve-up of the Ottoman empire. One is, however, entitled to doubt whether General Garner, the American governor-general designate of liberated Iraq, is the new, successful TE Lawrence.

The issue, as before the start of this war, is not: would the world be a better place if Washington`s grandiose vision for re-making the Middle East could be realised? It is: will it work? Can it be done? Or will not attempting it create a chaos far worse even that what we have hitherto tolerated for more than half a century and extending far beyond the region?

One thing is certain: France, Germany and Russia are not remotely ready to entertain the Americans` optimistic assessment of their prospects, let alone the idealism of their motives. Nor, I fancy, are several European states that are supportive of the current conflict. Nor, judging by his recent remarks on the matter, is the prime minister. But can he get off the hook, isolated from "old Europe" as he is? Mr Blair is as unaware of the scale and scope of the Middle East roadmap that Bush is now following as he is of the roadmap Chirac and Schröder are working on in response to US unilateralism. Whether the Americans or the Europeans are realistic in their different dream destinations remains to be seen. But it is certain that Blair is going nowhere.

· John Stevens was a Conservative MEP from 1989-99. He is on the council of Britain in Europe

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April 7, 2003
A Strange but Familiar War
By ALEX VERNON


ITTLE ROCK, Ark.

Twelve years ago, as a lowly tank platoon leader in the Persian Gulf war, I had only the vaguest idea of where I was or what was happening around me. Yet I also knew that, no matter how much they watched CNN, friends and family back home couldn`t know what it was like to be tossed against the nearly windowless walls of a Bradley armored fighting vehicle as it bumped its way across the desert.

Today`s soldiers have a far better sense of their surroundings; some have touch-screen computers linked to satellites that can show the position of the army on the battlefield. (In the gulf war, advanced command-and-control technology was the Post-it note.) And with hundreds of journalists "embedded" in the troops, soldiers may have a better idea of overall operations, while viewers and readers have a much better sense of the life of the grunts and the strategy of the generals.

Still, the presence of so many journalists tricks us, once again, into thinking we know more than we do. With every revelation, despite myself, I ache to see a little more. Yet I also realize that whatever I say about these soldiers` experience is pretense: I can never truly know this war.

In 1991, the ground war stopped after 100 hours — four days and four hours. This ground war was just getting under way after four days. In the gulf war we stopped when the real challenges would have begun: our supply lines were stretching very thin, our ammunition was starting to run low, and our vehicles were beginning to break down from the hard and fast riding we gave them. We were exhausted.

As our division made its mad dash around Kuwait through southern Iraq, my job as platoon leader included keeping our company in its proper place in formation — and keeping my drivers awake. I was constantly on the lookout for tanks slowing down and stopping. That usually meant both the driver and the tank commander had dozed off.

The United States military prides itself on its ability to respond to rapidly changing situations. But this flexibility demands a great deal of its soldiers. Vigilance and clear-headedness are these men and women`s most important resources. They are also a tired army`s first casualties.

As a veteran, I worry about when these soldiers come home. This war is more controversial than the gulf war. And though antiwar protests will probably not affect morale or military operations — at least not in the short term — veterans might have more conflicted emotions about their participation than did veterans of the gulf war. As if it weren`t enough to contend with images of their own dead and maimed, of dead and maimed Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

I hurt for the leader whose platoon killed 10 civilians who did not stop as they approached his checkpoint. He faced an impossible moment. He and his men must live with the consequences. With the headlines. With the overheard conversations about collateral damage.

Last week, looking out my front window, I saw a boy, maybe 7 years old, riding a red bicycle with training wheels as his mother ambled behind. On his head he wore a bright green surplus-store helmet liner from World War II, and strapped to his back was a life-sized wooden rifle. Several mornings later a picture on the front page of the local paper showed an American soldier in Iraq stooped over reading his Bible. The scrawled message on his helmet read, "Kill `em all."

Hoo-ah.

I have my own conflicted emotions about this war. I do not believe we should be fighting it, yet since we are I feel that, but for my family, I should be part of it. This feeling has nothing to do with wanting the rush of adventure or wanting to "finish the job." Simply — if nonsensically — that desert has a singular claim on me. It is one of my soul`s few homes. The gritty no-slip texture of the front slope of an Abrams tank, which I have not felt in more than a decade, is more palpable to me than the wooden handle of the skillet with which I made dinner last night. I miss the sand.


Alex Vernon, assistant professor of English at Hendrix College, is an author of ``The Eyes of Orion: Five Tank Lieutenants in the Persian Gulf War.``



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April 7, 2003
A Fly on the Wall
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


.S. satellite surveillance is so sophisticated it can now provide transcripts of high-level meetings before they are held. Here is what Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush are likely to say at today`s Belfast summit:

Bush: Your brave troops were fantastic at Basra.

Blair: I`ll pass that on. Great turn of phrase — "The power to be patient." That`s what your chaps are wisely emulating in Baghdad. Water is the problem.

Bush: And that war plan that those retired brass hats on TV thought was so risky looks pretty good now. The media "misunderestimated" us again.

Blair: Memorable locution. Now the first thing we want to do after the war ——

Bush: Hold on. When you came to Camp David a couple of weeks ago, your polls were in the tank. So I went along with that "road map" to lean on Sharon in Israel.

Blair: Evenhandedness will redound to America`s benefit in world opinion as well. Now about postwar Iraq ——

Bush: You really think we ought to turn it over to Chirac, Schröder and Putin?

Blair: You know I don`t, George. But I will tell you I`m firmly of the belief that the United Nations must have a pre-eminent role in post-Saddam Iraq.

Bush: What do you mean, "pre-eminent"?

Blair: Foremost, central, predominant ——

Bush: Not on my watch. You and Colin dragged me to the Security Council and six months of getting jerked around. Now, with all the British and American lives lost and treasure spent, you want those foot-dragging bureaucrats to come in and run things?

Blair: I am the bridge between you and the three nations that presume to speak for all of Europe. If I can get you to turn peacekeeping in Iraq over to the U.N., I`ll be able to mediate between the U.S. and Europe for the rest of both of our days in office. You need it.

Bush: What I need is to knock down the notion that America is against the Arabs or Islam. My mission is to show that our war of liberation not only makes the world more secure, but also results in a better life for the Iraqi people. That`s a responsibility that you and I assumed when the U.N. wouldn`t.

Blair: But the U.N. confers legitimacy ——

Bush: The U.N. does projects. Distributing food, health programs, coordinating charitable contributions from a lot of nations, all that. And if you want to be the bridge to making that happen, I`m all for you getting full credit with Vladimir and all of `em. Start laying those pontoons.

Blair: But the reconstruction of a nation is a huge task, even for a superpower. To police the despicable detritus of Saddam`s regime, to build a platform for a parliamentary system ——

Bush: That`s the job for a coalition of the liberators who know how democracy and free enterprise work. And we won`t be alone. Japan is ready to help. South Korea, now that Rummy threatened to pull out our troops, is suddenly eager to pitch in. And India, biggest democracy of all, with all those Muslims ——

Blair: Hindus, mainly.

Bush: But with a billion people, plenty of Muslims, good constabulary, educated, smart at business — hell, half of America`s financial backrooms are run out of India. We`ll put together a coalition that will turn Iraq around while you and I are still in office.

Blair: You`re an incurable optimist, George. I fear we`ll be seen and hated as occupiers unless we put a government of Iraqis in place quickly.

Bush: We`re not in the anointing business. That`s why I said no to a provisional government. We`ll start with Iraqi advisers, let the factions work out their leaders, make sure no dictator grabs power, help set up a justice system. And we`ll show them how to get much more oil out of the ground and make sure royalties go into transparent government accounts. No skimming. Then we`re out of there.

Blair: Churchill did say "In war, resolution. . . . In victory, magnanimity. . . ."

Bush: And "In peace, good will." (At Blair`s aghast expression) Condi briefed me on that one.



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Es war einmal in Afghanistan, ein Beispiel.

washingtonpost.com
Winning The Other War


By Mahmood Karzai, Hamed Wardak and Jack Kemp

Monday, April 7, 2003; Page A15


Among the accomplishments of the partnership between Afghanistan and the United States are the liberation of Afghanistan`s people from a tyrannical regime, the fading of old political resentments among different factions, the opening of schools and universities, the emancipation of Afghan women and the influx of capital to Afghanistan.

But the devil is in the details.

The current interim Afghan government, which has its origins in an agreement brokered in Bonn by world nations, has not performed to the expectations of the Afghan people. Instead of facilitating political openness and economic growth, the government is proving to be an obstacle to political and economic reform. There is considerable mismanagement, a hostile and chaotic bureaucracy (which continues to hinder entrepreneurship), a lack of a clear chain of command and no discernible mechanisms for ensuring accountability.

Even more disconcerting is the lack of a comprehensive vision. The central government does not have a transparent economic policy, with the exception of the role of the Central Bank. The few decrees issued by the central government have not been implemented beyond Kabul. International funds fail to affect the daily lives of Afghans because these funds encounter miles of red tape, layers of corrupt politicians and greedy warlords. The lack of a political vision has enabled two undemocratic trends: the resurgence of the monarchist camp and the entrenchment of the warlords.

There are those who are campaigning for the reconstitution of the monarchy. These actions are destabilizing the central government and sowing seeds of distrust among the various political actors who, at least in their rhetoric, support a democratic vision. Such a force is ideologically opposed to democratic governance.

To make matters worse, Afghanistan`s politics and stability are beholden to warlords who were in power before the rise of the Taliban. These warlords are despised as the main cause of corruption and tyranny. Democracy and free markets will never take root in an environment dominated by them. Unfortunately the reemergence of these warlords is directly related to U.S. financial and military support, which is the sole source of their power. This power allows the warlords to treat public funds as personal largesse.

At best, U.S. cooperation with the warlords serves to alienate the common Afghan citizen. A worst-case scenario is that Afghans will associate U.S. involvement with tyranny and become vulnerable to political manipulation by the Taliban and al Qaeda. President Hamid Karzai has unveiled a comprehensive disarmament, demilitarization and reintegration program that could work to sideline the warlords and help the president emerge as a strong leader with a popular vision.

Meanwhile the political agenda of the warlords is to maintain the status quo. In this framework, the central government`s power is weakened and mostly confined to the capital. This allows the warlords to continue to exercise their political and economic policies autonomously -- policies based on nepotism, tribalism, ethnocentrism, closed markets, price controls, conflict of interest, corruption, inequality and injustice. This is a dangerous path, as the public good is controlled and consumed by the few, while the masses are deprived of subsistence and basic needs. As a result, the Afghan public is vulnerable to political manipulation against the international coalition.

The United States is closely identified with the current situation in Afghanistan. We are afraid that by appeasing the warlords and pursuing a gradualist approach to reform, the United States is losing the support of the Afghan people. While we are aware that Karzai is in a tough position, he needs to show stronger leadership. He should begin by putting together a strong team of economic and political advisers trained in democratic politics and free-market economics. The U.S. government should aggressively align itself with Karzai as he takes these bold steps. He has already taken a brave position regarding the disarmament of the warlords. The success of such a program will depend on the unequivocal support of the U.S. government and other world nations.

America`s failure to give its unambiguous support to Hamid Karzai at this critical time in Afghan history could result in the question: "Who lost Afghanistan?"

Mahmood Karzai, a businessman and brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is founder of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce. Hamed Wardak is vice president of the chamber. Jack Kemp, former congressman and Republican candidate for vice-president, is a co-director of Empower America.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Which Road Map?


By Jackson Diehl

Monday, April 7, 2003; Page A15


The shared hope of Israeli and Palestinian moderates has been that the Iraq war would finally propel their peoples back to the peace process they abandoned two years ago. The destruction of Saddam Hussein`s regime, they imagine, could demoralize Palestinian extremists and help empower a new pro-peace cabinet under Prime Minister Abu Mazin. Meanwhile President Bush would fulfill his prewar commitment to Tony Blair by finally putting political muscle behind his own "vision" for a Palestinian state -- even if that meant a clash with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The dream could still come true. But the news of the past week also has given the pro-peace camp a nightmare scenario to contemplate -- one in which the United States, rather than extricating Israel from its quagmire in the West Bank and Gaza, joins it as an isolated occupying power fighting off suicide bombers.

It wasn`t just the suicide attacks on successive days -- the first in central Iraq and the second in central Israel -- that evoked that gloomy specter. There were also the signs of entrenchment by Sharon`s government against the "road map," the multilateral plan for an Israeli-Palestinian peace that Bush recently endorsed at Blair`s behest -- and the emerging split between London and Washington over whether the United Nations, as opposed to the Pentagon, will oversee the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Even as U.S. and British forces closed in on their joint military objectives, it appeared the allies were contemplating widely diverging paths for the postwar Middle East. Along one lay Blair`s vision of a U.N.-sanctioned reconstruction of Iraq joined by the European Union and possibly NATO, and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement brokered by the "quartet" of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations. The other begins with a postwar Iraq managed exclusively by the United States, as sought by the Pentagon`s hawks. With the bond to Blair`s agenda broken, U.S. policy would no more be governed by the "road map" than by the Security Council. A U.S. showdown with Syria or Iran would be more likely than one with Israel.

It`s not hard to figure out which side of this debate Sharon is on. Last week his new foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, was in town to rally opposition in Congress and the Jewish community to the road map -- and to begin the familiar process of diplomatic trench warfare by which Middle East peace initiatives are blocked. Like Sharon, Shalom assured his audiences that Israel "accepts" Bush`s "vision" of side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states. But he insisted that a few amendments need to be negotiated in the road map -- a demand that quickly became the rallying cry of Israel`s friends in Congress.

State Department veterans of Arab-Israeli negotiations know well where this leads: toward a quagmire of endless negotiations in which both Israelis and Palestinians come forward with dozens of textual changes to a procedural document (Israel has prepared more than 100). Talks about talks then substitute for actual negotiations, not to mention concessions on the ground. Just this prospect prompted Powell to announce last week, as Shalom`s visit began, that the road map would not be opened for amendments -- a position that may or may not stand.

Sharon`s defenders insist that he genuinely wants a peace accord with the Palestinians. So why the well-worn stalling tactics? Because, as Shalom made clear, his Likud Party still stoutly opposes the first major concession required of Israel, which appears in the road map`s opening phase: a freeze on further Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza. Asked in a meeting at The Post whether Israel would accept a freeze, Shalom repeated the Likud`s longstanding position that "natural growth" of settlements must continue -- a cover under which their numbers and size have been vastly expanded over the years. "I don`t see the problem that the settlements will remain where they are even if there is a provisional Palestinian state," Shalom added.

Shalom understands very well the politics of the postwar policy debate -- which is why he squarely attributes the trouble over the road map to Blair. "The idea of the road map was brought here from Europe, so maybe it`s not the same as the president`s vision," he said. In private, Israeli officials are even more blunt. "It`s not a secret," said one, "that Tony Blair and the Europeans are pushing very hard, and the administration will have to decide what in the future is in America`s interest."

Along one route, as the Israelis see it, is cooperation with Blair`s vision of a non-negotiable road map, along another continued comity with Sharon. As the gears of the postwar Middle East engage, abandonment of the multilateral road map would likely mesh with a unilateral American administration of Iraq. Both risk a deeper breach with European allies, maybe even with Blair himself, and an Arab backlash against the United States that builds rather than wanes after the war. It might not all turn out that way -- a more muddled result is likely. But that is the nightmare that now haunts the dream of a postwar peace.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Robert Fisk in Baghdad: The twisted language of war that is used to justify the unjustifiable
07 April 2003


Why do we aid and abet the lies and propaganda of this filthy war? How come, for example, it`s now BBC "style" to describe the Anglo-American invaders as the "coalition". This is a lie. The "coalition" that we`re obviously supposed to remember is the one forged to drive Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait in 1991, an alliance involving dozens of countries – almost all of whom now condemn President Bush Junior`s adventure in Iraq. There are a few Australian special forces swanning about in the desert, courtesy of the country`s eccentric Prime Minister, John Howard, but that`s it.

So, who at the BBC decreed this dishonest word "coalition"? True, there`s a "coalition of the willing", to use Mr Bush`s weird phrase, but this is a reference to those nations that have given overflying rights to the United States or have given political but not military support. So the phrase "coalition forces" remains a lie.

Then there`s the historical slippage to justify the unjustifiable. When Jonathan Charles, an "embedded" journalist, reported in the early days of the invasion that the British army outside Basra was keeping a watchful eye on the Iranian border because the Iranians had "stirred up" an insurrection in the city in 1991, his dispatch was based on a falsehood. The Iranians never stirred up an insurrection in Basra. President Bush Senior did that by calling for just such a rebellion – and then betraying the Shia Muslims who followed his appeal. The Iranians did everything they could to avoid involvement in the uprising.

Then there`s the disinformation about the "securing" of Basra. This was followed by an admission that though the British had "secured" Basra they hadn`t actually captured it – and, indeed, have still not captured it. The same goes for the US Marines who were said to have "secured" Nasiriyah, but didn`t capture it until last week when, given the anarchy that broke out in the city, they appear to have captured it without making it secure. The US forces bravely rescued a captured American female soldier; what didn`t make it into the same story was that they also "rescued" 12 Americans, all of whom were already dead.

The Iraqis try to imitate the US Central Command (CentCom) propaganda operations, though with less subtlety. An attempt to present an American cruise missile attack on a secret police office in the Mansour district last week as the attempted destruction of a maternity hospital – it was just across the street but only sustained broken windows – was straight out of the "Huns crucify nuns" routine. Iraqi military communiqués inevitably claim a number of American and British tanks and personnel carriers destroyed that is way beyond credibility. At Najaf, the Iraqi Armed Forces General Command (communiqué number 16) stated on Friday that Iraqi forces had destroyed 17 tanks, 13 armoured personnel carriers and a Black Hawk helicopter. Whoops.

Yesterday, according to the Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi troops destroyed four US personnel carriers and an American warplane.

Sometimes the communiqués are verifiable. An Apache actually was shot down by a farmer and CentCom admitted an F-18 bomber was shot down over Iraq last week. However, the sheer military detail put out by the Iraqi authorities, grotesquely exaggerated though it often is, far outstrips the old bones chucked by the Americans at the correspondents in their air-conditioned high-security headquarters in Qatar.

Another enjoyable lie was the American assertion that the anti-chemical weapons suits issued to Iraqi soldiers "proved" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqis neatly replied that the equipment was standard issue but that since US and British forces carried the same equipment, they too must be in possession of forbidden weapons. The Iraqi lie – that the country remains united under a beloved leader – is hardly questioned in press conferences held by Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi Vice-President. Unity may be the one element Iraq will never possess under US occupiers. But its existence under Saddam Hussein has been imposed through terror.

Then there`s the famous "war in Iraq" slogan which the British and American media like to promote. But this is an invasion, not a mere war.

And isn`t it turning into an occupation rather than a "liberation"? Shouldn`t we be remembering in our reports that this whole invasion lacks legitimacy? Sure, the Americans claim they needed no more than the original UN resolution 1441 to go to war. But if that`s the case, why did Britain and the US vainly seek a second resolution? I can`t help thinking readers and viewers realise the mendacity of all this sleight of hand, and that we journalists go on insulting these same readers and viewers by thinking we can con them.

Thus, we go on talking about an "air campaign" as if the Luftwaffe was taking off from Cap Gris Nez to bomb London, when not a single Iraqi aircraft has left the ground. So, it`s "coalition forces", a war not an invasion, liberation rather than occupation, and the taking of cities that are "secured" rather than "captured", and when captured, are insecure.

And all this for the dead of 11 September.
7 April 2003 11:59

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Zukunft des Irak

Das viel sagende Schweigen des Saddam-Nachfolgers Garner

Aus Kuweit-Stadt berichtet Matthias Gebauer

Dass der designierte Verwalter für den Irak seinen eigentlich für heute Morgen geplanten ersten Auftritt erstmal verschoben hat, ist wohl kein Zufall. In Washington wird ein heftiger Streit zwischen Pentagon, Außenministerium und US-Kongress um die Besetzung der Nachkriegsordnung ausgefochten.

Auf den ersten Auftritt des ehemaligen Generals Jay Garner hatten nicht nur in Kuweit-City alle Beobachter des Kriegs sehnsüchtig gewartet. Bisher ist nicht viel heraus gesickert aus dem Team um den 64-jährigen, der seit Wochen mit einer Schar von Beratern im "Hilton Beach Ressort" residiert. Mit um die Hüfte geschnallten Gasmasken, aufgeklappten Laptops und eisgekühlten Drinks auf Holztischen ist die Nachkriegsverwaltung des Iraks zwar jeden Tag vor ihren gut bewachten Villen am Strand von Kuweit zu sehen, doch an die Öffentlichkeit gelangten bisher kaum mehr als ein paar abstrakte Statements.

Umso schneller ging am Wochenende die Kunde herum, dass der Saddam-Nachfolger Garner am Montag das erste Mal vor die Presse gehen wollte, um seine Grundzüge für die Nachkriegsverwaltung vorzustellen. Doch die Beobachter wurden enttäuscht. Schon am Sonntagabend verbreiteten die Berater Garners im Hotelkomplex, das Briefing finde nicht statt. Wenig später bestätigte der Sprecher des Generals, Nathan Jones, dass der erste Auftritt Garners auf unbestimmte Zeit verschoben sei. Jones betonte am Montagmorgen, es sei eine reine Terminverschiebung. "Wir werden in den nächsten Tagen versuchen, einen neuen Termin zu fixieren", sagte Jones und bat mehrmals, die Verschiebung nicht zu interpretieren.

Kampf an vielen Fronten

Es fällt schwer, dem Wunsch des Garner-Sprechers nachzukommen. Natürlich ist der Terminkalender des Ex-Generals gut gefüllt, doch aus Washington und von den Fluren in der Nobelresidenz der Nachkriegsregierung in Kuweit kommen deutlichere Signale: Zwischenzeitlich ist ein schwerer Kampf um die Nachfolge des Saddam-Regimes ausgebrochen, in dem es viele verschiedene Fronten gibt. Heftiger Widerstand regt sich gegen den Plan der Bush-Regierung, alleine Vertraute des Pentagon mit der Verwaltung des Iraks zu betreuen. Streit gibt es dabei nicht so sehr um die Person Garner. Er gilt seit seiner Mission nach dem zweiten Golfkrieg in Kurdistan durchaus als Mann aller Fronten. Damals hatte er wie heute unter dem Mantel einer scheinbar humanitären Organisation die Verwaltung neu strukturiert.

Als Garner damals aus dem Irak als letzter Mann seines Teams ausreiste, trugen ihn die Menschen fast auf den Händen. "Ich bin nur einen Telefonanruf entfernt", rief ihnen Garner zu und behielt Recht. Doch umso schneller die Fortschritt beim Kampf um Bagdad und Basra gemeldet werden, desto heftiger wird das Stühlerücken in Washington um die Besetzung des Garner-Teams. Die Gruppe soll für eine Übergangszeit die irakische Regierung ersetzen und schließlich den Übergang zu einer irakisch besetzten Verwaltung organisieren. Seit Wochen planen die Männer und Frauen um Garner diese Mission, vergangenen Dienstag reisten sie schon zu einer Kurz-Visite in die besetzte Hafenstadt Umm Kasr, wo ihr erstes Büro eröffnen soll.

Der lange Arm von Donald Rumsfeld

Neben dem Wunsch vieler Länder aus dem Uno-Sicherheitsrat wie Frankreich, Deutschland, Russland und vor allem der im Irak kämpfenden Briten, die Uno stärker zu beteiligen, will das US-State Departement von Colin Powell mehr Einfluss auf die Nachfolge Saddams. Auch der Kongress in den USA will sich nicht damit abfinden, dass die Falken Donald Rumsfeld und sein zweiter Mann Paul Wolfowitz die Causa Irak allein in die Hand nehmen. Denn auch wenn Jay Garner kein Militärgeneral mehr ist, ist er von Rumsfeld persönlich ausgesucht worden - folglich ist er ihm auch unterstellt.

Rumsfelds Vize Paul Wolfowitz hatte am Sonntag zumindest schon mal einen Zeitrahmen für das Übergangsregime angedeutet, das seinen Worten zufolge etwa sechs Monate walten soll. Hauptaufgabe in dieser Zeit soll die Reinigung der Verwaltung von Baath-Partei-Vertretern und die Auswahl von "sauberen" Nachfolgern sein, sagen Insider in Kuweit. Geht es nach dem Willen von Wolfowitz und seinen Vertrauten aus dem Pentagon, wird dabei der Chef des Exil-Iraker-Parlaments, Ahmad Chalabi, und sein Cousin eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Mit beiden pflegt Wolfowitz seit langem einen engen und vertraulichen Kontakt. Genau diese Männerfreundschaft aber lässt Skeptiker frösteln.

US-Kongress will Kontrolle über das Geld für den Wiederaufbau

Doch schon über die Zeit, bevor die Iraker ihr Land wieder selbst regieren, gibt es Streit zwischen US-Außenministerium und Pentagon. Eine Liste von ehemaligen Botschaftern und anderen State Departement-Beamten wurden in den letzten Tagen vom Pentagon ohne weitere Begründung zurück gewiesen und nur einige der Powell-Vetrauten durften nach Kuweit reisen. In deutlichen Worten lancierten Rumsfelds Truppen anonym in mehreren US-Zeitungen, die Ausgewählten seien für die schwierige Aufgabe einfach zu schwach. Stattdessen wollen die Falken aus dem Pentagon lieber ehemalige Militärs und enge Vertraute Rumsfelds auf die 23 Posten einer künftigen Ersatzregierung in Bagdad hieven.

Auch im US-Kongress fällt die starke Koalition zwischen alle politischen Lagern auseinander, die sich während der ersten Kriegstage solidarisch mit den Truppen und dem US-Präsidenten George W. Bush versammelt hatten. Nun aber wollen die Politiker an der Nachkriegsverwaltung beteiligt werden. Zwar sind 2,5 Milliarden Dollar als Budget für die Nachfolger Saddams bereits genehmigt, doch viele US-Politiker wollen sich nicht damit abfinden, dass mit dem Geld wie mit einer Geheimsache umgegangen wird. In einem Memo, dass Ende vergangener Woche in Washington kursierte, kritisierten sie außerdem die starke Rolle des Pentagon. Der demokratische Senator Patrick J. Leathy sagte, dass Pentagon solle das tun, wofür es gemacht sei. "Doch wir sind diejenigen, die das Geld geben müssen", so Leathy.

Die Lehren aus Afghanistan

Heftige Diskussionen gibt es in Washington auch schon über die mögliche Wahl einer demokratischen Regierung in Bagdad. Offenbar will die Bush-Regierung dabei aus den Erfahrungen aus Afghanistan einige Schlüsse ziehen. Dort hatte eine Großversammlung aller Stammesfürsten, die Loya Jirga, nach langem Gerangel Hamid Karzai als Präsidenten bestimmt. Erfahrene Strategen aus dem Pentagon, die in Kuweit weilen, wollen bereits wissen, dass es zu "so einem Chaos wie in Kabul" in Bagdad nicht noch einmal kommen dürfe. Vielmehr wolle man einen Wahlgang auf die Beine stellen, "dessen Ausgang für uns etwas berechenbarer" ist, so einer der Bürokraten aus dem Garner-Team.

Wann der designierte Nachkriegsverwalter Jay Garner nun in Kuweit zu einem ersten Auftritt laden wird, blieb am Montag ungewiss. Sein Sprecher sagte lediglich, dass die Arbeit des Teams auf Hochtouren weiter laufe. Auch wenn er sich zu den Konflikten in Washington nicht äußern wollte, gilt die Aussage wohl auch für sie.
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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet AG

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[Joerver]

Das amerikanische Problem

[Joerver]

Jackson der Falke der Falken, Lehrer von Perle, Förderer von Saddam über das "Black Budget" der CIA von 63 und 68 bei den beiden US-backed plots. Eine graue Emminenz für Jahrzehnte in der amerikanischen Politik.
Eine Geschichte eines Ultrakonservative.
J.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/115505_focus06.shtml

P-I Focus: The road the U.S. traveled to Baghdad was paved by `Scoop` Jackson
The hawks` hawk

Sunday, April 6, 2003

ROGER MORRIS

America`s attack on Iraq started 65 years ago in the wooded curving inlets and gentle fog of Snohomish County.

At least that`s one genealogy of the war, curling back through closed-door politics where so much of U.S. history happens.

Nineteen thirty-eight was the year Henry Martin Jackson, an ambitious 26-year-old Democrat from Everett fresh out of the University of Washington Law School, was elected prosecuting attorney for Snohomish County. As usual, few outside Washington state noticed the obscure local vote. But it launched a fateful political career, and ultimately led to the U.S. missiles, tanks and troops flung into Iraq last month.

Jackson rose rapidly from the Everett courthouse. Making a name for himself chasing bootleggers and gamblers, he shot on to Congress in 1940. He served five terms in the House, broken by a stint as a World War II GI, and by 1952, had gained the Senate, where "Scoop," as he was called, became a national force. A middle-of-the-road, pro-labor Democrat on domestic issues and an early champion of environmental causes, Jackson was chairman for nearly two decades of the Interior Committee (later Energy and Natural Resources) and sat on the Government Operations Committee and Joint Committee on Atomic Energy -- all major fiefdoms in dispensing federal money and wielding influence in politics and policy. One of Capitol Hill`s more vigorous legislators, he was a main author and driving force of the legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency, major wilderness preservation and other landmark acts.

With another local prosecutor raised to Senate power, King County`s Warren Magnuson, Jackson also saw to it that generous appropriations and contracts were sluiced to his home state, especially the Puget Sound area. "Scoop" especially would be known scathingly in congressional corridors as the "Senator from Boeing" for being on-call to the corporate giant.

But it was in national security that Jackson`s impact was deepest. The hawks` hawk, he was to the right of many in both parties. Not even the massive retaliation strategy and roving CIA interventions of the Eisenhower `50s were tough enough for him. Perched on the mighty Armed Services Committee as well as his other bases of power, he went on over the next decade to goad the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, urging the Vietnam War, fatter military budgets, stronger support of Israel in the Middle East and a more aggressive foreign policy in general.

It was then, 40 years ago, that Jackson began to be linked directly, if furtively, to some of the uglier and little-known origins of the war on Iraq in 2003. Overseeing the CIA`s "black budget" for covert operations and interventions from a subcommittee of Armed Services, he was one of a handful of senators who gave a nod to two U.S.-backed coups in Iraq, one in 1963 and again in 1968. Those plots brought Saddam Hussein to power amid bloodbaths in which the CIA, exacting the price for its support, handed Saddam and his Baath Party cohorts lists of supposed anti-U.S. Iraqis to be killed.

The result was the systematic murder of several hundred and as many as several thousand people, in which Saddam himself participated. Whatever the toll, accounts agree that CIA killing lists comprised much of Iraq`s young educated elite -- doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military officers and political figures -- Iraqis who would not be there to oppose Saddam`s growing tyranny over ensuing years or to help rebuild or govern Iraq, as the United States now hopes to do, after the current war.

By 1969, Jackson was so prominent in military and national security affairs, and so at odds on those issues with many in his own party, that newly elected Republican Richard Nixon thought to name the Washington Democrat his secretary of defense, though the senator declined the job.

But Snohomish County`s favorite son coveted the White House himself and was soon a sharp critic of Nixon`s arms control and détente. Added to his cold warring was even greater zeal for Israel, a certainty that the United States should endorse the Israelis` own hard line -- absorbing the West Bank after its conquest in the 1967 Middle East War, the long-term subjugation of Palestine and an abiding hostility to Iraq and other Arab states.

As Jackson grew nationally prominent, he attracted the inevitable ambitious staffers and partisans boarding his coattails to advance both their own hawkish views and themselves. Among them was a recent graduate of the University of Southern California who was fanatic about amassing and projecting U.S. power, especially on behalf of Israel, and not least about his own strategic genius. The young New Yorker named Richard Perle became Jackson`s chief assistant from 1969 to 1980.

I saw these origins firsthand working in the Senate in the early `70s after resigning from Henry Kissinger`s National Security Council staff over the invasion of Cambodia. Seen from the inside, Jackson`s Senate heft was considerable. Though a relatively small, unprepossessing figure as politicians go, he usually did his homework, could be incisive about important details his colleagues let slip and struck a shrewd balance between conviction and expedience. Much of his Capitol Hill power derived from his unique role, which he played well, as a northern Democrat with solid labor backing and other party credentials yet whose hard-line international view drew the support of many Republicans and the most conservative Southerners on either side of the aisle.

His belligerence also exerted (and still does) a kind of extortionist pull on liberal Democrats deathly afraid of appearing "weak" on national defense or in standing up to the Russians and anyone else. There was no question that "Scoop," from the mountains and straits of the far northwest corner of the continental United States, caught the unease and reflexive combativeness of much of America in dealing with a planet we knew so little despite our power. Still, in the `70s, a more worldly post-Vietnam moderation and sensibility in the leadership of both parties appeared to have passed Jackson by, leaving his chauvinism and foreign policy animus marginal, sometimes looking a bit crazed.

As for Perle, he was a pear-shaped, slightly fish-eyed man of self-consciously affected locution, the too-hungry, too-sly and too-toadying aide familiar in bureaucracies public and private. His views were patently uninformed, and he wore his conference-room warrior`s zealotry no more gracefully than his expensive blue pinstriped suits. It seemed obvious that the bellicose policies he and Jackson embodied were not only wrong for America, but would also usher Israel into the ruinous isolation I and other admirers of its brave people most feared. "Scoop" & Co. would remain, I assumed, an extremist fringe. How wrong I was.

Jackson, of course, never got the White House. With big pro-Israeli money though stolid style, he lost the presidential nomination in 1976 to Jimmy Carter, who offered a fresh face in the national weariness in the wake of the Watergate scandal. But when Jackson died seven years later back in Everett, ending more than four decades on the national scene, he had spawned a cult following. There was always much less substantively than met the eye in the lavishly financed and much-propagandized neoconservative cabal taking power under President Reagan, and now again under George W. Bush. In any case, its throwback foreign policy was, and is, "Scoop" Jackson warmed over -- the red, white and blue, Israel-first, bombs-away dawn of an old era.

For his part, Perle missed a long-coveted chance to make presidential policy when Jackson stumbled in 1976. But the aide promptly moved on to the next coattails in classic, if banal, Washington, D.C., style. Relentlessly levering the system he learned under Jackson, he cultivated the media, courted politicians in both parties and used old allies in the politically potent pro-Israeli and military-industrial lobbies. By the Reagan `80s, he was an assistant secretary of defense, veteran of the now-venerated Jackson tradition of military expansion and a self-promoted strategist for a Republican president as comfortably as for a Democratic senator.

Whatever "Scoop" Jackson`s mix of political principle and opportunism, Perle`s politics were largely himself.

On the way up, Perle gathered his own disciples -- Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and others who would go on themselves in similar fashion to become key officials in the current administration. Like Perle, who was appointed to chair the administration`s influential Defense Policy Board, they`re all longtime advocates, years before the Sept. 11 attacks, of pre-emptive American military invasions in Iraq and elsewhere and of implicit, if not open, support for the expansionist and repressive policies of their right-wing counterparts in Israel. By all accounts, their concerted influence was decisive in going to war in Iraq.

Grown wealthy in the revolving door between government and corporate plunder, Perle has drawn notoriety lately not only for his intimate ties to Israel but also for his connections to companies standing to profit obscenely from the war he`s mongered. When Michigan Congressman John Conyers Jr. and Sen. Carl Levin began to prod Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the disreputable dealings, Perle angrily resigned March 27 from the chairmanship of the board, though he continues to sit as a full-fledged member of the pivotal body. Token resignation aside, it all reeks of the seedy conflict-of-interest "Scoop" once would have prosecuted in Snohomish County. But in the rest of their martial provincialism, Perle and his minions are Jackson`s offspring.

By the way, Snohomish County`s current prosecuting attorney, if you hadn`t noticed, is a young woman named Janice Ellis. She seems dedicated to her job. But you can`t tell where these county officials may go. Please let us know if Ellis begins to take an unusual interest in national security.



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Roger Morris, who served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, is an investigative journalist and historian. He is at work in Seattle on a book on U.S. covert policies in the Near East and South Asia.

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

[Joerver]

April 7, 2003
A Global Catalog of Wrongs

round this time each year, the State Department produces a remarkable document detailing the human rights practices and problems of almost every country in the world. Dispensing with the niceties of diplomatic language, the report looks at friend and foe alike with candid scrutiny.

Among the nations that come in for criticism are a number of members of President Bush`s Coalition of the Willing for the invasion of Iraq — embarrassing company in a campaign whose aims include liberating the Iraqi people from dictatorship. Uzbekistan routinely tortures detainees and some have died in custody. Eritrea has ended freedom of the press and restricts religious freedom. Azerbaijan arbitrarily detains dissidents and rigs elections. Significant violations are noted in such other coalition members as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Macedonia, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. In all seven, the overall human rights situation was rated as poor.

Of course, the "axis of evil" also rightly comes in for plenty of scorn. The White House`s main security concern has been these countries` weapons programs and alleged links to terrorism. But Iraq, North Korea and Iran also victimize their own people. Baghdad has ordered executions without trial, political murders, torture and deadly persecution of Shiite Muslims. North Korea is an absolute dictatorship with detention camps, torture and harsh prison conditions, including deliberate starvation. Iran, relatively better, is still horrific, with arbitrary arrests, disappearances and sadistic punishments like stoning and flogging.

Several other governments deserve dishonorable mention. Myanmar, formerly Burma, is responsible for punitive rape by soldiers, forced relocation of ethnic minorities, forced labor and conscription of children. Turkmenistan`s self-glorifying autocrat models his repressive rule on Stalin`s.

China is much freer than before. But its sheer size makes it the world`s No. 1 quantitative violator of human rights. Beijing executed more than 3,000 people last year, many without due process. It uses torture, forced confessions, imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals and lengthy detentions with no right to communicate with family members or lawyers.

The report cites several countries for withholding sleep and food to extract confessions, techniques some have charged American authorities with using in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These methods are correctly listed under the heading of "Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment." Washington should reject them and should refuse to hand over prisoners to countries that routinely use torture. The rights report must become a tool not just for documenting abuses, but also for combating them.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[Joerver]

When facism comes to America, it will wrapped in the flag.Quote: Huey Long


Carla Binion: `A whiff of fascism`
Posted on Monday, April 07 @ 09:59:42 EDT
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By Carla Binion

During election 2000, Bush paid campaign operatives posing as ordinary voters shoved people and banged on doors at the Miami-Dade canvassing offices in an effort to stop the Florida vote count. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said he detected "a whiff of fascism" in their tactics.

Some people criticized Nadler for drawing the comparison, but, of course, not all forms of fascism have to equate precisely to the classic form represented by Hitler or Mussolini. Fascism doesn`t have to involve mass genocidal slaughter, nor does it have to be equal in degree to the fascism practiced by members of the Axis powers. Traits of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism, belligerent militarism, meshing of big business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy, subversion of democracy and human rights, disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight corporate/government control of the press.

Today all of those conditions exist in our country to a degree.

Let`s focus on corporate/government control of the press - specifically corporate control of U.S. television news networks. According to a March 24 article, "Protests Turn Off Viewers" by Harry A. Jessell, 45 percent of Americans rely on cable channels as their primary source of news, and 22 percent get most of their news from broadcast networks` evening newscasts. Only 11 percent rely on other forms of media as their principle source of war news.

Our corporate controlled TV networks might as well be state controlled, because they promote the war and Bush policies fairly consistently and have virtually eliminated all dissenting voices. NBC fired Phil Donahue despite his good ratings, saying in an internal network memo they didn`t want to air Donahue`s anti-war views. Peter Arnett was fired for giving an interview to Iraqi TV and merely stating the obvious on a number of issues. For example, Arnett said media reports of civilian casualties had helped the "growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war."

According to William Shirer (THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, Ballantine Books, 1950), the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which "tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich....or offends the honor and dignity of Germany." The Nazis forced dissenting journalists out of business and consolidated the press under party control.

U.S. television news networks have been consolidated under the control of a handful of corporations. America doesn`t need a "press law" prohibiting the airing of anything which might weaken the strength of Bush`s war policies, because the corporate owners of today`s television networks are in total agreement with the state.

It is irrefutable that corporate owners of American television networks want only pro-Bush, pro-war opinions aired, because those are virtually the only views that are in fact aired. The Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett firings, especially when coupled with the NBC internal memo explaining the Donahue firing, also indicate this is true.

Do the various TV networks do a good job of informing the public, or do they more often propagandize? Propaganda is aimed at the emotions, while news sources that disseminate factual information aim toward reason.

In NAZI GERMANY: A NEW HISTORY (Continuum Publishing, 1995), Klaus P. Fischer says Hitler promoted "a system of prejudices rather than a philosophy based on well-warranted premises, objective truth-testing, and logically derived conclusions. Since propaganda aims at persuasion rather than instruction, it is far more effective to appeal to the emotions than to the rational capacities of crowds."

If you`ve spent much time watching the pro-Bush, pro-war cable television news programs, you can`t help but notice they manipulate (whether deliberately or not) the viewing audience`s emotions rather than appealing to viewers` logic.

That is, instead of providing the American public with a broad range of necessary facts and varied viewpoints about the war, the TV networks exploit emotions by urging the audience to focus on and identify with the day-to-day plight of individual soldiers and their families.

There`s nothing inherently wrong with empathizing with the troops. However, when that aspect of war news is heavily emphasized at the expense of hard facts and varied debate, the networks serve the purpose of managing the public mood rather than informing the public mind.

According to Klaus Fisher, the Nazis eliminated from state media any ideas that clashed with official views. He writes that permissible media topics for public consumption included war itself and the Nazi movement; support of Nazi soldiers; praise for Hitler and "celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is the service of the fatherland."

Today`s Bush-friendly TV networks have also deemed only certain subjects "permissible," as evidenced by the irrefutable fact that they only cover a narrow range of subjects. Coincidentally, the proverbial network "list" would read virtually the same as the list in the paragraph above. Permissible topics include praise for the "war;" praise for the administration`s policies; support for our soldiers; praise for Bush and the "celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is the service of" (in this case) the Homeland - even though there is no rational link between attacking Iraq and defending our soil.

Of course, who needs rationality or facts from TV news when the American public already has enough information about world events? In a March 26 article for Editor and Publisher, "Polls Suggest Media Failure in Pre-War Coverage," reporter Ari Berman refers to a Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll. This poll showed 44 percent of respondents believed "most" or "some" of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqis. Only 17 percent gave the correct answer: none.

In the same poll, 41 percent said they believed Iraq definitely has nuclear weapons. As Berman points out, not even the Bush administration has claimed that.

Berman also refers to a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey showing that almost two-thirds of people polled believed U. N. weapons inspectors had "found proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction." This claim was never made by Hans Blix or Mohammed ElBaradei.

The same survey found 57 percent of those polled falsely believed Saddam Hussein assisted the 9/11 terrorists, and a March 7-9 New York Times/CBS News Poll revealed that 45 percent of respondents believed Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

TV news reporters have done little to correct the public`s misconceptions. On the contrary, network reporters and their guests have often helped bolster the false impressions by mentioning September 11, or the threat of terrorism by Al Qaeda, and the "threat" posed by Saddam in the same breath.

Individual TV reporters aren`t always free to choose the information they pass along to the public. CNN now has a relatively new "script approval" system, whereby journalists send their copy in to CNN chiefs for sanitizing. In his article, "Guess who will be calling the shots at CNN," British war correspondent Robert Fisk of London`s Independent quotes a relatively new CNN document (dated Jan. 27), "Reminder of Script Approval Policy."

The policy says, "All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval....Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved....All packages originating outside Washington, LA or NY, including all international bureaus, must come to the ROW [a group of script editors] in Atlanta for approval."

William Shirer comments on the Nazi party`s control of press, radio and film. "Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding, a daily directive was furnished along with the oral instructions."

In an interview with TomPaine.com, Janine Jackson of the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said that the group examined two weeks of nightly television news coverage. FAIR found that 76 percent of all news sources or guests on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS`s NewsHour were "current or former government officials," leaving little room for other diverse voices.

In addition, FAIR found that only 6 percent of those sources were skeptical about the war. Jackson noted that "on television news at night, there`s virtually no debate about the need to go to war." It would further public understanding if the TV networks would offer substantial debate on the following:

The Bush administration`s invasion of Iraq has alienated many world leaders and lost this country the respect of millions of citizens around the globe. The Bush team has created instability in the Middle East and risked retaliation. They`ve undercut the U.S. economy with the financial cost of this endeavor. They`ve increased the likelihood that worldwide nuclear weapons proliferation will increase. And, according to a recent Red Cross report, they have likely helped create a horrifying number of human casualties and a rapidly expanding humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

The content of television news lacks range and diversity, but the way the news is presented is also disturbing. Television reporters often deliver news of the "war" with apparent breathless excitement, as if they`re giving play-by-play descriptions of football games. People are dying in this conflict. Civilians are caught in the middle, being blown to pieces or losing loved ones. Children are left behind when their soldier-parents are killed. Instead of presenting news of this "war" with giddiness, wouldn`t it be more appropriate, more human, for network reporters to take a somber, respectful approach?

On TV, we see bombs dropping from a distance. Network commentators seldom offer the public close-ups. In his article, "Military precision versus moral precision," Robert Higgs, writes that the much-used JDAM bombs dropped in Iraq kill most people within 120 meters of the blast. According to Higgs, such a bomb "releases a crushing shock wave and showers jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction."

Just yesterday I heard a TV reporter describe certain casualties with the sterile phrase, "This is what war does." Well, it isn`t "war" that bursts sinus cavities and rips away limbs - nothing as nebulous as that. George W. Bush and his administration have done these things. They have directly ordered that these things be done. The bombs` shredding of flesh and crushing of human cells didn`t just passively "happen."

In an April 5 article for The Mirror, "The saddest story of all," reporter Anton Antonowicz describes an Iraqi family`s loss of their daughter. "Nadia was lying on a stretcher beside the stone mortuary slab. Her heart lay on her chest, ripped from her body by a missile which smashed through the bedroom window of the family`s flat nearby in Palestine Street."

Nadia`s father said, "My daughter had just completed her PhD in psychology and was waiting for her first job. She was born in 1970. She was 33. She was very clever. Everyone said I have a fabulous daughter. She spent all her time studying. Her head buried in books."

Nadia`s sister Alia said, "I don`t know what humanity Bush is calling for. Is this the humanity which lost my sister? It is war which has done this. And that war was started by Bush."

Today we`re again getting a whiff of fascism from the Bush administration. This isn`t the equivalent of Hitler or Mussolini - just sort of a creeping fascism light- and the corporate controlled television news networks are only one example of the way even light fascism undermines American values.

With the Bush administration and television networks currently fixated on the high melodrama of "winning" the "war" and sprucing up its aftermath, they don`t have much time to reflect on whether winning at any cost is a good idea. Whether the slaughter in Iraq and its aftermath "go well," the "war" has already destroyed many lives in Iraq and the U.S. and damaged the American character and democracy at home. For thoughtful people in this country, the question has never been "will we win," but "at what cost?"

[Joerver]

Los Angeles Times Scheint Interesse an der Meinung von Günter Grass zu haben.

COMMENTARY
The U.S. Betrays Its Core Values
Having learned from its past, Germany rightly rejects Bush`s war and his disdain of the U.N.
By Gunter Grass

April 7, 2003

BEHLENDORF, Germany -- A war long sought and planned for is now underway. All deliberations and warnings of the United Nations notwithstanding, an overpowering military apparatus has attacked preemptively in violation of international law. No objections were heeded. The Security Council was disdained and scorned as irrelevant. As the bombs fall and the battle for Baghdad continues, the law of might prevails.

And based on this injustice, the mighty have the power to buy and reward those who might be willing and to disdain and even punish the unwilling. The words of the current American president -- "Those not with us are against us" -- weighs on current events with the resonance of barbaric times. It is hardly surprising that the rhetoric of the aggressor increasingly resembles that of his enemy. Religious fundamentalism leads both sides to abuse what belongs to all religions, taking the notion of "God" hostage in accordance with their own fanatical understanding. Even the passionate warnings of the pope, who knows from experience how lasting and devastating the disasters wrought by the mentality and actions of Christian crusaders have been, were unsuccessful.

Disturbed and powerless, but also filled with anger, we are witnessing the moral decline of the world`s only superpower, burdened by the knowledge that only one consequence of this organized madness is certain: Motivation for more terrorism is being provided, for more violence and counter-violence. Is this really the United States of America, the country we fondly remember for any number of reasons? The generous benefactor of the Marshall Plan? The forbearing instructor in the lessons of democracy? The candid self-critic? The country that once made use of the teachings of the European Enlightenment to throw off its colonial masters and to provide itself with an exemplary constitution? Is this the country that made freedom of speech an incontrovertible human right?

It is not just foreigners who cringe as this ideal pales to the point where it is now a caricature of itself. There are many Americans who love their country too, people who are horrified by the betrayal of their founding values and by the hubris of those holding the reins of power. I stand with them. By their side, I declare myself pro-American. I protest with them against the brutalities brought about by the injustice of the mighty, against all restrictions of the freedom of expression, against information control reminiscent of the practices of totalitarian states and against the cynical equations that make the death of thousands of women and children acceptable so long as economic and political interests are protected.

No, it is not anti-Americanism that is damaging the image of the United States; nor do the dictator Saddam Hussein and his extensively disarmed country endanger the most powerful country in the world. It is President Bush and his government that are diminishing democratic values, bringing sure disaster to their own country, ignoring the United Nations, and that are now terrifying the world with a war in violation of international law.

We Germans often are asked if we are proud of our country. To answer this question has always been a burden. There were reasons for our doubts. But now I can say that the rejection of this preemptive war on the part of a majority in my country has made me proud of Germany. After having been largely responsible for two world wars and their criminal consequences, we seem to have made a difficult step. We seem to have learned from history.

The Federal Republic of Germany has been a sovereign country since 1990. Our government made use of this sovereignty by having the courage to object to those allied in this cause, the courage to protect Germany from a step back to a kind of adolescent behavior. I thank Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, for their fortitude in spite of all the attacks and accusations, from abroad and from within.

Many people find themselves in a state of despair these days, and with good reason. Yet we must not let our voices, our no to war and yes to peace, be silenced. What has happened? The stone that we pushed to the peak is once again at the foot of the mountain. But we must push it back up, even with the knowledge that we can expect it to roll back down again.
_ _ _


Gunter Grass won the 1999 Nobel Prize in literature. His most recent novel, "Crabwalk," will be published this month by Harcourt. This piece was translated from German by Daniel Slager.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-war-oegras…

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Prison Rates Among Blacks Reach a Peak, Report Finds
By FOX BUTTERFIELD


An estimated 12 percent of African-American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail or prison, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department.

The proportion of young black men who are incarcerated has been rising in recent years, and this is the highest rate ever measured, said Allen J. Beck, the chief prison demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical arm of the Justice Department.

By comparison, 1.6 percent of white men in the same age group are incarcerated.

The report found that the number of people in United States jails and prisons exceeded 2 million for the first time last year, rising to 2,019,234.

That represented an increase of 0.3 percent in the number of people behind bars, in keeping with a slowdown in the prison boom since the late 1990`s, Mr. Beck said. But the number of inmates is still four times what it was before the enormous increase in the prison population began in the mid-1970`s.

The small growth in the overall prison population last year included larger changes in some states, the report found.

California, which has the largest state prison system, with 160,315 inmates, had a 2.2 percent decrease in its number of prisoners in 2002.

Texas, which has the second-largest state prison system, with 158,131 inmates, had a drop of 3.9 percent, the report said.

New York, with the fourth-largest state prison system, had a decline of 2.9 percent.

In California, much of the decline stemmed from a ballot referendum two years ago that mandated treatment rather than prison time for nonviolent drug crimes.

The drop in Texas was the result of efforts by state prison officials to save money by finding alternatives to imprisoning parole violators, Mr. Beck said.

In New York the decline was the result of the drop in crime, he said.

The report found that last year, for the first time, the size of the federal prison system surpassed that of any state`s, with 161,681 inmates.

Some of this growth in the federal prison system was accounted for by the Federal Bureau of Prisons` takeover of prisons operated by the government of the District of Columbia. But it also is part of the expansion of the federal prison system in recent years as Congress has increased the number of federal offenses, including many drug crimes and gun possession cases.

The report found that the overall prison population was relatively stable last year, but there was a 5.4 percent increase in the number of people confined in local and county jails, with the number rising to 665,475. This was the largest growth in the jail population in five years.

Generally, people sent to jail are awaiting trial or serving sentences of a year or less.

Mr. Beck said the growth in the number of jail inmates could be a result of the increase in crime last year, especially property crimes like burglary, with more suspects now awaiting trial.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said the report highlighted variations in the way states use prisons in their approach to reducing crime.

Louisiana, for instance, had an incarceration rate of 799 inmates per 100,000 of its population, the highest rate in the nation. But Maine, which had the lowest rate, incarcerated 137 inmates per 100,000 of its citizens.

Some of this disparity reflects a higher crime rate in Louisiana compared with Maine, Professor Blumstein said. "But the disparity goes way beyond that into differences in punitiveness," he said.

"People tend to think of us as one nation with one culture," Professor Blumstein said. "I don`t think the disparities between states are widely appreciated."

Mr. Beck said that the 12 percent of black men in their 20`s and early 30`s in jail or prison was "a very dramatic number, very significant."

That is just the rate on a given day, Mr. Beck said. Over the course of a lifetime, the rates are much higher, he said. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has calculated that 28 percent of black men will be sent to jail or prison in their lifetime.

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Police Open Fire At Oakland Anti-War Protest
Longshoremen Injured

(ABC7)
Apr. 7 (AP) — Police opened fire Monday morning with wooden dowels, "sting balls" and other non-lethal weapons at anti-war protesters outside the Port of Oakland, injuring at least six demonstrators and six longshoremen standing nearby.

Most of the 500 demonstrators at the port were dispersed peacefully, but police opened fire at two gates when protesters refused to move. The longshoremen, pinned against a fence, were caught in the crossfire.

The port protest was one of several anti-war demonstrations Monday in the San Francisco Bay area. Several people were arrested at the Concord Naval Weapons Station and seven were arrested after they temporarily blocked an off-ramp from Interstate 280 in San Francisco.
ABC7

Other protests were planned for the federal building in San Francisco and at businesses such as ChevronTexaco in suburban San Ramon.

In Sacramento, nine anti-war protesters were arrested when they blocked the entrance to the federal building.

Protesters said they targeted the Port of Oakland because at least one company there is handling war supplies. Demonstrators said it was the first time they had been fired upon since anti-war protests started in the San Francisco Bay area more than two weeks ago.

"Oakland police are being the most aggressive of any department I`ve seen in the Bay Area since the war began," said protester Damien McAnany, a database manager. "The San Francisco Police Department never used any of this stuff against us."

Oakland Police said at least 24 people were arrested at the port.

"Some people were blocking port property and the port authorities asked us to move them off," said Deputy Police Chief Patrick Haw. "Police moved aggressively against crowds because some people threw rocks and big iron bolts at officers."

Police spokeswoman Danielle Ashford said officers fired bean-bag rounds and wooden dowels. They also used sting balls, which send out a spray of BB-sized rubber pellets and a cloud of tear gas.

"When they hit you, it feels like a bee sting," Haw said.

Six longshoremen were treated by paramedics, as were at least six protesters.

"I was standing as far back as I could," said longshoremen Kevin Wilson. "It was very scary. All of that force wasn`t necessary."

