Au Coeur des Apres-Midis Acryliques

2005-12-08T01:15:00.000Z

Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech has got to be possibly one of the best speeches of the year, methinks... or rather, of the new millennium. Ranks alongside Robin Cook's one at the House of Parliaments, and Dominique de Villepin’s coruscating attack of the US at the UNSC.

read it all here on The Guardian.

(sur une autre chose - j'ai justement dit à Andrée, à propos de son nouvel appart et plus précisement, sa nouvelle vie:

"... ouaais, une nouvelle vie, une renaissance, une rajeunissement! C’est comme de revoir le monde avec des nouveaux yeux et de commencer sur une ardoise propre, n’est-ce pas ? Je pense que c’est une experience merveilleuse!"

et tout ça m'a fait sourire.

t'as souvenu cette phrase?

"chaque pensée devrait être la ruine d'un sourire...")

2005-09-25T04:23:00.000Z

"Britain to pull troops from Iraq as Blair says 'don't force me out'", The Guardian

about fucken time.

2005-05-22T11:35:00.000Z

ah yes, once again, the whole sideshow vaudeville begins just in time to divert attention from the real issue -- that of the abuse of Afghan detainees and the reluctance of the US authorities to pin responsibility on someone at the helm (mentioned in yesterday's post here).

just when Hamid Karzai expresses his outrage at these abuses, and argues for more control over US forces in Afghanistan, a mysterious cable is intercepted that has US embassy personnel in Kabul claiming that the Afghan president has done little to stop the trafficking of heroin in the country, as reported here by David Cloud and Carlotta Gall in The New York Times. such good timing, eh? probablu just another diversion tactic, to make sure no one pays too much attention on Tim Golden's investigative report, also to be found in The New York Times today, which reveals that although there was evidence of homicidal assaults on the dead Afghan detainees in Bagram, US army investigators tried to sweep it all under the carpet by initially recommending to shut the book on the whole affair without trial. in fact, interestingly enough, not only did this inquiry take almost two fucken years to complete, with a mere 7 soldiers being charged, it's been noted that there've been important witnesses that were not questioned, and documents that went *pouf!*.

so instead of paying attention to this, the world's being told it's more important to concentrate on poor Afghans growing the only crop that will garner them enough dosh to keep alive. instead of focusing on the middle-men (usually fatcat dealers from the West), we're told it's the Afghan people who're the root of all evil, and Hamid Karzai's to be blamed for not reining them in. evidently, someone in the White House is trying to ignore the fundamentals of supply and demand here -- whilst conveniently luring us away from the key issue that will expose the degenerate behaviour of the administration.

2005-05-22T04:29:00.000Z

this week's Schnews has an excellent damning feature on current mess in Uzbekistan and American (and Brit) complicity. download the PDF version here.

2005-05-21T08:04:00.000Z

remember Scott Ritter? he was the senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, when he decided to quit 'cos he alleged that the then Clinton administration was soft on Saddam Hussein. later on, he became an independent consultant, as well as a vociferous critic of the belligerent Bush administration. he rightly argues that unless Dubya and his acolytes can substantiate up their allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability, there is no reason to believe that Saddam Hussein has been building it up (i.e. the "innocent unless proven guilty" argument...)

anyway, Ritter's contributed a succinct article in The Guardian today about George Galloway being the only politician with verve to challenge US Senators and their shambolic McCarthy-esque attempt to smear his name.

also in today's Guardian: an excerpt from Seymour Hersh's book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, where he points out that the main failure of the Abu Ghraib inquiry lie in the fact that no further investigation was carried out to trace responsibility back to the senior politicians who must've been in the know and who, as many of those in the lower ranks indicted for their disgusting deeds claim, have condoned these horrendous human rights abuses. here's a dead good quote from the article:

Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.

Such action, or inaction, has special significance for me. In my years of reporting, since covering My Lai in 1969, I have come to know the human costs of such events - and to believe that soldiers who participate can become victims as well.

but there's more, and abuse of prisoners have way predated Abu Ghraib, which should come as no surprise. Tim Golden, in The New York Times today, writes about the abuse of innocent Afghan prisoners by American soldiers, as revealed by a confidential army investigative report obtained by the paper. Golden notes that the dossier contained:

"ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault."

Human Rights Watch has also issued a press release, stating that at least six detainees in US custody in Afghanistan have been killed since 2002, and that despite the fact that five of the six deaths were evident homicide cases, no personnel has been charged -- and more importantly, as in the case of Abu Ghraib, no senior official has been made answerable these crimes.

seeing the pattern here? in fact, Golden points out an outrageous fact that links both the abuses in Abu Ghraib and Bagram together:

"Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison."

if those bastards in the US State Department was not only paying lip service by saying that those who were responsible will be brought to justice, how could it be that investigations of abuses in Afghanistan, which began in 2002, went on at such a snail's pace that by July 2003, the same foot soldiers could be sent to Abu Ghraib to do exactly the same shite as before? how could it also be that in October 2004, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command claimed that 27 officers and enlisted personnel could be charged for these crimes, but only seven have been charged to date, and none have been convicted. how could it also be that the investigations are yet again stopping at the lowest ranks, rather than pursued upwards to make sure the twats sitting at the helm are made to pay?

simply because there's no desire to make the cunts pay, innit? after all, they'd already rejected the Geneva Conventions back in 2002, by claiming that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war. i don't want to sound pessimistic, but the truth is, given the way things have been panning out, there's little chance that with the Bush administration still in power (still bewildered how this could come to be), any higher-ups will have the finger pointed in their direction.

2005-05-17T23:39:00.000Z

i'm so chuffed that dear ole George Galloway has been socking it to the dafties in the US Senate. the farce in court became such a total sham, with the US prosecuters trying to forge some link between a Jordanian businessman who they believe received oil allocations from Saddam Hussein, and Galloway's children's charity... anyhow, check out these quotes from Galloway at his testimony. brilliant!

do also check out Andrew Bunscombe's article on the whole shambolic affair in The Independent. there's an excellent summary of what this hearing all means at the end of the piece.

2005-05-17T02:16:00.000Z

this is becoming such a farce, it's almost enjoyable to watch!

"US 'backed illegal Iraqi oil deals'", by Julian Borger and Jamie Wilson in Washingtonm 17th May 2005, in The Guardian

2005-05-16T04:19:00.000Z

so in Alec Russell's article in today's Daily Telegraph:

One of America's main allies in the fight against terrorism was accused yesterday of slaughtering women and children "like rabbits", placing the Bush administration in a quandary over its support for President Islam Karimov, the strong man of Central Asia.

...

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who faces criticism for British support of Uzbekistan's dictatorial regime, condemned its record.

He said the situation was "very serious" and there had been a "clear abuse" of human rights.

Jack Straw!!! who woulda thought, eh?

let the hemming-and-hawing/secret-chastising/backtracking show begin.

2005-05-14T13:24:00.000Z

go read Naomi Klein's new commentary in The Nation, where she talks about the use of torture by the US through proxy nations/corporations. here's a bit which brings to mind Foucault's fundamental argument in Discipline and Punish:

This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will.

on another related note, the news about Uzbek troops firing on protesters should come as no surprise to anyone. there're enough documents on this country report page on Human Rights Watch to reiterate the point that Islam Karimov is a fucken monster. but do bear in mind that the cunt in the White House has previously declared US-Uzbek relations to be "flourishing", if not warm and cordial, according to John Bolender's article on Zmag. in fact, the two were so chummy that back in October 2003, the then-British ambassador in Tashkent, Craig Murray (known for not mincing his words when it comes to his opinions about human rights violations in Uzbekistan and Washington's "compromises" made to further its shambolic "war on terror") was effectively sacked by US-poodle Downing Street for not toeing the line and hushing on the truth. this "mutual appreciation society" goes much further. as reported here in The Guardian,

Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet police state on the strategically important border with Afghanistan, was another potential political minefield. Uzbek security services use "torture as a routine investigation technique", according to the US State Department. But Washington's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led them to finance much of the regime's security apparatus. In exchange the US gets a military base in Khanabad as a centre for operations in Afghanistan. Last year Washington gave the government $500m (£298m) in aid, $79m of which was specifically for the same "law enforcement and security services" they accused of routine torture.

so it's hardly going to raise any eyebrows that Washington, the self-professed beacon of democracy and liberty (ha bloody ha), had only "urged restraint" from both the Uzbek government and protesters in the recent spate of violence.

"The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government. But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

well, fuck you, you twat. this isn't merely a case of the people rising up to fight for that much-bandied notion of "democracy" -- it's because the Uzbek people are sick to death of watching their government act as your proxy and doing your dirty work for you. bear in mind that the protest didn't start with a straggly bunch of Uzbeks chanting slogans about freedom; it began because attempts were made to free inmates from prisons -- the same ones who are being held without trial for "alleged Islamic extremism".

nice to know that Dubya makes friends with the worst dictators and human rights violators in the world. birds of a feather, etc. etc.

2005-05-13T05:43:00.000Z

not the same shite again!

i'm glad Galloway is taking those cuntfaced US senators head-on. i hope he pisses all over their allegations -- the same ones made by The Daily Telegraph and The Christian Science Monitor during the shambolic war (and which Galloway successfully rebuffed). either the twats in the US Senate have not been keeping up with the papers, or have been able to perfect their forgery techniques just yesterday.

as usual, good ole Georgy spices things up with a quote or two -- taken from the report from The Times:

“I’ll be there to give them both barrels — verbal guns, of course, not oil — assuming we get the visas. I welcome the opportunity to clear my name,” Mr Galloway said. “My first words will be, ‘Senator, it’s a pity that we are having this interview after you have found me guilty. Even in Kafka there was the semblance of a trial.’”

Roy Greenslade's commentary in The Guardian is spot-on in his observation about the slew of (personal) attacks on Galloway:

"Galloway has achieved the dubious honour of being the media's new leftwing whipping boy, following in a line that includes Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone. Like them, he has dared to confront not only the old establishment but also its Labour alternative (or, in his eyes, the new establishment), having been expelled from the party on the basis of what might be charitably described as rather dubious reasoning.

anything to distract the populace, eh? bastards. you go, George! tell those fuckers where to stuff it!

2005-05-07T02:42:00.000Z

so Blair's got a third term (rivalling Thatcher da Milk-Snatcher), which comes as no surprise. and now, it looks like Michael Howard's quit the Tories too (he was never going to flash some charisma turnaround to garner votes anyway).

but mind, this is no longer a euphoric, starry eyed British electorate sold on Blair's schoolboy optimism, Third Way hogwash and tabloidy obsession with Blair's shambolic flirtation with Britpop... point is: Labour's majority has been slashed by half (36% of the poll), and the only Labour voters who stuck with the party are the ones grudgingly satisfied with Gordon Brown's economic policies and recent public splashouts (wait and see -- a fallout is imminent and the public's sullen silence will be broken in a year or two). Like it or not, Blair had better face up to the fact that despite all the declarations that voters give a toss more about domestic and foreign policy, the very Labour voters that drifted away (largely to Charles Kennedy and the LibDems -- and rightly so!) are the same ones he'd targeted at the beginning of his Third Way mumbo-jumbo -- folks like me, the white-collared types who find the stance of the Tories repugnant, and yet aren't totally sold to views espoused by traditional old Labour. the same ones for which the turning point was the war in Iraq.

on another note, i'm dead chuffed that George Galloway's won the seat for Bethnal Green and Bow! i *knew* i shoulda moved to Brick Lane -- Beigel Bake aside. highlight though is this interview of Galloway by Jeremy Paxman. go read the transcript. Pythonesque? quite.

2005-04-27T01:52:00.000Z

am i reviving this blog?

hmmm. i realised this is certainly less clocked than the other LJ one, but that isn't really a matter of import since the other one concentrates on moozeek, and i never have let slip too much about me and what truly mattered.

i'm tempted to get back thisaway... except i don't feel like i want to return to the politico-ramblings anymore. not now. not here. not when i'm too angry and frustrated to write anything of coherence.

so... *enneywey*... i'm working on summat which involves a list of couples in bands, and so far, i've gotten as far as:

Ira and Georgia - Yo La Tengo
Serge and Jane - Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin
Alan and Mimi - Low
Neil and Rachel (ex) - Slowdive/Mohave 3
Kevin and Bilinda (ex) - My Bloody Valentine
Win and Regine - The Arcade Fire
Paul and Linda - Wings
John and Yoko - Plastic Ono Band
Daniel and Elizabeth - Ida
Windy and Carl - Windy and Carl
Adam and Dominique - Ivy
Brett and Rennie - Handsome Family
Jim and Katharine - Squirrel Nut Zippers
Thurston and Kim - Sonic Youth
VV and Hotel - The Kills
Sean and Yoshimi - Lullatone
Adele and Scott (?) - Sons & Daughters
Alun and Emma (?) - The Delgados

any others? (yes, i've been picky -- not *all* bands with couples get listed, only those i give a toss about)

2005-04-18T09:54:00.000Z

Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie

the atlantic was born today and i'll tell you how:
the clouds above opened up and let it out.

i was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
when the water filled every hole.

and thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
making islands where no island should go.

oh no.

those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
i thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
the rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door have been silenced forever more.
the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
it seems farther than ever before

oh no.

i need you so much closer (x8)

-instrumental break -

i need you so much closer (x4)

so come on, come on (x4)

-----

*sigh*

2005-01-25T01:48:00.000Z

i don't want to go into the individual stories of atrocities committed by the occupation forces, which are now being uncovered in Iraq. i don't need to, because i'm hoping that folks out there are reading the news reports, tasting bile in their mouths and feeling a deep sense of shame about humanity as it is.

but i'll like to point your attention to a wonderfully written commentary by Mary Riddell which appeared in The Observer on 23rd January 2005. she puts it concisely:

Punishing lowly perpetrators, as the US is doing now, is proper, of course. But though justice is done and public horror appeased, individual scandals always bear a heavier tariff. Shameful behaviour by serving soldiers, wherever proven, makes a mockery of a mission to implant the rule of law. In the case of Abu Ghraib, it has rendered Iraqi democracy more elusive and those of Western interventionists more tainted.

...Learning the lessons of Abu Ghraib will require people of power to stare into the mirror and study their reflections for any shadow of the mark of Cain.

2004-12-13T04:40:00.000Z

i'd thought i was a little sceptical about Bernard Henri-Levi and his pop-philosopher pontifications... but i'm well impressed by how spot-on he is in this commentary he'd contributed to Truthout, about how the Democrats need to pay heed to the growing ultra-conservatism festering in middle America -- something which they'd ignored (to their own peril) during the (farcical) 2004 US Elections.

it ain't over 'til it's over.

2004-11-13T05:36:00.000Z

Buzzflash has a very insightful interview with filmmakers Jehane Noujiam and Hani Salma, whose documentary "Control Room" is a must-watch. Noujiam had taken a film crew to Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar just before the Iraq War erupted, and shot hours upon hours of footage, showing the staff of the station desperately trying to maintain journalistic professionalism and objectiveness, as they watched the Neocon cunts massacre thousands of civilians, with a war waged on false pretenses. the documentary also focuses on the US bombing of the Al-Jazeera broadcast office in Baghdad, killing a reporter who was airing a story from the roof of the building. there're also coverage on the deliberate US targeting of Arab TV station Abu Dabi, where all of their equipment was shot down, but nobody was killed.

2004-11-12T05:53:00.000Z

hail to the thief indeed.

very succinct and well-written article by David Corn in The Nation about voting irregularities in the US Elections. we knew Florida 2000 was the tip of the iceberg, but this has turned out to be a nightmarish fraud of the highest degree. as you would be well aware, the electronic machines are manufactured by a Republican donor, that really, that doesn't say much about non-partisanship, does it? Corn points out:

In Broward County, Florida, software subtracted votes rather than added them. In Franklin County, Ohio, an older electronic machine reported an extra 3,893 votes for Bush.

mysterious favouring of the Republicans? i doubt it.

i wonder if Bush is considering exporting his tactics to his tyrant friends in Central Asia for instance. or to mates like Blair who must be shitting his keks, worrying about the next UK elections.

on another note, was listening to the Beeb the other day and there was this news report about a new CD release called "Lullabies from the Axis of Evil" ... and it stopped me dead in my tracks 'cos the music was simply too haunting, beautiful and gut-wrenching...

anyhow, this release was a project by Norweigian producer Erik Hillestad, in response to that shambolic speech made by monkey-king Dubya (who really ought to have choked on that bloody pretzel many moons ago), where he (or was it his Neocon speechwriters) singled out Iran, Iraq and N. Korea as "enemies of democracy" (oh the irony... there's probably more democracy in the pinkie of an Iranian reformist than George Bush and his cabal put together).

basically, the collection brings together women from all these supposedly "evil" countries (plus some other countries which traditionally get the sharp end of the stick from Dubya or have been severely fucked up the arse by his administration -- e.g. Cuba, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan... shame France wasn't featured), and has them sing traditional lullabies of their lands, with Western female collaborators offering translations of the songs.

thought some of you (being either music-lovers, parents, politically disenfranchised types, etc.) will be interested. i don't know if it's available in the stores as yet, but it's certainly available for sale online.

more on the release on these pages:

World Music Central article

article in The Washington Post

and clips can be found here at CD Roots.

:-) enjoy. and let's hope that twat in the White House chokes another pretzel soon.

2004-11-12T02:30:00.000Z

as you may have already guessed, i'm appalled and dismayed by the fact that MonkeyFace is going to be roosting at the White House for another four years.

words escape me. it's been ten days since the dreaded elections, but i'm still speechless. i'm almost compelled to believe that Americans, by and large, are not very clever. oh dear.

apologies for the silence, but i'm sure you understand.

2004-09-28T04:59:00.000Z

ah yes... here's more evidence -- not that we need any more -- of the idiocy of that monkey who's currently still sitting in the White House: this is a snipplet of a Q&A session where he waxes lyrical about "tribal sovereignty". too funny. and too depressing.

2004-06-16T05:59:00.000Z

hola you peeps. deepest apologies for the lack of updates -- especially to those of you who'd written to prod and probe. 'sbeen fucking insane where i am, and add to that the fact that i'm so appalled and aghast at the way things are turning out here in Armageddon, sorry, world... that i am dumbstruck most of the time. anyhow, things should ease up soon. keep your fingers crossed. i'm keeping mine firmly so.

but here's a tidbit:

get your browsers directed towards Terry Jones' wonderful commentary featured in The Guardian today, where he talks about the parallels between the horrors of Abu Ghraib (and possibly other US-run prisons) and curbing his kiddie's freedom post-choir practise. bastard Rummy saved him, eh?

2004-05-22T01:34:00.000Z

apologies for the brevity. madness reigns.

Bob Herbert writes in his article published in The New York Times about Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who has refused to return to Iraq after his furlough back home in Miami post-6-month stint in Iraq. he is now charged with desertion. now, is it me or is it really odd that:

His [Mejia's] court-martial at Fort Stewart, Ga., began Wednesday, the same day that Specialist Sivits [who's the foot soldier charged for torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib] pleaded guilty to the charges against him. If Sergeant Mejia is convicted, he will face a similar punishment, a year in prison and a bad-conduct discharge.

Mejia's "crime" is that he had the guts to stand up and say that there's something that the US is doing wrong in this shambolic war, and that he refuses to be part of this whole fuck-up. yet, he's subject to the same punishment as another soldier, Sivits, who has been torturing and humiliating prisoners -- something that is not only an infrigement of international human right laws, but also something abominable to human decency. how is it possible that the two get equitable punishment?

Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg (the beheaded American) has contributed a heartbreaking piece in The Guardian, where he makes a vociferous condemnation of the Texan short shrub and his cabal's policies:

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

more later.

2004-05-18T06:20:00.000Z

short one:

go read the article by John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff in Newsweek. the authors focus on the recent Abu Ghraib atrocities, and quell any whimpering from the cunts in the Bush administration about the use of torture being confined to a rouge group of soldiers:

Indeed, the single most iconic image to come out of the abuse scandal—that of a hooded man standing naked on a box, arms outspread, with wires dangling from his fingers, toes and penis—may do a lot to undercut the administration's case that this was the work of a few criminal MPs. That's because the practice shown in that photo is an arcane torture method known only to veterans of the interrogation trade. "Was that something that [an MP] dreamed up by herself? Think again," says Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. "That's a standard torture. It's called 'the Vietnam.' But it's not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them."

who could have taught these soldiers such inhumane tactics? according to the magazine's investigations:

as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places.

another article you ought to read about the horror perpetrated by the Americans would be Seymour Hersh's wonderful commentary in The New Yorker.

more later. i'm so sickened by the actions of those American twats that i find it hard to articulate the fury and disgust...

2004-05-11T04:17:00.000Z

this is *not* a sabbatical. it's just me trying to keep from tearing out all the hair from my head. too much to do, too little time. more updates to come soon.

and oh, by the way, i'm so disgusted with the whole Iraq debacle that i'm just too dumbfounded to say nowt.

2004-05-07T10:28:00.000Z

Bush has finally public apology "for the humiliation suffered by the prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families." this turnaround came after more evidence of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners surfaced with the publication of digital photographs in The Washington Post. according to Christian Davenport's report, these graphic images of naked Iraqis being humilitated in grotesque ways by American soldiers are a new batch of photos which have been passed around military police serving at the Abu Ghraib prison, and were seized by military investigators probing conditions at the prison. some of the soldiers in the photos have since protested their innocence, but it's hard to believe that they were "compelled" to take these photos or were simply (in the words of one of the soldiers) "in the wrong place at the wrong time", when their facial expression and demeanour indicate so much glee in the horrendous acts they were commiting. what's more, there are other pictures which seem to demonstrate the degree of savagery going on within the prison:

The pictures obtained by The Post include shots of soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts with one another and shots of a cow being skinned and gutted and soldiers posing with its severed head. There are also dozens of pictures of a cat's severed head.

Other photographs show wounded men and corpses. In one, a dead man is lying in the back of a truck, his shirt, face and left arm covered in blood. His right arm is missing. Another photograph shows a body, gray and decomposing. A young soldier is leaning over the corpse, smiling broadly and giving the "thumbs-up" sign.

And in another picture a young woman lifts her shirt, exposing her breasts. She is wearing a white band with numbers on her wrist, but it is unclear whether she is a prisoner.

Dubya had also claimed that Rummy should have told him earlier about the abuse, and that he had only realised the extent of the abuse when he say the pictures on the telly. yet, Bush went on to argue that Rummy "has served our nation well. He is an important part of my cabinet and he'll stay in my cabinet", in an attempt to brush off critics who have called for Rummy's resignation. however, as Jonathan Marcus points out in his analysis on BBC News, Rummy's job might just be on the line since his "apparent failure to relay the gravity of the charges of abuse together with the Pentagon's failure to get a grip on the detention system once such mistreatment was made clear" has caused deep embarassment for Bush, estranged the Arab world further, and increased the mistrust Iraqis have towards the US Army. furthermore, Rumsfeld has fucked up enough in Iraq -- for instance, the size of the troops there is just too puny to provide security in post-Saddam Iraq; moreoever, by disbanding the Iraqi army right away removed "the only authentic Iraqi force that might have been able to move quickly to restore order." with reference to the torture of prisoners, the problem can largely be linked back to Rummy's policies:

[H]uman rights groups have long argued that the problems in Iraqi prisons - and in those in Afghanistan as well for that matter - amount to "systemic" abuse.

It is not that every prisoner is tortured or mistreated. But many of the rules and regulations governing the treatment of detainees have been suspended or have been deemed to be inapplicable - largely at Mr Rumsfeld's behest.

So the Geneva Conventions have not been applied; the concerns of the ICRC have been ignored; and even basic military procedures - the principle that military police guards should not be involved in what is euphemistically described as "preparing prisoners for interrogation" - has been ignored.

the UK is also rocked by reports that another witness has come forward as a witness to add his voice to the case of UK soldiers abusing prisoners. the man, a soldier from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, has actually compiled a dossier including detailing claims of "appalling beatings" by a small "rogue element" in at least four instances, and has presented his story to The Daily Mirror.

meanwhile, the capture of foreigners as hostages continues in Iraq, with footage of an American civil engineer Yvan Elias, taken hostage by a group called the Islamic Anger Brigades, being shown on Al-Arabiya.

2004-05-06T12:09:00.000Z

as US troops launched more major attacks on Shia insurgents in Karbala and Diwaniya last night, the Texan short shrub has appeared on Arabic telly to denounce the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees by US soldiers as "abhorent". interestingly, he's appeared not only on the US-funded mouthpiece Al-Hurra, but also on the same Arabic telly channel which he'd accused of being anti-American, Al-Arabiya. clearly, this was the White House's attempt to assuage the fury in the Arab world. however, Dubya's appearance, as Jon Leyne notes in his analysis on the Beeb, "classic George W Bush":

In interviews with Arab TV channels about the abuse of Iraqis at the hands of American soldiers, he did exactly what he does when he faces troubles domestically.
Mr Bush used his credibility and his plain-speaking to communicate a clear, simple message.

as Leyne rightly points out, the interview left many questions unanswered. for one, why did Bush insist that the atrocious acts were only committed by a small group of individuals and that the soldiers "do not represent America", when in the same breath, he admitted that the US had to find out whether such abuses are a systemic problem? furthermore, there was no mention of what the exact punishment to be meted out to the perpetrators will be, and given that they were to be tried by their own superiors from the same organisation, it's hard to believe that the latter would push the envelope and issue strong condemnations and punishments. moreover, the same question which had plagued Bush during the September 11 inquiry has returned to haunt him -- what did Bush know and when did he know about it? how could there be a report in January by Major General Antonio Taguba listing almost all of the abuses, but yet the top general in America, Richard Myers, had not read it as of an interview last Sunday? does it mean the information took a long time to weave it way up to the White House? moreover Bush did not offer a squeak of an apology, and this would certainly infuriate the Arab world further. earlier, the new US military chief of prisons in Iraq apologised for the "illegal or unauthorised" actions, and White House spokesman Scott McClellan also later told reporters that Mr Bush was "sorry for what occurred" in the prison. well, so what? it didn't come from his own gob, did it? what would it take for Dubya to have enough decency and sense to apologise for the mess he and his acolytes have created? as noted in this report in Al-Jazeera, it does appear that Dubya has failed to convince many of his Arab viewers, particularly because he didn't publicly apologise.

Hasan Abu Nimah writes in Electronic Iraq about his horror and dismay at the atrocities being committed by US forces against Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison, which show "the depth to which human cruelty can sink." he states that "[i]f Americans are still asking 'why do they hate us', they will find the answer now." the invasion of Iraq has already proven to be one launched on false premises, but "[w]hat is impossible to absorb or understand is how the United States could make such a massive blunder with its eyes wide open." he asks a question which i have already mentioned previously -- since these are not merely isolated crimes committed by a few individuals, but are instead violations of international law, why is it that the perpetrators and the admimistration in charge of them not taken to the courts? moreover, as Abu Nimah notes, "[t]he true crime is by those who planned and carried out this unjust and aggressive war, and of the hostile climate they have, for so long, been fostering against Arabs and Muslims." he cites the point that the US has vehemently opposed and tried to sabotage the International Criminal Court, and wonders aloud if this opposition is in part in anticipation of the atrocities which its troops will commit in Iraq.

Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed has also contributed an article in The Arab News on the topic, and he argues that what makes the incident so much more shocking is the sheer fact that the US had purportedly (after the WMD proposition collapse) entered Iraq to put an end to such practices which were not uncommon during the reign of Saddam Hussein. he calls for the respective individuals in charge of the military (Donald Rumsfeld in the US, Geoff Hoon in the UK) to resign -- "This is the acceptable, honorable and correct thing to do... Moral responsibility for subordinates’ behavior rests forever with the top people."

meanwhile, Ian Fisher has managed to interview an Iraqi ex-detainee in The New York Times -- Hayder Sabbar Abd has provided a detailed, two-hour account of his time at the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison, and pointed out that during his detention, he was never interrogated nor charged with any crime:

"The truth is we were not terrorists," he said. "We were not insurgents. We were just ordinary people. And American intelligence knew this."

he also spoke of his ordeal of being forced to perform masturbation whilst looking at a female soldier, as well as subsequent beatings by the forces, who also made prisoners sleep on cold wet floors.

do give Maureen Dowd's wonderfully acerbic commentary in The New York Times a read. she begins by talking about the seeming insouciance and nonchalance displayed by the Bush administration initially in response to the media coverage on the horrors committed at the Abu Ghraib prison, which she refers to as "the latest example of a dysfunctional and twisted occupation warped by arrogance over experience, ideology over common sense." Dowd expresses incredulity at Rummy's excuse for not perusing the whole Taguba report. what's more, the fact that it has been reported that Blair's own human rights envoy to Iraq Ann Clwyd had said that reports that American soldiers humiliated an elderly Iraqi woman is evidence that the dehumanisation and mistreatment of Iraqis is more widespread than the Bush White House would like to have us believe:

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

more later. insane day.

2004-05-05T11:18:00.000Z

former detainees in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison have begun to speak about their traumatising experiences, according to this report. the ex-prisoners have spoken of the American soldiers' sole intent to humiliate them by forcing them to perform horrendous acts, and by beating them up. one prisoner even said that "CIA officials and two Iraqi and Egyptian translators showed us immoral pictures of the acts that took place" before interrogating them. Ahmed Janabi's article in Al-Jazeera also cites the anecdotal evidence that detainees were subject to inhumane treatment in the US Camp Cropper detention centre in Baghdad. as one ex-prisoner said, "The torture inside this camp leads you sometimes to wish you were dead." he also described in details the horrendous tortures he was subject to during interrogations and the cramped and chaotic living conditions, noting that the whole process appeared to be intended for the recruitment of Iraqi informants.

Bush is trying to soothe the Arab countries' outrage by appearing on Arab TV channels later today and claiming that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is "shameless and unacceptable". according to the report on the Beeb, the US military has admitted to 25 deaths in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, including two murders. nevertheless, Bush's attempt to salvage the situation is going to come to naught -- particularly when it appears, according to Amnesty International amongst other sources, that such mistreatment is more widespread than has been reported; particularly when the Arab world is less than chuffed about Bush cosying up to the Butcher of Beirut. to quote Ranwa Yehia in her commentary published in The Arab News, the issue of the photographs have already "undermined the main credit the armies which came in the name of liberation could have taken: the removal of a leader known for brutality against his own people." it is no wonder why Iraqis are now saying that there is no difference between the regime of Saddam Hussein and that of the Americans. Ehsan Ahrari makes a similar point in his commentary featured in The Asia Times:

If the United States invaded Iraq to liberate its people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, recent reports of "systematic" inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners only underscore that the very nature of occupation of one country by another is such that it invariably leads to acts that dehumanize the occupied people in the name of security. The outcome: intense and incessant hostility, resentment, and anger of the occupied toward the occupiers.

Ahrari goes on to state that the very act of an unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq, both of which were not internationally sanctioned, has caused the occupation forces to face the wrath of Iraqis, who are further angered by the fact that none of the promises of "liberation" and an improvement in the quality of life in post-Saddam Iraq has materialised. the parallels between the treatment of prisoners by Saddam and by the American troops in the same Abu Ghraib prison are hard to miss:

The Arab world has been saturated with the reports and pictures of the dehumanization of Iraqi prisoners. Admittedly, there is no comparison between the brutality of the Saddam regime and the reports of abuse of prisoners in occupied Iraq. However, as one dispatch in the latest issue of Newsweek aptly notes: "No one would liken US abuses to Saddam's techniques, which included the most sadistic forms of torture and murder. But then, being more humane than Saddam isn't much to brag about."

moreover, instead of doing the decent thing and issue an official apology at the very least to begin with, Dubya and his acolytes have plunged right into what the editorial in The New York Times called "its now-classic defensive maneuvers" -- in this case, the twats simply shoved the blame into the laps of the small group of individuals, even though they must have known that the Army was conducting criminal investigations into more than 20 different incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, many involving prisoner deaths. what's extremely appalling and galling is that the Bush administration keeps doing a lousy reprise of the ex-Iraqi Information Minister's denial of reality, "cheerfully denying that anything happened and sticking to its original plans while international support for the occupation has steadily fallen to its current minimal level." as Robert Scheer notes in his commentary in The Los Angeles Times, the horrors at Abu Ghraib prison will not escape Iraqis who remember Bush's declaration that with the deposition of Saddam Hussein, there will be "no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone." Scheer also observes that oddly enough, even though one of the purported reasons for the US invasion was to find WMDs in Iraq, the same scientists that the Bush administration had claimed they must protect in order to procure information are now sitting in prisons in Iraq, even though the WMDs clearly don't exist. another shocking revelation was that weeks after the Pentagon's own damning internal report on the torture at Abu Ghraib, and several days after the media broke the story on the prison by showing the photos, Rummy apparently is still not briefed on the report:
How could it be that the top officials responsible for the military were not themselves interested in keeping abreast of the investigation — even after the story had exploded into a global scandal?
the UK doesn't emerge unscathed in this scandal -- Andrew Buncombe and Andrew Clennell report in The Independent that the British government has admitted that 33 cases of civilian deaths, injuries or ill-treatment in its custody are being investigated. Gavin Cordon and Emily Pennick also report in The Independent that lawyers representing 14 Iraqi families with relatives allegedly killed by British soldiers are lodging papers at the High Court in London seeking a judicial review.

in his angry opinion piece in the World Socialist Web Site, Bill Van Auken argues that for the Bush administration to feign surprise at the revelation that US troops have been indulging in the torture of their detainees is pure hypocrisy, especially given the increasingly belligerent attitude that has surfaced since the tragedy of September 11 2001. commentators such as Ted Koppel and Alan Dershowitz have already put forward their supportive views for tortures. there has also been a series of allegations of torture used in Guantanamo Bay, with detainees caught in a legal "black hole" where the US has made it out to be that these prisoners have no legal recourse to protect their rights. Van Auken also points to historical data showing that the US has long been utilising torture tactics in various military operations around the world. as such, Van Auken concludes that:
[T]he attempt to attribute the torture at Abu Ghraib merely to a half-dozen reservists and a roughly equal number of military intelligence officers amounts to a patent cover-up...

The fact remains, however, that these sadistic actions were encouraged by elements who bear far greater responsibility for the illegal war against Iraq.
want to know more about the alarming war crime history of some of the "contractors" hired by the US government in Iraq? then take a look at Louis Nevaer's article in Pacific News Service. did you know that through its outsourcing of security services, the CPA has actually engaged "terrorists, mercenaries and war criminals on the payrolls of companies contracted by the Pentagon"? Nevaer looks specifically at the case of Frans Strydom and Deon Gouws, two men who are employed by Erinys Iraq, and who have been killed during a suicide bomb blast:
News that Strydom and Gouws were in Iraq sent shockwaves throughout South Africa: In front of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, both men were granted amnesty after confessing to killing blacks and terrorizing anti-apartheid activists, acts that can only be called crimes against humanity.
furthermore, it looks like the US, in re-hiring military personnel from the Saddam administration to work in private military companies, has also employed a number of Serb air-defense specialists wanted for their paramilitary activities during the Balkan Wars in Europe. interestingly, once these individuals are employed, they are pretty much free to do whatever they so wish in Iraq, given that they are not bound to Iraqi civilian laws, nor are they held accountable to military rules and regulations. scary? you bet.

still on Iraq -- why are the US and UK not being held responsible for the crimes in Falluja, which are comparable to the atrocities being committed in the Palestinian territories, asks Jonathan Freedland in his commentary in The Guardian. he looks at the international consternation shown towards Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan which did not incorporate any negotiations with the Palestinians, and the subsequent rejection by the Likud Party for the plan, thereby "putting a safe, secure Israel ever further out of reach." Sharon is being oddly placed in a situation anyone would hardly imagine he would ever face -- being accused of being too "soft" on the Palestinians. Freedland points out that this new "perspective" allows him to think about whether "countries of the world apply a higher standard to Israel than they do to anybody else, including themselves." he notes that the key example in this case would the massive military campaign and siege in Falluja, and further argues that if Israel is held against a high standard and made to deal with the exposure of its daily brutalities in Jenin, then that standard has to be applied equally, and there should be unanimous condemnation for the crimes committed by the US and UK in Iraq:
If the battle of Jenin merited a UN inquiry, then surely the shooting-gallery of Falluja requires one too. If the more than 2,880 Palestinian deaths of the intifada since September 2000 are to be properly mourned, then so, surely, are the 30,000-60,000 Iraqi casualties the US military reckons it inflicted in the opening weeks of the war, according to Woodward. As George Bush tells the author: "We had just been mowing them down."

If we condemn Israel, then let's also condemn America and Britain. For now we are occupiers, too.
Paul Krugman has contributed a very insightful and saliently argued article in The New York Times, which recasts the whole Iraq debacle in terms of economic terms. Basically, Krugman argues that while a lot has been said about the political and military implications of Iraq, "[l]ess has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization — dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities — undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy." Krugman agrees with former US administrator of Iraq Jay Garner's assertion that the Bush administration deliberately delayed Iraqi elections so they could bulldoze through economic policies which no Iraqi government would have approved -- this explains why the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has managed to reduce tariffs, decreased taxes and opened Iraqi industry wide open to foreign ownership in the past year. more importantly, Krugman focuses his attention on the privatisation of the military through the hiring of contractors to carry out tasks usually performed by government workers that are liable to restrictions stipulated by the military. Krugman reminds us that employees of two private contractors, CACI International and Titan, have been hired as interrogators at the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and are currently in the centre of a probe into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. these private companies are not bound by any law within Iraq, and their atrocious acts have resulted in the sullying of any remaining goodwill and faith that the Iraqis -- and the rest of the Arab world and international community -- have for the US.

2004-05-04T10:58:00.000Z
the Beeb has reported that six US soldiers who are accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners are facing criminal charges, whilst six senior US officers who were responsible for supervising them have also been reprimanded. this "reprimand" apparently "prohibits any further promotion and paves the way for dismissal from the army." but why are they merely chastised? why aren't they facing the international criminal courts? why are they not subject to the Geneva Conventions relative to the treatment of prisoners of war? yet again, the US conveniently puts itself outside of the purview of international law. yet again, it skirts the issue of responsibility towards, not only fellow human beings, but more importantly, the international accords which it had signed and agreed to previously.

in his analysis featured in BBC News, Kevin Anderson focuses on the recent escalation of violence in Iraq, and the consequent dilemma of American media as to how far they should and could go in showing the horrors of battle. international outrage against the US abuse of Iraqi prisoners have been unanimous and strong, and this has led to journalists in the US to question whether the White House was pressuring the media not to cover stories critical of the American war in Iraq. this has resulted in uproars when pictures of flag-draped coffins carrying dead American soldiers being flown back to Iraq were shown on newspapers, as well as when ABC Television devoted a programme to to reading the names of all 700 Americans who have died in Iraq. some stations have refused to air the show, claiming that it was destabilising the US war effort, and that the act of honouring the war dead is really nothing more than a political statement. however, as media critic Howard Kurtz points out, "if there is anybody has a political agenda here, it's the people who don't want the American public to see this particular 30-minute reading of the names of the fallen." the upcoming re-election campaign means that Dubya is desperately trying to enforce the idea that he is a "war president" who is capable of bringing the nation through the tough times ahead. however, recent polls unequivocably show the decline in Dubya's popularity and approval ratings, and this cannot be good news for his bid for a second term in the White House.

while we're on the topic of media controversy, interestingly, it appears that the head of the US-funded Iraqi newspaper Al-Sabah has quit and taken almost his entire staff with him because he was fed up with American interference in the publication. according to this report by Lee Keath in The Boston Globe:

On a front-page editorial of the Al-Sabah newspaper, editor-in-chief Ismail Zayer said he and his staff were "celebrating the end of a nightmare we have suffered from for months ... We want independence. They (the Americans) refuse."

Zayer will apparently launch a new paper called Al-Sabah Al-Jedid which begins publishing today.

well, what in the world was Zayer thinking in the first place? of course the US-funded paper will be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the occupation forces, by indulging in the doublespeak that conservative American media and members of the Bush administration are so fond of. it'll be like al-Sahaf at the Ministry of Information all over again, wouldn't it?

back in Washington, in an act not dissimilar to the rebuke that Tony Blair encountered from more than fifty ex-British diplomats, Dubya is facing criticism from fifty-three former US diplomats for sacrificing America's credibility in the Arab world, as well as endangering the safety of its diplomats and forces, because of the Bush administration's blind support for the Butcher of Beirut. this comes after the Likud Party's overwhelming rejection of Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan, which had been strongly endorsed by the Bush administration. according to Suzanne Goldenberg's article in The Guardian, the letter written by the diplomats chastised Washington for overthrowing "decades of US diplomatic tradition" when Bush endorsed Sharon's plan with no Palestinian involvement. it also accused the Bush administration of "unabashed support" for Israel's strategy of assassinating Palestinian leaders and military operatives, and urges Washington to change course. such a public declaration by former diplomats -- many of them with strong track records in the Middle East -- is unusual, and especially so with regards to the government's policy on Israel. the former diplomats must have been inspired and emboldened by their British counterparts' condemnation of Blair's policies over the weekend, and their act will undoubtedly prove to be a destabilising force to the Bush administration's bid for re-election as well.

more later.

2004-05-03T10:04:00.000Z

more carnage in Iraq over the weekend -- multiple attacks against the occupation troops have resulted in the death of eleven US soldiers (six in Western Iraq, five in other parts of the country). that brings the grand total of US troops killed since the start of this shambolic war to 745, with more than thirteen times that amount of Iraqis (an estimated 10,000) being slaughtered. the Iraqi city of Amara has also seen clashes between Iraqi supporters of al-Sadr and British troops, resulting in the deaths of three Iraqis, with eight others wounded.

what's even more interesting about this article in Al-Jazeera is this:

A senior US military officer in Iraq warned on Sunday there was no end in sight to resistance, predicting more violent attacks against occupation forces until 2005.

The officer said the public should not expect an end to attacks until there was an elected administration.

He also called into doubt the occupation administration's claim that the installation of an interim Iraqi government on 30 June would deflate the insurgency.

"The important thing to remember is it's only an interim government and it's not an elected government".

hilarious how the Americans seem to realise that they're fucking up by refusing to relinquish true sovereignty to the Iraqis, and yet they persist in grasping at straws, trying to justify the restrictions placed on this illegitimate interim government made up of marionettes.

Patrick Graham has written a heartrenching account in >The Observer of his return to Falluja after the US ended its siege of the city on Friday. Falluja is now in absolute devastation, and in the words of an Iraqi civilian surveying the damage there, "because of four dead American soldiers." although it is uncertain whether the civilians of Falluja are actively supporting the resistence, it would appear that "hatred of the Americans seems universal." Graham points out that in fact, the US army has never really "got" Falluja -- it has never conquered the land effectively, nor has it come close to winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis there. after the spate of brutality and fury, the Americans have left "a traumatised, angry city".

so it appears that the statements given by a US Army Reserve general Janis Karpinski has largely corroborated claims that Iraqi prisoners were being abused by the American cuntheaded soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison (as evidenced by photographs taken, showing the prisoners being subjected to systematic and illegal humiliation and torture). this practice of abuse is reportedly abetted by the US military intelligence. Philip Shenono reports in The New York Times that General Karpinski was "formally admonished in January and 'quietly suspended' from commanding the 800th Military Police Brigade":

General Karpinski said she was speaking out because she believed that military commanders were trying to shift the blame exclusively to her and other reservists and away from intelligence officers still at work in Iraq.

"We're disposable," she said of the military's attitude toward reservists. "Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the M.P.'s and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away."

Seymour Hersh has written an extremely well-researched investigative piece in The New Yorker about the Abu Ghraib prison (which was incidentally Saddam Hussein's personal grotesque playpen where he tortured and incarcerated as many as fifty thousand men and women -- the Americans, true to form, are simply taking over the former dictator's role by "liberating" more Iraqis from their lives). he points out a very pertinent point with reference to the style of torture being inflicted on the Muslim Iraqis, who were made to stimulate sexual acts and forced to pile on top of each other naked:

Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. "Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture," Haykel said.

Hersh also refers to the case of Chip Frederick, one of the perpetrators of these horrendous acts against humanity. the US military had tried to brush off the issue by claiming that Frederick and his other colleagues had not been given any "training guidelines", and therefore did not know that such torture was frowned upon. however, according to Hersh, "what I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run." furthermore, Frederick's letters and e-mails to family members made references to the fact that these acts were actually sanctioned and encouraged by the US military intelligence. to quote from one of these correspondences:

I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, "This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done." . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.

The military-intelligence officers have "encouraged and told us, 'Great job,' they were now getting positive results and information,"

moreover, Frederick's defense is in fact reinforced by two internal Army reports. according to Hersh, these practises have been utilised in the Afghanistan war as well, with military intelligence operatives assisting the troops to "set favourable conditions for subsequent interviews" with detainees -- which Hersh points out is a "euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners." a more recent report by James Risen in The New York Times points to "a virtual collapse of the command structure" in Abu Ghraib prison, with mid-level military intelligence officers being free to skip the normal chain of command to issue "questionable orders to enlisted personnel" handling guard duty there. this "ambiguous command relationship" basically provided military intelligence officials with broad authority to do what they want, and this was further exacerbated with the lack of proper communication with the commanders of the policing units.

the UK is not free from taint as well -- The Daily Mirror has published pictures showing British soldiers apparently kicking, stamping and urinating on a hooded Iraqi. there is apparently some doubts being cast with regards to the authenticity of these pictures, as reported by Sandra Laville, Richard Norton-Taylor and Helena Smith in The Guardian:

A source close to the regiment told the Guardian that the pictures looked too pristine to have been taken by a soldier with a pocket camera. Other defence experts said the rifle in the photograph was an SA80 Mk 1 which was not issued to soldiers in Iraq and British troops on patrol wore berets or helmets not floppy hats like the one in the picture.

nevertheless, the editor of The Daily Mirror stands by the authenticity of the photographs, and claims that two serving members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment had provided them, with an account of how the prisoner was subjected to an eight-hour beating.

are reports of these abuses surprising news? of course not -- particularly since the Americans clearly don't give a flying fuck about international law in any case (cf. Guantanamo Bay, the unilateral decision to go to war, etc.). however, as Juan Cole notes in his insightful commentary published in TomDispatch, while the Bush administration may have prevailed over the war of guns, "despite the savvy of its spinmeisters and Hollywood-trained publicists, [it] has lost the war of images abroad." Cole points out that the photos have incurred the wrath of Arab countries. to quote Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arabist London newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi:"The liberators are worse than the dictators. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for America . . . That really, really is the worst atrocity. It affects the honour and pride of Muslim people. It is better to kill them than sexually abuse them."

in short, the US has damaged whatever remaining shreds of goodwill or tolerance for their role in the Middle East. Patrick Cockburn adds his voice to this sentiment that the US has lost the battle for hearts and minds in his commentary in The Independent (reprinted in CommonDreams). he asserts that one of the reasons why so many Iraqi civilians have developed a visceral hatred of Americans is the abovementioned photographs which depict the brutality and humiliation of Iraqi captives. what those photos show is the similarity between the regime of Saddam Hussein and the supposed "liberated" Iraq under American rule. furthermore, the increasing death toll of civilians shot down by occupation forces have reinforced their belief that Americans do really regard them as inferior beings whose lives are worth nowt. add to that the fact that normal life has not been restored by the occupation forces, and it is no surprise that Iraqis are extremely disillusioned and disgruntled with the US.

nevertheless, it is essential that news of the atrocities committed by the occupation forces receive as much media coverage as possible, and thereby have mass opinion force the authorities to take action against the perpetrators (be it the individual soldier who has committed the acts or the organisation and government which has sanctioned the acts). the bastards at the helm of the occupation forces have been brushing aside similar complaints of humilitation for over six months, according to this report by Peter Beaumont, Kahal Ahmed, Edward Helmore and Jason Burke. they state that in the case of the allegations against the American soldiers, as mentioned above, the evidence provided by Frederick has made it clear that the abuse "was not only for pleasure but was regarded as part of interrogations led by US intelligence and private contractors in the prison." yet, as early as last summer, Amnesty International had already reported on allegations of torture and killings by occupation forces of incarcerated Iraqis, and these have persisted despite its own report warning the occupying powers of their obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Iraqi tribal leaders have also lodged similar complaints after suffering similar treatments whilst in prison, but these were ignored by the authorities. why has it taken so long for anyone to act against it? as it is, the US and UK had invaded Iraq on false premises -- the elusive WMDs have yet to be found; the forces continue to linger in Iraq despite the capture of Saddam Hussein. there is little point in leaders of the respective countries expressing their outrage at these pictures. what's imperative, as the editorial in The Observer asserts, is for determined and rigorous investigations to be conducted, and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

the guilty parties would certainly include private military companies which have been hired by the Bush administration to take on the dirty jobs in Iraq whilst maintaining an adequate distance from the military establishment and therefore avoiding the checks and balances the latter is subject to. in the World Socialist Web Site, James Conachy looks at the role of these companies, and states that they represent "one of the most outrageous forms of war profiteering taking place under the auspices of the Bush administration." these companies, all of which have close links with officials in the higher echelons in Dubya's administration, are already contributing as much as 20 percent of the total US-led occupation force. in fact, Conachy points out that employees of private military companies are some of the accused who have been working as interrogators and translators at the Abu Ghraib prison, and although one of them is charged with raping a young Iraqi man, he has not been charged because these mercenaries have complete immunity from Iraqi law under an edict issued by the US Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). not only are obscene amounts of profits being generated for the cronies of the Texan short shrub, they are able to carry out atrocious acts which remain outside the purview of the US military per se. it's important to note that these mercenaries are not acting as supplementary forces to the main occupation troops; rather, there seems to be a trend towards increasing the use of private military companies whilst forcing the decrease in the use of regular army troops, precisely because soldiers are defecting to these companies in order to get higher salaries. Conachy also notes that the secrecy surrounding the operations of these companies allows the White House to hide the actual cost of the war in terms of men and casualties it is taking to sustain the illegal occupation of Iraq. going back to the case of Abu Ghraib prison, it is extremely important that these companies which have been hired to perform roles coded as "analytic support" for US military operations -- read: interrogators and translators -- are held accountable for the crimes they have committed. as Peter Singer states in his commentary in The Guardian, "[t]he lack of rules and regulations for the industry has serious ramifications." because these companies are not subjected to the same structures that the military has imposed, the perpetrators of these horrendous acts may escape investigation, prosecution and subsequently, punishment, simply because they are regarded as civilians rather than part of the chain of command. Iraq currently has no established legal institutions -- which means that these "civilians" cannot be held accountable to Iraqi law. in fact, these contractors are already protected by the US-imposed regulation that protects them from prosecution in Iraq. what this means is that these contractors basically fall into a legal black hole, where they cannot be held accountable for anything they do. as such, Singer advises that the occupation forces should "re-examine which roles are appropriate for outsourcing and which are not." however, i seriously doubt the use of these contractors as interrogators is coincidental -- the twats at the helm of the Bush administration know that this is precisely the legal black hole they require to allow for such atrocities to be committed without the glare of the media spotlight on them.

2004-04-30T10:35:00.000Z

the Beeb has reported that US forces are beginning to withdraw from Falluja, after apparently coming to an agreement to hand over power to a new 1,100-strong Iraqi force led by one of Saddam Hussein's former generals. however, the Pentagon seem to be less than keen to talk about this agreement, and has instead tried to hush it up by feigning ignorance. rather contradictory to all the self-confident posturing being dished out by Dubya, don't you think? thought Dubya was going on about how the US forces were adamant to "secure" Falluja for the Iraqi people, and that the insurgency was in part engineered by bitter ex-Saddam officers. in any case, as Juan Cole points out in his blog entry, this volte-face is probably a better strategy, so as to "put an Iraqi face on the confrontation in Falluja". a US retreat is going to be less costly than a bloody invasion of Falluja, that would only increase Iraqi and Arab discontent. this move towards a less belligerent and bloodthirsty attitude probably also has to do with the fact that 125 US troops have been killed in Iraq in April alone -- the bloodiest month for the American forces since the fall of Saddam Hussein. ten of the dead were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad yesterday.

however, what still baffles me is the fact that the US seems intent in inflict maximum damage in Falluja before their troops pull out. according to this report in Al-Jazeera, American warplanes have attacked three areas in Falluja, namely the Golan, al-Nawwab al-Dhubbat and Nazzal districts. even worse, apparently US soldiers have targeted fleeing civilians at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Falluja -- a minibus full of Iraqis were greeted with a hail of US bullets, turning the vehicle into a ball of fire. why is the US so adamant on shooting itself in the foot by angering more Iraqis and augmenting the power and size of the resistence? ironically, the Bush administration's mismanagement of post-war Iraq has resulted in such a turn in attitudes that it appears that the American and Iraqi public opinion towards the occupation is converging, according to Jim Lobe's report in Inter Press Service News:

[T]wo major public opinion polls released Thursday, one by the 'New York Times' and CBS News.. found that a record 58 percent of U.S. respondents now believe the invasion was not worth the cost in lives and resources, and another by CNN, 'USA Today', and Gallup that found 57 percent of Iraqis believe U.S.-led coalition forces should leave their country "in the next few months".

so what has this shambolic war in Iraq waged by belligerent Christian fundie nutters with an imperialist streak and fat pockets to line achieved? nowt. all this insane act of aggression which is immoral, unjust and illegal has done is to incite more fury in the Middle East. the editorial in The Arab News rightly states that the US has pretty much "squandered the good will and confidence that many moderates in the Middle East once bore toward it" in the space of a year. in fact, i'd go even further and say that the goodwill that the international community had demonstrated towards the US, particularly after the horrors of September 11 2001, has all but dissipated. the US is no longer regarded as a fair, let alone trustworthy, broker in the international arena. furthermore, as the editorial succintly notes:

The greatest loss the Americans face is to their reputation, not simply in the Middle East but in the world at large. US military power will be seen for what it is, a behemoth with the response speed of a muscle-bound ox and the limited understanding of a mouse. This has all happened because Bush refused to listen to the many friendly warnings he was given.

as for the Bush administration's grand plans for the future of democratic Iraq, in his article in The New York Times, Paul Krugman predicts that these schemes would mean next to nothing now, given the absolutely horrendous mess which the US has created:

The official story line portrayed a virtuous circle of nation-building, one that could eventually lead to a democratic Iraq, allied with the U.S. In fact, we seem to be faced with a vicious circle, in which a deteriorating security situation undermines reconstruction, and the lack of material progress adds to popular discontent. Can this situation be saved?

...

I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant. If America's leaders hadn't made so many bad decisions, they might have had a chance to shape Iraq to their liking. But that window closed many months ago.

Bob Herbert notes in his opinion piece in The New York Times that the first casualty of this shambolic war in chase of some "pipe dream" of Dubya and his cronies was "reality":

Reality was the first casualty of Iraq. This was a war that would be won on the cheap, we were told, with few American casualties. The costs of reconstruction would be more than covered by Iraqi oil revenues. The Iraqi people, giddy with their first taste of freedom, would toss petals in the path of their liberators. And democracy, successfully rooted in Iraq, would soon spread like the flowers of spring throughout the Middle East.

yet, after one year since Dubya manufactured a Top Gun moment featuring himself as a star who proclaimed victory in Iraq, everything that has emerged from the ravaged land has not signified victory in any sense of the world. instead, while Iraq remains in ruins, the US flounders about trying to invent some sort of purpose to the whole exercise:

[W]e don't know what we're doing in Iraq. We don't know where we're heading. We don't know how many troops it will take to get us there. And we don't know how to get out.

...

Mr. Bush has enmeshed us in a war that we can't win and that we don't know how to end. Each loss of a life in this tragic exercise is a reminder of lessons never learned from history. And the most fundamental of those lessons is that fantasy must always genuflect before reality.

Colonol Daniel Smith looks at the death toll in Iraq before and after Bush's declaration of "victory", in his commentary featured in Foreign Policy in Focus:

May 1st marks a full year since President Bush declared major combat to be over in Iraq. At that point, 138 U.S. military personnel had died in Iraq, 115 killed by hostile fire.

Since then, another 598 have died, 456 in combat. Of this latter number, 126 were killed in April alone; that’s 22% of total combat deaths (571) in one month.

he notes that the death toll may well be the only reality in this war:

What is not rumor is the death and destruction on both sides.

Smith argues that one of the most important issues that needs to be dealt with is that of trust. the US needs to start winning the trust of the tribal leaders in Iraq in order to stem the bloodshed in the country.

as mentioned yesterday, some US personnel have been charged for their abuse of Iraqi prisoners. to see the atrocities being perpetrated by these so-called agents of "liberation" sent by Dubya's "Higher Father" (as he would like to have us believe), go to the Empire Notes blog entry. Justin Raimondo's article in Antiwar.com focuses on this atrocity -- he states angrily that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers is "emblematic of our crazed foreign policy." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, has tried to make light of the issue by asserting the US military shouldn't be judged based on the actions of the officers involved. come come... how could you expect us to believe that when the US forces have reportedly been targeting civilians in assaults as well? how do you explain why Iraqis see US soldiers as "uncaring, dangerous and lacking in respect", according to Tom Regan's article in The Christian Science Monitor?

to go back to the perpetrators of these crimes -- why should these men be simply court martialed? shouldn't they stand before international human rights tribunals since they have infringed international law? Richard Phillips argues the same point in his commentary in the World Socialist Web Site:

These acts of sadism and cruelty constitute a blatant violation of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" and are war crimes as defined by Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners.

Article 3 prohibits:

a. violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

b. taking hostages;

c. outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.

as corroborated by one of the US soldiers charged with assaulting detainees, US military intelligence has actually "sanctioned and encouraged" the acts of these soldiers. in fact, CBS has managed to obtain excerpts of writings of one of the accused soldiers, who had helped in the running of a Baghdad prison, which further confirms that military intelligence were well aware of the mistreatments and had actually administered and condoned it.

Richard Phillips goes on to argue that:

...the fact that US soldiers are employing methods similar to those used by the Nazis in World War II is indicative of a deep-seated state of demoralization and degradation that the occupation has bred within the US military...

The pictures of torture, brutality and sexual sadism are representative of the entire criminal operation being conducted in Iraq.

it is absolutely unacceptable that Washington is not held accountable for the crimes of its soldiers. there is no justice that could possibly be meted out if the perpetrators are merely court martialled. furthermore, no criminal charges can be brought against a US soldier in Iraq because the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) has given the US military a blanket amnesty from prosecution. to make matters worse, US soldiers and citizens are actually not liable for prosecutions for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. and yet, as Phillip points out, this same "rouge state" can continue to act in this reprehensible manner as it wishes because it is not held accountable, and more specifically, the US is incarcerating over 25,000 detainees in US-run concentration camps around the world, in total violation of the Geneva Conventions.

last but not least, check out Terry Jone's wry commentary in The Guardian about the strange and bewildering doublespeak of the Americans, i mean, "coalition forces."

2004-04-29T09:40:00.000Z

the Beeb has reported that the US has pummelled Falluja with more air raids and attacks from gunships and artillery. whilst the seriously deluded Dubya continues to yammer on about how these attacks are meant to "secure" the city "for the Iraqi people", UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has instead been cautioning against further violence for fear that resistance will escalate if civilians are harmed:

"Violent military action by an occupying power against the inhabitants of an occupied country will only make matters worse," Mr Annan told a news conference at UN headquarters.

"It's definitely time now for those who prefer restraint and dialogue to make their voices heard," Mr Annan said.

the editorial in the World Socialist Web Site has also condemned the belligerence of the occupation troops:

What is being prepared is a wave of mass killing aimed at terrorizing the Iraqi people into accepting the continued occupation of their country by the US military. Lacking anywhere near the forces necessary to police a country of 25 million people, Washington is determined to make an example out of Fallujah and Sadr’s movement, much in the same fashion that the Nazi occupiers of World War II Europe leveled the Czech town of Lidice and razed the Warsaw ghetto.

it further argues that the violence unleashed against the Iraqis is also a deliberate strategy of the White House to seek revenge for the deaths of occupation troops in the past month. in fact, occupation forces have taken to mistreating Iraqi prisoners, as reported by Dan Rather in his article in CBS News. photos showing the inhumane manner that the Iraqis were subject to have surfaced, resulting in 17 soldiers, including a brigadier general, being removed from duty. the report states some of the abuses the Iraqi prisoners had undergone:

[O]ne Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted.

...

There are shots of the prisoners stacked in a pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.