Trent Willis, a business agent for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said enraged dockworkers were leaving the docks after the incident.

"They shot my guys. We`re not going to work today," Willis said. "The cops had no reason to open up on them."

The Bay Area has been the site of some of the biggest and most boisterous anti-war protests in the country. In the first few days after the war began, there were more than 2,000 arrests when demonstrators blocked downtown streets and tried to seize control of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

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Wenn man durch die Internetseiten blättert fallen manchmal in Bezug auf den Krieg Ungereimtheiten auf.
Am Sonntag war ein Artikel in einer amerikanischen Zeitung mit einem Bericht über die Klinik in Landstuhl. Der Arzt erzählt, dass bis Freitag 281 Verwundete nach Deutschland gebracht wurden.
Heute wird im Guardian berichtet, dass bis Freitag 114 Verletze bei den Amerikanern gemeldet wurden und 74 bei den Engländern.



Friday morning: 57 dead; 16 missing; 7 captured.

The daily White House press briefings and fuzzy real-time TV reports fall far short of conveying the brutality of war, says Boulder neurosurgeon Gene Bolles.

Bolles spent Thursday hunched over an operating table at Germany`s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, repairing the broken back of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital this week. The 19-year-old soldier will require aggressive rehabilitation, Bolles said, but is expected to recover well — one success story in a war full of tragedy.

"It really is disgustingly sanitized on television," said Bolles, who has spent the last 16 months as chief of neurosurgery at Landstuhl, the destination for the war`s most wounded soldiers.

As of Friday, 281 patients had been brought to Landstuhl since Operation Iraqi Freedom started, and plane-loads are arriving regularly.

"We have had a number of really horrific injuries now from the war. They have lost arms, legs, hands, they have been burned, they have had significant brain injuries and peripheral nerve damage. These are young kids that are going to be, in some regards, changed for life. I don`t feel that people realize that."

Bolles, 66, had a private practice in Boulder for 32 years before taking the job at Landstuhl. The U.S. military was short on neurosurgeons after Sept. 11, 2001 — having scaled down its medical staff in response to a shrinking troop population in the `90s — and was looking for an experienced civilian doctor willing to work as a contractor for a few years, said Lt. Colonel Bill Monacci, consultant to the Army Surgeon General for neurosurgery.

Bericht des Guardian vom 07.04.

A list of civilians, military forces and journalists killed, captured or reported missing since the start of the war in Iraq

Andrew Ellson
Friday April 4, 2003

Casualties so far
US- 61 killed (15 non-combat); 15 missing, 114 injured, 7 PoWs
UK- 27 killed (22 non-combat), 74 injured

Da frage ich mich, wo kommen die 157 zusätzlichen verletzten amerikanischen Soldaten her, die nach Landstuhl gebracht wurden. Dann gibt es Kliniken in Kuweit und anderswo. Da werden auch noch Verletzte liegen.
Hat jemand andere Zahlen? Oder wird bei den Opferzahlen gelogen?
J.

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The two horrible flaws in Blair`s Panglossian vision
He is gripped by optimism and moral conviction - but he has no leverage

Hugo Young
Tuesday April 8, 2003
The Guardian

George Bush and Tony Blair met in Belfast last night mainly to talk about the consequences of military victory. Seven days earlier and the context would have been different. A week seems to be a longer time in modern warfare even than it is in politics. But neither leader now believes that another seven days will turn things back Saddam`s way. They were talking about a win that many thought they would not get, and some did not want them to have. It`s already not too soon to try and enter their minds as they survey the postwar world.

This is easier to do with the prime minister than with the president. The prime minister, to his credit, is an open and rather consistent book. He thought he was right to go in, and his reasoning will not have changed. The victory will be vindication, not only for a deeply unpopular decision but for a world view that combines, as he sees it, moral correctness with obvious rationality. I think this has two horrible flaws. But meanwhile, let`s hear from this Candide whose six years in Downing Street have not staled his belief in the self-evident case for reasonable leaders to do only the best for their people.

Northern Ireland will have been his starting point. The location has resonance. Wasn`t it blazingly clear that Catholics and Protestants had only to bury the hatchet, to create the fastest-growing economy in the UK? The Good Friday agreement, perhaps now about to be finalised, had proved it, he will have told Bush. The balm of persistence and the craft of negotiation, led by the most rational of optimists, himself, surely provide a model that could apply the world over?

Survey the globe and examples abound of the case for benign intervention. This need not necessarily be military. The Blair mind is not instinctively militaristic. But Iraq shows what can be done, and other theatres should be ready to yield to international pressure that made plain to foolish self-destroyers the simple clarity of a different kind of solution. The dangers posed by India and Pakistan, their great subcontinental potential wrecked by a stupid squabble over Kashmir, are much on Whitehall`s mind. Zimbabwe, likewise, should obviously be amenable to a bit of constructive solidarity by decent and powerful countries like our own.

Top of this list, we may be sure, are Israel and Palestine. Why can`t Israel understand that its own best interest lies in serious commitment to the minimal conditions necessary for a viable Palestinian state? Why do they see every peace overture as a threat, motivated by deep, dark anti-Zionism? That`s another question it is natural for Mr Blair to put to his fellow-victor, as he searches to apply to the world`s most enduring disputes a liberal rationality that refuses to submit to their brutish intransigence.

Such, it is pretty clear, is going to be the Blair role as long as he remains prime minister. For Iraq itself, he will be making the case for an interim authority that is representative and fair, rather than one that`s necessarily swathed in the contestable authority of the UN. He will scurry sensibly about, trying to persuade others out of their corners, making the case for content over process, urging the need for an Iraqi democracy, rejecting the weary and insulting contention that Arabs have to be left to stew in their undemocratic juices.

Dominating his strategy will be the famous British bridge, whose overarching value will only have been fortified by the war`s outcome. Nothing drives Blair harder than the need to keep Europe and America together, unswayed by Chiraquian follies that purport to replace Washington with Moscow as the new magnetic pole. Cannot every rational person see the error of any other way? Is it not the British statesman`s task, having led his people to victory against their better judgment, to dedicate himself to impressing upon both the US and the EU the only route to the best of all possible worlds?

The role of Candide on the world stage is not ignoble. Arguably it infuses geopolitics with a persuasive optimism that is badly needed. But the Blairite version confronts two obstacles.

First, it places a bet on responses from Washington that there is no recent evidence to expect. While understanding, indeed echoing, America`s belief that terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction will define most of global politics in coming decades, Blair will urge on Bush the case for justice as well as security in handling them. This means justice for Palestinians, a better world order for trade, more generous treatment of Africa, a rededication to the UN etc. In other words, a shift first in the discourse then in the priorities coming out of Washington.

Blair has often said that Bush does not behave like a prisoner of the neoconservatives who surround him. He now takes seriously the president`s commitment to not merely describing but implementing a road map for the Middle East. He will be dedicating all his persuasive power to pushing Bush in that direction. But he must know as well as anyone that this is a gamble whose outcome he can control as little as he controlled the start of an Iraqi war without proper UN authority. He wants it to happen. He knows it is the only sensible course. He can`t understand why anyone, from Cheney to Rumsfeld, should think otherwise. He might even deny that anything so crude as Bush`s second election might depend on the opposite analysis. But he has no leverage.

The second contingency puts different pressures on him. He has considerable control. To keep this famous bridge in place, he has to shore up the European end. He knows he needs to prove to several continental allies, after the terrible hostilities brought on by the war, that his vision of Britain as a central EU player has not faded. This will partly depend on this country`s conduct of the endgame at the constitutional convention. Here, although we have proposed 10 times more amendments to the Giscard d`Estaing draft than any other participant, it`s too early to say that we have no allies for a decentralised EU that might challenge our Europe credentials.

But the euro, as Blair well knows, is another matter. Present wisdom is that sterling`s entry will happen no time soon. The Treasury leak machine has been spewing out news of a eurosceptic subtext to the Budget. The chancellor will very likely have his unsubtle words of scorn for the inferiority of eurozone economic performance. But the question, I believe, is not dead. For, to Mr Blair, it is obvious that entry is the right historic choice, still more so because any perception of Britain retreating for political rather than economic reasons would destroy his influence for the duration.

Since 1997, as it happens, there has not been a more propitious economic moment than now for the euro entry to be made. Rejecting this moment would be a wholly political act, unintelligible in both Europe and America in any other terms. Which is why Candide declines to remove it from his agenda.

· [e-mail]


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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`Nuanced` is for losers
Mathew Engel
Tuesday April 8, 2003
The Guardian

Well, I don`t care about that video: I still think Saddam is dead. But then, despite having seen him, heavily made-up, in what appeared to be the flesh, I think George Bush may be dead too. It could easily have been a body double: he certainly said nothing that couldn`t have been written before the war.

And what about Tony Blair? The theme of someone being captured, brainwashed and turned to do the bidding of a foreign power was explored in The Manchurian Candidate 40 years ago. Can we be absolutely certain the CIA hasn`t been at work?

Furthermore, what evidence do we have for the continued existence of John Kerry? John who? you might well ask.

According to analysts who are currently monitoring this matter closely (about two of them), Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to oppose Bush in the 2004 election. But the fog of war has not merely enveloped the opposition in this country, it has almost evaporated it.

The only way you could get firm evidence for the continued existence of any of the dozen or so declared or half-declared Democratic candidates would be to live in Iowa or New Hampshire, the states that play the crucial early role in the electoral process. There, the reverse problem is already starting to apply: it is hard to go to the shops without being accosted by a politician.

You might have thought the opinions on the war of the nearest thing the US possesses to a leader of the opposition would be of some general interest.

Perhaps it`s safer that they are not. Last week, in a speech in New Hampshire, Kerry announced (according to the Associated Press): "What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States."

The speech did not exactly set the bells ringing on the nation`s news desks, but that is not quite the same as being wholly unnoticed.

The Republicans noticed, and immediately started shitbagging Kerry. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, accused him of "petty, partisan insults launched solely for personal political gain"; Tom DeLay, Frist`s counterpart in the House of Representatives, called Kerry`s words "desperate and inappropriate". And that made Kerry news. There are a number of points to be made here. First, if the AP`s report is accurate, Kerry could be a match for Bush at least when it comes to convoluted syntax. Second, the regime change line is awfully hackneyed and feeble: leaders need new lines as well as new ideas. On the other hand, since Kerry is running for president, what the hell is he supposed to advocate except regime change in the US?

Now Kerry is not having a very good Iraq war, since he is attempting to be simultaneously for and against it, which is held to be the only safe position for an ambitious Democrat.

He did, however, have a great Vietnam (one silver star, three purple hearts) - unlike Frist, DeLay and the rest of the Republican chickenhawks (patron: Dick Cheney), who prefer wars in which others do the fighting. And unlike Bush, whose dad helped him book a cushy number in the Air National Guard.

It seems to me the classy position for Kerry to adopt is to keep these well-known facts nicely in reserve. But he got goaded at once: "I refuse to have my patriotism or right to speak out questioned. I fought for and earned the right to express my views in this country."

True, but his war record is a line on his CV; it is not the basis of an election campaign. It is Iraq that matters now, and Kerry`s yes-but position, which his supporters like to call "nuanced", is rather pathetic. Winning the presidency needs political rather than physical courage.

Why did Bush start this war? I believe that all politicians have mixed motives, some noble, some not. I don`t believe the war is fundamentally about oil or world domination; Bush`s obsession with Saddam was in large part sincere.

I also think the timing, the urgency, the need to do it now , was dictated primarily not by geopolitical needs or even the Iraqi climate. Rather, the war has to be done and dusted long before election year to give the US economy time to recover from this self-inflicted GBH so Bush can see off the likes of Kerry. This is a very, very political war.

But if Kerry has any coherent thoughts to counter that, he is too scared to utter them. Maybe he would do better to accept reality, and shut up until well after Baghdad falls.

matthew.engel@guardian. co.uk


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Robert Fisk: It seemed as if Baghdad would fall within hours. But the day was characterised by crazed normality, high farce and death
08 April 2003


It started with a series of massive vibrations, a great "stomping" sound that shook my room. "Stomp, stomp, stomp," it went. I lay in bed trying to fathom the cause. It was like the moment in Jurassic Park when the tourists first hear footfalls of the dinosaur, an ever increasing, ever more frightening thunder of a regular, monstrous heartbeat.

From my window on the east bank of the Tigris, I saw an Iraqi anti-aircraft gun firing from the roof of a building half a mile away, shooting across the river at something. "Stomp, stomp," it went again, the sound so enormous it set off alarms in cars along the bank.

And it was only when I stood on the road at dawn that I knew what had happened. Not since the war in 1991 had I heard the sound of American artillery. And there, only a few hundred metres away on the far bank of the Tigris, I saw them. At first they looked like tiny, armoured centipedes, stopping and starting, dappled brown and grey, weird little creatures that had come to inspect an alien land and search for water.

You had to keep your eye on the centipedes to interpret reality, to realise each creature was a Bradley fighting vehicle, its tail was a cluster of US Marines hiding behind the armour, moving forward together each time their protection revved its engines and manoeuvred closer to the Tigris. There was a burst of gunfire from the Americans and a smart clatter of rocket-propelled grenades and puffs of white smoke from the Iraqi soldiers and militiamen dug into their foxholes and trenches on the same river bank further south. It was that quick and that simple and that awesome.

Indeed, the sight was so extraordinary, so unexpected – despite all the Pentagon boasts and Bush promises – that one somehow forgot the precedents that it was setting for the future history of the Middle East.

Amid the crack of gunfire and the tracer streaking across the river, and the huge oil fires that the Iraqis lit to give them cover to retreat, one had to look away – to the great river bridges further north, into the pale green waters of that most ancient of rivers – to realise that a Western army on a moral crusade had broken through to the heart of an Arab city for the first time since General Allenby marched into Jerusalem in 1918. But Allenby walked into Jerusalem on foot, in reverence for Christ`s birthplace and yesterday`s American thrust into Baghdad had neither humility nor honour about it.

The US Marines and special forces who spread out along the west bank of the river broke into Saddam Hussein`s largest palace, filmed its lavatories and bathrooms and lay resting on its lawns before moving down towards the Rashid Hotel and sniping at soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children were brought to Baghdad`s hospitals in the hours that followed – victims of bullets, shrapnel and cluster bombs. We could actually see the twin-engined American A-10s firing their depleted uranium rounds into the far shore of the river.

From the eastern bank, I watched the marines run towards a ditch with their rifles to their shoulders and search for Iraqi troops. But their enemies went on firing from the mudflats to the south until, one after another, I saw them running for their lives. The Iraqis clambered out of foxholes amid the American shellfire and began an Olympic sprint of terror along the waterside; most kept their weapons, some fell back to an exhausted walk, others splashed right into the waters of the Tigris, up to their knees, even their necks. Three climbed from a trench with hands in the air, in front of a group of marines. But others fought on. The "stomp, stomp, stomp" went on for more than an hour. Then the A-10s came back, and an F/A-18 sent a ripple of fire along the trenches after which the shooting died away. It seemed as if Baghdad would fall within hours.

But the day was to be characterised with that most curious of war`s attributes, a crazed mixture of normality, death and high farce. For even as the Americans were fighting their way up the river and the F/A-18s were returning to bombard the bank, the Iraqi Minister of Information gave a press conference on the roof of the Palestine Hotel, scarcely half a mile from the battle.

As shells exploded to his left and the air was shredded by the power-diving American jets, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf announced to perhaps 100 journalists that the whole thing was a propaganda exercise, the Americans were no longer in possession of Baghdad airport, that reporters must "check their facts and re-check their facts – that`s all I ask you to do." Mercifully, the oil fires, bomb explosions and cordite smoke now obscured the western bank of the river, so fact-checking could no longer be accomplished by looking behind Mr Sahaf`s back.

What the world wanted to know, of course, was the Question of All Questions – where was President Saddam? But Mr Sahaf used his time to condemn the Arabic television channel al-Jazeera for its bias towards the US and to excoriate the Americans for using "the lounges and halls" of Saddam Hussein to make "cheap propaganda". The Americans "will be buried here," he shouted above the battle. "Don`t believe these invaders. They will be defeated."

And the more he spoke, the more one wanted to interrupt Mr Sahaf, to say: "But hang on, Mr Minister, take a look over your right shoulder." But, of course, that`s not the way things happen. Why didn`t we all take a drive around town, he suggested defiantly.

So I did. The corporation`s double-decker buses were running and, if the shops were shut, stallholders were open, men had gathered in tea houses to discuss the war. I went off to buy fruit when a low-flying American jet crossed the street and dropped its payload 1,000 metres away in an explosion that changed the air pressure in our ears. But every street corner had its clutch of militiamen and, when I reached the side of the Foreign Ministry, upstream from the US Marines, an Iraqi artillery crew was firing a 120mm gun at the Americans from the middle of a dual carriageway, its tongue of fire bright against the grey-black fog drifting over Baghdad.

Within an hour and a half, the Americans had moved up the southern waterfront and were in danger of over-running the old ministry of information. Outside the Rashid Hotel, the marines opened fire on civilians and militiamen, blasting a passing motorcyclist onto the road and shooting at a Reuters photographer who managed to escape with bullet holes in his car.

All across Baghdad, hospitals were inundated with wounded, many of them women and children hit by fragments of cluster bombs. By dusk, the Americans were flying F/A-18s in close air support to the US Marines, so confident of their destruction of Iraq`s anti-aircraft gunners that they could clearly be seen cruising the brown and grey skies in pairs.

Was this what they call "rich in history"? General Stanley Maude invaded Iraq in 1917 and occupied Baghdad. We repeated the performance in 1941 when the former prime minister Rashid Ali decided to back Nazi Germany. The British, Australians and Arabs "liberated" Damascus from the Turks in 1918. The Israelis occupied Beirut in 1982 and lived – not all of them – to regret it. Now the armies of America and, far behind them, the British – a pale ghost of Maude`s army – are moving steadily into this most north-eastern of Arab capitals to dominate a land that borders Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

As night fell, I came across three Iraqi defenders at the eastern end of the great Rashid Bridge.These three – two Baathist militiamen and a policeman – were ready to defend the eastern shore from the greatest army known to man.

That in itself, I thought, said something about both the courage and the hopelessness of the Arabs.
8 April 2003 10:28

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Myths and misconceptions about the war in Iraq
By Brendan Nyhan and Bryan Keefer
April 4, 2003

Accurate information is essential for an informed political debate over the war in Iraq here at home. Yet since hostilities were initiated, politicians and the American media have continued to circulate misinformation, much of which has gone largely unchecked. As with our first column on the debate leading up to the war, we can only deal with information that has been addressed conclusively or near-conclusively on the public record. We do not address most of the apparently mistaken reports that are at least understandable amidst the fog of war. We also do not address allegations from coalition forces that can`t be independently verified at this time, nor do we look at the propaganda of the Iraqi regime, which is of course extraordinarily suspect.

Iraq has launched Scud missiles at coalition forces and civilians in Kuwait.

As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has recounted, in the early days of the war, it was widely reported that Iraq had fired Scud missiles into Kuwait -- a claim made by Kuwaiti government officials that was quickly given the veneer of fact in media accounts. If the missiles were Scuds, it would have been significant: Iraq is prohibited from possessing such missiles under disarmament agreements it has entered into since the Gulf War. However, the missiles launched at Kuwait were apparently not Scuds, as the military later admitted. While Iraq may still possess the banned weapons, there is no solid evidence that any of the missiles launched at Kuwait so far have been Scuds, nor have any Scuds been discovered by coalition troops in the current war. Instead, according to the Washington Post, "[t]he missiles being fired at Kuwait have not been definitively identified," but US commanders say eight were Ababil-100s, while "[a]t least two" were Al Samoud-2s, which the United Nations says are also banned under Iraq`s 1991 disarmament agreement. Despite the inherent factual uncertainty of sketchy early reports, pundits like Mona Charen then rushed to condemn the alleged use of Scuds, bashing the "antiwar crowd" for the supposed failure of inspections to find the Scuds that were launched. She later corrected the record (as did others), but this was a major mistake.

The coalition against Iraq is larger than the one that conducted the first Gulf War.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has claimed that the current coalition "is larger than the coalition that existed during the Gulf War in 1991." While this claim is accurate in terms of the number of countries lending their political support to the effort, it is highly misleading in terms of the actual operational contributions of coalition members. As Dana Milbank pointed out in the Washington Post, "that 34-member group [in 1991] was an actual military coalition, with all members providing troops, aircraft, ships or medics. By that standard, there are only about a half dozen members of the coalition in the current war."

Passage of the Bush tax cut is necessary so that troops have jobs to come home to.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has offered a new rationale for passage of the president`s proposed tax cut in recent days: "so that when our men and women in the military return home, they`ll have jobs to come home to." But as Milbank has noted, full time military personnel will continue to be employed by the military, and thanks to legislation passed in 1994, reservists are entitled to resume their civilian jobs. The situation is not analogous to World War II, where large numbers of decommissioned troops returned home without guaranteed employment. Fleischer`s claim is simply disingenuous.

Evidence found at the Ansar Al-Islam camp ties Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.

On March 31, coalition forces raided the camp of Ansar Al-Islam, an extremist Islamic group based in Iraqi Kurdistan that is allegedly affiliated with Al Qaeda. After the raid, coalition leaders claimed to have found evidence demonstrating a link between the two groups. However, the Associated Press story about the raid specifically states that "there was no indication any of the evidence tied Ansar to Saddam Hussein as Washington has maintained."

Nonetheless, Rush Limbaugh simply asserted that the evidence found demonstrates an Al Qaeda-Iraq link, arguing that the very existence of the group in the Kurdish part of northern Iraq proves that Saddam is linked to Al Qaeda. The fact is, however, that Kurdish northern provinces of Iraq have been outside of Saddam`s control since 1991 and that his possible knowledge of activities there is not in itself proof of anything. Rather than even making an argument to this effect, the Union Leader in New Hampshire brazenly headlined the AP story "HAVEN FOR TERROR: U.S.-led raid reveals Saddam`s al-Qaida ties," ignoring the contradictory conclusion in the text below.

No one in the administration ever claimed the war in Iraq would be easy.

Though the war in Iraq is only about two weeks old, critics have already noted that Bush administration officials implied that it would be quick and easy. In response, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has suggested that the President repeatedly stated that the war in Iraq could be quite difficult. Fleischer cited three speeches by Bush: an October 7 speech in which he said that "military conflict could be difficult," a January 3 speech during which he stated "I know that every order I give can bring a cost... We know the challenges and the dangers we face" and the January 28 State of the Union passage in which he said, "This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost and we dread the days of mourning that always come."

Yet as a number of sources, including USA Today, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, and Salon.com [subscription or viewing of an advertisement required] have pointed out, Bush officials and advisors were often aggressive before the war in suggesting that it would be relatively quick and easy. Though they occasionally equivocated, the thrust of their rhetoric implied that US troops would face little resistance.

On March 16, Vice President Dick Cheney suggested on CBS`s "Face the Nation" that a war would proceed "relatively quickly" and be over in "[w]eeks rather than months." On NBC`s "Meet the Press" the same day, Cheney was asked by Tim Russert whether "the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties." Cheney replied, "Well, I don`t think it`s going to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." While he stated that "close-in defenders" of Saddam "might, in fact, try to put up ... a struggle," Cheney added, "I think the regular army will not [fight]. My guess is, even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces and are likely to step aside."

Richard Perle, a civilian member and former chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board (which advises the Defense Department), was particularly outspoken with his predictions about how quickly Iraqi resistance would collapse. In an interview on PBS`s "Wide Angle" last July, he claimed that "we have the ability to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime. And it will be quicker and easier than many people think," and suggested that "Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder." (In the same interview, he does also backtrack a bit and say that the war "will not be easy"). Kenneth Adelman, another member of the Defense Policy Board, went even further in a February Washington Post op-ed in which he predicted that "demolishing Hussein`s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."

President Bush doesn`t pay attention to war coverage on television.

When the war began, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer claimed that President Bush was not paying attention to television coverage of the conflict, saying "The President may occasionally turn on the TV, but that`s not how he gets his news or his information." But in a March 29 New York Times article the administration conceded that this was in fact untrue:

In the opening days of the conflict, White House officials were so eager not to personalize the war as a Bush revenge match against the dictator who tried to assassinate his father that Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, at first suggested that Mr. Bush was not even watching the enormous blasts on live television of the first bombs thundering down on Baghdad. Mr. Fleischer said later that the president had indeed been watching television.
In fact, Bumiller reports that Bush "started laughing" when he heard reports that "the president of the United States, according to White House officials, was not glued to the TV" and that he "regularly turned in to the cable channels for updates on Iraq," even calling National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice when he "saw something that concerned him."

The Iraqi military is using terrorist tactics to attack coalition troops / the suicide bombing in Iraq proves Saddam is a terrorist.

Iraqi soldiers have disguised themselves as civilians, attacked coalition troops after feigned surrenders and conducted a suicide bombing of a US checkpoint while dressed in civilian clothes. These are reprehensible violations of international law protecting non-combatants. But contrary to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer`s claim that "We`re really dealing with elements of terrorism inside Iraq that are being employed now against our troops," these attacks are not "terrorism" as it is almost always defined (as Slate`s Fred Kaplan points out). Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke and Major General Stanley McChrystal of the Joints Chiefs of Staff have made similar suggestions.

Kaplan cites the official US State Department definition of terrorism, stating that like all such definitions it identifies the term as referring to attacks on civilian targets that are political in nature: "premeditated, politically motivated violence propagated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Saddam`s regime has engaged in terrorism and supported terrorist groups (though the extent of this is highly disputed) and has recently endorsed terrorist tactics targeting civilians in its official rhetoric, but attacks on military targets are not a case where the term applies.

Most absurd among those pushing this line was New York Times columnist William Safire, who argued that the suicide bombing of US troops, which was carried out by an Iraqi noncommissioned officer, "vividly demonstrate the Baghdad-terrorist nexus." This is absurd - the alleged "nexus" refers to supposed relationships between Saddam`s regime and terrorist groups that are in no way demonstrated by a single copycat attack.

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030404.html

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Published on Saturday, April 5, 2003 by the Toronto Star
The Shape of World War IV, By Number
by Vinay Menon

Never before has liberation seemed so perilous.


"Overcoming evil is the noblest cause and the hardest work," declares U.S. President George W. Bush. "And the liberation of millions is the fulfillment of America`s founding promise."

It`s Thursday. Bush is addressing a boisterous contingent of Marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C. As he squints into the radiant sky, he pauses more than 35 times to allow for bursts of cheering, fist pumping and clapping.

This is the sight and sound of freedom.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, 91 million kilograms of explosives — more than were used in the entire first Gulf War — have already thundered from the heavens, erupting into a blur of fireballs and smoldering craters from Basra to Baghdad to Mosul.

By yesterday, the civilian death toll was estimated at between 600 and 760. To these people, the coalition cause may not seem so noble. Because liberation managed to do something the treacherous regime did not: It killed them. As Bush talks, my attention is diverted to an e-mail, with links to distressing pictures of civilian casualties.

Children missing eyes. Splayed and broken limbs. Skulls crushed like walnuts. Internal organs spilling from mangled torsos. These broken images will endure long after the evil is overcome.

It`s tough to judge this "preventive" war, since no historical comparison exists. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, says World War IV is upon us — "World War III" was the Cold War. What the rest of the world can`t figure out is who started it. And why.

There are many reasons to be skeptical about what is happening right now. But, sometimes, numbers say more than words. Here are a few that have caught my attention.

Iraq War Index


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77: Percentage of Americans who support military action against any country believed to be linked to 9/11 terrorist attacks, even if innocent civilians are killed in those countries.


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69: In a 2002 poll, percentage of Americans who said they believe Iraq has nuclear weapons.


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O: Number of nuclear warheads in Iraq.


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53.9: Estimated number of U.S. troops over the age of 20 deemed to be overweight by federal obesity standards.


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$850 billion: Estimated military spending in the world in 2002.


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50: Percentage spent by U.S.


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0.0015: Percentage spent by Iraq.


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50 per cent: Spending increase on U.S. national defense projected between 2000 and 2007.


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320 metric tonnes: Amount of depleted uranium left in region after 1991 Gulf War.


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200,000: Estimated number of U.S. soldiers said to be suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.


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700: Between 1991 and 94, percentage increase in cancer rates in Iraq.


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1 in 6: Chance the U.S. bombed Iraq on any given day last year.


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9: Percentage of U.S. munitions dropped during the first Gulf War that were classified as precision-guided.


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75: Percentage used during current war.


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98: During the first Gulf War, the reported "success rate" (or percentage of accurate strikes) by Tomahawk cruise missiles.


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10: Pentagon`s estimated "success rate" after the war ended.


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$750,000: Unit cost of one Tomahawk cruise missile.


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725: By Thursday morning, number of Tomahawks used in Iraq.


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6: Of the 10-member commission created to investigate the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the number who have direct links to the airline industry.


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$3 million: Budget given to commission.


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$9 billion: Estimated monthly cost for U.S. to sustain war in Iraq.


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$100 billion: Estimated cost of Iraq "reconstruction."


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$7.4 billion: Amount U.S. will spend on missile defense research and development this year.


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70: The percentage increase in wealth gap between the top 10 per cent of American families with highest incomes and the 20 per cent of families with lowest incomes between 1998 and 2001.


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400: Number of French products and companies suggested for boycott on several Web sites.


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18: Number of times France has invoked its veto in United Nations history.


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76: Number of times the U.S. has used its veto.


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1,200: Number of American historians who signed a petition last year demanding the Bush administration respect the U.S. Constitution with respect to declaration of war.


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54 to 67: By 2020, estimated percentage of crude oil that will come from Persian Gulf.


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2: As a measure of proven oil reserves, ranking of Iraq among all countries.


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6: Percentage of the world`s population living in the U.S.


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30: Percentage of the world`s energy resources used in the U.S.


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89: Percentage of Americans who rely on television as their first source of news during war in Iraq.


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92: Between Sept. 14, 2002 and Feb. 7, 2003, percentage of news stories airing on NBC, ABC and CBS that originated directly from White House, Pentagon or State Department.


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67: Between March 25 and 27, percentage of U.S. television viewers who said they felt "sad watching the war coverage."


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83: Percentage of U.S. television viewers who say they now want a return to entertainment programming.


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236,202: The number of times Osama bin Laden was mentioned in international media reports between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 11, 2002.


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57, 667: The number of times Osama bin Laden was mentioned between Sept. 11, 2002 and today.


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66,648: The number of times Saddam Hussein was mentioned between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 11, 2002.


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225,147: The number of times Saddam Hussein was mentioned between Sept. 11, 2002 and today.


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Oct. 2, 2002: Date the American Gulf War Veterans Association called for the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after he denied the U.S. sent biological weapons to Iraq during the 1980s.


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38: In a 2002 poll, percentage of Americans who said Canada should be annexed.


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13: Percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who could find Iraq on a map prior to the war.


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16,000: Number of inactive military ranges in the U.S. that have unexploded munitions that pose serious environmental hazards.


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1.5 million: Number of Internet "hits" the Iraq Body Count Web site has had since the war began.


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52: Percentage of these visitors who are from the United States.


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50: Percentage of weapons entering the global market that come from American firms.


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10: Percentage of U.S. military spending that would provide global population with basic necessities.


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1: Number of countries that have used nuclear weapons against another country.

Sources: U.S. Department of Defense, New York Times, Opinion Dynamics Corporation, Factiva Database, Leger Marketing, Center for Media and Public Affairs, Medact, Pentagon, Znet, U.S. Surgeon General, National Geographic, Environmental Protection Agency, United Nations, World Health Organization, National Energy Policy, Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, Iraqi Body Count, Advertising Age, The Pew Research Center, Congressional Budget Office, BBC News, Washington Post, Amnesty International.
Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

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Für alle die noch mehr lesen wollen:


http://www.counterpunch.org/


.

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Ein wirklich interessanter Artikel der israelischen Zeitung Haaretz.

Tuesday, April 08, 2003 Nisan 6, 5763 Israel Time: 12:41 (GMT+3)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtWar.jhtml?itemNo=280…

America is not a role model

By Gideon Levy

Those who trample human rights in Israel are having a field day: Look at the behavior of the Americans in Iraq, they say. Every time troops open fire at a checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment here. The United States, the cradle of democracy, the leader of the free world, is behaving like us.

According to one report, "IDF officers find it difficult to stop smiling" when they hear the reports of the war in Iraq. From now on, no one will be able to criticize their conduct in the territories. The New York Times reported that Israel even hastened to suggest that the United States learn from its experience in the use of tanks, helicopters and bulldozers in the center of cities and refugee camps.

Similar delight has also gripped those wishing to curb the media in Israel: Look at how America is censoring the images of the war in its media - no coffins and no prisoners, how the media has volunteered enthusiastically to enlist in the war effort. And how they fired the courageous reporter Peter Arnett, without so much as batting an eyelash, for expressing his opinions on enemy television.

This keeping in line with the behavior of the United States is another case of the collateral damage of this base war. America is not an example for anything. Even before going to war, there was no way it could serve as a role model, and going to this unjustified war in Iraq has deprived it completely of the right to serve as a light unto the nations and the Jews in upholding freedom, morality and human rights.

So let us not be quick to conclude that what America is allowed to do, we are allowed to do, too. Neither they nor we have the right to kill needlessly, to harm and humiliate civilians, deprive them of their freedom, starve them, take away their livelihood and trample on their sovereignty, or to recruit the media for the war effort.

America, which is fighting an illegal war, is an occupier in every respect.

Long before the first Iraqi civilian was shot at a checkpoint, the United States was in no position to take pride in all its deeds, either at home or externally. Not all its citizens benefit from the fact that it is a large democracy.

For example, in the past 29 years, 816 people have been executed in the United States, as in the darkest of regimes, with a clear bias against the blacks. Studies show a black murderer is 11 times more likely to be executed than a white person convicted of the same crime. More than one-fifth of the children in the country that is supposed to be the leader of the free world live below the poverty line, and 41 million Americans, among them 8.5 million children, do not have any form of medical insurance. Is that the definition of a just society? Some 3.5 million Americans are registered as homeless, though the real number is estimated to be twice that many.

A country that launches a war at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars when it lacks the ability to care for millions of homeless people and poor children cannot consider itself enlightened or a liberator.

Outside its borders, the United States cannot always serve as a moral model, either. Hundreds of thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed and murdered in the wars and military campaigns it has launched since World War II - such as in Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere - and in the murderous regimes the United States has brought to power or assisted.

However, even if the United States had been a beacon of justice, its decision to go to war in Iraq and turn its army into an occupying force deprives it of the right to be considered a paragon. To the remarks of journalist Thomas Friedman (in an interview to Ari Shavit in Haaretz Magazine over the weekend), to the effect that the American democracy becomes aggressive when threatened, we should add that democracies cease to be such when they become occupiers. France, Belgium, Britain, the United States and Israel, all of them enlightened democracies, lost the justness of their cause when they became occupying powers. That is inevitable.

As soon as the United States starts to become mired in the occupation, today`s enlightened soldiers will become tomorrow`s inhuman troops. They will lose the remnants of their moral image and will kill, destroy and abuse. The children huggers will become the children persecutors, the food distributors will turn into agents of starvation, the wound healers will block ambulances at checkpoints, the liberators will become jailers. Humiliating the occupied and stripping them of their rights will become the norm. The liberated Iraqi people will pay in the form of heavy losses, hunger and humiliation, even if these are temporary. And they will not forget. That is the impact of occupation, whether in the narrow alleys of a Gaza Strip refugee camp or in the sprawling city of Baghdad.

If there is one lesson Israel can impart to the Americans, it is that every occupation is appalling, that it tramples the occupied and corrupts the occupier. If the Americans pause for a moment to see what is going on in the Tul Karm refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus, they will see what they will soon become. And if Israelis look at what is happening in Iraq, perhaps they will understand that it is not the Palestinians but, above all, we who have created the present situation.

An occupier is an occupier, whether he comes from a democracy that is two- and-a-quarter centuries old or from "the only democracy in the Middle East."

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Die amerikanischen Tageszeitungen sind gut und bieten jegliche Information
Die großen Tageszeitungen leisten im allgemeinen gute Arbeit allen voran Blätter wie die "New York Times" und die "Los Angeles Times", aber auch kleinere Zeitungen wie die "Chicago Tribune". Doch vergessen Sie nicht: Während 1,2 Millionen Menschen die "New York Times" abonnieren, beziehen 30 Millionen ihre Nachrichten aus dem Fernsehen. Fernsehen erdrückt alles andere, und die Qualität ist beschämend. Interview mit Orville Schell, Berkeley



April 8, 2003
The Ring of Truth?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


OHA, Qatar


The front line in the war for hearts and minds in the Arab world and beyond is here, at the U.S. Central Command headquarters and media center, and it`s prettier than most battlefields. The stage that the generals speak from each day was built for the government by a showbiz professional at a cost of $250,000, and it`s as high-tech as an Abrams tank.

But not, unfortunately, as effective.

One of America`s most historic and bipartisan traditions is to do an execrable job explaining itself to the world. The average Fortune 500 company is far more sophisticated at getting its message across abroad than the U.S. government has been.

To its great credit, the Bush administration gets this. From President Bush on down, particularly since 9/11, the administration has scrambled to win over folks in Yemen and Pakistan and Indonesia as if they were Florida voters. Mr. Bush hounds cabinet members to give interviews to Al Jazeera television, a new White House office flatters foreign reporters by spinning them, and the U.S. began Radio Sawa to seduce Iraqis and other Arabs with sirens like Jennifer Lopez. The brilliant system of embedding journalists in U.S. military units includes Arab journalists.

"By improving the way you get your message across, you have the ability to save lives," notes Jim Wilkinson, a former White House press official who is running the Central Command`s P.R. campaign. And he`s absolutely right: the battle for global opinion is less dramatic than the one in Baghdad but no less important.

President Bush`s determination to sell the U.S., and its product of the season — the war in Iraq — to a skeptical Muslim world is evident here in Qatar, a flat expanse of desert that peeps out of the turquoise waters of the gulf. Telegenic generals like Vincent Brooks were chosen to be the congenial face of the American Imperium, the briefings are translated simultaneously into Arabic, and Al Jazeera was assigned a front-row seat for the briefings (The New York Times is in the second row).

The generals have just borrowed a couple of Arabic-speaking diplomats from the State Department to spin Arabs in their own language, and the experts have been coaching pronunciations: General Brooks is no longer pronouncing the town of Umm Qasr as Umm Qazir (which sounds like the Arabic for "filthy mother").

So why does everybody still hate us? Even in Britain, one of the rare countries where a traveling American isn`t tempted to seek camouflage by donning an "O Canada" T-shirt, a poll last week found that fewer than one person in seven trusts President Bush to tell the truth.

The central problem was underscored for me by a Chinese journalist who sat next to me during a U.S. military briefing here in Doha.

"This is propaganda," he said brightly. "I was born and grew up in a propaganda country, and so I know it well." He beamed. "Actually, they do the propaganda very well, better than we do it. We in China can learn from this propaganda."

Fundamentally, the administration`s overseas efforts resemble those of the Chinese Communist Party: excellent effort, lousy execution. The Bush administration knows how important this issue is (which the Clinton administration never did), but there`s a Beijing-style rah-rah self-righteousness, too earnest by half, so the propaganda fizzles, even from a $250,000 stage.

Moreover, as Raghida Dergham, a columnist for Al Hayat, an Arabic newspaper published in London, notes, "It`s the policy, stupid." Arab perceptions of America are framed by Mr. Bush`s coziness with Ariel Sharon. No amount of spin can soften that; it will take a serious and balanced Middle East peace initiative of the kind that Tony Blair is urging.

When he was secretary of state, James Baker was a master of both policy and spin. He had a light touch and could spin reporters like Ping-Pong balls; these days, we Ping-Pong balls just feel whacked.

At U.S. briefings, from Mr. Bush on down, we`re always on plan, and our coalitions are always the largest in history. The U.S. effort to manufacture a huge global coalition involved an embarrassing effort to recruit microdots in the Pacific, and the White House proudly put out a list of supporting countries that included the Solomon Islands. When reporters asked the Solomon Islands` prime minister about the support, he said he was "completely unaware" of that.

Even China`s propaganda officials can do better than that.




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Der Krieg als Wahlkampf

April 8, 2003
The Last Refuge
By PAUL KRUGMAN


n 1944, millions of Americans were engaged in desperate battles across the world. Nonetheless, a normal presidential election was held, and the opposition didn`t pull its punches: Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate, campaigned on the theme that Franklin Roosevelt was a "tired old man." As far as I`ve been able to ascertain, the Roosevelt administration didn`t accuse Dewey of hurting morale by questioning the president`s competence. After all, democracy — including the right to criticize — was what we were fighting for.

It`s not a slur on the courage of our troops, or a belittling of the risks they face, to say that our current war is a mere skirmish by comparison. Yet self-styled patriots are trying to impose constraints on political speech never contemplated during World War II, accusing anyone who criticizes the president of undermining the war effort.

Last week John Kerry told an audience that "what we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." Republicans immediately sought to portray this remark as little short of treason. "Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America`s commander in chief at a time when America is at war," declared Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Notice that Mr. Racicot wasn`t criticizing Mr. Kerry`s choice of words. Instead, he denounced Mr. Kerry because he "dared to suggest the replacement of America`s commander in chief" — knowing full well that Mr. Kerry was simply talking about the next election. Mr. Racicot, not Mr. Kerry, is the one who crossed a grave line; never in our nation`s history has it been considered unpatriotic to oppose an incumbent`s re-election.

Anyway, what defines patriotism? Talk is cheap; so is putting a flag in your lapel. Citizens prove their patriotism when they make sacrifices for the sake of their country. Mr. Kerry, a decorated veteran, has met that test. Most of his critics haven`t.

I`m not just talking about military service — though it`s striking how few of our biggest hawks have served. Nor am I talking only about financial sacrifice — though profiting from public office seems to be the norm, not the exception, among those who wrap themselves in the flag. (Mr. Racicot himself accepted the job as R.N.C. chairman only on the condition that he remain on the payroll of Bracewell and Patterson, a law firm that specializes in lobbying.)

The biggest test of a politician`s patriotism is whether he is willing to sacrifice some of his political agenda for the sake of the nation. And that`s a test our current leaders have failed with flying colors.

Consider the case of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, who also piled on Mr. Kerry last week. As it happens, during the war in Kosovo Mr. DeLay was a defeatist, and blamed his own country for provoking Serbian atrocities; any Democrat who said similar things now would be accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Mr. DeLay`s political agenda hasn`t shifted a bit now that we`re at war again. He`s still pushing for huge, divisive tax cuts that go mainly to the rich: "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes," he says. And he`s still eager to slash any and all domestic spending. In the midst of war he pushed through a budget that included sharp cuts in, yes, veterans` benefits.

You can see why Mr. Kerry blasted back, "I`m not going to be questioned in my patriotism by the likes of Tom DeLay."

Some timid souls will suggest that critics of the Bush administration hold off until the war is over. But that`s not the American tradition — and anyway, when will this war be over? Baghdad will fall, but during the occupation that follows American soldiers will still be in harm`s way. Also, a strong faction within the administration wants to go on to Syria, to Iran and beyond. And Al Qaeda is still out there.

For years to come, then, this country may be, in some sense, at war. And all that time, if Mr. Racicot and his party are allowed to set the ground rules, nobody will be allowed to criticize the president or call for his electoral defeat. You know what? If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield.



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Aus der NYTimes

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washingtonpost.com
Preemptive Peace


By Harold Meyerson

Tuesday, April 8, 2003; Page A33


From the folks who brought us preemptive war, here comes preemptive peace.

The Defense Department intellectuals who have emerged as the dominant force in U.S. foreign policy had it all mapped out. While the debate raged over whether to go to war in Iraq, they dispatched a couple of hundred thousand troops to the region, establishing a fact on the ground that ultimately made the war unstoppable. Now, while the debate is just beginning over the nature of the interim government in postwar Iraq, they have dispatched a postwar government of their choosing to the Kuwait Hilton.

With the assistance of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, George W. Bush has emerged as an apt pupil of Nathan Bedford Forrest. In war and now in peace, he gets there first with the most men. Deployment precedes -- and damn near obviates -- debate.

The most narrowly factional administration in modern American history now seeks to impose a narrowly factional authority on postwar Iraq. The United Nations is to be reduced to a bit player. State Department personnel with expertise in the region -- former ambassadors to other Arab nations, for instance, who can actually speak Arabic -- have been vetoed by Donald Rumsfeld. The neoconservatives have their team in place, complete with their opposition group of choice: the Iraqi National Congress.

Never mind that the Iraqi National Congress is one of six opposition coalitions in exile. Never mind that its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, left Iraq the same year the Dodgers left Brooklyn. Never mind that Chalabi is bitterly opposed by the other exile groups, and that his standing in-country is all but undetectable. What matters is that he`s a longtime friend and associate of such leading defense neocons as Richard Perle and James Woolsey, who apparently loom large in the Iraqi electoral college being drawn up in the Pentagon.

The White House may not be sold on Chalabi, but the president has signed on to the rest of the grand design. In his decision to hand postwar Iraq to the Pentagon, however, Bush is utterly alone. No member of the coalition of the willing is willing to go along with him on this: Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi want the United Nations to control the interim authority; so does the European Union; so does the pope. Even congressional Republicans -- and not just the moderates -- are emphatic that Iraqi reconstruction should come under Colin Powell`s jurisdiction, not Rumsfeld`s. And Powell has been arguing for a greater role for the United Nations, too.

Understandably so, for the decision to run postwar Iraq as an adjunct of the Defense Department may prove even more fateful than the decision to go to war. It suggests that conquest alone confers legitimacy; it spurns international efforts to reconstruct a shattered nation; it fairly begs the world to view us as occupiers rather than nation-builders. It could well mean that our forces will be the only authority in postwar Iraq, subject (even if embraced by most of the population) to a steady stream of suicide bombings, mayhem and rage. It could ignite the entire region in a slow-fuse jihad. Yet these all seem matters of relative indifference to the president, the vice president and the guys at Defense.

The emerging debate over the shape of the peace is tracking the debate over going to war in one further and sickening particular: While the State Department, Republicans and foreign nations have taken up arms against the Pentagon`s plan, the Democrats have all but disappeared. AWOL in peace as they were in war, the Democrats are both a mystery and disgrace.

During the run-up to war, and since the shooting started, many Democrats feared they`d look squishy on security matters if they voiced their doubts about the wisdom of the war. But opposing the subordination of postwar Iraq to Wolfie`s private politburo is different; it would neither undermine the Democrats` bona fides as a party committed to national security nor unduly expose the Democrats at the polls. It`s not as if the American people have been clamoring for a U.S. owned and operated occupation, after all.

Indeed, the question of postwar Iraq is one on which two sometimes conflicting Democratic tendencies -- the anti-imperialism of the Vietnam `60s and the nation-building of the Clinton `90s -- can be reconciled. Democrats can and should support generous financial aid for Iraqi reconstruction, even as they can and should support a postwar Iraq administered by the legitimate authority of the United Nations.

Instead, Bush is unveiling earth-shaking changes in fundamental American policy as a series of faits accomplis, and the Democrats are hiding under rocks. And this is a nation that claims the expertise to build a democracy on the other side of the world?

The writer is editor at large of the American Prospect.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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The answer is no

By James Carroll, 4/8/2003

ARE YOU UNMOVED by the loss of the young Americans who have died? Or indifferent to the devastation now felt by their families? Or less than worried sick by what awaits the stalwart individuals poised to enter Baghdad?

Are you surprised that many of Saddam Hussein`s defenders have fought ruthlessly and lawlessly? Do the discoveries of mutilated corpses in Basra establish something new? Are you confident that chemical or biological weapons won`t yet be unleashed? Or sure that those weapons have not already been dispersed among others who hate America?

Do the deaths of noncombatant Iraqis mean less to you than the fate of your own forces? Are Iraqi children less precious than other children? Are the conscripted young men who make up the bulk of the Iraqi Army deserving of being smashed and killed? Are their families less griefstruck than American families? Do Ba`ath Party leaders care for the huddled people behind whom they hide? Did war planners not know that that mass of people would face death, maiming, homelessness well before the leading clique is cornered? Does it help a bereaved Iraqi family to be told its anguish is ``collateral?``

Would the war unfold differently if the age groups traded places -- with the middle-aged decision makers on both sides leading the charge, while wide-eyed 20-year-olds remained safely behind the lines? Would the war be popular if it involved immediate danger of homeland America`s suffering war`s direct consequences -- demolished neighborhoods, orphaned babies, thousands homeless, disease from bad water, hospitals overwhelmed? Can a people who have never been subjected to invasion, occupation, or all-out terror bombing begin to imagine what such things actually do to bodies and souls?

Does Washington stand ready to universalize its policies of preventive war and unilateral violation of sovereignty as new principles of international order available to all nations? Would Washington welcome such behavior from Moscow, say, or Beijing? Will the short-term definition of victory in Iraq survive its long-term global consequences, when ``disarmament`` and ``liberation`` become common justifications offered by other nations for aggression? As for consequences local to Iraq, will the pain of those who lost loved ones under Saddam Hussein`s tyranny be eliminated by cruise missiles? Will America fare any better as an occupying force than Israel does in the West Bank and in Gaza? Is victory really the opposite of defeat?

In the age of world-destroying weapons, does violence lead to international balance and domestic security? Have the ancient laws of vengeance and vendetta been suspended? Will war at last put an end to war? Does the exercise of overwhelming force by a strong nation against a weak one slow proliferation of nuclear weapons if it gives other weak nations an urgent new reason to obtain such weapons? Does the context implied by such a question seem even to be in the minds of US war planners?

If American purposes are innocent, aiming only at the obliteration of disorder, does that make the new disorder that follows every such act of obliteration any less cruel? If, on the other hand, American purposes are selfish, aiming at economic hegemony and world power, does a war thus waged protect what makes America America? Do American motives, whether good or ill, matter in the slightest to those who are dead?

Can aggressive war be waged by those who grasp the bottomless tragedy of the human condition, how every story -- whether one person`s or a nation`s -- ends in death? How every untimely death wounds the absolute, and how unnecessary death is itself the mortal enemy? Knowing that, could America so willingly enter into the alliance with death that is war? Could America kill those children? Could America send its own young women and men to die? Could America, for that matter, so ruthlessly maul an army mainly of draftees who have no choice? Could America, more broadly, license future wars like this one, sowing seeds of untimely death into winds that now blow across Iran, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt -- around the very globe to Korea, Pakistan, India? Does a hair-trigger obsession with an axis of evil, in other words, align America with the axis of human good?

Does your nation any longer know that it, too, is part of the human family? That that family is now warning of a fatal loss of trust in the ideal for which the American flag has so long stood? Are that flag, and all who have carried it, honored by what is being done under its sign today?

These many questions boil down to three: Was this war necessary at the start? Is it a just war now? If the one heartbreaking answer were somehow to lead America to change course, away from war toward law and life again, would the dead have died in vain?



James Carroll`s column appears regularly in the Globe.


This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 4/8/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Nachkriegs-Irak

Die Milchmädchen-Rechnung der Öl-Strategen

Von Michael Kröger

Die US-Regierung ist noch immer davon überzeugt, dass sich der Wiederaufbau des Iraks durch dessen Öleinnahmen finanzieren lässt. Das könnte sich jedoch als teure Fehlkalkulation erweisen - mit weit reichenden Folgen.

Washington - Auf den Etappensieg sind die US-Strategen besonders stolz. Mit Erfolg hatten sie ihre irakischen Widersacher daran gehindert, im letzten Rückzugsgefecht die Ölquellen im Süden des Landes anzuzünden. Lediglich neun Bohrtürme konnten Saboteure in Brand setzen, bevor sie die Flucht antraten - kein Vergleich zu dem Inferno, das sie 1991 entfacht hatten.

Brennende Ölfelder hätten nicht nur den Vormarsch der alliierten Bodentruppen erschwert. Die Zerstörung der Ölförderanlagen hätte auch den Wiederaufbau nach dem Krieg merklich verlangsamt. Deshalb hatte die Sicherung von Bohrtürmen und Ölleitungen durch alliierte Truppen höchste Priorität.

Dennoch dürfte der große Geldsegen nach der Wiederaufnahme der irakischen Produktion noch lange auf sich warten lassen. Ein erster Augenschein genügte den Experten, um festzustellen, welche Arbeit noch auf zukommt. Rostige Leitungen, leckende Ventile und verrottete Steuerungstechnik - kaum ein System auf den Ölfeldern ist noch in brauchbarem Zustand. "Die Infrastruktur ist hoffnungslos veraltet", sagt Energieexperte Herman Franssen vom Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. Jahrelange Sanktionen und dürftige Wartungsarbeiten haben die Industrie dahin siechen lassen. Weil Ersatzteile und Knowhow fehlten, fürchten viele Experten gar, dass die Felder bleibende Schäden erlitten haben.

An Produktionsanlauf ist nicht zu denken

In Rumaila, wo rund 60 Prozent des irakischen Öls gefördert wurden, ist deshalb auch vorerst nicht an ein Anfahren der Produktion zu denken. "Es wird mindestens drei Monate dauern, bevor dort überhaupt wieder gepumpt werden kann", vermutet Brian Burridge, Kommandeur der britischen Truppen im Golf, die das Gebiet im Süden des Landes eingenommen hatten

Damit könnte sich aber auch der Plan der Pentagon-Strategen als Luftbuchung erweisen, dass der Aufbau des Landes nach dem Krieg im Wesentlichen durch das Erölgeschäft finanziert werden kann. Ursprünglich war geplant, die Produktion so schnell wie möglich wieder auf das Niveau vor der irakischen Invasion Kuweits zu bringen, also rund 3,5 Millionen Barrel pro Tag. Danach soll die Produktion so schnell wie möglich weiter gesteigert werden.

Kein Problem, so schien es zunächst, angesichts der gewaltigen Ölvorräte - immerhin verfügt der Irak über die zweitgrößten konventionellen Ölreserven der Welt und förderte davon vor dem Krieg lediglich 2,5 Millionen Barrel täglich, rund zwei Prozent der weltweiten Produktion.

Doch bis allein das erste Etappenziel erreicht ist, braucht es mindestens zwei bis drei Jahre, schätzt Franssen. "Die Produktion könnte zwar schneller wieder hochgefahren werden, doch die Iraker müssen die Anlagen zuerst modernisieren, damit die Reservoire nicht weiter geschädigt werden."

40 Milliarden Dollar Investitionen sind nötig

Zu diesem Ergebnis kommen auch die Experten vom London Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES). Nach ihrer Schätzung dauert es mindestens bis zum Jahr 2005 um einen Ausstoß von 3,5 Millionen Barrel pro Tag zu fördern - doch das sei nur unter optimalen Bedingungen möglich. Um die geplante Tagesproduktion schließlich bis auf fünf Millionen Barrel anzuheben, seien 40 Milliarden Dollar an Investitionen nötig.

Als sicher gilt, dass sich diese Summe keinesfalls aus den Öleinnahmen finanzieren lässt. Denn zunächst sind Ausgaben für Nahrungsmittel, der Aufbau von Gesundheits- und Schulwesen und vieles andere fällig. Die Iraker sind deshalb auf ausländische Partner angewiesen. Exxon und Co stehen bereits in den Startlöchern, argwöhnisch beobachtet von russischen und französischen Öl-Konzernen.