In some, the male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each other. And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing, or giving the camera a thumbs-up.

the Army had -- not surprisingly -- claimed innocence, and said that the revolting behaviour of these 17 soldiers is "not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here." however, interestingly, one of the soldiers facing court martial, Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick, pointed out that the way the Army was running the prison led to the abuse of prisoners, with military intelligence officials patting the perpetrators on the back and encouraging them by saying that they've done a "great job."

going back to Falluja -- what's absolutely baffling and sinister is how the Americans continue to cling onto the idea that there's a "ceasefire" in Falluja that has just been temporarily broken, so that they don't have to admit to the fact that they have resumed a full-scale assault on the city. Nick Child's main question in his analysis featured in BBC News is a very pertinent one: "When is a ceasefire no longer a ceasefire?" and what does it say about the ethics of the occupation troops if they're targeting civilians and firing on ambulances? (do read Lee Gordon's heartbreaking article featured in The Guardian, where he describes his experience ferrying a severely injured Iraqi four-year-old to an Italian coalition hospital for treatment, as well as anecdotal evidence from American, British and Australian volunteers who'd come under US fire). M. Junaid Alam rightly states in his commentary in Counterpunch that it is the servants of American colonialism who are proving to be the "barbarians" -- the extreme bombing of Falluja, the deliberate impediments being placed to prevent humanitarian work (e.g. functioning of hospitals), etc. are the acts of "an arrogant power lashing out at what infuriates it most: humiliation."

there's been divergent views in Washington on the US actions in Falluja -- one camp feels that the US marines have been "too heavy-handed", whilst another camp believe that they have to go further to subdue the insurgents. while some military personnel believe that the cautious approached used by the British in the south should be recommended, funnily enough, Blair has decided yet again to remain steadfast behind Bush's actions as Commander-in-Chief, by claiming that US tactics in bombarding Falluja is "perfectly right and proper," as reported in BBC News. once again, Blair has shown his weak will and inability to moderate US actions by influencing their opinions and decisions. what is clear though is that the US Central command's director of operations has acknowledged that US Army and Marine commanders have asked for more tanks and armoured vehicles, showing that the US is concerned about the deteriorating security situation. as Sidney Blumenthal notes in his commentary in The Guardian, the casualty rate of US forces in Iraq in April has already reached record highs -- 122 soldiers have been killed this month alone, as compared to 73 last April in the supposed last month of the war. what's more, the "pillars of support" for Bush are largely grounded in misperceptions:

[A]ccording to a study by the University of Maryland: 57 % of those surveyed "believe that before the war Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaida", and 45% "believe that evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida has been found". Moreover, 65% believe that "experts" have confirmed that Iraq had WMD.

the supporters in Bush's camp have rallied around Dubya more fervently, simply based on a "will to believe", Blumenthal argues.

the Texan short shrub and his cronies will be fretting more now that the so-called Coalition seems more shakey than ever -- apparently more members of Bulgaria's 45-strong force have asked to be discharged from their duty in Iraq, after repeated attacks on their battalion in Kerbala, as reported by Al-Jazeera. according to Patric Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor's article in The Guiardian, senior British military officials have also resisted proposals to increase the size of British troops currently in Iraq, or to any extension of their area of command, until their legal status post-30th June is sorted out. meanwhile, Patrick Cockburn reports in The Independent that a second unit of the US-trained Iraqi armed forces has mutinied at Falluja after being involved in heavy fighting with insurgents. in terms of reconstruction work in Iraq, it looks like there's been a major "setback" with the announcement by BP that the company sees "no future" in Iraq and plans to withdraw altogether, due to the disastrous political and security situation there. this comes as a sharp contrast from the same MNC that had been initially worried that US companies would monopolise post-Saddam Iraq.

back in Washington, it'll be a big day for Dubya today, as he will appear before the September 11 Commission alongside his nanny Dick Cheney -- oddly, the White House has refused to have Bush and Cheney face the Commission individually, but would rather confirm our hunches that Dubya is really just a puppet of the US vice-president. moreover, the inquiry is subject to, as Benjamin Leslie notes in his article in MotherJones, "conditions and qualifiers" -- it's to be held behind closed doors, the testimony of Dubya and Cheney will not be given under oath, no recordings or transcripts of their remarks are to be made, and the Bush administration will be absolved from making further public testimony. either Dubya really doesn't speak English or this is yet another manifestation of his doublespeak when he claimed to want to cooperate with the Commission. as Leslie wryly points out, "So Bush gets his closure, but what about everybody else?" and how could it be that Bill Clinton was subject to a recorded testimony when he testified before the jury during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but Bush and Cheney are not going to have to be subject to the same stringent conditions for a much more sinister issue pertaining to national security -- i.e. "what did the President know [about the September 11 attacks] and when did he know about it?" is it an indication that the American public is more interested in sensational issues about a public figure's personal sexual life than those about their own country's security and the degree of accountability that the current administration has towards its people?

to add to the Bush administration's troubles, David Obey (US House of Representatives) and Robert Byrd (US Senate) have issued a letter to Bush (published in TomPaine.com) asking to know what the Bush administration had done to the US$40 billion Emergency Response Fund granted after September 11, purportedly to "assist the victims of those terrorist attacks and to strengthen homeland and national security." according to Bob Woodward's devastating book, Plan of Attack, the White House had used US$700 million in 2002 to prepare bases in the Persian Gulf region for an attack on Iraq, and US$178 million from the US$40 billion Emergency Response Fund for "Supporting the global war on terrorism" in Kuwait, Qatar and other nations in the Persian Gulf region, several months before Congress approved the Iraq war resolution. according to Congressional law, the president had to keep the Congress fully informed through consultation prior to the expenditure of funds, and also had to provide Congress with quarterly reports detailing the use of these funds. neither has been done with regards to the US$40 billion worth of funds. as such, both Obey and Byrd have called for full disclosure on the issue:

When the Congress provided the extraordinary authorities in response to the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it expected that tax dollars would be managed carefully so as to provide assistance to the victims of the attack, to secure our homeland and to improve our national security. The letter of the law and consultation with the Congress in the expenditure of appropriated funds provides our citizens with assurance that their tax dollars are spent in accordance with congressional intent. Transparency in this regard is critical. We need a full accounting of the entire $40 billion Emergency Response Fund.

have you heard of Jane Errey, former senior defence adviser with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Australia? she has joined the list of civil servants of the governments in the Coalition of the Winning -- e.g. Katherine Gun (UK whistleblower who revealed UK and US plans to tap phonelines of Security Council delegates), Charmaine Means (US major who refused to seize an Iraqi TV station because it infringes the freedom of speech of the same people the twats in the White House claim to be "liberating"), etc. -- who had refused to be complicit to the fibbing that had been perpetrated by these administrations in their move towards war. apparently, Jane Errey has claimed that she was sacked from her job because she had refused to write a briefing paper exaggerating the extent of Iraq's as-yet-elusive WMDs, according to this report on ABC News. her previous employers claim that she was discharged because she had not returned to the office after taking leave, but Errey justified her leave-taking by pointing out that she would not have done so "I hadn’t felt that the government was lying to the public." according to Margaret Rees' article in the World Socialist Web Site, Errey is one of the few defence and intelligences analysts in Australia who have publicly protested their government's slavish support for the shambolic and imperialistic US-led incursion of Iraq -- senior intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie had also resigned before the invasion, and had criticised Prime Minister John Howard's case for war; senior defence intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins had also called for a royal commission into the intelligence agencies over a range of issues from the Australian-led military intervention of East Timor in 1999 to the Iraq war. in the latter case, cited by Mike Head in his article Bush and Blair are clearly not the only heads of states currently facing the fury of insiders of their administrations, as well as their voting public.

2004-04-28T11:06:00.000Z

Spain has reportedly announced that it plans to have all its troops pulled out of Iraq by 27th May. Tony Blair has also apparently refused to confirm if more British troops will be sent to Iraq, as requested by the US -- he now claims that "the advice that we have is that we have sufficient troops to do the job." it's certainly not surprising that world leaders are starting to see the folly of participating in the Bush administration's imperialistic incursion into Iraq, particularly with the increase of violence in the country. according to this report in The Daily Times (Pakistan), the US military has killed at least 64 Iraqi "insurgents" during fighting near Najaf. it has also been reported that heavy clashes between US marines (backed by US tanks and aircrafts) and Iraqi fighters have resumed in Falluja. apparently the US forces is asserting that this is "not an assault", but rather they're just "targeting positions that had earlier fired on Marines." sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it? everytime civilians have been shot at, the US drone on about how that was a position from which they were targeted. remember the Palestine Hotel? journalists were attacked because, oh, guess what, the US thought they were being attacked from the hotel. nice one, you fuckwits. you can only cry wolf so many times. there's no question that civilians would have been hit by the Americans -- according to an Al-Jazeera correspondent, heavy gunfire was heard and several homes were on fire. homes, mind. the reports also states:

There are reports that an AC-130 gunship aircraft fired multiple cannon rounds over the city. One report said the gunship fired 20 to 25 rounds at a time with explosions on the ground sending showers of sparks and flames into the night sky.

now don't tell me such a ferocious attack on a city would not have civilian casualties. no, don't dodge behind the term "collateral damage". women. children. the elderly. you cunts. don't tell me your fucking American bullets can discern between so-called "terrorists" and civilians.

Colin Powell has spoken about the scope of Iraqi "sovereignty" to be handed back to the Iraqi people come 30th June 2004. according to this report in Al-Jazeera, Powell has admitted that the 135,000 troops who invaded and occupied Iraq without a UN mandate will continue to operate under US command in Iraq. he tried to justify this by claiming that the troops will be helping to get the new Iraqi govenrment "up and running", and that the US "have to be able to operate freely, which in some ways infringes on what some would call full sovereignty." some freedom this is. to quote the Iraqi Governing Council's (IGC) current head, Masud Barzani, who like many Iraqis, are bitter about this public revelation:

"I probably wouldn't have made the mistake of letting an army of liberation turn into an army of occupation."

the editorial of The Guardian focuses on the letter by 52 former UK diplomats (published yesterday) rebuking Blair for his kamikaze Middle East policy, blindly following in the footsteps of the US. the article emphasises that it is indeed rare for diplomats to break their usual silence and discretion to express their deep concern about the Prime Minister's policies, and as such, this public attack on Blair ought to be taken seriously. moreover, what's extremely important is that these diplomats' concerns seem very valid. specifically,

The three large points that they make are, first, that the US government has unilaterally committed itself to a one-sided policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict; second, that the US is now paying the price for having no effective post-invasion plan for Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and, third, that Britain has not exerted its influence to redress these dangerous policies.

the editorial rightly notes that despite Blair's attempt to "repair the initial damage" of appearing as a supporter of the Butcher of Beirut's unfair and unjust "disengagement" plan (which has diverged from the so-called Middle East road map significantly) as well as supporting the shambolic US-led imperialistic war in Iraq, by emphasising that Sharon's plan is only "part" of the negotiations, and that the UN will have a bigger role to play in Iraq as well, these are merely "fig leaf efforts". the diplomats are perfectly right in arguing that Blair's attempt to reconcile mainstream anti-war sentiment with the US' unilateralism is "naive and probably doomed." in fact, as Jonathan Freedland points out in his commentary in The Guardian, all of Blair's positive contributions to the UK during his term of office would not stand for anything because of the blight that the Iraq war has on his record. future generations, Freedland predicts,

will side with the 52 former ambassadors who wrote this week's damning open letter to the PM, wondering how a man so full of promise and loaded with political capital could have blown it on support for a rogue US administration. This was never part of the Blair project; it appeared on no pledge card. Yet support for Bush and his new doctrine of war is all but defining Blair, now and for the future. This is not the legacy he wanted, but it is the one he looks fated to bequeath. And he doesn't have another seven years to put it right.

this is why Blair must decide if he is to leave office in absolute disgrace for being the lapdog of the US; for sending his own countrymen to fight and die in an unjust, illegal and morally repugnant war; and for being absolutely disempowered to influence US decision-makers in any concrete manner despite devoting so much British resources in the hope of being able to moderate American unilateralism. in his commentary in The Guardian, Charles Wheeler advises Blair to rethink this supposed "special relationship" between the US and UK, particularly given the current US administration's policy of unilaterialism. he notes that Dubya and his acolytes' newfound deference to the UN is a "tactical move", prompted by the desperation of the US to have others share their burden in Iraq and help clean up the mess they'd created. Wheeler recognises that the UK may find it tough to withdraw its support at this late stage, but advises Blair to "stop treating the special relationship as holy writ."

i'd mentioned in my entry yesterday about the new Iraqi flag. well, it appears that the flag wasn't even designed in Iraq, but rather in the UK, as reported by Patrick Cockburn and David Usborne in The Independent. the fact that the flag is not only designed outside of the country, but also endorsed by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) has caused an outburst of vituperation amongst Iraqis, who now regard the flag as nothing but a representation for " traitors and collaborators." you really have to wonder at the stupidity of the occupation forces -- for some reason, the US, being a wannabee imperialist, has yet to understand the intricacies of the relationship between the imperialist/occupier and occupied. how is it that the Americans just manage to fuck up at every step of the way? back to the flag, which is clearly less than popular amongst Iraqis:

The outburst of fury over the flag highlights the extraordinary ability of US leaders and the Iraqi Governing Council to alienate ordinary Iraqis, already angered by the bloody sieges of Fallujah and Karbala. And yesterday, in the hotbed of Iraqi rebellion, the flag was burnt in public in a demonstration of public anger.

Cockburn and Usborne state that insurgents might just stick to the old Iraqi flag as a sign of defiance, whilst portraying the new one as a symbol of subservience to foreign occupiers. yet again, another shot in the foot.

2004-04-27T10:49:00.000Z

the cunts at the US military has ended the ceasefire in Falluja by launching attack helicopters and planes to bomb targets after a gunfight with militants, according to this report in Al-Jazeera. Falluja town elders have turned towards the UN, protesting that the US has been using cluster bombs in Falluja battles, the elders have also been asking Kofi Annan to mediate between resistance fighters and occupation forces, as well as set up an international investigation into the US-led occupation of Iraq. although there was little media access to Falluja during the past two weeks, eyewitness reports have started surfacing, claiming that US gunmen have been firing at ambulances and civilians. with access to the main hospital blocked off, many Iraqis could not get adequate medical attention for their injuries and temporary clinics have been swamped. the hypocricy and cruelty of the US is evident -- how dare they have the gall to describe the operation as "humane" and that they "do everything possible to protect non-combatants". could they please explain the targeting of medical workers and victims then? could they also explain how it is that there're people being shot by snipers by American bullets in an area controlled by the US forces? the US is retorting that militants have used civilians as human shields. oh aye? militants in ambulances then? militants who're aged women carrying white flags? come come, what do you take us for, you fucking twats.

Dubya and his bastard cronies have also decided that Iraq should have a new flag to replace the one flown by Saddam. apparently one member of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) had the good sense to protest against the adoption of this flag -- he points out that Iraq's leaders should wait for an elected government before changing the flag, and that there're other more important issues to focus on instead of a garish piece of cloth, to be flown so that Americans can pat their own backs and claim that they have "liberated" a country. however, as stated in the latest entry of Riverbend's blog:

[The new Iraqi flag] wouldn't make a difference. The Puppets are illegitimate, hence their constitution is null and void and their flag is theirs alone. It is as representative of Iraq as they are- it might as well have "Made in America" stitched along the inside seam. It can be their flag and every time we see it, we'll see Chalabi et al. against its pale white background.

political stability and subsequently, an end to the chaos in Iraq looks like a pipe dream, given the plans that the US has for Iraq. as Paul Reynold points out in his commentary in BBC News, the interim government to take over come 30th June has no legitimacy due to the fact that it is appointed by the US rather than democratically elected by the Iraqi people, and can't even change the legislature in any way -- in fact, laws made by the occupation forces will remain in place instead. furthermore, it is limited in its power because the occupation forces plan to stay on, with a US general commanding the Iraqi army. however, Reynold points out the US is clearly realising the increasing danger the occupation troops are facing:

A telling detail about the actual state of affairs on the ground is that the US army is making a world-wide search for armoured Humvees. This is not a war which is getting easier, therefore.

At the moment, these ubiquitous vehicles are often soft skinned and are especially vulnerable in attacks on convoys. According to figures used by the Associated Press, of 15,000 Humvees in Iraq, only 1,500 to 2,000 are armoured.

Some are even being made safer by having steel sheets fixed by local Iraqi workshops.

this is despite the rosy pictures politicians back in Washington are so fond of painting, to appeace the voting public as well as to reassure other countries which have contributed troops to the lost cause of Iraq. on a related note, do check out David Corn and Kristin V. Jones' wonderful investigation in The Nation, exposing the porkies that Rummy has been spewing out about the extent that "Iraq's security is...handled by the Iraqi people themselves." despite the constant media reports (obviously fed with figures churned out by Rummy and his pals in the Pentagon) that more and more Iraqis are being trained and empowered to take charge of the security issues of their own country -- to a tune of a reputedly sizable force of 200,000 on 15th March 2004, -- Corn and Jones astutely note that Iraqi security forces have not been seen on the frontline fighting for their own land in the April clashes. to quote the authors, "all those months Rumsfeld was cooking the books." there is a glaring discrepancy between the purported number of Iraqis in the police and security forces, and the number of them on the payroll:

75,844 Iraqis were on the payroll as police officers, but only 2,865 were fully qualified and on duty. Another 13,286 were deemed "partially qualified" and supposedly on duty, while 3,245 were in training. Three-fourths of those on the police payroll had received no training. Six months earlier Rumsfeld had declared that 55,000 police had been trained. Not even close.

many of the Iraqis in the forces are actually either untrained, security guards or civil defence forces, rather than being on active duty. Corn and Jones conclude:

The Administration's inability to construct an effective security and police apparatus has been one of the main problems in Iraq. After the scheduled June 30 sovereignty hand-off occurs, Iraqi forces are supposed to handle more responsibility. And now--in another sign that Rumsfeld's previous happy-talk was off-track--the US occupation authority in Iraq is recruiting Iraqis for a new elite volunteer unit designed to fight the insurgency. Let's hope any public statements Rumsfeld may make about this unit will be accurate.

the very fact that the US has been putting pressure on Downing Street to deploy more British soldiers in Baghdad and other volatile part of Iraq also says a lot about the mess there. Patrick Cockburn and Kim Sengupta report in The Independent that British military commanders are trying to resist this pressure, which has in part intensified with the withdrawal of Spanish troops (and possibly those of other countries in the very near future). apart from the sheer immensity of the task and the volatility in Iraq, Cockburn and Sengupta rightly point out that the British soldiers are also meant to play a "legitimising" role for the US:

The presence of British soldiers in the Iraqi capital would enable the US to claim it was a truly international operation in the violent Sunni triangle.

however, British commanders are not keen on the idea, as the British troops sent to Baghdad would be put under direct American command, rather than a nominal one enjoyed in the British-controlled zone in the south. as a British defense source stated yesterday:

"Thanks to the way the Americans have behaved, it [a 'heart and minds' campaign] is too late. Any hand of friendship extended now is likely to be attached to a suicide bomber."

to add to the dire situation there, it seems that essential reconstruction work in Iraq has been stopped because of the deteriorating security situation in the country, according to senior occupation officials quoted in Jamie Wilson's article in The Guardian. this means that the electricity network will still be in absolute shambles when the summer heat rolls in, which means more power cuts may just end up inciting more discontent and riots amongst the Iraqi population. with more countries urging their citizens to leave Iraq as soon as possible, there's very little hope that reconstruction work can be expedited or even managed successfully.

back in the UK, Tony Blair is being lambasted by 52 former British diplomats for being a wuss and blindly tagging along the US in their (mis)adventures. according to this report in Al-Jazeera. in their letter published in The Guardian, these former ambassadors, high commissioners and governors urged Blair to sway US policy" in the Middle East as "a matter of the highest urgency". in a supplementary commentary by the former British envoy to the UN Sir Crispin Tickell (featured in The Independent), he notes that the situation in Iraq and Palestine seem so alarming that he has "never seen such a level of worry and despair among those who have been involved in the diplomatic field ever before." he reiterates that the war in Iraq was waged on absolutely illegal grounds, and Blair and Bush's post-war plans (or the lack of it) are badly executed. he also warns that with Bush's endorsement of the Butcher of Beirut, who is now able to do anything he wants, there can only be "unending war" in the Middle East.

Blair's going to find it hard to respond to the letter by the 52 diplomats, especially with growing discontent amongst voters at home with regards to the UK's involvement in a shambolic war that has disintegrated into utter chaos:

The diplomatic swipe is bound to be seized upon by Blair critics as fresh evidence that British interests come second to America's because of Blair's zealous alliance with President George Bush and his neo-conservative agenda.

James Galbraith concentrates his commentary in The Los Angeles Times on another aspect which would be extremely pertinent in a year when the presidential elections is due to take place. he observes that although wartime expenditure through the stimulation of production does seem to boost the economy, this is only a termporary measure. this means that the recent buoyancy of the US economy is bound to end soon once inflation, the subsequent depreciation of private wealth and public debt kick in. Galbraith notes that the current US trade deficit is already staggering, and national debt will continue to increase. with particular reference to the Iraq war, Galbraith states:

Economically, the Iraq war is more like Vietnam: insidiously underestimated, sold to the public and Congress on false premises, improperly budgeted and inadequately taxed. During the Vietnam years, there was also economic growth at first. But then came creeping inflation, followed by worldwide commodity shocks, the oil crisis of 1973, international monetary disorder and a decade of economic troubles.

Could it happen again? Yes, it could.

what this reveals is the frightening lack of planning the Bush administration had committed itself to, with regards to the crippling cost of a long war and occupation. instead, Dubya and his acolytes "counted on the war being quick, cheap and self-financing." the reliance on oil can only benefit the private pockets of members of the administration involved in the energy industry, and it seems almost undeniable that the Iraq war was in a large part fought for oil. Galbraith recommends that the future American economy look into "a new energy direction, emphasizing conservation and renewable energy, and concerted investment in the world's next generation of technologies — both to reduce our oil dependence and to help balance our trade deficits."

to quote David Rieff in his analysis featured in MotherJones, "even the staunchest advocates of the Bush administration's plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein and remake Iraq are hard-pressed to square their predictions about how things would turn out with what has actually happened—and failed to happen—on the ground." Americans are starting to realise that the supposed "War on terrorism" carried out in Iraq has had nothing to do with "terrorism" (in the forms of those elusive WMDs). in fact, the war looks like "a foreign adventure, fought for reasons other than the ones cited by the Bush administration." the scale of the deceit generated and perpetuated by the Bush administration ought to be questioned by the American people, and the Bush administration held accountable for the porkies they had told to their voters and themselves, as well as the formenting of illwill in the Arab world by Bushite policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Rieff argues that the US' belief that it is a "benign hegemon" with a "virtual monopoly on truth" is actually quasi-religious, and has resulted in the belief in American exceptionalism. the danger is, of course, that such a view is certainly not going to be wholly adopted by other countries, and conflict (in terms of ideology, practise and culture) will undeniably surface to estrange all parties and break down international institutions and consensus.

on a different -- but related -- note, E.J. Dionne Jr has written an article in The Washington Post, chastising Dubya and his Neocon chickenshit Republican camp of supporters for targeting John Kerry in an attempt to conceal the fact that while Kerry is a decorated Vietnam veteran who has also come out to protest strongly against the war, Bush and Cheney dodged the draft (Cheney claimed he had "other priorities in the '60s than military service", whilst Bush got himself into the National Guard, thus avoiding deployment to Vietnam). partisan Republicans have the audacity to criticise Kerry for protesting against the Vietnam war, despite the fact that the man had risked his life and shown his bravery during his tour of duty there. Dionne Jr questions whether Bush would have the balls to "or condemn the attacks on Kerry's service," or would be prove yet again that he is the imbecilic yellow-bellied twat he is by keeping silent, "hoping the assaults do their work while he evades responsibility."

however, Kerry himself has not come outright to condemn the war in Iraq, as noted by Ruth Conniff in her commentary in The Progressive. his reticence towards criticising the Iraq war could be down to the fact that he's trying not to jeopardise his chances with swing voters who may be influenced by the media to see any condemnation of American efforts in Iraq as "disloyal" and "unpatriotic", and who may also want to see a "strong" presidential candidate who could deal with the increasing dangers in this world:

Overall, Kerry has some incisive criticisms of Bush. But he seems to lack the courage of his convictions, often sounding apologetic or defensive. It wasn't supposed to be that way. The argument for Kerry during the primaries was that, with his war record, he could easily overcome the Democratic phobia of appearing "soft on defense." With so much going wrong for this Administration, a tough critic could ride a wave of popular doubt.

however, to quote 24-year-old Marine Michael Hoffman who was mentioned in Conniff's article:

"I do think we've got a better chance changing Kerry's mind than Bush," Hoffman adds. "But as someone said at a Veterans for Peace meeting recently, even if we do like Kerry, we'll be protesting and fighting the day after he takes office."

2004-04-26T08:19:00.000Z

the casualty toll in Iraq continues to rise by the day. according to this report in Al-Jazeera, a rocket attack on a hospital in Mosul left two Iraqi doctors dead, with ten hospital employees injured. Mosul's Ashur Hotel and a local television and radio station were also hit by rockets. in Karbala, an Iraqi was shot dead by Polish troops, while in Ramadi, a US patrol respectively came under attack from a bomb. Iraqi resistance fighters have even launched their first seaborne operation targeted at the al-Basra oil terminal, killing two occupation soldiers. Al-Jazeera has also reported that civilians and one US soldier have been killed by a roadside bomb blast followed by a gun battle in Baghdad on Sunday. these civilians included children, who were apparently caught in the crossfire when they tried to dodge flying bullets by running back to a Humvee. more lives are going to be threatened, with the Americans now threatening to cross the "red line" that delineates the holy city of Najaf, claiming that they aim to crush Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his supporters without entering holy sites. according to Patrick Cockburn's report in The Independent, Shia leaders have warned that this incursion by the US forces will ignite the fury of 15 to 16 million Iraqi Shia if US soldiers enter Najaf, where Imam Ali, the founder of their faith, is buried in a golden-domed shrine.

more indications that the supposed 30th June handover of sovereignty from the American imperialists to the Iraqis is just a complete sham: Matthew Lee reports in Agence France Presse (reprinted in The Arab News) that US officials have remained less than forthright about the extent of "sovereignty" to be passed on to the Iraqi interim government. the fact that the US is piping up with ominous statements about "limited sovereignty" and that the new Iraqi government should not be making laws between July to December indicates an unwillingness to allow for a true handover of power. what sort of a government has no right over its own legislature? how could the new government have any credibility in the eyes of Iraqis. what's even more hilarious is how the US claims that "Iraq’s sovereignty would not be impaired despite the fact that the country would be run under a law adopted during the US occupation." looks like Iraqi sovereignty will be of an American brand -- forget democracy and freedom, sovereignty is a given only if it benefits the US strategy and American conglomerates milking Iraq's riches.

Paul Craig Roberts focuses on the same issue in his commentary featured in Antiwar.com. for one, he points to the recent assertion by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, who told reporters that "decades is probably not unreasonable," with reference to the long-term involvement of the US forces in their "fight against terrorism" in Iraq; as well as Republican Senator John McCain's request for Dubya to send in more troops to Iraq, as evidence that the Bush administration has little wish to leave Iraq as soon as possible. since the idea that the Iraq war was either one to hunt down WMDs (nul point) or to "liberate" Iraq from Saddam Hussein's clutches (check), it really makes no sense for the occupation forces to remain there any longer than they have already. furthermore, it's odd for the US to be talking about sovereignity come 30th June, if Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman is going around telling Congress that the handover of "sovereignty" on June 30 was just a device for putting an "Iraqi face" on the American occupation. yet another case of doublespeak from the Bush administration, perhaps?

in any case, more should be revealed tomorrow when United Nations' special envoy in Baghdad Lakhdar Brahimi is due to clarify the proposed future role of the UN in Iraq to the Security Council, as reported in The Observer. it does appear that the Bush administration is hoping for the UN to come in and clear up the shite they'd created, although the Pentagon is less willing to listen to the UN, whilst the UN is not eager to do the dirty work for the US given that they did not authorise the war in the first place:

UN officials are concerned that Washington will now regard the UN as a useful receptacle to take the blame after 30 June for future disasters inside Iraq, while the US military will be free to suppress resistance in their own way, making it much harder for the new ruling council to exercise their authority.

and the UN has reason to be worried. in his opinion piece in Truthout, William Rivers Pitt warns that the current casualty toll is merely an indication of worse things to come. Dubya's shambolic imperialistic excursion into Iraq has not yielded anything that has been cited as a justification for war (read: no WMDs, no connection between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda, nor is there one between Saddam and the tragedy of September 11). moreover, from the rumblings from within the US administration, the prospect of true Iraqi liberation seems faraway. the only thing that Bush has been successful in doing is to galvanise anti-American sentiments in Iraq and in the Arab regions. the ceasefire between occupation forces and Iraqi insurgents in Falluja and Najaf appears to have been dismantled, which can only mean that more carnage lays ahead. in fact, Dubya has successfully united the Shia and Sunni muslims, who now stand side by side after casting away old enmities to focus on one common enemy:

The religious aspect is easily the most explosive element in this matter. Falluja is a Sunni town. Through the almost mystical bungling of the Bush administration, it has become tied to the holy city of Najaf, a Shi'ite stronghold. This city, like Falluja, has been surrounded by American forces and faces imminent attack. If an attack against Najaf is indeed undertaken, the consequences for Iraq, and indeed for the entire Middle East, will be unimaginable.

once Bush issues the order to invade any one of the two cities, there will be massive urban guerilla warfare, which the American troops are hardly prepared for. furthermore, Arab anger would be incurred once the US targets Najaf with attacks, and the repercussions will be too servere to imagine.

2004-04-24T09:26:00.000Z

more countries in the Coalition of the Sinning are reconsidering their move to send troops to Iraq. the latest country to join Spain, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Thailand in expressing its alarm is Norway -- Oslo has apparently rejected a US appeal to keep Norwegian troops in Iraq after June, whereupon the country will focus its efforts in Afghanistan instead. Ukraine has also shunned US advances to get it to send a helicopter squadron to Iraq to join its forces there. meanwhile the former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt has reportedly called a spade a spade by labelling the US as a "rogue state" on a telly programme on Nova, stating that in waging a war without any UN mandate and subsequently illegally occupying Iraq, the US has "'repeatedly and seriously" breached international law. another political casualty due to the shambolic Iraq wae has surfaced - it has been reported that the Danish defense minister Svend Aage Jensby has resigned yesterday due to pressure as a result of parliamentary questioning about whether the military exaggerated the WMD threat to justify the war in Iraq, and subsequently to send its troops to Iraq.

according to Rory McCarthy's article in The Guardian, for the past three weeks, about 2,000 US troops, supported by jet fighters and attack helicopters, have been carrying out "most ferocious urban street fighting in Iraq since the start of the war last year". doctors in Falluja claim that up to 600 people have been killed, with many more injured. to add to the barbaric acts perpetrated by the occupation forces, US Marines have been blocking access to the city's only hospital for more than two weeks (as mentioned in one of my other entries this week); houses and other civilian structures have also been bombarded. medical supplies are inadequate, and this results in more deaths due to casualties not being able tp receive sufficient treatment. Ibrahim Younis, the Iraq emergency coordinator for Médecins sans Frontieres, noted that the Americans have positioned a sniper on the top of the hospital's water tower and troops in the building -- this would have impeded further any access to medical help. Younis has since called for an independent inquiry to determine why the US military used the hospital as a military position, an act which is a violation of the Geneva Convention (see Article 14).

the battle of Falluja is generally identified as the major rallying point for most Iraqis, as the belligerence of the fighting there has roused the anger of many against the failing US occupation, Edward Wong reports in The New York Times:

More than anything else, Falluja has become a galvanizing battle, a symbol around which many Iraqis rally their anticolonial sentiments. Some say the fighting there exposes the lie of American justice by showing that the world's sole superpower is ready to avenge the killings and mutilation of four American security contractors by sending marines to shell and invade a city of 300,000 people.

not only are Iraqis angry with the Americans' ferocity in battle against Iraqi insurgents and civilians, the unequivocal sentiment is that it is time for Dubya to pull the US out of Iraq completely, and let the Iraqis rule their own land.

so now, it seems that not only does Dubya not care enough about the soldiers who've died whilst fighting to further his (and his cronies') imperialistic plans, he doesn't even want to be reminded of them. of course, the official line is for him to claim that he's standing by an order that prohibits more photographs of flag-draped bodybags and coffins as the White House "must pay attention to the privacy and to the sensitivity of the families of the fallen." oh aye? try telling that to Jane Bright, who has lost her son Evan Ashcraft in combat in Iraq last July, but who has insisted that "We need to stop hiding the deaths of our young... we need to be open about their deaths." and try telling that to Sue Niederer, who was refused permission permission to see the return of her son Seth Dvorin in a coffin from Iraq -- Niederer has articulated her anger vehemently:

"They killed my son and they did not permit me to be there to see the coffin. They said it was for health reasons, and ... they did not want the public to see it and they did not want the newspapers there... They don't want any of this being shown because it's reality. A coffin strikes home. If you don't see the coffin you just say: 'Oh, there's another one who has died.' But when you show the coffin, you show families, you show people and emotions. This is what they are doing this is what they do not want you to see."

the truth of the White House's purported concern about the victims' families' sensitivies is that this is an attempt to keep American voters in the dark, so as to ensure their support for Bush's re-election bid come November -- a blight such as the truth about an unjustified war that has killed so many soldiers and civilians wouldn't look too good on Dubya's curriculum vitae, would it? Mark Lawson states the same case in his commentary in The Guardian:

The truth is that the invisibility of the military fallen was a decision driven purely by spin. A governing belief of US politics is that the Vietnam war failed partly because news coverage made President Johnson resemble some kind of national funeral director, presiding over the obsequies of young men. Accordingly, Bush's image-handlers quite deliberately decided that neither he nor his war in Iraq would become associated with long, low boxes draped with the American flag.

what gall to demand young men and women to sacrifice their lives for a war (at a rate of four to six coffins a day, mind!) which has proved to be unjustified, immoral and unlawful, and then to refuse to acknowledge their existence even when they have returned back in coffins. to quote Lawson:

A leader's most profound decision is to ask his soldiers to die in a war. If this is a leader's sincere belief, then it's his/her prerogative, at least until the next election. But it is not acceptable to pretend that the consequence of his/her decision is anything but death.

meanwhile, the Butcher of Beirut has decided to thumb his nose even more at the international community and even to Washington -- Sharon has claimed that he has told Dubya that he doesn't see himself being bound to an earlier pledge not to kill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, according to this report in Al-Jazeera. while the US has apparently warned Sharon that he has to honour his promise, it doesn't look like Sharon would flinch, particularly since he's trying to appeal to more hardline hawks in the Likud Party to win their votes next week on his "disengagement plan".

the fact that the US seems incapacitated and can't hold Sharon to his word is going to further anger Arab leaders, who're already not feeling too chuffed about the Texan short shrub's shambolic excursion into Iraq. as noted in Paul Wood's analysis in BBC News, the situation is even more acutely felt by moderate Arab countries which have supported the US:

America's Arab allies do not just feel angry. They feel wounded, humiliated and threatened.

these leaders have good reason to feel pissed off -- Dubya's seemingly unconditional support for Israel despite the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, as well as Sharon's unilateral plan, is angering Arab voters, and the catastrophe in Iraq is not scoring him any brownie points either. furthermore, it appears that both Jordan and Egypt, the moderate Arab countries who have also signed peace treaties with Israel, had not been consulted by both the US and Israel before the announcement of Sharon's plans, and it is no wonder that they feel betrayed. Wood rightly concludes:

If winning the war on terror depends on winning Arab hearts and minds, the anger and turmoil in these two key Middle Eastern countries is not good news for President Bush.

yet another atrocity committed by Israel comes to light -- according to Donald Macintyre's article in The Independent, a photo of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed Bedwan tied to an Israeli police jeep has been handed to justice officials -- human rights activists have called for an investigation into the use of Palestinians as human shields by Israeli soldiers. although there is supposedly a Supreme Court ruling which bans the use of Palestinians as human shields since 2002, chances are the photos aren't lying, and it would come as no surprise that Israel is continuing to commit such appalling crimes, which the US is complicit to since it has sanctioned the Israelis' "right" of "self-defence" (read: massacre of Palestinians in as large an extent as possible).

finally, do take a look at the glossary of the Iraqi occupation drawn up by Paul de Rooij in Counterpunch... s'always helpful to have summat to make sense of all that doublespeak being hurled out way.

2004-04-23T14:06:00.000Z

how could the international community sit on their arses and remain silent about the atrocity happening in Sudan? Declan Walsh reports in his article in The Independent about the horrific government-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign taking place in the country, where the menfolk are massacred, womenfolk gangraped, villages bombed, and property and crops destroyed in a scorch-earth policy. the government of Sudan had in fact intervened to delay the release of a UN Human Rights Commission report which condemns the Sudanese government forces for leading a "reign of terror", perpetrated by war criminals. it also calls for an international commission of inquiry to establish the scale of the crimes against humanity in Darfur, and the complicity of the Sudan government in the atrocities.
. meanwhile, Sudanese civilians have escaped in droves to neighbouring Chad, only to find themselves in a landmine-ridden land. the humanitarian disaster is massive, and yet the international community continues to remain complicit by uttering not a peep.

back in Iraq, the US has scratched another notch for its tally of recent U-turns in policy. former Iraqi generals who had fought for Saddam Hussein are now being reinstated the US-trained Iraqi army, after half the army's Iraqi soldiers mutinied by refusing to fight or going home. according to Patrick Cockburn's report in The Independent:

Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, is reversing the policy under which the 350,000-strongÊ Iraqi army was dissolved and 750,000 members of the Baath party were either sacked from their jobs or found it difficult to gain employment. It is widely admitted among US officials that the disbandment of the army and de-Baathification were disastrous decisions helping to fuel the insurgency among Sunni Arabs, only a fifth of all Iraqis but the foundation of Saddam Hussein's regime.

because of the lack of legitimacy of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraqis' eyes, Iraqis who worked and cooperated with them were regarded as "collaborators", and were therefore seen as enemies. as it stands, there is no popular supported for the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which is cobbled together by the occupation forces and as such cannot be said to represent the people's will. the hostility against the occupation forces is extremely strong, and it's hard to imagine how things could change for the better unless the UN returns to Iraq to help it in a transition towards a democratically elected government which is free from backstage influence by the Americans.

Paul Krugman reiterates this point in his commentary in The New York Times, when he states that the occupation forces are "inadequate to maintain postwar security" at the point of invasion, and screwed up further by making a series of errors such as disbanding the Iraqi army, ignoring the postwar looting, cancelling local elections whilst putting together an interim council which excludes important domestic groups and is dominated by exiles with no political base. he pointed out that this failure in Iraq had already been predicted by many commentators and analysts, and that "the character flaws in the Bush administration that led to the present crisis were fully visible in the months that followed 9/11." the Bush administration's thirst for war was hardly matched by its interest in reconstruction and security, unless of course these could be carried out via contracts with companies owned by Bush and his pals. add to that the fact that military expenses is now at a alarming US$4.7 billion a month, with more money being required (but which will only be reported after the election fever), and it's not surprising that therew is "a growing sense of foreboding, even panic, about Iraq among national security experts."

in his interesting commentary in Al-Ahram Weekly, Azmi Bishara focuses on these boo-boos made by the Bush administration, and notes that many of these policies sprung from academics who realised that a post-Saddam Iraq gave them an opportunity to "put their theories into practice":

Abstraction serves the status quo. The professional theorists who dwell in academia, and propagate notions of the abstract truly believe that dictatorship is something that lacks roots. They are stunned when the collapse of a dictatorship leads to the collapse of other structures. They truly believe that dictatorship is a naked force that, once smashed, would make room for democracy pure and simple. According to the theorists this can happen without democrats, without the middle classes. It is the result of a relentless imperial quest that breaks the country into pieces and gives the nation a foretaste of sectarianism.

Bishara criticises the inability of the Bush administration to explain its actions -- be it pre- or post-war -- to its public and to itself; instead, Dubya and his spin-doctors grasp at straws to justify the chaos in Iraq today, ending up with absolute tosh that defies belief and common sense, but which is happily propagated by the unquestioning media that has become the "mouthpiece" of the occupation forces. this would explain why, for instance, till this day, according to a recent survey, public perceptions in the US about the alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, as well as the elusive WMDs in Iraq, continue to lag far behind the testimony of experts. Bishara argues that the US, "a country that boasts about democracy and the rule of the law", has proven to be anything but democratic or law-abiding. as a result, Iraqi resistance is growing by the day. to quote Bishara:

[W]hat we now see in Iraq is an armed uprising against a merciless foreign occupation, an occupation that symbolises everything backward, fanatical, and bellicose about America. What we see in Iraq is an armed civilian uprising, and there is no contradiction in terms here. The Iraqi combatants are civilians under arms.

more Iraqis are certainly going to turn towards the insurgency once they hear what the White House has to say about its view of Iraqi sovereignty. Steven Weisman reports in The New York Times that the plan negotiated by the US and UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will place "severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws." this will certainly cause a ruckas with the other so-called "allies" of the US, as they have stated very clearly that they don't think the Security Council would allow for a US-proposed resolution which sees the new Iraq government with such limited powers.

Luke Harding and Mohammad Haider report in The Guardian that the attacks in Basra are most possibly an act of revenge for the US's brutal offensive in Falluja, rather than the handicraft of Al-Qaeda as suspected earlier. apparently, an Iraqi who is suspected to be involved in the bombings came from Falluja, and the "most likely theory is that they were the work of local Iraqis incensed by the deaths of hundreds of fellow Sunnis killed in Falluja by US troops."

back in the US, Dubya and his acolytes are desperately trying to cover up the fact that there are certainly more bodybags with dead Americans making their way back from Iraq. Hal Bernton reports in The Seattle Times that Tami Silicio, a Kuwaiti-based cargo worker and her husband have been fired by her military contractor company Maytag Aircraft, for having her photo of flag-draped coffins of fallen US soldiers published in the same paper. apparently, since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the US, claiming that this was to "defer to the sensitivities of bereaved families", though it does sounds more like a case of making sure that the American electorate don't hear too much about their fellow countrymen dying for unjustified wars. in the case of Silicio, it's undeniable that her company is being vindictive by sacking not just her, but her husband as well. still, the story doesn't add up -- according to Claire Cozen's report in The Guardian, the ban on photos of dead soldiers has been lifted:

[T]he controversial ban was lifted temporarily this week after thememoryhole.org, a website dedicated to combating government secrecy, mounted a successful legal challenge under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Pentagon was forced to release hundreds of photographs, which immediately appeared on the site yesterday and quickly made their way to news organisations.

if so, Silicio ought to have a legal case against Maytag Aircraft, and it would appear that like it or not, the law is forced to be on her side.

2004-04-22T12:10:00.000Z

as mentioned yesterday, Mordechai Vanunu has finally been released after 18 years in prison. Nurah Tape reports in Al-Jazeera that Vanunu has called for the heads of countries such as the US, Germany and Russia to "speak up" on Israel's nuclear secrets. he argues that since most of the Middle East is "free from nuclear arms", there is no reason for Israel to possess these weapons at all. Vanunu also adds that he had suffered "cruel, barbaric treatment" during his incarceration because he had become a Christian.

still in Israel: Dubya has once again demonstrated how absolutely deluded and bonkers he is by dishing praises on the Butcher of Beirut, asserting that world leaders owe the man a "thank you", according to this report in Al-Jazeera. oh aye? should the world express our gratitute to Sharon for killing another nine Palestinians yesterday during a raid on Bait Lahiya in the Gaza Strip... one of which was a 13-year-old? should we also thank Sharon for killing another three Palestinians in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarim? apparently, the number of Palestinians killed in the past three days has now increased to twelve, with only half that number believed to be connected to any resistance movement at all.Marc Lynch rightly points out in his opinion piece in TomPaine.com that Bush's public bouquets for Sharon will end up being detrimental to Bush himself as it ends up alienating the Arab moderates, who are precisely the Arab leaders Dubya needs on his side. Lynch observes that the repercussions of Bush's public endorsement of Sharon are already obvious:

The impact of the furious humiliation of Arab moderates has already begun to surface. King Abdullah II of Jordan—probably the most friendly of all Arab leaders—postponed a scheduled meeting at the White House. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that Arab views of the United States had plummeted to unprecedented depths. Even more ominously, independent Arab moderates who had tentatively embraced Bush’s calls for democratic reform—often at great personal and political risk—spoke with one voice about their humilitation and outrage. The Arab media now routinely equates the American occupation of Iraq with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and it has become a consensus view that America has lost all credibility in the region.

Lynch further notes that Dubya's purported objectives and actions seem to run counter to one another. if Bush is, as he claims to be, seeking democratic reform in the Middle East, the last thing he needs is to estrange the moderates in the region. Lynch argues that the core problem of the Bush administration is its disregard and contempt for Arab public opinion, "a contempt which is keenly felt by those Arab moderates who actually share the goals of political, economic and cultural reform." as such, Lynch's conclusion is ominous:

The Bush administration speaks often of the need for a war of ideas in the Middle East. With his embrace of Ariel Sharon’s vision, Bush came one step closer to losing that war.

i guess Sharon's taking comfort in the fact that the Bush administration's resorting to a similar strategy in Iraq, treating civilians as legitimate targets. in Falluja, US Marines supported by tanks and aircraft have been fighting Iraqi insurgents, according to this report in BBC News. in fact, Al-Jazeera has reported that the occupation forces have even taken to destroying buildings and homes. most of the evacuated families are still unable to return to their homes: only seven families had so far been able to return to the city, with one discovering that their home has been used by US forces as its headquarters, while their roof has become an observation post. according to Aaron Glantz's article in Antiwar.com, the US military has already seized more than 20,000 Iraqis -- most taken during house-to-house searches -- and placed them behind bars. Glantz also cites anecdotal evidence from Iraqis who claim that American soldiers had beaten women, destroyed houses, rounded up unarmed men for interrogation, and subjected those arrested to inhumane and unhygenic conditions, depriving them of basic human rights.

compared to the violence being unleashed in places such as Falluja and Sadr City, Basra appeared to be one of the more "peaceful" cities in post-war Iraq. however, that assessment can now be tossed into the trashcan of history. as reported yesteday, three police stations and one police academy were attacked by a series of explosions, resulting in at least 68 people dead and many more injured. according to this news report on the Beeb, many of the casualties were actually children travelling in passing buses on their way to school. UK soldiers who tried to assist the casualties were attacked by Iraqi protesters who blamed the British for failing to provide security. Blair, who's clearly on the same hallucinogenic shite that Bush is on, claims that the British troops were coping "extremely well", but as Luke Harding and Richard Norton-Taylor point out in their article in The Guardian, "the sense that the country was descending into chaos and violence was hard to avoid". should it be time for Blair to consider seriously the prospect of bringing back British troops which didn't have to be there in the first place? you bet. after all, according to this report by Ian Traynor and Suzanne Goldenberg in The Guardian, even Dubya's staunchest ally in continental Europe, Poland, as well as the US' "sheriff" in Southeast Asia are both now considering retreats from Iraq. their combined military support to this shambolic war is not insignificant:

Australia has 800 servicemen and women in Iraq, while Poland has a detachment of 2,400 and is in command of 9,500 soldiers from 23 countries, including Spain, in the south-central sector of Iraq that has been rocked by intense insurgency in the past few weeks.

their withdrawals will follow those of Spain, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Thailand. are you listening, Tony? the crisis in Iraq is even prompting some within Washington to propose the reinstatement of the draft, as stated in Bill Van Auken's article in The World Socialist Web Site:

Senator Chuck Hagel (Republican from Nebraska), appearing on NBC television’s 'Today Show' on Wednesday, said that mandatory military service had to be considered in the face of what he described as a "generational war against terrorism."

apparently, Hagel had already expressed the same view during his speech at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. as it is, in order to stretch current resources, the Bush administration has barred members of the military from retiring or resigning, thus compelling them to continue with their service. furthermore, troops in Iraq have been told that they have to continue their tour of duty longer than initially established. as Van Auken points out, while the Bush administration has denied that they plan to revive the draft,

the Bush administration and the military have been conducting a low-profile recruitment campaign in recent months to staff the country’s Selective Service boards with more than 10,000 volunteers. If the draft were reinstated, these boards would have the authority to accept or reject appeals by young men seeking deferments from military service.

in fact, what's even more disturbing and telling is the US military's new focus on American high schools for recruitment drives, as reported by Democracy Now! in an interview with Michael Cervantes, an Army veteran with Veterans for Peace. clearly a new policy to recruit as many young people as possible before they realise what they are getting in for.

Common Dreams has published the remarks made by Senator Robert C. Byrd regarding the continued lack of security and stability in Iraq, as well as the Bush administration's sneaky shifting of funds without Congressional approval from the war in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq. Byrd argues that "[i]In the harsh glare of hindsight, it is now clear that the President's preconceived notions of the war and the aftermath of the war in Iraq were profoundly flawed," and Bush will have to answer some extremely tough questions about Iraq. Byrd deplores Dubya's simplistic manner of looking at the world in terms of absolutes, and states that:

Either-or propositions like those invoked by the President to describe the war in Iraq are nothing more than politically inspired slogans, like last year's ill-advised "Mission Accomplished" banner, designed to whip up emotions while masking the complexity of national security considerations.

...

The fact is, while espousing hard-line rhetoric and iron-clad resolve, this Administration has ducked and bobbed and weaved at every opportunity. In the Administration's ever-shifting explanation for the war in Iraq, the face of our enemy has ricocheted over the past 12 months from Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard to disgruntled Baathist dead-enders to foreign terrorists taking advantage of the unrest in Iraq to pursue their agenda of jihad to today's vague assortment of thugs and fanatics opposed to democracy for Iraq.

he argues strongly for the UN to take a greater role in the occupation, administration, and reconstruction of Iraq. similarly, in his commentary in The Guardian, Jonathan Steele also emphasises the necessity for the UN to take over the reins in Iraq so as to move towards a democratically elected government. Steele points out that it is a good sign that Washington has decided to allow the UN a key role in selecting the interim government to take over on 1st July. the UN's special advisor for Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, has recommended that the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) be dissolved, and an interim government of technocrats headed by a prime minister be instituted instead. Steele notes that since the UN does not have as bad a reputation amongst Iraqis as the occupation forces, the international organisation stands a higher chance of succeeding in its plan. furthermore, Brahimi's recommendation has already received preliminary nods from members of Iraq's civil society, and is also a more feasible structure since it isn't drawn across regional, ethnic and sectarian lines as the IGC is. however, Steele cautions against a cosmetic handover of Iraq to the UN -- if the US remains in control of security issues in Iraq, Steele predicts that this would result in " sovereignty which is severely impaired, a bizarre situation in which an allegedly independent country's army is under foreign command on its own territory."

Norman Solomon's insightful commentary in The Arab News is an indictment of Jim Lehrer, who had made a false claim during his interview programme "NewsHour, which is something absolutely disgraceful and impermissible for a journalist. Solomon cites Lehrer's interview with US Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner on 7th April 2004: in response to Gardiner's statement that the Americans have in fact started the stand-off with Moqtada al-Sadr by shutting down his newspaper, Lehrer interjected that "[t]The reason we shut down his press is because it was calling for violence and anti-American...", claiming that he wanted to "get that on the record." Solomon tried to source for articles which verified al-Sadr's claim, but after scrutinising the two news stories he was referred to, he noted that not only did the articles not confirm that al-Sadr's newspapers had incited violence, but The New York Times had actually stated clearly that "the paper did not print any calls for attacks." apparently, the only citations upon which the journalists of the two stories based their articles were provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Lehrer's refusal to correct his error demonstrate his culpability in further generating spin for the Bush administration, rather than scrutinising the government spin. i guess that means Lehrer wouldn't end up being a "legitimate target" like Al-Jazeera journalists are.

2004-04-21T11:50:00.000Z

Mordechai Vanunu has just been released today from Israel's Shikma Prison after 18 years of incarceration. Vanunu is now freed but not free -- although he has claimed that he has "no further secrets" about Israel's secret nuclear facility to leak, the Israeli authorities claim that he still holds sensitive information, and as such, has restricted his movement and freedom of expression by not allowing him to hold a passport, approach airports and ports, and talk to foreigners without permission. as noted in the editorial in The Guardian, it is probably true that Vanunu's knowledge of Israel's nuclear weaponry is no longer up to date:

The Israeli armed forces now possess missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload up to 1,500 kilometres away, and are developing others with much longer range. They have acquired more than 200 nuclear-capable aircraft, and have completed the land-air-and-sea triad by buying three nuclear-capable submarines. They probably have more nuclear warheads than Britain, including thermonuclear warheads.

the editorial urges Western governments to take stock of their silence towards Israel's nuclear capabilities, particularly since there is now a heightened awareness of WMDs. it argues that since countries such as Iran, Libya and North Korea are being encouraged to reveal the truth about their nuclear weapons, there is no reason why Israel should be allowed to maintain its cloud of ambiguity.

in his in The Los Angeles Times, Daniel Ellsberg rightly states that Mordechai Vanunu should in fact be treated as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era", because his "crime" was to ensure that the world was a safer place, and that his loyalty lay not only with his country, but more importantly, with humanity. Ellsberg also notes that ironically, it is Israel which has "a stronger stake ...in preventing nuclear proliferation, above all in the Middle East," and that Israel's persistent refusal to acknowledge its possession of nuclear weapons is "shortsighted and self-destructive." more whistleblowers like Vanunu are needed to expose the secret weaponry of other countries, Ellsberg asserts:

The cult and culture of secrecy in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu's challenge to that wrongful and dangerous secrecy must be joined worldwide.

as mentioned in my entry yesterday, following the Spanish withdrawal of troops of Iraq, Honduras has also announced that it plans to bring back its 370 soldiers from their service there. now, it appears that the Dominican Republic is planning to withdraw its 300 soldiers as well. meanwhile, it has been announced that Thailand will pull out its 443 non-combat troops from Iraq if they're attacked. the news of these impending pull-outs are evidently blows to the US, and as articulated by Nonna Gorilovskaya in her article in MotherJones, these withdrawals confirm that "the United States has failed to internationalize and legitimize its occupation." however, Washington tries to reassure its home electorate as well as the other countries who have supplied troops to Iraq by continuing to drone on about how it reckons "the coalition is still strong (according to Colin Powell), and how things in Iraq are looking up. well, certainly not in the case of Falluja, where the US has threatened to launch a new offensive unless the Iraqi gunmen surrender soon. despite ongoing negotiations between Iraqi negotiators and insurgents, Rummy is playing down the prospect of successful peace talks. even more recently, at least 55 people have been killed after a series of explosions ripped through three police stations and a police academy in Basra this morning during rush hour.

as Patrick Cockburn observes in his commentary in The Independent (reprinted in The Arab News), the American position has deteriorated significantly over the past two weeks. he cites his encounter with some Shia pilgrims as an example -- the men turned out to be soldiers in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (a paramilitary body which the US had be training with urgency to replace American soldiers), but were quick to point out that they would fight for the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr if their religious leaders tell them to do so. Cockburn also notes that the US military faced increasing opposition even within the Iraqi forces which they had trained:

Across Iraq in the last fortnight, the US Army has discovered to its horror that the 200,000 men in police, paramilitary and army units are not prepared to fight for the US against fellow Iraqis. An army battalion mutinied rather than go to Fallujah. In the cities of the south, the police melted away, often handing over their weapons to Sadr’s Army of the Mehdi.

Cockburn also cites an incident where he witnessed the ambush of American petrol tankers on a road which was already under the Iraqi insurgents' control, but which the Americans had no clue of simply because they no longer had serious allies (aside from the Kurds with their own agenda to fulfil) who would let them know. because the US have alienated and antagonised the Iraqis, there is no particular group with any legitimacy in Iraq which can take over from the US come 30th June:

The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, its credibility never high, has been further discredited. It has taken incompetence of a high order for the US to become so isolated in Iraq. The fighters in Fallujah and Muqtada Sadr never previously enjoyed majority support in their own communities.

the only viable way forward, Cockburn argues, is to establish a provisional authority whose main task is to hold elections first and foremost. a democratically elected government would be the only body capable of making decisions which Iraqis will be able to agree on, and unless the Bush administration allows for the real "liberation" of Iraq, the chaos in Iraq will simply fester and grow.

one important aspect of a "liberated" country should be the existence of journalistic rights and the freedom to report, and Arthur Neslen argues in his article in The Guardian the US' claims of bringing "freedom" and "democracy" to Iraq are discredited when it targets news media such as Al-Jazeera, which has a track record of accurate and bold reporting. the channel has not flinched despite criticisms and intimidations by the US focrs, and has continued to broadcast the truth which Iraqis on the ground are well familiar with: that US snipers have fired at women and children, that many civilians have been killed indiscriminately. to quote Neslen:

Democratising the Middle East may have been the neo-cons' case for the conquest of Iraq. But on the ground, the US is acting against the flowering of Middle East media freedom, which al-Jazeera initiated.

Neslen further notes that the targeting of Al-Jazeera is "all the more remarkable, given that it is the only Arab TV network to routinely offer Israeli, US and British officials a platform to argue their case." while Al-Jazeera's reputation for honesty, accuracy and pluralism has resulted in it being "vilified, criminalised and bombed", it is also precisely the reason why it should be supported and defended by those who believe in the importance of an independent media in a supposedly "free" society.

Khaled M. Batarfihttp://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=43312&d=18&m=4&y=2004&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion" target="_new">contribution in The Arab News is a bitter attack on the American propaganda machine and its shameless double standards:

Why is the burning of four mercenaries from Blackwater, a US-owned, Israeli-run security firm, such a terrible crime, while scorching tens of thousands with B52 firestorms is just a war? Why is bombing Palestinians and Afghan villages, mosques and schools restoring civil order, but bombing a bus or a cafe is barbaric? Why, when asked about the human cost of Vietnam, Americans tend to count only the 50,000 American casualties and forget the millions of murdered Vietnamese?

he deplores the US' practice of ignoring the Iraqi casualty rate, and argues that it is not the soldiers but the Bush administration which should be held responsible for the perpetuation of these myths.

however, with Bush's appointment of John Negroponte as the new US ambassador to Iraq after the handover on 30th June and the departure of Paul Bremer, the future looks exceptionally bleak. for one, it's important to scrutinise Negroponte's diplomatic track record. as Bill Van Auken states in his analysis in The World Socialist Web Site:

[Negroponte] has an intimate familiarity with mass killing, covert operations and death squads. Negroponte’s 'experience and skill' lie not in spreading 'freedom and peace,' as Bush piously declared, but rather in organizing bloody repression—from Vietnam to Central America and elsewhere.

one should remember that Negroponte was heading the US embassy in Honduras when the Reagan administration was waging a dirty war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and the popular insurgency in El Salvador. during this period, Honduras became a base of operations for the CIA-backed Contra war against the Sandinistas, resulting in the loss of more than 50,000 lives. Negroponte had also allegedly suppressed any reporting of human rights violations during this period, even though many people had apparently "vanished" and prisoners were apparently tortured by the Honduras military.

essentially, the role of Negroponte as "ambassador" in Iraq goes beyond that of an ambassador -- to quote Van Auken:

Negroponte’s true job description is not that of a diplomat dealing with a sovereign state. Rather, he is to function as an imperial proconsul, wielding unfettered power over a militarily occupied country. The embassy he is to direct will be the largest ever assembled by any country in the world, with a staff of close to 4,000. Initially to be housed in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, it will act as the US colonial administration.

it would hardly be surprising if Negroponte decides to reprise these strategies to quell any opposition in the Iraqi populace.

now, here's a very interesting piece written by Jason Vest of The Village Voice, in which he studies a leaked Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March 2004, which states in no uncertain terms that the situation in Iraq is hardly as rosy as the Bush administration claims it is. the author of the memo, a US government official stationed in Iraq, pointed out that he feared that US efforts "have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war." while the author is undeniably a supporter of the unjustified war against Iraq, as well as the occupation of the country, his descriptions of the situation in Iraq illustrate the dire situation there:

The memo is gloomy in most other respects, portraying a country mired in dysfunction and corruption, overseen by a CPA that "handle(s) an issue like six-year-olds play soccer: Someone kicks the ball and one hundred people chase after it hoping to be noticed, without a care as to what happens on the field."

even more significantly, the author of the memo makes mention of the presence of corruption and cronyism within the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC):

In retrospect," the memo asserts, "both for political and organizational reasons, the decision to allow the Governing Council to pick 25 ministers did the greatest damage. Not only did we endorse nepotism, with men choosing their sons and brothers-in-law; but we also failed to use our prerogative to shape a system that would work . . . our failure to promote accountability has hurt us."

he also names at least four Iraqi ministers who are guilty of accepting "kickbacks", and argues that the US is just as responsible as the accused in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis.

the author also rebukes Paul Bremer's policy of staying in and ruling from Baghdad through a central Governing Council, claiming that it has resulted in a "desperation to dominate Baghdad, and an absolutism born of regional isolation." he also criticises the frivolous use of resources by the US government -- for instance, in purchasing SUVs simply to transport officials between the CPA and IGC headquarters -- and also condemns the harsh gun-toting image of American troops, as it results in Iraqis being unwilling to talk or assist. any improvement in life in Iraq, he claims, "happens despite us rather than because of us."

the memo also includes portions where the author affirms the fact that the lack of planning by the US for the post-war period has led to destabilisation and chaos, and also validates the point made in the US Army War College's report, "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario": that "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious," and that more focus has to be put on the political complexities of a post-Saddam Iraq, where religious and ethnic lines will become more pronounced.

i have not written about Tony Blair's volte-face regarding his stance on the EU constitution previously -- i'd assumed that most people would have kept up to date on the matter. briefly: Blair has rescinded his previous anti-referendum stance, and issued a statement asserting his new pro-EU position, as well as calling for a referendum to be held on the new European Constitution, drawn up to accomodate the new members of the Union when membership expands from the current 15 to 25. naturally, this has ignited the ire of the Euro-sceptic Tories, with leader of the Conservative Party Michael Howard mercilessly mocking Blair for his about-turn, as reported by Kirsty Buchanan in The Western Mail (Wales):

"Marched up to the top of the hill by the Prime Minister to oppose a referendum just three weeks ago, then marched down again today - the loyal foot-soldiers of the Grand Old Duke of Spin.