Doch auch für die Öl-Barone könnte sich die Hoffnung auf das große Geschäft unter diesen Bedingungen als trügerisch erweisen. Denn sie werden gezwungen sein, möglichst schnell möglichst viel Öl zu verkaufen, um ihre Investitionen zu amortisieren. Die US-Regierung ebnet dafür bereits den Weg: Die Opec soll dem Irak gestatten, seine Produktion nach Kräften auszuweiten.

Opec in Gefahr

Das könnte jedoch, so befürchtet Opec-Präsident Abdullah al-Attijah, Ölminister von Katar, zu einer Überschwemmung des Marktes und damit zu einem drastischen Preissturz führen. Schlimmer noch: Nach Einschätzung des venezolanischen Vizepräsidenten José Vicente Rangel könnte so das Kräfteverhältnis innerhalb der Opec aus den Fugen geraten.

Es würde die Motivation der anderen Mitgliedsländer, sich an die eigenen Regeln zu halten, empfindlich verringern. Ein neuer Konkurrenzkampf würde entbrennen. Kurzfristige Folge: Mehrproduktion und fallende Preise - das wäre, so die Befürchtung von CGES-Chef Ahmed Saki al-Jamani, das Ende der Organisation.


© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet AG

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Finanziert die Welt das amerikanische Imperium?

Craig Morris 09.04.2003
Die USA könnten aus einem gewonnenen Irak-Krieg eine neue, moderne Art des Kolonialismus entwickeln

Die ersten Vorbereitungen seitens der USA für den Nachkriegsirak lassen keinen Zweifel daran, dass der US-Steuerzahler die Zeche für den Krieg und die Vereinten Nationen das Geld für den Aufbau des Landes zahlen sollen. Auch wenn dieser Schachzug nicht von langer Hand geplant war, stellt er eine Weiterentwicklung der kolonialistischen Idee des "Empire" dar, in dem private Firmen die Profite einstrichen, während der Staat für die Verwaltungskosten aufkam.


Lohnen sich Kolonien? Diese Frage stellten sich unter anderem viele Franzosen, als ihr Reich bereits verfallen war. So hat Mitte der 1960er Jahre Raymond Cartier, Herausgeber von Paris-Match, in einer Artikelserie "Attention! La France dilapide son argent" ("Vorsicht: Frankreich vergeudet sein Geld") argumentiert, dass beispielsweise Schweden und die Schweiz ohne Kolonien offenbar besser dran seien als Frankreich und die Briten mit Kolonien. Andere seiner Landsleute folgten dieser Idee konsequent und riefen dazu auf, nicht in Afrika, sondern im französischen Mutterland zu investieren.

Heute dürfte eher die Meinung von Marc Ferro vorherrschend sei: Das Mutterland habe durchaus von seinen Kolonien profitiert. Der französische Historiker, der den Deutschen vor allem durch die Sendung "Die Woche vor 50 Jahren" bei arte bekannt wurde, fasst in seiner fulminanten "Histoire des colonisations" die Haltung der Briten nach 1960 zusammen, die die Wende vom Kolonialismus zur Globalisierung erfolgreich durchmachten:"Die weltweiten Kolonien mussten nicht mehr im alten politischen System unterhalten werden. Die multinationalen Firmen waren nunmehr in der Lage, es zu ersetzen." Noch deutlicher wird er, wenn er auf die französischen Kolonien zu sprechen kommt: "Sie kosteten den Staat, brachten aber Gewinne für private Firmen ein."

Amerikas "Kolonien"

Die USA haben seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts eine andere Art entwickelt, die Ressourcen in Übersee für sich zu sichern. Aus den Philippinen wurde keine Kolonie im europäischen Sinne und auch kein US-Bundestaat, doch die Bindungen zwischen dem Land und den USA sind sehr eng. Heute dürfen Philippinos sogar im US-Militär dienen. Im Gegenzug nehmen die USA alles aus dem Land, was sie haben wollen:


"The Philippines is rich in natural gas, oil and geothermal supplies. Mindanao has long been exploited for its natural resources by local and overseas power elites. Creating a stable environment for foreign investment - at any social or environmental cost - has been the aim of successive Philippine governments."


Die USA haben also schon lange erkannt, dass man keinen Staat in Übersee - wie in den französischen und britischen Kolonien - aufbauen muss, um an die Reichtümer eines Landes zu kommen. Eine willige einheimische Regierung, die man schmieren kann, genügt. Der europäische Kolonialismus stellte eine Subventionierung der ersten multinationalen Firmen durch den Staat dar. Die Amerikaner haben vor den Briten und Franzosen erkannt, dass man unter bestimmten Umständen auf den kostspieligen Verwaltungsapparat weitgehend verzichten kann. Wenn diese Ausgaben wegfallen, bleiben nur die Einnahmen der Multis.

Die Geburt einer neuen Form der Subventionierung?

Was aber, wenn die einheimische Regierung dem Mutterland nicht mehr genehm ist? Dann muss der Staat doch noch einschreiten. Neben mehr oder weniger subtilen subversiven Eingriffen, so wie die USA sie seit Jahrzehnten in Lateinamerika praktizieren, hat der Golfkrieg 1991 gezeigt, dass man sich einen Krieg zahlen lassen kann:

"In the first Gulf War, about 90% of the $61 billion tab was picked up by U.S. allies, which included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Japan, Germany and South Korea."

Nun könnte es passieren, dass die Welt - vertreten durch die UNO - den Aufbau des Nachkriegsiraks finanzieren wird. Damit würden die einzigen verbliebenen Kosten für imperialistische Eingriffe entfallen, denn es werden weitgehend US-Firmen sein, die die Aufbauarbeit im Nachkriegsirak leisten - und sich zahlen lassen. Erste Anzeichen dafür gibt es bereits. Daneben könnten Ölverträge mit russischen und französischen Firmen neu verhandelt werden, nämlich mit US-Firmen. Wer bezweifelt, dass sich das Geschäft lohnen wird, sollte sich diese Zahlen der Weltbank auf der Zunge zergehen lassen:

BIP der BRD (2001) $ 1,9 Billionen
BIP der USA (2001) $ 9,9 Billionen
Ölreserven im Irak (heute) $ 3.4 Billionen1

Dabei muss die Subventionierung von amerikanischen Firmen durch die Welt gar nicht Teil eines Plans gewesen sein. Schließlich hat sich Europa in dieser Frage auch entzweit, ohne dass diese glückliche Wendung das Kind des Pentagons ist.

Nichts aber könnte dem Pentagon gelegener kommen als eine gespaltene EU, die den USA nicht nur vom Angriffskrieg nicht abhalten kann, sondern auch nicht in der Lage ist, diesen Krieg für völkerrechtswidrig zu erklären. Dabei haben manche Experten des internationalen Rechts keine Probleme, den Angriff auf den Irak als völkerrechtswidrig zu verurteilen. So gab der ehemalige General-Sekretär der UNO, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, dem Sender 3Sat am Wochenende in einem Interview bekannt: "Der Krieg gegen den Irak ist illegal. Er widerspricht der Charta der Vereinten Nationen."

Nun kann die Bush-Regierung nicht nur ohne eine einheitliche Opposition auf Regierungsebene schalten und walten, um an kostbare Ressourcen zu kommen, sondern eventuell auch die Kosten ihres militärischen Eifers an die unwillige Welt abwälzen.


While the American people will end up paying for the war, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and corporations involved in `reconstruction` work will make direct gains from the war.
Arundahti Roy im Guardian

Was ist, wenn es den Vereinigten Staaten nicht nur gelingt, Saddam abzusetzen und eine US-freundliche Regierung, die die Interessen von US-Firmen wahrt, einzusetzen (so wie in Afghanistan), sondern es auch schafft, die Kriegsgegner für die Kriegsschäden zahlen zu lassen? Denn es ist bekannt, dass an ersterem bereits gearbeitet wird. Dann dürften militärische Interventionen erst richtig wirtschaftlich sinnvoll erscheinen. Und da die USA allein im Jahre 2002 ein Handeldefizit von 550 Milliarden Dollar hatten (knapp $2000 pro Kopf), wovon das Erdöl allein fast ein Drittel ausmacht, kann man dem französischen Historiker Emmanuel Todd nur beipflichten: "Es ist zunehmend so, dass die Welt produziert, damit Amerika konsumieren kann."

Heute rufen schon die ersten Stimmen, dass man die UNO beim Aufbau des Iraks einschalten muss, anstatt ihn den USA zu überlassen. Denn Colin Powell hat schon klargemacht:

"We didn`t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant, dominating control over how it unfolds."

Wie kann dabei verhindert werden, dass die Welt die USA für einen Krieg bezahlt, den sie mit überwältigender Mehrheit nicht wollte? Anscheinend nur dann, wenn der Irakkrieg II zu einem Vietnam II fürs US-Militär wird. Dann bleibt die Baath-Partei an der Macht, und keiner baut den Irak wieder auf. Man wünscht sich weder das eine, noch das andere. Aber wo liegt der dritte Weg?

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I`m a registered Democrat; I voted for Clinton in 92 and 96, and for Gore in 2000. I`ve visited your website regularly for as long as it`s been around.

I`m writing to let you know I`m a bit concerned about the tack you`ve recently taken, in which you`ve decided to label a substantial portion of the electorate "Moron-Americans."

You are being reckless when you imply that those who believe "going to war with Iraq was the right thing to do even if the United States fails to turn up biological or chemical weapons" are morons.

While it is true that the administration has given several shifting reasons and goals for the Iraq war, and that some of their evidence has been found false, I think it is still possible for reasonable and intelligent Americans to believe that "going to war with Iraq was the right thing to do." People (like myself) who conclude this, get our information from a wide variety of sources on the internet, not just from the media whores.

It is counterproductive (if your goal is electing Democrats in 2004) to lambaste voters as misinformed and naive; it reveals your frustration, seems vaguely elitist, disdainful and superior, and is bound to alienate some people who might be potential Democratic voters. Frankly, it`s a tactic I`d expect from the Greens, not from the Democrats.

Thanks!
Kerry Tatlow
Rockford, IL

Thanks, Kerry. In this case we referred specifically to that percentage who, at the start of the invasion, said they would not support it if there were no WMDs found - but by virtue of the fact that it is started have changed their "minds" within a matter of days, like dull, lowing, lumbering cows in a herd.

We have said many times that there are some who supported this war from the beginning in good faith. Some even supported it based not on WMD issue but on the possibility of liberating the Iraqi people.

"One right makes a wrong" arguments ("If we liberate Iraq, why not X, Y, Z country?") by themselves are weak. But it was known before the first bombs were dropped that countless civilians would be slaughtered by both American forces and Saddam`s regime the moment the invasion began. Iraq is Bush`s Waco (except in that case, the government was informed by "experts" who judged an invasion would reduce, not increase the likelihood the insane Koresh would slaughter others in the compound).

And it was and is far from clear whether the current catastrophe and the undemocratic regime almost certain to follow are better for the Iraqi people than continuing inspections, lifting sanctions, and other more peaceful means by which some relief from Saddam`s reign of terror could be achieved. We`ll never know, because the thousands dead: Iraqi civilians, conscripted Iraqi soldiers, and US servicemen who would be alive but for the US invasion, can no longer speak for themselves.

So, now that the worst has happened, there is little reason for anyone who supported the war only if WMDs were found to now support it in the event they are not.

It`s true that "Moron-Americans" (coined by the inimitable Gene Lyons) is disdainful. But in what other way can one regard groups who are as irresponsible with their roles as citizens as to change their views with no discernable reason other than following the herd, whose movement is determined by what cable News networks convey they should be thinking that day? Or the many who decided war was justified not because of WMDs or liberation, but because "Iraq was responsible for 9/11" (statistics on that question bode horribly for the future of our country), despite that no such connection exists?

The term is not "elitist." While working Americans lack the time to sift through all of the media lies to the extent necessary to inform themselves of the whole truth, nearly everyone has had enough time to determine that Iraq was not involved in 9/11, and the capacity to determine that wars don`t become just and necessary because they begin.

No, Moron-Americans are something far worse than merely stupid or too time-deprived to learn at least the most basic facts. They willfully lazy, incompetent citizens - the kind once known as "Good Germans." And like their lazy and incompetent counterparts in the media, they represent a serious threat to our American way of life.

http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/

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Force is not enough

George Bush praised the Belfast peace process yesterday, even as he tramples on its lessons across the globe

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday April 9, 2003
The Guardian

So where exactly in Northern Ireland is this summit going to be, asked the White House press corps last Friday. "Dublin," replied Ari Fleischer, press secretary to the US president.
You can forgive Fleischer his error, just as George Bush hardly deserves to be pilloried for referring to "Northern Irelanders" in his press conference with Tony Blair yesterday, following their Belfast summit. Northern Ireland has been off the boil as an international issue and Bush decided early on that it was to be a low priority for his administration. That`s fine: Bill Clinton`s intense involvement in Northern Ireland was always an idiosyncratic interest, and presidents have every right to choose their pet projects.

Less forgivable, though, is Bush`s willingness to talk the honeyed talk about the province`s astonishing achievements since the Good Friday agreement was sealed five years ago tomorrow - "there is such hope here in Northern Ireland that the past can be broken"- without absorbing a single one of its lessons. Yesterday the president seemed smilingly unaware even of the contradiction, unbothered that the approach which has made peace possible in Northern Ireland is the very opposite of the Bush philosophy for the rest of the world. He sang a hymn of praise to the Belfast peace process yesterday, even as he tramples on its teachings across the globe.

So the president seizes on the welcome US and British troops are now receiving in Iraq, as if that augurs an amicable, long-term relationship. His in-flight briefing material should have told him that Northern Ireland`s Catholics welcomed British troops, too, back in 1969 - and look where that led. Ulster`s lesson is that a military presence, no matter how well received initially, is soon resented.

The same goes for Bush and Blair`s breezy promises that Iraqi self-government will come "as swiftly as possible". If the US president had gone for a walkabout outside Hillsborough Castle, he would have found no shortage of "Northern Irelanders" ready to tell him all about interim and transitional arrangements - and how long they can last. When power-sharing collapsed and direct rule was restored in 1974 that too was meant to be only a temporary measure. It lasted until the new Stormont assembly was established 25 years later.

Blair spoke of the "patience and perseverance" that made progress in Northern Ireland possible and Bush paid tribute to him for it, promising to dedicate equal energy to pursuing peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Yet patience is the last quality you would associate with the Bush administration. Time was all Hans Blix and his UN weapons inspectors asked for on the eve of war, claiming they could oversee Iraqi disarmament peacefully in a matter of months. But time was what Washington would not give them; Bush was impatient for action.

How different from Blair`s approach to the disarmament of the IRA. He has been prepared to play the long game, aware that weapons only matter if there is a serious intent or ability to use them. The PM understood that logic when faced with the IRA and yet, on Saddam, the US-UK policy has been disarmament-by-force, even when the evidence pointed to an Iraqi threat already boxed-in and contained.

The British remedy in Northern Ireland was negotiation, albeit with a hated enemy like the IRA. In the Iraq crisis, Bush has not so much as uttered the word. He would not countenance the idea, even though the IRA posed a much more direct threat to British lives and property than Baghdad ever has to the US. What`s more, Washington had a public precedent for talking to Saddam, which is more than London enjoyed with Gerry Adams. Bush`s own father dispatched his secretary of state, James Baker, to talk with Tariq Aziz hours before hostilities began in 1991. So there was no taboo: Washington could have negotiated with Baghdad just as London did with the IRA. Yet talks - praised so warmly by the president yesterday - were never once considered by this Bush White House.

That`s because the US administration has not appreciated one of the critical lessons of the Troubles, a lesson that took Britain a long, painful time to learn: that there can never be a purely military solution to a problem with deep political roots. Hopefully, Washington understands that truth in the case of Iraq - entrenching democracy will require more than cruise missiles - but it shows no sign of realising it in its war on terror.

Instead terror is a phenomenon to be fought solely by hunting down the bad guys - "smokin` `em out," says Bush - and tightening security. Talk of tackling the core causes of terror, the anger and resentment which allow fanatical movements like al-Qaida to take root, is instantly dismissed as European, effeminate and an act of appeasement.

Yet the Good Friday agreement, which Bush endorsed so gushingly yesterday, was built on precisely these premises. British intelligence had long realised that the Northern Irish problem could not be solved by military means alone. The best they could promise was a permanent stalemate, with losses on both sides. Given that the republican movement had a constituency, whose grievances it articulated, that movement could never be eradicated by force. Instead, its cause would have to be addressed.

So that`s what first John Major and then Blair set out to do. They began a process which would hear Catholic complaints - on discrimination, policing and the justice system - and seek to meet them, all the while balancing them with Protestant needs. The heart of the matter was compromise and its reward was the Good Friday agreement.

Where is there a sign that Bush even understands this idea, let alone plans to follow it? Admittedly, his war on terror is much less straightforward than Britain`s conflict with the IRA: the new enemy makes no demands, operating in a netherworld outside conventional politics. But the effort could be there, an attempt to understand not what motivates the killers themselves - they are beyond reach - but the people who give them succour.

The closest Bush gets is his admission that the Palestinians need a state of their own: he realises this single issue does much to feed the anger which keeps Osama bin Laden and his ilk in business. Yet how much, in this area, is Bush prepared to learn the lessons of Northern Ireland? Hardly at all. He has not realised, for example, that progress depends on being seen as even-handed, able to get tough when needed with both sides. In Northern Ireland that meant imposing harsh concessions on both nationalists and Unionists; indeed, things ran into trouble when London or Dublin seemed to be favouring one over the other. Yet Bush for months bowed to Ariel Sharon`s demand that the "roadmap" for peace not be published. It`s still not appeared, just as Sharon requested.

Maybe it was too much to expect the US president to have learned Northern Ireland`s lessons before he came. But now he`s had a visit, perhaps he will benefit from what he saw. The road to peace can go through Belfast, with its unique experience these last 35 years - but first you`ve got to know how to get there.

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Robert Fisk: The dogs were yelping. They knew bombs were on the way
09 April 2003


Day 20 of America`s war for the "liberation" of Iraq was another day of fire, pain and death. It started with an attack by two A-10 jets that danced in the air like acrobats, tipping on one wing, sliding down the sky to turn on another, and spraying burning phosphorus to mislead heat-seeking missiles before turning their cannons on a government ministry and plastering it with depleted uranium shells. The day ended in blood-streaked hospital corridors and with three foreign correspondents dead and five wounded.

The A-10s passed my bedroom window, so close I could see the cockpit Perspex, with their trail of stars dripping from their wingtips, a magical, dangerous performance fit for any air show, however infernal its intent. But when they turned their DU shells – intended for use against heavy armour – against the already wrecked Iraqi Ministry for Planning, the effect was awesome. The A-10`s cannon-fire sounds like heavy wooden furniture being moved in an empty room, a kind of final groan, before the rounds hit their target.

When they did, the red-painted ministry – a gaunt and sinister building beside the Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris that I have always suspected to be an intelligence headquarters – lit up with a thousand red and orange pin-points of light.

From the building came a great and dense cloud of white smoke, much of which must have contained the aerosol DU spray that so many doctors and military veterans fear causes cancers.

At about this time I noticed the tanks on the Jumhuriya Bridge. Two low-slung M1A1 Abrams, one in the centre of the bridge, the other parking itself over the first stanchion. Just another little probing raid, the Americans announced, but it looked much more than that.

I reached the eastern end of the Jumhuriya Bridge – a wide and deserted four-lane highway that soared out across the river, obscuring the American tanks on the other side – an hour and a half later. It looked grimly like that scene in A Bridge Too Far, Richard Attenborough`s epic on the Arnhem disaster, in which a British officer walks slowly up the great span with an umbrella in his hand to see if he can detect the Germans on the other side. But I knew the Americans were on the other side of this bridge and drove past it at great speed.

Which provided a remarkable revelation. While American fighter-bombers criss-crossed the sky, while the ground shook to the sound of exploding ordnance, while the American tanks now stood above the Tigris, vast areas of Baghdad – astonishing when you consider the American claim to be "in the heart" of the city – remain under Saddam Hussein`s control. I drove all the way to Mansur, where relatives of the 11 Iraqi civilians killed in Monday`s massacre of civilians – the Americans used four 2,000lb bombs to dismember the mainly Christian families in the vain hope of killing President Saddam – still waited to retrieve the last of their dead.

On my way back past the Ahrar Bridge, I found a crowd of spectators standing on the parapet, watching the American tanks with a mixture of amusement and fear. Did they not know what was happening in their city, or – an idea that has possessed me in recent days – are the poor of Baghdad kept in such ignorance of events that they simply do not realise that the Americans are about to occupy their city? Could it be that the cigarette sellers and the bakery queues and the bus drivers just don`t know what lies down on the banks of the Tigris?

As I arrived back at the Palestine Hotel, I saw the smoke of the shell that the Americans had just fired into the Reuters office. It was to take two lives, in addition to the reporter from the Arab al-Jazeera satellite channel killed a few hours earlier by an American air attack on his office. Despite two separate assurances from the American government that al-Jazeera`s base of operations would not be targeted, it was destroyed.

Just an hour later, one of the tanks on the Jumhuriya Bridge fired a shell into the wreckage. Eighteen civilians – 15 of them women – were reported to be still hiding in the basement last night with no immediate hope of rescue.

The International Red Cross had tried to arrange a convoy out of Baghdad; inexplicably, it was reported that the Americans had refused it passage from the city.

At one point, Red Cross workers hoped to take a severely wounded Spanish television reporter with them – his leg had been amputated after the tank shell exploded below his office in the hotel – but he died during the afternoon. The American infantry divisional commander issued a statement that suggested the Reuters cameramen were sniping at the US tank, a remark so extraordinary – and so untrue – that it brought worldwide protests from journalists.

I don`t know what it is about the street dogs of Baghdad, but they always know when the bombers are returning. Is there some change in air pressure, some high technological decibel that we humans can`t hear?

The dogs always get it right. Every time they start baying, you know that the bombers are coming back. And they yelped and barked as night fell last night. And within 15 minutes, even we humans could hear the rumble of explosions from southern Baghdad.
9 April 2003 10:12

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Heute 2 Fisk Kommentare.

Robert Fisk: Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists?
09 April 2003


First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain`s Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.

Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings – the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank – was murder? These were not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by American troops in southern Iraq, who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle. His crew are still missing. Michael Kelly of The Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two journalists have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists – a German and a Spaniard – were killed on Monday night at a US base in Baghdad, with two Americans, when an Iraqi missile exploded amid them.

And we should not forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by the hundred and who – unlike their journalist guests – cannot leave the war and fly home. So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the Americans, they make it look very like murder.

The US jet turned to rocket al-Jazeera`s office on the banks of the Tigris at 7.45am local time yesterday. The television station`s chief correspondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian-Palestinian, was on the roof with his second cameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir, reporting a pitched battle near the bureau between American and Iraqi troops. Mr Ayoub`s colleague Maher Abdullah recalled afterwards that both men saw the plane fire the rocket as it swooped toward their building, which is close to the Jumhuriya Bridge upon which two American tanks had just appeared.

"On the screen, there was this battle and we could see bullets flying and then we heard the aircraft," Mr Abdullah said.

"The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof – that`s how close it was. We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit – the missile actually exploded against our electrical generator. Tariq died almost at once. Zuheir was injured."

Now for America`s problems in explaining this little saga. Back in 2001, the United States fired a cruise missile at al-Jazeera`s office in Kabul – from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the world. No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night before the city`s "liberation"; the Kabul correspondent, Taiseer Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Mr Alouni was in the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the USAF`s second attack on al-Jazeera.

Far more disturbing, however, is the fact that the al-Jazeera network – the freest Arab television station, which has incurred the fury of both the Americans and the Iraqi authorities for its live coverage of the war – gave the Pentagon the co-ordinates of its Baghdad office two months ago and received assurances that the bureau would not be attacked.

Then on Monday, the US State Department`s spokesman in Doha, an Arab-American called Nabil Khouri, visited al-Jazeera`s offices in the city and, according to a source within the Qatari satellite channel, repeated the Pentagon`s assurances. Within 24 hours, the Americans had fired their missile into the Baghdad office.

The next assault, on Reuters, came just before midday when an Abrams tank on the Jamhuriya Bridge suddenly pointed its gun barrel towards the Palestine Hotel where more than 200 foreign journalists are staying to cover the war from the Iraqi side. Sky Television`s David Chater noticed the barrel moving. The French television channel France 3 had a crew in a neighbouring room and videotaped the tank on the bridge. The tape shows a bubble of fire emerging from the barrel, the sound of a detonation and then pieces of paintwork falling past the camera as it vibrates with the impact.

In the Reuters bureau on the 15th floor, the shell exploded amid the staff. It mortally wounded a Ukrainian cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, who was also filming the tanks, and seriously wounded another member of the staff, Paul Pasquale from Britain, and two other journalists, including Reuters` Lebanese-Palestinian reporter Samia Nakhoul. On the next floor, Tele 5`s cameraman Jose Couso was badly hurt. Mr Protsyuk died shortly afterwards. His camera and its tripod were left in the office, which was swamped with the crew`s blood. Mr Couso had a leg amputated but he died half an hour after the operation.

The Americans responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward lie. General Buford Blount of the US 3rd Infantry Division – whose tanks were on the bridge – announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased. The general`s statement, however, was untrue.

I was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the shell was fired – and heard no shooting. The French videotape of the attack runs for more than four minutes and records absolute silence before the tank`s armament is fired. And there were no snipers in the building. Indeed, the dozens of journalists and crews living there – myself included – have watched like hawks to make sure that no armed men should ever use the hotel as an assault point.

This is, one should add, the same General Blount who boasted just over a month ago that his crews would be using depleted uranium munitions – the kind many believe to be responsible for an explosion of cancers after the 1991 Gulf War – in their tanks. For General Blount to suggest, as he clearly does, that the Reuters camera crew was in some way involved in shooting at Americans merely turns a meretricious statement into a libellous one.

Again, we should remember that three dead and five wounded journalists do not constitute a massacre – let alone the equivalence of the hundreds of civilians being maimed by the invasion force. And it is a truth that needs to be remembered that the Iraqi regime has killed a few journalists of its own over the years, with tens of thousands of its own people. But something very dangerous appeared to be getting loose yesterday. General Blount`s explanation was the kind employed by the Israelis after they have killed the innocent. Is there therefore some message that we reporters are supposed to learn from all this? Is there some element in the American military that has come to hate the press and wants to take out journalists based in Baghdad, to hurt those whom our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has maliciously claimed to be working "behind enemy lines". Could it be that this claim – that international correspondents are in effect collaborating with Mr Blunkett`s enemy (most Britons having never supported this war in the first place) – is turning into some kind of a death sentence?

I knew Mr Ayoub. I have broadcast during the war from the rooftop on which he died. I told him then how easy a target his Baghdad office would make if the Americans wanted to destroy its coverage – seen across the Arab world – of civilian victims of the bombing. Mr Protsyuk of Reuters often shared the Palestine Hotel`s elevator with me. Samia Nakhoul, who is 42, has been a friend and colleague since the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. She is married to the Financial Times correspondent David Gardner.

Yesterday afternoon, she lay covered in blood in a Baghdad hospital. And General Blount dared to imply that this innocent woman and her brave colleagues were snipers. What, I wonder, does this tell us about the war in Iraq?

`The American forces knew exactly what this hotel is`

The Sky News correspondent David Chater was in the Palestine Hotel when the hotel was hit by American tank fire. This is his account of what happened.

"I was about to go out on to the balcony when there was a huge explosion, then shouts and screams from people along our corridor. They were shouting, `Somebody`s been hit. Can somebody find a doctor?` They were saying they could see blood and bone.

"There were a lot of French journalists screaming, `Get a doctor, get a doctor`. There was a great sense of panic because these walls are very thin. "We saw the tanks up on the bridge. They started firing across the bank. The shells were landing either side of us at what we thought were military targets. Then we were hit. We are in the middle of a tank battle.

"I don`t understand why they were doing that. There was no fire coming out of this hotel – everyone knows it`s full of journalists.

"Everybody is putting on flak jackets. Everybody is running for cover. We now feel extremely vulnerable and we are now going to say goodbye to you." The line was cut but minutes later Chater resumed his report, saying journalists had been watching American forces from their balconies and the troops had surely been aware of their presence.

"They knew exactly what this hotel is. They know the press corps is here. I don`t know why they are trying to target journalists. There are awful scenes around me. There`s a Reuters tent just a few yards away from me where people are in tears. It makes you realise how vulnerable you are. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to carry on if American shells are targeting Western journalists?"
9 April 2003 10:15


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Haben wir uns gut unter halten wie Lawrence?

April 9, 2003
Dances With Wolfowitz
By MAUREEN DOWD


ASHINGTON

There is an unforgettable scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" when an agonized Lawrence resists as a British commander in Cairo presses him to return to the desert to lead the Arabs revolting against the Ottoman Turks.

Lawrence: "I killed two people. One was yesterday. He was just a boy, and I led him into quicksand. The other was . . . well . . . before Aqaba. I had to execute him with my pistol, and there was something about it that I didn`t like."

General Allenby: "That`s to be expected."

Lawrence: "No, something else."

General Allenby: "Well, then let it be a lesson."

Lawrence: "No . . . something else."

General Allenby: "What then?"

Lawrence: "I enjoyed it."

We were always going to win the war with Iraq. We were always going to get to some triumphant moment, like the great one on Fox at 1:30 a.m. Eastern time on Monday morning, when two G.I.`s from Georgia held up a University of Georgia bulldog flag in front of Saddam`s presidential palace in Baghdad, and others mischievously headed upstairs to try out Saddam`s gold fixtures in the master bathroom.

The big question about the war was, How much blood could Americans bear?

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were determined to lead America out of its post-Vietnam, post-Mogadishu queasiness with force and casualties, to change the culture to accept war as a more natural part of a superpower`s role in the world.

Their strategy might be described as Black Hawk Up.

Mr. Cheney`s war guru, Victor Davis Hanson, writes in his book "An Autumn of War" that war can be good, and that sometimes nations are better off using devastation than suasion. Mr. Hanson cites Sherman`s march through Georgia, the 19th century`s great instance of shock and awe, as a positive role model.

Polls and interviews show that in their goal of making Americans less rattled by battle, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney have succeeded: most Americans are showing a stoic attitude about the dead and the wounded so far.

(Perhaps the American tolerance for pain is owed to the fact that much of the pain is not shown on television, embeddedness notwithstanding.)

Wolfowitz of Arabia and the other administration hawks are thrilled with U.S. hawkishness. When Mr. Wolfowitz was on "Meet the Press" on Sunday his aides sat in the green room watching the monitor and high-fiving their boss`s performance.

As American forces made their first armored thrusts into Baghdad, visions of a JDAM strike on Damascus danced in the hawks` heads.

The former C.I.A. director James Woolsey, a Wolfie pal and a prospective administrator in occupied Iraq, bluntly told U.C.L.A. students last week that to reshape the Middle East, the U.S. would have to spend years and maybe decades waging World War IV. (He counted the cold war as World War III.)

He identified America`s enemies as the Islamist Shia who run Iran, the Iranian-supported Hezbollah, the fascist Baathists in Iraq and Syria, and the Islamist Sunnis who run Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups.

Mr. Wolfowitz, however, played the diplomat on Sunday, gliding past Tim Russert`s probing on whether the neo-cons` dreams of other campaigns in Syria, Iran and North Korea would come true. Pressed, he said, "There`s got to be change in Syria as well."

And the Times`s David Sanger reported that when a Bush aide stepped into the Oval Office recently to tell the president that the hard-boiled Rummy had also been shaking a fist at Syria, Mr. Bush smiled and said one word: "Good."

The administration already sounds as triumphalist as Lawrence at his giddiest. Today`s satirical Onion headline reads: "Bush Subconsciously Sizes Up Spain for Invasion."

The success of this war should not leave us infatuated with war. Americans` tolerance for these casualties should not be mistaken for a willingness to absorb endless American sacrifice on endless battlefields.

Victory in Iraq will be a truly historic event, but it will be exceedingly weird and dangerous if this administration turns America into Sparta.

There remains the unfinished business of Osama bin Laden. But the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom should not mark the beginning of Operation Eternal War.







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April 9, 2003
In Search of Horror Weapons

As allied forces seize control of more Iraqi real estate every day, one of the great questions still to be answered is whether Saddam Hussein has the unconventional weapons that were cited as the prime reason for launching the invasion. Most Western analysts believe that Mr. Hussein has at least some chemical and biological arms. Otherwise, they reason, he could have headed off the invasion by showing that he had destroyed his previously known chemical and biological stocks. Yet if Iraq does have chemical weapons, Mr. Hussein has shown remarkable restraint by not using them even as his government heads for certain destruction. Solving this mystery requires urgent, neutral investigation once the allies gain full control of Iraq and can mount a sustained search.

American forces, encumbered in bulky protective suits, believed that there was a strong possibility of chemical attacks. While nothing like that has yet materialized, it is possible that the invading forces disrupted control of the weapons or moved too fast for the Iraqis to launch a chemical attack. Perhaps American threats to prosecute Iraqi commanders for war crimes deterred their use, or Mr. Hussein was loath to tarnish his bid for world opinion by resorting to weapons he claimed not to have, especially since they were unlikely to turn back the invaders in any case.

But it is also possible that Iraq simply has far fewer horror weapons than many have suspected. Some analysts are now wondering whether Mr. Hussein kept only small quantities of forbidden materials because he presumed that his well-trained scientists and existing manufacturing capacity could be geared up after the United Nations` scrutiny eased off.

Almost every day brings new reports that advancing troops have found indications of chemical weapons, but the evidence has been mostly small-scale and circumstantial: gas masks, protective suits, nerve gas antidotes, training manuals, a few barrels of suspicious chemicals, a cache of shells that look as if they are designed to be filled with chemicals. No actual chemical weapons have been clearly identified yet, and there is no conclusive proof that any suspicious chemicals are warfare agents and not pesticides. That judgment could change in the blink of a laboratory technician`s eye. Then the issue would become whether Iraq had significant quantities of lethal materials and the means to deliver them.

In making the case for the invasion, the administration suggested that Iraq`s arsenal might be quite large: up to 500 tons of nerve and mustard agents, and 30,000 munitions capable of delivering them; materials to produce 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; and mobile or underground laboratories to make germ weapons. If so, it should be possible to find them with the help of Iraqi scientists and officers. But for any findings to be credible in the battle for global opinion, neutral analysts — from the United Nations or technically proficient nations like Finland or Switzerland — will be needed to verify the laboratory results and ensure a strict chain of custody to avoid charges of tampering with the evidence.



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Wenn die Amis nächstes Jahr Bush in die Wüste schicken, dann werden überall unfertige Baustellen sein. Man kann nur hoffen, dass der nächste Präsident die Kraft hat Lösungen anzubieten.
J.

washingtonpost.com
Facing the Warlords

Wednesday, April 9, 2003;
AFGHAN MILITANTS loyal to the former Taliban government and al Qaeda have begun their long-expected spring offensive against the country`s new regime and the U.S. forces supporting it -- and by some measures, they are winning. In the past couple of weeks the insurgents have staged attacks that have killed two American soldiers, a close political ally of pro-Western President Hamid Karzai and a Red Cross aid worker. In response, a number of international agencies have removed their personnel from the southern city of Kandahar and the surrounding provinces, which are the Taliban`s base. The insurgents haven`t yet posed much of a military threat to the 11,000 U.S. and allied troops still in Afghanistan, or to Mr. Karzai`s administration in Kabul. But the offensive has demonstrated that little else in Afghanistan has been secured in the 18 months since the Taliban and its terrorist allies were driven from power.

Seen from a complacent Washington, Afghanistan still may look better than it did before the U.S. intervention. But experts following the country say they worry about a steady unraveling, much like that which preceded the Taliban`s seizure of power in the mid-1990s. The symptoms are similar: Outside the capital, warlords and bandits rule the country, sometimes battling each other and regularly robbing their fellow citizens at highway checkpoints. At the borders, aid shipments and "customs collections" on imported goods are diverted to the warlords, depriving the central government of resources and revenue. The opium trade is booming. In some places, the Taliban`s extreme practices, including the persecution of women, have been reimposed.

All of these phenomena have flourished in a vacuum knowingly created by the Bush administration, which refused to support the deployment of peacekeeping forces outside Kabul. Rather than disarm and disable the warlords, U.S. commanders continue to depend on them and even to finance some of them. The relationships help provide security for U.S. forces and support in some combat operations, but they also make it impossible to end the lawlessness in the countryside or extend the authority of Mr. Karzai`s government. The new Afghan army that administration officials touted as an alternative to foreign peacekeepers remains years away from becoming a meaningful force. Meanwhile, few significant reconstruction projects have begun, partly because of security problems and partly because foreign donors have been slow to deliver on their promises.

With its focus on Iraq, the White House appears to be virtually ignoring Afghanistan`s slow deterioration -- its former point man on the subject, Zalmay Khalilzad, has spent the past few months brokering deals with Iraqi exiles and Turkey. Yet only the Bush administration has the ability to reverse the country`s negative momentum. It is already fighting the resurgent Taliban, so far with limited results; but it needs to develop, at last, an effective strategy for neutralizing warlords and investing Mr. Karzai`s administration with real authority. One solution would be the extension of peacekeeping from Kabul to other parts of the country, perhaps in cooperation with the NATO alliance. Failing that, U.S. commanders could at least break their own bonds with the warlords. Those bonds were created in the days after 9/11 as a way of pacifying Afghanistan on the cheap. Now they are beginning to exact an unacceptable cost.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Return of an Iraqi Exile


By Jim Hoagland

Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page A21


You are hearing a lot about Ahmed Chalabi right now. Much of it is not true. Worse, you are not hearing what you need to know about a man who is neither an Iraqi puppet for U.S. forces nor a conniving political fortune hunter taking the Bush administration for a ride.

Who is Chalabi? The antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-change-in-Iraq crowd spreads the puppet version to smear this Iraqi exile leader, while State Department and CIA senior officials peddle the fortune-hunter image. Both groups use Chalabi as a dartboard to serve their own interests or those of their Arab clients. Their objections reveal more about their politics than his.

Like Iraq itself, Chalabi has learned in a lifetime of fighting Saddam Hussein from abroad to keep things hidden. We have known each other for 30 of his 58 years. But it was only two years ago that I fully understood why he had given up a banker`s fortune, a life of academic achievement and material comfort and precious time with children he manifestly adores to oppose the Iraqi dictator in his every waking moment.

His sister had just died. A distraught Chalabi was preparing to leave London to arrange for her burial in the Syrian capital of Damascus. "This is the worst part," he said over the telephone. "I have to bury one more member of my family outside our country. I have buried my parents and my brother outside Iraq already. When will I bring them home?"

Chalabi was much closer to achieving that goal yesterday when I reached him by satellite telephone in Nasiriya. He and at least 700 members of the Free Iraqi Forces being trained by the U.S. military were flown over the weekend from northern Iraq into that southern city, which is inhabited largely by Iraqis who follow the Shiite branch of Islam -- as does Chalabi.

His religion is important both to the U.S. troops trying to work with Shiite clerics to calm the population in the south and to his critics in the State Department, who identify American interests with the authoritarian Sunni elites who run the Arab world. When you hear Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage maligning Chalabi, you hear the institutional voices of Saudi Arabia and Egypt speaking through him.

Chalabi was too busy yesterday to worry about the ugly polemics and race for influence that the impending collapse of Iraq`s dictatorship has sparked in Washington. He had just returned from the town of Suq ash-Shuyukh, where seven civilians had been killed or wounded by U.S. forces in a "fog of war" incident.

"We were able to work out problems both sides felt they had in this tragedy," said Chalabi, who went on in exasperation: "This could have been avoided. It was a result of lack of knowledge by the U.S. soldiers about the region. We are here to participate in joint operations that will free and protect Iraqis, not to be anybody`s puppets."

Like exiles and oppressed people everywhere, Chalabi has been forced to take support for his cause wherever he could find it. He worked closely with the shah of Iran in the 1970s to spark a rebellion against Baghdad, and with the CIA and the Clinton administration in the 1990s, until they too abandoned him.

Today it is Vice President Cheney, some Pentagon planners and neoconservative intellectuals (among others) who have absorbed his analysis of Iraq. That fact is offered as prima facie evidence that Chalabi is their creation and must be stopped. But that is the kind of guilt-by-association politics that Cheney once practiced in denouncing Nelson Mandela`s African National Congress because it took support from Moscow and Moammar Gaddafi when American help was not available.

Such character assassination by remote control was wrong when practiced by the political right. It is no less wrong now for having been taken up by the left, by ex-Clintonites who fought Chalabi when he sought their help, and by those with personal or ideological scores to settle against Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle. The attempt to get at them -- and ultimately at Bush`s presidency -- by libeling Chalabi sets a new low in the stinking mess known as Washington politics.

This former math professor takes more pride in the doctorate his daughter Tamara has just received from Harvard than in any of his own accomplishments. He will be nobody`s puppet. I doubt he will agree to serve in the Iraqi Interim Authority that will be created by a U.S. military government he has sought to prevent.

Chalabi has a more pressing, more personal agenda in liberated Iraq. He first has to find burial plots for his family.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Schuld sind immer die anderen

washingtonpost.com
Playing Russian Roulette


By Anne Applebaum

Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page A21


A few days before the United States invaded Iraq, two retired Russian generals received medals from Saddam Hussein`s defense minister. Both men had worked, in the past, at the highest levels of the Soviet military establishment. Both were involved in the 1991 coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev and the 1993 revolt against Boris Yeltsin. One of them, Igor Maltsev, was a specialist in air defense. The other, Vladislav Achalov, was a specialist in the use of special forces. When asked by a Russian reporter what he had been doing in Baghdad -- photographs of the ceremony appeared on a Russian Web site -- Achalov refused to say. Instead, he replied cryptically that "if they`re awarding you a decoration, it must be for something."

And what was that something? According to the most straightforward account, they were helping to plan the defense of Iraq. According to the conspiratorial version, their appearance in Baghdad signifies the revival of the ancient rivalry between the KGB, Putin`s old stomping ground, and the GRU, Russian military intelligence. Never mind: What matters is that the incident fits a pattern. For the past year, rumors of Russian military sales to the Iraqis have swirled around Washington. More recently, the Pentagon has confirmed them, angrily accusing Russian companies of supplying the Iraqis with everything from night-vision goggles to missiles to jamming devices. An apparent American attack on a convoy of Russian diplomats looks, according to the Moscow media, like an act of revenge. Condi Rice flew to Moscow on Monday to make up -- but on Tuesday, the Russians invited the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to St. Petersburg for a meeting of the axis of obstruction.

We have, in other words, moved into a new phase of an old cycle. Since that moment in the summer of 2001 when George W. Bush looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and got a "sense of his soul," the Russian-American relationship has already come full circle. Once, we all loved Gorbachev. Then, after his troops fired on Lithuanian protesters, we all hated Gorbachev. Later, we all loved Yeltsin. Then, when he unleashed a tidal wave of economic corruption, we all hated Yeltsin. I had thought, after the manic-depressive Yeltsin years, that the American hate-love-hate relationship with Russian leaders would end, but I was wrong: President Bush fell in love with President Putin and is now falling out of love with him with stunning predictability.

It would be funny, in fact, if it weren`t so serious. American leaders in general, and this administration in particular, talk a great deal about "American values," yet they persist in believing that it is possible to develop deep, meaningful, strategic partnerships with countries that do not share them. Russia does, it is true, share some of our interests. Putin took a bold and unexpected decision after Sept. 11, 2001, to ally himself with the United States in the war on terrorism. He does seem genuinely interested in injecting more entrepreneurial capitalism into Russia`s oligarchic economy. But he still rules over a country whose rogue retired generals sell military advice to Saddam Hussein, whose scientists sell nuclear technology to Iran, and whose army is running one of the world`s dirtiest wars in Chechnya. He hasn`t shown much interest in free media or open debate, either. Both are slowly vanishing as a result.

None of which is to say that we shouldn`t cooperate with Russia, or that we shouldn`t talk and trade and even fight al Qaeda with Russia. But (although bombing their diplomats would seem a touch extreme) it is to say that we need to maintain some distance from Russia. Just a few months ago, there was talk, around Washington, of replacing our traditional European NATO alliances with a new, Eurasian, anti-terrorist alliance featuring Turkey, Russia and India. Then Turkey dropped out of the war with Iraq, India turned skeptical and Russia -- or some Russians, at least -- appear to have actually backed the other side.

Although it is unfashionable to say so at the moment, our relationships with Russia and Turkey are clearly not going to replace our relationships with Europe anytime soon. The web of relationships America maintains with Britain -- and ultimately even with Germany and France -- is far more complex, and runs far deeper into our societies, than does Bush`s personal relationship with Putin. At the end of the day, Washington has more in common with London, Paris, Rome and Warsaw than it does with Moscow, and sooner or later that commonality will always be reflected in foreign policy.

I hope it won`t be that way forever. I hope the changes in Russia continue to pull the Russians closer to the West and continue to open up Russian society, for the sake of the Russians more than anything else. But we aren`t there yet, and until we are it`s better not to drop allies who share our values and swear eternal friendship with Russian leaders who don`t, and won`t, really see the world the way we do.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

[optimalisty]

Braver Kopierer,brav
Deinem Aufwand stehen etwas wenig Leser gegenüber,gell

[CheapThrill]

#900: Hauptsache dumm rausgelabert, oder ?

ich schätze diesen Thread sehr, weil er vorwiegend englishsprachige
Quellen zitiert und schaue auch mehrmals täglich rein.

Mittlerweile hab ich den Link hierher auch meinen Kumpels in
den States gemailt und keiner hat sich bisher drüber beschwert.
Im Gegenteil.

So, jetzt verkrümel Dich wieder und halt wieder Ausschau nach
runden Posting-Nummern, scheint ja Dein zentrales Anliegen zu
sein.
Leute gibt´s

[Joerver]

und wenn es nur 1 Leser am Tag wäre, reicht es mir, weil ich die Artikel selbst lese, da sie mich interessieren. Ich brauche dies nicht als Onaniervorlage, um mein Selbstwertgefühl aufzubauen.
J.

[Joerver]

Danke CT. Zustimmung freut jeden.
J.

[CheapThrill]

Gern geschehen

[Joerver]

George and Mammon and Hector

By: W. Campbell - 04/07/03


Commerce Secretary Don Evans, “a close friend who talks with Bush every day,” tells us Junior “believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time.” ( USA Today, April 2, 2003) Ah, huh. Richard Brookhiser (The Atlantic, April 2003) quotes a former Bush aid to the effect that when Dubya says “‘I’ll pray on this, it is not a figure of speech.’’’ (p.63)


Good grief!

For someone who named Jesus his favorite philosopher, one is bound to wonder who is it this little mummer thinks he is addressing when he looks into the deepest part of himself, where the Holy Spirit is supposed to dwell. The God about whom my Lutheran mother taught me would not have anyone mock a woman on her way to execution. That God would not have anyone shirk the duty governors have to prisoners on death row to review the fairness of their sentences . S/He would not have anyone hide in the Texas National Guard, going AWOL from even those responsibilities to which he pledged to avoid service in Vietnam. Nor would that God have anyone lie to the world by adducing bogus documents, though they be British, to warrant a war already decided upon, come what may.

The Son of the God I know had something to say about the eye of a needle, camels, rich men and heaven. He would not think it seemly for one calmly to bed having dispensed filthy lucre from the public purse to grasping clutches gathered in groups like the Carlyle Group, Halliburton and Trireme, leaving aside the poor and cutting benefits for veterans.

No one could look to my God for support in risking the lives and livelihood of men and women in a war the Pope has pronounced unjust and one’s intellect and heart abjures; in a war whose plan gobs of generals have pronounced flawed---fatally for the virtually impressed infantry. Could my God urge anyone to support Israel’s slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinians (the Son of the God I know was sent to wean the Israelites from their murderous, arrogant past), botch any prospect for peace in the Middle East, and toss American prosperity into the porcelain fixture for decades?

Me thinks George is not in touch with the God of my mom. Mammon, more likely. The Commander-in-Chief is an avaricious, vainglorious liar who has wrapped himself in Oxxford suits and the flag in an effort to convince us his deeds issue from a more distinguished source than his own warped interior. I believe in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Great Pumpkin. I do not believe in George W. Bush. He is nothing more than an undeserving but rich, lucky drunk whom a five member reactionary cabal on the Supreme Court decided to appoint our chief executive.

Evans avers that his master has a history degree from Yale and, therefore?, “knows he is making ’history-changing decisions’.’’ Rumsfeld insists Junior ‘’’thinks things through, but when he makes a decision, he makes it, and doesn’t go back and worry about it’.” (USA Today, ibid.) Sweet Jesus. That sounds like both these guys were trained at the Reagan School of ‘Tweren’t My Fault, I Delegate and Forget’ Management.

Is it reassuring to know that, having set a course that makes a good part of the world’s population furious with us and lagers a brew that for years to come will produce terrorists by the scores (families in the Middle East are extended and killing one family member can motivate dozens of relatives to take revenge for that, ah, extra-legal killing), Dubya will stay the tortured course he and his retainers have put us upon!? Having made ordinary Americans the soft targets terrorists will strike as they react to this antic campaign for a “new world order,” they have now cooked up a strategy to “protect us”---and to savage all those rights, those niceties, Scalia has recently pronounced nonessential to the Constitution anyway.

George may be Hector to his neocon Trojans. Nevertheless, hectoring (the hallmark of a frail mind trying to express itself forcefully) to his end, Bush will be stalked by his Achilles. The lies central to his persona will be separated from his substance as Achilles hacked away the members of Hector’s trunk, to honor Petroclus. Try as he might by stealth and executive order to hide the record of Reagan, his father and himself, Junior must be exposed as the falangist fraud he is.

Our job as citizens of these United States of America is to do just that. Foregoing criticism of a rogue president, especially in times of undeclared war, does not honor those who submitted to the Bush order to fight in Iraq to protect our freedoms at home.


W. Campbell is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant

http://fp.enter.net/~haney/wc040703.htm

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Tödliche Schüsse auf Hotel

Journalistenverband wirft USA Kriegsverbrechen vor

Die tödlichen Schüsse eines US-Panzers auf Journalisten in einem Bagdader Hotel haben international ein wütendes Echo ausgelöst. Politiker, Gewerkschaften und Journalistenverbände forderten eine Untersuchung. Die Internationale Journalistenföderation sprach gar von Kriegsverbrechen der USA.

Berlin - Nach dem Beschuss des vor allem von Journalisten genutzten Bagdader Hotels Palestine werden schwere Vorwürfe gegen die US-Streitkräfte laut: Es liege im Interesse der USA, dass Journalisten nur das berichten, was die Amerikaner vorgeben, sagte Gustl Glattfelder, Vorstandsmitglied des Deutschen Journalistenverbandes (DJV) im DeutschlandRadio Berlin. Deshalb hätten die US-Soldaten die westlichen Journalisten absichtlich attackiert.

Glattfelder, der auch Vizepräsident der Internationalen Journalistenföderation (IJF) ist, gab zwar zu, dass Tod ein Berufsrisiko von Kriegsberichterstattern sei, sagte aber: "Das Risiko muss kalkulierbar bleiben, dass bei einem Krieg, an dem eine zivilisierte Macht wie die USA beteiligt ist, klar erkennbare Journalistenfahrzeuge und Gebäude nicht attackiert werden." Beim dem Beschuss des Journalisten-Hotels Palestine und des arabischen Senders al-Dschasira waren am Dienstag drei Medienvertreter getötet und vier weitere verletzt worden.

BBC: Vom Hotel aus keine Schüsse zu hören

Die britische BBC äußerte Zweifel an der Version des US-Militärs, ein Panzer sei von dem Hotel aus beschossen worden und habe deshalb mit einer Granate geantwortet. Nach Angaben des Korrespondenten Rageh Omar, der sich laut BBC zur Zeit des Angriffs in dem Hotel aufhielt, sind auf Videoaufnahmen der BBC und eines französischen Filmteams in den 20 bis 30 Minuten vor der Explosion keine Schüsse aus Richtung des Hotels zu hören.

Kerstin Müller (Grüne), Staatsministerin im Auswärtigen Amt, forderte eine Untersuchung der Vorfälle in Bagdad. Die Journalisten wüssten natürlich um die Gefahr ihrer Arbeit im Irak, sagte Müller im Deutschlandfunk. "Aber trotzdem sollten solche Vorgänge auf jeden Fall untersucht werden", denn sowohl das Hotel Palestine als auch der Standort von al-Dschasira seien dem amerikanischen Militär bekannt gewesen.

Spanien verlangt Erklärung Washingtons

Der Beschuss des Hotels sorgt mittlerweile auch in der internationalen Politik für Wirbel. Spanien verlangte einem Bericht der BBC zufolge eine Erklärung von Washington. Die griechische Regierung habe den Vorfall verurteilt und betont, sie werde die USA aufrufen, die Sicherheit von Journalisten zu garantieren.

Die Internationale Journalistenföderation (IJF), die nach eigenen Angaben rund 450.000 Berichterstatter in 100 Ländern vertritt, bezeichnete die "Angriffe auf Journalisten im Irak" als "Kriegsverbrechen, die bestraft werden müssen". Die Organisation forderte eine unabhängige internationale Untersuchung der Schüsse auf das Hotel und der Bombardierung des Bagdader Büros der arabischen Fernsehsender al-Dschasira und Abu Dhabi TV.

"Zweifellos könnten diese Attacken Journalisten zum Ziel gehabt haben", sagte IJF-Generalsekretär Aidan White. "Die Bombardierung von Journalistenhotels und arabischen Medien sind besonders schockierend in einem Krieg, der im Namen der Demokratie geführt wird. Die Verantwortlichen müssen vor Gericht gestellt werden." Hinter den Angriffen stecke ein "finsteres Muster".

US-Militärs: Bedauern den Tod

US-Brigadegeneral Vincent Brooks bedauerte zwar den Tod der Journalisten. Aber das irakische Regime und der Krieg seien nun einmal Risiken für die Reporter. Abgesehen von den "eingebetteten" Journalisten wüssten US-Soldaten oft nicht, wo auf den Schlachtfeldern Journalisten anzutreffen seien. Man ziele nicht bewusst auf Reporter.

[Joerver]

Nochmal Spiegel 09.04.

Halliburton

Demokraten machen mobil gegen Cheneys Ex-Firma

Die guten Beziehungen zwischen Halliburton und dem Verteidigungsministerium dürften schon bald den US-Kongress beschäftigen. Die beiden demokratischen Kongressabgeordneten Henry Waxman und John Dingell wollen die staatlichen Aufträge für den texanischen Mischkonzern genauer unter die Lupe nehmen lassen.


Washington - Insgesamt hatte der Halliburton-Konzern samt seiner Tochterunternehmen während der vergangenen zwei Jahre Aufträge im Wert von mindestens 600 Millionen Dollar von der US-Regierung erhalten. Erst vor vier Wochen hatte die Halliburton-Tochter Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR) den Auftrag erhalten, brennende Ölquellen im Irak zu löschen. Bei der Ausschreibung gab es weder einen Konkurrenten noch eine Preisbindung.

Waxmann und Dingell werfen nun die Frage auf, ob diese Aufträge durch eine bevorzugte Behandlung von der Bush-Administration zustande gekommen sein könnten, berichtet der Nachrichtensender CNN.