"So now that the Prime Minister has been forced, by popular opinion and parliamentary pressure, to eat so many of his words - let him answer these three fundamental questions.

"First, will he tell the House why he has changed his mind?

Was it because he knew he was hurtling towards defeat in the European elections in June?

"Or was it because he knew he could not win the argument at the next General Election?

"Perhaps he will tell the House if his change of heart is a product of principle or a decision based purely on opportunism?"

Jonathan Freedland points out in his commentary in The Guardian that Blair seems oblivious to the fact that he is making a blatant U-turn; rather, he seems to believe this "reverse gear" is his way of "pushing forward", simply because he is convinced of his own rectitude. as Freedland rightly observes, Blair seems to share Bush's (and ex-Iraqi Information Minister al-Sahaf's) knack to "deny reality and keep smiling." Dubya has exhibited his forte in making assertions that seem to "stand at almost surreal odds with the truth" when he insists that "Iraq will be free, Iraq will be independent" -- whilst everything that has transpired has exposed the fact that the US is adamant to retain control over Iraq directly or indirectly. Freedland notes that Iraq is not the only "Orwellian zone where black is white and day is night", and sees the same doublespeak recurring in the Bush administration's dabbling in the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. Freedland argues that rather than believe that the Bush-and-Blair show is one that stems from dishonesty, it does seem that both of them have actually "created a moral universe with an internal logic of its own," such that the UK and US as become the paternal moral and political arbitrators of Iraq, with anyone opposed to their actions labelled an enemy straightaway.

in his commentary featured in The Independent, Massoud Derhally notes that Bush's and Blair's unequivocal support for Ariel Sharon's shambolic "disengagement" plan, coupled with Israel's unlawful belligerence in the assassination of Abdel Aziz Rantissi, would only increase Arab resentment of the US, as well as lead to the "proliferation of Osama bin Ladens." furthermore, the US' policy to "court Israel with open arms" consequently alienates some important Arab allies, such as Jordan's King Abdullah (who, as Deborah Ziff reports in MotherJones, has also snubbed the US by refusing to meet with Bush until "discussions and deliberations are concluded with officials in the American administration to clarify the American position on the peace process and the final situation in the Palestinian territories, especially in light of the latest statements by officials in the American administration."). because of the mess which the Americans have perpetuated in the Middle East(cf. Israeli-Palestinian conflict, war in Iraq, etc.), it's no surprise that the Arab world is disenchanted and "sees nothing but unfulfilled US promises, a Bush administration that is disconnected from the realities on the ground, and an intransigent Israel." Derhally concludes that both the US and UK:

must grasp that for peace to prevail, for the hostilities to abate, the US needs to create a win-win situation where Palestinians are granted their inalienable rights, a life free from occupation, where they are treated as equals by their Jewish neighbours. Only then will America be viewed as a credible mediator.

last but not least, Salam Pax has submitted another article in The Guardian, where he talks about the increase in Iraqis' open antagonism towards the occupation forces and misfirings by the resistance which have resulted in civilian casualties. his descriptions of how one has to take extra caution so as to stay alive in post-war Iraq clearly demonstrate the extreme danger and latent anger present in the country.

2004-04-20T11:14:00.000Z

Mordechai Vanunu is due to be released tomorrow after 18 years in prison (11 of which were in solitary confinement) for exposing Israel's nuclear programme. however, his freedom of movement will be severely curtailed -- he can't talk to foreigners, can't obtain a visa to travel abroad, etc. however, the Israeli authorities have just released a videotape of Vanunu at an interrogation by security officials, expressing his defiance and making some supposedly controversial remarks (for instance, that there shouldn't be a Jewish state, but rather a Palestinian one -- though if you think about it, he's perfectly right: the state should not be one defined by its religious affiliations, but rather a geographical entity that allows for both Jews and Palestinians to live side by side... and given that the territory was called Palestine in any case before the West decided to carve it up on their own accord after the second World War to appeace the Jews, there is no reason why the Palestinian identity of the land should therefore be completely eradicated). families and supporters of Vanunu are understandly distraught by the release of this tape, as it would probably anger Israelis who would see him as a traitor.

whilst we're on the topic of Israel, do take a look at George Monbiot's startling commentary in The Guardian, where he talks about the small but influential Christian fundamentalist interest groups in the US, and how these people -- which include key members of the Bush administration, such as John Ashcroft and Tom DeLay -- are the main drivers of Bush's hardline (and bonkers) Middle East policy. these Christian fundies are fervent believers that Israel should have undivided claim over Jerusalem and the West Bank, that the Arab states are to take in all Palestinian refugees, and that Israel can do as it wishes to combat terrorism. furthermore, they believe in an event known as The Rapture (not the band, mind... you can find out more about the barminess of these fundies at the Rapture Ready site) -- not only would believers get to float up to heaven after disrobing (they'd be so lucky, ha), they will sit at the right hand of some anthropocentric God and watch as their political and religious enemies are subject to horrendous torture. might sound like the script for a Monty Python flick, but as Monbiot states, these people constitute 15 percent of Dubya's voting constituency, and also have members of their community sitting in important decision-making positions in the White House. this explains in part why Dubya (himself supposedly an emissary of God, as he would have us know, George the Bringer of "Freedom", eh?) seems almost like a banana state of Israel, by formulating such pro-Israel policies which has utterly destroyed the US' role as the mediator in the Middle East. to quote Monbiot:

Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.

as Richard Dreyfuss notes in his commentary in TomPaine.com, Bob Woodward has mentioned in his book Plan of Attack: The Road to War (currently serialised here in The Washington Post) as well as on the programme 60 Minutes that Bush had honestly believed that he was doing the "Almighty's" work by attacking Iraq. to quote Dreyfuss:

Bob Woodward presented a terrifying picture of a president obsessed. Bush demonized Saddam, creating a Manichean world in which America was a God-inspired nation combating the Beelzebub-led hell of Iraq.

in his article featured in The Nation, David Corn looks at Woodward's arguments, and sieves out one extremely important fact: not only had the Texan short shrub already decided by 11th January 2003 that the US was going to invade Iraq, he'd informed the Saudis before even bothering to inform his Secretary of State Colin Powell. just as surprisingly:

when Bush got around to sharing his decision with Powell, no such conversation ensued. Powell merely noted there will be "consequences." Bush did not ask for details. Nor did the two discuss what to do about such "consequences."

Corn deduces that this lack of communication and discussion about something as important as waging a war demonstrates the "overall shallowness that infected Bush administration deliberations on the topic of war in Iraq." furthermore, Bush was evidently adamant to attack Iraq, with or without solid evidence of WMDs. the fact that he didn't bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq himself (which would have told him that although the NIE believe that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, many analysts took exception to these findings) shows his insouciance and disregard for research or justifications for the invasion.

Robert Scheer writes in his opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times that much as Dubya would like to think that he's "doing the Lord's will" by waging what he calls a "crusade", he has no right to disregard the US Constitution, which specifies that only Congress has the authority to allocate funds and to declare war. however, in secretly misappropriating US$700 million which was to be used to restore order to Afghanistan and put it toward planning an invasion of Iraq, Scheer argues that Bush is in fact impeachable. Dubya has not only "rejected the checks and balances installed by the nation's founders" to steer clear of war, he has shown complete disregard for international opinions and institutions, and instead seems to "relish his role as an avenging Christian crusader who seeks — under the guiding hand of the Almighty — to cleanse the Arab world of 'evildoers'." he deplores the continued occupation of Iraq, particularly after a war fought on unjustified grounds:

After the bloodiest month of the entire war and occupation, we are told by the nation's media and political elites that we must "stay the course," "get it right" and, in the words of the president himself, "honor the fallen." How do we honor the fallen by sending more soldiers to die in a war based on lies now amply documented by insiders?

while the Texan midget shrub has refused to condemn Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al Rantissi, it appears that Blair has opened a rift with the US by coming outright to condemn the assassination, according to this report by Ewen MacAskill and Patrick Wintour in The Guardian. maybe it's Blair's desperate attempt to shore up support -- according to this report by Alan Travis in The Guardian, the latest polls show that the past month of chaos in Iraq has led to public opinion in the UK swing sharply against Blair, with 48% now claiming that the war was not justified at all. still, this is somewhat surprising given that Blair could have left the criticism to Jack Straw (who had already condemned the act), and considering the comment comes from an individual who had backed Sharon's "disengagement" plan, it does seem almost incongruous. however, Blair is quick to state that he sees Sharon's plan as merely the first step towards a final settlement as outlined in the so-called road map. what Blair doesn't seem to realise (or rather, to admit) is that Bush doesn't seem to have any plans in furthering the course for the Middle East peace process, and has already played Blair out most embarassingly by backing Sharon's unfair plan in any case.

Richard Norton-Taylor also observes in his commentary in The Guardian that Blair's purported "decisive influence" on the Bush administration in keeping the latter committed on the Middle East road map, in exchange from the UK's active involvement in Iraq, has shown to be minute, if any at all. similarly with reference to Iraq, the UK seems to be unable to influence the Americans in any significant way, and in fact, Blair's decision to enter the war despite the escape route offered by Bush (for the UK not to send troops to Iraq initially) has resulted in a "deep unease" within the British government. Taylor cites the example of the US decision to dismiss the entire Iraqi army and subsequently insist that they are not engaged by the occupying forces -- a decision taken by Rummy despite the initial British proposal to negotiate with senior Iraqi officers, so as to keep them in the Iraqi army and Republican Guard to help maintain law and order under the supervision of senior officers from the occupying force. the US decision has since proven to be a disaster, resulting in widespread and uncontrolled chaos in Iraq. to further stir the anger in Whitehall, there've been reports of British officers being miffed with their American counterparts for their brutality and lack of respect for the rule of law in Iraq. given that it's also becoming blatantly clear that there are no WMDs, nor is there a link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, it's no wonder that Whitehall officials are becoming more furious by the day. it would therefore be appropriate for them to question the value of the so-called "special relationship" between the US and the UK.

back in Iraq, it looks like there're more signs of cooperation between the Sunni and Shia insurgents, as evidenced in Barbara Plett's report in BBC News. to quote Mohammed Odeh, a young Sunni who's fighting in the Mahdi army, the militia led by the Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, "I came to strengthen our religion and prove to the Americans we are one people." furthermore, Shias have been actively donating food to Sunni mosques which are organising aid conveys to Falluja. this is beyond the worst nightmare of the occupation forces, who now not only have to fight on separate fronts, but against fighters who are abandoning their historic grudge against each other to combat the occupiers of their land. however, as Plett points out, the two conflicts in Falluja and Sadr City have differences -- while Falluja has long been the stronghold of Sunni resistence and had even been a thorn in the flesh for Saddam Hussein, the conflict in Sadr City is a direct result of the US crackdown on Sadr's movement, and fueled by Shia discontent. while the Sunnis are adamant to force an American withdrawal or recognition as credible Sunni representatives, al-Sadr's aim appears to be to increase his influence in the Shia regions. as such, Plett concludes that this is "[n]ot so much a national resistance than, as perhaps the seeds of a new national identity, built on what's common to both." nevertheless, the Americans - "whether through stupidity or ill thought out design", to quote Iraqi analyst Wamid Nathmi - have managed to forge a union between the two camps, something which previous Iraqi leaders have never managed to do.

furthermore, as evidenced in Rahul Mahajan's entry in his wonderful blog Empire Notes, the bombing of Falluja by the US military didn't just stop at killing civilians, but had also destroyed integral civilian institutions such as hospitals and power stations, as well as resulted in the closure of key roads and bridges. doctors have had to rush out to the streets to tend to the casualties, which meant they had limited equipment and supplies, and the inadequacy of the set-up led to the loss of numerous lives. Mahajan also reports that an important hospital in Najaf called the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital was closed by the Spanish-language 'Plus Ultra' garrison , purportedly because "the hospital overlooks the Plus Ultra’s base, and that the roof could be used by resistance snipers." the US had also restricted the operation of hospitals and essential medical assistance in other ways, for instance, by targeting ambulances (this was mentioned earlier in another entry). there are also allegations that US troops would visit hospitals asking for information, with the intention of removing potential resistance members and interrogating them. Mahajan points out that:

While the American media talks of the great restraint and “pinpoint precision” of the American attack, over 700 people, at least half of them civilians, have been killed in Fallujah. And, according to the Ministry of Health, in the last two weeks, at least 290 were killed in other cities, over 30 of them children. Many of those who died because of the hospital closures will never be added in to the final tally of the 'liberation.'

the killing of Iraqi civilians appear to be a strategy used by the US military to keep the ratio of enemy dead to American soldiers dead as high as possible, a figure which can later be used for political ends to placate its home electorate. however, the attack of hospitals and shooting of ambulances are clearly war crimes, and the US should be held responsible for its atrocious acts. moreover, as Mahajan states, the US brutality will mean that not only are the occupation forces unable to control Iraq, but resistance to the US forces would certainly rise in the face of such injustice and inhumanity.

meanwhile, according to this report in Al-Jazeera, al-Sadr has issued a statement urging his followers to stop attacking Spanish troops, following Madrid's announcement that it plans to withdraw its 1,300-strong troops as soon as possible. the US is trying to play down Madrid's decision to withdraw, claiming that "[o]n the military point of view, it's not a large problem. We certainly have sufficient capabilities and we'll certainly have more countries coming." oh aye? since we're dabbling in the world of reversed-logic with the deluded Bush administration, i guess it explains why Honduras President Ricardo Maduro has just announced that the country's 368 troops in Iraq will be withdrawn pronto, eh? in any case, Dubya has wasted no time in chiding Zapatero for his decision, claiming that the Spanish withdrawl gives "false comfort to terrorists." right. if you're not with us, you're against us. it's hard to forget that Bush is living in a straightforward Western.

in his commentary in The Washington Post, Chas W. Freeman Jr. also focuses on the hubris of the Bush administration, and argues that "[a]rrogant daydreams that inspire military actions can become humiliating nightmares that produce political debacles." Freeman has plenty of experience in the Middle East -- he was the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War waged by Papa Bush, and then became the assistant secretary of Defense from 1993 to 1994, before undertaking the post of the president of the Middle East Policy Council, which he still holds today. as such, Freeman would certainly be an authority to pay attention to with regards to Middle East strategy, and he has already noted that post-Saddam Iraq has become "an Arab zone of anarchy under foreign occupation," with the so-called transfer of power slated for 30th June being merely illusory. he predicts that the idea of an Iraqi civilian authority with little or no legitimacy coexisting with an unpopular foreign occupation force over which it has no control is absolutely untenable, and Iraq will erupt into a "guerrilla war against U.S. forces, coupled with the progressive collapse of the successor regime to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), and conjoined with jockeying for position in the civil war to follow US military withdrawal."

apparently, Bush's media flag-wavers Fox News has persistently referred to US troops killed on duty in Iraq are "dying in the war on terrorism." in his opinion piece in The Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob G. Hornberger rebukes Fox's response, arguing that it is "embracing the government’s attempt to morph its 'war on terrorism' with its unprovoked war of choice against Iraq.":

[I]sn’t there a difference between Middle East terrorists who are retaliating for prior acts of U.S. foreign policy and Iraqi insurgents who are simply resisting a foreign occupation of their country?

the US troops are not dying for this shambolic "war on terrorism", which is after all just a blanket term bandied around by the Bush administration to justify just about every single illegal and unjust action it launches into. rather, these soldiers are dying to maintain a military occupation, so that Dubya and his cronies can keep a hold of Iraq and prevent Iraqis from determining their own fate like a democracy would allow for.

nevertheless, the occupation forces' treatment of the media seems to be almost schizophrenic at the moment. of course, we know how the US military seems to regard journalists as legitimate targets -- think 8th April 2003, Palestine Hotel in Baghdad; think of the various other journalists killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war on 20th March 2003. so while the US is whinging that Al-Jazeera is "putting troops at risk" (simply because the channel has the guts to broadcast the truth about Iraqi civilian casualties), American soldiers are reported to have killed two employees of the US-funded (i.e. US-friendly) Al-Iraqiya, as well as wound another one in Samarra. either the US military can't suss out what their policy is, or it is true that they are just targeting journalists and civilians willy-nilly. some "liberation" this is.

2004-04-19T12:42:00.000Z

late news -- but i'm sure you would have heard about the latest Israeli assassination, this time of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who was killed in a targeted Israeli missile strike on his car. Hamas has announced that it has appointed a new leader, but have kept his identity under wraps for security reasons. not surprisingly, the Israeli act of atrocity has spurred Hamas supporters, and the organisation has vowed to take revenge for the Israeli killings of Rantissi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (who was killed on 22nd March this year). around the world, various leaders (with the clear exception of Dubya, of course) have voiced their consternation, with EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana reiterating that the act of assassination is unlawful, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stating that "extrajudicial killings are violations of international law." even Jack Straw has come out to condemn the killing, calling it "unlawful, unjustified and counter-productive", as reported by Conal Urquhart and Gaby Hinsliff in The Observer. the US, on the other hand, is seen as "the guiding hand and supporter of Israel" by many in the Palestinian territories, to quote Conal Urquhart in his report published in The Guardian, and the fury of the Palestinians are targeted not only at Israel but at its primary backer, the US.

in fact, in his commentary in The Guardian, Afif Safieh accuses Bush and Blair for letting Israel dictate their Middle East policy. while he admits that Blair has a more muted (or sophisticated) approach towards the Middle East conflict, he notes that Bush has essentially allowed US policy to play into the hands of Israel's political strategy:

The collusion between the US and Israeli agendas has put America on a collision course with the Arab World, which now perceives the US as Israel's belligerent Sparta and the aim of American foreign policy to be docility, not democracy.

Sharon's purported "disengagement" plan from the Gaza Strip is not in any way a means to accomodate the Palestinians and allow for a two-state solution, but rather, as Sharon himself had pointed out in a recent interview, his plan is not a reward to the Palestinians but one of punishment. in effect, the Palestinians will be ghettoized in their own lands -- they will not be allowed to operate a port or airport, and Israel will retain control of territorial water and airspace, as well as border controls. although Safieh is able to see why Bush would use support for Sharon as a way to win votes from the strong Jewish lobby in the US, he fails to understand Blair's "enthusiasm for Sharon's machinations and his conviction that they are in harmony with the road map," particularly since the majority of the British people are more sympathetic to the Palestinian and Israeli position.

as observed in the editorial in The Guardian, in killing both leaders of Hamas, it would appear that Israel intends to decapitate the leadership of Hamas before pulling out from the Gaza strip (despite the denials of the Israeli leadership that it is adopting this strategy). however, the editorial in The Arab News angrily condemns the fact that there are two laws in the Middle East: "One for the Israelis, where murder, whether of Sheikh Yassin or Rantissi, is justifiable revenge; and one for the Palestinians, where revenge is always unjustifiable." it states that such double standards -- supported by countries such as the US -- will only perpetuate the disaster in the Middle East, especially since the Palestinians find themselves still victimised, whilst the Israelis believe that they can get away with anything:

Every Israeli outrage, and every reaction to it, seem to both sides to bear out what they have always believed. Both sides become ever more firmly convinced that violence is the only language the other side understands.

in his opinion piece in The Observer, Henry Porter reminds Blair that as former US Defence Secretary S. McNamara said, "America has no friends, only allies", and that this was evident in the way Bush had ungraciously left Blair out of the White House's negotiations with Sharon:

The 'Road Map' and the promise of multilateral action in Palestine and the West Bank were, after all, the only real concession that Blair won in exchange for British help in Iraq. Yet before he had even touched down in America, the deal was done. Bush's undertaking to his 'friend' had been chucked away like a motto in Christmas cracker.

Porter rejects Blair's claim that Sharon's plan is "stage one of the 'Road Map'", given that it is already in audacious defiance to UN Security Council resolution 242, which states clearly that Israel has to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. the point is that the Bush administration's strategy for the Middle East is an undeniable failure, and Blair has followed Dubya at every step to his own political peril.

Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has kept to his campaign promise to bring back Spanish troops from Iraq, but will not be waiting till the end of June (as early stipulated) to do so -- according to this report on the BBC, Spain's foreign minister told his Egyptian counterpart the pull-out for its 1,300 troops would be "within 15 days". Juan Cole astutely points out in the latest entry in his blog that one of the reasons for Zapatero's eagerness to get the Spanish troops out of Iraq promptly is that Spanish troops are currently stationed around Najaf, which at the moment,

has a Coalition bull's eye painted on it in all the satellite photos. This could be the epicenter of a vast earthquake if fighting should escalate between the Coalition and the Army of the Mahdi, because of the city's central religious importance.

in fact, Najaf's already like a pressure cooker ready to explode. the situation continues to be tense, with 2,500 US soldiers surrounding the town with orders to kill or capture Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, according to this report in Al-Jazeera. this has resulted in a heightened situation of danger for civilians there, who have complained that "their lives and livelihoods were at risk with shops closed and streets around the city's shrines crowded with gunmen instead of pilgrims".

it has also emerged that Blair was given three opportunity by the Bush White House to keep British troops out of Iraq at no political cost, according to Suzanne Goldenberg's report in The Guardian, but he'd instead refused Bush's offer. this information is gleaned from a new publication by Bob Woodword (himself a former Watergate journalist) entitled Plan of Attack: The Road to War, in which Woodward also states that Blair was willing to commit British troops to the war since 7th September 2002, five days before Bush appeared before the UN to seek international sanction for an aggressive weapons inspections regime in Iraq. one wonders if it's his bravado or dogged belief in the US which led Blair to commit his fellow countrymen to a dangerous operation which was unlawful and unjust to begin with. however, Woodward also adds that while Blair was "better placed to effect decision-making in the White House than other world leaders", his influence seems to have been "severely limited".

meanwhile in Iraq, four more US soldiers have been killed in attacks in southern and western Iraq this weekend, as reported in Al-Jazeera. it has also been reported by Lisa Ashkenaz Croke of Yellowtimes that US forces are holding about 200 Iraqi soldiers from the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps who had refused to participate in the siege on Falluja.

Ibrahim Nawwar has written a strong condemnation of the post-Saddam Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Al-Ahram Weekly. he rightly points out that the CPA's inability to establish law and order one year after the fall of Saddam clearly shows that the US policy in post-Saddam Iraq is "a complete failure", and that in fact, rather than "liberation", the Bush administration is in effect pushing Iraq to become an American colony, which is neither democratic nor independent, with decisions made by the Interim Governing Council (ICG) being overturned to suit American purposes. he cites the specific case in point of the establishment of the Iraqi Media Network (IMN), which serves as a "propaganda machine; a simple PR tool and lie-producing factory", rather than an umbrella body for independent media. furthermore, there have been increasing casualties amongst journalists in Iraq, oftentimes caused by the US military.

while Nawwar agrees that the immediate withdrawl of US forces seems impractical given the state of chaos Iraq is in, as Graham Usher notes in his article in Al-Ahram Weekly, Bush faces a dilemma:

Should he resort to force as a demonstration of "American resolve", he will cause greater casualties, bring about a further collapse of the IGC and the Iraqi police forces and generate outrage throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. Should he turn to political solutions, he will be granting legitimacy to those Iraqi forces most opposed to the occupation and fuel the nascent nationalism they are starting to embody.

thus, defeat in Iraq for the White House is inevitable, and Dubya and his war-mongering acolytes have unleashed exactly the situation they were trying to avoid: the forging of a cohesive Iraqi identity between groups that used to be at loggerheads with one another.

this thesis is propounded in Martin Jacques' analysis in The Guardian as well, where he cites the case of US' defeat by the Vietnamese as a case in point:

The Vietnamese struggle pitted the world's most powerful military machine against a profoundly poor nation of 80 million, whose only weapon was people's war...It is, perhaps, not surprising that every imperial nation during the past 60 years has profoundly underestimated the ability of a poor people to resist overwhelming military force. With wealth not only goes military power but also overweening hubris, a sense of arrogant superiority in the face of the backward and the uncivilised, the alien and the Other.

Jacques is spot-on in his observation that what lies at the core of "the people's war" is the sheer desire of the people of the land to rule over themselves, rather than have an extraneous power impose its will on them. similarly, this situation is becoming more evident by the day in Iraq, where the Anglo-American forces were not greeted as "liberators", but as "occupiers". the resistence is not the straggling group of pro-Saddamists and foreign fighters that the Bush administration would like to have us believe, but are rather a broadbased group of people who simply do not want to become the next American colony.

Charles Kennedy (leader of the Lib Dems) has contributed a sharp commentary in The Observer, arguing against Blair and Bush's insistence that Iraq is " the front line in an uncompromising 'war' against terrorism." opposition to the coalition, Kennedy points out, should not be equated with terrorism -- what Iraq is experiencing is nascent nationalism rather than Islamic terrorism, but should the occupation forces continue to utilise violence against civilians as a tool, this would only promote fanaticism. like many other commentators, Kennedy calls for a broad-based participation of Iraqi interest groups and the involvement of the UN in order to create a transitional government that can be regarded as legitimate. Kennedy also rejects Blair's complicity in remaining silent in the face of US endorsement of Sharon's shambolic "disengagement" plan, especially since Blair had used the so-called Middle East road map as a bargaining chip to gain support for the UK's active involvement in the war in Iraq.

back in the US, the Bush administration is facing increasing pressure from an anxious Congress, which has summoned officials to testify on their plans for quelling violence in Iraq and for handing power over to Iraqis by 30th June, as reported by Mary Curtius of The Los Angeles Times. as Curtius notes, although Congress is controlled by Republicans and these hearings would not be anything as dramatic as the testimonies of the September 11th Commission, Republican lawmakers would be hoping that the hearings would provide them with some justification or semblance of a strategy to present to disgruntled constituents, while Democrats would be quick to seize upon the holes in the Bush administration's testimony.

in his opinion piece in The New York Times, Bob Herbert argues that it is the "height of absurdity" when American troops "continue to fight courageously and sometimes die... in the wrong war." he refers to Bob Woodword's book, Plan of Attack: The Road to War, where Woodward claims that Dubya had Rummy to draw up plans for a war against Iraq three months after the September 11 attacks, and had insisted that these plans be done in "the greatest of secrecy", even withholding information from Condi Rice and Colin Powell. as Herbert states, the Texan short shrub has "made the world less safe with his catastrophic decision to wage war in Iraq," by waging war against a helpless people, whilst energising the real enemies by delaying concrete action against the terrorists. he concludes:

The administration and its apologists spread fantasies of a fresh dawn of freedom emerging in Iraq and spreading across the Arab world. Instead we are spilling the blood of innocents in a nightmare from which many thousands will never awaken.

Robert Fisk's commentary featured in The Independent (reprinted in Zmag) is a vehement condemnation of Dubya's policies in the Middle East, with Fisk asserting that Bush is "more frightened of the Israeli lobby than he is of his own electorate." Fisk also notes the language used by the Bush administration in its hyperbole about Iraq: that the US is bringing "freedom" to the country:

Not "democracy" in Iraq. No, "democracy" was no longer mentioned. "Democracy" was simply left out of the equation. Now it was just "freedom" - freedom from Saddam rather than freedom to have elections. And what is this "freedom" supposed to involve? One group of American-appointed Iraqis will cede power to another group of American-appointed Iraqis. That will be the "historic handover" of Iraqi "sovereignty". Yes, I can well see why George Bush wants to witness a "handover" of sovereignty. "Our boys" must be out of the firing line - let the Iraqis be the sandbags.

Fisk looks at Bush's claim that it is "unrealistic" to have the Israelis return stolen land back to the Palestinians, and argue that the same logic can be used in various historical situations to justify totally absurd claims to land, whilst relying on some amorphous idea that "God" has bestowed the land on us:

What Bush has actually done is give way to the crazed world of Christian Zionism. The fundamentalist Christians who support Israel's theft of the West Bank on the grounds that the state of Israel must exist there according to God's law until the second coming, believe that Jesus will return to earth and the Israelis - for this is the Bush "Christian Sundie" belief - will then have to convert to Christianity or die in the battle of Amargeddon.

as Fisk rightly asserts, whatever pathetic shred of credibility that the US government had as a "middle-man" and broker in the Middle East peace process has now been squandered. Bush has repeatedly defied international law, and has a disturbing insouciance towards his unjust and morally repulsive actions. the world for Dubya has a strictly black-or-white distinction, and therefore, anyone who's not actively supporting this shambolic war in Iraq is labelled a "terrorist supporter" -- an allegation which is puerile, absolutely immature and unbecoming for the leader of the world's only superpower.

2004-04-16T10:56:00.000Z

any possibility of a cessation in the standoff between Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the occupation forces is bleak, particularly with the killing of a senior Iranian diplomat in Iraq, Khalil Naimi, who had been trying to mediate between the US-led authorities and al-Sadr. meanwhile, 2,500 US troops have amassed near Najaf, and may just ignore Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's warning against going into the holy city, where al-Sadr is now hiding. Rory McCarthy from The Guardian, who is currently in Najaf, reports about the tensed and explosive atmosphere in a city which is traditionally more supportive of moderates like Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani than firebrands like al-Sadr, but which is now waiting to retaliate should there be a US attack against their homes.

meanwhile, the hostage crisis seems to be easing -- the Association of Muslim Scholars (which is the highest Sunni authority in Iraq) has intervened to plead for calm and an end to the bloodshed. this has led to the release of the three Japanese hostages.

Dubya isn't scoring brownie points at home though, not with the announcement that 20,000 soldiers in Iraq will have their tour of duty extended, in a bid to quell the Iraqi insurgency. Rummy told a press briefing that "essentially, we have approved the extension of roughly 20,000 forces, people who are currently in the theatre." theatre? what theatre? must be the one in Rummy's greasy head, since he continues to insist that the US was "winning the war in Iraq" -- this despite having more than 80 soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis slaughtered this month. and his response to evidence of these killings being shown on Arabic channels such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya? "Vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable," he persistently retorts. Rummy has clearly outdone the ex-Iraqi information minister al-Sahaf, but seriously, the joke is wearing thin. in any case, many families of troops in Iraq aren't finding this amusing at all. Benjamin Duncan reports in Al-Jazeera that the Bush administration is facing increasing pressure from these families to end the occupation and bring their loved ones home. these family have banded together under Military Families Speak Out, an organisation of about 1500 military families with children and spouses serving in Iraq, some of whom have already died in combat, and have been staging demonstrations outside the White House. the escalating violence in Iraq, prolongation of troops' stay in a hostile land, and the media's interest in dishing out human-interest stories in the press with regards to Iraq, will mean there will be more media coverage for the demonstrators. add to that the fact that Bush's popularity in the polls seem to be falling, and you can see how the possibility of a re-election success for the Texan midget plant is hardly tenable.

another audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden has been broadcasted by Al-Jazeera. the voice of the tape pledged to avenge the assassination of Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin by Israel, and also offered a truce to Europe "with a commitment to stop operations against any state which vows to stop attacking Muslims or interfere in their affairs." naturally, the European leaders have rejected this offer, and as stated by European Commission President Romano Prodi:

"How could you possibly react to this statement?

"There is no possibility for a deal under a terrorist threat. It is completely impossible."

however, it's important to note that despite a refusal to back down against terrorism, European countries (such as Germany) have also repeatedly ruled out sending troops to their deaths in Iraq. France goes one step further -- according to this article in Al-Jazeera, Jacques Chirac has made no comment on the al-Qaeda offer, but has confirmed that he will not be sending troops to Iraq even under some sort of UN mandate -- this whilst Blair has stated that he is seeking a new UN resolution to propel the process of transferring power to the Iraqis... or rather, this appears to be a desperate attempt to get international sanction and support in Iraq, as the situation there grows more dismal by the day) . instead, Chirac has called again for a "swift, complete and visible transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis themselves and the creation of Iraqi institutions that are genuinely representative, legitimate and fully responsible." in fact, Chirac has also voiced his opposition to the US' backing of Sharon's plan to lay claim on Palestinian lands while dismissing the Palestinian refugees' right of return, according to Hisham Abu Taha's article in The Arab News. he adds his voice to that of the Arab League, which has condemned the declarations as "very dangerous" and "legally baseless", warning they could "strengthen Israel’s occupation."

even Dubya's lapdog Blair had attempted (in vain) to convince Dubya to apply an "even-handed" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but as reported by Nicholas Watt and Suzanne Goldenberg, Dubya has spurned Blair's appeal. as a result, Blair would reportedly make it clear in private that the UK will not agree to Sharon's unilateral "disengagement" plan. it is therefore hoped that Blair will use whatever influence the UK has on the US to convince Bush and his hawkish acolytes like Condi Ric to return to the negotiating table rather than abide by a unilaterial strategy that is clearly disadvantageous to the Palestinians, and blatantly defies international law and UN resolutions. however, as observed by Jonathan Freedland in his article in The Guardian, Bush had in effect humilitated Blair by hailing Sharon's shambolic land-grabbing plan as "historic and courageous", and agreeing that Jewish settlements are "new realities on the ground" rather than "obstacles to peace" and a deliberate strategy by the Israelis to grab ownership of the land. this is especially so since, as the editorial in The Guardian points out, Blair had focused his efforts previously to reach a peace deal in the Middle East through the so-called "road map", which was "one justification for British involvement in the attack on Iraq, and for the fruits of British influence in the White House." with the announcement of Sharon's plan and Bush's backing for it, Blair just looks ridiculously weak and helpless.

as the editorial in The Arab News angrily states, the US' previous promise dedicate efforts to the so-called Middle East road map for a peaceful and just settlement in Palestine has shown itself to be nothing more than "another lie stand alongside claims about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's involvement in Sep. 11." the editorial points out that the Bush administration's support of the shambolic plan by the "Butcher of Beirut" will have serious implications for its occupation of Iraq, as it would sway the opinions of moderate Iraqis, whose remaining shred of faith in the US would be eroded. the editorial concludes with an ominous prediction for the Middle East peace process:

When in November George W. Bush enters the history books as one of his country’s most inept single-term presidents, he will leave his successor a poisoned legacy in the form of his Middle East policy. Both politically and diplomatically, it will be well-nigh impossible to claw back this momentous concession to expansionist Israel.

Freedland had also articulated a similar sentiment in his article:

[Bush's support for Sharon's plan] confirms the extent to which Bush's is the aberrant presidency, a period future historians will marvel at as a rupture from all that had gone before. The abandonment of even the attempt to appear to be an honest broker in the Middle East, along with the doctrines of pre-emptive war and unilateralism, are departures from the post-1945 US consensus with no precedent.

the editorial in The Guardian notes that both Bush and Sharon are facing tricky investigations at home -- Sharon is under scrutiny for a political corruption scandal, while Dubya has to handle the September 11 Commission and the debacle in Iraq, both which are revealing his administration's ineptitude and arrogance -- and therefore, the temporary political salve of Sharon's "disengagement" plan is a convenient diversion:

The pair therefore have a lot to gain in terms of their respective domestic political positions from a deal. For Mr Sharon this allows him to, however briefly, arrive home in triumph, and offer a war-weary public the possibility of a pull-out from Gaza. For Mr Bush, it allows him to claim some sliver of tangible result, one that appeals to his conservative political base in the coming presidential election.

furthermore, as Rabbi Michael Lerner observes in his article in TomPaine.com, both Bush and Sharon used the opportunity to "confer legitimacy on the other's failed policies of occupation" -- Bush had essentially endorsed Sharon's hardline policies against the Palestinians, and would have hoped that Sharon's "success" may convince Americans to agree to resorting to heightened repression and violence to quell the "terror" bogeyman. Dubya's endorsement of Sharon would also mean that he might be able to secure "a larger-than-usual quotient of swing-state Jewish votes" during the coming November elections, as noted by Deborah Ziff in MotherJones. instead of a real negotiation between the Israelis and Palestinians, Sharon's strategy basically conjures up the illusion of "withdrawal" -- the truth is that most Jewish settlers can still remain in the southern tip of the Gaza, effectively hiving off the territories to Israeli control.

in his analysis in Salon, Juan Cole argues that Dubya and his Neocon twattish cronies are "mapping the Iraq conflict onto the Likud Party agenda in Palestine... [and this] will have devastating repercussions for U.S. interests in both Iraq and the entire Arab world." Bush's support for Sharon is in a sense a justification for his own policy -- that is, the seizure of thr land of one party by another in an international dispute. Iraqis are not oblivious to the fact that the US' combat tactics against the insurgency are similar to those used by Israeli troops against Palestinian interests. moreover, Cole notes that "Iraqis, like most Arabs and Muslims, feel anger and sorrow over the Palestinian catastrophe and regard their struggle as legitimate."

in his commentary in The Arab News, Ramzy Baroud compares the parallels between the Israelis' brutal attack of Jenin in April 2002 and the violence in Falluja in Iraq today. he notes that some of the members in Jenin's new breed of "militants" are "the brothers, sons and daughters of those who were killed by the Israeli Army in the last few years." likewise, in the case of Falluja, the senseless killing inflicted on Iraqi civilians would only spur more towards an extremist brand of politics. note that both attacks were sanctioned by the Likud-pally administration of Dubya. Bush demonstrated his nonchalance to the unjust loss of Palestinian lives by shrugging the Israeli attack off -- "Israel has the right to defend itself." in fact, Baroud reminds us that "Washington was so impressed that it deployed members of the US Marine Corps to an area north of Israel; using a mock refugee camp, Israeli military officers trained their American counterparts on how to fight street battles like that in Jenin." aye, these same tactics are being used in Falluja, and as Baroud points out, "the Iraqi town of Fallujah, near Baghdad, is now a new lab for the Israeli experiment." Baroud goes on to state that in imitating Israel's failed policy in Jenin, Bush is heading for utter disaster, given that he claims that it is necessary to win the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis:

[F]lattening entire neighborhoods with its people shall not "uproot terror", instead, it will augment hatred, calls for revenge and the willingness to die a martyr.

John Pilger's wonderful commentary in The New Statesman is a blistering attack on the US' belligerent strategy towards Iraqis, as well as the complicity of the media -- including the traditionally left-leaning ones -- in lapping up the propaganda spewed by the Anglo-American imperialist forces:

That a nationalist uprising has been under way in Iraq for more than a year, uniting at least 15 major groups, most of them opposed to the old regime, has been suppressed in a mendacious lexicon invented in Washington and London and reported incessantly, CNN-style. "Remnants" and "tribalists" and "fundamentalists" dominate, while Iraq is denied the legacy of a history in which much of the modern world is rooted.

he rebukes the media for their "gesturing at the obvious: that this is a war of national liberation and that the enemy is 'us'". furthermore, in emphasising on the casualty suffered by the troops (the invading/occupying enemy) rather than stating the atrocities being committed against the Iraqi people on their own soil, the media is just as culpable for providing a support structure for the bastards in the White House, allowing them to propagate their porkies to create a web of deceit and veil of obscurity around the truth:

When will this catastrophe be properly reported by those meant to keep the record straight? ... Iraq will be a US colony, like Haiti. And when will journalists have the professional courage to report the pivotal role that Israel has played in this grand colonial design for the Middle East?

Pilger's conclusion, like that of Chris Floyd in his acerbic opinion piece in The Moscow Times, is that the occupation forces must get out. to quote Floyd:

The occupying armies -- including the 15,000 corporate mercenaries -- should leave now. They should never have been sent in the first place on this ghoul's errand, this war of aggression, this mission of murder and plunder -- the perversion of every enlightened value of the civilization that the coalition's "Christian leaders" purport to defend.

Floyd mocks the "chest-beating announcements" of Blair and Bush that they are "staying the course" in Iraq, pointing out that "[t]he way to rectify a crime is not to keep doing it." Dubya's policy of unilateralism and aggression in Iraq has resulted in more people pledging allegiance to Islamic extremism, and even more people being passive supporters of the insurgency.

last but not list, Michael Moore's article in Alternet has him spitting bile at Dubya and his cronies for using "double-speak" to conceal the truth in Falluja. don't be deceived by fluffy words such as "contractors" and "insurgency" used by the Bush administration, Moore states -- "contractors" are actually "mercenaries", and the "insurgency" is in reality the "revolution" to overthrow the US occupiers.

2004-04-15T08:59:00.000Z

a group of kidnappers known as al-Katibat al-Khadra (Green Brigade) have carried out the execution of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of the four Italian hostages held in Iraq, according to this report in the Beeb. the four Italians were apparently security guards working for a US-based company, and the kidnappers have issued a statement claiming that they will execute the others unless all Italian troops in Iraq were withdrawn, all clerics held by Italian forces released, and motormouth Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologies for alleged insults against Islam. a video of the execution of the Italian and the statement by the group was sent to Al-Jazeera, but the station has not aired it because it was "too bloody."

speaking of Al-Jazeera, in response to Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt's accusation that Aljazeera and other Arab media outlets like Al-Arabia were "anti-coalition media" that deliberately portray US military action "as purposely targeting civilians, and we absolutely do not do that, and I think everybody knows that", the news channel has this to say in repudiation of the claim:

"Aljazeera rejects these accusations and consider them a threat to the right and the mission of the media outlets to cover the reality of what is happening in Iraq during this tough and complicated field circumstances.

"This is an unjustified pressure against the freedom of the press," added the statement."

quite right. as pointed out in River's entry in her blog, both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia have done "a phenomenal job of covering the attacks" in Falluja and other areas in Iraq. in fact, River points out that Al-Jazeera even embedded their own journalist in the midst of the chaos -- "and I don't mean the lame embedded western journalists type of thing they had going at the beginning of the war (you know- embedded in the Green Zone and embedded in Kuwait, etc.)" the reason why the occupation forces are getting tetchy about the whole issue is clearly because they hate the fact that the Arab and independent media are portraying the occupation and the attacks for what they are -- bloody affairs strewn with not merely military but civilian casualties. they would certainly much prefer a Disneyland/Hollywood version of the occupation of Iraq, so as to retain support for this unjust war.

apparently, the Shia cleric al-Sadr, who is now in Najaf, has dropped all demands for negotiations with the US, but according to Patrick Cockburn's article in The Independent, divisions with the US leadership in Baghdad are impeding any possible negotiation to end the stand-off and violence:

Foreign diplomats, Coalition Provisional Authority officials and Iraqi politicians also say that Mr Bremer, though it was he who first sought a confrontation with Sadr by closing his newspaper, has very little influence on decisions taken by the US military.

evidently, this spells disaster, especially if the US Marines who're now fighting in Falluja are apparently carrying out attacks without any regard for civilian casualties, thus resulting in a number of the current casualty toll (600 dead and 1,200 injured) being women and children. as Cockburn points out, while the US insists that "Sadr's recent activities have further marginalised him and he is in a very weak position," it seems that US actions have "gained [al-Sadr] the reputation of a martyr among the Shia and he is much more popular than he was before."

the editorial in The Guardian reiterates Cockburn's argument, and points out that "[t]he heavy-handed tactics being used bear little resemblance to peace-keeping, and far more to those of an occupying army seeking to crush all resistance." would Blair be able to convince Bush that such aggression is not going to win the peace, but would instead inflame Iraqi passions to oust the occupation troops as soon as possible, when he travels to Washington tomorrow? the editorial advises that Blair reminds Bush of the importance of democratic elections in Iraq in order to win the peace:

Mr Blair must try to convince Mr Bush of the need for elections in Iraq as soon as possible, with every effort being made for the elections to be seen as legitimate by Iraqis. Tainted democracy will dilute what goodwill remains for the American efforts.

the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam has often been made, and Arthur Schlesinger, former Special Assistant to the late President John F. Kennedy, has now included his voice amongst those who argue that Iraq is Bush's Vietnam. in his commentary featured in The Independent, Schlesinger articulates his belief that "[a]n American year of miscalculations and misjudgements seems to have led Iraq into a chaos bordering on anarchy." he notes that despite the differences between the circumstances that led to the debacle in Vietnam and Iraq, both resulted in what he terms the "quagmire" effect, and he adds that in both situations, the US betrayed its "lack of historical experience and cultural knowledge and the consequent ignorance and arrogance that lead us into quagmires." Schlesinger observes that there is roughly about 10% of voters in the US who have yet to profess their support either to Bush or Kerry (i.e. swing voters), and the actions taken by these two candidates would likely have a decisive impact on the results of the elections (particularly since support for both candidates now stand at about 45 percent each). Bush's Vietnam may prove to be detrimental to his re-election bid, and Fallujah could well be the event that set in motion a process not unlike that which drove Lyndon B Johnson from the White House.

however, as Sidney Blumenthal observes in his commentary in The Guardian, Bush's performance in the press conference on Wednesday exposes his inability to grasp hold of the reality in Iraq. in fact, Blumenthal reveals Bush's extraordinary nonchalance towards the Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs) (such as the infamous memo of 6th August 2001) which are presented to him each morning:

Bush, in fact, does not read his President's Daily Briefs, but has them orally summarised every morning by the CIA director, George Tenet. President Clinton, by contrast, read them closely and alone, preventing any aides from interpreting what he wanted to know first-hand. He extensively marked up his PDBs, demanding action on this or that, which is almost certainly the likely reason the Bush administration withheld his memoranda from the 9/11 commission.

this really inspires confidence in the American public, i'm sure. the reins of their country is placed behind a man who doesn't have time to find out for himself what the pressing issues of the nation are, but instead spends more than 40% of his time out of his office, possibly enjoying the delights of those wonderful resorts paid for with taxpayers' dosh, of course. it's no wonder why Dubya still believes that everything's going perfectly well in Iraq -- he probably doesn't even read the papers, if he can read at all, that is. besides, one would be foolish to expect more from the twat, who, as Derrick Jackson reminds us in his article in The Boston Globe, told reporters that the memo of 6th August didn't have any "actionable" detail since "there was not a time and place of an attack." (funny how this same bloke who needed specific details regarding the attack to be unleashed upon the country he's supposed to be heading didn't exercise the same degree of specificity before he launched a war in Iraq, purportedly based on "evidence" of elusive WMDs). and by the way, if you want to read a point-by-point rebuttle of Bush's embarassing speech, take a look at William Rivers Pitt's article featured in Truthout.

to return to Blumenthal -- he explains that:

As the iconic image of the "war president" has tattered, another picture has emerged. Bush appears as a passive manager who enjoys sitting atop a hierarchical structure, unwilling and unable to do the hard work a real manager has to do to run the largest enterprise in the world. He does not seem to absorb data unless it is presented to him in simple, clear fashion by people whose judgment he trusts. He is receptive to information that agrees with his point of view rather than information that challenges it. This leads to enormous power on the part of the trusted interlocutors, who know and bolster his predilections.

... such as how he is meant to be the leader of a crusade, bestowing upon the rest of us plebs the "Almighty's" gift of "freedom", of course. after all, didn't the Texan short shrub declare that his mission is to ensure that we've all got freedom thrust in our face -- "Freedom is the almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world"? Maureen Dowd has a sardonic retort to Dubya's deluded remark in her commentary in The New York Times:

Given the Saudi religious authority's fatwa against our troops, and given that our marines are surrounding a cleric in the holy city of Najaf, we really don't want to make Muslims think we're fighting a holy war. That would only further inflame the Arab world and endanger our overstretched military, so let's hope that Mr. Bush's reference to the almighty was to Dick Cheney

that said, wasn't the whole Iraq excursion supposedly meant to "liberate" the people there? didn't Bush and his cronies keep banging on about the importance of "liberation" -- as opposed to the elusive WMDs that Saddam supposedly possessed, and which was initially the reason behind the invasion of Iraq? in which case, isn't Iraq "liberated", now that Saddam has been deposed? as Jacob Hornberger rightly points out in his commentary in the Future of Freedom Foundation, the whole "violent fuss" in Iraq now isn't about "liberating" Iraq, but about who is to wield power over the new rulers of Iraq:

Will the new ruling regime in Iraq be U.S.-appointed Iraqi puppets who are willing to do the bidding of U.S. officials, especially after having large amounts of U.S. taxpayer cash stuffed into their pockets and bank accounts, or independent Iraqis, ones who are unwilling to obey mandates and orders issued by U.S. government officials?

bollocks to Bush's version of freedom -- it seems to be no more than a convenient replacement for the term "political power". the latter would explain why the US has taken so much pains to get amenable candidates in the Iraqi Governing Council, rather than call for democratic elections as soon as possible, wouldn't it?

meanwhile, the headlines of The Guardian says it all: "Bush rips up the road map". as another affront (deliberate or otherwise) to Muslims, the twattish Texan short shrub has backed "Butcher of Beirut" Ariel Sharon's plans to pull out of Gaza and part of the West Bank as part of the so-called Middle East Roadmap, as reported in the BBC. Dubya even had the gall to roll back "decades of diplomatic tradition in the Middle East" by claiming that it was "unrealistic" to expect a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. This essentially provides Sharon a vote in confidence he needs to return to the Israeli government to push through his strategy. this "disengagement" plan includes the uprooting of all settlements in the Gaza Strip, with the exception of six settlement blocks in the West Bank.

naturally, the Palestinians are up in arms, warning that this would ruin all hopes for peace. for one, the six settlement blocs to be retained are key areas which are now inhabited by about 92,000 settlers (38 percent of all Jewish settlers in Gaza). most of them are also situated in the southern part of the Palestinian territories, and to retain these settlements effectively hives off the area to Israel -- which is why the Palestinians feel that Sharon's plans "aims to bypass past international agreements and unilaterally draw the borders of a rump Palestine," to quote this analysis in the BBC. secondly, as noted by this article in Al-Jazeera, in his support for Sharon, Bush has appeared to have negated the Palestinian refugees' right of return to what is now Israel. in short, this was a "US endorsement of a cementing of Israel's hold on land Palestinians want for a state". add to that the fact that both Bush and Sharon are using this to pat each other's back and claim that they have tried to establish peace in the region -- as PLO executive member Yasser Abed Rabbo retorts, "Bush and Sharon are trying to protect each other's political future but are endangering the political future of Israel, the Palestinians and the whole region."

furthermore, the Jewish settlers in these areas also feel "betrayed" by Sharon, who was the one to champion the settler movement. as noted by this analysis on the Beeb, this means the dismantling of 21 Jewish settlements and evacuation of about 7,000 settlers who reside in the region -- not exactly something they (and the ultra-rightwing Likud members in the Knesset) would be too chuffed about.

in fact, the whole Sharon proposal is an infringement of international law and undoubtedly defies UN resolutions. resolution 242 (passed in 1967 after the Six Day War) of the UN Security Council unequivocally states that Israel is to Withdraw its troops from all territories occupied during the war. moreover, resolution 446 of 1979 reiterates this point, and asserts that "the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East." Dubya, in supporting Sharon's illegal moves, is just as culpable of infringing UN resolutions -- oh wait, but Dubya doesn't know that there's a world beyond the US, does he? and didn't he think he could treat the UN merely as a rubber stamp for his Iraqi excursion? and oh well, it is Israel and the US -- the only two countries in this world that aren't bound to international law. why did i keep forgetting this? after all, the US is just sticking to its traditional role as protector of brat-boy-on-the-block Israel, just like the way the US has always vetoed UN resolutions critical of Israel.

in her analysis featured in The Guardian, Suzanne Goldenberg argues that the Sharon plan is a "milestone victory" for the "Butcher of Beirut", because what the Bush administration has essentially done is concede to Sharon's claim that Israel could not negotiate with the Palestinians at all. to quote Philip Wilcox, former US consul general in Jerusalem and the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Dubya's support "offers commitments to Israel without any corresponding commitments to the Palestinians, which I think is unwise." Goldenberg also notes that the Bush administration's current preoccupations with Iraq and the September 11 revelations (as well as the coming Presidential elections) means that this "double diplomatic coup confirms what has been evident to observers of the Israeli-Palestinian process for months": that with the Bush administration's distraction, Sharon could easily dictate his terms with regards to the Middle East Roadmap. however, Sharon's victory is the US' misfortune because the Arab world would lost any credibility of being an honest broker of peace in the Middle East -- something which has already been tarnished with the Iraq debacle.

2004-04-14T10:24:00.000Z

Dubya's acolytes have attempted to defend their ineptitude at the September 11 Commission by blaming it all on the Clinton administration. here's the somewhat lame excuse given by US Attorney General John Ashcroft who was questioned yesterday:

"The simple fact of September 11 is this, we did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade, our government had blinded itself to its enemies.

"The old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail."

however, that's merely skirting the issue. the fact is that the Bush administration had been warned about the terror threat even before the memo of 6th August 2001 -- Dana Priest reports in The Washington Post that Dubya, Cheney and the US National Security team had all already received "a stream of alarming reports on Al-Qaeda's intentions" even from as early as April and May 2001. to claim that there was no "silver bullet", that they had no idea that the US was in danger of an attack is simply beyond belief. as James Pinkerton sarcastically asks in his commentary in Antiwar.com:

When terrorists plan to strike America, should they call in advance and make reservations? If not - if they aren't specific about time and place - should President George W. Bush and the rest of the federal government be held blameless for failing to stop them? That's been the view of the White House for the past two-and-a-half years, although public pressure may be changing that complacency.

the sheer fact that hijackings are serious matters in any case, and that a number of plots involving the "kamikaze-ing" of airplanes (including one in 1995 with plans to crash hijacked planes into the CIA headquarters) have been uncovered in the last decade, should have meant that the 6th August memo ought to have jolted the Bush administration into precautionary action.

as stated in the preliminary report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US, although the FBI was accused of failing to respond adequately to the growing terrorist threat due to poor intelligence, a failure to share information and insufficient resources, Ashcroft had himself rejected an appeal for more funding a day before the attacks. in fact, it was revealed that in May 2001, Ashcroft's Department of Justice had issued a statement about its priorities for the 2003 budget -- specifically, it mentioned gun violence and illegal drug trafficking, but shockingly made no reference to counter-terrorism efforts. as such, for John Ashcroft to allege that the tragedy of September 11 resulted due to the failures of previous administration, and not due to his own stonewalling and evident lack of attention paid to the issue is simply preposterous and laughable.

that said, this isn't to say that the Clinton administration was without taint. as the editorial in The New York Times states:

Under Bill Clinton, the F.B.I. became politically untouchable, and the president was eventually so weakened by scandal that he was incapable of even directing the F.B.I. director, Louis Freeh. Mr. Freeh was hostile to the president, but he appeared to be equally hostile to efficient computerization — a vital step to update an agency in which none of the parts appeared to communicate with one another.

however, Ashcroft had apparently lowered the priority of the entire counterterrorism issue in his strategic planning once Bush got into office. to then have the audacity to claim innocence under oath, before the September 11 Commission, is simply deplorable and disgraceful.

the UK didn't remain unscatched -- the September 11 Commission has accused the UK of failing to prevent the tragedy of September 11 by providing crucial information about an alleged accomplice of the hijackers that could potentially have allowed investigators to detect and disrupt the plot. according to Andrew Buncombe's article in The Independent, the UK gave a low priority to a US request for information about Zacarias Moussaoui, who was in American custody. two days after the New York attacks, it was revealed that the information provided by the UK showed that Moussaoui had spent time at an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and had links to a terrorist cell involved in the hijackings. BUncombe notes that this is not the first time the UK has been accused of its lax attitude -- previously, the French authorities had revealed that they had warned Britain about Moussaoui as well, but those warnings were ignored.

however, in his insightful commentary featured in The New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers asserts that there are other urgent questions which have yet to be surfaced by the September 11 Commission, specifically:

Did the CIA's director, George Tenet, and other high agency officials respond to White House pressure for estimates that would support the administration's determination to go to war? Did the administration intend from the beginning to use these alarming intelligence reports as a blunt instrument to extract a vote for war in Congress?

Powers refers to Richard Clarke's question in his book as to how the same organisation which had the capability to garner information pointing to an impending terror attack over the summer of 2001, and which had subsequently warned the Bush administration of the danger, could also blunder so badly in making repeated and explicit claims to have found Iraqi WMDs -- which didn't exist. if Clarke's claims that the Bush administration was more intent to "get" Iraq than concentrate on Al-Qaeda in the aftermath of September 11 are true, then it would appear that the CIA had been a pawn in Dubya's plan to promote his agenda against Iraq. that is to say, the Bush administration is guilty of exploiting its executive power to pressurise the CIA to produce "intelligence information" that coincided with its desire to go to war. Powers concludes:

Only one of two things could have happened—either the CIA completely misread the evidence and precipitated an unnecessary war, or the administration determined on war for reasons of its own and insisted that the CIA cobble together a best case from scraps of information in the intelligence grab bag. No official body will decide to state the choices quite this starkly, and the writers of reports will be even less willing to identify the implications. But something went terribly wrong as America debated the need for war a year ago, and each of the possible explanations raises grave questions of trust—either the CIA cannot be trusted to see the difference between real and imaginary dangers, or the agency made itself pliant and supine in the hands of the President, who exploited the CIA to make his case for war.

meanwhile, the Texan midget plant continues to indulge in his deluded imperialist fantasy -- in his rare prime-time news conference given in a desperate bid to reassure the increasingly edgy American public, Dubya continues to insist that "tThis is not a civil war, this is not a popular uprising, the majority of Iraq remains stable." does anyone know what the man is on, could we all have some please? in fact, as Ronald Brownstein's analysis in The Los Angeles Times shows, Bush's performance during the conference wasn't exactly regarded highly by his own staunch supporters such as William Kristol. Dubya kept reiterating his point that troops need to stay the course in Iraq, but certainly offered no clear strategy as to how peace and stability can be attained in the country. as Brownstein points out, his poor articulation of the administration's plans in Iraq means that he faces the political risk of losing swing votes during the upcoming elections. the editorial in The New York Times even comments that Bush's "responses to questions were distressingly rambling and unfocused, and that his rhetoric to "stay the course" in Iraq "did not seem to indicate any fresh or clear thinking about Iraq, despite the many disturbing events of recent weeks."

in any case, it does look like the occupation troops in Iraq right now are royally fucked, since UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has announced that he doesn't plan to authorise a large-scale return of UN staffers to Iraq as violence imperiled the country's reconstruction, according to this article in Al-Jazeera. without any semblance of legitimacy from an international body like the UN, the Anglo-American invaders will be faced with increasing hostility from an incensed Iraqi population impatient to regain control of their own country. furthermore, as Jonathan Steele notes in his article in The Guardian, the current lack of a unified Shia position also means that the only person with the authority to broker a compromise between the insurgents and occupying forces is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. however, al-Sistani has always refused to acknowledge nor negotiate with administrators from the occupying forces, but would only meet with the UN. given that the UN is less than willing to return to Iraq, this would mean the US and UK are left on their todd to come up with a way to stem the bloodshed.

the violence in Iraq and the surge in kidnapping of foreigners has prompted a number of governments such as those of Russia, France, Czech Republic and Australia to urge their citizens to leave the country immediately, as reported by Jamie Wilson and Nick Paton Walsh in The Guardian. to date, forty foreign nationals from twelve different countries have been seized by Iraqi insurgents, and another four mutilated bodies (reportedly those of American contractors) have been found in the west of Baghdad, according to this report in the Beeb. the unrelenting horror in Falluja must have shaken the nerves of the Bush administration, as it has announced that it will drop demands for the handover of the killers of the four American men.

Lisa Ashkenaz Croke of Yellowtimes has written about accounts of Falluja residents claiming that the US snipers had ignored the supposed ceasefire, and had instead fired indiscriminately at any person who dared venture outdoors. another Yellowtimes journalist, Firas al-Atraqchi, has also reported that Iraqi doctors and independent Arab media sources have said that "several Abrams tanks attempted to breach the city defenses in the Anzal district of the city." Croke also goes on to mention other eyewitness accounts by journalists and residents who accused the US forces of firing indiscriminately at women, children and the elderly. Croke adds:

Ironically, but unsurprisingly, the cold refusal of snipers to distinguish between unarmed civilians and armed insurgents, coupled with the mounting casualties of the innocent is transforming people who looked forward to peace just a week ago into fighting resistance members.

if this is the sort of strategy Bush has in mind when he talks about "staying the course" in Iraq, it could only spell disaster not only for Iraqis, but any foreigners in the country. it's hard not to reckon that Bush is deliberately shooting himself in the foot here. refugees from Falluja have been telling reporter Christina Asquith of Christian Science Monitor about the rising anger in their city. Asquith points out in her article that as many as 60,000 -- one fifth of the population of Falluja -- may have poured into Baghdad since Friday. accounts have emerged of forced closures of roads, which have made transport to hospitals altogether impossible. this has resulted in the wounded being sprawled on the floors of mosques without proper medical care. meanwhile, air strikes continue, indiscriminately killing both insurgents and civilians. according to Patrick Cockburn's article in Counterpunch, Iraqis have claimed that even families are unable to escape due to US snipers. all the brutality has only served to anger Iraqis, and is driving previous moderates towards revenge. some kind of "liberation" the Americans are bestowing.