Der texanische Mischkonzern, dessen Vorstandschef bis zum Jahr 2000 US-Vizepräsident Dick Cheney war, verdiente bereits während des Vietnamkriegs durch Aufträge, die KBR zur Errichtung von Flugplätzen erhielt. Seit 1999 spielt der private Militär-Dienstleister auch eine wichtige Rolle bei der Versorgung der US-Truppen auf dem Balkan. Die Kosten, die dort angefallen sind, gaben Dingell und Waxmann jetzt ersten Anlass zum Argwohn. Sie seien durch das General Accounting Office (GAO) bereits selbst in Frage gestellt worden, argumentieren sie. Der Mutterkonzern Halliburton selbst werde überdies wegen Bilanz-Unregelmäßigkeiten aus dem Jahr 1998 von der SEC durchleuchtet.

Eine Sprecherin des US-Vizepräsidenten wies die Vorwürfe zurück. Cheney habe mit der Auftragsvergabe überhaupt nichts zu tun. Alle Verbindungen zu Halliburton, auch die finanziellen wie Aktien und Aktienoptionspläne, seien vor Amtsantritt gekappt worden. Die Halliburton-Tochter KBR sei überdies das einzige Unternehmen gewesen, das für den Fall brennender Ölfelder im Irak schnell und mit ausreichender Mannschaft hätte reagieren können, ergänzte ein Sprecher.

Die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit hatte aber offenbar bereits erste Folgen. Halliburton hatte sich auch für den millionenschweren Auftrag um den Wiederaufbau der Infrastruktur im Irak beworben, der allein US-Firmen vorbehalten ist und von der Agency for International Development vergeben wird. In der Endauswahl ist der texanische Konzern nicht mehr dabei.


© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten

[Joerver]

Napoleon steht kurz vor Los Angeles

Los Angeles dispatch

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Know thine enemies

The American media seem to think the US is at war with France as well as Iraq, writes Duncan Campbell

Tuesday April 8, 2003

I was buying some groceries in a store just after the war in Iraq had started when the man taking my money asked whether or not I thought we were about to come under attack.
I can understand that being a topic of conversation in Basra, but we were in LA - the sun was shining and there were surfers heading for the beach.

I assured him he need not worry, the Iraqis were not about to mount an invasion on California. Yes, he said, but what about the French?

It was only when I was about to tell him that French troops were already making their way south from Quebec and that Napoleon was confident they would be in Long Beach by Easter that I realised he was serious.

There has certainly been a lot of silliness about the French in the media here of late, but I had not realised some people thought the US was at war with them as well as the Iraqis.

So who gave the cashier this idea? Where are we all getting our news on the war from?

The LA Times ran an interesting poll on the subject last week which showed that 69% of those surveyed were turning to cable news - CNN, Fox or MSNBC. This compares with 30% for newspapers, 23% for local television news, 18% for network news and 13% who go online. Radio news got 8% and "family and friends" 2%. (People could list three sources.)

This started to explain things. The French attract almost as much ire from cable news commentators and talk show hosts as Saddam Hussein. If you were quietly flicking between channels and English was not your first language, it would be easy enough to get the impression that the US was indeed at war with France.

I have seen various online petitions from people complaining about the media coverage of the war and there are ritual denunciations of the media at all anti-war rallies. The complaints seem to be directed not at the journalists in the field, who are doing a conscientious and brave job, but at the editorialising of the studio-based hosts and "experts".

Chief complaints centre on the ommission of mention of civilian casualties and the derogatory treatment of the anti-war movement.

Before the war started, I met Ron Kovic at a rally in San Francisco. He is the anti-Vietnam war veteran on whom the film Born on the Fourth of July was based. He must be busy, I suggested, doing the rounds of the television talk shows. He was, after all, a national figure. Not at all, he said, virtually no-one would give him the time of day.

But this is war. What do we expect?

Fox News, for instance, which pulls in a larger audience now that CNN, is owned by Rupert Murdoch and makes no great secret of its conservative bias. The station`s slogan, "fair and balanced", is meant as a knowing joke and not to be taken seriously; I have seen enough "Faux News" T-shirts in the Fox News logo to realise that most people are in on the joke.

Equally, Clear Channel Communications, which owns 1200 radio stations, has been leading the charge by publicising pro-war rallies. It was Clear who, after September 11, advised their stations not to play certain deviant records - such as Imagine, for instance.

Critics of Clear suggest that the gung-ho support will not be unhelpful at a time when the federal communications commission is considering whether to regulate the number of stations one company can own. It may be depressing that one company owns so many stations - six times the number of its nearest rival - but it cannot be a surprise what they do with that power.

If you live in LA, the Bay Area, New York, Washington or Houston, you can, for respite, tune in to one of the Pacifica network radio stations, which for more than 50 years have been broadcasting news from the left. Their war coverage is entitled "Assault on Peace" rather than "Showdown Iraq" and on an average day on my local station, KPFK, you can hear Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky and members of the anti-war movement with a completely different take on the war and items of news not broadcast anywhere else.

My local national public radio station, KCRW, has been covering the war well by swapping between the BBC, CNN and NPR, who often have three varying takes on the same event to report. The station also has a host, Warren Olney, who could teach most television anchors many lessons on how to conduct a debate by allowing people to say their piece without patronising or undermining them.

One of the great long-running myths here is that of a "liberal bias" in the media, a fantasy propagated by a number of undertravelled commentators who haven`t bothered to look up the word in the dictionary. The lesson of the war has been to prove that myth even more laughable and also to show that, if you want to know what is going on, you certainly cannot rely on one source.

But I must stop now, put out the lights and lock the door. Both Fox News and NPR have just announced that Napoleon will be here tomorrow. They say it is a television film starring John Malkovich. But who knows?

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

April 8, 2003

Here Come the Fat Cats
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
By LINDA HEARD

Iraq is being `liberated` while truth is incarcerated. Former BBC reporter Kate Adie warned that non-embedded journalists in Iraq could be Pentagon targets before the war began. She was right. Today, an American tank shell was fired at Baghdad`s Palestine Hotel--temporary home of international reporters and film crews--causing casualties among those who bravely stayed in a war zone so that we could know.

Sky`s David Chater said he saw the tank turn towards the hotel and spew out its deadly load. He wonders how independent reporters (as opposed to embeds) can continue to do their jobs when such danger emanates from their own side. Not from the Iraqi side but from `our boys`.

That`s the whole idea. Those people who are giving the orders to fire upon journalists want them to flee in terror. We must not see the criminal acts yet to be perpetrated against the civilians of Baghdad. We have seen too much already.

The Baghdad office of Al Jazeera, housed in a residential district, was hit too, reminiscent of Kabul. This time a journalist and a cameraman lost their lives. Al Jazeera`s mistake was to have given the Pentagon its coordinates.

A further `accident` on the same day resulted in a Reuters` vehicle being attacked, and another `stray` bomb or missile `coincidentally` destroyed the office of Abu Dhabi television causing severe injuries.

Early on in this war, ITV`s Terry Lloyd was allegedly killed by a U.S. bullet while two of his colleagues went missing following the same incident. The Pentagon tells us that it is still investigating, yet, even while their own employees fall, the Western television networks refuse to condemn this assault on the truth, making excuse after excuse about the `fog of war`.

In a `blue on blue` incident a 25-year-old BBC translator was killed in northern Iraq and a cameraman wounded in the head when a convoy of Kurdish fighters and American special forces was bombed.

But veteran BBC reporter John Simpson, who was slightly injured during the attack, calmly commented that such things happen during conflict, and thanked the Americans travelling with them for their first aid capabilities. How polite! "Your chappie who is probably rattling with `go-pills` (amphetamines) has just killed my friend but, hey, such things happen. Thanks for the bandages, by the way."

From the point of view of the Coalition of two and a bit, who repeat over and over again that `every effort is being made to protect civilians`, what shouldn`t we know?

We should not have learned about soldiers who shoot first and ask questions later, as seven Iraqi women and children found to their cost as well as the drivers and passengers of numerous vehicles, erroneously mistaken for suicide bombers.

We should not be appraised that the Coalition`s boys and girls are dropping cluster bombs and firing Depleted uranium tank shells, without any thought to how much misery these weapons of mass destruction will certainly cause in the future.

We should not have seen the British marines, who when arresting a middle-aged suspect, forced him to the ground and repeatedly yanked off his kuffiyeh (Arab headdress). This was an appalling insult to that man`s dignity and his heritage, done without any respect to the traditions of the people Bush and Blair claim to befriend.

We should not have born witness to the way that prisoners were handcuffed and hooded by this "liberating army". There is a photograph doing the rounds of one of a hooded man cuddling his terrified infant behind coils of barbed wire. One can only wonder what that boy will think of his "liberators" when he grows up.

In Najaf, American soldiers headed towards the golden-domed Imam Ali Mosque, one of the most sacred Shiite sites, and were kept back by sheer people power. Hundreds of unarmed men steadfastly marched towards those armoured servants of the U.S. military machine shaking their fists in a rare display of courage.

The confused soldiers were ordered to step back... and smile. We were not told by our media of the bravery of those men defending an icon of their religion, only of the diplomacy of the American troops in retreating.

In Nassiriyah, an enraged middle-aged resident shouted `they are molesting our women` with reference to body searches being undertaken at checkpoints, and called Bush, Hussein and all Arab leaders "Liars". He then sobbed tears of frustration and humiliation. This emotive scene, which has caused outrage in the Moslem world, was courtesy of Al Jazeera, Pentagon bad boy number one.

CNN, Fox News, NBC, the BBC and Sky News are trying to sell us an antiseptic war, one in which there are no torn and bleeding victims. In their war the enemy is destroyed in its thousands while the coalition suffers only those losses inescapably witnessed by the cameras of independent journalists.

A BBC spokesman, when asked why the British network was portraying such a sterile conflict, said that people with children wouldn`t like to see such gory images coming into their living rooms. In other words, it`s fine for those sensitive souls to support their nation`s finest, but not to see the obscene results of their handiwork.

The Anglo-American media hasn`t shrunk from distorting the truth and putting out disinformation in its scrambling to prove which one of its outlets can serve as the most effective propaganda arm.

If the media comes across some bottles of liquid, these are painted as possible chemical weapons. Boxes of white powder are turned into anthrax. A meat hook hangs from a ceiling and that room must have been a torture chamber. The finding of some 200 decomposed bodies in southern Iraq is touted as a sinister find.

Late on Saturday night, a Sky News anchor interviewed one of the inevitable "experts" about the discovery of the makeshift morgue. "How can we know who these people are?" she asked. The pathologist said that samples of DNA would have to be taken and dental records sought.

Did he imagine that these unfortunates were discovered near Harley Street instead of in the middle of a desert? Dental records indeed! We saw a British soldier flicking through a file on which was written "Iran" in Arabic and inside were photographs and names of the victims. Despite this evidence, Sky`s southern Iraq-based reporter hinted darkly that this discovery could only mean one thing.

What it did, in fact, mean was that Iran and Iraq had been in the process of exchanging corpses of soldiers who lost their lives during the Iran-Iraq war--now confirmed by state-run Tehran Radio. Murdoch`s Sky News once again proved that the unrelenting vilification of the Iraqi regime is part of its agenda with the facts not being allowed to get in the way of a good story.

Have you noticed that even when the truth does come to light, the media rarely issues a retraction, leaving its audience forever in the dark, its views tainted by false facts and incriminating innuendo?

Meanwhile, Britain`s Sun newspaper--a Murdoch-owned tabloid rag--puts the photograph of a dissenting British Member of Parliament on its front cover with the word `Traitor` emblazoned on the page. It even went as far as publishing his email and telephone number inciting its ignorant readership to tell the MP their thoughts. The result was a barrage of insults and death threats forcing the paper`s victim to surround himself with bodyguards.

Al Jazeera has been accused of following an agenda too and this is why it has been evicted from the New York stock exchange, the victim of professional hackers, and has had to look for a new server for its website.

While it is true that Al Jazeera is certainly playing to the bias of its Arab audience, it does show graphic videos, worth more than a million words. It didn`t concoct those images of ashen-faced, lifeless babies, victims of carpet bombs in Al Hilla or those heartrending scenes of the victims of man`s inhumanity to man, filling the beds and covering the floors of Iraqi hospitals.

Iraqi television has an agenda too. It`s called showing your side of the story against all odds. It made the mistake of screening a downed Apache helicopter and was bombed. It later ran images of captured American service personnel and dead British pilots and the Ministry of Information was promptly targeted.

Broadcasting out of the Palestine Hotel--temporary home of foreign journalists--Iraqi television still won`t do as it`s told. After it showed footage of a burning American vehicle, the coalition promptly unleashed a warning bomb just 100 yards from the hotel. According to a coalition spokesman pressure is being put on those companies, which sell satellite time to Iraqi TV to desist.

As I write, the stubborn Baghdadi people have yet to welcome the liberating armies, with the exception of around 20 waving to U.S. tanks in front of a backdrop of scorched and half-demolished homes and shops on the outskirts of their city. Great photo-op!

Another gem of Pentagon propaganda was the so-called `rescue` of one of its female soldiers, the now famous Jessica. They made it look like a re-run of Entebbe. The helicopter landed, the troops rushed out and after creating a diversion rushed into Jessica`s hospital room before carrying her off to safety.

During their press briefings they made no mention of the Iraqi doctor who had told them where she was. They did not say that the hospital had not been guarded and that Jessica had been well treated and they did not dampen the rumours that she had been shot several times. It took her father to do that. It would probably have suited the US administration better had she been tortured and raped.

And how the British press lapped up those photographs of U.S. servicemen lounging around one of Saddam`s many palaces taken by embedded reporters who ensured we knew that the Iraqi leader had gold taps on his bidet while his people starved. Couldn`t we say the same about Buckingham Palace while children sleep in the doorways of nearby Regent Street, or the White House while bag ladies doss out in cardboard boxes?

In Basra, the people have already been liberated and are celebrating their freedom by looting and stealing while British commanders look on saying that there is nothing they can do about such lawlessness. (I do hope Athens will be freed soon. There`s a gold bracelet in the window of a jewellery store at the end of my street, which would look great on my wrist).

Iraq`s new interim rulers--led by Viceroy-Designate pro-Likud former U.S. General Jay Garner with links to SY Coleman, a company specialising in weapons guidance systems--are patiently awaiting their glorious destiny in a luxury Kuwaiti beach resort.

Fat-cat Iraqi exiles hope for some crumbs. Like Hamid Karzai before him, the normally well turned out Ahmed Chalabi head of the Iraqi National Congress has donned a uniform and headed off to northern Iraq to make his victorious entry into Baghdad like Hannibal without the elephant.

American oil companies wait for this war to receive a stamp of legality from the United Nations before they can draw up lucrative contracts. U.S. companies look forward to being recipients of bounty from Iraq`s reconstruction and the Israelis hope for a long-awaited oil pipeline from northern Iraq to Haifa.

Evangelical Messianic Christians circle like soul-scalping vulture in Jordan until they can make their vainglorious entry into Baghdad bearing bread and Bibles.

And the Iraqis? What do they get? Why! Liberation, of course. The Saddam regime is coming to an end. The pro-Israel American neo-cons are about to take its place, while the Arab world shakes its collective head with dismay, and the media buries its dead.

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. The writer can be contacted at [e-mail]

[Joerver]

Our Man in Iraq: Hero or Crook?
by Joe Conason



Whether the physical demise of Saddam Hussein has been achieved or not, his political destruction is nearly complete. Once the United States committed military force against him, Saddam’s eventual defeat was never in doubt. But what follows in the wake of his unlamented dictatorship will determine the success of the war that ousted him.

For advocates of the war, the justification for this enormous expenditure of blood and treasure is the liberation of the Iraqi people and the establishment of democracy as a light unto the Arab world. And now those of us who opposed the war must hope that project succeeds—or at least avoids disastrous failure. If we are perceived as imperialists who have installed a puppet regime, then the true victors will be the propagandists of Al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, signs are emerging that a puppet regime may be exactly what the war’s intellectual authors have planned. The most troubling indication was the U.S. airlift into Nasiriya’s smoking ruins of a gentleman named Ahmed Chalabi.

If that name isn’t familiar yet, it will be. Although his recent return to his homeland is the first time he has set foot there since 1958, Mr. Chalabi is the dominant leader of the exile movement known as the Iraqi National Congress. Among his admirers in Washington—where he has long been a favorite of the neoconservative right—he is regarded as brilliant, selfless and courageous. Senator Joseph Lieberman has called him "a person of strength, principle and real national commitment." His friend Richard Perle, the influential Defense Department adviser, notes that Mr. Chalabi, a very wealthy man with an American education and British citizenship, "could have lived comfortably without spending a day on the effort to liberate Iraq."

That last remark is surely true. Just how Mr. Chalabi came to be fixed so comfortably remains a matter of grave concern in neighboring Jordan. Eleven years ago this week, he was convicted in absentia on more than 30 counts of embezzlement, theft and fraud after the mysterious crash of Petra Bank, a large financial institution he founded and ran in Amman. (In some profiles, this episode is described discreetly as his "controversial past.") By the time he fled, Jordan’s central bankers were trying to uncover what had happened to about $300 million in missing deposits.

According to Mr. Chalabi and his defenders, the government of the late King Hussein framed him at Saddam’s behest. Since he may well get his hands on his native land’s vast oil wealth someday, let’s hope he is indeed innocent. The problem is that many informed observers suspect otherwise.

Among the doubters is the impeccably conservative journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave, author of a thoroughly unflattering Chalabi profile for the Washington Times last December. Quoted in that article is the "widely respected" former governor of the Jordanian central bank, who said that after a full examination of Petra’s books, he concluded that "they had been cooked and that Ahmed Chalabi was the master cook …. Chalabi was one of the most notorious crooks in the history of the Middle East."

Not the best endorsement for the would-be Iraqi savior, but an all-too-typical description of past and present leaders in that region. If Mr. Chalabi is indeed guilty as charged, his ascent would continue a tradition that includes the late Shah of Iran and the greedy criminals who rule various emirates and monarchies in the Gulf region. Plus ça change, as the despised French might mutter.

Aside from all those musty details, Mr. Chalabi’s critics in the C.I.A., the State Department—and other groups who have shed blood fighting Saddam Hussein—wonder how a figure with no visibility or known support among the Iraqi people is qualified to lead them. Among his pronouncements from exile, he has said that he would extend diplomatic recognition to Israel, a laudable idea that probably has very little support among the Iraqi public.

Apparently, Mr. Chalabi believes he will be best served by a long U.S. military occupation of his country. He told the CBS program 60 Minutes that he expects our troops to stay for two years. That is a dangerous notion, not only for American and British soldiers, but also for the stability of the Gulf region.

Meanwhile, at his Belfast summit, President Bush denied that the United States is seeking to install Mr. Chalabi or any other Iraqi in power to succeed Saddam. Other top U.S. officials have vowed repeatedly that only the Iraqis can choose their future leadership.

In affairs of state, denial is all too often the equivalent of confirmation. Let’s hope that the White House is telling the truth this time—and that the Iraqis themselves, rather than the Pentagon or the State Department, will render the final judgment on Mr. Chalabi’s ambitions. Our own future as well as theirs may depend on it.

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: [e-mail].

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This column ran on page 5 in the 4/14/2003 edition of The New York Observer.

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Die UN und der Informationsminister sind heute die Lieblinge der Zeichner

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Was passiert mit Labour nach Blair?

My views are those of millions

I am not a traitor and I will not be gagged over this war

George Galloway
Monday April 7, 2003
The Guardian

Last week the government enlisted the Murdoch press to launch an assault on me with the journalistic equivalent of a cluster bomb. The central thrust of their attacks, that I am a traitor not fit to sit in parliament, was scattered over the Sun, News of the World, Times and Sunday Times. Some bomblets were designed to wound now (like the incitement to pound me with hate mail and threatening phone calls), others to explode later, and with terminal effect (like the order to strip me of parliamentary rank through withdrawal of the Labour whip, followed by expulsion).
In a world where thousands of civilians are being minced by the real thing, this would not ordinarily detain us over-long, but both the medium and the message are significant. That Tony Blair has taken New Labour into the outer limits of social democratic politics, a kind of twilight zone where, in the dimness, an axis of Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar and Sharon can just be glimpsed, is pretty much a given. But his alliance with the cheap jingo press, which is spreading racist hatred in this conflict, is a key development in the war for Labour`s future. This latest attack on me, for example, was fed to a willing press by Labour sources. I know this because the national newspaper editor who was first offered the "story" (a transcript of a translated interview I gave to Abu Dhabi TV) turned it down and alerted me. It was then given to the Sun. The transcribed words were mine; the spin was all New Labour`s.

The Sun (whose columnist, Richard Littlejohn, called me a "cocksucker" last week and assaults Muslims every time he takes out his armour-plated lap-top - "You`re Shiite and you know you are") and the News of the World (which told us yesterday that model Nell McAndrew was sending her knickers to Our Boys at the front) are Mr Blair`s new friends, and the principal cheerleaders for his war of agression.

Mr Blair, it seems, wants free speech in Baghdad, but not in the British parliament. He wants to use his systems of regime control - the whips, the emasculated national executive committee and the party conference (now dragooned more carefully than a Ceausescu mass wedding) - to ensure that only "licensed" and low-key opposition is heard.

It`s true that some of my words have been harsh, but that`s because I`m expressing the views of the millions who remain fiercely angry at the government`s taking us into a war in defiance of the UN, in the teeth of overwhelming international opposition, on bogus and fabricated grounds, and to such disastrous effect. Not least, I`m speaking for the many in the British Muslim community - Shi`a or otherwise - who feel powerless and virtually voiceless amid the slaughter of Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan and now Iraq.

Whole regiments of journalists and commentators have thrown objectivity to the desert wind and signed up for the war effort, endlessly parroting propaganda, wheeling this way and that, virtually on command. Parliamentary sketch-writers openly deride hostile questioning in the Commons as "suicide missions" on the part of MPs whose right, indeed duty, it is to stop our own parliament becoming a rubber-stamp assembly like those in Baghdad and elsewhere. The threat to discipline me is also crucially aimed at muzzling the others in what is at risk of becoming a frenzy of intolerance, shredding the very values for which the "coalition" claims to be fighting.

Any sense of how this illegal war is playing around the globe is now virtually absent from public discourse; Bush and Blair have gone from being "the west" to the "international community" to being, quite simply, the known world. The safety of our citizens at home and abroad, the trading and other interests of the state and the security of the world we will be leaving to our children are all gravely imperilled by this colonial crime and blunder. But to say so in Blair`s Airstrip One is to become, as the Sun called me, "A traitor ... an enemy of the state".

The real traitors are those who recklessly abandoned our European heartland and Labour`s natural friends like Gerhard Schröder, Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter and subordinated our interests to an extreme rightwing faction of a foreign power; George Bush`s USA. History will judge New Labour more harshly than their fans at Wapping have done so far.

I don`t want to be pushed out of Labour politics. After 35 years, and having served at every level, I suspect I love the Labour party rather more than Mr Blair does. I hope he will eschew a witch-hunt. But, just in case, my friends and I are busy building the new Glasgow central constituency into an impregnable fortress of real Labour values. Mr Blair and his peculiar allies, his army of rightwing hacks and control-freaks, may well besiege it. But they will have their work cut out to overcome it.

· George Galloway is Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin and a columnist for the Scottish Mail on Sunday

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Liberation Through Occupation?
A reader submission
Baghdad will fall within days. Saddam will be killed, the Iraqi army routed, and the Ba’ath Party relegated to the garbage bin of history. Democracy will bloom, and peace and tranquility will descend on Iraq, and then the entire Middle East. Muslim radicals will transform en masse into social democrats. There will be no more war or terrorism, and everyone will live happily ever after. Even the mothers of children whose limbs have been blown off by allied cluster bombs will, in the words of the British Defence Secretary, "one day" thank Britain for their use. So goes the chimerical script plotted by the Bush administration and their coterie of neo-conservative advisors.

However, like so many an American production, Gulf War II is a re-run of a British classic. Almost 85 years to the day when Tommy Franks spoke of "liberating" Iraq and not conquering it, the British Lt General Stanley Maude had assured the people of Iraq: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators".

For the Iraqis of the early 20th century, "liberty through occupation" meant having their country carved up, a puppet regime put in place, buttressed by British military might, followed by years of bloody rebellion. The Arabs killed 450 British soldiers and wounded 2,000. The British deployed 90,000 soldiers to liberate the country and ending up liberating over 10,000 Arab souls from their bodies. In an irony typical of so much in our history, the British used the weapons of mass destruction (poison gas) of their day against the Iraqi resistance fighters.

Now it’s all being repeated again: the same language; the same bravado; the same promises of "liberation" and "democracy"; the same lies; and the same descent into violent chaos.

Is America any more sincere in its objective of "freeing" the Middle East than the British were in "freeing" Iraq from the Turks during World War I? Here’s the litmus test: When America articulates its vision for the Middle East of regimes falling and "democracies" appearing in their place, is it also willing to accept that these democracies may not be secular and may not be as malleable to American interests as the previous regimes? In other words, does America also recognize the right of the people to decide their own system of government and elect the governments that they, the people, want?

I think not. This war is not being fought to give the Muslim world the kind of freedom that, when sincerely exercised, will bring into being governments that may oppose American interests or may actually reflect popular anger on the Palestinian issue.

Yet, clearly, the Muslim world is in need of some change. Almost all of the countries are ruled by despotic dictatorships hated by their constituents. Whilst we are amongst the richest societies, we have amongst the lowest levels of literacy and are plagued with intellectual, political and economic stagnation. Political violence and unrest are features of almost all.

However, the idea that the export of secular democracy to the Muslim world at the barrel of a gun will solve the Muslim world’s problems is completely detached from the realities of Muslim society.

The reality is that most all Muslim countries are already secular. Nobody can doubt the secular credentials of a country like Egypt where wearing a beard and praying your morning prayers in a mosque can be an invitation for security forces to harass you, or a country like Turkey where women are banned from graduating from university if they wear a scarf.

At the same time as governments and the elites of the Muslim world are staunchly secular, the common people are not. It is this schism between the leaders of the Muslim world and their constituents that forms the sociological basis for most of the political violence that blights the Muslim world. In Egypt, for example, the violence of the al-Jamaah al-Islamiyyah organization (whose leaders went on to become ideological powerhouses of al-Qaeda) was a reaction to the extremist violence of the Nasser regime. When Muslim activists began peacefully calling for an increased role for religion in the state, the Arab nationalist Gamel Abdel Nasser initiated a program of imprisonment, forced disappearance and torture to quell dissent. The reaction of the people was violence directed at the state, which escalated into a cycle of violence that continues to this day in the form of assassination of tourists and government employees.

Likewise, the civil war in Algeria that left thousands dead was a result of the government’s intervention in the country’s first ever free election. When it became apparent that Islamic parties looked set to win, the government cancelled the election. With democracy suspended, the people rebelled and the country was plunged into a civil war that left thousands dead. In the same year, the Turkish army removed the democratically elected Refah party from power, because the mild Islamic character of the party offended the military’s Kemalist sensitivities.

That extreme behaviour by a government begets extreme behavior from its constituents is a truism that the American government should consider as its centurions march across the Middle East and its bombs fall on Arab cities.

Muslims are increasingly asking for Islam to play a role in the affairs of the state and for governments that actually represent the interests of their constituents rather than "bunker regimes" that view their constituents as an enemy. If America thinks that imposing, at the barrel of the gun, American-backed secular regimes in place of the current secular regimes is going to lead to some sort of Muslim Enlightenment, then it is dangerously wrong. Muslims don’t want secularism and to be subjects of some Arab Quisling; they want and will fight for true democracy and freedom to choose their own systems of government. And when George W. Bush promises "freedom" to the Muslim people, this is definitely not the type of freedom he means.

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Amir Butler is executive director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC).

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Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC)
PO Box 180
PASCOE VALE SOUTH VIC 3044
Email: [e-mail]
Web: http://www.muslimaffairs.com.au

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The battle for American science

Creationists, pro-lifers and conservatives now pose a serious threat to research and science teaching in the US, report Oliver Burkeman and Alok Jha

Thursday April 10, 2003
The Guardian

One of the first signs that something was changing came in March last year in the suburbs of northern Atlanta, when people started talking, a little more frequently than might be expected, about mousetraps. It was hardly unprecedented in the US that a group of local parents should be lobbying for their children to be taught that evolution was a disputed theory, not a fact. But the way some of them were doing it was new, which is where the mousetraps came in. Unlike some of the openly evangelical Christian lobbies, they didn`t want schools to teach creationism - the theory that God created the universe in seven days - they only wanted to air a theory known as Intelligent Design. ID holds that the living cell is "irreducibly complex", like a mousetrap. Remove the spring from a mousetrap and it isn`t just an inferior mousetrap; it isn`t a mousetrap at all. It had to have been created by an intelligent designer. It was the same, they said, for cells, and so life must have been designed by some kind of intelligence. Critics called this "stealth creationism" - religious dogma masquerading as science - but the ID proponents got their way, thanks partly to wording in President Bush`s new education bill. Schools in Atlanta are now theoretically entitled to "teach the controversy" (though officials have urged teachers to stick to evolution for now, sparking a lawsuit) - and textbooks presenting Darwinism as fact have stickers inside, pointing out that it might not be.
Some other signs: if you were contemplating an abortion and were worried about the rumour that it might increase your risk of breast cancer, you might visit the website of the government-funded National Cancer Institute to read their factsheet, which noted that most scientists doubt a link. Or, at least, you might have done so until June last year, when the page, criticised by some Republicans in Congress, simply vanished. (A replacement page was posted last month.) Or maybe you were an Aids activist, elated by the president`s unexpected (and genuinely revolutionary) announcement in the State of the Union address of $15bn (£9.7bn) in funding for fighting the epidemic worldwide - and then surprised to find that only around 10% was destined for the Global Aids Fund, while the rest would be funnelled through US agencies, where it is more likely to be accessible to American abstinence-only groups campaigning against condoms.

Welcome to the new battlegrounds of American science. No conspiracy, nor even one political agenda, links the incidents above. But US scientists say they are indicative of a new climate that has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science. The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation`s laboratories and lecture halls.

As prescient observers of the events north of Atlanta last year realised, these aren`t the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other. Proponents of ID - using a strategy previously unheard of among anti-Darwinists - grant almost all the premises of evolution (the idea that species develop; that the world wasn`t necessarily created in seven days) in order to better attack it.

"It`s not that I don`t think Darwinian evolution can`t explain anything," says Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the movement`s foremost academic advocate, when asked how he accounts for the very visible evolution of, say, viruses. "It`s just that I don`t think it can explain everything. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example, is one of the things it can explain."

Similarly, the White House`s strategy on global warming is not to scoff at the scientific establishment`s warnings on climate change. Rather, it trumpets the importance of their research activities and calls for even more research - years more, in fact - before any action is taken. In the same fashion, one of the most popular arguments currently circulating on anti-condom websites claims not that they encourage promiscuity but that they can`t protect against HIV. The reason, it argues, is because the virus is 0.1 microns in diameter, while there are tiny pores in latex measuring 10 microns. (There is no evidence for this.)

A related tactic has been observed in recent weeks among the conservative organisations vying for a say in how Bush`s new Aids cash should be spent. The Bush administration had long been criticised by the left for neglecting the promotion of cheap anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) in favour of policies that benefited patent-owning pharmaceutical giants. Usaid, the government`s international development agency, argued at one point that Africans would find it hard to adhere to drug programmes because they had a different conception of time.

Suddenly, though, ARVs are the right`s new passion - because, argues Holly Burkhalter of the pressure group Physicians for Human Rights, spending more money on drugs means condom programmes could be starved of cash. It is the most unlikely reversal of positions, she argues. "Who knew? Now you have the activists putting the case for prevention and the conservatives campaigning to make treatment widely available in Africa."

The two men inside the Bush administration who have had the most to do with this shift in approach are about as different from each other in style as it is possible to imagine - except, perhaps, in their avoidance of the media spotlight. One is Karl Rove, the president`s senior political aide, a master tactician who has been Bush`s main strategist since his earliest days campaigning for the governorship of Texas. (He does not seem overly bothered by scruples: in one campaign, for another politician, he claimed to have discovered a bug in his office on the day of a major debate. The opponent, tarnished by the insinuation of dirty tricks, lost the race, but the ensuing police investigation found nothing.) His importance should not be understated. "If Karl Rove did not exist, George Bush would not be president of the United States," the liberal columnist EJ Dionne wrote bluntly this month.

Some saw Rove`s influence at play when John Marburger, Bush`s new science advisor, was informed that the role would no longer be a cabinet position. The White House had decided that "they don`t need that level of scientific input," Allan Bromley, the first President Bush`s science advisor, said glumly at the time.

The other man is Leon Kass, chairman of the President`s Council on Bioethics. The occupant of that role was always going to be a central figure in an administration as morality-driven as Bush`s. In Kass, the president found a paragon of good repute (a renowned ethicist at the University of Chicago, Kass exudes erudition) who nevertheless differed radically from the academic consensus on the issues his committee would be considering, such as euthanasia, human cloning and in-vitro fertilisation.

"It is rare to see a scientist who thinks that nascent human life has any dignity worth respecting whatsover," he said last year, arguing that the scientific establishment "treat it as chopped liver".

Rove`s alertness to Bush`s Christian-conservative voter base and Kass`s moral convictions proved a powerful combination when it came to one of the most radical science policy changes to emerge from the current White House: the clampdown on human cloning.

The Bush presidency was in its infancy when Rove identified cloning as a topic that needed to be tackled. The administration`s contempt for the issue was made transparent when he suggested introducing a bill into Congress that would ban all forms of cloning. Kass readily agreed: "We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings," he has written, "not because of the strangeness or novelty of the undertaking, but because we intuit and feel the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear."

The problem for scientists was that the legislation could single-handedly destroy research using stem cells (otherwise known as "therapeutic cloning", a term the anti-cloning lobby rejects), as well as closing the door on reproductive cloning - making cloned babies. Stem cells are the master cells found in early-stage embryos. They evolve into all the different tissues of the body, and doctors hope to treat several serious diseases by directing the cells to develop into specific implants. Advised by Kass`s council, however, Bush announced in 2001 that he would end government funding for the cultivation of new cell lines, forcing scientists to find private funding or rely on existing, often contaminated lines.

On the subject of whether to introduce a wider ban on cloning itself, though, the US is stuck. Galvanised by the news that the Raelians, a Canadian cult, claimed to have overseen the delivery of the world`s first cloned baby, the House of Representatives tabled a bill earlier this year to ban all cloning. Fortunately for the scientists involved, the bill is now destined for the more sympathetic Senate. But Bush has already made it clear in several statements that he is reluctant to sign any bill into law that did not ban all forms of cloning.

Cloning proponents like Howard Garrison, director of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, say that when they sit down with sceptics they go a long way in convincing them. But the president "listens selectively", says a source close to one of the national academies, the learned societies which represent the elite scientists in the US. In the White House, an embryo is an embryo and must be protected at all costs. Not that this is necessarily a cause for surprise. "We elected a Republican president," sighs the source. "And the scientific community tends to be more liberal."

Nor, perhaps, was it a surprise that evolution, in this climate, would come in for a renewed bout of questioning. Bush has said that he has not made up his mind on evolution - a stance that is politically helpful in the US, where Christian conservative voters feel strongly but where there is not, on the other side of the debate, a unified "pro- evolution" lobby likely to be turned off a candidate solely on the basis of such remarks.

But John Ashcroft`s Department of Justice has proved active: when Michael Dini, a Catholic biology professor at Texas Tech University, announced that he would not write academic recommendations for students who did not "affirm" that there is a scientific explanation of the origin of the species, a creationist student launched a lawsuit. Such lawsuits aren`t uncommon. What was uncommon was that Dini, soon after, received a call from government lawyers, demanding the handover of numerous documents, and implicitly threatening to make a minor local dispute into a high-profile federal case.

Advocates of ID, too, are making further attempts to change school curricula, and this month achieved success in Tennessee. Their strategy is to adopt a studiedly undogmatic style, and to come across as amiable debaters willing to listen to your doubts. "All very good questions," says Behe when asked about the most glaring absence from ID: a theory of when, and by what mechanism, an imputed intelligent designer actually did their intelligent designing. (Also: who designed the designer?) "We`d all like to have the answers. Suppose you drove someone who`d never seen Mount Rushmore to look at it. They would immediately apprehend that the mountain had been designed, formed by intelligent activity. Now, most people would think that designer would be God ... but where the designer came from is a separate question." (Most scientists point out, among many criticisms of ID, that it assumes the function of an organism to be a given: true of a mousetrap, but not necessarily of living things - ends themselves can change.)

Kenneth Miller, a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island who is one of the most persistent critics of ID, remains happy at the overwhelming lack of success the movement has had. "But none of that has come without concerted work," he says. "I think they`ve made significant advances in public opinion: if you ask the American people, do you believe in the general Darwinian theory, they split 40/40 [with 20% unsure]." ID, he says, is "stealth creationism - it`s been recognised for what it is, which is a quasi-political theory."

Critics speak with similar alarm about other theories that have been getting a new airing recently, on Aids and abstinence and global warming, for example - theories presented as rival scientific ideas asking only for a "fair hearing". "It`s a very good rhetorical strategy, because it appeals to the very American sense of openness and fair play," says Miller. "But there`s something called the scientific process, you know - involving open publication, criticism, and rejection of things that aren`t convincing. We don`t teach both sides of the germ theory of disease and faith-healing. Evolution isn`t in the classroom because of political action or court decisions. It`s in the classroom because it made it through, it stood up to scrutiny and became the scientific consensus. It fought the battle and won."

Further reading
Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brain Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W Bush by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid and Carl M Cannon. Public Affairs (2003). ISBN: 1586481924

Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President`s Council on Bioethics by Leon R Kass. Public Affairs (2002). ISBN: 1586481762

Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies about Human Cloning ,edited by Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein. W W Norton (1999). ISBN: 0393320014

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Iraqis have paid the blood price for a fraudulent war
The crudely colonial nature of this enterprise can no longer be disguised

Seumas Milne
Thursday April 10, 2003
The Guardian

On the streets of Baghdad yesterday, it was Kabul, November 2001, all over again. Then, enthusiasts for the war on terror were in triumphalist mood, as the Taliban regime was overthrown. The critics had been confounded, they insisted, kites were flying, music was playing again and women were throwing off their burkas. In parliament, Jack Straw mocked Labour MPs who predicted US and British forces would still be fighting in the country in six months` time.

Seventeen months later, such confidence looks grimly ironic. For most Afghans, "liberation" has meant the return of rival warlords, harsh repression, rampant lawlessness, widespread torture and Taliban-style policing of women. Meanwhile, guerrilla attacks are mounting on US troops - special forces soldiers have been killed in recent weeks, while 11 civilians died yesterday in an American air raid - and the likelihood of credible elections next year appears to be close to zero.

In Baghdad and Basra, perhaps the cheering crowds have been a bit thinner on the ground than Tony Blair and George Bush might have hoped - and the looters and lynchers more numerous. But it would be extraordinary if many Iraqis didn`t feel relief or euphoria at the prospect of an end to a brutal government, 12 years of murderous sanctions and a merciless bombardment by the most powerful military machine in the world. Afghanistan is not of course Iraq, though it is a salutary lesson to those who believe the overthrow of recalcitrant regimes is the way to defeat anti-western terrorism. It would nevertheless be a mistake to confuse the current mood in Iraqi cities with enthusiasm for the foreign occupation now being imposed. Even Israel`s invading troops were feted by south Lebanese Shi`ites in 1982 - only to be driven out by the Shi`ite Hizbullah resistance 18 years later.

Nor does the comparative ease with which US and British forces have bombed and blasted their way through Iraq in any way strengthen the case for their war of aggression, as some seem to have convinced themselves. Not even the smallest part of the anti-war argument rested on any illusion that a broken-backed third world regime could win a set-piece military confrontation with the most technologically advanced fighting force in history. Rather, the surprise has been the extent of the resistance and bravery of many fighters, who have confronted tanks with AK 47 rifles and died in their thousands.

In reality, the course of the conflict has strengthened the case against a war supposedly launched to rid Iraq of "weapons of mass destruction" - but which has now morphed into a crusade for regime change as evidence for the original pretext has so embarrassingly not materialised. Not only have US and British forces so far been unable to find the slightest evidence of Saddam Hussein`s much-vaunted chemical or biological weapons. But the Iraqi regime`s failure to use such weapons up to now, even at the point of its own destruction, suggests either that it doesn`t possess any - at least in any usable form, as Robin Cook suggested - or that it has decided their use would be militarily ineffective and politically counter-productive.

So great is the political imperative to find such weapons, it seems hard to believe they won`t turn up in some form. This is after all the coalition which used forged documents to implicate Iraq in the purchase of uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger. But, short of a last-ditch deployment in Tikrit or Mosul, the main pre-emptive pretext for war has already been exposed as a fraud.

As the price that Iraqis have had to pay in blood has become clearer - civilian deaths are already well into four figures - Tony Blair and his ministers have increasingly had to fall back on a specious moral calculus to justify their aggression, claiming that more innocents would have died if they had left the Iraqi regime in place.

What cannot now be disguised, as US marines swagger around the Iraqi capital swathing toppled statues of Saddam Hussein with the stars and stripes and declaring "we own Baghdad", is the crudely colonial nature of this enterprise. Any day now, the pro-Israeli retired US general Jay Garner is due to take over the running of Iraq, with plans to replace the Iraqi dinar with the dollar, parcel out contracts to US companies and set the free market parameters for the future "interim Iraqi administration".

Shashi Tharoor, UN under secretary-general warned Britain and the US against treating Iraq as "some sort of treasure chest to be divvied up", but the Pentagon, which is calling the shots, isn`t listening. Its favoured Iraqi protege, Ahmed Chalabi - scion of the old Iraqi ruling class who last set foot in Baghdad 45 years ago - was flown into Nasiriya by the Americans at the weekend and, almost unbelievably for someone convicted of fraud and embezzlement, is being lined up as an adviser to the finance ministry.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair is once again seeking to provide a multilateral figleaf for a policy set by Washington hardliners. "Democratisation" in Iraq could only have legitimacy if security were handed over to a United Nations force of non- combatant troops and elections for a constituent assembly held under UN auspices. But nothing of the kind is going to happen, when even Colin Powell insists on "dominating control" by the US. The "vital" UN role Blair has secured from the US president appears to be no more than humanitarian aid and the right to suggest Iraqi names for the interim authority.

The most that could eventually be hoped for from US plans is a "managed" form of democracy in a US protectorate, with key economic and strategic decisions taken in advance by the occupiers. Given the likely result of genuinely free elections in any Arab country, it is little wonder that the US would have such problems accepting them - just as they collude with torture and dictatorship by their client states in the region. Anyone who imagines the US is gagging for independent media in the Middle East should ponder Tuesday`s attacks on the al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV offices in Baghdad.

The wider global impact of this war was spelled out by North Korea`s foreign ministry this week. "The Iraqi war shows," it declared, with unerring logic, "that to allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather sparks it", concluding that "only a tremendous military deterrent force" can prevent attacks on states the US dislikes.

As the administration hawks circle round Syria and Iran, a powerful boost to nuclear proliferation and anti western terror attacks seems inevitable, offset only by the likelihood of a growing international mobilisation against the new messianic imperialism. The risk must now be that we will all pay bitterly for the reckless arrogance of the US and British governments.

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Robert Fisk: A day that began with shellfire ended with a once-oppressed people walking like giants
10 April 2003


The Americans "liberated" Baghdad yesterday, destroyed the centre of Saddam Hussein`s quarter-century of brutal dictatorial power but brought behind them an army of looters who unleashed upon the ancient city a reign of pillage and anarchy. It was a day that began with shellfire and air strikes and blood-bloated hospitals and ended with the ritual destruction of the dictator`s statues. The mobs shrieked their delight. Men who, for 25 years, had grovellingly obeyed Saddam`s most humble secret policeman turned into giants, bellowing their hatred of the Iraqi leader as his vast and monstrous statues thundered to the ground.

"It is the beginning of our new freedom," an Iraqi shopkeeper shouted at me. Then he paused, and asked: "What do the Americans want from us now?` The great Lebanese poet Kalil Gibran once wrote that he pitied the nation that welcomed its tyrants with trumpetings and dismissed them with hootings of derision. And the people of Baghdad performed this same deadly ritual yesterday, forgetting that they – or their parents – had behaved in identical fashion when the Arab Socialist Baath Party destroyed the previous dictatorship of Iraq`s generals and princes. Forgetting, too, that the "liberators" were a new and alien and all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race nor religion to unite them with Iraq.

As tens of thousands of Shia Muslim poor from the vast slums of Saddam City poured into the centre of Baghdad to smash their way into shops, offices and government ministries – an epic version of the same orgy of theft and mass destruction that the British did so little to prevent in Basra – US Marines watched from only a few hundred yards away as looters made off with cars, rugs, hoards of money, computers, desks, sofas, even door-frames.

In Al-Fardus (Paradise) Square, US Marines helped a crowd of youths pull down the gaunt and massive statue of Saddam by roping it to an armoured personnel carrier. It toppled menacingly forward from its plinth to hang lengthways above the ground, right arm still raised in fraternal greetings to the Iraqi people.

It was a symbolic moment in more ways than one. I stood behind the first man to seize a hatchet and smash at the imposing grey marble plinth. But within seconds, the marble had fallen away to reveal a foundation of cheap bricks and badly cracked cement. That`s what the Americans always guessed Saddam`s regime was made of, although they did their best – in the late Seventies and early Eighties – to arm him and service his economy and offer him political support, to turn him into the very dictator he became.

In one sense, therefore, America – occupying the capital of an Arab nation for the first time in its history – was helping to destroy what it had spent so much time and money creating. Saddam was "our" man and yesterday, metaphorically at least, we annihilated him. Hence the importance of all those statue- bashing mobs, of all that looting and theft.

But of the real and somewhat less imposing Saddam, there was no trace.

Neither he nor his sons, Uday and Qusay, could be found. Had they fled north to their homeland fortress of Tikrit? Or has he – the most popular rumour this – taken refuge in the Russian embassy in Baghdad. Were they hiding out in the cobweb of underground tunnels and bunkers beneath the presidential palaces? True, their rule was effectively over. The torture chambers and the prisons should now be turned into memorials, the true story of Iraq`s use of gas warfare revealed at last. But history suggests otherwise. Prisons usually pass over to new management, torture cells too, and who would want the world to know how easy it is to make weapons of mass destruction.

There will be mass graves that will have to be opened – though in the Middle East, these disinterments are usually performed in order to allow more blood to be poured onto the graves.

Not that the nightmare is entirely over. For though the Americans will mark yesterday as their first day of occupation – they, of course, will call it liberation – vast areas of Baghdad remained outside the control of the United States last night. And at dusk, just before darkness curled over the land, I crossed through the American lines, back to the little bit of Saddam`s regime that remained intact within the vast, flat city of Baghdad. Down grey, carless streets, I drove to the great bridges over the Tigris which the Americans had still not crossed from the west. And there, on the corner of Bab al-Moazzam Street, were a small group of mujahedin fighters, firing Kalashnikov rifles at the American tanks on the other side of the waterway. It was brave and utterly pathetic and painfully instructive.

For the men turned out to be Arabs from Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Palestine. Not an Iraqi was among them. The Baathist militiamen, the Republican Guard, the greasy Iraqi intelligence men, the so-called Saddam Fedayeen had all left their posts and crept home. Only the foreign Arabs, like the Frenchmen of the Nazi Charlemagne Division in 1945 Berlin, fought on. At the end, many Iraqis had shunned these men and a group of them had turned up to sit outside the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, pleading to journalists for help in returning home.

"We left our wives and children and came here to die for these people and then they told us to go," one of them said. But at the end of the Bab al-Moazzam Bridge they fought on last night and when I left them I could hear the American jets flying in from the west. Hurtling back through those empty streets, I could hear, too, the American tank fire as it smashed into their building.

But tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind from which smart young soldiers with tanned faces look down with smiles at Iraqis who are obliging enough to wave at them, tanks with cute names stencilled on their gun barrels, names like "Kitten Rescue" and "Nightmare Witness" (this with a human skull painted underneath) and "Pearl". And there has to be a first soldier – of the occupying or liberating kind – who stands at the very front of the first column of every vast and powerful army.

So I walked up to Corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, from Michigan. He hadn`t spoken to his parents for two months so I called his mother on my satellite phone and from the other side of the world, Mrs Breeze came on the line and I handed the phone to her son.

And so this is what the very first soldier to enter the centre of Baghdad told his family yesterday evening. "Hi you guys. I`m in Baghdad.

"I`m ringing to say `Hi! I love you. I`m doing fine. I love you guys. The war will be over in a few days. I`ll see you all soon.``

Yes, they all say the war will be over soon. There will be a homecoming no doubt for Corporal Breeze and I suppose I admired his innocence despite the deadly realities that await America in this dangerous, cruel land. For even as the marine tanks thrashed and ground down the highway, there were men and women who saw them and stood, the women scarved, the men observing the soldiers with the most acute attention, who spoke of their fear for the future, who talked of how Iraq could never be ruled by foreigners.

"You`ll see the celebrations and we will be happy Saddam has gone," one of them said to me. "But we will then want to rid ourselves of the Americans and we will want to keep our oil and there will be resistance and then they will call us "terrorists". Nor did the Americans look happy "liberators". They pointed their rifles at the pavements and screamed at motorists to stop – one who did not, an old man in an old car, was shot in the head in front of two French journalists.

Of course, the Americans knew they would get a good press by "liberating" the foreign journalists at the Palestine Hotel. They lay in the long grass of the nearest square and pretended to aim their rifles at the rooftops as cameras hissed at them, and they flew a huge American flag from one of their tanks and grinned at the journalists, not one of whom reminded them that just 24 hours earlier, their army had killed two Western journalists with tank fire in that same hotel and then lied about it.

But it was the looters who marked the day as something sinister rather than joyful. In Saddam City, they had welcomed the Americans with "V" signs and cries of "Up America" and the usual trumpetings, but then they had set off downtown for a more important appointment. At the Ministry of Economy, they stole the entire records of Iraq`s exports and imports on computer discs, with desk-top computers, with armchairs and fridges and paintings. When I tried to enter the building, the looters swore at me. A French reporter had his money and camera seized by the mob.

At the Olympic sports offices, run by Uday Hussein, they did the same, one old man staggering from the building with a massive portrait of Saddam which he proceeded to attack with his fists, another tottering out of the building bearing a vast ornamental Chinese pot.

True, these were regime targets. But many of the crowds went for shops, smashing their way into furniture stores and professional offices. They came with trucks and pick-ups and trailers pulled by scruffy, underfed donkeys to carry their loot away. I saw a boy making off with an X-ray machine, a woman with a dentist`s chair.

At the Ministry of Oil, the minister`s black Mercedes limousine was discovered by the looters. Unable to find the keys, they tore the car apart, ripping off its doors, tyres and seats, leaving just the carcass and chassis in front of the huge front entrance.

At the Palestine Hotel, they smashed Saddam`s portrait on the lobby floor and set light to the hoarding of the same wretched man over the front door. They cried "Allahuakbar" meaning God is Greater. And there was a message there, too, for the watching Marines if they had understood it.

And so last night, as the explosion of tank shells still crashed over the city, Baghdad lay at the feet of a new master. They have come and gone in the city`s history, Abbasids and Ummayads and Mongols and Turks and British and now the Americans. The United States embassy reopened yesterday and soon, no doubt, when the Iraqis have learned to whom they must now be obedient friends, President Bush will come here and there will be new "friends" of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those who "liberated" them, and – equally no doubt – relations with Israel and a real Israeli embassy in Baghdad.

But winning a war is one thing. Succeeding in the ideological and economic project that lies behind this whole war is quite another. The "real" story for America`s mastery over the Arab world starts now.
10 April 2003 10:07

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Robert Fisk: Final proof that war is about the failure of the human spirit
10 April 2003


It was a scene from the Crimean War; a hospital of screaming wounded and floors running with blood. I stepped in the stuff; it stuck to my shoes, to the clothes of all the doctors in the packed emergency room, it swamped the passageways and the blankets and sheets.

The Iraqi civilians and soldiers brought to the Adnan Khairallah Martyr Hospital in the last hours of Saddam Hussein`s regime yesterday – sometimes still clinging to severed limbs – are the dark side of victory and defeat; final proof, like the dead who are buried within hours, that war is about the total failure of the human spirit. As I wandered amid the beds and the groaning men and women lying on them – Dante`s visit to the circles of hell should have included these visions – the same old questions recurred. Was this for 11 September? For human rights? For weapons of mass destruction?

In a jammed corridor, I came across a middle-aged man on a soaked hospital trolley. He had a head wound which was almost indescribable. From his right eye socket hung a handkerchief that was streaming blood on to the floor. A little girl lay on a filthy bed, one leg broken, the other so badly gouged out by shrapnel during an American air attack that the only way doctors could prevent her moving it was to tie her foot to a rope weighed down with concrete blocks.

Her name was Rawa Sabri. And as I walked through this place of horror, the American shelling began to bracket the Tigris river outside, bringing back to the wounded the terror of death which they had suffered only hours before. The road bridge I had just crossed to reach the hospital came under fire and clouds of cordite smoke drifted over the medical centre. Tremendous explosions shook the wards and corridors as doctors pushed shrieking children away from the windows.

Florence Nightingale never reached this part of the old Ottoman Empire. But her equivalent is Dr Khaldoun al-Baeri, the director and chief surgeon, a gently-spoken man who has slept an hour a day for six days and who is trying to save the lives of more than a hundred souls a day with one generator and half his operating theatres out of use – you cannot carry patients in your arms to the 16th floor when they are coughing blood.

Dr Baeri speaks like a sleepwalker, trying to describe how difficult it is to stop a wounded man or woman from suffocating when they have been wounded in the thorax, explaining that after four operations to extract metal from the brains of his patients, he is almost too tired to think, let alone in English. As I leave him, he tells me that he does not know where his family is.

"Our house was hit and my neighbours sent a message to tell me they sent them away somewhere. I do not know where. I have two little girls, they are twins, and I told them they must be brave because their father had to work night and day at the hospital and they mustn`t cry because I have to work for humanity. And now I have no idea where they are." Then Dr Baeri choked on his words and began to cry and could not say goodbye.

There was a man on the second floor with a fearful wound to the neck. It seemed the doctors could not staunch his blood and he was dribbling his life away all over the floor. Something wicked and sharp had cut into his stomach and six inches of bandages could not stop the blood from pumping out of him. His brother stood beside him and raised his hand to me and asked: "Why? Why?"

A small child with a drip-feed in its nose lay on a blanket. It had had to wait four days for an operation. Its eyes looked dead. I didn`t have the heart to ask its mother if this was a boy or a girl.

There was an air strike perhaps half a mile away and the hospital corridors echoed with the blast, long and low and powerful, and it was followed by a rising chorus of moans and cries from the children outside the wards. Below them, in that worst of all emergency rooms, they had brought in three men who had been burned across their faces and arms and chests and legs; naked men with a skin of blood and tissues whom the doctors pasted with white cream, who sat on their beds with their skinless arms held upwards, each beseeching a non-existing saviour to rescue him from his pain.

"No! No! No!" another young man screamed as doctors tried to cut open his pants. He shrieked and cried and whinnied like a horse. I thought he was a soldier. He looked tough and strong and well fed but now he was a child again and he cried: "Umma, Umma [Mummy, mummy]".

I left this awful hospital to find the American shells falling in the river outside. I noticed, too, some military tents on a small patch of grass near the hospital`s administration building and – "God damn it," I said under my breath – an armoured vehicle with a gun mounted on it, hidden under branches and foliage. It was only a few metres inside the hospital grounds. But the hospital was being used to conceal it. And I couldn`t help noticing the name of the hospital. Adnan Khairallah had been President Saddam`s minister of defence, a man who allegedly fell out with his leader and died in a helicopter crash whose cause was never explained.

Even in the last hours of the Battle of Baghdad, its victims had to lie in a building named in honour of a murdered man.
10 April 2003 10:11


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April 10, 2003
Jubilant V-I Day
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


ASHINGTON — Like newly freed Parisians tossing flowers at allied tanks; like newly freed Germans tearing down the Berlin wall; like newly freed Russians pulling down the statue of the hated secret police chief in Dzerzinsky Square, the newly freed Iraqis toppled the figure of their tyrant and ground their shoes into the face of Saddam Hussein.

All these pictures flow together in the farrago of freedom`s victories over despotism in the past two generations. Just as video of human suffering understandably triggers demonstrations against any war, unforgettable images of the jubilation of enslaved people tasting liberty drives home the wisdom of just wars.

Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals` forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)

The most insulting question is this: considering their Islamist religious schisms and tribal hatreds, their tradition of monarchy and obedience to dictatorial regimes, their turbulent "street," easily inflamed by demagogues — how can any population of Arabs be entrusted with democracy?

The answer to that is the experiment on which the Iraqis are now embarked. Most start with the advantages of being literate, not fundamentalist and extravagantly oil-rich.

If Iraqis are able to adopt a system of free enterprise and representative government, they will become the center of an arc of freedom from Turkey in the north to Israel in the south (with Lebanon freed from Syrian occupation, if France will liberate the state it created). Egypt, the largest Arab nation, could not long resist such a tidal wave of liberty.

A parade of former U.S. ambassadors to Arab nations pooh-pooh this vision, deriding the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz idealists as the four horsemen of hubris.

But consider one example of a big segment of Iraq`s population that proved itself willing to ally itself wholeheartedly with the coalition, and showed under fire its eagerness to make sacrifices for its freedom.

Nobody came out of this war more nobly than the 3.5 million long-suffering Kurds of Iraq. After Gulf War I, we at first left them to the poison-gas savagery of Saddam, then expiated that sin by provided them air cover for the next decade. In that time, this ethnic group built a model state: a lively parliament, schools, hospitals, a thriving economy built on farming and a little smuggling on the side.

Their rival leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, realized that what they call "our friends to the north" — the Turks — suspected a plot to declare an independent Kurdistan, which might encourage Turkey`s Kurdish minority to break away.

Because the U.S. believed that we would get Turkey`s cooperation against Saddam, we refused to arm the Kurds, even though they were under attack from terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda. Despite this, when we launched our invasion, the 70,000 Kurdish pesh merga troops volunteered to serve in the coalition under the command of our small airborne units in the north. The Kurds were and still are the only indigenous force fighting against Saddam`s regime.

One tragic test of loyalty came last week when one of our aircraft mistakenly bombed a convoy carrying pesh merga to engage Saddam`s troops. Nineteen Kurds died, with two of the Barzani clan wounded. A Barzani aide, Hoshyar Zabari, told me by cellphone afterward: "We do not blame anyone. This happens in war. We are fighting together for our freedom."

That`s an ally. The Kurds have decided their cultural autonomy — and their future safety — lies not in independence but as part of Iraq`s new confederation, with its capital Baghdad. "We will always retain our Kurdish identity, but we are Iraqis," emphasizes Barham Salih, Mr. Talabani`s prime minister.

My guess is that the urbane Mr. Talabani will serve in Iraq`s national government, with the locally rooted Mr. Barzani in its regional capital in the north. They have learned how democracy works, and have earned a seat at the governing table. They also know, and will bear witness to their Iraqi compatriots in this great experiment, that the U.S. and Britain are freedom`s best friends.




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April 10, 2003
Spoils of War
By BOB HERBERT


Follow the money.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz is on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group, the largest contractor in the U.S. and one of the finalists in the competition to land a fat contract to help in the rebuilding of Iraq.

He is also the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a fiercely pro-war group with close ties to the White House. The committee, formed last year, made it clear from the beginning that it sought more than the ouster of Saddam`s regime. It was committed, among other things, "to work beyond the liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy."

War is a tragedy for some and a boon for others. I asked Mr. Shultz if the fact that he was an advocate of the war while sitting on the board of a company that would benefit from it left him concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest.

"I don`t know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it," he said. "But if there`s work that`s needed to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from."

Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel. He`s also a member of the Defense Policy Board, a government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon on major defense issues. Its members are selected by the under secretary of defense for policy, currently Douglas Feith, and approved by the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Most Americans have never heard of the Defense Policy Group. Its meetings are classified. The members disclose their business interests to the Pentagon, but that information is not available to the public.

The Center for Public Integrity, a private watchdog group in Washington, recently disclosed that of the 30 members of the board, at least 9 are linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.

Richard Perle was the chairman of the board until just a few weeks ago, when he resigned the chairmanship amid allegations of a conflict of interest. He is still on the board.

Another member is the former C.I.A. director, James Woolsey. He`s also a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm that, as the Center for Public Integrity noted, is soliciting investments for companies that specialize in domestic security. Mr. Woolsey is also a member of the Committee to Liberate Iraq and is reported to be in line to play a role in the postwar occupation.

The war against Iraq has become one of the clearest examples ever of the influence of the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against so eloquently in his farewell address in 1961. This iron web of relationships among powerful individuals inside and outside the government operates with very little public scrutiny and is saturated with conflicts of interest.

Their goals may or may not coincide with the best interests of the American people. Think of the divergence of interests, for example, between the grunts who are actually fighting this war, who have been eating sand and spilling their blood in the desert, and the power brokers who fought like crazy to make the war happen and are profiting from it every step of the way.

There aren`t a lot of rich kids in that desert. The U.S. military is largely working-class. The power brokers homing in on $100 billion worth of postwar reconstruction contracts are not.

The Pentagon and its allies are close to achieving what they wanted all along, control of the nation of Iraq and its bounty, which is the wealth and myriad forms of power that flow from control of the world`s second-largest oil reserves.

The transitional government of Iraq is to be headed by a retired Army lieutenant general, Jay Garner. His career path was typical. He moved effortlessly from his military career to the presidency of SYColeman, a defense contractor that helped Israel develop its Arrow missile-defense system. The iron web.

Those who dreamt of a flowering of democracy in Iraq are advised to consider the skepticism of Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush. He asked: "What`s going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We`re surely not going to let them take over."



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April 10, 2003
Must What Goes Up Also Come Down?
By SOLOMON VOLKOV


t is almost certain that the toppling yesterday of Saddam Hussein`s giant statue in the center of Baghdad will be considered in retrospect as one of the iconic images of the present war in Iraq. As I watched this scene unfolding on television, similar episodes from the not-so-distant yet already faintly hazy past, sprang to my mind.

First, of course, there was the 1989 demolition of the Berlin Wall, which for years divided Germany into the socialist East and the capitalist West. Watching that evening unfold on TV, one could feel the almost palpable physical excitement as youthful drunks madly clawed and hammered away at the hated symbol of this enforced division.

Then, on an August night in 1991, another statue came down. This time it was a bronze of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, which had presided over central Moscow since 1958. One saw the same excitement but markedly less merriment, and the crowd looked more mature, even sober. They had thought ahead, going to the trouble of bringing along five cranes for the job. These people were exacting what felt like an intellectual revenge for the years of living in fear, of being able to talk candidly only with trusted friends — and then only in a whisper.

A parenthetical thought: lately, parallels have been drawn in the press between Saddam Hussein`s Iraq and the repressive Communists who ruled Russia. I think an important difference between the two regimes was revealed when the solidity of the comparative statues was tested. The Soviet one had to be dragged away with much effort, exertion, etc. And when it came down, it came down in one piece. In contrast, the Iraqi monument toppled quite easily. And when it did, it broke apart, leaving the hollow boots of the dictator on the pedestal. Of course, the statue`s quick demise could be attributed to the superiority of American equipment and expertise, which seem to be in plentiful supply in Baghdad these days.

Compared to the events in Berlin and Moscow, the crashing of Mr. Hussein`s statue was a much more modest affair. One got the feeling that the dancing, shirtless men didn`t extend too far beyond the camera`s eye. This is probably not such a bad thing, because big symbolic gestures, while immensely satisfying at the time, rarely live up to their promise. This is certainly true with regard to Germany, where almost 14 years after the fall of the wall, the economic and psychological division between East and West endures.

As for Russia, there is now persistent talk coming from Moscow`s conservative mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, that the statue of Dzerzhinsky (which conveniently survived intact and has been living a quiet life in a Moscow park) should be returned to its former home — a traffic island in front of the headquarters of the former K.G.B. and its successor, the Federal Security Services. The liberal intelligentsia, of course, vehemently objects to the resurrection. But with polls showing that more and more Russians are looking on the Soviet past with fondness, there is a distinct possibility that one day we will see the once-toppled monument back at the heart of Moscow, gazing imperiously at passers-by.

And if this happened, one question in particular would gnaw at me: is it possible that among those who restored the statue, there were also some who helped to bring it down?


Solomon Volkov is author of "St. Petersburg: A Cultural History."



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Liberated Baghdad


Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A28


THE GLORIOUS IMAGES of Iraqis and U.S. Marines joining to topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad yesterday came just three weeks after those first scenes of billowing black smoke from the war`s opening bombing -- yet for many Iraqis the celebration was long overdue. With an explosion of pent-up emotion, people in Iraq`s capital yesterday displayed the relief and jubilation of liberation not just from 21 days of bombing, but from decades of brutal tyranny. Riotous men in the city center tore up posters of Saddam Hussein and stamped their feet on the sculpted head torn from the statue; women stood on rooftops to shower tanks with rose petals. In another neighborhood, a group of some 100 children, clothed mostly in rags and newly released from one of the regime`s prisons, hugged and kissed the Marines who had freed them. Not all the passion was joyful. Fierce combat continued at Baghdad University. Some Iraqis wept bitterly at the sight of Western troops, not from love of Saddam Hussein but from shame and humiliation. The complex mix of reactions offered grounds for joy and vindication among those who pressed the cause of regime change in Iraq -- mixed with sadness for Iraqi and American sacrifices along the way and sober reflection about the postwar challenges to come.

The postwar era, of course, has yet to begin. The big cities of the north, including Kirkuk and Mosul, have yet to fall, and U.S. commanders warned yesterday that Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad, may yet put up a stiff fight. The dictator, his sons and his leading collaborators must all be located and either captured or killed -- the sooner the better: Victory will be incomplete as long as Saddam Hussein is unaccounted for. Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction must be identified, neutralized and displayed to the world -- United Nations inspectors included -- to remove their threat and prove the validity of the Bush administration`s casus belli. Though Iraq`s conventional military has been crushed, irregular forces may still challenge U.S. commanders for some time. Whether those paramilitaries or the suicide bombers who have occasionally appeared evolve into an enduring menace will depend in part on how quickly and well the occupying forces can restore order and vital services in Baghdad and other cities.

Yesterday`s scenes of celebration were an answer to skeptics who doubted that Iraqis wished to be liberated from Saddam Hussein by American troops, just as the collapse of resistance in the capital silenced critics, including several senior field commanders, who questioned whether the Pentagon`s war plan was too ambitious or relied on too few troops. The capture of Baghdad ultimately required half the time, and less than half the American fatalities, of the expulsion of Iraq`s army from Kuwait in 1991. In the Middle East and Europe, political and media commentary has shifted swiftly from gloating over the presumed humbling of the American superpower to speculation over which rogue state -- Syria, Iran, North Korea? -- will be the next target for invasion. Senior Bush administration officials have done little to quiet such fevered talk and, in the case of Syria, may have even encouraged it. If that worries the dictatorial regime in Damascus, which also has a record of supporting terrorism and stockpiling chemical weapons, perhaps the effect will be beneficial.

Yet the best way to build on the success of the Iraqi military campaign will be not by threatening other regimes but by allowing Iraqis to construct a government that offers them political freedom, human rights and a chance to prosper in the global economy. That task will be in many ways harder, and will certainly take longer, than this waning war; and the Bush administration`s readiness for it is questionable. Success will require more flexibility, patience and willingness to work with allies than were present in the administration`s prewar diplomacy or than it has so far shown in its postwar planning. The United States cannot rebuild Iraq or shepherd Iraqis to democracy by willfully excluding Europe, the United Nations or Iraqis not of its choosing; any attempt to do so would risk squandering the gratitude and goodwill that were so evident yesterday on the streets of Baghdad.



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A War of Images


By Richard Cohen

Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A29


Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. The picture I have in mind is the stirring one seen on TV when U.S. soldiers draped an American flag over the face of Saddam Hussein`s massive statue in Baghdad`s Firdaus Square. It made me feel good. But not the crowd in Baghdad. It went sullen. When Old Glory was taken down a moment later and an Iraqi flag was substituted for it, the crowd erupted in cheers. This, alas, was truly reality TV.

In some respects the scene was similar to ones that occurred all over Eastern Europe in 1989. Back then, communist regimes crumpled, the stone likenesses of petty dictators swiftly followed and pro-American democracies rose from the rubble. History, however, is not repeating itself now. It`s merely making a photo op.

The trap would be to think that the jubilant Iraqis of today will be the Iraqis of tomorrow. Unlike the people of Eastern Europe, who loathed communism and admired the United States, it`s likely that most Iraqis loathed Hussein but have no particular fondness for the United States. Among other things, we have been bombing their cities and killing their soldiers for the past three weeks.

The United States is once again in a part of the world that is not Christian and not Western and not particularly enamored of America`s values -- everything from its hip-hugging secularism to its unstinting support of Israel. Americans have been welcomed in such parts of the world before -- Lebanon, Somalia -- and then sent packing when elements of the local population turned homicidal. This could happen in Iraq as well.

Dick Cheney, of all people, recognized the dangers back in 1991, when, paradoxically, the first Bush administration recognized little else. In defending that administration`s appalling decision to end the Gulf War and leave Hussein in power, Cheney turned his attention to what would have happened if coalition forces -- and that was a real coalition -- had entered Baghdad.

"Once you`ve got Baghdad, it`s not clear what you do with it," Cheney said. "It`s not clear what kind of government you put in place. Is it going to be a Shiite regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? . . . How much credibility is that government going to have if it`s set up by United States military when it`s there?"

Cheney`s rationalizations for inaction then are pertinent to what`s happening now. In fact, they showed an uncharacteristic modesty on his part, a humility of the sort the current President Bush mentioned when he was running for president. If, in fact, there was a time for America to be -- or at least pretend to be -- truly humble, it is now. It could save lives.

Clearly, the near-term administration of Iraq has to be done by the United States and its military -- certainly not by the United Nations. But the U.N. haters in the administration ought to realize that there are some things the world body knows how to do. Along with nongovernmental organizations -- CARE, etc. -- it knows how to distribute humanitarian aid. The United Nations does this day in and day out.

The United Nations is also pretty good at organizing and administering elections. It has done so in other countries -- South Africa, for instance. It should also do so in Iraq. Then the results will have legitimacy and will more likely be accepted in the Muslim world.

The United Nations or one of its affiliated agencies should be used to verify the existence of weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and, in the case of nuclear, any plans or facilities that might exist. No one more than 10 miles from the Potomac is going to accept an announcement by Donald Rumsfeld that the so-called smoking gun has been found. Have the United Nations announce it.

Finally, as satisfying as it might be, neither France nor Germany should be shunned or punished for what, after all, was disgraceful behavior. France remains a permanent member of the Security Council, and only the Security Council can lift the sanctions imposed on Iraq. Better to enlist France to help in postwar Iraq than to roll over it, no matter how gratifying that might be.

Images are all powerful in today`s world. Flags are raised in homage to the powerful photo from Iwo Jima. Statues are toppled as they were in squares all over Eastern Europe. But to these images must be added a third one -- the mute reaction to the American flag in Firdos Square. For that moment, Saddam Hussein and the crowd had something in common: Both their faces were of stone.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Warum immer nur Politiker

OZZY OPPOSES WAR
Reality-TV rocker Ozzy Osbourne is the latest star to come out against the military action on Iraq.
The star of "The Osbournes" can`t bear to watch war images on television, and strongly opposes the political forces in London and Washington controlling the conflict.

He says, "I hear these politicians talking about when `we` take Baghdad. There`s no f-----g `we` about it. The politicians are three miles underground in a bunker.

"Wars would be a lot shorter and simpler if the politicians actually had to have a go at one another."

And Ozzy would do anything to prevent son, Jack, from joining the army.

He rages, "I`d break my son`s foot before I`d let him go off and fight some stupid f-----g war."


http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/dailydish/

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Der amerikanische Favorit für den Präsidenten des Iraks, eine ziemliche zeifelhafte Persönlichkeit.

Ahmad Chalabi
Why shouldn`t a politician be president of Iraq?
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 4:16 PM PT



"I have returned home," Ahmad Chalabi declared today on CNN from the city of Nasiriyah, in a country that he has barely set foot in for more than 40 years. It was a stirring moment and a nice sentiment. But it`s more accurate to say that the 58-year-old leader of the Iraqi National Congress finds himself in a place where almost no one knows his name. If Iraq were New Hampshire, Chalabi would be polling somewhere behind Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley-Braun. Luckily, Chalabi is running in a democratic primary and not a Democratic one. But perhaps he`s learned a lesson during his lifelong project to bring American-style democracy to the Middle East: If Hillary Clinton can be a senator from New York, why can`t Ahmad Chalabi be the president of Iraq?

For now, Chalabi denies that he wants to be his country`s first democratically elected president. But his statements are something less than Shermanesque. In fact, they sound suspiciously like the carefully crafted formulations that American presidential candidates use when they`re pretending not to be presidential candidates. "I`m not a candidate for any position in Iraq, and I don`t seek an office," Chalabi told 60 Minutes this past week, echoing a statement he made to the Financial Times last year: "I have no desire or inclination to seek office in Iraq." Chalabi`s slipperiness on the subject plays into the hands of his critics, who point out that he`s a showman, an operator who was better at using his political skills to garner credit for himself than he was at mounting a serious opposition to Saddam Hussein. Let`s assume the critics are right. Their objections raise an obvious question: Since when did that ever stop someone from winning an election?


It`s certainly true that as a military leader, Chalabi was an abject failure. The best anyone can say about him is that he tried hard, and for the right side. From 1993 until 1996, he spent time in Iraq`s north, trying to put together an organized, armed resistance to Saddam. His efforts culminated in disaster when a Kurdish faction, the Kurdish Democratic Party, invited Saddam`s tanks into Kurdistan to crush their rivals, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as well as the INC. More than 100 INC officials were executed, and thousands more had to be evacuated by the United States.

By 1998, however, Chalabi had used his formidable lobbying skills to restore the INC`s luster in Washington. He helped to win passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, in which Congress endorsed regime change in Iraq and appropriated funding to the INC. Chalabi`s plan was to use INC soldiers and U.S. air power to take the cities of Kirkuk, Mosul, and Basra, then pray for Iraqi soldiers to defect and for a popular uprising to begin. In Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Pollack, Daniel Byman, and Gideon Rose dubbed the plan "militarily ludicrous."

It`s not clear that Chalabi`s forces are any less absurd in 2003. A Financial Times report last week questioned the discipline of the INC troops and described a drunken soldier at the INC`s northern headquarters at Dokan; he was "falling over into the gutter, where his plastic bag containing beer and stronger liquor burst open." And according to U.S. News, Chalabi`s Free Iraqi Forces, which were recently airlifted by the United States into southern Iraq, are off to an inauspicious start, too. The FIF`s first move was to take over some local government offices, only to be told by the British to get out in an hour unless they wanted to be regarded as "hostile forces." U.S. News added that Chalabi`s men have not been given any weapons, and their job so far consists mainly of identifying fleeing Baath Party leaders at U.S. checkpoints.

There are other reasons to be suspicious of Chalabi. In 1992, a Jordanian military court convicted him in absentia of bank fraud for allegedly embezzling $70 million from Petra Bank, which Chalabi founded in the 1970s in Amman. Chalabi`s supporters argue that he was set up by the Jordanian government because he was helping to fund the opposition to Saddam. But Chalabi`s money-management skills didn`t necessarily improve over time. According to a State Department report, nearly half of the $4.3 million in U.S. dollars doled out to the INC under the Iraq Liberation Act wasn`t properly accounted for. Ultimately, State cut Chalabi off, and the INC`s funding was turned over to the Pentagon, where Chalabi has more political allies. Chalabi also reportedly ran through $100 million in CIA money.

Chalabi`s military failures, his poor bookkeeping, and his lack of support inside Iraq have led some people at the State Department and the CIA to be skeptical about his prospects. But a more worrisome possibility is that some people inside the United States government don`t like Chalabi because he`s serious about trying to create an Iraqi democracy. Foreign-policy "realists" may prefer a pro-American dictator who is more interested in security than popular sovereignty. The Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya said as much in the New York Times Magazine in March: "Some people in the government are talking democratic change," Makiya told the writer George Packer, "and there are other people who think that`s all a pile of garbage. These others are in the State Department and the C.I.A. today."

Of course Chalabi should not be imposed on the Iraqi people as their ruler. But there`s no reason for the United States not to encourage him in his project to build a real, democratic government inside Iraq. Now that Saddam Hussein has been defeated, Chalabi`s military prowess isn`t all that relevant, and it`s hard to see how allegedly wasting American taxpayer dollars disqualifies him for elective office. If anything, it should qualify him for it. The very attributes that sometimes hurt Chalabi as leader of the Iraqi National Congress—his over-optimistic assessment of his abilities, his penchant for mismanaging other people`s money, his failure to always be truthful, and his self-promoting style—sound like virtual prerequisites for higher office in the United States. Chalabi "has been entirely ineffective, except in one area, which is undermining other opposition groups," an anonymous U.S. official told the Philadelphia Inquirer last year. In a war, behavior like that can get you killed. In a democracy, it makes you president.


Also on MSN

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Passt doch zur`Operation Iraq Liberation` (O.i.l.)

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Hawks in U.S. Eyeing Syria As Next Target
Debating its threat to region
By Timothy M. Phelps
WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF; Special correspondent Knut Royce contributed to this story

April 10, 2003

Washington - With victory in Iraq assured, hawks outside and inside the Bush administration have begun taking a notably aggressive stance toward its neighbor to the west, Syria.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and their main ideological ally at the State Department, undersecretary John Bolton, have all made menacing public remarks about Syria in recent days.

Yesterday, Rumsfeld said Syria was harboring lower-level members of Saddam Hussein`s regime. He said Syria had ignored his warnings not to help Iraq militarily and, in response to a question as to whether Syria was "next," said ominously, "It depends on people`s behavior. Certainly I have nothing to announce."

One intelligence source with good access to Pentagon civilian authorities said that Rumsfeld last week ordered the drawing up of contingency plans for a possible invasion of Syria and that Defense undersecretary Douglas Feith is working on a policy paper highlighting how Syria`s support of terrorist groups is a threat to the region.

However, a senior Pentagon officer said he was unaware of any new planning regarding Syria.

Rumsfeld and his allies directly contradicted soothing comments about Syria by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, in a clear sign the debate over the Middle East continues between administration hawks and moderates beyond the Iraq question. And Rumsfeld has also taken on the CIA, where sources have said there was no evidence of Syrian governmental help for Iraq.

With many Arabs afraid that Iraq is only the first of several Arab targets of the U.S. government, and others alleging that its real interest in the Middle East is to bolster Israel, the undiplomatic comments by Rumsfeld and the others provoked intense debate within the diplomatic community of U.S. intentions.

In an interview Sunday, Wolfowitz told NBC, "There`s got to be a change in Syria," and said it should eventually "get the message" from what happened to Iraq that it should not acquire weapons of mass destruction and not use terrorism as an instrument of national policy.

Syria has long supported Hezbollah and other groups that carry out attacks against Israel, and it is said by the CIA to possess chemical and biological weapons.

Armitage assured reporters yesterday that "in the last several days ... [the Syrians] have responded quite well to U.S. and coalition warnings and demarches about closing their borders and things of that nature and she has done so." He downplayed talk of a list or of further military action.

But Rumsfeld directly contradicted Armitage yesterday.

Syrian diplomats here denied Rumsfeld`s allegations but admitted they were alarmed by the aggressive tone not only of officials, but influential conservatives outside the administration.

Former CIA director James Woolsey - mentioned at the Pentagon as a possible official in postwar Iraq - recently said the United States is involved in a new world war against Iran, the "fascists of Iraq and Syria" and Islamic extremists.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute this week published an article apparently calling for U.S. attacks on Syria and Iran, which it said were sending forces into Iraq. "So they are coming to kill coalition forces, which means that there is no more time for diplomatic `solutions.` The United States will have to deal with the terror masters, here and now," it said. Michael Ledeen, a go-between with Israel in the 1980s U.S. plot to ship arms from Iran to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, wrote the article.

Iran is often mentioned as another possible target of the Bush administration, and also has been warned recently by Rumsfeld, but has not gotten as much public attention as Syria.

Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian-born Syria scholar in Washington, said the recent comments "are warnings and by going public, it is an undiplomatic thing to do ... Really, we have to see if what is going on is a plan in progress or are those folks improvising?"

Jouejati said the attacks from the United States would only bolster the standing of Syrian President Bashar Assad at home and in the Arab world. Assad, a mild-mannered doctor who took over when his father died three years ago, is still consolidating his power in Syria. Jouejati said that it would be "political suicide" for Assad to be seen as kowtowing to the United States.

A Syrian diplomat said there would be even less international support for a war on Syria than a war on Iraq. Before joining George W. Bush for their summit in Belfast, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called Assad to reassure him, the diplomat said.

Special correspondent Knut Royce contributed to this story
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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Madison: `War is Bush`s Teflon cloak`
Posted on Thursday, April 10 @ 09:50:08 EDT
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By Madison

I feel a profound sense of depression about the future of our country. I read of the gleeful high-fiving in the Bush administration that the war has gone so "well" for them -- their cronies and campaign contributors have profited mightily from waging the war and are on the threshold of making even more money from re-building the country they just provided the munitions to destroy. And, yet, there is almost no hint of criticism in the media or in Congress about such war-mongering and war-profiteering.

And now Bush and his war-mongering team are fired up to invade Iran and Syria. But there is only silence from Congress and silence from the media. Invading one, two, three more countries does not seem to even raise an eyebrow anymore in the halls of Congress or in the halls of the TV studios.

More killing. More dying. More profits for the Bush cartel.



I think I am on firm ground saying that never in America`s history has a president taken our nation into war on such flimsy if not out-and-out fabricated "evidence"; and never in history have a president and his family and friends so directly profited from waging war. They don`t even bother to use middlemen for "cover"; the owners and directors of the companies making the munitions and supplying the military`s needs are all friends, family and campaign supporters of George W. Bush. The companies awarded the contracts to profiteer off the rebuilding are also friends, family, business partners and campaign contributors of George W. Bush.

And yet, I hear only silence from Congress, and silence from the media.

Here at home, our president wages war against the poor, the elderly, women, minorities, our civil rights, our economic security, the environment. And, yet, I hear only silence from Congress, and silence from the media.

Bush and his obscenely rich cronies plunder our national treasury for their own gain -- and wage war on helpless people, also for their own gain.

This war was not about weapons of mass destruction and it was not about deposing a ruthless dictator. The Bushites have known about Saddam Hussein`s character from the start and yet they did business with him for decades. They do not care that he is or was ruthless. If they cared about such things there are at least twenty ruthless rulers around the world they would be moving to depose; but they do not, because that is not what this Iraq war is or was about.

It is about power and money and DISTRACTION. We are not "allowed" to criticize Bush because he is a wartime president. He will run with this moniker wrapped around him, like a Teflon cloak, until he is re-elected. That is Bush`s main goal in life: re-election. How better to stifle all dissent than to be engaged in perpetual war "for our own good and safety"? Hitler fed the Germans the same swill about waging war "for their own good and safety." Hitler convinced the German people that foreigners threatened their well-being, so he had to attack before those foreigners attacked Germany. Phantoms. Everywhere, phantoms.

But, still, here at home the drugged TV poof-heads keep talking as if we were under immediate threat of invasion by Saddam Hussein. Iraq`s non-existent long-range missiles were supposedly going to carry loads of weapons of mass destruction to our shores. Mushroom clouds over Manhattan! Except Iraq didn`t have any missiles capable of carrying those yet-to-be-found (and maybe soon-to-be-planted-and-"discovered") WMDs to our shores.

No matter, the American people have already forgotten that eliminating WMDs was what this war was advertised to us as being about. Now it seems the war is about "liberating" the Iraqi people, the living and the half-dead Iraqi people. The dead don`t care a whole lot about being "liberated."

In fact, the war was not about WMDs or "liberating"; it was and remains driven by Bush`s desire to show the watching world what powerful weapons we have -- and informing the world that this president is just crazed enough to use those powerful weapons wherever and whenever it suits his political needs.

Here at home, senators are high-fiving because they held Bush`s new tax-cuts-for-the-obscenely-rich to just $387 Billion, instead of the $750 Billion Bush demanded. What in the hell are they doing giving ANY tax cuts when they don`t even have funds to cover the costs of the war?

You and I know what this is all about; Bush`s goal with these tax cuts is to drain the national treasury and throw us into such federal debt that not only will social programs be cut and eliminated now, but no one will dare propose restoring them for decades to come -- because there will be NO money in the federal coffers. Bush will have "transferred" it all to his wealthy corporate campaign contributors (and his family and friends) as surely as if he just had new keys made for Fort Knox and given the new keys to his friends and family.

Yes, I am depressed; and if you aren`t, it`s just because you have been watching too much TV and thinking you are getting news there. You aren`t; all you get from the TV is deception. A con-man with a criminal`s mind is at the head of our government, and he is poised to rule forever. Think about it, and tell me why I shouldn`t feel depressed for America, and the world.

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Miss America
Even Dick Nixon looks good to me now

by Alan Bisbort - April 3, 2003

I miss Richard Nixon. What I mean is, I miss the days of Richard Nixon when, even while the Trickster and Spiro Agnew were abusing power, a loyal opposition resided in Washington, D.C. I miss the days when a loyal opposition was bipartisan, well-spoken and independent-minded, when it included people like Daniel Moynihan, who died this week, and Lowell Weicker, then a Republican Senator from this great state. I miss the time when the Republican Party had smart people in it, even if you disagreed with them, people like Mark Hatfield, Barry Goldwater, John Chaffee. I miss the time when even so-called "doves" like William Fulbright, Mike Mansfield, George McGovern and Morris Udall were admired by those who voted differently from them. I miss the checks and balances that were built into our Constitution and worked so well for this nation up until November 2000.
I miss America.

I miss the fact that Nixon was something of an evil genius and Spiro Agnew a sort of idiot savant, and that, in tandem, they made for excellent public spectacles. I miss how easy it was to kick Dick Nixon around and how comically predictable was the bombast of Agnew (written by now eminent pundits Pat Buchanan and William Safire).

I miss the fact that, even in his darkest hours, Nixon conducted regular, unscripted press conferences, his upper lip and enormous forehead beading with sweat as he fielded one tough question after another from unsycophantic (even openly hostile) journalists. I miss Nixon`s ability to speak in complete sentences and foment strategies that, even if you disagreed with them, were consistent. I miss Nixon`s occasional forays into moderation and even shockingly prescient policy (e.g., opening the door to China, creating the Environmental Protection Agency).

I miss the stiff-necked desperation of the nerdy Nixon to be liked by others, a wish forever denied him. I miss how, even after he left office in disgrace, Nixon had the wherewithal and intellect to reinvent himself yet again-a hallmark of his entire political career-and how he would make sincere but ultimately wrongheaded gestures toward reconnecting with the cheering public he so achingly missed.

There are so many things that I don`t miss about Richard Nixon, of course, that it would take another column to list them. Mostly I don`t miss his deceit, his paranoia, his cheap kneejerk appeal to mob hatreds when he was smart enough to know better. I don`t miss his evil assistant, Henry Kissinger, nor do I miss their expansion of the air war in Southeast Asia. I don`t miss Nixon`s beady-eyed Attorney General John Mitchell, who was a pussycat next to John Ashcroft. (I do, however, miss Martha Mitchell, his un-Stepford wife who smelled the feces of corruption before anyone else).

Next to the high crimes and low misdemeanors perpetrated by this Bush administration, Nixon`s sins seem, well, if not quaint, then understandable within the context of the times. Even though he will forever bear the blame for the expansion of the Vietnam War with his bombings of Cambodia and Laos-and the terrible "blowback" they bred-it should be noted that Nixon inherited that war from two Democratic predecessors, that the largest troop escalations were done on Lyndon Johnson`s watch.

Ironically, beyond these much more serious sins, the crimes that led to Nixon`s impeachment hearings and resignation in August 1974 seem so, well, tame: he bugged the campaign headquarters of a Democratic opponent (George McGovern) whom all polls indicated he`d beat in a landslide in Nov. 1972 (he did). And, then, when the press discovered that this break-in led back to the White House, he covered it up. That`s it. Sounds like standard, and unchallenged, presidential protocol these days.

Indeed, the crimes of George W. Bush ON A DAILY BASIS surpass the collective crimes of Richard Nixon`s entire presidential career.

So, why aren`t people more outraged by the current White House`s abuse of power, unprecedented in American history?

What could be more criminal than to start a war by invading another country that poses no immediate threat? What could be more criminal than starting this war by using fictitious documents, photographs and threats of retaliation against countries, and longtime allies, that will not go along with this charade? What could be more criminal than to perpetrate, and escalate, this terrible bloodshed even as we speak? What could be more telling about this Little Caesar in the White House that, even as he needlessly puts our brave, dutiful soldiers in harm`s way, he is cutting the benefits to veterans of previous wars? What could be more criminal than to loot the U.S. Treasury to conduct a blood-for-oil feud, then pass the cost on to generations unborn?

It seems the only thing that could restore the America I remember is another Watergate. There are so many more Watergates just sitting there, hidden in plain sight, and they are more widespread and galling than anything Nixon ever did.

I miss the America that stood up to Richard Nixon. Even Dick Nixon looks good to me now
http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content.html?oid=oid:…

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Drawing fire

The Guardian`s Steve Bell explains why he`d rather stay in the Palestine hotel than don a war cartoonist`s flak jacket

Thursday April 10, 2003


Steve Bell`s view of Bush`s plan for a role for the UN


How would I like to be an embedded cartoonist? Not one little bit.
I believe passionately in the idea of cartoon reportage, but not at my age, and certainly not in the present circumstances with the military breathing down my neck.

Don`t get me wrong - I would love to hurl myself into foxholes and I really enjoyed the only time I`ve ever been paintballing. But I fear this would be paintballing with extreme prejudice - and just imagine the indignity of being at the beck and call of nuclear-powered wankers like Air Marshal Bertrand Bollocks or whatever his name is.

Would I care to be an unembedded one? Not in the conditions that obtain at the moment. The Rumsfeld doctrine, as clearly expressed by the US defence secretary during the Afghan war in late 2001, means that un-embedded journalists of any description can expect no protection from the forces of freedom.

There`s never been a more dangerous time to be a journalist at war.

If you don`t believe me then take a look at To Afghanistan and Back by the US cartoonist Ted Rall, an excellent little book that supplies a first hand account of what really happened to journalists in that particular conflict.

And look at what they`ve just done to the Palestine Hotel. To hit the offices of al-Jazeera once in Kabul could be construed as carelessness; to blast them for a second time in Baghdad seems like something other than misfortune.

So that leaves me back home in my armchair, or seated at my desk, wading up to my metaphorical eyeballs through the swollen torrent of shit pouring out of my radio and TV.

One of the real advantages of being able to draw in this awful context is that it affords the chance to manipulate a little of this flood of imagery and turn it back on itself; since I`m certain the vast bulk of these mega-pictures constitute a campaign of deliberate obfuscation.

This explains the western media`s strange combination of squeamishness and prurience. They don`t want the gory bits, thank you very much, but they are inexorably drawn towards them nonetheless. Then they shut their eyes tight at the crucial moment, for isn`t such explicit imagery both tasteless and intrusive? Surely that`s the bloody idea.

I might be a little more sympathetic to the Bush-Blair axis if they would at least own up to the effects of what they are actually doing out there. But they manage the precise opposite: repeating blatant lies and shrouding their campaign of supposed (but impossible) surgical accuracy in a blanket of misinformation.

For at the end of the day, no matter what your views on the legitimacy of this war, there is no escaping the grisly equation that high explosives plus densely populated areas equals civilian casualties.

Apart from the inevitable risk of seeming flippant and trivial in the face of tragedy and heroism, is it any more difficult working as a cartoonist now than under normal conditions? Personally speaking, there is no more "censorship" than usual.

The only thing I`ve been obliged to adapt slightly was the "turd count" in my cartoon on the role of the UN, published on April 4 - I agreed to remove three splattered turds from the version that appeared in the printed edition of the Guardian. The version on the web went out unaltered.

The response to my war cartoons (which have made up my entire output during the last couple of months) has been interesting, particularly by email.

Since, by its very nature the web version ends up in all sorts of exotic, weird and wonderful places, I have almost become used to getting a steady supply, occasionally building to a flood of righteous abuse, from across the Atlantic.

But since the outbreak of hostilities, this seems to have eased and given way to a generally more positive electronic mailbag from the other side of the pond (if I discount the offers of porn, Viagra and Nigerian bank scams). However, I`m not sure this means anything other than people of like mind wishing to stick together in times of trouble and strife.

Whatever happens I`m always very grateful for any response, though my frequent failure to reply may give the opposite impression. The web has also been an invaluable source of information and imagery unavailable in any other medium (I can`t get al-Jazeera on my cable account).

I often wonder what I would do if I were ordered to pack up pen, paper, scanner and laptop and head for the front - something which is technologically perfectly possible, but which I`ve only ever done in the far less threatening context of a party political conference.

I think after I`d been prised out of the wardrobe in which I would be trying to hide, I would endeavour to keep my head down and draw whatever came in front of me. Which, if I really kept my head down, would be absolutely bugger all.

However, the great thing about drawing cartoons is that you can do it from memory. So, looking at it another way, if I were a military-type spin person and I came across somebody in a flak jacket with "CARTOONIST" plastered across the front, I`d have them shot or sent back home sooner than I could say "exercising my right of self-defence".

© Steve Bell 2003

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Professor Barry Glassner, The Man Who Knows About Fear in American Culture

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

We became acquainted with Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, through his walking interview with Michael Moore in "Bowling for Columbine." When we read his book, "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things," we realized how pivotal his thinking was to the overall theme of Moore`s remarkable film.

Recently, BuzzFlash talked with Glassner about the nature of mass-media produced fear in America. It`s an interview to be patient with, because it provides the background for how Karl Rove and the Pentagon have harnessed the media to take advantage of a population that his been primed for obsessing about what may be LEAST threatening to them on a daily basis.

When you finish the interview, you will understand a bit better how the Bush propaganda experts have "branded fear" to advance their political agenda. We don`t spend a lot of time talking with Glassner directly about the Bush strategy or politics per se. However, we arrive at the point, by the end of the interview, of helping us to understand how we got to the point, as a culture, that the Karl Rove/John Ashcroft/Rumsfeld "Ministry of Fear" strategy could succeed.

Indeed, Glassner does point out how politicians are like magicians:

"A lot of what politicians do is what I refer to as misdirection, which is a magician`s term. If I want to make a coin seem to disappear from my right hand, I need to get you to look at my left hand for a moment while I get rid of the coin. Politicians use this technique to get the public`s mind off of those issues and problems that the politicians are either unable or unwilling to confront -- and to keep our attention instead on those issues or problems that they are willing or able to confront."

Here is the BuzzFlash interview on media-induced fear in America.

* * *


BUZZFLASH: Fear is a basic instinct in animals, including our own species. How does it differ between, for instance, a rabbit who hears a noise and hops away and the way a human processes and reacts to fear?

BARRY GLASSNER: Well, the first difference that comes to my mind is the rabbit probably doesn`t watch Fox News Channel. Or receive solicitations from advocacy groups in the mail every day saying that if the rabbit doesn`t write a check, some horrible thing will happen.

I think there are big differences in human society that have mostly to do with who does the fear-mongering, and to what ends. I am not someone who would argue that if your fears are legitimate that you should not respond accordingly and be cautious and take self-protective action. What I`m really talking about is exaggerated fears –- the kind that are promoted by organizations in their own self-interest and that have unfortunate consequences, like parents raising paranoid children, people being suspicious of their neighbors.

In the U.S., our fears are so exaggerated and out of control that anxiety is the number-one mental health problem in the country.

BUZZFLASH: Let`s say we`re in a dark parking lot and someone approaches with a black mask on and a gun. I think you`d consider that a basis for legitimate fear. And we`d do what we could to flee what we`d consider a hostile force, someone that can cause us bodily harm or death, just as the deer flees a wild animal that is pursuing it. And that`s a primal fear.

You seem to be talking about something that is more distinct to humans -– that comes from language, the environment, images on television. As humans, we can process language and images in a way to make us anxious.

GLASSNER: Well, the fear-mongers in our society certainly rely on the fact that we have something like what you`re calling primal fear that they can tap into. In your example, the kind of distinction I would raise is between a person who`s in that black mask and the person who has a dark complexion and is wearing no mask.

BUZZFLASH: Who just happens to be there.

GLASSNER: And in U.S. society, most everyone, but especially Anglo-Americans, fear people of color, and especially men of color, very much disproportionately to any threat that they pose to them in the abstract. And I think in that kind of example, we have to ask, why is that the case? Where does it come from, and who`s benefiting from it? And that`s the question I would ask in many other cases as well where there are high levels of fear that are disproportionate to the danger.

And when we ask that question, it seems to me, it`s reasonably clear who is doing the fear-mongering, and it`s TV news magazines and news programs that are trying to sell programs to their viewers, advocacy groups that are trying to sell memberships and make some money, lawyers who are selling class-action lawsuits, politicians who win elections by whipping up fear of crime, even when crime rates are way down. And the list goes on and on, all the way to marketers of anti-bacterial soaps and realtors who sell homes in gated communities. And when living in that kind of environment, with so much profit available to those who can manipulate our fears effectively, it`s not surprising that we`re so fearful.

BUZZFLASH: How do we know what to fear and what not to fear? If we can have fear instilled in us through television, through words, through language and through visual images -- and so much of that is being done, as you point out, by the different organizations and people you just mentioned -- how do we as individuals make a decision on what is a legitimate fear and what`s artificially produced for gains of some sort by different people?

GLASSNER: The short answer to that question is why I wrote a book –- to try to help people know how to do that. But let me just talk about a couple of what I think are the most important sorts of clues that we have that we are in the presence of exaggerated fear-mongering. One of those is when isolated incidents are treated as trends, and that often occurs in scares about groups of people.

So, for example, if we flash back just a few years to the hysteria over school shootings, for instance, what we find is that this was occurring at a time when there were fewer deaths at schools than in the past -– at a time, in fact, when the rate of youth violent crime was falling precipitously. So how was it that various politicians and journalists and others were talking about a quote-unquote epidemic of youth violence? Primarily they were doing it by taking isolated incidents and treating them as trends.

There were some horrific incidents that any of us over the age of about 20 will recall of school shootings in places like Pearl, Mississippi and West Paduka, Kentucky, which occurred in the late 1990s. But they did not constitute what Geraldo Rivera, at the time, referred to as "an epidemic of seemingly depraved adolescent murderers." And they didn`t constitute what various politicians were referring to in the same terms, or worse.

The word "predator" was used quite often. And then with the shootings at Columbine High School, of course, there was this general sense in the country that just about every adolescent male was a potential mass murderer, when, in fact, there were fewer of these incidents during this period than there had been in the past. And the probability of someone being shot at school was tiny. So the moral – one moral of the story -- I would draw is that we should be very cautious when incidents and anecdotes that substitute for facts. And secondly, we need to ask ourselves what the real probability of danger is from what we`re being led to be fearful about.

BUZZFLASH: You said that people profit from fear-mongering. Now in the case of this issue of school shootings, who profited or gained from the belief that we had an epidemic?

GLASSNER: All those groups profited that were able to put the sorts of policies toward youth in place that they found politically appealing: for example, those who wanted much more surveillance and supervision of schoolchildren. Obviously, another group that profited is the security industry that was able to sell devices ranging from metal detectors to camera equipment, to the services of security guards. Probably the biggest beneficiary was the television news media, as is often the case, because they had a dramatic story that they could run with for a very long period of time.

BUZZFLASH: Let`s talk about television a bit. In the movie Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore emphasized your theory of a culture of fear. That was the central thesis of the film. In the film, you went with Michael to South Central L.A., a Mexican-American community. And you were standing on a corner and talking about the perception to white Americans that South Central LA is an extremely dangerous place. That really wasn`t a valid fear on a day-to-day basis, as both of you showed walking through the area. And then Michael had a segment where there was a shooting in the area, and he was asking the media why they didn`t cover pollution and so forth. And it was comical, as much of the film is, but in a very sort of tragic sort of way. The media people looked at him like he was from Pluto.

We know that television has been accused of it "if it bleeds, it leads," and that so much of news, particularly weekend news in urban areas, focuses on murders, shootings and crime in the city. Why does television have such an impact on creating that sort of stereotype and fear -- particularly among whites -- of minorities? And why is that so beneficial to the corporations that transmit the news?

GLASSNER: Well, I think it`s fair to say that many Americans live in a televisual environment. They spend considerable amounts of time watching television and get a good part of their view of reality beyond their immediate surroundings by what they see on television. It`s one thing when those representations are in programs that are avowedly fictional, like TV dramas or sitcoms. Almost every viewer and, with the exception of perhaps some children and persons with perceptual problems, everyone else understands that that`s fiction.

When we watch the news, we believe, unsurprisingly, that we`re watching reality. What`s unfortunate is that often what we watch when we watch local TV news is a distorted view of the community in which we live. And when we watch national TV news, and TV news magazines, a distorted view of the nation and the world in which we live. It is distorted, in particular, in my view, in the direction of making the community, the nation and the world appear much more dangerous for the average TV viewer in the U.S. than is actually the case.

And at the same time, what is at least as unfortunate for the well-being of the society and the individuals within it, is the near-invisibility of phenomena that are actually much more common in the world in which we`re living. Those range from what may seem utterly banal, like the fact that the greatest killer of children is unintentional injuries, a great many of which can be avoided, and a great many of which are from very common causes, to some very large socioeconomic and political issues like the fact that nearly one in three Americans lacked health insurance for some period during the last two years.

TV news gains by continuing its style of coverage in several ways. First, it is relatively inexpensive to run a news operation based on the maxim "if it bleeds, it leads." You need a police radio and an adequate camera, or, in some cities, a helicopter, to follow the police around. You will get very dramatic pictures. The audience is understandably anxious and engaged when presented with the prospect of violence by strangers in their own community. In point of fact, of course, most interpersonal violence is between people who know each other, often people who live together.

But we don`t get that impression from the TV news. And were they to present that to us, it would create lots of uncomfortable viewers, uncomfortable advertisers, and an uncomfortable political climate for them. It would raise difficult and important questions. No one can disagree with the premise that an attack by a stranger is a bad thing and a frightening thing that should be stopped. And that`s basically what they cover, and what those newscasts cover, and a lot of what police in many cities focus upon.

To cover corporate crime in any way that makes for compelling TV viewing is very difficult and expensive, so they`re not going to cover that. To cover domestic violence would require a level of understanding that they typically don`t have, and a level of access that is more difficult for them to get as well. Now if we talk about other areas, however, there`s quite a bit that TV news could be doing. So I mentioned a couple of minutes ago the roughly 75 million Americans who`ve gone without health insurance for at least some part of the last couple of years. There are great pictures and stories to be had, simply by going to public hospitals and emergency rooms, and medical facilities. Going into the homes of people who are underinsured or uninsured. There are very dramatic stories to be told.

And so I personally am impatient when I hear TV news directors and reporters saying we can`t really cover those stories because we wouldn`t have an audience, or because they`re too expensive to cover. For TV news to cover the major social problems and dangers that people in this country face need not be more expensive, though they would have to learn something about the problems. And they would have somewhat greater challenges on their hands in putting together a dramatic narrative that would keep viewers watching. But the story itself is at least as dramatic and interesting at those emergency rooms or at under-funded schools in their communities, as on the street corner where someone attacks someone else.

BUZZFLASH: Is there something in human nature that makes violence appeal to us in a vicarious way? There was a period –- less so now –- where Hollywood was just putting out enormously violent films. And the argument of Hollywood is, well, people come and see them. Television too –- it helps in the ratings. This is an invariable formula: Show the person who`s been killed. Show the blood. Show the grieving relative. Get a comment from the police. And go to the next one. Commercial break. It`s like creating a "bleed and lead" gaper`s block on the local news. We denounce it, but we can`t help watching it.

GLASSNER: You`re right to compare to the fictional media -– movies and TV shows. And if we look at that comparison, we see that it`s very feasible to attract large audiences for other types of material. To stay with the example I was giving just a minute ago, hospital ER-type shows do very well, just to take one example. More generally, it`s sometimes said that there`s an epidemic of violence on television and the movies, but if that`s the case, there`s an even bigger epidemic of kissing in television and in the movies. And the kissing does just as well in the ratings and at the box office as the shooting. So I think there are lessons to be drawn from that comparison and they`re not the ones that producers of local TV news would like to draw.

But more broadly, the notion that it is the viewers` fault somehow, either because of the way we`re hard-wired as human beings, or because of our preferences for what we watch –- that somehow it`s the viewers` fault that this is the fear they get –- is nothing but a cop-out from those who produce these programs. We`re not asking for this kind of material, and we have very little choice.

If I turn on the television news in any major market in the country, on any given night, I will not be able to find out much about what is going on of consequence in my community because the stories are not available for me to watch. It`s not as if I have a choice of watching the latest crime story versus, say, a story about the state of the public schools or the healthcare system, or the increasing number of unemployed, or any of the other serious environmental, economic and other social problems that are very much worthy of my attention. I can flip the channels as many times as I want, and I`m not going to find much of anything about those much more pressing and prevalent dangers.

BUZZFLASH: On September 11, 2001, a dreadful, horrible tragedy struck this country in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Subsequent to that, we`ve experienced a series of ongoing terror alerts; most recently, advice to duct tape our houses and so forth. And people ran out and got duct tape and plastic sheeting. We`ve been told that basically -- if you assemble all the terrorist alerts together -- terrorists could strike in any way. We`ve been told terrorists may be disguised as beggars. We`ve been told they may drive trucks. Last year, in May, we were told that they had targeted apartment buildings, which probably includes half of the country. We`ve been told they might use hydrofoils in the Everglades, that they might attack ports, airports, centers of governments, tall buildings, small buildings. Basically we`ve been told, in bursts of fear, that terrorists may strike in any manner and at any time. So what do the alerts tell us?

Within the context of the culture of fear, how are we supposed to sort this out? The government says, well, be wary and vigilant. As an individual, I have no idea what that means. And when these alerts come, the question remains: What am I supposed to do? The only concrete thing the government`s offered is duct tape and plastic sheeting.

GLASSNER: To the extent that the government is asking us to do something specific, I think they need to tell us what that is in each instance, and why they are asking us to do that. If they meet those two criteria –- which they have not so far, at least to my mind -– then I think it`s a reasonable thing for them to do. So if they need to tell us that they have reason to believe someone may be leaving packages unattended on the subway, and we should watch out for that, that`s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask us to do.

If, on the other hand, the alert is just a general statement with no specific requests, no substance behind it, I can`t see how it benefits anyone except those persons who would like the general population to be more fearful. It discourages us from participating in our communities, in community life. This is harmful to the well-being of the community -- not only in terms of revenues for businesses, which is the point that is often raised, but in terms of what we sociologists refer to as community integration -- the connection between people -- the very sense of community, people`s political engagement, and so forth.

Another point I would emphasize in this regard is that we need to ask ourselves, when we are living in this environment that you describe well, where we`re hearing about all sorts of terrifying attacks that could occur, I think we need to put those dangers into some sort of rational perspective, as we should do with any other danger that is being blown out of proportion.

So, for example, I thought I would check some of the relative levels of risk during 2001, the year of the terrible attacks of 9/11. So I checked the National Safety Council`s statistics for motor vehicle deaths -– for deaths from motor vehicle accidents. And I discovered that that number is 42,900 for 2001. Then I checked the number of deaths from terrorist attacks worldwide that year, and the number is 3,547, according to the figures published by the U.S. State Department; 3,000 of which were on 9/11. That suggests that my odds that year as an American citizen of dying in a motor vehicle crash were more than 10 times as high as my odds of dying from a terrorist attack. This comparison is relevant, partly because of the relative nature of the danger, and partly because the more anxious, fearful and distracted I am, the more likely I am to be involved in an accident, whether while driving a motor vehicle or doing anything else.

BUZZFLASH: So the generalized fear, if we live in a state of fear, can cause such anxiety that it actually could result in an accident.

GLASSNER: Anxiety, fear –- just the distraction that comes from those –- increases the likelihood of an accident. It also increases the likelihood of a variety of illnesses, ranging from the common cold to much more serious conditions, such as heart conditions. And in terms of sociological dimension of this, high levels of fear and anxiety also create unfortunate social conditions, like people being more willing to give up civil liberties, like people not participating in the life of their community and political institutions and so forth.

For individuals, at a much more personal level, there`s a separate upshot to what I`m suggesting. And that is if you want to protect yourself and your loved ones as an individual, the place to do that is not in the duct tape aisle of the store, but other places, like, for example, if you have concern for your children, you should ask questions like whether they wear helmets when they ride their bicycles, because head injuries account for about 60 percent of bicycle-related deaths for children, and about two-thirds of bicycle-related hospital admissions. The probability that your child is going to go to the hospital as a result of a terrorist attack, even if there are more terrorist attacks than there have been in this country, does not compare to the risk from common household accidents and from motor vehicle accidents. And so we need to keep it in proportion in that sort of way.

And then finally I would say, to the extent that any of us might be concerned about protecting ourselves and our loved ones during and after a terrorist attack, what we should be focusing on is not what we can do to secure our homes with duct tape, but rather the condition of the public health system and the public health facilities in our communities. Because if there really is an attack of any of the sorts you`ve mentioned earlier, it`s not duct tape we`re going to need. It`s a sufficiently large, well-functioning and well-funded public health system, which is not something that we have been particularly good at building in this country for quite some time.

BUZZFLASH: You mention in your book -- and historically we`ve seen this during elections -- politicians have used fear of crime -- and fear within the white community of minorities particularly -- to wipe other issues off the table. They`ll say, "I`m for law and order and more police; lock ‘em up and throw ‘em away the key." And they use the fear of rampant crime, which usually doesn`t exist in the communities they`re running in, particularly in the suburbs, to get elected. And now we`re seeing fear as part of a political context, involving dark skinned Arabic men are to be feared. How is fear used to control people?

GLASSNER: Well, if we`re going to lock people up or go to war with them, we need to either hate them or be fearful of them, or preferably both. And so it is incumbent upon politicians or others who want to engage in those activities, or who want the public to support those activities, to make sure that they are fearful and/or full of hatred for those other persons. What we members of the public need to ask is: Are we being manipulated into these responses? And are these really the responses we want? And why, at any particular time, are those feelings being whipped up in us?

A lot of what politicians do is what I refer to as misdirection, which is a magician`s term. If I want to make a coin seem to disappear from my right hand, I need to get you to look at my left hand for a moment while I get rid of the coin. Politicians use this technique to get the public`s mind off of those issues and problems that the politicians are either unable or unwilling to confront -- and to keep our attention instead on those issues or problems that they are willing or able to confront. So even though we had this horrible attack on 9/11, and we have been involved in at least two major military engagements since that time, and there`s all sorts of talk about the threat from terrorism, I think it`s important to note that misdirection around domestic issues hasn`t stopped.