Michael Schwartz states in his extremely well-researched piece in MotherJones that the current insurrection in the Shia regions of Iraq was not completely unexpected nor inspired by events in Falluja; rather, there have already been indications of unrest, which were a direct result of a long series of actions and reactions between the occupation forces and anti-American Shia militias. before the spate of violence, the occupation troops had withdrawn from the more peaceful cities and had allowed Iraqis to govern themselves in these areas. Schwartz notes that in the Shia areas, it was militias such as the Mahdi Militia loyal to Muqtada Sadr and the Badr Brigade, representing the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq which organised affairs in the cities and kept law and order. however, Paul Bremer's announcement in March 2004 that the US intends to continue controlling the newly formed Iraqi army, establish permanent bases in Iraq, as well as use its US$18.4 billion reconstruction aid as a bargaining chip to maintain strong US influence in the region made it clear to the Iraqis that the Americans had no wish to relinquish ultimate control to them at all even after the 30th June deadline. this issue of "sovereignty" became a volatile one, and as Schwartz points out, "the Bremer announcement would eventually have led to some sort of definitive confrontation." in the meantime, the US had already spotted al-Sadr as a key figure amongst the militants, and had already targeted him to ensure he wasn't a viable force to be reckoned with in Iraq. this led to the closure of his newspaper, as well as efforts to arrest al-Sadr and his chief aides, to dismantle his organisation. as a result, al-Sadr felt pushed towards adopting an extremist standpoint to challenge the US authorities. with news of the increasing violence in Falluja spreading across Iraq, more moderate Iraqis joined the young and disgruntled supporters of al-Sadr in their fight against the occupation forces which did not seem to want to cede power to the people of the land. Schwartz predicts more chaos in the near future:

Sooner or later, the Coalition will reestablish itself in the epicenters of this insurgency. That is inevitable, but if the insurgents do not ravage the cities while they are in control, and if they "melt back into the population" (to use the classic image of guerilla war) without being destroyed by the Coalition counterattack; then they will be even stronger after this episode. It will only be a matter of time before the next uprising occurs. In the meantime, the Bush administration and its allies will need magnitudes more troops -- or ever more brutal suppressive measures -- to try to pacify a country in arms.

Christian Parenti raises similar points in his article in Alternet to demonstrate the arrogance, incompetence and hubris that have become key characteristics of the US imperialistic rule over Iraq:

The truth is that had Bremer and Pentagon's top ground commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez played it cool and not provoked the Shias or attacked Fallujah, Iraq today would probably be limping along in relative peace – as it has been for the past year.

he observes that most Iraqis that he's met have appeared "war-weary and hesitant to fight," and were more concerned with getting by and ensuring that daily necessities such as water, electricity and security were available. however, the belligerence of the US has compelled many of these Iraqis to take up arms to fight instead. furthermore, Parenti points out that the purported "reconstruction" of Iraq has seemed to halt:

The stalled political and economic efforts are the result of two interconnected factors: the pro-market ideological delusions of Bremer's staff and the wholesale private sector fraud these delusions foster.

"reconstruction" has hardly taken place because, as Parenti alleges, "Bush administration-connected firms such as Halliburton and Bechtel have stolen the vast majority of the money allocated for such tasks." although US$11.2 billion in contracts have been awarded in non-competitive bids to US firms, there's no one individual or agency tasked to keep track of their progress. as such, one US journalist found that many reconstruction projects that had allegedly been "rebuilt" had in reality barely been touched. not surprisingly, the failure of the occupation forces to provide the bare necessities to the Iraqi population has angered many of them, who are running short on patience.

well, "reconstruction" can't be on the top of the occupation forces' priority is, not if planting WMDs in Iraq is anyway. Tehran's Mehr News Agency has reported about new information indicating that occupation forces are using the current unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into southern Iraq:

An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor’s Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.

furthermore, it has been alleged that the US had threatened some professors in the Baghdad University with incarceration or death, if they did not provide written information on what they know about various programs and research centers and the possible storage of WMD equipment. as the anonymous Iraqi source stated, the Bush camp might announce the discovery of "Iraqi" WMDs in order to overshadow the scandals that have resulted from the September 11 Inquiry, in an attempt to shore up Dubya's public opinion rating as the election approaches.

on another note, it looks like the chummy Bush-Blair relationship might just be marred by the comments made by Jonathon Porritt, Blair's senior adviser and chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, in his commentary in The Guardian. Dubya is certainly not going to be too chuffed about Porritt's blistering (and valid) comments about how the Bush presidency has had a "devastating impact" on global sustainable development:

On climate change, international aid, family planning, arms, nuclear proliferation, trade, corporate responsibility - to name but a few - the US president's efforts to impose "a new world order" and stay true to a discredited model of extreme economic liberalism have set the world back a decade or more.

moreover, Ben Russell and Andrew Grice write in their report in The Independent that senior Labour MPs have urged Blair to "put some distance between Britain and the Bush administration and not to make his alliance with the US President the cornerstone of British foreign policy." to quote Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy:

"Tony Blair's original aim as Prime Minister was that Britain can sit astride a transatlantic relationship as well as a European relationship. That, however, has become warped beyond recognition by the unilateral action in Iraq."

to add to that, the Institute of Public Policy Research has just released a report by David Mepham and Jane Cooper entitled "Human Rights and Global Responsibility: an international agenda for the UK", which argues that the war in Iraq and the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay limited the UK's ability to influence states with poor human rights records. to quote Mepham and Cooper:

"Keeping close to the US has muted UK Government criticism of US policy in Guantanamo Bay.

"UK support for the policies of President Bush has also damaged relations with some EU partners, many Arab and Islamic countries, and with parts of the developing world. This will potentially make it harder for the UK to gain support for human rights initiatives."

Blair would do himself a lot of good to inch away from the Bush administration, not only because of the abovementioned factors, but also because come November, he might well be dealing with a Democratic president. as it is, Labour is finding it hard to reconcile Blair's pally attitude towards Bush, a hardline Neocon Republican. it would be wise for Blair to distance himself from an increasingly beleaguered Bush White House that is desperately fending of criticism -- and looking desperately silly at the same time.

2004-04-13T10:52:00.000Z

so this is the manner in which the US plans to halt the hostilities brewing in Iraq -- pledge to either arrest or kill al-Sadr. how very intelligent. not only have they marched right into Iraq based on false premises (we still await the day we see some WMDs, for fuck's sake!), they might as well wreck absolute havoc and cause a bloodbath while they're at it, why don't they? Rory McCarthy accurately points out in his article in The Guardian that the US' adamant adherence to military doctrine (to quote Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the American plan is to "separate, isolate and destroy the enemy wherever we find him on the battlefield"), as well as its complete lack of sensitivity and diplomacy has scuppered things in Iraq. rather than court the support of a moderate voice like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the US has gotten into a tangle with a low-level cleric and cast him as a bogeyman, thereby focusing attention on his extremist views and winning him more supporters in the process. the sheer strategic idiocy and lack of political savvy of the Bush administration is slapstick comedy material -- if it wasn't causing such disasters.

the US forces have finally admitted to extremely high casualty figures since 1st April 2004 -- 70 soldiers dead, while casualties among insurgents were 10 times as high. the chaos has led to General John Abizaid (head of US Central Command in Iraq) to ask the Pentagon to send 10,000 more troops, thus back-tracking on a year-long aim to reduce the US military presence. but wait a minute -- didn't the Texan short shrub and his lackeys claim that the insurgency was only made up of a "small" group of pro-Saddamites and foreign fighters? 700 Iraqi fighters may have been killed, but there are certainly more Iraqis up in arms. small numbers indeed. Paul Krugman rightly states in his article in The New York Times that "[a] year after the occupation of Iraq began, Mr. Bush and his inner circle seem more divorced from reality than ever." first, it was all this cheery talk about Iraq being a "cakewalk", and how the US troops will be greeted as "liberators" with flowers (and eager young lasses) being thrown in their paths. now it's this crazed talk about the chaos in Iraq being caused by an insignificant bunch of disgruntled Iraqis, and al-Sadr (being given the role of the bogeyman-of-the-month) is the sole instigator of these attacks. it's evident to the rest of us living in the real world that perhaps the Iraqis are just sickened by this US-brand of "liberation" and would like to grasp their fate in their own hands... how is it that the US administration goes on telling such porkies, believing that we would all buy into all this codswallop?

as more foreigners are taken hostage -- the hostages now include Russians, Pakistanis, Turks, Indians, Nepalese, Filipino, Japanese, Americans, etc. -- and a battalion of the new Iraqi army refuses to support the US troops in Falluja to fight fellow Iraqis, more Iraqis are getting incensed with the way things are panning out and how the occupation forces are mismanaging the situation. this shouldn't come as a shock to US troops, if it is indeed true that US troops have taken to firing upon fleeing Fallujah residents marooned in the desert, as reported in Lisa Ashkenaz Croke's report in Yellowtimes, as well as in Dahr Jamail's entry in his Iraq Dispatches. in fact, Rahul Mahajan, who has visited Jalluja just recently during the supposed "ceasefire", writes in Alternet about evidence of US brutality:

An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have most likely hit the driver's chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). I also saw a second ambulance, again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield.

These were deliberate shots designed to kill the drivers. There is no way to explain them away as panicked, indiscriminate spraying of fire.

Mahajan also encounters a number of injured women and children brought into the clinic during the four hours he was there. what's more, some of the wounded were actually brought in by the Iraqi fighters, who, he notes, "stood around openly conferring with doctors about logistical and other issues; not once did I see them threatening people with their ubiquitous Kalashnikovs."

furthermore, even the British counterparts of US troops are condemning US tactics as "heavy-handed and disproportionate", and that the US soldiers "view things in very simplistic terms" (such as regarding Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans"), according to Sean Rayment's article in The Daily Telegraph.

as John Simpson notes in his analysis in BBC News, a lot of politicians on the Iraqi Governing Council are angry because the entire catastrophe in Falluja could have been avoided:

[These politicians] feel the Americans have just played into the hands of the extremists by letting themselves be drawn into a war, or at any rate a crisis on two fronts

* Falluja, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim and is now violently anti-American

* the Shia Muslim towns of southern Iraq

even members of the Shia community who have not been followers of al-Sadr now voice their resentment against the US tactics in the region, and al-Sadr and his Mehdi army have therefore assumed the status of defenders of the faith for ordinary people.

is it any wonder that Iraqis -- and the sane and less blinkered members of the international community -- feel bitter about the whole debacle? to quote Linda Heard in her sarcastic and biting article in The Arab News:

One day the Iraqis will no doubt see the light, understand the errors of their ways; little Ali’s arms will grow back, Iraq’s WMD will be found, and the moon really will be green cheese.

what sort of "liberation" is this if Iraqis are still too scared to walk on the streets for fear of being shot by coalition troops, or bombed to smithereens by tank shells, grenades or now, apparently, air strikes? what sort of freedom is it if it only means the freedom of expression is limited to fawning presses belonging to the occupation forces and their cronies, if Arab presses like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya get attacked, and if the only freedom that seems to thrive is that for the huge bloodsucking corporations interested in reaping as much profits as they can from plundered wealth? how could this be better than the days of Saddam is the US troops is now using Israeli tactics to deal with so-called insurgents? how dare they have the audacity to try to pull the wool, not only over their own eyes, but that of Iraqis suffering in their own homeland, and that of the rest of the world?

of course, despite the fact that Dubya seems to be enjoying his idle time walking through farmland and going on holidays at his resorts, you wouldn't think the Bush administration is feeling that relaxed now, given the situation in Iraq, as well as the backlash from Condi Rice's performance at the September 11 Commission and the subsequent declassification of the memo of 6th August 2001. Larry Johnson, a previous CIA employee from 1985 to 1989 before moving on to the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism from 1989 to 1993, has submitted an insightful article in TomPaine.com about the web of deceit woven by Bush and his cabal around the memo. he notes that the 6th August Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) article was written in response to a presidential request after intelligence warnings he'd learnt about. Johnson states that although the memo did not -- and could not -- specify exact details of the attacks, it was evident that Osama bin Laden was determined to launch an attack in the US. as Johnson points out:

[T]he details that are included in the piece are so alarming that anyone familiar with the nature of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda should have asked, "What are they planning and what can we do to stop it?"

why did this alert not motivate Rice to call a meeting so that all members of the National Security team will be updated with the information? instead, Johnson reminds us that "Bush was on vacation and Condi—the smartest woman in Washington, we are told—was asleep at the switch." all this only goes to vindicate Richard Clarke's allegations that the Bush administration had not placed fighting Al-Qaeda and its brand of terrorism as a priority before September 11. this is further corroborated in Melvin Goodman's analysis featured in Foreign Policy in Focus:

Rice’s testimony confirms that there were 33 meetings of high-level members of the Bush administration in 2001 before there was any meeting on the problem of counter-terrorism. She noted that Vice President Cheney was told in May 2001 to supervise the role of domestic agencies in the campaign against terrorism but Cheney formed no task force and held no meetings. Rice claimed that the FBI, the FAA, and the Department of Transportation were given explicit orders in the summer of 2001 to step up security activities in their respective areas, but the directors of these agencies recall no communication from Rice regarding an increased security threat. This fact is particularly important because the national security adviser is charged not only with making sure that all policy-relevant information is put in front of the president, but monitoring the performance of all security agencies in carrying orders from the White House.

Goodman also contrasts the attitude of the preceding Clinton administration to that of the Bush administration with regards to security alerts -- he notes that in late 1999, when Clinton's office received increased indicators about terrorist attacks during the Millennium celebrations, the information was disseminated to the public so that they could make their own decisions about their safety. this is sharply contrasted again Dubya's inaction even after receiving numerous warnings from April to June 2001 about the likelihood of terrorist attacks.

in fact, Robert Scheer goes further back in time in his article in The Los Angeles Times, and rebukes the Bush administration for its previous support for the Taliban regime during its "war on drugs", providing US$43 million in aid to Afghanistan -- despite the fact that the Taliban had refused to extradite Osama bin Laden after he admitted responsibility for attacks against US diplomatic and military sites in Africa and the Middle East. although the Bush administration's defence is that the money was meant for humanitarian aid, Scheer argues that the fact that "the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders were at that point inseparable, financially, militarily and ideologically" makes it difficult to claim support for one (owing to its supposed "crop control" of opium) is mutually exclusive to the other. Scheer concludes:

Today, opium production in a tattered Afghanistan is at an all-time high, benefiting various warlords and a resurgent Taliban, while our money, troops and attention are focused on a quagmire in Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 and is not known for its opium.

in his commentary in TomPaine.com, Craig Unger notes that the September 11 Commission needs to keep up its hard line of questioning when the hearings resume on 13th April (today), and Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others, will testify. this is when evidence regarding evacuation of approximately 140 Saudis just two days after September 11 will be given. Unger states the unique close relationship between the Bush administration and the Saudi royal family will come under scrutiny. more specifically, Unger tells us that:

have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions—Harken Energy, Halliburton and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?

given the security situation immediately after the tragedy of September 11, it would have been impossible for the flights (luxurious first-class ones as well) carrying high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud (24 of which were members of the bin Laden family) out of the US without prior White House approval. it was known by then that the majority of the plane hijackers were Saudi, that Al-Qaeda was funded by Saudis, and that Osama bin Laden himself was Saudi as well. although the Bush administration has gone to great pains to claim that this flight didn't take place, Unger has not only managed to interview sources who'd orchestrated the flights, but has also taken photos of the interior of the planes. the FBI, which was supposed to interrogate these Saudi individuals before they boarded the planes, was reported to have done a cursory interview. since there has been much speculation of the funding of Al-Qaeda by Saudi royals, it's suspicious that the White House managed to whisk these people -- who clearly would have been able to assist to some extent in the September 11 inquiry -- out of the US so quickly. this is why Unger cautions the Commission against backing down from the issue:

If the commission dares to confront this issue, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing the most important national security investigations in American history—in an election year, no less. If it does not, it risks something far worse—the betrayal of the thousands who lost their lives that day, and of the living who want answers.

what the Bush administration needs to do now for a start, as E.J. Dionne Jr states in his opinion piece in The Washington Post, is to accept responsibility for its failures:

To take responsibility straightforwardly would be a sign of strength, not weakness. Instead, the president is sticking to a strategy of denial.

Dubya and his acolytes have clearly not done enough to prevent September 11, despite the information available to them. they lied about the contents of a memo dated a month prior to the attacks to hide their lack of action. they have led an entire nation into an unjust, illegal and morally repugnant war unilaterally, a war which has resulted in Iraq plummeting into utter chaos, and has done nothing to win the faith of not only the Iraqis, but the people in the other Middle Eastern countries. if they think they can continue with their line of deceit and uniltaralism, they are sorely mistaken -- the US has squandered any goodwill that the world had for Americans after September 11; the shambolic incursion of Iraq has only resulted in more anger and frustration being generated against the US and its Neocon policies.

to quote Karen Kwiatkowski in her interview with Frida Berrigan in InTheseTimes, the Bush Doctrine Experiment -- as mapped out in National Security Strategy, which incorporates the notion of pre-emptive war as a policy instead of an emergency response, as well as promotes unilateralism -- has been proven to fail:

Costs have been high, payoffs unclear and there is no exit strategy in sight.

Kwiatkowski argues that the Bush administration's proclamation of "success" cannot be true if it's a measure of its accomplishment in improving the lives and giving democracy to the Iraqis (or the Afghanis). however, if "success" is measured in terms of how the US is able to increase and solidify "a military basing structure and force projection footprint around key oil and gas regions and within areas where threats to US (and Israeli) interests", then the Bush administration has certainly done incredibly well. if the latter is true, then it's undeniable that Dubya and his bunch of war-hungry hawkish Neocon cronies have abused their executive powers, and have wrongly led the nation -- and other countries -- into a war which is completely unjustified by the reasons given (e.g. WMDs, "liberation" of Iraqis, etc.). in fact, as David Clark states in his commentary in Antiwar.com:

If the invasion of Iraq was intended to bring democracy and enlightenment to the darkest recesses of the Arab street, it must be obvious that it has been a spectacular miscalculation. Instead we have a spiral of violence that now involves attacks on coalition forces by armed elements of the Shia majority...

Far from striking a blow against terrorism, the invasion of Iraq has unleashed the very forces of extremism it was supposed to destroy.

2004-04-12T07:57:00.000Z

after initial reports that the Japanese hostages would be released, it was later reported on the Beeb that the three were still being held at Falluja, with their captors threatening to carry out their threat to kill them within 24 hours if Japan does not pull its troops out of Iraq -- as is the case for the hostages of other nationalities (30 in total, from countries such as Bulgaria, Israel, Spain, Korea and the US), as reported by Justin McCurry and Martin Bright in The Observer. according to a report in Al-Jazeera, the Iraqi death toll in Falluja has risen to 600, with another estimated 1,200 injured since the US forces launched an offensive against resistance fighters in the town a week ago. yet, the cunts had the temerity to claim that most of the Falluja dead were insurgents, according to Rory McCarthy and Julian Borger's report in The Guardian. hold on -- 600 dead, and more than a thousand injured... but that doesn't sound right, didn't the Bush administration say the fighters were a "minority", and just a small bunch of foreign fighters and Saddamists? 600 doesn't sound like a small number at all. porkies, porkies and more porkies. in fact, Paul Bremer has conceded that even newly trained Iraqi soldiers had refused to fight after members of the unit were attacked while passing through a Shia district of Baghdad -- the Iraqi soldiers have made it plain that "we did not sign up to fight Iraqis."

the US, acutely aware that the bloodshed in Falluja is potentially debilitating not only in terms of opinion at home, but also in terms of the level of support provided by other countries, have called for a tentative truce in Falluja to allow, to quote Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt, "the political and discussion track" to go forward.

meanwhile, in a desperate plea for support (if not a desperate attempt to extricate himself from a web of lies), Blair has contributed an article in The Observer, where he claims that failure for the Coalition of the Sinning in Iraq would mean that:

The hope of freedom and religious tolerance in Iraq would be snuffed out. Dictators would rejoice; fanatics and terrorists would be triumphant. Every nascent strand of moderate Arab opinion, knowing full well that the future should not belong to fundamentalist religion, would be set back in bitter disappointment.

more hyperbole, Tony? we do vaguely remember the whole 45-minutes "smoking gun" claim, don't we? you forget the main question, which has nowt to do with success or failure in Iraq: why did you go into Iraq in the first place? and how deluded can you be if you truly believe that the insurgents are all "former Saddam sympathisers, angry that their status as 'boss' has been removed, terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda and, most recently, followers of the Shia cleric, Muqtada-al-Sadr." you do realise that those groups are mutually exclusive, and even have opposing doctrines and strategies, don't you? and have you forgotten one group of people who might be less than chuffed -- you know, the ones who are bitter about the empty promises made to them about the wonders of a post-Saddam Iraq, like Mustapha Abbas, whose contribution in The Independent clearly shows his disappointment and growing anger that "all hell's broken loose" in his "liberated" homeland; the ones who just want you and your war-mongering mates to get the fuck out of their land; the ones who are angry that they are being subjected to the same repulsive Sharon-style tactics being utilised on Palestinians, as noted by veteran Israeli journalist and commentator Uri Avnery in his interview with Khalid Amayreh in Al-Jazeera? no? why should the Iraqis trust you, given that the Western world has failed them one too many times, given that you all seem to be more interested in fighting like buzzards for obscenely huge "reconstruction" contracts, or scurrying for oil riches anyway; given that you have consistently rejected a strong international presence (forget the international acquiesence for the war -- it's not as if your nincompoop pal, the Texan short shrub, gave a toss anyway) in Iraq -- that is, until things got sour and you were all too scared to see troops and contractors leaving for Iraq but bodybags returning? come now, just who are you trying to kid?

back to Falluja -- the Bush administration has persistently claimed that the insurgents were just a minority, a straggling bunch of pro-Saddam supporters and foreign fighters. however, as Patrick Graham states in his dispatch in Falluja, featured in The Observer:

But the first thing our Iraqi travelling companions yelled out when the insurgents forced guns into the car window was the name of their tribe, every sheikh they were related to and a genealogy going back generations. It was not an action that would have had much success with foreign fighters or Baathists.

it's important not to forget that Falluja was no Saddam-fawning city, nor at al-Sadr's supporters fans of Iraq's ex-ruler. as Robert Fisk reminds us in his opinion piece in The Independent (reprinted in Zmag, "some of Muqtada Sadr's dangerous militiamen fought Saddam in the 1991 insurgency - the one we supported and then betrayed." furthermore, as Jonathan Steele astutely points out in his article in The Guardian, it's hardly believable that these fighters had anything to do with Saddam, since "[h]is hollow regime did not have the muscle or the loyalty to summon up the urban guerrilla resistance that we have seen over the past seven days." if the insurgents are hardly Saddam loyalists, nor are they zealous foreign fighters, it would lend credence to the argument that they are largely disgruntled Falluja inhabitants. to quote the message by a middle-aged Iraqi at a mosque, who handed Steele a note for Tony Blair, there is "no dignity with occupation", and simply put, the Anglo-American invaders have done enough damage -- both during and post-war -- and must leave.

Jason Burke, Kamal Ahmed, Jonathan Steele and Ed Helmore's commentary in The Observer is a wonderfully written and well-researched piece about the two Iraqi fronts which the occupation forces are now fighting, and the threat that the escalating violence have on the political careers of both Dubya and Blair. as they had described, the current situation in and future of Iraq are absolutely arsed up -- not only are foreigners increasingly targeted, but civil infrastructure such as powerhouses and water supplies are still in shambles, with reconstruction work stopping in many parts of the country. furthermore, the political situation is chaotic, with no one certain as to who would take over the reins once Paul Bremer. moreover, the fact that Bush tries to make himself out to be the "War president" in his re-election campaign has backfired somewhat given that support for the war has decreased. Blair is due to make a trip to the US, and his electorate, government and the world in general will be watching how he will be exercising his persuasive power to convince Bush to rethink the Iraq "liberation" adventure altogether. the electorate in the US would undoubtedly be just as interested in his visit, given that, as Andrew Rawnsley observes in his article in The Observer, Blair remains the most popular and respected foreigner leader in the US, and his presence in the US will most certainly provide ample photo-ops for pixel-renditions of his warm relationship with the buffonish Dubya.

as William Pfaff rightly points out in his commentary, "Tony Blair and George W. Bush must come to grips with the fact that they are not fighting 'terrorism' in Iraq, they are fighting nationalism - a struggle they will lose sooner or later." of course, to call a spade a spade in this case would do no benefit for their political standing at home, especially when both are facing elections soon -- which explains why they have to conjure up the bogeyman as usual: pin the blame on "terrorists" and "remnant Saddam supporters", and play down the idea that the insurgents just want their home back. Pfaff states succintly the fear of the Anglo-American invaders:

This kind of war all but inevitably produces exemplary punishments of civilians, destruction of homes and reprisals against the families of men fighting the occupation. This can suppress resistance in a given place for a given time, but it promotes hatred and has a brutalising effect on the troops involved, who can be demoralised by serving in a moral climate of reprisals, 'wasting' civilians and an inability to distinguish between enemy combatants and non-combatants.

Such measures have a long and depressing history in guerrilla warfare and popular resistance against occupiers. They serve chiefly to reinforce the political claims of the resistance and discredit those of the occupier.

This is the classic paradox of war against nationalism. Its short-term successes tend to produce long-term costs not only in the war zone but also at home, by undermining the political acceptability of occupation policy.

Pfaff goes on to note that the American assumption that it is a paternalistic and benign sole superpower in this world capable of exercising decisive influence in the general interest of the world is, in the words of George Kennan, "unthought-through, vainglorious, and undesirable":

It is a policy that eventually would be resisted by every government with a commitment to national autonomy. It would reinforce the international isolation of the US. It undermines and would eventually break the Atlantic alliance - the democratic community of nations. In Iraq, it leads towards prolonged conflict.

the only viable thing for the US to do in the case of Iraq would therefore be to cede real sovereignty to an Iraqi government, which is established under international auspices through the assistance of the UN. the occupation, Pfaff concludes, has already failed, and there is moot point in Bush and Blair mooning on about how they can't allow their excursion into Iraq to fail. rather, they have to rethink their policy and get out of the -- yes, i repeat myself -- quagmire as soon as possible.

back home in Washington, Dubya now has to deal with the electorate finding out the truth about September 11 -- Andrew Buncombe reports in The Independent that Dubya's now on the defensive after critics seized on a recently declaissified intelligence document presented on 6th August 2001 to Dubya, proving that the Texan midget shrub and his inner cabal were warned that Al-Qaeda was planning a terror strike inside the US. critics are also at Condi Rice's neck for misleading the public over the document's contents by claiming that it was "largely historical". what did Bush need in terms of specificity, one wonders? did he need a memo which specified the exact day, time, and venue of the attacks, so that he could take action? if he claims that he "would have moved mountains" to deal with an imminent terrorist threat had he known about it, then it's just too unbelievable that the warning in the briefing of 6th August 2001 remained unheeded. then again, given that Dubya spends more than 40% of his presidency out of office at one of his three retreats, why should we be surprised that he doesn't give a flying corpulation about these Presidential Daily Briefings, really? better to figure out which trainers to wear for the daily photo-op jog, than to crack his head over anti-terrorist strategies, don't you think? in fact, you have to wonder if Dubya is deliberately offering Osama bin Laden a scenario beyond his wildest dreams -- to quote William Rivers Pitt in his sharp rebuke of the Bush administration in Truthout:

Bush invaded a Muslim country without just cause and in defiance of practically the entire world, and delivered to bin Laden a terrorist recruitment poster for the ages. The Middle East is coming together in unprecedented ways to fight the United States, a crucial step along the path towards bin Laden's desire to create a pure Islamic Caliphate. The bloodshed spurred by the Shi'ite uprising, aided by the unlikely alliance with the Sunnis, have left Iraq in utterly unsolvable turmoil. American soldiers, and Iraqi civilians, continue to die. There is absolutely, positively no good side to this situation.

Osama bin Laden need only sit back and watch everything go his way. He is almost certainly aware of the old military rule which states, "Never interfere with an enemy who is in the process of destroying himself." It is unclear how that statement translates into Arabic, but the old-school Chicago politics version is equally succinct: "Never get in the way of a perfectly good train wreck." However you phrase it, George W. Bush is proving these old sayings to be axiomatic, and Osama bin Laden is smiling.

meanwhile, the Middle East peace process remains utterly screwed, for lack of a better term. Toby Harnden of The Daily Telegraph has reported that the draft of a letter from Dubya claiming that the White House will state that a final status deal will recognise "demographic realities" on the ground, has been leaked. basically, what these "demographic realities" mean is that the Bush administration will back Sharobn's plan to annex some of the Palestinian lands in the occupied territories settled by Jews. in return, Sharon is supposed to agree to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, as well as withdraw Israel military forces from the area. although four Jewish settlements in the northern part of the West Bank will be dismantled, more than 120 others will be allowed to remain. naturally, Israeli officials are chuffed with this development, but Palestinian negotiators are dismayed at this rejection of the refugees' "right of return" to their original homelands and angered by an apparent US acceptance of withdrawal of only a small number of settlers from the West Bank, and completion of the Israeli separation barrier, which cuts deep into occupied territory. to quote Nurah Tape's article in Al-Jazeera, the Palestinian authorities have said that these US assurances to Sharon "will fly in the face of the 'road map' and result in even more instability in the region."

2004-04-10T07:16:00.000Z

the Beeb has reported that a senior Japanese official has arrived in the Middle East to try to get the three Japanese hostages held by the Iraqi kidnappers out. despite pleas from the families of the three Japanese, the Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is still refusing to pull Japanese troops out of Iraq, and will probably face more pressure to stand firm now that Dick Cheney has arrived in Tokyo as part of his Asian tour. the Japanese public had already expressed their displeasure when Koizumi defied public opinion and sent troops to Iraq. he's now claiming that Japan will jeopardise its international standing by backing out. oh aye? what international standing? or rather, what Koizumi means is that Japan will rank lower down on the US' priorities list if it backs out. if Koizumi has been paying attention to his voters and world opinion, he might want to consider taking a leaf out of Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero's book, and pledge to pull Japanese forces out unless a firm UN presence is established.

meanwhile, more news about casualties of other nationality have come in -- Rory McCarthy and Julian Borger report in The Guardian that another British man was shot and killed in Iraq yesterday, becoming the second civilian worker from the UK to die there this year. the Iraqi insurgents have also claimed to have seized another six foreign hostages -- Italians and two Americans -- according to Patrick Cockburn's report in The Independent.

to make matters worse, the Iraqi Governing Council has now declared that the US military action in Falluja is tantamount to "genocide", according to this report in The BBC. the casualty toll of Falluja continues to rise, and a doctor who runs the city's main hospital has told Al-Jazeera that at 450 Iraqis have been killed and more than 1,000 others wounded this week. naturally, the western media has been so sensitive of the needs of their consumers, and have blacked out the pictures of the horrendous catastrophe -- but the truth in photos is still available across the independent and Arab presses. to quote River's entry in her blog:

The American and European news stations don't show the dying Iraqis… they don't show the women and children bandaged and bleeding- the mother looking for some sign of her son in the middle of a puddle of blood and dismembered arms and legs… they don't show you the hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying because they don't want to hurt American feelings… but people *should* see it. You should see the price of your war and occupation- it's unfair that the Americans are fighting a war thousands of kilometers from home. They get their dead in neat, tidy caskets draped with a flag and we have to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification.