What was the big news story of the summer of 2002 –- last summer? If you turned on the TV news channels, you couldn`t watch for more than a few minutes without seeing a story about kidnapped children. And there was lots of talk about how there was a new epidemic of stranger kidnappings, when really the number of kidnappings was less during last year than previous years. And the media can`t leave that alone. When a child was thankfully returned home to her family, a tremendous amount of time on television news and a significant amount of space in the print media was devoted to her story, and to the whole issue of stranger kidnapping again.

Given all of this coverage, people can be forgiven for thinking that stranger kidnapping is something they need to worry about for their children, when in point of fact, it would be very near the bottom of the list of dangers children confront, based on how likely the danger is to actually affect any given child.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

* * *

BuzzFlash Note: We strongly recommend Glassner`s book, which was written in 1999, before September 11th. Please note, however, that Glassner also takes on some of the sacred cows of the left. He is an academician of integrity. He`s not a political advocate. You may disagree with one or two of his examples of fear-inducing campaigns, but you`ll end up with deep appreciation for his insight. He`s nailed it on the head as to how we have become a nation of fear.

Get your copy of "A Culture of Fear" from BuzzFlash.

[CheapThrill]

Crowd egged me on, says Marine in statue stunt

By Andrew Clennell
(Filed: 11/04/2003)
Daily Telegraph

The Marine who draped a US flag over the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad said he had been "egged on" by the Iraqi crowd.

Cpl Edward Chin, 23, who was born in Burma, told CNN the incident "was a symbol that we were here to free the people. The crowd were happy to see what we were doing.


Cpl Edward Chin places the US flag over the statue`s head
"We took it down after a brief moment and put their flag up to symbolise that we`re here to free their country and give it back to the people."

A short time later, the bronze statue was pulled down.

The US flag used to cover Saddam`s head was recovered from the Pentagon after the September 11 attack and carried to Baghdad by Marines.

In New York, Cpl Chin`s family, who did not know where in Iraq he was, watched the events on television.

His father, Stanley Chin said: "I thought, `Oh, my son, you are making history`." Cpl Chin`s mother, Laikoon, 52, said that when she saw it was her son she was so excited she hugged the television set.

Cpl Chin`s fiancee, Anne Fu, said she knew he meant no disrespect when he put up the US flag. She said: "He wanted to show the Iraqi people that they were free and that Saddam is over."

[CheapThrill]

Baghdad fights on as suicide bomber kills US Marine

From Stephen Farrell in Baghdad
The Times
11 April 2003

THE Americans’ honeymoon in Baghdad ended in violence last night as a suicide bomber attacked US Marines in the city centre and other US forces came under fire from machineguns and rocketpropelled grenades.
The attack came amid a near-total breakdown of law and order in the capital, with looting and burning of government buildings, shops and offices as American forces watched but did not intervene.

The suicide bomber struck near Saddam City, scene of some of the most widespread looting. A Marine who witnessed the suicide attack told The Times: “Just as we came up to our checkpoint a guy came up and blew himself up, and wounded three of my guys. They were my men. It happened right in front of me.” US officials would confirm only that one Marine had died.

While the US controls most of the city, resistance remains, and the suicide attack showed the strength of feeling of Islamists and loyalists who were not among those celebrating the downfall of the regime.

Bodies, by now fly-infested and turning black in the midday sun, still littered the streets. On the Rashid Bridge two corpses spilled out of vehicles blown apart by US tanks. Around the palace complex east of the Tigris, guardhouses and palace entrances had been shattered by US tank fire, and rotting bodies lay every few hundred yards.

Others were in cars and trucks blown apart if they ventured too near checkpoints or military units. They are such a disease risk that units of US engineers have been assigned to clear the remains, and bury them facing Mecca, in accordance with Muslim custom. The task fell to Bravo Company of 10th Engineers, who spent the day scooping up piles of the dead in their bulldozer and depositing them in makeshift trench graves.

“This is not the greatest detail,” said Thomas Joshua, 26, from Philadelphia, behind the wheel of his digger, on the shovel of which lay a charred body. On its arm a watch still ticked. “We have moved 16 bodies already today and we don’t get any face masks.”

In a nearby field, opposite the giant Republican Palace surmounted by four statues of Saddam, the bodies were placed in shallow graves. With a detailed graph of the grave plot in his hand, Lieutenant Charles Greeley said he was collecting identification documents and had drawn up a grid reference system accurate to within 3ft so relatives could collect the bodies later.

Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Decamp, commander of an armoured unit that holds the main palaces, said that while he regretted civilian deaths, his men would brook no threat from locals who launched attacks on heavy armour in vans and trucks armed with light machineguns and RPGs.

Some irregular Iraqi units had tried to attack at night, he said, thinking they could fool his forces by dropping off weapons and walking towards them in civilian clothing to pick up and use against US forces. “They think from all that propaganda that they are winning,” he said. “They think they can kill an American, and they get slaughtered.”

[CheapThrill]

Robert Fisk: Baghdad: the day after
Arson, anarchy, fear, hatred, hysteria, looting, revenge, savagery, suspicion and a suicide bombing
11 April 2003
The Guardian

It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador`s desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul`s office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later.

At the headquarters of Unicef, which has been trying to save and improve the lives of millions of Iraqi children since the 1980s, an army of thieves stormed the building, throwing brand new photocopiers on top of each other and sending cascades of UN files on child diseases, pregnancy death rates and nutrition across the floors.

The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves – they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty – seem to have a different idea what liberation means.

American control of the city is, at best, tenuous – a fact underlined after several marines were killed last night by a suicide bomber close to the square where a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down on Wednesday, in the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima.

Throughout the day, American forces had fought gun battles with Saddam loyalists, said to be fighters from other Arab countries. And, for more than four hours, marines were in firefights at the Imam al-Adham mosque in the Aadhamiya district of central Baghdad after rumours, later proved untrue, that Saddam Hussein and senior members of his regime had taken flight there.

As the occupying power, America is responsible for protecting embassies and UN offices in their area of control but, yesterday, its troops were driving past the German embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate.

It is a scandal, a kind of disease, a mass form of kleptomania that American troops are blithely ignoring. At one intersection of the city, I saw US Marine snipers on the rooftops of high-rise building, scanning the streets for possible suicide bombers while a traffic jam of looters – two of them driving stolen double-decker buses crammed with refrigerators – blocked the highway beneath.

Outside the UN offices, a car slowed down beside me and one of the unshaven, sweating men inside told me in Arabic that it wasn`t worth visiting because "we`ve already taken everything". Understandably, the poor and the oppressed took their revenge on the homes of the men of Saddam`s regime who have impoverished and destroyed their lives, sometimes quite literally, for more than two decades.

I watched whole families search through the Tigris-bank home of Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam`s half-brother and a former minister of interior, of a former defence minister, of Saadun Shakr, one of Saddam`s closest security advisers, of Ali Hussein Majid – "Chemical" Ali who gassed the Kurds and was killed last week in Basra – and of Abed Moud, Saddam`s private secretary. They came with lorries, container trucks, buses and carts pulled by ill-fed donkeys to make off with the contents of these massive villas.

It also provided a glimpse of the shocking taste in furnishings that senior Baath party members obviously aspired to; cheap pink sofas and richly embroidered chairs, plastic drinks trolleys and priceless Iranian carpets so heavy it took three muscular thieves to carry them. Outside the gutted home of one former minister of interior, a fat man was parading in a stolen top hat, a Dickensian figure who tried to direct the traffic jam of looters outside.

On the Saddam bridge over the Tigris, a thief had driven his lorry of stolen goods at such speed he had crashed into the central concrete reservation and still lay dead at the wheel.

But there seemed to be a kind of looter`s law. Once a thief had placed his hand on a chair or a chandelier or a door-frame, it belonged to him. I saw no arguments, no fist-fights. The dozens of thieves in the German embassy worked in silence, assisted by an army of small children. Wives pointed out the furnishings they wanted, husbands carried them down the stairs while children were used to unscrew door hinges and – in the UN offices – to remove light fittings. One even stood on the ambassador`s desk to take a light bulb from its socket in the ceiling.

On the other side of the Saddam bridge, an even more surreal sight could be observed. A truck loaded down with chairs also had the two white hunting dogs that belonged to Saddam`s son Qusay tethered by two white ropes, galloping along beside the vehicle. Across the city, I caught a glimpse of four of Saddam`s horses – including the white stallion he had used in some presidential portraits – being loaded on to a trailer. Tariq Aziz`s villa was also looted, right down to the books in his library.

Every government ministry in the city has now been denuded of its files, computers, reference books, furnishings and cars. To all this, the Americans have turned a blind eye, indeed stated specifically that they had no intention of preventing the "liberation" of this property. One can hardly be moralistic about the spoils of Saddam`s henchmen but how is the government of America`s so-called "New Iraq" supposed to operate now that the state`s property has been so comprehensively looted? And what is one to make of the scene on the Hillah road yesterday where I found the owner of a grain silo and factory ordering his armed guards to fire on the looters who were trying to steal his lorries. This desperate and armed attempt to preserve the very basis of Baghdad`s bread supply was being observed from just 100 metres away by eight soldiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who were sitting on their tanks – doing nothing. The UN offices that were looted downtown are 200 metres from a US Marine checkpoint.

And already America`s army of "liberation" is beginning to seem an army of occupation. I watched hundreds of Iraqi civilians queuing to cross a motorway bridge at Daura yesterday morning, each man ordered by US soldiers to raise his shirt and lower his trousers – in front of other civilians, including women – to prove they were not suicide bombers.

After a gun battle in the Adamiya area during the morning, an American Marine sniper sitting atop the palace gate wounded three civilians, including a little girl, in a car that failed to halt – then shot and killed a man who had walked on to his balcony to discover the source of the firing. Within minutes, the sniper also shot dead the driver of another car and wounded two more passengers in that vehicle, including a young woman. A crew from Channel 4 Television was present when the killings took place.

Meanwhile, in the suburb of Daura, bodies of Iraqi civilians – many of them killed by US troops in battle earlier in the week – lay rotting in their still-smouldering cars. And yesterday was just Day Two of the "liberation" of Baghdad.

[CheapThrill]

This war not worth a child`s finger

Victory in just three weeks, relatively few western casualties and now, at last, even dancing on the streets. So, asks Julian Barnes, did those of us who opposed the Iraq conflict get it wrong?

Friday April 11, 2003
The Guardian

So, peacenik, you lost. We told you so. Sure, it wasn`t exactly the pushover we`d war-gamed. The Iraqis didn`t rise in rebellion as we promised, the flower-throwing was a little tardy, but that was just because we`d underestimated how terrorised they were. Still, a three-week campaign with a couple of hundred coalition dead; the end approaches, and the Iraqis are dancing on fallen statues. Soon your fellow peaceniks can start trucking in the relief and nation-building can begin. May I hear a squeak of rejoicing?
So, warnik, you think you`ve won? Please consider this. On Monday afternoon your guys thought they had found Saddam in a restaurant. A US plane dropped four very clever 2,000lb bombs on it. The next night, BBC News showed an enormous crater and its correspondent said that no one who might have been there could have got out alive. According to Peter Arnett, the sacked NBC correspondent, the targeted restaurant was still intact, but three neighbouring houses were reduced to rubble instead. According to most people, Saddam escaped. When asked about this, Torie Clarke, the US defence spokeswoman, said crisply: "I don`t think that matters very much. I`m not losing sleep trying to figure out if he was in there."

I don`t know how much of the above paragraph - apart from Clarke`s words, which I saw coming out of her mouth - is true. It probably approximates to some sort of truth, and it`s possible that years down the line an accurate version might emerge: how good was the tip-off, how accurate was the bombing, how many were killed, and how many of those were civilians? But I know this: if I were Clarke, I would think I ought to lose a little sleep. If I were Clarke, I might wonder about my American home town, and how secure it might be from terrorist attack. Because if her words, in their brutal flippancy, seemed shocking to me, then imagine their effect on someone whose father, brother, sister, friend, acquaintance was killed in that raid. Would they say, "It was a sacrifice we are happy to accept, because after all, you were trying to kill Saddam Hussein"? No, I doubt they would react like that.

As the war began, like others I tried to imagine what the best result might be. A quick war with single-figure casualties and Saddam ousted painlessly? But that might mean Rumsfeld and co merely forcing their troops to Damascus and Tehran, centres of acknowledged recalcitrance and listed evil. A slow, horrible war with so many Anglo-American dead that leaders in both countries would realise that go-it-alone invasions, which look to neutrals like neo-imperialism, were simply not practicable. But that would mean wishing for the extinction of hundreds, maybe thousands of troops, and even more civilians. An unanswerable either-or. So, something in-between? Well, something in-between is what we`re getting. Enough for some to call it a stunning professional victory, others a vile and unnecessary bloodbath.

But there`s another tacit calculation going on. The war depends on domestic public support. Public support depends in part on disguising the reality of war (hence the hypocritical hoo-ha about the "parading" of prisoners) and on calculating the acceptability of death. So what would be the best way of scoring the game? Someone, somewhere, some Machiavellian focus-grouper or damage statistician, is probably doing just this. Let`s start with the basic unit: one dead Iraqi soldier, score one point. Two for a dead Republican Guard, three for Special Republican Guard or fedayeen. And so on up to the top of the regime: 5,000, let`s say, for Chemical Ali; 7,500 for each of Saddam`s sons; 10,000 for the tyrant himself.

Now for the potentially demoralising downside. One Iraqi civilian killed: if male, lose five points, female 10, a child 20. One coalition soldier killed: deduct 50 points. And then, worst of all (as it underlines the futility and hazard of war), one coalition soldier killed by friendly fire: deduct 100 points. On the other hand, gain 1,000 for each incident which a couple of years down the line can give rise to a feel-good Hollywood movie: witness "Saving Private Lynch".

By this count, the war is a success. And television has more or less reflected the weighting of the above scoresheet: film a swaddled, bleeding, terrified child in hospital and airtime is guaranteed. With what blithe unconcern, too, it has disregarded the one-pointers. How have the Iraqi military been presented? a) as massively outgunned; b) as foolishly sallying forth in columns and making themselves easy meat for aerial attack (though the words "turkey shoot" have doubtless been sensitively banned); c) as experimental subjects for live testing of daisycutter bombs; d) as "fanatically loyal", ie still fighting when massively outgunned; e) as running away in their underpants.

The return of British bodies has been given full-scale TV coverage: the Union-Jacked coffin, the saluting Prince Andrew, the waggling kilts of soldiers escorting the hearse of their fallen comrades. Then each dead soldier`s face comes up on screen, sometimes in a blurry home colour print, with listing of wife, fiancee, children: it thuds on the emotions. But Iraqi soldiers? They`re just dead. The Guardian told us in useful detail how the British Army breaks bad news to families. What happens in Iraq? Who tells whom? Does news even get through? Do you just wait for your 18-year-old conscript son to come home or not to come home? Do you get the few bits that remain after he has been pulverised by our bold new armaments? There aren`t many equivalences around in this war, but you can be sure that the equivalence of grief exists. Here come the widow-makers, goes the cry as our tanks advance. Here too come the unwitting recruiters for al-Qaida.

For all the coverage, I don`t know what I`ve seen. Embedding journalists has certainly worked from the military point of view. This is not to disparage them, and they have taken proportionally much greater casualties than the military. But they can at best provide footage, which is not the same as telling us what is actually happening; for that they, and we, depend on official spokesmen. And journalists have to be approved. French television ran a documentary about journalists who had been refused approval, and thus access. British television lets us assume we are getting as much, and as pure, information as it is possible to give in the circumstances.

But in wartime we are even less able, and willing, than usual to see ourselves as others see us. For us, the war consists of coalition troops, Saddam, Iraqi troops, and Iraqi civilians; with bit-parts for the Kurds and Turkey. In the first days of the war I saw a report on French television news which told me - I think - that the US had closed down its embassy and cultural centre in Pakistan; I say "I think" because I never saw it confirmed here. Reaction from the wider Arab world has been sketchily covered, as if to say: let`s pretend this is a localised struggle with no wider repercussions, and then it might be. A friend of mine, who works in television, quickly realised he wasn`t getting the full picture and signed his household up for six months of al-Jazeera. Only when his wife asked where he`d been learning Arabic did he realise the flaw in his thinking. But his instinct was absolutely right.

As Baghdad falls to conventional warfare, I keep remembering that mantra in Jack Straw`s mouth: "nuclear, chemical and biological." He repeated it again and again while trying to round up support. Then the "nuclear" had to go, after the UN inspection report. So it was down to the other two villains. Like some, I believed (no, "very much wanted to believe" is as close as you get in this world of claim and counterclaim) Scott Ritter`s judgment that if the Iraqis still had some bad stuff, it was past its use-by date and turning into hair-gel. Even so, it seemed a grotesque gamble on Bush and Blair`s part to seek to prove that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons by provoking Saddam to use them against coalition troops. Now we`re told that the wily ####### has moved them to Syria. (Hey, let`s invade Syria! Then he might move them to Iran. We could look there afterwards!)

The peacenik question before the war went like this: suppose Saddam destroys all his weapons tomorrow, do we still invade on humanitarian grounds? I can`t imagine there would have been too many cries of, Yes please. But that, in retrospect, may be what we`ve done, or shall endeavour to claim we have done and therefore had been intending. Does it look like a humanitarian war to you? Are "shock and awe" compatible with "hearts and minds"? Early on, a US infantryman was seen grimly returning fire over a sand dune, then turning to camera and complaining: "They don`t seem to realise we`re here to help them." How odd that they didn`t.

In the past three weeks, I`ve had emails from friends in different parts of the world. Almost without fail, they have expressed incredulity at our prime minister`s position. "We can understand Bush, we see exactly where he`s coming from, we aren`t surprised by his gross limitations and gross ambitions. But what is your Blair up to? He seems a civilised, intelligent man. What does he think he`s doing? And what on earth does he think he`s getting out of it?" Oil? Reconstruction contracts? Hardly. As for what he thinks he`s doing: it seems, I explain, to be a mixture of deluded idealism (finding a moral case for war where neither the Anglican bishops nor the Pope - moral experts he might acknowledge - can see one) and deluded pragmatism: he really does believe the military conquest of Iraq will reduce the likelihood of terrorism.

This is Blair`s War; and as he reminded us, history will be his judge. But since we`ll all be dead by the time history comes along, three key Blair moments should be pondered. The first came long before the war was mooted. The prime minister was asked in the House of Commons about Iraq and replied with a satisfied gleam: "Saddam is in his cage." At the time I merely noted the crudeness of the diction, which is why the phrase has stuck. What few of us realised at the time was that the self-appointed zookeepers were abrogating to themselves the right to shoot the beast.

Then the question of the second UN resolution. Do you remember being told that we wouldn`t go to war without a second resolution? How quickly came the slippage. On the February 15 anti-war march, one of the talking-points was how Blair seemed to have shafted himself: if he didn`t get a second resolution, he would have to choose between going back on his promise to the British people or going back on his friendship with Bush. Soon, we knew his choice, which led to a third key moment. When accused once too often of being Bush`s poodle, Blair responded that, on the contrary, if Bush had proved timorous over Iraq, he, Blair, would have been pressing him harder to take action. Not a typical example of our "restraining influence".

Well, peacenik, are you happy now that peace is coming? No, because I don`t think this war, as conceived and justified, was worth a child`s finger. At least, are you happy that Saddam`s rule is effectively over? Yes, of course, like everyone else. So, do you see some incompatibility here? Yes, but less than the incompatibilities in your position.

And in return, warnik, I have two questions for you. Do you honestly believe that the staggering bombardment of Iraq, televised live throughout the Arab world, has made Britain, America, and the home town of Torie Clarke, safer from the threat of terrorism? And if so, let me remind you of another statement by your war leader, Mr Blair. He told us, in full seriousness, that once Saddam was eliminated, it would be necessary to "deal with" North Korea. Are you getting hot for the next one - the humanitarian attack on Pyongyang?

©Julian Barnes 2003

[CheapThrill]

French`s Mustard Announcement

The makers of French`s Mustard made the following recent statement:

"We at the French`s Company wish to put an end to statements that our product is manufactured in France. There is no relationship, nor has there ever been a relationship, between our mustard and the country of France. Indeed, our mustard is manufactured in Rochester, NY. The only thing we have in common is that we are both yellow".

[CheapThrill]

Britain must now ensure that there is no US puppet government in Iraq
When American politicians talk, as they continually do, about Iraq run by Iraqis, the question arises of `whose Iraqis?`

By Donald Macintyre
10 April 2003
The Independent

There could scarcely be a more banal term to describe the extraordinary scenes you saw in Baghdad on your television screens yesterday. But in military and diplomatic parlance, this was merely the beginning of the end of "Phase Three." Phase One was the slow and painful process of agreeing UN Resolution 1441, the only legal basis for the war. Phase Two was the process of UN weapons inspections. And Phase Three, of course was the war itself.

The terms, used a lot more now than they once were, are suggestive of an inevitability about the process that wasn`t often admitted at its beginning. But that`s history now. What isn`t is that Phase Four is now about to begin. Or rather has begun. Two days ago, the retired US General FJ "Buck" Watkins slipped into the south Iraq port of Umm Qasr with a small American staff to establish the first toehold in the country for ORHA, the benignly named Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. And it`s a truism to say that Phase Four is almost as fraught with hazard and controversy as Phase Three was.

It`s a paradox, not perhaps fully anticipated at the outset, that the continued security presence of the US and British military for a period is perhaps the least controversial aspect of all. For all the outrage the war has generated in much of the Middle East, not to mention western Europe, few seriously now question the need for a substantial troop presence through the country to maintain security in the Iraqi interest. Ideally, of course, it would be more multinational than it is, but that, too is history. If anything, the fear is that the forces may start coming home too soon.

But it`s when you get to the daunting task of reconstruction, practical and political, that the controversy intensifies. The words that President Bush used in Belfast on Tuesday about the UN`s role in post-war in Iraq were warm enough. How far they will be realised in practice remains to be seen. For all the admirable words in the Belfast statement about ensuring that the "patrimony" of Iraq`s natural resources should be used "only for the [Iraqis`] benefit, the details have still to be worked out now that notion of a UN Trust Fund, which Tony Blair rightly pressed on the President in the Azores last month, appears to be in abeyance. There has been little if any contact so far between ORHA and the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, Ramiro Lopes da Silva And you don`t have to be a conspiracy theorist about ORHA`s boss, ex-General Jay Garner, a missile defence contractor with close ties to Israel, to realise that his is largely a Pentagon operation.

Whitehall, notably wary of ORHA, wants to see it balanced in a quadripartite structure which includes the UN, the US and British military, and a genuinely representative spectrum of Iraqis, especially those inside the country – not to mention a loose enough remit for the British to run south-eastern Iraq in their own rather more multilateralist way. And this matters a lot. For when US politicians talk, as they continually do, about Iraq run by the Iraqis, the question arises of "whose Iraqis?"

The British don`t for example, believe that you can purge every Baathist, however lowly, from the vital administrative and technical jobs they have done in the past. But they are a good deal more open-minded about the future than some Americans. No one has denied that the US military flew Ahmed Chalabi and 700 of his men, in what can only be seen as a politically pre-emptive move ordered by the Pentagon, down from northern Iraq to Nasiriyah last week. Many in the Pentagon, such as Paul Wolfowitz, see Mr Chalabi, a long-time London-based exile, as their guy, a man ideally placed to lead a pro-American Iraq. The British – and the State Department – have deep doubts about whether he has the credibility to emerge as a popular leader in Iraq.

Whether the US will agree to the Baghdad conference proposed by Jack Straw on the model of the one in Bonn on Afghanistan remains to be seen. But chillingly, a Washington official close to the ORHA planning process was quoted in The New York Times yesterday saying: "To the victor, the spoils, and in this case the spoils are choosing who governs." This is about as far removed from the idea of letting – in some cases unknown – Iraqi leadership figures emerging from a genuinely broad-based interim administration to contest eventual elections – if and when they finally happen – as it`s possible to be.

For all the harmony in Belfast, in other words, real differences are emerging between the British and the US about the post-war settlement. You could see a little symbol of it at US Central Command yesterday, when British officials – as excited as everyone else by the television pictures of a hauling cable round the massive statue of Saddam in Shahid Square – held their heads in their hands in despair as overenthusiastic US Marines planted the Stars and Stripes over the statue`s head.

In some ways these differences mirror those over whether to involve the UN before the war, reflecting in turn divisions within Washington, which according to Western diplomats are much bitterer and more ferocious now than they were then. But this time the usual story that it will be all right on the night, that the US President will come down on the side of the angels, won `t work. Events are moving too fast for that. And the stakes are too high. For many in the Middle East – including inside Iraq itself – are now looking directly to Britain as their one hope of moderating what they fear could so easily turn in to a US proconsulate followed by the establishment of a puppet regime. "The foresee an occupation, and they say, if that`s not what you`re about, you`d better prove it," says one diplomat.

Having watched on television some the scenes he predicted when others doubted they would happen, Blair now has two opportunities to be true to this goal – vital to British as well as Iraqi interests. One is to set out publicly the kind of evolution he wants in Iraq in open defiance of those US interests who want something utterly different. And the other is to ensure the British establish Basra and the south-east, where London`s military writ will run, as an administrative model for the rest of the country.

No doubt British security services identified the tribal leader the British military plans to use to help them establish the beginnings of a civil administration in the Basra province. But it is still an important start, as speedy as, and a great deal more culturally sensitive than, the Chalabi airlift. To bow, however unwillingly, to the hegemony of the Pentagon, bolstered by its great military victory, will be to let down the British Army as well, of course, as to betray the Iraqi people.

[Joerver]

April 11, 2003
Conquest and Neglect
By PAUL KRUGMAN


redit where credit is due: the hawks were right to say that a whiff of precision-guided grapeshot would lead to the collapse of Saddam Hussein`s regime. But even skeptics about this war expected a military victory. ("Of course we`ll win on the battlefield, probably with ease" was the opening line of my start-of-the-war column.) Instead, we worried — and continue to worry — about what would follow. As another skeptic, Michael Kinsley of Slate, wrote yesterday: "I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn`t happened yet."

Why worry? I won`t pretend to have any insights into what is going on in the minds of the Iraqi people. But there is a pattern to the Bush administration`s way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect.

One has to admit that the Bush people are very good at conquest, military and political. They focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don`t worry about breaking the rules. This technique brought them victory in the Florida recount battle, the passage of the 2001 tax cut, the fall of Kabul, victory in the midterm elections, and the fall of Baghdad.

But after the triumph, when it comes time to take care of what they`ve won, their attention wanders, and things go to pot.

The most obvious example is Afghanistan, the land the Bush administration forgot. Most of the country is back under the control of fundamentalist warlords; unpaid soldiers and policemen are deserting in droves. (Remember that the Bush administration forgot to include any Afghan aid in its latest budget.)

President Hamid Karzai`s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, told an Associated Press reporter: "It is like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem. What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."

The same pattern can be seen on the economic front. President Bush won a great triumph in 2001 when he pushed through a huge tax cut — claiming that his plan was just the medicine to cure the economy`s ills. What has happened since?

The answer is that things have gradually fallen apart. There was one quarter of good growth, early in 2002 — and there were cries of triumph over the policy`s success. After that, however, things went steadily wrong. Growth was too slow to create jobs: at the end of 2002, after a year of "recovery," fewer people were working than at the end of 2001.

And in the last two months the situation has deteriorated rapidly. In February and March the U.S. economy lost 465,000 jobs, bringing the total job loss since the recession officially began in March 2001 to more than two million.

At this point the employment decline has been bigger, and has gone on longer, than the slump that took place during the first Bush administration. And there`s no sign of an upturn: new claims for unemployment insurance are still running well above the level that would signal an improving labor market.

Some hope that the economy will turn around of its own accord — that consumers and businesses, relieved that the war has gone well, will begin spending freely. But hope is not a plan. What is the plan?

The answer seems to be that there is no plan for the economy. Instead, the White House is fixated on achieving another political triumph — the elimination of taxes on dividends — that has little or no relevance to our current economic troubles.

I could demonstrate this irrelevance by going through an economic analysis, but here`s a telling political clue: USA Today reports that faced with concerns in Congress about budget deficits, the administration has indicated that it is willing to consider a phase-in of its dividend plan.

That is, it`s willing to forgo immediate tax cuts — the one piece of its proposal that might actually help the economy now — in order to be able to pass its long-run proposal intact, and hence claim total victory.

The scary thing is that this slash-and-burn approach to governing may continue to work for Mr. Bush`s people because the initial triumphs get all the headlines. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has to live in the wreckage they leave behind.






Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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[CheapThrill]

Israel`s Influence in America


Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A28

In his April 5 op-ed column, "Scapegoat Syndrome," about concerns over Jewish influence on U.S. foreign policy, Colbert I. King dismissed out of hand the idea that Israel`s interests are being served at the expense of U.S. interests. Instead of addressing such concerns, he resorted to name-calling and to the charge that is supposed to shut anyone up: anti-Semitism.

Instead of discussing the data that Ed Kwiatkowski presented -- either to demolish it or to benignly interpret it -- Mr. King faulted Mr. Kwiatkowski simply for collecting the data.

This approach is not going to dispel concerns. This crucial issue needs to be dissected.

WAGUIH DRAZ
Cairo

•

Colbert I. King is sobered by "the realization that there are people in this country who regard Jews as so dangerous that they bear watching and keeping tabs on their comings and goings in government and in other positions of influence in society."

A fascinating observation. However, it is not Jews but Muslims and Arabs who are being watched by their own government. Muslim and Arab countries and charities are put on official lists as supporting terrorism, and rumor, innuendo and secret evidence are used to round up racially profiled suspects, strip them of their rights and charge them with being terrorists.

Recently, Robert J. Goldstein was arrested for allegedly plotting to blow up as many as 50 mosques in the Tampa area. Mr. Goldstein, who is Jewish, allegedly wanted to make a statement for "his people" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He had in his possession more than 30 explosive devices, including light-armor rockets, hand grenades and a gasoline bomb. But he was not charged with being a terrorist. Apparently, that privilege is reserved for Arabs and Muslims.

Perhaps if Israel did not receive such massive amounts of U.S. taxpayer money, weapons and political support; perhaps if Israel were not waging such a brutal and racist war against the Palestinians; perhaps if Israel didn`t have such a loud voice in America`s political process, sidelining politicians who show even an iota of sympathy for the Palestinians; perhaps if Israel weren`t in the process of bulldozing Palestinian homes and confiscating Palestinian land and building apartheid walls -- well, perhaps then the threat of anti-Semitism would not be rearing its ugly head.

Racism is wrong -- period. The United States` support of Israel has ramifications worldwide, empowering sick lunatics such as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, who hijack the Palestinians` suffering and just cause for complaint.

ANNE SELDEN ANNAB
Mechanicsburg, Pa.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1544-2003Apr9…

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April 11, 2003
The Future of Iraq`s Oil

raq is no longer a republic of fear, but it is still a republic of oil. Some 112 billion barrels lie beneath its soil, more than a tenth of the world`s known reserves. How the Bush administration handles the management of that resource as it gains control of the country will go a long way toward determining not just the future of Iraq but also America`s worldwide reputation. Any effort to manipulate Iraq`s oil for the benefit of the United States and American oil companies rather than the benefit of the Iraqi people will squander whatever political gains Washington has won in the war.

Thanks to good planning and quick military action, coalition forces secured Iraq`s southern oil fields before they could be sabotaged, and the allies are now establishing control over northern oil areas as well. If they, too, are captured intact, limited oil production may resume in a few months.

In the short term, oil revenues must be used to provide for the humanitarian needs of a population that has suffered from almost 13 years of sanctions and more than three weeks of wartime dislocation. They should not be used to pay for the costs of the war, but should be used to help build a livable peace. In the longer term, the future of the Iraqi oil industry, including its possible privatization, must be decided by the Iraqi people themselves once a legitimate, internationally recognized new government has been established.

The Bush administration has repeatedly pledged that Iraq`s oil wealth will be used exclusively to benefit the Iraqi people. That is the right principle. By adhering to it, Washington can dispel lingering suspicions about America`s motives for invading Iraq. But with tens of billions of dollars at stake, there are likely to be heavy pressures from interested parties to lock up lucrative long-range contracts during the period of American occupation. There will also be proposals for using Iraq`s oil production capacity to break the power of OPEC, which was founded in Baghdad in 1960.

Iraq`s oil sales are still governed by the international sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Current rules require that all sales must be made through the United Nations, which also controls how the resulting revenues can be spent. Oil exports halted when the invasion began, but the U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, has temporary authority to spend the billions of dollars on hand from recent exports for emergency relief.

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait, it produced around 3.5 million barrels of oil per day. The rate had fallen to about 2 million barrels per day before the war began last month. Iraqi oil is of high quality, cheap to produce and abundant. But repeated wars and sanctions have dried up oil exploration and investment. New investment will be needed to restore and possibly expand production.

By developing its oil wealth on an equitable basis and shedding the expensive burdens of militarism and dictatorship, Iraq can exceed the prosperity it briefly knew a quarter-century ago. America should direct its occupation efforts toward achieving that goal.



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washingtonpost.com
Tougher Battles Ahead


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, April 11, 2003; Page A27



For a moment, forget your feelings about George W. Bush or whether this preemptive war on Iraq will be good for the United States in the long run. Consider only whether the Iraqi people are better off to be rid of Saddam Hussein. There is only one answer, and it was visible on the joyful faces from Baghdad and Kirkuk that appeared on our television screens.

The best case for this war, made in February by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was humanitarian. Whether Hussein, given how quickly he folded, was as threatening as President Bush said, he and his regime were, to use the president`s word, evil. It is not the task of the United States to put all the world`s evil regimes out of business. But it is always heartening to see one fall.

And unless resistance in the rest of Iraq proves more robust than what we have seen so far, it now makes no sense to fault the war plan. The weakness of the Iraqi military might be said to prove that the 12-year policy of sanctions, inspections and containment worked. The war plan took full advantage of those weaknesses. Bush`s critics, including opponents of his Iraq policy, should not deny or begrudge him these successes. It would be morally obtuse to do anything but cheer the fall of a tyrant and the rapid conclusion of hostilities.

But Bush`s critics should feel free to cheer for another reason: Their doubts about his policy never rested on a defense of Saddam Hussein or on questions about the capacity of America`s armed forces -- despite the brief winter of televised discontent with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s strategy.

Almost all the objections focused on the administration`s diplomacy before the war, and on what would come after. The fall of Saddam Hussein was always going to be good for Iraqis. Now we`ll learn whether this venture will be good for the United States and its security. The hardest part is just starting.

There is, at best, a deep ambivalence in the Arab world over the American victory. Not only did Arabs see a different war on television -- their stations placed far more emphasis on civilian casualties -- but they also are naturally hostile to the intervention of big Western powers in their affairs.

This extends to Iraq itself. Will Iraqis who today cheer American troops for bringing down Saddam Hussein be cheering an occupying force six months or a year from now? The United States is about to engage in an intricate form of nation-building that will entail the most direct involvement in Iraqi politics, down to the local level. Americans, including our soldiers, will find themselves caught in the middle of feuds between political factions, and also at the heart of fierce ethnic struggles. American soldiers may be called on to prevent civil war.

That`s why the administration`s desire to keep full control of the political transition in American hands needs to be challenged. "We act like it`s some kind of prize," Sen. Joe Biden noted on ABC`s "This Week." On the contrary, the United States should be eager for help that could defuse anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere. The United States will also need enormous staying power of a sort we have not demonstrated in Afghanistan. That will require political support at home, not easy to maintain in the midst of an economic downturn.

According to news reports, the United States is preparing to pay the salaries of more than 1 million Iraqi civil servants. It would not be a form of isolationism for taxpayers in California or Florida or Illinois to ask why the same federal government can`t share revenue to help avert layoffs of their own civil servants. Squaring big government in Iraq against cutbacks at home will challenge even the most talented administration spin doctors. If it`s good in Kirkuk, why is it bad in Kankakee?

Administration supporters will no doubt write this off as more of the flawed gloom-and-doom talk heard just days ago from the media`s retired generals (and, yes, columnists). But the moment when Americans are cheering victory and Hussein`s fall is precisely the time to build a sustainable Iraq policy that keeps American troops as safe as possible and opens the way for the democratic transition the administration has so proudly promised. Bush deserves credit for bringing Saddam Hussein down. History will ultimately judge him by everything that happens from now on.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Europe`s Decline


By George F. Will

Friday, April 11, 2003; Page A27



The task of reconstructing Iraq -- more its civil society than its physical infrastructure -- is entangled with the less urgent task of reweaving the frayed relations between the United States and France and Germany, and with the optional task of rehabilitating the United Nations.

The United Nations has proved itself unsuitable as an instrument of collective security. It is a stew of starkly conflicting political cultures and incompatible assessments of the world`s dangers and what to do about them. Hence it cannot function as a policymaking body. It can, however, be invited to help with certain brief relief and civil administration chores. This invitation should be extended for the same reason France was made a permanent member of the Security Council in 1945 -- as psychotherapy for a crisis of self-esteem brought on by bad behavior.

Note the verb "invited." There is no entitlement for France, Germany, Russia and the United Nations. They did all in their power to keep Saddam Hussein in power, which makes them accessories to tyranny -- and war crimes. All of Iraq`s debts incurred to Russia, France, Germany -- U.S. officials at the United Nations say Germany was even more troublesome than France "in the corridors," meaning in the prewar politics outside the Security Council -- during Hussein`s regime should be canceled.

Some European militaries can, like Canada`s, barely be considered real military -- meaning war-fighting -- forces. The New York Times reports that more than half of Germany`s defense budget of just $27 billion goes to salaries and benefits for personnel -- a third of them civilians who, after 15 years, are guaranteed lifetime employment. Germany had to lease Ukrainian aircraft to get its peacekeeping forces to Afghanistan.

Still, such militaries can perhaps earn their keep by maintaining order in an Iraq where tribalism is reasserting itself and civil war might now fester. Besides, there is a danger that peacekeeping will diminish the U.S. military services` aptitude for their real purpose, which is war-fighting. Furthermore, the services are stretched perilously thin and were being exhausted by the tempo of operations even before the war began.

The crisis with Iraq, which became an overdue crisis of U.S. relations with the United Nations and portions of Old Europe, arrived as the United Nations was publishing "State of the World Population 2002." To the extent that demography is destiny, Europe`s collective destiny, for decades, will be beyond the choice of its governments and will be a continuing decrescendo.

Today Europe`s population is 725 million. The populations of 14 European nations are declining, and the declines are driven by powerful social values and trends that would be difficult for governments to reverse were they inclined to try, which they do not seem to be. The growth rates of the populations of the other European nations are at or near zero. So the European population is projected to be 600 million in 2050.

In developed countries, a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman is a replacement rate, producing population stability. Only Albania has that rate. Catholic Ireland`s rate is 2.0, but the rates of the Catholic nations of southern Europe are among Europe`s lowest -- 1.2. The estimated European average is 1.34.

Stein Ringen, an Oxford sociologist, writes that "without emigration or immigration and with a stable birthrate of 1.5, a population would be reduced to about half in 100 years, and with a birthrate of 1.2 to about 25 percent." On those assumptions, Germany`s population would shrink from 82 million to fewer than 40 million by the end of the century, and Italy`s 57 million to fewer than 20 million.

Ringen acknowledges that population trends can change rapidly and unpredictably. But with the exception of the post-1945 baby boom -- before working mothers became the norm -- Europe`s birthrates were low for most of the last century, and higher rates are unlikely because the "modern conventions for family life are built around the now firm idea, and economic necessity, of both parents working and earning."

Economic anemia and further military impotence are probable consequences of Europe`s population collapse. Which will trouble some Americans with peculiar political sensibilities.

Americans who are apt to argue that U.S. foreign policy needs constant infusions of legitimacy from the approbation of European governments are also apt to deplore, in the domestic culture wars, Eurocentrism in academic curricula. Such Americans resist the cultural products of Europe`s centuries of vitality but defer to the politics of Europe in its decadence.

Why? Perhaps because yesterday`s European culture helped make America what it is, and today`s European politics expresses resentment and distrust of what America is. Both sensibilities arise from the distaste of some Americans for America.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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US-Comics und der Krieg

"Wie ein langer, schlechter Action-Film"

Von Stefan Pannor

Die aktuelle amerikanische Politik spiegelt sich von jeher auch in den US-Comics. Täglich erscheinende Zeitungs-Cartoons nehmen George W. Bushs Irak-Feldzug mit Spott und Ironie aufs Korn. Viel Pathos und Patriotismus versprühen hingegen Comic-Superhelden wie Captain America.

Die Reflektion aktueller politischer Ereignisse in Comics hat in den USA eine lange Tradition. Nicht nur in den täglichen Comicstrips, die naturgemäß sehr schnell reagieren - erinnert sei an die seit den siebziger Jahren laufende legendäre Strip-Reihe "Doonesbury" von G.B. Trudeau, die schon Gerald Ford gelegentlich zur Verzweiflung trieb. Auch die amerikanischen Superhelden-Hefte konnten dank ihrer fließbandartigen Produktionsweise (je ein Autor, Zeichner, Kolorist usw. teilen sich die Arbeit) meist relativ rasch am Puls der Zeit sein. Ob nun Superman gegen Hitler kämpfte oder die Fantastischen Vier gegen kommunistische Horden, im Guten wie im Bösen war man immer mit dabei.

So widmeten sich Amerikas Zeichner und Texter auch den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September und nehmen natürlich auch den Irak-Feldzug George W. Bushs aufs Korn. "That`s pre-9/11-talk", sagt eine der Hauptfiguren in "Doonesbury", befragt nach den Opfern in der irakischen Zivilbevölkerung. Ähnlich zynisch gibt sich Aaron McGruders "Boonedocks", ein Strip über den Alltag der Schwarzen in Amerika: "Wie ein schlechtes Big-Budget-Movie", heißt es da über den zweiten Golf-Krieg, "endlose Stunden langweiliger Dialoge, unterbrochen von kurzen Momenten intensiver Action. Als ob man `Star Wars: Episode I` sieht..."

Überhaupt ist vor allem die Medienberichterstattung immer wieder Zielobjekt der täglichen Gagstreifen, sogar der ansonsten absolut unpolitischen. Zum Beispiel "Dork Tower" von John Kovalic, der einen seiner Couch-potatoe-Helden dabei zeigt, wie er stundenlang vor einem Fernseher sitzt, aus dem nur zwei Worte kommen: "Speculation" und "Rumour", Vermutungen und Gerüchte. "Demnächst: die obligatorische Anti-Frankreich-Story. Aber zuvor: Vermutungen..."

In den Superheldenheften ist man, bedingt durch den größeren Produktionsvorlauf, noch nicht im Irak angekommen. Wie eine Reaktion auf aktuelle politische Ereignisse aussehen kann, lässt sich jedoch auch sehr gut an den Comics zur jüngsten Präsidentschaftswahl und zum Schock vom 11. September 2001 ablesen. Parallel zum Bush/Gore-Wettlauf startete etwa der DC-Verlag seine eigene Wahlkampagne in den Heften. "Vote Lex" hieß das Ereignis und machte schließlich Lex Luthor, den berüchtigten Superschurken und Erzfeind Supermans, zum Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten.

Im Endeffekt war im Comic von dieser politischen Umwälzung nicht viel zu spüren: bis auf den kleinen Schock, jetzt einen Verbrecher im Weißen Haus zu haben, blieb im Amerika der DC-Hefte eigentlich alles beim Alten. Möglicherweise aber ist genau das die Message der Geschichte. Fakt ist jedenfalls, dass in diesen Comics von einer Invasion des Irak nicht die Rede ist, auch nicht von einem Bruch des Völkerrechts - fast möchte man Präsident Luthor dafür lieben.

Wesentlich näher am Puls der Zeit zeigt man sich beim ewigen DC-Konkurrenten Marvel. Stan Lees Comicheldenschmiede hatten schon nach dem 11. September die Nase vorn. Mit einer schnell heruntergerasselten "Spider-Man"-Story, die den Netzschwinger bei den Aufräumarbeiten an Ground Zero zeigte, läutete man - nicht nur bei Marvel - eine ganze Phase von Comics ein, die sich mit dem Thema auseinander setzten.

Besonders große Auswirkungen hatte das Ereignis jedoch auf Captain America. Sicher Marvels politischste und umstrittenste Figur, war der blonde Hüne im rot-blauen Flaggendress seit jeher Spielball aktueller politischer Strömungen. Als Freiheitskämpfer an den Fronten des II. Weltkriegs, als eiskalter "Commie-Smasher" in den fünfziger Jahren, und auch schon mal als einer, der nach dem Watergate-Skandal den Dress hinwarf.

In der Folge zum 11. September darf er, durch die Trümmer des WTC watend, sich Gedanken machen, die jedem Propagandachef zu Ehren gereicht hätten. "Wir müssen stärker sein als je zuvor", monologisiert er beim Anblick der Verletzten. "Als ein Volk. Als eine Nation." Und stellt fest: "Wir werden es schaffen. Wir, das Volk. Vereint durch eine Macht, die der Feind nicht mal versteht. Es ist der Amerikanische Traum." Kitsch as Kitsch can: Natürlich geht zu diesen Worten die Sonne auf und erzeugt einen Heiligenschein um den patriotischen Captain, der gleich im nächsten Heft Moslem-Terroristen jagt. Denn der Feind trägt jetzt Turban. Bush Jr. hätte seine helle Freude daran.


© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet AG

[Joerver]

Werden hier neue Ziele vorbereitet. Der Autor schreibt für die Washington Times u.ä.

Pakistani General Threatens To Nuke Tel Aviv
So Something Good May Come From This War After All

4/10/03 4:41:39 PM
Discuss this story in the forum
The American Conservative

Islamabad, Pakistan -- [LSN: From the most recent issue of the American Conservative, transcribed by us, possibly run originally by UPI. Note that we ban the use of the Jewish term "Islamist" on this site:]
http://www.amconmag.com

An Islami[c] Nuke?

With the focus on Iraq, no one`s watching Pakistan.

By Arnauld de Borchgrave

A PAKISTANI NUCLEAR MISSILE can now hit Tel Aviv, according to a former Pakistani intelligence chief who is "strategic adviser" to his country`s Islami[c] politico-religious parties.

Gen. Hamid Gul, the retired head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, in his latest well-publicized (in Pakistan) statement, says "we have the nuclear capability to destroy Madras (India), surely the same missile can do the same to Tel Aviv. Washington cannot stop Muslim suicidal attacks. Taliban are still alive and along with `friends` they will continue the holy jihad against the US. America will destroy Iraq and later on repeat the same act of war against Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia."

A coalition of six extremist religious parties, MMA, now governs two of Pakistan`s four provinces -- a direct result of the free elections the United States insisted be held after the President Perez Musharraf endorsed the Bush administration`s war on terror. MMS leader and newly elected senator Sami ul- Haq has also declared jihad against the United States and Israel. "If the US attacks Iraq, the MMA alliance and all their supporters will attack Washington and Tel Aviv," he said.

Another redoubtable MMA leader, Fazlur Rehman, said, for his part, "the US better take seriously the consequneces of its attack against Iraq because we are fully capable of taking revenge." Arguably the most powerful extremist religious leader, Qasi Hussain Ahmed, head of Jamat-e-Islami, warned President Bush he "will suffer the horrible punishment of God."

Pakistan possess between 35 and 60 nuclear weapons with the missile capability (obtained from North Korea) to deliver them. The nuclear arsenal is designed as a deterrent to India`s older nuclear capability. India conducted its first nuclear tests in 1974. This was the first time an influential Pakistani, well known for his hatred of the United States and Israel, had mentioned another nation besides india as a possible target for Pakistani nukes.

A number of Pakistani generals are Islami[c] fundamentalists and resent President Musharraf`s close alliance with the United States. It was a "shotgun wedding" some of them have said. Musharraf had no choice when Bush called him the day after 9/11 and asked him whether he could count on him to pursue the new war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Musharraf made a quick command decision, broke with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and gave the United States the use of several bases for Operation Enduring Freedom.

The all-powerful ISI`s culture has long been anti-American, dating back to 1989 when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and the United States began punishing Pakistan for its secret nuclear buildup. Ever since the collapse of the Taliban in November 2001, ISI officers have spread the word among the tribal chiefs along their ill-defined Pakistani-Afghan border that "America will be coming after Pakistan`s nuclear arsenal as soon as they have finished with Afghanistan."

How safe is Pakistan`s nuclear arnsel? Shortly after 9/11, Musharraf ordered the country`s nuclear weapons to be detached from their launchers and stored in six different secret locations with fail safe security systems. But Musharraf has survived six assassination plots since 9/11, and the CIA is clearly concerned about the very real possibility that an Islami[c] general could take over one day -- and acquire control of the arsenal.

Pakistan has crefully refrained from signing the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. Nor is it committed to the non-first-use doctrine. India and Pakistan pulled back last summer from a face-off between one million troops. There is little doubt if India were to humiliate Pakistan militarily over the long standing Kashmir dispute, Pakistan would retaliate with a nuclear salvo. Senior Indian national security officials accept this possibility with equanimity. In fact, one of them, speaking privately a month ago, said, "we could easily survive one or two nuclear hits, but when we retaliate Pakistan would disapper from the map."

The North Korean crisis has been adjudged by Secretary of State Colin Powell as "not a crisis." Pakistan, in that perspective, is even less of a crisis.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of United Press International.

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The Lie Of Liberation
Cheering Iraqis are just a diversion, folks. BushCo`s real goal is only just beginning
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 11, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/



Yay! The gorilla has crushed the mouse. The bazooka has blown apart the BB gun. The dinosaur has stomped the fly. Yay!

Rejoice in the streets! The bright shiny righteous angry Christian god has obliterated the angry sullen foreign god. Or something.

Except, of course, it hasn`t, not by a long shot. But, hey, we`ve more or less taken Baghdad, right? Headlines are screaming, it looks like victory, it smells like victory ... it must be victory! We`ve won! Sort of! But not quite! Savor it like bloodied candy, we will!

Except that it was never a question. There was never a shred of doubt the U.S. would "win" Shrub`s vicious little war. The world`s richest superpower, the most deadly and potent high-tech military on the planet, all aimed at a pip-squeak, ragtag nation whose bedraggled, barely trained military was but a fraction of what it was 10 years ago, when we wiped most of them out in a week. Oh yeah, we bad.

It was never a contest. It was only a matter of time. It is, basically, a fierce and bloody U.S. steamrolling that hit a few unexpected speed bumps. And we`ve still got a long, difficult way to go.

But we have taken Baghdad and the regime has fallen, the headlines scream, as if this is something unexpected or miraculous or blessed, and not, as most astute observers have been saying all along, a bittersweet inevitability, a desperately volatile power prize for the Shrub regime to wield over neighboring Arab nations like a bloody hammer.

And it`s a nation we will be involved in for years, if not decades, to come. Think all our troops are coming home anytime soon? Think again. Wonder if all our new and hate-filled enemies in surrounding countries will now roll over and beg for our mercy? Think again.

Remember, Iraq`s overthrow is only Phase 1 of the premeditated, long-standing Rummy/Cheney/Wolfie plan to aggressively bludgeon the Middle East into compliance with U.S. corporate and political interests. Did you miss that one? About the Project for the New American Century? Yep, been mapped out for years.

And their plan has nothing whatsoever to do with giving a damn for repressed people or raining blissful democracy upon starving nations. That is a side effect, a bonus, a great and touching piece of cover-up PR. Just as it is right now. Thousands of dead Iraqis? Hell, you ain`t seen nothin` yet. Just wait until we "liberate" Syria.


Ah, but still the celebratory chants come. We have freed Iraq from its brutal dictator, one who was zero threat to our monster superpower country! And we did so by mutilating and killing countless thousands of Iraqi people, often ruthlessly, soldiers and citizens, women and children, so many bodies the local hospitals stopped counting, thousands more than were ever killed in 9/11, though there remains absolutely no connection between this war and 9/11, none whatsoever! Yay! Don`t you feel proud?

And what, exactly, have we the American people won? What are the spoils of our victory? Let`s look: A gutted U.S. economy, a record budget deficit, decimated civil liberties (the GOP now wants to make the draconian USA Patriot Act permanent), one of the most secretive and ruthless and warmongering administrations in 50 years and the outright derision and bitter resentment of much of the civilized world, of nearly every one of our former allies.

Oh, and a bonus: the horrific, irrevocable reputation that we are now a power-mad rogue superpower that will attack anyone, for any reason, on the hollowest of bogus pretenses. Righteous!

Ah, but what are Bush`s spoils? Let`s look: His copious corporate pals get to rush in and install a nice puppet government to help the baffled Iraqis rebuild their hovels and "manage" their precious oil. There, there, now, Iraq, your brutal dictator is gone. Welcome to rampant capitalism. See if you can tell the difference.

But, more than that, Bush`s regime gets a vital, strategic piece of the oil-rich power puzzle with which to strong-arm all Mideast comers. Our iron foot is now in the door. This was the point all along.

Look. We haven`t won a single thing. We haven`t defeated a deadly or truly threatening enemy. We have not lovingly promoted the causes of peace and freedom and hot vente mocha-caramel lattes for every starving child. Liberating an oppressed people is a wonderful thing indeed. The images of cheering Baghdadis are truly amazing. For about a week. But that result was never the point.

And we have not, in the slightest bit, reduced the threat of terrorism to our nation. In fact, we have done the exact opposite. We have, most likely, amplified that threat a hundredfold, a thousandfold. Look at those cluster bombs fall, those women decapitated. See the children scream, those Arab nations seethe and mourn, the world stare at us, appalled and horrified and angry. Do you feel safer now? Boy, I sure do. I feel like, like ... another tax cut for the wealthy! Yep, that oughta do it.

Quick show of hands: Who remembers the alleged reason we had to stomp Saddam in the first place? Wasn`t it nukes? Chemical warfare? WMDs? Skanky mustache? Because, of course, we have found exactly nada. If he had any, and he was as vile as insane as we all seem to think, don`t you think he would`ve used them by now? Go figure.

Wait, was it because he`s a brutal thug? Is that why we stomped him? Nope, that was never the reason. Hell, if that`s our criteria for slamming tiny nations completely unprovoked, if all it takes is a wicked despot/former ally and an oppressed people who don`t even realize how much they`re in need of a nice bloody all-American ass-kicking, well, we`re gonna be busy. It`s a long list.

Sure enough, Baghdad fell like an old Tinker-Toy fort. The pointless battle has indeed been "won," as everyone knew it would be. But the real war -- ideological, religious, geopolitical, petrochemical -- is only just beginning. And, as the Shrubster says, it won`t be over until the last terrorist is killed.

Good thing we just keep creating them, eh, George?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

©2003 SF Gate

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The Dance of Lawlessness
Last Tango in Baghdad
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!
For thy victim is no redressor;
Thou art her sole possesor
Of her corpses and clods and abortions--
they pave the path to the grave.

Hearest thou the festival din
Of death and destruction and sin,
And Wealth crying Havoc! within?
Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,
Thine Epithalamium.

Lines Written During the Castlereagh Administration
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819

There`s a ritual scene in many westerns of the 50s. A drunken gunslinger picks out a frail bar patron, bullies him into the street and barks, "Dance". When the befuddled man doesn`t respond immediately, the smirking gunslinger fires his six-shooter at the feet of the unlucky dupe until he is forced to dance a sadistic jig. The nervy townsfolk clap to the beat of the bullets. They`d better.

So it goes in Baghdad. Iraqis dance in the streets. Flowers are piled on top of M-1 tanks. The bronze idols of a power maddened regime are smashed.

Is it jubilation over the fall of Saddam? Or relief because the American bombs have finally stopped falling? Is the outcry one of genuine gratitude for liberation? Or a sensible attempt to ingratiate themselves with their conquerors? Or a mixture of the above? Remember the Shi`ia cheered the entry of the Israelis into Lebanon.

The war was a cakewalk after all: the path paved by the bodies of Iraqi civilians and conscripts, who died defenseless against a storm of remote control bombs.

The three week invasion offered barely a battle to speak of: a few small arms firefights, a couple of wobbly Scuds launched harmlessly into the Kuwaiti desert, an ambush or two. That was about the most the Iraqis choose (or could) mount. Even the gurus of 4th Generation Warfare must feel cheated that the much-ballyhooed asymmetrical street fight never really materialized. The Americans killed nearly as many American and British soldiers as the Iraqis did.

This begs the question: if it was so easy, why was it necessary? How big of a threat was the Beast of Baghdad, after all? Did his rusting army, even the supposedly fearsome Republican Guard, really pose any kind of the threat to the US? Or even the pampered sheiks of Kuwait?

The relentlessly hyped arsenal Weapons of Mass Destruction were never used, if they even existed in any militarily useful condition to begin with. The long-range rockets were never launched. The oil wells and dams were never dynamited, despite Rumsfeld`s pompous claims about "environmental terrorism"-surely one of the crudest hypocrisies yet uttered by this apex hypocrite.

Why was it necessary? Who benefits? What will happen once the military moves on?

These are questions that will never get serious answer over here. Indeed, the questions may even never be asked, in the scripted kabuki shows that are passed off as Bush press conferences.

Too bad. They are the only questions that really matter.

So Bush and Blair wallow in their triumph, the Beavis and Butthead of the new Imperium. Blair at least seems harried, a bit chastened by the bitter upheaval against him in Britain and by acting as a hatchet man for the Dauphin from Crawford.

Bush drifts deeper and deeper in messianic stupor each day. He has assumed a new pose: chin lifted, eyes fixed on the heavens as if waiting on his next communication from God. Where is the Goya of Los Caprichos when you need him most?

Meanwhile, American war profiteers and fundamentalist preachers are poised to descend on Iraq like carrion feeders. US troops have been instructed to pray before they begin their daily routine of destruction and death-making. Army chaplains withhold water to parched civilians in exchange for Christian baptisms. Franklin Graham, minister to the President, hovers in Jordan, like a vainglorious Rasputin, itching to unleash his robotic minions on the people of Iraq to desecrate their religion and rack up conversions to his apocalyptic brand of Christianity like a body count for the Lord.

Halliburton executives are no doubt dejected that Saddam`s men didn`t torch more oil wells in southern Iraq and must be pinning their hopes on errant smart bombs to make up for the shortfall by doing damage to the northern oil fields outside Kirkuk. Billions are at stake. The war must go on.

One of the other corporate sponsors of the Iraq invasion is Fluor-Daniel, the southern California-based company staffed by former Pentagon and CIA officials. Fluor is a front-runner in the quest to get the $600 million contract to rebuild Iraq`s roads and public buildings. It has a financial stake in wide-spread looting.

Fluor bills itself as an environmental services company though its track record is more harrowing than Dow Chemical`s. In the mid-90s, Fluor took over the management of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, arguably the most polluted site in North America. Aggressive cost-cutting measures and radioactive waste don`t mix, as the people of the Pacific Northwest discovered to their horror when Fluor`s mismanagement of the site nearly caused an explosion that would have spewed radioactive debris from Spokane to Portland. Fluor`s flirtation with a real dirty bomb makes Saddam`s nuclear program look like a high school chemistry lab.

But it gets worse. Fluor`s tactics are as vicious as any American company since the days of Anaconda Copper. In a lawsuit filed last week, a lawyer for South African workers details how Fluor brutalized and exploited its black workers. "This company has a long history of human rights violations in South Africa," says John Ngcebetsha, a lawyer for the workers. "It cares nothing about the society`s in which it works and its involvement in Iraq would be disastrous."

The lawsuit claims that Fluor hired former members of the South African secret police to work as security guards and then dressed them up in Ku Klux Klan robes to smash a strike by workers protesting meager wages and horrid working conditions. Good morning, Baghdad: Let freedom ring.

Over at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld and his loathsome henchman Paul Wolfowitz busily plot a new round of threat inflation and target other recalcitrant regimes. Lately, the talk has been of smashing Syria and the old whipping boy, Qaddafy, in Libya. Iran and North Korea are already on the hit list as part of the infamous Axis of Evil. One wonders what lesson they`ve taken from all this? Will preemptive wars send a "use it or loose it" message to Pyongyang and Teheran. Does it make a nuclear strike on South Korea or Japan a near certainty?

Also watch for the war-plotters to shift the crosshairs back closer to home, back to the other obsession of the Reagan era: Central and South America. Of course, they`ve never really stopped.

The Pentagon`s proxy war continues unabated in Colombia. In Venezuela, the CIA tried to topple Chavez once and failed. They will try again. Bolivia is becoming unruly. Lula must be taught a lesson. And, in a regime fixated on settling old scores, the biggest prize of all sits only 90 miles away: Castro`s Cuba, another nation emaciated by a cruel embargo. Already there are reports of renewed CIA mischief in Havana. Rest assured, the Bush gang doesn`t want Castro to die in power. His toppling would be their ultimate glory.

Early on I held out some hope that the fatuous Rumsfeld might be forced out as a result of his incessant meddling with the war plan. But now he preens in triumph, like Scipio Africanus overseeing the final humiliation of Carthage. His mania has been only been whetted. Rumsfeld is man of overweening vanity. He publicly relishes each big blast, scoffing as the corpses pile up in rotting mounds in the morgue at Al-Kindi Hospital, like the Vincent Price character in Roger Corman`s darkly prescient masterpiece, The Masque of the Red Death. Rumsfeld`s rationalizations for war are a facile game of three card monte.

Why did Rumsfeld make the assassination- by-bunker- buster-bomb of Saddam and his family such an unyielding obsession? The bungled hits cost tens of millions each, put US pilots at risk and slaughtered dozens of nameless innocents. It seems obvious that the Bush gang desperately wants to avoid a war crimes trial, where the legitimacy of their invasion might be put to a fatal legal test.

Official lawlessness is the new order of the day and corporate looters roam the globe, packing cruise missiles as their dance card.

So heed to the music and step fast. The dance of death has only just begun.


Jeffrey St. Clair`s new book, Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature, will be published in September by Common Courage Press.

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EDITORIAL
Monitor Iraq Contracts

April 11, 2003

As Iraq goes from a military to a financial battleground, billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake. Congress is stepping in to ensure that rebuilding doesn`t turn into cronyism for big business. Even the appearance of impropriety by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development in awarding bids could sully the U.S. effort to turn Iraq into a functioning democracy.

Already, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) are calling for a General Accounting Office investigation of whether Halliburton Co., which was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney for five years before he resigned in August 2000, received special treatment from the Pentagon in securing a contract.

There`s no evidence that Cheney influenced the contract. Still, as The Times` Mark Fineman and Dana Calvo reported Sunday, many are suspicious about how Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, in alliance with Houston-based Boots & Coots International Well Control, locked in a no-bid, two-year contract worth up to $7 billion for suppressing oil well fires.

Waxman and Dingell are also calling for an investigation of eight contracts awarded by the USAID. These contracts were expedited for what the agency called national security reasons, which also allowed it to skirt normal public bid requirements.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) unveiled legislation Thursday that would require the USAID to make public the documents it uses to exempt contracts from open competition.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has also inserted a valuable amendment into the war supplemental budget that would give the USAID inspector general $4.3 million to monitor and audit expenditures in Iraq. Essentially, Dodd`s proposal would allow the inspector general to open an office in Iraq to monitor how funds are distributed by contractors to subcontractors who do the actual work on the ground.

Without such supervision, taxpayers have no way of knowing how companies are spending the money the government hands out. Congress should ensure that Dodd`s amendment is fully funded.

The average homeowner wouldn`t hand over a pile of cash to a contractor without considering other bids. Nor would he or she be indifferent to how it was being spent. If the Bush administration isn`t willing to protect taxpayer dollars, Congress must.

[Joerver]

It`s No Time to Go It Alone
A multilateral effort will be needed just to establish a stable, functional Iraq.

By Rajan Menon
Special to The Times

April 11, 2003

God, Napoleon remarked, is on the side of the bigger battalions. The examples of Davids vanquishing Goliaths -- the wars of the Vietnamese communists and the Afghan moujahedeen come to mind -- are famous precisely because they are rare. History virtually assured our success in the war to oust Saddam Hussein, but it offers little reassurance as we prepare to manage the peace. Candidate George W. Bush derided nation-building; President Bush will have his fill of it.

The dubious prize for victory is responsibility for a battered country the size of California whose 23 million people are divided by religious, tribal and ethnic tensions. Iraq could become Lebanon or Yugoslavia if Sunnis and Shiites, Turkmens and Kurds, the repressed and the repressors start settling scores.

Although the U.S., having paid in blood to defeat Hussein, will not agree to be one of many in an international relief and reconstruction effort, it also cannot bear the burden alone. Nor can it expect others to finance an American dominion from the sidelines. The American role in postwar Iraq will of necessity be bigger, but other nations can and must play important parts through consultation, compromise and contributions. And the United Nations should be asked to help coordinate and legitimize the overall effort.

A democratic Iraq would be wonderful. But institutions and values cannot be exported like bags of rice, and Iraq`s history is not reassuring. This multilateral effort must, then, settle for a stable, functional Iraq at first.

There are three ways to increase the odds of that outcome:

* Because our postwar honeymoon with Iraqis will prove brief, we must improve the quality of their daily lives rapidly and substantially. Otherwise, slogans and speeches stressing our democratic ideals and honorable intentions will amount to blather that spawns cynicism, even hatred. Hostile nationalism and radical Islam can best be averted by quickly delivering life`s necessities -- food, shelter, clean water and medicine -- particularly in the political nerve centers of Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk.

* Iraq`s interim government must have an Iraqi face. Few Iraqis will mourn the end of Hussein`s blood-drenched rule, which killed about 300,000 people. But suspicion of foreigners remains. Although outsiders will necessarily manage Iraq`s institutions for a time, there must be a clear, public timetable for increasing the presence of Iraqis in the upper echelons of power. An American-backed regime will create mistrust if it is dominated by people who have not set foot in Iraq for decades or represent ethnic and religious minorities. That includes Ahmad Chalabi, the London-based exile leader who was airlifted into Iraq this week. It is essential to identify respected notables from Iraq`s various constituencies who can serve in an interim administration while Iraqis begin drawing up a new constitution and preparing for national elections.

* The pillars of Hussein`s dictatorship must be razed while also safeguarding public order. The Baath Party, senior military officers and the paramilitary groups and internal security forces must be uprooted if Iraq is to enjoy stability, let alone democracy. But the danger that a power vacuum and disorder will result is very real. The omens have appeared already, with the murders Thursday of two clerics -- one of them was Abdel Majid Khoei, the son of a former Iraqi grand ayatollah -- by rioters who stormed a reconciliation meeting at a Najaf mosque. The job of providing stability now that Hussein`s security apparatus has disappeared will fall initially to American and British soldiers, but the sooner it becomes a multinational affair, the better.

Order is essential for securing the time needed to create a professional police and civilian militia, but the costs and complexities of maintaining it must be shared. That would include bringing to justice people guilty of war crimes, which should be a United Nations task -- not a U.S.-sponsored operation involving the tainted Iraqi judiciary.

Destroying Hussein took weeks; building a new Iraq will take years. Under the best of circumstances, it will tax American resources and endurance far more than the war did.

The Bush administration, having scorned multilateralism in the past, must embrace it in the future, not because it is a virtue but because it is a necessity.

Rajan Menon, professor of international relations at Lehigh University, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.


If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

[Joerver]

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin`
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it`s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people`s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You`ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain`t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I`m young
You might say I`m unlearned
But there`s one thing I know
Though I`m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death`ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I`ll watch while you`re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I`ll stand o`er your grave
`Til I`m sure that you`re dead



Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Wer es mag Songs Texte von Dylan

http://bobdylan.com/songs/masters.html

.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Wirbel um US-Fernsehserie

Bush indirekt mit Hitler verglichen

Eine umstrittene Miniserie des US-Senders CBS über die Jugend Adolf Hitlers sowie ihr Produzent Ed Gernon sorgen in den USA für Schlagzeilen.

Los Angeles - Nach US-Medienberichten vom Freitag ist Gernon nun zurückgetreten, berichtet die Nachrichtenagentur dpa. Zuvor hatten der Sender und Gernons Arbeitgeber, eine kanadische Produktionsfirma, Äußerungen des Produzenten scharf kritisiert. "Daily Variety" zufolge sagte Gernon in einem Interview mit der Fernsehzeitschrift "TV-Guide", dass Angst "absolut" ein Grund für die Akzeptanz von Hitlers Politik durch die deutsche Öffentlichkeit gewesen sei.

Der Produzent zog dabei auch Parallelen zur aktuellen Situation in den USA. Die Amerikaner unterstützten die Irak-Politik von Präsident George W. Bush "aus der Angst heraus, was passieren würde, wenn sie es nicht täten."

"Daily Variety" verwies zwar darauf, dass Gernon an keiner Stelle einen direkten Vergleich zwischen Bush und Hitler macht. Der Sender CBS verurteilte die Äußerungen des Produzenten dennoch als "absolut falsch" und distanzierte sich von ihm. Die Serie "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" soll im Mai in den USA ausgestrahlt werden.

Seit Produktionsbeginn im vergangenen Jahr hat das TV-Projekt zahlreiche Gegner mobilisiert, darunter Veteranenverbände und Fernsehkritiker, die auf die Gefahr einer Humanisierung des jungen Hitlers verweisen. Der britische Schauspieler Robert Carlyle spielt die Hauptrolle. Die vierstündige Miniserie soll am 18. und 20. Mai in zwei Teilen gezeigt werden.


© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet AG

[Joerver]

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Are tyrants shocked, awed or stocking up on nukes?
The US wants to intimidate `axis of evil` countries, but the plan could backfire

Jonathan Freedland
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

Have they got the message? Have Iraq`s neighbours, and the rest of the world`s dictators, understood the lesson of Operation Iraqi Freedom? And if so, what exactly was it?

It`s fair to ask - after all, part of the purpose of this war was what the strategists call "demonstration effect". Its aim was not only to topple Saddam and find those elusive weapons of mass destruction but to show tyrants the world over, and especially in the Middle East, that America meant business; that Washington was not all talk, but was ready to use its overwhelming might to impose its will. The very things that made so many oppose this war - the fact that it was pre-emptive rather than provoked, the complete absence of UN or any other authorisation - were all part of the show. They demonstrated the seriousness of American purpose.

The target audience centred on the remaining spokes of George Bush`s axis of evil, Iran and North Korea, but it included any country with tendencies towards wickedness. It was not just Tehran and Pyongyang that were meant to feel the shock and the awe - but Damascus, too. (Maybe, hopes Tony Blair, even Harare felt a shudder.)

So what conclusion will the "evil-doers" draw from the display they have just witnessed? Washington reckons they will realise they have to change and knuckle under - or else get a dose of the Saddam treatment. Donald Rumsfeld was surely sending that message when he accused Syria of "hostile acts" a fortnight ago, as was undersecretary of state John Bolton on Thursday, when he urged Iran, North Korea and Syria to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq". Loose translation: "You`ve seen what happened to Baghdad, so behave - or you`re next. You know we`re crazy enough to do it."

The trouble is, it would be perfectly rational to come to the opposite conclusion. For the past month has been like a round-the-clock, slickly produced infomercial for acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. Can`t you just picture the North Korean leader, well-lit in a TV armchair, saying: "Hi, my name`s Kim Jong-Il. My friend Saddam didn`t have nuclear weapons, and look at the price he paid. I do have nukes - and America backed off. If you`re a rogue state, call one of our operators now - and get nuked-up. The US won`t touch you. I guarantee it."

That logic - what one former Clinton official calls "pre-empting the pre-emption" - might appeal to Iran and the newest member of the axis club, Syria. Both countries can now feel America`s hot breath on their necks, with US forces right on their borders. Iran in particular has reason to feel jumpy: it`s all but encircled, with a US presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and all along the Persian Gulf waterway.

So will Tehran take the Pyongyang remedy, seeking a nuclear buffer to protect it from US might? There are grounds for that suspicion. Iran has shown an unusually active interest in nuclear energy for a country with the second largest natural gas reserves in the world. Since gas is cheaper and more efficient than nuclear power, it is rather suspicious that Tehran is so keen on building nuclear generators. And it has hardly been open about its plans.

Washington sees other signs that Iran has failed to absorb the "with us or against us" new reality. Hawks cite the Karine A - the Iranian boat packed with arms which was on its way to Gaza to aid the Palestinian intifada before Israel intercepted it last year - and the safe harbour they say Iran has given to al-Qaida operatives fleeing from Afghanistan.

But all this forgets a basic fact about the Islamic republic: it has two governments. The conservative old guard may well be stuck in a confrontational posture with the US, but reformers around President Mohammed Khatami are not keen to provoke Washington. This group`s alternative foreign policy saw Iran "play ball" during the US offensive against Afghanistan in 2001, according to one analyst. It may also have led to pressure on the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah to scale back its attacks on Israel, lest they stir America`s ire. In other words, while some in Iran`s ruling circle may decide the lesson of the past month is to stand firm, others will want to keep the US sweet.

As a one-party dictatorship, Syria offers a less divided picture - and it seems to be leaning toward the pussycat, rather than tiger, option. "They`re very scared of what the US will do," says one experienced Syria hand. And they did not need the Iraq war to goad them into action; they`ve been trying to clean up their act since 9/11. Earlier this year Damascus withdrew another 5,000 troops from Lebanon, reducing a force that once stood at 30,000 to half that size. It can also claim shared credit for that recent reduction in Hizbullah activity - with the group launching just a handful of rocket attacks on northern Israel, inflicting little damage.

Those steps seemed calculated to comply with the Syria accountability bill, a proposal from the US Congress which would have exposed Damascus to a strict battery of sanctions. Syria saw the threat - and blinked. Equally revealing, Syria has been helping out in the war on terror. Al-Qaida suspects picked up in the US have found themselves transferred to Damascus for "interrogation" of a rather more persuasive variety than allowed in America. Would the Syrians like to go the Kim Jong-Il route? Maybe. But their attempts to get even a civil-use nuclear power plant have failed: no one is willing to incur US wrath by selling them one.

So it seems Washington could subdue both Syria and Iran without recourse to force: there are signs that both are prepared to make nice. They understand that the North Korea option, continued defiance, is only really available to those who have already got a nuclear deterrent. If you try to get one - try to pre-empt the pre-emption - the US military will be knocking on your door.

But will that be enough? Or will Washington choose to accentuate the negative, in order to turn what could be the reluctant co-operation of nations like Iran and Syria into confrontation? And there`s plenty to accentuate. Damascus continues to make bellicose public noises, chiefly to placate a restless population, and it still hosts Palestinian terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Syrian defence is that they like to keep an eye on those groups, but Washington may not buy it. Diplomats also suspect Damascus has chemical and biological weapons (though that goes for several countries in the region). On Iran, the US merely has to ignore the Khatami reformers and pick its fight with the conservative establishment.

Which way it goes depends on the ongoing struggle for the soul of the Bush administration. The Blair approach, endorsed by the state department, emphasises the possibility of engagement: witness Bashar Assad`s red-carpet visit to London last year.

But hawkish minds think differently. This week William Kristol, senior intellectual of the neo-conservative set, testified before the Senate foreign relations committee. He was asked whether the logic of the Iraq war - targeting a Ba`athist regime with links to terror and weapons of mass destruction - did not point inevitably to an attack on Syria, which meets all those same criteria. Kristol saw the logic, conceding that war with Syria could not be ruled out. This is the message from Washington: the shock and the awe may not be over yet.

[e-mail]


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Blix: US was bent on war

Nicholas Watt
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

War against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the first shot was fired, the chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has claimed.
In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign.

Letting rip after months of frustration, he told the Spanish daily El Pais: "There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the [weapons] inspections."

Mr Blix said Iraq was paying a "a very high price in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of banned weapons could have been contained by UN inspections.

The 74-year Swedish diplomat made clear that he believes he was misled by President Bush. At a White House meeting last October Mr Bush backed the work of Unmovic, the UN inspection team.

But at the time Mr Blix knew "there were people within the Bush administration who were sceptical and who were working on engineering regime change". By the start of March the hawks in Washington and London were growing impatient.

He said he believed that finding weapons of mass destruction had been relegated as an aim and the main objective had become the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

[Joerver]

Robert Fisk: Flames engulf the symbols of power
12 April 2003


Baghdad is burning. You could count 16 columns of smoke rising over the city yesterday afternoon. At the beginning, there was the Ministry of Trade. I watched the looters throw petrol through the smashed windows of the ground floor and the fire burst from them within two seconds.

Then there was a clutch of offices at the bottom of the Jumhuriyah Bridge, which emitted clouds of black, sulphurous smoke. By mid- afternoon, I was standing outside the Central Bank of Iraq as each window flamed like a candle, a mile-long curtain of ash and burning papers drifting over the Tigris.

As the pickings got smaller, the looters grew tired and – the history of Baghdad insists that anarchy takes this form – the symbols of government power were cremated. The Americans talked of a "new posture" but did nothing. They pushed armoured patrols through the east of the city, Abrams tanks and Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles, but their soldiers did no more than wave at the arsonists. I found a woman weeping beside her husband in the old Arab market. "We are destroying what we now have for ourselves," she said to him. "We are destroying our own future."

The flames spread. By mid-afternoon, the al-Sadeer hotel was burning – the army of child thieves sent into the building had already stolen the bed-linen and the mattresses and the beds and tables and even the reception desk and its massof iron keys. Then from the towering Ministry of Industry, came trails of black smoke. Every central street was strewn with papers, discarded furniture, stolen, wrecked cars and the contents of the small shops whose owners had not invested in armoured doors.

When I tried to reach the old Saddam hospital opposite the Ministry of Defence, American rifle-fire was hissing through the trees opposite the administrative block; they were, two nurses trying to flee the building said, shooting at any moving car because they believed Iraqi soldiers were hiding there. I saw none.

At last, the banks were looted. The Iraqi dinar has collapsed and no one had bothered to bash their way into the banks before.

But in the morning, I saw a mob storming the Rafidain Bank near the Baghdad governorate, dragging a massive iron safe to the door and crow-barring it open. Given the worth of the dinar, they would have done better to leave the cash inside and steal the safe.

And so it was by early evening that Baghdad was a place of gunfire as well as smoke. Stall-owners turned up with guns to protect their property because the Americans obviously declined to do so. Two looters were wounded.

Then mobs broke into the Kindi hospital. By the time I reached the compound – where only five days ago lives were being saved – armed men were at the gates. Most were in blue medical gowns, although they did not look to me to be doctors. They appeared to be Shia Muslims and this raised an immediate question. Was the Shia population of Baghdad trying – if only by protecting the insistutions of the place – to take over from the Sunnis?

At the Kindi hospital, they ordered journalists away from the premises but, briefly obtaining access to the emergency ward, I found a Shia Muslim cleric inside, a man who had studied in southern Lebanon, lecturing the gunmen on the need to restore order in the city. Of course, that was the Americans` job. But they weren`t doing it.

After the West German and Slovak embassies and the Unicef offices, it was the turn of the French cultural centre to be looted.

I briefly mentioned the extent of the anarchy to a US Marine officer who promised to tell his colonel about it. When I saw him later, he said he`d seen the colonel – but hadn`t had time to mention the looting and burning.

Just a week ago, it was the Iraqi army`s oil fires that covered the city in darkness. Now it is the newly "liberated" Iraqi people who are cloaking their city in ash.
12 April 2003 10:36

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Robert Fisk: I sat on Saddam`s throne and surveyed the dark chamber where terror was dispensed
`Fascist is the word that springs to mind, but fascism with Don Corleone thrown in`
12 April 2003


The seat is covered in blue velvet and is soft, comfortable in an upright, sensible sort of way, with big gold armrests upon which his hands – for Saddam Hussein was obsessed with his hands – could rest, and with no door behind it through which assassins could enter.

There is no footstool, but the sofas and seats around the vast internal conference chamber of President Saddam`s Jumhuriyah Palace placed every official on a slightly lower level than the Caliph himself.

Did I sit on President Saddam`s throne? Of course I did. There is something dark in all our souls that demands an understanding of evil rather than good, because, I suppose, we are more fascinated by the machinery of cruelty and power than we are by angels.

So I sat on the blue throne and put my hands over the golden armrests and surveyed the darkened chamber in which men of great power sat in terror of the man who used to sit where I was now. Behind the throne is a vast canvas of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem – minus the Jewish settlements, of course – so the third holiest city of Islam hung above the head of the mightiest of Iraqi warriors.

Opposite the President`s chair was a different work of Baathist art. The torchlight that illuminated the canvas produced a gasp of astonishment and horrible clarity. It depicted huge missiles, flames burning at their tails, soaring towards a cloud-fringed, sinister heaven, each rocket wreathed in an Iraqi flag and the words "God is Great".

The godly and the ungodly faced each other in this central edifice of Baathist power. The American 3rd Infantry Division, which is camped in the marble halls and the servants` bedrooms, have kept the looters at bay, though I found some of them thieving televisions and computers in the smaller villas of the palace grounds, because, they say, General Tommy Franks will probably set up his proconsulship here. If the Americans can create a compliant government, Ahmed Chalabi and his chums may be running the country from this pseudo-Sumerian complex within a few months.

They will find Saddam Hussein`s swimming pool intact, with his vast palm groves and rose gardens. Indeed – how often are brutal men surrounded by beauty – the scent of roses drifts even now through the marble halls and chambers and underground corridors of the Jumhuriyah Palace. There are peonies and nasturtiums and the roses are red and pink and white and crimson and covered in white butterflies, and water, though the 3rd Infantry Division has not yet found the pumps, gurgles from taps into the flower beds.

In the pool-side washing room, piles of books have been tied up for removal – Iraqi poetry and, would you believe, volumes of Islamic jurisprudence – while exercise machines remain to keep the second Salahuddin in moderate physical shape.

His 68th birthday will fall – if he is alive – in just over a week. Over the door are the initials "S H". Walking the miles of corridors, after the two-mile road leading to the palace, through more fields of roses and palms, piles of spent ammunition and the smell of something awful and dead beyond the flower beds, one is struck by the obsessive mixture of glory and banality.

The 15ft chandeliers inspire awe. But the solid gold bathroom fittings, a solid gold loo-roll holder, for God`s sake, and a solid gold loo handle, create a kind of cultural aggression. If one was supposed to be intimidated by President Saddam`s power, what was one to make of the narrow, unpolished marble staircases or the great marble walls of the ante-chamber with their gold-leaf ceilings, walls into which were cut quotations from the interminably dull speeches and thoughts of "His Excellency President Saddam Hussein". Fascist is the word that springs to mind, but fascism with a bit of Don Corleone thrown in.

In that great conference room would sit the attendant lords, the senior masters of the Baath party, the security apparatchiks upon which the regime depended, desperately attempting to keep awake as their leader embarked on his four-hour explanations of the state of the world and of Iraq`s place in it. As he talked of Zionism, they could admire the Al-Aqsa mosque. When he became angry, they could glance at the fiery missiles streaking towards that glowering sky with the clouds hanging oppressively low in the heavens.

His words are even cut into the stonework of the outer palace walls where four 20ft tall busts of the great warrior Hamurabi, in medieval helmet and neck-covering, stare at each other across the courtyard. Hamurabi, however, has a moustache and, amazing to perceive, bears an uncommon likeness to one Saddam Hussein. What on earth, one wondered, would General Franks make of this? Can the government of the "New Iraq" really hold its cabinet meetings here while these four monsters stare at their American-supplied Mercedes?

The gold leaf, the marble, the chandeliers, the sheer height and depth of the chambers take the breath away. In one hall, a Pantheon-like dome soars golden above the walls and when I shouted "Saddam", I listened to the repeated echo of "Saddam" for almost a minute. And I have an absolute conviction that President Saddam did just that. If he could instruct his masons to carve his name upon the walls, surely he wanted to hear it repeated in the heights of his palace.

Outside stand the American Abrams tanks of the 3rd Infantry, their names expressing the banality and power of another nation. On their barrels the crews have nicknamed their armoured behemoths. Atomic Dog. Annihilator. Arsonist. Anthrax. Anguish. Agamemnon. Saddam would have approved.
12 April 2003 10:39


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Robert Fisk: Who is to blame for the collapse in morality that followed the `liberation`?
Pillage merits a specific prevention clause in the Geneva Conventions, just as it did in the 1907 Hague Convention
12 April 2003


Let`s talk war crimes. Yes, I know about the war crimes of Saddam. He slaughtered the innocent, gassed the Kurds, tortured his people and – though it is true we remained good friends with this butcher for more than half of his horrible career – could be held responsible for killing up to a million people, the death toll of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. But while we are congratulating ourselves on the "liberation" of Baghdad, an event that is fast turning into a nightmare for many of its residents, it is as good a time as any to recall how we`ve been conducting this ideological war.

So let`s start with the end – with the Gone With The Wind epic of looting and anarchy with which the Iraqi population have chosen to celebrate our gift to them of "liberation" and "democracy". It started in Basra, of course, with our own shameful British response to the orgy of theft that took hold of the city. Our defence minister, Geoff Hoon, made some especially childish remarks about this disgraceful state of affairs, suggesting in the House of Commons that the people of Basra were merely "liberating" – that word again – their property from the Baath party. And the British Army enthusiastically endorsed this nonsense.

Even as tape of the pillage in Basra was being beamed around the world, there was Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Blackman of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards cheerfully telling the BBC that "it` s absolutely not my business to get in the way." But of course it is Colonel Blackman`s business to "get in the way". Pillage merits a specific prevention clause in the Geneva Conventions, just as it did in the 1907 Hague Convention upon which the Geneva delegates based their "rules of war". "Pillage is prohibited," the 1949 Geneva Conventions say, and Colonel Blackman and Mr Hoon should glance at Crimes of War, published in conjunction with the City University Journalism Department – page 276 is the most dramatic – to understand what this means.

When an occupying power takes over another country` s territory, it automatically becomes responsible for the protection of its civilians, their property and institutions. Thus the American troops in Nasiriyah became automatically responsible for the driver who was murdered for his car in the first day of that city`s "liberation". The Americans in Baghdad were responsible for the German and Slovak embassies that were looted by hundreds of Iraqis on Thursday, and for the French Cultural Centre, which was attacked, and for the Central Bank of Iraq, which was torched yesterday afternoon.

But the British and Americans have simply discarded this notion, based though it is upon conventions and international law. And we journalists have allowed them to do so. We clapped our hands like children when the Americans "assisted" the Iraqis in bringing down the statue of Saddam Hussein in front of the television cameras this week, and yet we went on talking about the "liberation" of Baghdad as if the majority of civilians there were garlanding the soldiers with flowers instead of queuing with anxiety at checkpoints and watching the looting of their capital.

We journalists have been co-operating, too, with a further collapse of morality in this war. Take, for example, the ruthless bombing of the residential Mansur area of Baghdad last week. The Anglo-American armies – or the "coalition", as the BBC still stubbornly and mendaciously calls the invaders – claimed they believed that Saddam and his two evil sons Qusay and Uday were present there. So they bombed the civilians of Mansur and killed at least 14 decent, innocent people, almost all of them – and this would obviously be of interest to the religious feelings of Messrs Bush and Blair – Christians.

Now one might have expected the BBC World Service Radio next morning to question whether the bombing of civilians did not constitute a bit of an immoral act, a war crime perhaps, however much we wanted to kill Saddam. Forget it. The presenter in London described the slaughter of these innocent civilians as "a new twist" in the war to target Saddam – as if it was quite in order to kill civilians, knowingly and in cold blood, in order to murder our most hated tyrant. The BBC`s correspondent in Qatar – where the Centcom boys pompously boasted that they had "real-time" intelligence (subsequently proved to be untrue) that Saddam was present – used all the usual military jargon to justify the unjustifiable. The "coalition", he announced, knew it had "time-sensitive material" – ie that they wouldn`t have time to know whether they were killing innocent human beings in the furtherance of their cause or not – and that this "actionable material" (again I quote this revolting BBC dispatch) was not "risk-free".

And then he went on to describe, without a moment of reflection, on the moral issues involved, how the Americans had used four 2,000lb "bunker-buster bombs to level the civilian homes". These are, of course, the very same pieces of ordnance that the same US air force used in their vain effort to kill Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains. So now we use them, knowingly, on the flimsy homes of civilians of Baghdad – folk who would otherwise be worthy of the "liberation" we wished to bestow upon them – in the hope that a gamble, a bit of faulty "intelligence" about Saddam, will pay off.

The Geneva Conventions have a lot to say about all this. They specifically refer to civilians as protected persons, as persons who must have the protection of a warring power even if they find themselves in the presence of armed antagonists. The same protection was demanded for southern Lebanese civilians when Israel launched its brutal "Grapes of Wrath" operation in 1996. When an Israeli pilot, for example, fired a US-made Hellfire missile into an ambulance, killing three children and two women, the Israelis claimed that a Hezbollah fighter had been in the same vehicle. The statement proved to be totally untrue. But Israel was rightly condemned for killing civilians in the hope of killing an enemy combatant. Now we are doing exactly the same. And Ariel Sharon must be pleased. No more namby-pamby western criticism of Israel after the bunker-busters have been dropped on Mansur.

More and more, we are committing these crimes. The mass slaughter of more than 400 civilians in the Amariyah air raid shelter in Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War was carried out in the hope that it would kill Saddam. Why? Why cannot we abide by the rules of war we rightly demand that others should obey? Why do we journalists – yet again, war after war – connive in this immorality by turning a ruthless and cruel and illegal act into a "new twist" or into "time-sensitive material"?

Wars have a habit of turning normally sane people into cheerleaders, of transforming rational journalists into nasty little puffed-up fantasy colonels. But surely we should all carry the Geneva Conventions into war with us, along with that little book from the City University. For the only people to benefit from our own war crimes will be the next generation of Saddam Husseins.
12 April 2003 10:42

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

[Joerver]

The hell that once was a hospital

Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

The man had been dumped near the rubbish bins at the back, blood spreading across his chequered shirt. An orderly, who had been burying bloated corpses in a mass grave in the hospital grounds, recited the Muslim last rites. "Dead, dead, he`s died, what can we do?" and returned to his shovel. But the man was breathing, in slow laborious gurgles, and his flesh was warm.
Forty-eight hours after Baghdad was liberated - as President George Bush would call it - by American forces, the city yesterday was in the throes of chaos. Men with Kalashnikovs dragged drivers from their cars at gunpoint, babies were killed by cluster bombs, and hospitals that had carried on right through the bombing were transformed into visions of hell.

Floors were coated with stale blood, and wards stank of gangrene. The wounded lay on soiled sheets in hospital lobbies, screaming with pain, or begging for tranquillizers. Orderlies in blue surgical gowns shouldered Kalashnikovs to guard against marauders. Ambulance drivers staged counter-raids on looters to reclaim captured medicines and surgical supplies.

Amid such scenes of anarchy, it was not always clear who was responsible: US soldiers, unnerved by a spate of suicide bombings, who continued yesterday to open fire on civilian cars; the pockets of resistance by the die-hard supporters of the regime; the scores of armed Iraqis rampaging through Baghdad; or the unexploded ordnance strewn about the city. But Iraqis had a ready culprit: they blame America for toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein before it was prepared to deliver order to Baghdad.

At Yarmouk hospital, once the city`s main casualty centre, the unclaimed corpses were so badly rotted that volunteers wearing chemical warfare masks buried them in mass graves. Sixteen stinking corpses were heaved into the ground yesterday and 20 on Thursday, after collection from the local mosques.

Some were Arab recruits to Saddam`s cause, from Syria and Lebanon, with no one to mourn them in Iraq. Some belonged to families stranded in those pockets of Baghdad which remained outside the control of the US troops even yesterday. Others were so badly charred and bloodied, the doctors gave up hope of ever knowing who they were.

"I am searching for my brother. He`s dead since four days ago," said Thair Mohe el-Din, green eyes tired beyond exhaustion as he returned from the morgue of the Saddam children`s hospital.

On Monday the family home in the Beyaa neighbourhood of west Baghdad was bombed by American aircraft, wounding one of Mr Din`s brothers, and killing another outright. He had visited seven hospitals and countless mosques searching for him.

At each makeshift mortuary he had encountered dozens of corpses. None was his brother, and as he continued to search, edging his car warily through the columns of smoke from plundered buildings and the armed mobs who have taken over the streets, grief was making way for a powerful hatred.

"It`s my country, and I hate Saddam," he said. "But why are they allowing robbing, why are they allowing people to set fire to buildings? Saddam was right to put those kinds of people in prison.

"I don`t like Saddam, I hate him; but when I see American soldiers I want to spit on them."

At Yarmouk hospital there was no time for anger yesterday - only the sad, sickening work of burying the dead. Rifle fire crackled, and the volunteer burial committees stolidly dug on. Then came the boom from an American tank shell, and the hospital guards - neighbours drafted into service with their Kalashnikovs - fled into the grounds. A young man, naked to the waist, ran in screaming, waving his bloodied hands in the air. A sedan with two flat tyres pulled up, with an entire wounded family, and the corpse of a baby girl. Her name was Rawand, and she was nine months old.

When her family returned to their home for the first time since the war yesterday, she crawled over to a small dark oval - a cluster bomblet - which detonated, killing her outright, and injuring her mother, and two of her boy cousins.

Only one doctor was on duty at Yarmouk yesterday - it shut down at the beginning of the week - and he left the grave diggers and went to try to save the family. Rawand`s father, Mohammed Suleiman, was inconsolable. "I am going to kill America - not today, after 10 years," he swore.

Battle at hospital


By the rubbish bins, the unknown man was barely breathing. His eyes were closed, and he could not speak. After what seemed like an eternity, the doctor was brought, and he ran an intravenous drip into his arm from a trolley of supplies abandoned in the yard.

The hospital ceased to function on Monday when it became a main battle theatre between US forces and Iraqi fighters. But there was no time to tell the wounded streaming in from other parts of Baghdad.

"Many cars came from here and there. They didn`t know there was a battle. When they came, the American forces shot them," said Mohammed al-Hashimi, a doctor at Yarmouk. A Volvo was hit directly opposite the hospital, a Volkswagen a few yards away, and an ambulance further down the road.

"There were injured people in those cars, and we wanted to treat them. We were in our coats," Dr Hashimi said, tugging at his white doctor`s collar. "We took a gurney to transfer the injured patients. They saw them, and they still shot them."

He interrupted his story to beg a car to take Mr Suleiman`s relatives to the nearest hospital - a paediatric centre. There was little the staff there could do.

"We are working with no anaesthetic at all," said Iman Tariq al-Jabburi. "The doctors are exhausted. There is no water to wash our hands from patient to patient. But what we really need is security."

She summoned an ambulance to move the family - and the unknown man - to yet another hospital, Saddam medical centre, once the finest facility in a city known for the quality of its medical care, and now the only hospital with a functioning operating theatre.

Another doctor stepped out of the crowded ward, grabbing a cigarette from a passing ambulance driver.

"Where is freedom in Iraq?" he said. "Where?"

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Once a time in America, 1933 wollten die USA die 30 Std-Woche einführen. Und jetzt sind sie bei 60. Tempora mutant..

April 12, 2003
Workweek Woes
By JOHN DE GRAAF


SEATTLE
Last week was the 70th anniversary of a momentous yet forgotten event in American history. On April 6, 1933, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would have made the standard work week 30 hours. Anything more would be overtime.

The bill passed by the Senate was an effort to reduce a national unemployment rate that stood at 25 percent. It had strong support from labor and religious leaders who argued that working people needed time for family, education, recreation and spirituality as much as they needed higher wages. But the bill failed in the House. The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed five years later, gave Americans a statutory 40-hour workweek.

Yet today, in an era when American productivity is several times what it was then, most Americans find it hard to get all their work done in 40 hours. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are without work, even as many others are working mandatory overtime or far longer than they would if they had a real choice in the matter.

According to the International Labor Organization, Americans now work 1,978 hours annually, a full 350 hours — nine weeks — more than Western Europeans. The average American actually worked 199 hours more in 2000 than he or she did in 1973, a period during which worker productivity per hour nearly doubled.

What happened? In effect, the United States as a society took all of its increases in labor productivity in the form of money and stuff instead of time. Of course, we didn`t all get the money; the very poor earn even less in real terms than they did then, and the largest share of the increase went to the richest Americans.

The harmful effects of working more hours are being felt in many areas of society. Stress is a leading cause of heart disease and weakened immune systems. Consumption of fast foods and lack of time for exercise has led to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Many parents complain that they do not have enough time to spend with their children, much less become involved in their community. Worker productivity declines during the latter part of long work shifts.

By contrast, over the past 30 years, Europeans have made a different choice — to live simpler, more balanced lives and work fewer hours. The average Norwegian, for instance, works 29 percent less than the average American — 14 weeks per year — yet his average income is only 16 percent less. Western Europeans average five to six weeks of paid vacation a year; we average two.

Work and consumption are not necessarily bad. But producing and consuming can become the focus of a person`s life — at the expense of other values.

Americans should reflect on those values. Later this year, on Oct. 24, will be the first Take Back Your Time Day, the goal of which is to encourage Americans to lead more balanced lives. The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, nine weeks being how much more, on average, Americans work each year than Western Europeans. Perhaps this day will help American workers realize that, in the end, there`s no present like the time.

John de Graaf, co-author of "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic," is national coordinator of Take Back Your Time Day.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

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Steve`s* WPD UPDATE OF THE DAY
*An extreme far-centrist foundation!
Saddam May Use "WPDs" After His Death!
Wily Hussein`s plan hailed for posthumous brilliance.
by Steve Young

April 7, 2003 -- LOS ANGELES (apj.us) -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believes that Saddam Hussein, once dead, will be more dangerous than ever.

"We cannot be lulled to sleep by this guy`s lack of life," warned Rumsfeld. "We’ve tracked a lot of noise in recent days hinting that immediately following his death, Hussein will release his hidden weapons of mass destruction which would take a terrible toll on the coalition forces. With Chemical Ali now officially dead, the Iraqi plan is working perfectly."

While there has been support at the White House for this new position, there has been a severe split within the administration as to when the WMDs will be used. The faction supporting security advisor, Condolleeza Rice, believes that Hussein is readying an even more devious plan.

"We’ve got some pretty good evidence that Hussein will not hit us right away," said Rice, "but will wait until his body has been fully consumed by maggots and ravenous larva, then with his still growing fingernails reaching their necessary length, he will use them to signal for release of WMDs and bio-terror."

General Tommy Franks, who has asked the reporters to start calling him Tommie, has no love for Hussein, but does admit a grudging respect for his opponent’s tactic. "A dead Saddam may be more dangerous than a live one who we’re not really sure if he is dead or a body double. This guy is good -- but good in an evil way."

As far as the location of the WMDs, the Bush administration still has no doubt that Iraq possesses the
weapons.

"Weren’t you at the UN when I showed the world evidence of the WMDs?" scolded Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Just because we have looked in the places we said they are and couldn’t find them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. It has become obvious to me that there is a strong possibility that Saddam has stored these WMDs and bio-weapons inside a schism ripped open in the space-time continuum. We will not rest until we search every black-hole, abyss and macrocosmic void." Added the ever-persistent former general. "Gotta be there someplace."

Questioned on a FOX News report that the smoking gun had been found, Powell quickly refuted the rumor.

"A smoking gun was found, but it was just a gun that was smoking."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steve Young is an award-winning television writer, director/writer of "My Dinner With Ovitz," and author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (Tallfellow Press). Check out his Web site at www.greatfailure.com.


http://www.greatfailure.com/

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Mehr in dieser Richtung:
http://www.outragedcomics.com/

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Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM


U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim`s bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim`s ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim`s office in Iraq`s Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim`s movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam`s CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish`s account.

Darwish said that Saddam`s paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim`s driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam`s apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.

One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Saddam`s U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam`s American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq`s communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran`s communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn`t sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq`s armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq`s military intelligence, to meet with the Americans.

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam`s ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America`s one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy.

Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International

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Doch ein bisschen Öl für Blut?

Florian Rötzer 12.04.2003
Zunächst einmal will die US-Regierung das irakische Öl zur Finanzierung des profitablen Wiederaufbaus des eroberten Irak verwenden und dazu eine Organisation gründen, die die irakische Ölindustrie kontrolliert

Das Ende des Saddam-Regimes wurde von Ari Fleischer erklärt. Während Chaos nach dem Wegtauchen der Autoritäten des irakischen Regimes in den befreiten Gebieten zu herrschen scheint und jeder sich nimmt, was er kriegen kann, überlegt man in der amerikanischen Regierung mehr oder weniger laut, was man nach der Befreiung mit dem irakischen Öl machen soll.

"No blood for oil" war einer der Slogans der Kriegsgegner. Das leuchtete angesichts der tiefen persönlichen Verstrickungen vieler Mitglieder der Bush-Regierung ein, auch wenn der Krieg keineswegs allein als Griff nach den reichen Öl-Ressourcen des Landes verstanden werden kann. Viele Motive spielen hier herein, zumal die gesamte Region seit langem schon ein Brennpunkt der amerikanischen Politik ist.

Man kennt sich schon lange

Soeben berichtete beispielsweise die Nachrichtenagentur UPI, dass der CIA bereits 1959 in Kontakt mit dem damals knapp 20jährigen Saddam Hussein getreten sei. Damals sei er Mitglied in einer sechsköpfigen Gruppe geworden, die im Auftrag des CIA einen Anschlag auf Abd al-Karim Qasim ausführen sollte. Der Brigadegeneral hatte zusammen mit Muhammad Arif in einem blutigen Putsch den pro-britischen König Faisal II. gestürzt, was erst einmal den amerikanischen Interessen diente, weil er sich zunächst dem antisowjetischen Bagdad-Pakt anschloss. Doch 1959 schon verließ Qasim, der zunächst eine soziale Revolution einleiten wollte, den Pakt, brachte Kommunisten in Machtstellungen und begann sowjetische Waffen zu kaufen. Qasim ging gegen die Kurden vor und wollte Kuwait annektieren. Schnell wurde der Irak etwa von dem damaligen CIA-Chef Allan Dulles (siehe auch: 50 Jahre Brain Warfare)zum "gefährlichen Ort der Welt" erklärt, was irgendwie an die Gegenwart erinnert.

Das war die Zeit, als Hussein nach Bagdad gebracht wurden, um Qasim zu töten. Termin sei der 7. Oktober 1959 gewesen. Doch es klappte nicht. Hussein floh über Syrien in den Libanon und später mit der Hilfe des CIA und des ägyptischen Geheimdienstes nach Ägypten. Hussein soll des öfteren die amerikanische Botschaft aufgesucht haben. Möglicherweise wurde Qasim 1963 dann mit Unterstützung des CIA doch noch ermordet, jedenfalls half der Geheimdienst der an die Macht gekommenen Baath-Partei mit Listen verdächtiger Kommunisten, diese zu eliminieren. Es war schließlich Kalter Krieg. In dieser Zeit wurde Saddam zunächst Geheimdienstschef und schließlich.

Die Herrschaft war jedoch kurz, denn erst einmal kam Arif an die Macht bis 1968 schließlich die Baath-Partei sich durchsetzte. Die Erdöl-Industrie wurde verstaatlicht, 1972 ein Freundschaftsvertrag mit der Sowjetunion geschlossen. 1979 puschte sich dann Hussein an die Macht und machte sich gegenüber der USA beliebt, als er 1980 einen Krieg gegen den Iran begann. Dort war nämlich der pro-amerikanische Schah von radikalen Muslimen unter der Führung von Khomeini gestürzt worden. Hier begannen dann erneut enge Kontakte zwischen der US-Regierung und Irak. Gerne sah man über Diktatur, Menschrechtsverletzungen und Giftgaseinsätze hinweg, solange der Irak den freien Westen verteidigte. Es wurden Waffen, chemische und biologische Substanzen und Geheimdienstinformationen geliefert, um dem Irak im Krieg gegen den Iran zu helfen. Die Völkerfreundschaft zwischen der demokratischen USA unter Führung von Bush sen. und der Diktatur von Hussein kam bekanntlich erst an ihr Ende, als der Irak im Sommer 1990 in Kuwait einmarschierte und damit den Bogen überspannte.

"We have no interest in the oil``

Aber die Vergangenheit interessiert bekanntlich niemand, weil man doch in die Zukunft schauen muss. Und da stehen gewaltige Summen an, um den im ersten und im zweiten Krieg zerstörten Irak wieder aufzubauen, dessen Technik mit dem Embargo mittlerweile hoffnungslos veraltet ist. Daran können die Unternehmen der Siegesländer verdienen, aber das können sie nur, ohne der amerikanischen Wirtschaft zu schaden, wenn das Land selbst Geld hat. Hier kommt das Öl ins Spiel, das bekanntlich auch langfristig eine Bedeutung hat, wenn eine USA-freundliche Regierung im Irak an der Macht ist. Noch freilich stehen dummerweise die Öl-Ressourcen nach einem Sicherheitsratbeschluss unter der Obhut der UN und des "Öl-für-Lebensmittel"-Programms. Einstimmig wurde zwar bereits entschieden, vond en Geldern Hilfsmittel für die irakische Bevölkerung zu liefern.

Doch mit den Hilfslieferungen steht es derzeit noch schlecht, weil das Pentagon nicht mit dem Chaos gerechnet hat. Doch abgesehen davon, haben die USA mit der Koalition der Willigen sich sowieso über das Völkerrecht und die UN hinweggesetzt. Daher sind sie jetzt auch faktisch im Besitz der Öl-Ressourcen. Und die sollen nun der dem Irak verordneten Regierung unterstellt werden, um die laufenden Kosten des Wiederaufbaus zu tragen. Da gibt es viele Milliarden zu verdienen. Bis zu 100 Milliarden US-Dollar rechnen manche. Die Erstaufträge, noch bezahlt von der USA, wurden nur an US-Unternehmen verliehen.

Halliburton beispielsweise, dessen Direktor Vizepräsident Cheney war, nachdem er vom Verteidigungsminister unter Bush sen. in die "freie" Wirtschaft übergewechselt und damit Halliburton kontinuierlich zu mehr Aufträgen vom Pentagon verholfen hat, wurde nach aufkeimender Kritik am Filz, beispielsweise was den Sicherheitsberater Richard Perle betrifft, vom großen Kuchen ausgeschlossen ( Erosionserscheinungen in der Bush-Regierung). Aber das Unternehmen hatte sich schon zuvor einen Vertrag gesichert ( Die Gewinner des Krieges), für das Pentagon (!) die brennenden Erdölquellen zu löschen. Nachdem aber das Hussein-Regime dieses Mal kaum Erdöl-Quellen in Brand gesetzt hatte, würden die Einkünfte eher schmal aussehen, auch wenn man schon gleich einmal vor Ort ist und so sich Optionen sichern kann. Allerdings soll aber die Halliburton-Firma Kellog Brown & Root Services überdies eine Bestandsaufnahme aller Ölquellen nach Ende der Kriegshandlungen vornehmen. Nach einem Brief von Army Corps of Engineers an den demokratischen Abgeordneten Henry Waxman könnte aber auch schon dieser unscheinbare Vertrag sieben Milliarden Dollar wert sein. Waxman forderte jetzt das General Accounting Office (GAO) auf, die Vergabe der Verträge unter die Lupe zu nehmen.

Angeblich wollen die USA noch so schnell als möglich die politische Macht an die Iraker übergeben. Dazu gehört auch die Verfügung über die verstaatlichte Öl-Industrie. Bis die irakische Übergangsregierung installiert ist, lassen sich die wichtigsten Dinge und Verträge auf jeden Fall zufriedenstellend lösen. Wie man beispielsweise mit den Verträgen umgehen wird, die das Hussein-Regime unter anderem mit Russland, Deutschland oder Frankreich abgeschlossen hat, ist noch offen. Aufgefordert werden zumindest diejenigen, dei nicht am Krieg teilgenommen haben, ihre Forderungen zurückzuziehen, um den Irak nicht zu belasten. Rechtlich ist überhaupt kaum etwas durch den Angriffskrieg geklärt.

Mit einem bisschen Hilfe vom Ausland, sprich: von der USA, könnte man nämlich die Erölförderung noch in diesem Jahr um 50 Prozent erhöhen - und damit auch die OPEC unter Druck setzen. 20 Milliarden US-Dollar ließen sich für die Iraker gewinnen, so dass diese kräftig in ihr Land investieren können. Vizepräsident "We have no interest in the oil``-Cheney formulierte das vorsichtig. Es gehe um die Etablierung einer Organisation, die das Erdölministerium kontrolliert.

Da seien "hauptsächlich" Iraker gefragt, aber es sollen auch andere Berater etwas zu sagen haben. Wie Reuters erfahren haben will, sollen ehemalige Leiter von US-Ölkonzernen in einen "Beirat" aufgenommen werden, der die von der US-Regierung bestimmte Übergangsregierung berät - gewiss nicht gegen die nationalen Interessen. Philipp Carroll, zuvor Direktor von Shell, soll an die Spitze des Gremiums gestellt werden.

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Mr.Rumsfeld auf den Spuren von M.S.S. (Irak. Informationsminister)Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf

Free to do bad things
War leaders are trying to damp down bad news coming out of post-invasion Iraq, writes Brian Whitaker

Brian Whitaker
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

On one of the bleakest days since the invasion began, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday shrugged off turmoil and looting in Iraq as signs of the people`s freedom.

"It`s untidy, and freedom`s untidy," he said, jabbing his hand in the air. "Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They`re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things."

Mr Rumsfeld insisted that words such as anarchy and lawlessness were unrepresentative of the situation in Iraq and "absolutely" ill-chosen.

"I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn`t believe it," he said. "I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny - `The sky is falling`. I`ve never seen anything like it! And here is a country that`s being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they`re free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot - one thing after another. It`s just unbelievable ..."

In an extraordinary performance reminiscent of the Iraqi information minister who assured the world that all was well even as battles raged visibly around him, Mr Rumsfeld quipped:

"The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it`s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, `My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?` "

In what appeared to be a concerted effort to damp down media coverage of the chaos, the British government simultaneously laid into the BBC and its defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, accusing them of "trying to make the news" rather than reporting it.

A spokesman for prime minister Tony Blair claimed that "in the main the anarchy and disorder is being directed against symbols of the regime". Mr Gilligan hit back: "The reality is half the shopping district [in Baghdad] is now being looted. Downing Street may be saying it`s only regime targets that are being attacked. I`m afraid it isn`t."

In the absence of any authority, residents of Baghdad have been erecting barricades to keep out marauders and there is some evidence of shooting, either between looters and citizens who are trying to protect their own property, or between rival gangs of looters.

Hospitals and laboratories have been ransacked, with thieves often seizing vital equipment - heart monitors, incubators and microscopes - which is of no obvious use to them. A report today says only one hospital in the city still has a functioning operating theatre.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has reminded the US and Britain of their legal obligation under the Geneva Convention to protect civilians and essential services such as hospitals.

The US yesterday appealed for Baghdad`s police - as well as fire and ambulance services - to resume work. It is doubtful that many will do so at present: the public is unlikely to welcome a return of the old regime`s crime prevention apparatus, and the police themselves may be unwilling to put their lives at risk to help out the Americans.

In a move that further undermines the United Nations` role in Iraq, the US has secretly and unilaterally resumed weapons inspections, according to a report in the Guardian today.

This will also annoy the British government, which still officially supports the UN`s Unmovic team.

The American inspection team, nicknamed "USmovic", which was set up in Kuwait a week before the war began, has already started work. It includes inspectors recruited from the previous Unscom team and is led by Charles Duelfer, former deputy head of Unscom.

The US has a pressing need to find evidence of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, since this was the pretext for the invasion in the first place. But the American-controlled inspection team has no international recognition and will also have to struggle to establish its credibility. The work of Unscom during the 1990s was partly discredited by allegations of espionage which were later, to some extent, admitted. Whatever "USmovic" finds, it is liable to be accused of planting evidence, even if that is not actually the case.

In northern Iraq, where the key cities of Mosul and Kirkuk were "liberated" by Kurdish forces with American support, the "liberation" of any available property has also begun.

Turkey is particularly worried about Kirkuk and has troops on the border ready to invade if Kurdish forces do withdraw from the city. Turkey`s fear is that possession of Kirkuk and the surrounding oilfields would make a Kurdish state in the region economically viable. This could jeopardise the territorial integrity of Turkey, where there is a substantial Kurdish population.

This morning there are reports of some Kurdish forces leaving Kirkuk, but they are said to be holding back until more US troops arrive to take over from them and maintain order.

This is only part of the picture, however. At the same time, large numbers of armed Kurdish civilians have been reported entering the city. They are said to be former residents of Kirkuk who were displaced by Saddam Hussein`s policy of Arabisation (ethnic "cleansing"). In the slightly longer term, these returnees are likely to strengthen Kurdish claims to possession of the city.

In southern Iraq, it was reported yesterday that British forces shot dead five alleged bank robbers in Basra. The robbers are said to have fired first.

There is also some embarrassment over Sheikh Muzahim Tamimi, the tribal leader appointed by Britain to take charge of Basra province. It has emerged that he is a former brigadier-general in Saddam Hussein`s army and was once a member of the Ba`ath party. Several hundred protesters threw stones at his house earlier this week.

One theory circulating in London is that the sheikh was appointed accidentally because British intelligence confused him with his anti-Saddam brother (who turns out to have been shot dead by the secret police in 1994).


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Die Absicht die Glaubwürdigkeit der UN zu zerstören ist nicht ein Nebenprodukt der neusten amerikanischen Politik. Es ist sehr stark beabsichtigt. Bush wählte Irak nicht weil es Sinn machte, sondern weil er es wollte. Er tat es so schnell er konnte. Es gab keine bessere Überlegung als die.` Weil ich es tun kann, will ich es tun.` (...) Die Erweiterung auf andere genannten Ziele-Syrien,Nord-Korea,vielleicht Burma, warum nicht China- trägt nur, in Bush Augen, zur Herrlichkeit dieses Spiels bei.
weiter im Text.
Wenn dies wahr wäre, was in diesem Artikel beschrieben, dann würde alles bisher dagewesene getopt.
J.

Don`t look for a reason
All the explanations for this war are bogus - Bush only invaded Iraq to prove that he could

David Hare
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

From the moment it was first mooted, this was, for me, the impenetrable war, the war wrapped in mystery. "It`s about oil." "It`s about imperialism." "It`s about a son avenging the failures of his father." All the answers that are supposed to tell you everything, that are always given to you in a tone of utter contempt, as if you must be a fool not to understand, in fact seem to tell you nothing. The fake certainty, the anger, the exasperation, and now the startling vindictiveness, the personal vitriol in the rhetoric of the west - as if we hated each other far more than we hate Saddam - betray our own bad faith about a conflict whose meaning eludes us.

Why Iraq? Why now? "It`s a response to September 11." Oh yes? And is that why you staged your response in a country which had no connection to September 11? "It`s about nuclear weapons." Oh yes? "Well, maybe not actual nuclear weapons. It`s about weapons of mass destruction." Oh yes? And how many weapons of mass destruction have you found?

What is this war then, which politicians like, which politicians in so many countries favour, and which only the poor bloody people in nearly every country in the world dislike and distrust? Who knows? Who truly can tell? Somebody explain to me: not just the feebleness of the rationale, the evident lies needed to be told by the Americans in order to try - and fail - to persuade international opinion that they had a right to invade. But on the other side, also, explain to me: perhaps 2 million people in Hyde Park, the march inspiring, the solidarity inspiring. And the only disappointment? The speeches. One speaker after another offering feeble jokes about regime change in the White House and Downing Street. Not one single speaker with an analysis that struck to the heart, that made any sense.

And note - no leader. A popular movement of visceral dissent - and no leader. Usually great movements throw up great speakers, people like EP Thompson or Emily Pankhurst whose identity crystallises the common outrage. This time - who? Michael Moore, yes. On the battleground, Robert Fisk, yes. In the columns, Paul Krugman and Julian Barnes, yes. But the great voice, the voice that will tell us "This is what`s happening. And this is why." For the first time in my lifetime, a movement with mass, but no tongue. Jacques Chirac? Please.

Those of us who, from the start, opposed this venture on the grounds that it was unnecessary and illegal may now have to face the possibility that it will improve the lives of large numbers of people in large parts of Iraq. We have to face the charge that we are spoilt, that we who already have freedoms have no right to deny even a colonial freedom - if there can be such a thing - to those who have known only brutality and suffering. We are, we are told, callous not to allow that it is a significant advance, at least to those who have known no advance at all, to move a country from dictatorship to anarchy and foreign occupation. But we, in return, have to insist that this release from pain has been bought in the wrong way and at what is already, and at what will only become more clearly, too high a price.

In our hearts, we all know - what`s interesting, even supporters of the war know - there was no need for this. Nothing has been achieved which, with common diplomacy and resolve, could not have been achieved with fewer dead babies, less bereavement, less murder, less random slaughter. Three thousand killed in the Twin Towers. Three thousand, at least, already dead in Iraq. Three thousand, a majority bystanders, dead in the reoccupation of Palestine following the second intifada. Is equivalence achieved? Can we stop here?

The answer, it seems, is no. At the beginning of all this I argued for George Bush to go into a wood outside Vienna or St Petersburg with Saddam Hussein. Pistols at dawn, Rumsfeld and Aziz as seconds on either side, a few paces back. Top hats. Handkerchiefs. Let the man who wants to fight fight. But instead the world has been sickened by a cowards` engagement. On one side, Saddam Hussein, instructing his head of protocol to shoot him in the face of capture because he knows he will not have the stomach to do it himself. On the other, in eerie parallel, George Bush, famous as frat-boy draft-dodger; John Ashcroft, draft-dodger; Richard Perle, draft-dodger; Dick Cheney, draft-dodger, his words about Vietnam already the epitaph of this administration: "I had other priorities at the time." Men willing to send others to do what they would not do themselves.

It is a hardy soul who has witnessed without flinching Americans raining down terror from the sky, shooting up Iraqi civilians, British soldiers, children, women - hell, fellow Americans, why not? Inflicting almost as many casualties on their own allies as the ostensible enemy has done. It has been impossible for anyone not to contemplate the disparity between American firepower, the bulk weight of US technology, and the pathetic, disorganised inadequacy of Iraqi resistance and not feel sickened by the unevenness of the fight. And more, beyond that shame at an inequality of means which you cannot even dignify with the name of war, to ask "And to what end? And to what point?"

I understand no more than anyone, no more than this: at some level I believe this administration does not even know why it chose Iraq. I believe it cannot even remember the reasons. The reasons have changed so many times - at least in public - and make so little palpable sense that it is, of course, tempting to believe, as conspiracy theorists will always believe, that there is some hidden reason which is being kept from us. But to me, the more frightening possibility is this: what if no such reason exists? If there is indeed, no casus belli?

If that were the case, then there would be, at least, an explanation for our own inarticulacy, for the failure of our speechmaking. It appears that something so profound is happening in the world that none of us is yet able to grasp it. How can we consider and speak to the possibility that America is deliberately declaring that the only criterion of power shall now be power itself? The introduction of the doctrine of the right to the pre-emptive strike is an event in international history of infinitely more consequence and importance than anything that happened on September 11. Even the transgression of a territorial border and the murder of innocent citizens cannot compare to what is being claimed here: the right to go in and destroy a regime, at whatever cost and without any clear plan for its future, not because of what anyone has done, but because of what you cannot prove they might do.

George Bush is a born-again Christian and a recovering alcoholic. I see in him the uncontrollable anger of the alcoholic, once directed at himself, sluiced away every night into his bloodstream and out into the gutter, now, tragically, directed, via his amazingly aggressive, amazingly triumphant body language, on to whatever poor soul comes into his sights.

The intention to destroy the credibility of the United Nations, and its right to help try and defuse situations of danger to life, is not a byproduct of recent American policy. It is its very purpose. Bush chose Iraq not because it would make sense, but because it wouldn`t. He did it, in short, because he could. No better reason than that. "Because I can, I will." The thinness of the justification for this war is, in fact, its very point. As is the arbitrariness of the target. The proliferation of other named targets - Syria, North Korea, maybe Burma, why not China? - adds, in Bush`s eyes, only to the deliciousness of the game.

Caught, significantly, chuckling and laughing before a supposedly serious press conference about enemy losses and American advances, Bush comes to represent the man flexing private muscles for no other reason than the feral pleasure of the flex. What is being asserted today is the right to assert, to go in with absolutely no gameplan for how you will get out. Did the Bush administration deliberately omit to put any aid to Afghanistan in its current budget plans? Or, worse, did it simply forget?

Tonight in Jerusalem, next to the Garden of Gethsemane, under cover of war, while the world is not looking, Jewish fundamentalists are moving into an armed apartment block on land which belongs to the Palestinians; in the White House, Christian fundamentalists dream of moving on to murder and mayhem in countries beyond count; and on the stony hillsides of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Muslim fundamentalists dream of moving on to murder and mayhem in countries beyond count. The trade union of international politicians exercises an ever more Stalinist grip, moving countries and armies to wars they do not want. Only the people say no.

· David Hare is a playwright

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[Brama]

Zufällig schaue ich hier rein, oh je, noch einer der sich in Selbstgesprächen ergeht

[Joerver]

Thom Hartmann: `The real war - on American democracy`
Posted on Saturday, April 12 @ 08:44:40 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Thom Hartmann

In the midst of news of foreign wars, Americans are beginning to wake up to the real war being waged here at home. It is, however, a confused awakening.

For example, Americans wonder why the Bush administration seems so intent on crippling local, state, and federal governments by starving them of funds and creating huge federal debt that our children will have to repay.

Many think it`s just to fund tax cuts and subsidies for the rich, that the multimillionaire CEOs who`ve taken over virtually all senior posts in the Bush administration are just pigs at the trough, and this is a spectacular but ordinary form of self-serving corruption. It all seems so plausible, and there`s even a grain of truth to it.



But juicy deals for Bush administration insiders are just a by-product of the real and deeper war against democracy. The neoconservatives are perfectly happy for us to think they`re just opportunists skirting the edges of legality and morality, but this is far more dangerous than simple government corruption.

Indeed, the neo-conservatives claim to be anti-government. As a leading spokesman for the neo-con agenda, Grover Norquist, told National Public Radio`s Mara Liasson in a May 25, 2001 Morning Edition interview, "I don`t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Without a larger view, the issues of domestic spending, oil, neo-conservative power plays in both major parties, the loss of liberties, anti-government rhetoric, and war in the Middle East all seem like separate and unconnected events. They`re not.

The "new conservatives" who`ve seized the Republican Party and, through the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) are nipping at the heels of the Democratic Party, are not our parents` conservatives. Historic conservatives like Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower would be appalled. Although their philosophical roots go back to Alexander Hamilton, who openly argued during the Constitutional Convention that royalty was the best form of government, the neocons have always been kept to the fringe, nipping at the heels of democracy.

In past times those promoting what is now called the neo-conservative agenda went by different names.

The Founders of America knew that for 6000 years "civilized" humans had always been ruled by one of three groups: kings, theocrats, or feudal lords. Kings held power by threat of violence and continual warfare; theocrats and popes held power by the people`s fear of a god or gods; and feudal lords held power by wealth and the power that comes from throwing average people into poverty.

The "new" idea of our Founders in 1776 was to throw off all three of these historic tyrannies and replace them with a fourth way - people being ruled by themselves. A government that derived its legitimacy and continuing existence solely from the approval of its citizens. Government of, by, and for "We, The People." They called it a republican democracy.

What we are seeing now in the neoconservative agenda is nothing less than an attempt to overthrow republican democracy and replace it with a worldwide feudal state.

The last time this happened, the feudalists took over a monarchy and then North America. In December 1600, Queen Elizabeth I chartered the East India company, ultimately leading to a corporate takeover of the Americas that the colonists ended with the Boston Tea Party and, three years later, the American Revolution. This corporate-state partnership went on to conquer India, but eventually faded out as the British Empire faded, and the British government, along with most of Western Europe, embraced Jeffersonian forms of democracy.

But it raised its head again in the 20th Century, revived by Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini. The Italian dictator even used the word "corporatism" to describe it, and then later renamed it as "fascism" - a word that was defined in American dictionaries such as The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company) in 1983 as "fas-cism (fash`iz`em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Since the "Reagan Revolution," two centuries after we rose up and rebelled against King George III`s support of corporate feudalism in Boston Harbor, this ancient enemy of democracy is again trying to seize America. Reagan ignored the Sherman Act and other restraints on corporations, and sold at fire-sale prices the airwaves once held in common by We, The People. The result was predictable: a merger and acquisitions frenzy, and the takeover of American media by a handful of mega-corporations. Bill Clinton then helped export corporatism to the industrialized world when he pushed GATT/WTO through Congress.

Thus, the war on Iraq was just one front in the larger feudal war against democracy itself. (And a particularly useful one - it gave the corporate feudal lords access to oil wealth, and was so effective at distracting the populace from Bush`s outrageous domestic agenda that we can expect to see another war, somewhere, in November of 2004.)

In 1936 - years before America turned its attention to fighting fascism in Germany - Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about the rise of a corporate feudalism here in the United States. In a speech in Philadelphia on June 27th, he said: "Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service."

Roosevelt suggested that human nature may play a part in it all, but that didn`t make it tolerable. "It was natural and perhaps human," he said, "that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself."

It was a control the Democratic Party of 1936 found intolerable. "As a result," Roosevelt said, "the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man."

Republicans of the day lashed out in the press and on radio, charging that Roosevelt was anti-American, even communist. Without a moment`s hesitation, he threw it back in their faces.

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America," Roosevelt thundered in that 1936 speech. "What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."

Those of us who still believe in republican democracy would have "We, The People" make the decisions through representatives we`ve elected without the feudal influence of corporate money. We realize that "big government" is, indeed, a menace when it`s no longer responsive to its own people, as happened in Germany and Russia in the last century - and is happening today in America under the neoconservatives.

But we also remember the vision of a free and democratic America - a sacred archetype so powerful that protestors in Tiananmen Square marched to their deaths carrying a 36-foot-tall paper mache replica of the Statue Of Liberty while quoting the words of Thomas Jefferson.

Facing the power of The East India Company`s corporate feudalism in 1773, the Founders of our nation, unable to get their voices heard in the halls of the British government or even in many of the newspapers of the day, turned to two nonviolent and very effective methods to spread the new meme of democracy.

The first was pamphleteering - and the internet is today`s pamphlet. Millions are using email and pointing to websites to awaken people and promote democratic change.

The second was creating "committees of correspondence," also used extensively by the Women`s Suffrage movement. These were groups organized to write letters to the editors of newspapers.

People across American have already begun letter writing, faxing, and email campaigns, and you can see the results on the editorial pages of our newspapers and in the reactions of some of our politicians. Other correspondents are blogging or calling in to talk shows, modern variations on this theme.

A correspondent in York, New York, who is pamphleteering in email and encouraging committees of correspondence to write letters to newspaper editors against the new feudalism`s wars on America and overseas, shared the following quote from Emerson: "One of the illusions [of life] is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour."

Yet this is the critical and decisive hour, and we are not without voices or tools.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is an author and talk show host. www.thomhartmann.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for republication in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

[Joerver]

Welcome aboard the Iraqi gravy train
Congratulations to all the winners of tickets to take part in the greatest rebuilding show on earth

Terry Jones
Sunday April 13, 2003
The Observer

Well the war has been a huge success, and I guess it`s time for congratulations all round. And wow! It`s hard to know where to begin.

First, I`d like to congratulate Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) and the Bechtel Corporation, which are the construction companies most likely to benefit from the reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts in the region of $1 billion should soon coming your way, chaps. Well done! And what with the US dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles on Iraq so far and with more to come, there`s going to be a lot of reconstruction. It looks like it could be a bonanza year.

Of course, we all know that KBR is the construction side of Halliburton, and it has been doing big business with the military ever since the Second World War. Most recently, it got the plum job of constructing the prison compound for terrorists suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Could be a whole lot more deluxe chicken coops coming your way in the next few months, guys. Stick it to `em.

I`d also like to add congratulations to Dick Cheney, who was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and who currently receives a cheque for $1 million a year from his old company. I guess he may find there`s a little surprise bonus in there this year. Well done, Dick.

Congratulations, too, to former Secretary of State, George Schultz. He`s not only on the board of Bechtel, he`s also chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group with close ties to the White House committed to reconstructing the Iraqi economy through war. You`re doing a grand job, George, and I`m sure material benefits will be coming your way, as sure as the Devil lives in Texas.

Oh, before I forget, a big round of appreciation for Jack Sheehan, a retired general who sits on the Defence Policy Board which advises the Pentagon. He`s a senior vice president at Bechtel and one of the many members of the Defence Policy Board with links to companies that make money out of defence contracts. When I say `make money` I`m not joking. Their companies have benefited to the tune of $76bn just in the last year. Talk about a gravy train. Well, Jack, you and your colleagues can certainly look forward to a warm and joyous Christmas this year.

It;s been estimated that rebuilding Iraq could cost anything from $25bn to $100bn and the great thing is that the Iraqis will be paying for it themselves out of their future oil revenues. What`s more, President Bush will be able to say, with a straight face, that they`re using the money from Iraqi oil to benefit the Iraqi people. `We`re going to use the assets of the people of Iraq, especially their oil assets, to benefit their people,` said Secretary of State Colin Powell, and he looked really sincere. Yessir.

It`s so neat it makes you want to run out and buy shares in Fluor. As one of the world`s biggest procurement and construction companies, it recently hired Kenneth J. Oscar, who, as acting assistant secretary of the army, took care of the Pentagon`s $35bn-a-year procurement budget. So there could also be some nice extra business coming its way soon. Bully for them.

But every celebration has its serious side, and I should like to convey my condolences to all those who have suffered so grievously in this war. Particularly American Airlines, Qantas and Air Canada, and all other travel companies which have seen their customers dwindle, as fear of terrorist reprisals for what the US and Britain have done in Iraq begins to bite.

My condolences also to all those British companies which have been disappointed in their bid to share in the bonanza that all this wonderful high-tech military firepower has created. I know it must be frustrating and disheartening for many of you, especially in the medical field, knowing there are all those severed limbs, all that burnt flesh, all those smashed skulls, broken bones, punctured spleens, ripped faces and mangled children just crying out for your products.

You could be making a fortune out of the drugs, serums and surgical hardware, and yet you have to stand on the sidelines and watch as US drug companies make a killing.

Well, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, has some words of comfort for us all. As he recently pointed out, this adventure by Bush and Blair will have created such hatred throughout the Arab world, that 100 new bin Ladens will have been created.

So all of us here in Britain, as well as in America, shouldn`t lose heart. Once the Arab world starts to take its revenge, there should be enough reconstruction to do at home to keep business thriving for some years to come.



Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

[Joerver]

Nur noch eine Frage von Tagen?

Syria could be next, warns Washington
Ed Vulliamy in Washington
Sunday April 13, 2003
The Observer

The United States has pledged to tackle the Syrian-backed Hizbollah group in the next phase of its `war on terror` in a move which could threaten military action against President Bashar Assad`s regime in Damascus.

The move is part of Washington`s efforts to persuade Israel to support a new peace settlement with the Palestinians. Washington has promised Israel that it will take `all effective action` to cut off Syria`s support for Hizbollah - implying a military strike if necessary, sources in the Bush administration have told The Observer .

Hizbollah is a Shia Muslim organisation based in Lebanon, whose fighters have attacked northern Israeli settlements and harassed occupying Israeli troops to the point of forcing an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon three years ago.

The new US undertaking to Israel to deal with Hizbollah via its Syrian sponsors has been made over recent days during meetings between administration officials and Israeli diplomats in Washington, and Americans talking to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. It would be part of a deal designed to entice Israel into the so-called road map to peace package that would involve the Jewish state pulling out of the Palestinian West Bank, occupied since 1967.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has so far rejected the road map initiative - charted by the US with its ally, Britain - which also calls for mutual recognition between Israel and a new Palestinian state, structured according to US-backed reforms. The American guarantee would be to take armed action if necessary to cut off Syrian support for Hizbollah, and stop further sponsorship for the group by Iran.

`If you control Iraq, you can affect the Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Hizbollah, both geographically and politically,` says Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington.

`The United States will make it very clear, quietly and publicly, that Baathist Syria may come to an end if it does not stop its support of Hizbollah.`

The undertaking dovetails conveniently into `phase three` of what President George Bush calls the `war on terror` and his pledge to go after all countries accused of harbouring terrorists.

It also fits into calls by hawks inside and aligned to the administration who believe that war in Iraq was first stage in a wider war for American control of the region. Threats against Syria come daily out of Washington.

Hawks in and close to the Bush White House have prepared the ground for an attack on Syria, raising the spectre of Hizbollah, of alleged Syrian plans to wel come refugees from Saddam Hussein`s fallen regime, and of what the administration insists is Syrian support for Iraq during the war.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - regarded as the real architect of the Iraqi war and its aftermath - said on Thursday that `the Syrians have been shipping killers into Iraq to try and kill Americans`, adding: `We need to think about what our policy is towards a country that harbours terrorists or harbours war criminals.

`There will have to be change in Syria, plainly,` said Wolfowitz.

Washingtom intelligence sources claim that weapons of mass destruction that Saddam was alleged to have possessed were shipped to Syria after inspectors were sent by the United Nations to find them.

One of the chief ideologists behind the war, Richard Perle, yesterday warned that the US would be compelled to act against Syria if it emerged that weapons of mass destruction had been moved there by Saddam`s fallen Iraqi regime.


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A civilisation torn to pieces
Baghdad, reports Robert Fisk, is a city at war with itself, at the mercy of thieves and gunmen. And, in the city`s most important museum, something truly terrible has taken place
13 April 2003


They lie across the floor in tens of thousands of pieces, the priceless antiquities of Iraq`s history. The looters had gone from shelf to shelf, systematically pulling down the statues and pots and amphorae of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks and hurling them on to the concrete.

Our feet crunched on the wreckage of 5,000-year-old marble plinths and stone statuary and pots that had endured every siege of Baghdad, every invasion of Iraq throughout history ­ only to be destroyed when America came to "liberate" the city. The Iraqis did it. They did it to their own history, physically destroying the evidence of their own nation`s thousands of years of civilisation.

Not since the Taliban embarked on their orgy of destruction against the Buddhas of Bamiyan and the statues in the museum of Kabul ­ perhaps not since the Second World War or earlier ­ have so many archaeological treasures been wantonly and systematically smashed to pieces.

"This is what our own people did to their history," the man in the grey gown said as we flicked our torches yesterday across the piles of once perfect Sumerian pots and Greek statues, now headless, armless, in the storeroom of Iraq`s National Archaeological Museum. "We need the American soldiers to guard what we have left. We need the Americans here. We need policemen." But all that the museum guard, Abdul-Setar Abdul-Jaber, experienced yesterday was gun battles between looters and local residents, the bullets hissing over our heads outside the museum and skittering up the walls of neighbouring apartment blocks. "Look at this," he said, picking up a massive hunk of pottery, its delicate patterns and beautifully decorated lips coming to a sudden end where the jar ­ perhaps 2ft high in its original form ­ had been smashed into four pieces. "This was Assyrian." The Assyrians ruled almost 2,000 years before Christ.

And what were the Americans doing as the new rulers of Baghdad? Why, yesterday morning they were recruiting Saddam Hussein`s hated former policemen to restore law and order on their behalf. The last army to do anything like this was Mountbatten`s force in South-east Asia, which employed the defeated Japanese army to control the streets of Saigon ­ with their bayonets fixed ­ after the recapture of Indo-China in 1945.

A queue of respectably dressed Baghdad ex-cops formed a queue outside the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad after they heard a radio broadcast calling for them to resume their "duties" on the streets. In the late afternoon, at least eight former and very portly senior police officers, all wearing green uniforms ­ the same colour as the uniforms of the Iraqi Baath party ­ turned up to offer their services to the Americans, accompanied by a US Marine. But there was no sign that any of them would be sent down to the Museum of Antiquity.

But "liberation" has already turned into occupation. Faced by a crowd of angry Iraqis in Firdos Square demanding a new Iraqi government "for our protection and security and peace", US Marines, who should have been providing that protection, stood shoulder to shoulder facing them, guns at the ready. The reality, which the Americans ­ and, of course, Mr Rumsfeld ­ fail to understand is that under Saddam Hussein, the poor and deprived were
always the Shia Muslims, the middle classes always the Sunnis, just as Saddam himself was a Sunni. So it is the Sunnis who are now suffering plunder at the hands of the Shia.

And so the gun-fighting that broke out yesterday between property owners and looters was, in effect, a conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims. By failing to end this violence ­ by stoking ethnic hatred through their inactivity ­ the Americans are now provoking a civil war in Baghdad.

Yesterday evening, I drove through the city for more than an hour. Hundreds of streets are now barricaded off with breeze blocks, burnt cars and tree trunks, watched over by armed men who are ready to kill strangers who threaten their homes or shops. Which is just how the civil war began in Beirut in 1975.

A few US Marine patrols did dare to venture into the suburbs yesterday ­ positioning themselves next to hospitals which had already been looted ­ but fires burnt across the city at dusk for the third consecutive day. The municipality building was blazing away last night, and on the horizon other great fires were sending columns of smoke miles high into the air.

Too little, too late. Yesterday, a group of chemical engineers and water purification workers turned up at the US Marine headquarters, pleading for protection so they could return to their jobs. Electrical supply workers came along, too. But Baghdad is already a city at war with itself, at the mercy of gunmen and thieves.

There is no electricity in Baghdad ­ as there is no water and no law and no order ­ and so we stumbled in the darkness of the museum basement, tripping over toppled statues and stumbling into broken winged bulls. When I shone my torch over one far shelf, I drew in my breath. Every pot and jar ­ "3,500 BC" it said on one shelf corner ­ had been bashed to pieces.

Why? How could they do this? Why, when the city was already burning, when anarchy had been let loose ­ and less than three months after US archaeologists and Pentagon officials met to discuss the country`s treasures and put the Baghdad Archaeological Museum on a military data-base ­ did the Americans allow the mobs to destroy the priceless heritage of ancient Mesopotamia? And all this happened while US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was sneering at the press for claiming that anarchy had broken out in Baghdad.

For well over 200 years, Western and local archaeologists have gathered up the remnants of this centre of early civilisation from palaces, ziggurats and 3,000-year-old graves. Their tens of thousands of handwritten card index files ­ often in English and in graceful 19th-century handwriting ­ now lie strewn amid the broken statuary. I picked up a tiny shard. "Late 2nd century, no. 1680" was written in pencil on the inside.

To reach the storeroom, the mobs had broken through massive steel doors, entering from a back courtyard and heaving statues and treasures to cars and trucks.

The looters had left only a few hours before I arrived and no one ­ not even the museum guard in the grey gown ­ had any idea how much they had taken. A glass case that had once held 40,000-year-old stone and flint objects had been smashed open. It lay empty. No one knows what happened to the Assyrian reliefs from the royal palace of Khorsabad, nor the 5,000-year-old seals nor the 4,500-year-old gold leaf earrings once buried with Sumerian princesses. It will take decades to sort through what they have left, the broken stone torsos, the tomb treasures, the bits of jewellery glinting amid the piles of smashed pots.

The mobs who came here ­ Shia Muslims, for the most part, from the hovels of Saddam City ­ probably had no idea of the value of the pots or statues. Their destruction appears to have been the result of ignorance as much as fury. In the vast museum library, only a few books ­ mostly mid-19th-century archaeological works ­ appeared to have been stolen or destroyed. Looters set little value in books.

I found a complete set of the Geographical Journal from 1893 to 1936 still intact ­ lying next to them was a paperback entitled Baghdad, The City of Peace ­ but thousands of card index sheets had been flung from their boxes over stairwells and banisters.

British, French and German archaeologists played a leading role in the discovery of some of Iraq`s finest treasures. The great British Arabist, diplomatic schemer and spy Gertrude Bell, the "uncrowned queen of Iraq" whose tomb lies not far away from the museum, was an enthusiastic supporter of their work. The Germans built the modern-day museum beside the Tigris river and only in 2000 was it reopened to the public after nine years of closure following the 1991 Gulf War.

Even as the Americans encircled Baghdad, Saddam Hussein`s soldiers showed almost the same contempt for its treasures as the looters. Their slit trenches and empty artillery positions are still clearly visible in the museum lawns, one of them dug beside a huge stone statue of a winged bull.

Only a few weeks ago, Jabir Khalil Ibrahim, the director of Iraq`s State Board of Antiquities, referred to the museum`s contents as "the heritage of the nation". They were, he said, "not just things to see and enjoy ­ we get strength from them to look to the future. They represent the glory of Iraq".

Mr Ibrahim has vanished, like so many government employees in Baghdad, and Mr Abdul-Jaber and his colleagues are now trying to defend what is left of the country`s history with a collection of Kalashnikov rifles. "We don`t want to have guns, but everyone must have them now," he told me. "We have to defend ourselves because the Americans have let this happen. They made a war against one man ­ so why do they abandon us to this war and these criminals?"

Half an hour later, I contacted the civil affairs unit of the US Marines in Saadun Street and gave them the exact location of the museum and the condition of its contents. A captain told me that "we`re probably going to get down there". Too late. Iraq`s history had already been trashed by the looters whom the Americans unleashed on the city during their "liberation".

"You are American!" a woman shouted at me in English yesterday morning, wrongly assuming I was from the US. "Go back to your country. Get out of here. You are not wanted here. We hated Saddam and now we are hating Bush because he is destroying our city." It was a mercy she could not visit the Museum of Antiquity to see for herself that the very heritage of her country ­ as well as her city ­ has been destroyed.
13 April 2003 11:15



© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Bernard Wasserstein: Peace is slouching to Jerusalem
13 April 2003


Pax paritur bello (peace is produced by war): the Latin tag may sound Orwellian, but in the Middle East today it rings true. The fall of Baghdad could well be the catalyst for a resumption of the languishing Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Israelis have greeted the downfall of Saddam with relief. But they worry about what comes next. Hawks have been dreading the "day after" the end of the war, when they will be called to order by the Americans. That day is now at hand.

For most Palestinians the fall of Saddam is a bitter pill. Once again bombastic Arab rhetoric has been exposed as hollow. Once again Palestinians fear they will pay the price for the failure of Arab leaders who claim to be their champions. Yasser Arafat was a little more circumspect this time than in the first Gulf War, but his acclaim for the "martyrs" of Baghdad has not improved his standing in Washington. At home he is a much-diminished figure, challenged by Islamic militants, by an impatient younger generation in his own Fatah movement, and by pragmatic technocrats surrounding the new prime minister, Mahmud Abbas.

The Palestinians fear that President Bush`s commitment to the "road-map" to peace is paper-thin and that he will succumb to Israeli attempts to redraw it, delay its implementation, or throw it out of the window. The Israelis, meanwhile, still hope to persuade Washington to amend the road-map that has been devised by the "Quartet" (the UN, EU, Russia, and the US). They demand, for example, that the reference to an independent Palestinian state by 2005 be changed to a state possessing "certain attributes of sovereignty". But the plan is unlikely to be changed. The Palestinians are supposed to rein in their wild men and streamline their administration. The Israelis must withdraw from areas of the West Bank and Gaza reoccupied since September 2000 and halt expansion of settlements in the occupied territories. The US will not impose the road-map on Israel, but will lean heavily on the government to comply.

Both Israeli hopes and Palestinian fears are exaggerated. Realisation of the objectives set out in the road-map is in the US`s interest and the administration has made clear it is serious about moving ahead with it. Even Paul Wolfowitz – the hawkish Pentagon Deputy Secretary and darling of the Israeli lobby in Washington – told a Senate committee on Thursday that progress on the map "is going to help us enormously in our overall posture in the Arab world, indeed in the Muslim world and the whole war on terrorism".

Tony Blair has lately taken to comparing the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to Northern Ireland. He seems to hope for a second coming of the Good Friday agreement in the Holy Land. Some Israelis draw unfortunate lessons from this analogy.

Nevertheless, both Israelis and Palestinians are tiring of endless, hopeless sub-war. Abu Mazen, the recently appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, has boldly nailed a white flag to the mast and called for an "end to military operations in all forms, totally and not partially". The Israeli security establishment is divided about the success of its anti-terrorist campaign. Official spokesmen point to the decline in Israeli casualties in past weeks. But one senior Israeli security figure, speaking privately the other day, said: "Israel is winning the battle against terrorism. But if we continue with this kind of success, the future will be very bleak. Because the kind of security regime we would need to put in place would lead to so much suffering and alienation that it would destroy any basis for productive coexistence with the Palestinians."

Last week former US secretary of state James Baker declared this a moment of opportunity for renewal of the peace process. He it was who, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991, succeeded in convening the Madrid Conference that formally opened the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks. If, as Mr Blair hopes, the second Gulf War yields a genuine peace dividend for Israel and Palestine, even George Galloway and other critics of the war will concede that the toppling of Saddam has brought some tangible benefit.

Bernard Wasserstein is Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow and the author of `Israel and Palestine: Why They Fight and Can They Stop?` (Profile Books)
13 April 2003 11:30


© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Für alle die es interessiert das Sharon Interview

PM to Haaretz: Iraq war has created chance with Palestinians

By Ari Shavit, Haaretz Correspondent



Outside the bureau the usual spin is spun. There`s no concern at all. Relations with George Bush are excellent. Mutual esteem, reciprocal fondness, joint credibility abound. So what`s to be afraid of? There`s no danger the "road map" will turn into a road trap. Anyway, Ariel Sharon is good at getting out of traps. It`s his speciality, leading others into the traps he himself has eluded.

However, the prime minister is not the same person he was not so long ago. Polite as always, evoking memories as always, but more cautious than ever. Lying under every question he sees a landmine. Lying under every statement is a crisis it is liable to foment.

Since the elections he hasn`t spoken out much. In fact, even during the election campaign he didn`t speak very much. The last time he said something explicit and clear, Justice Mishael Cheshin cut him off. No, he hasn`t forgotten that, and no, he didn`t like it. But no one will catch him uttering a word of criticism about a judge. He won`t say a word about the journalists, either. He recognizes the importance of a free media. But the words he used then - you have gone crazy - reflects his feeling. What happened during the election campaign he still sees as a clear-cut case of irrational behavior.

The year that has passed since the Passover eve massacre at the hotel in Netanya was his greatest year. He responded to the crescendo of terrorism with military might - Operation Defensive Shield - and with political moderation (the confrontation with Benjamin Netanyahu at the Likud Central Committee meeting). In his mid-seventies he achieved unprecedented popularity because he proved so adept at maneuvering within the Bush-Arafat-Netanyahu triangle.

It was the solid backing of the president of the United States that made it possible for him to imprison Arafat in the Muqata and Netanyahu in the treasury. However, the suspicion is looming now that the year of grace is drawing to a close; that it is Bush who is about to imprison Sharon himself in the road map. So things are very tense these days in the Prime Minister`s Bureau. Quiet, but tense.

Prime Minister Sharon, we are at an astonishing historic moment. The reality around us is changing radically. From your point of view, is the new reality in the Middle East after the fall of Iraq promising or dangerous? Good or bad for Israel?

Sharon: "The Iraqi leadership was a horrific and murderous one. As early as 20 years ago they understood it was impossible to acquire an Islamic bomb, and therefore it had to be manufactured. So the removal of Iraq as a threat is definitely a relief. However, this does not mean that all of the problems we are facing have been removed. Iran is making every effort to produce weapons of mass destruction and is engaged in making ballistic missiles. Libya is making a very great effort to acquire nuclear weapons. What is developing in these countries is dangerous and serious. In Saudi Arabia, too, there is a regime that grants sanctioned aid to terrorist organizations here.

Are you saying that what happened in Iraq has to happen, in one way or another, in Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia?

"In the matter of Iraq, the United States showed leadership at the highest level. I don`t think it is realistic to think that immediately after the conclusion of one campaign, another will begin. Even a superpower has limits. When you win, you are also weakened to a certain degree.

"But we face the possibility that a different period will begin here. The move carried out in Iraq generated a shock through the Middle East and it brings with it a prospect of great changes. There is an opportunity here to forge a different relationship between us and the Arab states, and between us and the Palestinians. That opportunity must not be neglected. I intend to examine these things with all seriousness."

Do you think there is a prospect of reaching a settlement in the foreseeable future?

"That depends first and foremost on the Arabs. It obligates a different type of leadership - a battle against terrorism and a series of reforms. It obligates the absolute cessation of the incitement and the dismantling of all terrorist organizations. But if there will be a leadership that understands these things and will carry them out seriously, the possibility of reaching a settlement exists."

Do you consider Abu Mazen a leader with whom you will be able to reach a settlement?

"Abu Mazen understands that it is impossible to vanquish Israel by means of terrorism."

One day very soon the telephone might ring. The president of the United States will be on the line. He will tell you, Arik, I have removed an existential threat from Israel, I am fomenting a revolution throughout the region. Now the time has come for you to make your contribution. Let`s have Netzarim, please."

"There are some matters regarding which we will be ready to take far-reaching steps. We will be ready to carry out very painful steps. But there is one thing that I told President Bush a number of times - I made no concessions in the past, and I will make no concessions now, or ever make concessions in the future, with regard to anything that is related to the security of Israel. I explained to President Bush and made it clear to him that this is the historic responsibility that I bear for the future and the fate of the Jewish people. You should know this - on this subject there will be no concessions. We will be the ones who in the end decide what is dangerous for Israel and what is not dangerous for Israel."

And what about Netzarim? [An isolated settlement in the Gaza Strip]

"I don`t want to get into a discussion of any specific place now. This is a delicate subject and there is no need to talk a lot about it. But if it turns out that we have someone to talk to, that they understand that peace is neither terrorism nor subversion against Israel, then I would definitely say that we will have to take steps that are painful for every Jew and painful for me personally."

Isn`t that phrase "painful concessions" a hollow expression?

"Definitely not. It comes from the depth of my soul. Look, we are talking about the cradle of the Jewish people. Our whole history is bound up with these places. Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beit El. And I know that we will have to part with some of these places. There will be a parting from places that are connected to the whole course of our history. As a Jew, this agonizes me. But I have decided to make every effort to reach a settlement. I feel that the rational necessity to reach a settlement is overcoming my feelings."

You established the settlements and you believed in the settlements and nurtured them. Are you now prepared to consider the evacuation of isolated settlements?

"If we reach a situation of true peace, real peace, peace for generations, we will have to make painful concessions. Not in exchange for promises, but rather in exchange for peace."

Some people expect you to be an Israeli [Charles] de Gaulle - a national leader, a general, who at a certain point understands that reality has changed and turns his back on part of his own history and creates a dramatic historical turning point. Do you have any such aspirations?

"One has to remember one thing about the comparison with de Gaulle - `Algeria` is here. It is not a few hundred kilometers away. The required measure of caution here is therefore much greater."

But I am asking about you. Do you want to be remembered as the one who spearheaded such a dramatic change?

"Let me tell you something. I am determined to make a real effort to reach a real agreement. I think that anyone who saw the tremendous thing called the State of Israel in the making possibly understands things better and knows better how to reach a solution. That is why I think that this task rests with my generation, which was privileged to live through one of the most dramatic periods in the history of the Jewish people.

"I am 75 years old. I have no political ambitions beyond the position I now hold. I feel that my goal and my purpose is to bring this nation to peace and security. That is why I am making tremendous efforts. I think that this is something that I have to leave behind me - to try to reach an agreement."

Have you really accepted the idea of to states for two peoples? Do you really plan to divide western Israel?

"I believe that this is what will happen. One has to view things realistically. Eventually there will be a Palestinian state. I view things first and foremost from our perspective. I do not think that we have to rule over another people and run their lives. I do not think that we have the strength for that. It is a very heavy burden on the public and it raises ethical problems and heavy economic problems."

Even so, under your leadership Israel went back to directly controlling Palestinian cities.

"Our stay in Jenin and in Nablus is temporary. Our presence in those cities was created in order to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist activities. It is not a situation that can persist."

In the past you talked about a long-term interim agreement. Did you not believe in a permanent solution and an end to the conflict?

"I think opportunities have currently been created that did not exist before. The Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular have been shaken. There is therefore a chance to reach an agreement faster than people think."

The Israeli public chose you twice by a large majority because it wants you to repulse Yasser Arafat and beat him. Have you done that?

"I think that one of our successes is that we opened many people`s eyes to the true nature of the Palestinian Authority and the nature of the person who heads it, making him irrelevant. When I used that phrase in the past it shocked many of our supporters, mainly those who write and express themselves. But in the end, Arafat became irrelevant."

Do you not fear that perhaps you won the battle against Arafat and against the terror but lost in the matter of the Palestinian state and the settlements? After all, the thing on the agenda now is the road map, which is not very comfortable for Israel.

"We supported the principles that were presented in President Bush`s speech of June 24, 2002. As long as the sketch matches the speech, it is acceptable to us. Regarding the latest draft that was sent to us, we have 14 or 15 reservations that I have passed on to the White House."

What are the main reservations?

"The main issue is security. How terror will be handled. There is no difference of opinion in this matter but there is a difference in the wording.

The second matter is that of the implementation of the stages. Our understanding with the United States is that the will be no transition from one stage to the next without the completion of the previous stage. The determining factor is not the timetable but the execution. That is why the issue of the stages is of paramount importance to us.

Our third reservation concerns the right of return. This definitely poses a problem.

Is your willingness to recognize a Palestinian state conditional on the Palestinians backing down from their demand for the right of return?

"If there is ever to be an end to the conflict the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish people`s right to a homeland and the existence of an independent Jewish state in the homeland of the Jewish people. I feel that this is a condition for what is called an end to the conflict. This is not a simple thing. Even in the agreements we signed with Egypt and Jordan this was impossible. That is why they did bring about an end to the conflict. They are important agreements, very important, but they did not bring about an end to the conflict. The end of the conflict will come only with the arrival of the recognition of the Jewish people`s right to its homeland.

That has to do with the end of the process. But do you think that the compromise on the right of return has to come beforehand?

This issue must be clear right from the outset.

Would you be willing, perhaps as a gesture to the Americans, to freeze construction in the settlements or to evacuate illegal outposts as part of the first stage?

"That is a sensitive issue. In the final stage of negotiations it will be brought up for discussion. We don`t have to deal with it just now."

One of your tactical achievements is your success in avoiding as much as possible any situation that forces you to make difficult choices. But if we are in fact approaching the moment of truth and your choice will have to be between Bush and Ze`ev Hever. [A prominent settler leader and close associate of Sharon`s]. Who will you choose?

"Each of the two people you mentioned is a special and impressive person. Each of them is very impressive in his own field."

Bush will also have to choose soon between two people whom he appreciates - Ariel Sharon and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Are you not afraid that even with all Bush`s respect and affection for you he will choose Blair?

"We are not under pressure. There is dialogue. Sometimes we see things the same way, sometimes we view them differently. But our relationship is very close. Our relationship with the White House has never been so good. I would like to emphasize that we are not in a conflict with the U.S. I do not live with a feeling that we are under any threat.

There are those who feel that the road map is worse than the Oslo accords. Some people figure the Americans have caught you off guard, that they led you to believe that the road map is not a serious document and then presented it to you as a fait accompli. Do you not feel that you have been misled?

"No. Not at all. Israel is not a pawn on a chessboard that anyone can move. We live here. It will be impossible to budge Israel on the major matters that are principles of her existence."

Do you feel that the dark and violent period of the past three years is ending?

"I will make every effort to make it end. I do not intend to be passive. The moment a Palestinian state forms I plan to begin working with it. I will not wait for the telephone to ring."



`I trust Netanyahu, the economic plan - and my sons`

Your finance minister is a Thatcherite, he believes in a small government and a big free market. In the past you were also a Thatcherite. Are you comfortable with the [economic] plan?

"We have reached a stage where difficult measures are necessary. This is a necessary step. therefore I support the plan that Mr. Netanyahu presented to the government."

The whole plan is acceptable to you?

"Everyone can fiddle and find an article here or an article there that he can argue about. But we are talking about these things also. This is a plan that must be passed. We all must stand together on this matter. This is not an easy matter, it is a difficult one, and it requires a great effort from all of us."

Your relationship with Mr. Netanyahu is well known. Are you not sacrificing him? Do you not enjoy watching him sweat?

"No. Not at all. I hear that there is such talk. But I can say with certainty that my relationship with him is good. I am in close communication with him. We talk nearly every day, and sometimes more than once a day."

Do you respect him?

"I think he is an excellent finance minister. He has my full backing, and he will continue to receive my full backing."

Besides the personal question, there is a fiery social and economic debate taking place. Your voice is not heard in this debate. Are you not worried that your government will be viewed as an Ashkenazi, secular and sated government that lacks sufficient social sensitivity?

"I do not think that this government ignores social issues. I also don`t think there is any link between social sensitivity and ethnic origin."

Are you enjoying this government more than you did from the previous one?

"I think this is a very good government. It has good ministers and it is handling matters very well. But I enjoyed the previous government also. In my eyes its greatest achievement was that it brought a near end to hatred between the right and the left. This, in my opinion, is one of our greatest achievements."

Still, during the elections, the spirits were inflamed once again. What did you think when you found yourself under fire once more?

"Well, all right, this is not the first time that I encountered such things. Did I feel good about it? I did not. But I knew what the truth was. I knew that the day after the elections it would all disappear. Look, the Jews are great. Really great. The Jewish nation is among the great nations, perhaps the greatest nation. But the Jews also know how to hate."

Do you not think that there was a flaw in the relationship between your son Gilad and Dudu Appel and Cyril Kern or in the relationship between your son Omri and Shlomi Oz?

"Believe me, I am not involved in those things. I do not know the details. I trust my sons."

The sons are an important part of your decision making process? Are they active partners in the handling of the affairs of state?

"These claims are exaggerated. The sons are not part of the handling of the affairs. But our family is very special. I think that Lily [Sharon`s late wife] had a part in creating a special atmosphere inside the family. They are good friends, the boys, true friends. I am proud of them."

You are a man that respects action, striving, bravery and friendship. However, maybe the whole matter of rule of law and public ethics does not really relate to you.

"This is a matter that relates to me a great deal. The law is the law and everything related to it must be obeyed. I support keeping the law in full, for everyone, on an equal basis."


© Copyright 2003 Haaretz. All rights reserved

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Constitution of the United States
Article II, Section 4

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States. They have:

1. Seized power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; planned massive military assaults on Iraq, a country that is not threatening the United States; planned a "shock and awe" strategy to create a Hiroshima-type effect on the Iraqi population which is terrorizing and outraging the people of the world.

2. Ordered and directed the violent overthrow of sovereign states, disappearances, kidnappings, assassinations, summary executions, murders and torture. "More than 3000 suspected terrorists have been arrested (by the U.S.) in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let`s put it this way. They are no longer a problem..." [G.W. Bush, State of the Union message, February 4, 2003.]

3. Threatened to wage first strike nuclear war against even non-nuclear countries, setting off a new arms race as non-nuclear nations now seek to develop nuclear arms to deter U.S. aggression or the loss of their sovereignty.

4. Trashed the Bill of Rights and fundamental freedoms of the American people and others everywhere by acting to strip U.S. citizens of their constitutional and human rights; ordering indefinite detentions of citizens and noncitizens; ordering unlawful arrests, raids, and interrogations; institutionalizing racial profiling and authorizing domestic spying on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activities.

Articles of impeachment drafted by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark

TAKE BACK THE CONSTITUTION.
Join the movement of deeply concerned people all across the U.S. who are voting to impeach. See www.VoteToImpeach.org or cast your vote here. Save our freedoms threatened by an Imperial Presidency! Prevent a U.S. War of Aggression!





http://www.votetoimpeach.org/donate.htm

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BAGHDAD FALLS: PRESIDENT BUSH EXTENDS A HEARTFELT RADIO OLIVE BRANCH TO IRAQ`S PROUD POPULATION OF NEWLY-LIBERATED, SOON-TO-BE-CHRISTIAN, PETROLEUM-PUMPIN` EUNUCHS
Radio Statement by the President to the People of Iraq

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, people of Texraq. This is your superior white liberator speaking. Please discontinue your anarchic orgy of looting and burning for a few minutes in order to luxuriate in a rich sonic bath of my monosyllabic magnificence.

Today, I have selflessly freed you from the regime of Saddam Hussein and the burden of wealth management, and replaced them with my own velvety smooth iron grip of freedom. And while as such, it is really you all who should be thanking me for sending so many thousands of your friends and relatives to see that it`s Jesus – not Allahammed – who`s pushing the buttons in heaven, I nevertheless wanted to heap a few words of gratitude onto your humiliation-stooped backs.

First off, I want to thank you for coming around and accepting reality. That whole "pride" thing you had going in the early days of this crusade was not only momentarily embarrassing for me, it was permanently fatal for both you and the grandmothers you took potshots from behind. In the end, it was never my intention to exterminate all of you – just the ones who wouldn`t accept the joy of liberty. We need the bulk of you to remain alive. I mean, who`s gonna bus the tables at all the lavish US Corporate luncheons that will soon be sprouting up all over Baghdad? Sure, we could ship over some Mexicans – but using you people injects a certain regional flavor.

Secondly, I want to thank the statue-defacers among you. When we`re handing out the Freedom PB&J`s, we`ll remember your opportunistic ass kissing. Watching you on the TV made Laura and me so proud to be the newly-ordained Emperor and Empress of the Arabiac World. The way you managed to stir up nearly 500 people in a city the size of Los Angeles, then cheer so telegenically as my Marines just happened to be tearing down the only Saddam statue in the shadow of the hotel where the Pentagon put all the TV reporters and their cameras. That was golden. Well done. Why, people here in the US have completely forgotten that we haven`t even had time yet to plant, then "uncover" any of those nasty old weapons of mass destruction that my daddy gave Saddam in the first place!

Thirdly, a big shout-out to the flower hander-outers among you. The photos of you will look wonderful in my 2004 campaign literature, and my occupying force of leathernecks appreciates the gesture. Just don`t make any sudden movements, or they`ll crack open your skull so fast, your brains will look like a freakin` blizzard of extra-chunky babaganoush.

Fourthly, mad props to the sudden non-burning American flag wavers, and the throngs of weeping people who I personally thought were hysterical with love for me, but could have just been blubbering about their uncertain future, chaotic present, and miserable corpse-strewn past.

Going forward, as you celebrate your blood-drenched freedom by joyously frolicking in feces-contaminated drinking water, rest assured that America is with you for the long haul. Our armies of compassionate missionaries and CEO carpetbaggers are already en route, and look forward to long and financially lopsided relationships with your fun-to-conquer and increasingly Christian peoples.

You deserve to enjoy free colonialized lives, unthreatened by your neighbors Syria and Iran. And with the 2004 election still two years away – rest assured that at least one of those suckers is going down, too. Who the hell rules Syria anyway, Condi? al-Asad, you say? Have our people at FOX News get crackin` on a fair and balanced documentary about that piece of shit. But I digress.

In closing, I want you Iraqazoids to know that America will respect your great subterranean natural resources, whose abundance and flammability are essential to our conjoined future. We will install a government for you which appears representative, and that protects the rights and interests of members of my "Pioneer Club" campaign contributors, and that one decade soon, will dispense with the charade of not being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Arbusto Energy.

Soon, all Arabs will be able to drink Budweiser and Jack Daniels, stuff their mouths with slice after slice of delicious and vitamin-rich Wonder Bread, and dream of a time when their children, and thier children`s children will happily transform into the morbidly obese, incontinent automatons of the Bush New World Order.

Thank you, and God Bless America.

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Americans as invaders..so what?

Can`t find WMD..doesn`t matter

Can`t find Hussein..now it doesn`t matter

Can`t find bin Laden...doesn`t matter

Americans hooting `USA! USA! USA!` in Sports bars watching the bombing of Iraqi cities..[when did war become a sporting event?]

GOP Brown Shirts bullying and smearing anyone who dares to question the wisdom of the war..and the so-called wisdom of the Moron

Liberals too afraid to raise questions

Liberals too afraid to block nominations and woeful evil economic plans/cuts, etc

Liberals who won` even defend their own

Media who are cheerleaders

Media who are lazy

Media who are vicious

Meida who spread lies

Hate Talk Radio cowards blustering and threqatening from the safety of their undisclosed studios

GOP scum who lie and lie and lie

Ah....sometimes I have to ask, what`s the use dueling with these clowns? We have no Meida outlets. Americans regurgitate in polls only what they are fed 24/7 by the right Wing GOP Media.

Anyone realize that the new permanent Homeland Security Watch Code for US is now ORANGE? Pretty soon, our permanent code will be RED..and that means Martial law, Curfews, late-night arrests, gulags and NO ELECTION IN 2004. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for THE MORON...PRESIDENT FOR LIFE!

Here`s one bright spot...John Kerry takes no shit from GOP bully boys. [see links below] But then you read coverage of his speech, the GOP smears and his response, and here`s what you get:

the Boston Globe goes 80% in the article questioning Kerry`s motives and citing the most vile puke from tyhe GOP before it even mentions Kerry`s response. They question HIM, NOT THE GOP NAZIS. Wow, that`s fair and balanced. And then you have the normally sane liberal columnist Tom Oliphant wringing his hands as he lectures Kerry to hold his tongue and not give his enemies anything to attack or distort. In this case, kerry merely said what lots of folks have been saying since 12/00 - AMERICA NEEDS ITS OWN REGIME CHANGE IN 2004.

Big deal. But no one comes to his defense from the Democrats. No they lecture him on proper speech etiquette so the Bad Boys won`t hurt him.

I somehow don`t think Kerry is a coward like those in the GOP. I like his no prisoners approach. I hope to God he doesn`t abandon his ferocious responses to thos scum who question his patriotism.

But you have to ask where are the Democrats? You know, if worst case scenarios about America`s future in the hands of the GOP and the Moron come to pass, much of the blame will have to go to the limp-dicik Democrats who have lsot the will to fight or even stand up for any principles or ideals.

I`ve never been so contemptuous of a major political Party that I`ve respected for thier honor and feistiness. They`ve been neutered by the GOP. They`re scared and believe me, no one is oging to vote for a Party of wimps and hand-wringers.

Oh, and good-bye to Michael Kelly and David Bloom..`journalists` who`ve died in Iraq.

Take care...Bob


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