One year later, and Bush has achieved what he wanted- this day will go down in history and in the memory of all Iraqis as one of the bloodiest days ever...

both the Iraqi interim Human Rights Minister, Abdel Basit Turki and another member of the Council, Iyad Allawi have resigned yesterday. not only do the US have to deal with the wrath of al-Sadr's Shia forces and angry Sunni insurgents, they now have the Council at their backs. the breakdown of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) had long been predicted -- remember that the members were handpicked up the Americans, and none of them were democratically elected, as you would expect in a "liberated" democratic state, which, oddly enough, was exactly what the Bush administration had promised. as Haifa Zangana states angrily in her article in The Guardian, the IGC is as culpable as the occupation forces for the utter chaos that now reigns in Iraq, particularly since the IGC had done fuck all to halt the demonstrations and brutality unleashed by the American soldiers. how could Iraqis place their faith in leaders who could do nowt to speak out, let alone protect them? to quote Zangana:

While the IGC denounced the savage mutilation last week of four American mercenaries in Falluja, they failed to issue an equal condemnation of the US marines' besieging of the town, sending tank columns into neighbourhoods, guns blazing, and attacking a mosque with F-16 planes, killing 40 people. The odd IGC member who could not hide from journalists does no more than murmur about the need for "restraint on both sides" or mouth well-worn phrases about foreign hands trying to delay the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. What sovereignty?

as mentioned previously, this new upsurge of discontent amongst the Shia community is probably not what the US had bargained for initially. to quote Graham Usher in his commentary in Al-Ahram Weekly, "[t]he Shia Intifada represents the greatest challenge yet faced by the US-led occupation and its plans for Iraq," particularly since it has united Shia insurgents with their previous enemies, the Sunni community. however, Usher makes the same point which Naomi Klein had previously stated: that it is unclear who is spoiling for a fight -- the Americans or al-Sadr. while it's easy to attribute the violence to the shutting down of al-Sadr's small Al-Hawza, it's important to remember that al-Sadr had initially only reacted through non-violent demonstrations. Paul Bremer played an important role in stoking the fire by conveniently issuing an arrest warrant for al-Sadr for a murder which took place a year ago. as Usher notes, al-Sadr is hardly the only Shia cleric "an open power play with each other and the Iraqi police and occupation soldiers". furthermore, to claim that al-Sadr is trying to "establish his authority in the place of the legitimate authority" is absolute bollocks -- particularly if, as noted yesterday, al-Sadr's men seem to be the only ones keeping order in towns that have hardly seen any promises of "reconstruction" being fulfilled. as Usher states, "in large swathes of Iraq there is no legitimate national authority to replace." the idea that the Americans were itching for a soft target after their humilitation in Falluja has already been surfacing amongst Iraqis, and al-Sadr seemed like a convenient bogeyman.

Usher argues that the increasing violence between Shia insurgents and US troops would do nothing but endanger US presence and control -- for one, with the rising casualty tolls on the Iraqi side, it would only be a matter of time before more people join the insurgency. for another, the fact that al-Sadr's relatively small militia was able to resist the supposedly mighty American military machine has exposed the weakness of the US troops to Iraqis, who would now be more keen to fight to get rid of the occupiers given the possibility of success. finally, Usher points out that "by issuing a warrant for Al-Sadr's arrest the Americans appear to have closed the door on any kind of honourable exit," as it's hardly possibly for al-Sadr to bow to American demands. add to that the fact that the Americans have resorted to Sharon-like strategies against the Palestinians, and that they've been daft enough to reprise Saddam's actions (such as cutting off the city's electricity supplies upon entering Sadr City), and you have a cauldron of hostility waiting to boil over.

at home, Blair is facing increasingly dark days, to the point that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw broke his silence yesterday and admitted that the violence in Iraq is worse than he ever expected and represented the "most serious" threat to face the coalition since the war formally ended a year ago, as reported by Patrick Wintour in The Guardian. Rob Evans and David Leigh have also written in The Guardian that the Blair government has had to back down from its refusal to cooperate with parliamentary ombudsman Ann Abraham, and had finally handed over copies of the attorney-general's advice on the legality of the Iraq invasion. meanwhile, Tony Blair heads for the US next week, and one wonders what he can possibly say to urge the war- (and oil-)hungry Bush administration to rethink its post-war strategy.

2004-04-09T09:50:00.000Z

last night -- which was also the eve of the anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall -- saw the most vicious fighting in post-Saddam Iraq, according to Rory McCarthy's report in The Guardian -- about 460 Iraqis have been killed, and 36 US soldiers have been "lost" this week. the US has also admitted it has lost control of the towns of Najaf to al-Sadr's forces, but has just announced that control over Kut has been regained, with operations in Falluja suspended. Falluja, one Iraqi journalist claims, "has become a ghost town" -- the streets are empty safe for fighters on both sides, bodies are still trapped under the rubble because no one dares to venture out and risk being shot at by one of the American soldiers in the minarets of mosques or bombed by the US aircrafts circling overhead, and the town is now devoid of electricity and water supplies. in fact, the head of Falluja's city council has throw in the towel because he felt that "this American behaviour is increasing the size of the resistance and it is making all the people sympathetic to them...this behaviour of the Americans will make everyone seek revenge."

quite right, as the editorial in The Guardian would tell you: " [Y]oung Iraqis are being radicalised into a new intifada." Rummy would like to have us believe that the insurgency is merely a wee straggling group made up of remnant Saddam supporters or mostly phantom foreign fighters. but that doesn't tally with the significant casualty toll of at least two hundred a day in Fallujah. moreover, as the editorial notes:

The misplaced machismo of the US armed forces and of its chief representative Paul Bremer has made a bad situation worse. The punitive raid on Falluja is pure vengeance for the mutilation after their death of four Americans last week. Mr Bremer's closure of a radical anti-American newspaper controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr, which has sparked the Shia violence, was a petulant move. If tribal factors are judged significant in the Iraqi resistance, there is now an almost tribal character to the US reaction.

this lack of sensitivies to the Iraqi mentality is also the focus of Naomi Klein's article in The Los Angeles Times. according to Klein:

Clerics at the Sadr office [in Sadr City] said soldiers had entered the building and shredded photographs of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Iraq. When I arrived at the destroyed center, the floor was covered with torn religious texts, including copies of the Koran that had been ripped and shot through with bullets. And it did not escape the notice of the Shiites here that hours earlier, U.S. soldiers had bombed a Sunni mosque in Fallouja.

there couldn't be any better way to incense the entire Iraqi population -- now, not only are civilian areas attacked, religious sites are similarly desecrated. in Sadr City, civilians had seen little "reconstruction" effort promised by the US, but have instead witnessed the supposed "outlaw militia" of al-Sadr had been the only ones maintaining order by directing traffic and guarding factories -- it's hard to imagine why they would now put their faith in the Coalition Authority which has demonstrated such disrespect, brutality and lack of understanding of their way of life.

if the US reckons that resorting to Sharon-style tactics and brutality is the way to quell the insurgency, then as Sami Ramadani warns in his piece in The Guardian, the Iraqi resistance will continue to spread to new areas, with the intense anti-occupation feelings of the people turning into more militant forms of protest, until the occupation ends. the "liberation", Ramandani states, is not the one promised by the Americans, but will be the one that comes with eradicating the "colonialist adventure" of the Bush administration and its lapdogs:

What went so wrong that the US-led war to "liberate" the Iraqi people turned into the daily slaughter of the victims of Saddam's tyranny? The answer is simple: nothing has gone wrong...

What has changed is that many Iraqis have decided that the peaceful road to evict the occupiers is not leading anywhere. They didn't need Sadr to tell them this. They were told it loudly and brutally a few days ago by a US Abraham tank, one of many facing unarmed and peaceful demonstrators not far from the infamous Saddam statue that was toppled a year ago. The tank crushed to death two peaceful demonstrators protesting against the closure of a Sadr newspaper by Paul Bremer, the self-declared champion of free speech in Iraq. The tragic irony wasn't lost on Iraqis.

moreoever, as Ramandani angrily points out, the notion of "liberation" is shambolic since the new US-engineered constitution specifically states that the new US-founded Iraqi armed forces will be under the command of the occupation forces, to be "invited" to stay in Iraq after 30th June, backed up by 14 large US military bases and the biggest US embassy in the world. to pin the blame on al-Sadr, as the US is attempting to do, is pure folly. Iraqis have already articulated their desire for the departure of the occupation troops right from the start. to quote Ramandani:

it is important to remember the greatest mass demonstration in Iraq's history, only days after the fall of Baghdad, when 4 million people converged on Karbala to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain. Their rallying cries then were "No to America, no to Saddam" and "No to the occupation" - a chant that has been repeated at many mass rallies since. Opposing Saddam's tyranny was never the same thing as welcoming invasion and the tyranny of occupation.

the Bush administration is going to have to answer to the growing number of Americans who demand to know where these "Iraqi friends" that Bush referred to in his previous placating speeches are, the editorial in The International Herald Tribune states:

President George W. Bush keeps assuring the public that the militias attacking the occupation forces represent a tiny, freedom-hating fringe. But that fringe is willing to take to the streets with guns, and none of Iraq's leaders are willing to stand up to them.

the editorial also observes the current impotence of the Iraqi Governing Council headed by Ahmad Chalabi, and wonders how the Council would inspire any confidence after the 30th June handover. well, this doesn't come as a surprise given that the Council was handpicked by Dubya's camp, and is not imbued with any legitimacy whatsoever since the members were not democratically elected by the people.
the Iraqi insurgents are now targeting just about anyone whose country took part in this sordid war -- the Beeb has reported that three Japanese civilians have been captured by a group known as the Saraya al-Mujahideen, and Al-Jazeera TV has shown video footage of them being held at knife point. earlier, seven South Koreans, one Canadian and two Arabs were also kidnapped, but the South Koreans were released later. the three Japanese aren't part of the occupation troops -- rather, they are volunteer workers, with one of them, 18-year-old Nahoko Takato, actually a campaigner for peace in Iraq. the Saraya al-Mujahideen is demanding that Japan withdraw its troops within three days. nevertheless, it looks like the Japanese government is refusing to budge -- Chief Cabinet ecretary Yasuo Fukuda has said that "there is no reason to withdraw" the troops from Iraq since they are only carrying out humanitarian activities, according to The Japan Times. this is certainly not going to sit down well with the Japanese public, which was already largely unsupportive of Prime Minister Koizumi's decision to kowtow to US pressure and send Japanese troops. as the report notes:

It is Japan's riskiest military deployment since World War II, and critics have said it violates Japan's pacifist Constitution.

this new strategy to target other countries in the Coalition of the Sinning is exposing the fragility of the alliance and putting a strain on the smaller partners, Ewen MacAskill states in his report in The Guardian. aside from the fact that these smaller troop deployments by the respective countries might just be pulled out soon owing to the intense displeasure of their home electorate, the US may have to re-deploy more troops to reinforce the current forces -- which could possibly lead to a wave of protests amongst Americans, who are beginning to acknowledge the fact that their president has told porkies to lead the country into war, and subsequently into an occupation of an increasingly hostile land. to quote Martin Woollacott in his commentary in The Guardian:

The US position in Iraq has rested until now not principally on military strength but on the cooperation of two critically important Iraqi forces: the Shia religious leadership in the south; and the reconstituted Iraqi police, and to a lesser extent the army, in the centre of the country. The political and military developments of the past few weeks have weakened both of these supports. The very fact that the Americans and other coalition troops are now involved in military action in and around some areas under the control of Sunni and Shia insurgents, even if that control is unlikely to last, is an index of how serious is the regression evident in Iraq.

the key figure now is Ayatollah al-Sistani, who has yet to outrightly condemn al-Sadr or endorse the action of American troops. al-Sistani cannot afford to throw his weight behind either side because the conflict is costing Shia lives, and to support either party could become political suicide for the senior clergy.

Woollacott also cites the US' failure to understand the intricacies of and division within Iraqi society as a major error. this was a nation crippled by decades of dictatorship, sanctions and corruption, and it comes as no surprise that internal discontent which was previously concealed has simply festered and grew after post-war Iraq looked nothing like the promised land the US had claimed it would be.

it is evident that the only possible way out of this mess is to give the UN a strong role in Iraq, as argued in the editorial in The Guardian. Washington is clearly peeing in its pants, with Bush backtracking from a previous aversion to a robust UN presence -- David Usborne of The Independent has reported that the Bush administration now plans to lobby up to a dozen countries to commit troops solely to protect UN personnel, in the hope of convincing the UN to redeply its staff in Baghdad before the 30th June deadline.

the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam has been brought up several times by a number of commentators, but is it justified to claim that the two have similarities? the BBC's Barnaby Mason focuses on the issue in his article, and notes that although there are differences (such as the deployment size, the fact that the UK resisted US calls to be its lackey during the Vietnam war, the decrease in the use of ruthless methods to quell natives), the fact remains that in both cases, "the same dilemma faces the Americans in Iraq - how to separate the fighters from bystanders, this time in run-down towns and cities rather than tropical jungle.". as Mason observes, the question that remains -- and which perplexed the Johnson administration during the Vietnam war -- is how the US is going to be able to get out of the mess they'd created. furthermore, on a more philosophical level, both the Johnson and Bush administration tried to make their actions out to be altruistic ones, where they were merely going in to "free" or "liberate" the people. Mason ends his article with a reference to the fact that Democrat shoo-in presidential candidate John Kerry had been decorated for bravery in the Vietnam war, but had later campaigned against it -- and is trying to don the hat of a critic now for Iraq as well -- whereas Dubya had avoided the draft to serve in Vietnam, thanks to his daddy's big bucks and influence. would the fact that Kerry's military experience -- and his subsequent condemnation of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq -- have a part in encouraging votes for the Democrats? possibly, since the situation in Iraq is just deteriorating from day to day, and dissenting voices are getting louder as well.

one thing currently predominant in Iraq, and which Vietnam didn't have to the same extent, is the presence of mercenaries -- or "contractors", as the Bush administration and the US media prefers to call them. Sarah Whalen looks at the sinister presence of these "Triggermen" in her commentary in The Arab News, and rightly points out that most Americans have the erroneous impression that these "contractors" are merely hired hands in Iraq to help in the rebuilding of infrastructure destroyed during the war. what they aren't told is that these are licensed to kill:

Their job is to plug the enemy. They are Triggermen. And their derivative M-16s fire a NATO-compatible ammunition round so that they can use ammunition wherever US and coalition forces are.

Whalen cites the case of the four American "contractors" killed in Falluja, and notes that they worked for Blackwater Security Consulting, a soldier-for-hire outfit run by retired US Navy SEALS who saw the prospects of establishing such a facility as the US military downsized forces while increasing operations abroad. as mentioned previously, and as reiterested by Whalen:

Mercenaries are illegal combatants under laws of war and international law. International law requires mercenaries to obey their host state’s laws. They may be entitled to use self-defense if local law permits them.

because these soldiers-for-hire are not accountable to anyone except by a civil employment contract to the occupation forces, their actions -- such as "firing thousands of ammunition rounds at hundreds of 44-mm grenades" during the seige in Najaf -- are not accounted for. therefore, casualty figures can be easily concealed as they are not included in official figures, and the US electorate can be further deceived into believing that all's well in Iraq. and that's also why these private military corporations can use the notion of "plausible deniability", which allows of official US military to avoid troop limits imposed by Congress, as well as carry out clandestine operations and still avoid public and media scrutiny by avoiding bodybags filled with US soldiers.

frightening? you bet. according to Dana Priest and Mary Pat Flaherty's article in The Washington Post, there are currently about 20,000 "Triggermen" in Iraq now, and that number is expected to grow to 30,000 in the near future when the US troop presence is drawn down after the handover scheduled for 30th June.

what Whalen didn't mention in her article was that these soldiers-for-hire a.k.a. "security contractor" firms rake in massive profits, something which was pointed out in Barry Yeoman's article in MotherJones in the May/June 2003 issue:

For-profit military companies now enjoy an estimated $100 billion in business worldwide each year, with much of the money going to Fortune 500 firms like Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.

don't forget who's behind the initiative to use these firms in the first place. Dick Cheney had started the ball rolling by engaging Brown & Root Services (a subsidiary of Halliburton -- where he later served as CEO, thereby lining his pockets with the same blood earnings he'd encouraged) to provide support for American soldiers in combat zones after the first Gulf War in 1991. furthermore, these companies cosy up to the Neocon Republicans in office as much as they can, by pouring money into the re-election campaign of the current president. given the absolute disaster that has exploded in Iraq, as well as the fact that it's yet another presidential election year for the US, it's no wonder why the presence of these "Triggermen" will become more significant in Iraq in time to come.

meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice's performance last night at the September 11 Commission left more unanswered questions than before, and did little to salvage the credibility (if there was any in the first place) of the Bush administration, as Jannat Jalil reports on the Beeb. Condi Rice stuck (har har) with the line that Dubya had taken the al-Qaeda threat seriously from the start, and that there was "no silver bullet" that could have prevented the attack, particularly since the main problem was a communication breakdown between the intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials. try telling that to the survivors and families of victims of September 11 -- "sorry, we couldn't do nowt, 'cos we just weren't talking to each other in the administration, y'know?" Rice feigned amnesia with regards to Richard Clarke's claims that he had informed Rice about the presence of sleeper cells of al-Qaeda in the US, but was later caught short when pressed to reveal the title of a briefing given to the Texan midget plant on 6th August 2001: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States" was the reply. so, just a wee bit more than a month before the attacks, Bush had already been alerted of bin Laden's plans to attack, and even though there may not have been specific details, it's rather odd that Rice would have focused her National Security speech (which was to be made on September 11, but was later cancelled) on missile defense rather than terrorist threats. an indication of the administration's priorities, perhaps? as the editorial in The Guardian states:

To say that a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" did not warn of an impending attack, according to Dr Rice, suggests the administration has begun to lose touch with reality.

in any case, it looks like this memo is to become the focus of the next battle between the White House and the September 11 Commission, as the latter has asked for its declassification, but is encountering the White House stonewall.

furthermore, as David Von Drehle states in his analysis featured in The Washington Post, Rice's insistence that Bush had taken the al-Qaeda threat seriously right from the beginning is inconsistent with the fact that key departments (such as transport) claimed to be uninformed of the threat. Rice whinged about the lack of action of the Bush administration's predecessors, but if she thinks that sitting in the White House for 233 prior to the attacks didn't give Dubya and his acolytes enough time to deal with the threat, then it must indicate the ineptitude of the administration.

this ineptitude becomes more evident in David Corn's incisive commentary featured in The Los Angeles Weekly, where he zooms his attention onto the fact that the Bush administration had didn't deal with Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the September 11 hijackers who were already being watched by the CIA since 2000. it is true that the CIA and FBI blundered by not communicating with each other:

Because the CIA failed to tell the FBI -- until August 23, 2001 -- that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdar were in the United States, the FBI never went looking for them. Had the FBI been searching for them, it well could have found them.

however, the fact that Bush did sweet f.a. in response to this major error, and had instead defended the pre-September 11 performance of the CIA, is worrying. Corn also argues that "if it were more widely known that the U.S. government had been this close to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdar, Bush’s lack of urgency would look worse and perhaps downright negligent.":

If Bush and his aides had considered al Qaeda an urgent matter, they might have responded to the increased warnings that came in during the summer of 2001 by going ballistic and demanding that government agencies double-check and triple-check all the information they had on al Qaeda operatives. Had Bush and Rice sounded a call to arms, would midlevel officials have connected the dots on al-Hazmi and al-Mihdar? Would they have paid more attention to other telltale signs in their possession, such as the infamous Phoenix memo, which was sent by an FBI agent in July 2001 to the bin Laden unit at headquarters and which reported that suspected extremists linked to bin Laden were taking flight instruction in Arizona?

to read a point-by-point rebuttle to Rice's session at the Commission, check out the wonderful articles featured in The Center for American Progress, where both Rice's opening statement and testimony is checked against the facts to show the gaping holes in her argument.

so, while Condi Rice was busy fielding questions before the September 11 Commission, where was Dubya himself? Tom Engelhardt spots this tidbit in The Washington Post and makes mention of Dubya's packed schedule on his entry in his blog TomDispatch. apparently, Bush is "leading a tour of his ranch for hunting, fishing and land-conservation advocates". fascinating. not that he didn't give a toss about Condi Rice, of course. Bob Herbert notes in his commentary in The New York Times that "[t]he president called Ms. Rice from his pickup truck on the ranch to tell her she had done a great job before the panel." a preoccupied man, is our Bush -- forget the fact that Iraq is going to the dogs, ignore the fact that one of the most important testimonies in his political career is taking place in Washington, disregard the fact that polls are starting to show a significant shift in American attitudes towards the failures of this administration... let's go take a walk with the ducks instead, shall we? the whole Iraqi debacle is a disgrace, and to quote Herbert, "[w]hen you open the door to get a look at the Bush policy on Iraq, you find yourself staring into an empty room." more importantly, the supposed "cakewalk" in Iraq isn't happening, and Bush's jeer to the Iraqi militants to "bring 'em on" betrayed his lack of comprehension for the horrors of war, as well as the complexities of Iraqi society.

2004-04-08T11:23:00.000Z

could someone please explain to me how the US' purported objective to "pacify" Falluja could be achieved through air strikes into a mosque compound, killing more than 40 people? maybe i'm just daft as hell, but for the life of me, i can't suss out how attacking the sacred Islamic place of worship like the Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque in a predominantly Muslim-populated area with two 227-kg bombs and tons of rockets, during afternoon prayers when worshippers congregate in the mosque, could be scoring the occupation troops any brownie points, particularly if casualties include ordinary families who are clearly innocent. just targeting "terrorists", the US military claims... oh yeah? well, go take a look at the photos of casualties from the bombing (very brutally graphic content -- mature audience only) in Information Clearing House (taken from Al-Jazeera) -- i guess this means the bastards in the Bush camp are telling us that children are legitimate targets too 'cos they're "terrorists" really.

and to add to that, the Shia community have even more reason to be furious, since the US forces seem to be unable to distinguish between the Army of the Mehdi and ordinary Shia pilgrims on their way to the holy city of Kerbala to commemorate the feast of Arbain, and as such, has attacked ordinary Muslims celebrating an important festival marking the forty-day period after the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, one of the founders of their faith. now, Jonathan Steele and Ewen MacAskill have reported in The Guardian that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has refused to condemn the uprising attributed to al-Sadr's supporters, but rather deplored "the methods used by occupation forces in the current escalating situation in Iraq ... and any action that disturbs order and prevents officials from carrying out their duties" -- this might just signal his (and consequently, his moderate camp's) complicit support for al-Sadr, which can only mean the escalation of tensions and imminent increase in violence.

this report in Al-Jazeera exposes the ridiculously simplistic thinking that seems endemic within the US troops:

American forces initially said those killed in Wednesday's attack on the mosque were fighters taking refuge.

But a marine officer was later forced to admit that US forces had failed to find any bodies.

"When we hit that building I thought we had killed all the bad guys, but when we went in they didn't find any bad guys in the building," Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne told reporters.

oh aye, it's really just a battle between good and bad guys, isn't it? the US and its Coalition of the Sinning being on the side of some divine anthropocentric figure called God, and the rest of the world which has disagreed from the US strain of thought being the baddies to be exterminated. and isn't it simple for them to just brush an erroneous attack aside -- oh we thought the mosque was chockablock with evil demons, but whaddya know, after the blitz, whoops, it was just a wee mistake, eh? so everything's fine now, and let's just move on, move on...

but it gets more sinister -- Firas al-Atraqchi has contributed a well-investigated piece in Yellowtimes that the US military appeared to have deliberately fed misinformation to the media about the scale of the attacks. apparently, US military sources had initially claimed that they had spotted two gunmen running into the Haj Musheen Abdul Aziz al-Kubaysi mosque in Falluja. and then followed up that piece of news with claims that the occupation forces had taken heavy fire from the mosque and this resulted in the loss of its protected status. this was promptly followed with the dropping of the two bombs -- on a mosque named Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai, which the US claimed was the same mosque despite the difference in names. during the subsequent press conference, the official line given by US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt was that the US forces dropped two 227-kg bombs and fired rockets at the walls of the mosque. yet, one Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne had claimed that a Cobra helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at the base of the mosque's minaret and an F-16 fighter-bomber dropped a 227-kg laser-guided bomb on the compound wall -- and as al-Atraqchi notes, "firing a missile at the base of the mosque's minaret is firing into the compound." lies, lies and more lies. surefire way to win friends, eh?

it's almost rib-tickling to read about Rummy's admission that the occupation forces are facing a "serious problem", while concurrently claiming that the insurgency is just made up of a straggling bunch of "terrorists":

"There's nothing like an army" or "large elements of hundreds of people trying to overthrow or to change the situation...

"You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness. It's a serious problem, and the problem's being worked on," he said.

right, just pockets of disgruntled folk, no need for alarm, really... everything's fine, just fine. Rummy's outdoing Al-Sahaf, methinks, and he must be severely deluded if he reckons that the rest of the world are as blissfully ignorant as he would like us to be.

Maureen Dowd snorts at the "Delphic" character of Rummy's double-speak in the same speech mentioned above in her article in The New York Times. To give an example of one of his priceless gems:

"We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going," he said, adding: "Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. You're going to have good days and bad days." On the road to democracy, this "is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments."

i know the word "quagmire" has been bandied around one too many times, but it looks like what's happening in Iraq today pretty much redefines the word. as Dowd points out:

Our troops in Iraq don't know who they're fighting and who they're saving. They don't know when they're coming home or when they're being forcibly re-upped by Rummy. Our diplomats in Baghdad don't know who they're handing the country over to next month. And Bush officials don't know where to go for help, since the military's tapped out, the allies have cold feet, the Arab world's angry and the rest of the globe is thinking, "You got what you deserved."

the Bush administration claims that these insurgents (or "terrorists", the preferred word by Dubya and gang) are resorting to violence because they fear that the US would build a successful democracy in Iraq -- mind, a successful democracy clearly doesn't require free and fair elections; you just have to appoint native leaders who would be kushty with American business interests and would bend to US political pressure. as noted by Nonna Gorilovskaya in her commentary in MotherJones, the Texan short shrub would like us to believe that the insurgents' political weakness has resulted in them resorting to violence to destabilise Iraq. however, she argues:

But if the spike in violence is an indication of the insurgents' weakness, so is the U.S.'s inability to maintain security in Iraq -- this goes for the U.S. troops and the Iraqi police force they have trained.

she cites Harold Meyerson's article in The Washington Post, where he states that the Iraqi cops are willingly handing over police vehicles and stations to the insurgents, with some of them even joining the militia in their struggle.

remember what has been said about the 30th June deadline to hand over power to the Iraqis being just a spot marked "X" on the calendar, and that it lacks real substance? well, i guess that wasn't too far off the mark, given that Rummy has now announced that some "seasoned" US troops in Iraq might be kept there longer than scheduled to deal with the surge in violence, and that thousands of US troops will be sent into Iraq to "quell the violence". is it any wonder why ordinary Iraqis have little faith in -- and lots of disdain for - the Anglo-American invaders? to quote Rory McCarthy in his article in The Guardian:

Angry young Sunnis in Falluja and Shias in Kufa had been saying for months that their frustration with the slow pace of reconstruction and their humiliation with occupation were running so deep that they were ready to fight against their occupiers. More moderate Iraqis also spoke openly of their resentment, deep dissatisfaction and wounded pride.

what's more, the new alliance between the Sunnis and Shias has been expounded upon by al-Sadr's aide and head of his office in Najaf, Qays Al-Khaz'ali, according to the latest entry in Zeyad's blog:

Speaking on behalf of Muqtada, he stated that they will certainly not calm down any soon because the Quran orders them not to; "Fight those who fight against you". And he has also made it clear that they stand united with their 'Sunni brothers' in Ramadi, Fallujah, and Adhamiya in the resistance.

as Rahul Mahajan states in his insightful commentary in CommonDreams, the fact that Falluja is now fiercely resistant to the occupation forces signals that moderate Iraqis are growing increasingly discontent with the way post-war "liberated" Iraq is looking -- Falluja, although a heavily Sunni Arab region, was not a strong Saddamist area:

[Falluja's] imams got into trouble for refusing to obey his orders to praise him personally during prayers. Many inhabitants were Salafists (Wahhabism is a subset of Salafism), a group singled out for political persecution by Saddam.

furthermore, Mahajan points out that Falluja was no hotbed of resistance during the war. if there was an upsurge of insurgence, it happened after 28th April, when US troops opened fire on a group of 100 to 200 peaceful protesters, killing 15. instead of appeasing the Sunni population, the US troops made a major booboo by incurring the wrath of Shias through their targeting of al-Sadr. Mahajan argues that Bush's claim that al-Sadr had incited violence is pure codswallop:

First of all, for all of al-Sadr's firebrand rhetoric, he and his followers had always stopped short of overt violence against the occupying forces. Second, the incident that precipitated this whole round of violence was the closing of his newspaper, al-Hawza, a blatantly undemocratic act. In fact, the paper was not closed for directly advocating violence, but simply for reporting one eyewitness claim that a supposed car bombing that killed numerous volunteers for the New Iraqi defense forces was actually done by plane (and therefore by the United States)...

Whatever the case, the administration's militaristic response and hollow rhetoric cut no ice with any Iraqis here, and are certain simply to exacerbate a situation that has already spun out of control for the United States.

so why does the US continue to insist that the insurgents are merely a minority, and even that al-Qaeda and other "foreign terrorists" who had infiltrated Iraq to fight the US military are responsible for the violence (though occupation commanders on the ground had admitted that they have met few foreigners)? rather than admit their failure, back out and let the UN clean up the mess they'd created, the Bush administration insists on pretending that all's well, and that these uprisings will be dealt with with even more military violence. strange how the Americans have this perennial problem of shooting themselves in the foot, don't you think? Bush is adamant to bank on his claim that he's a "war president" to win him another term in the White House. but he's certainly exposing himself as an extremely inept "war president", and it's no surprise that his approval ratings have fallen significantly since the prolonged occupation of Iraq and increase in casualties.

as the editorial in The Arab News points out, even if the occupation forces are successful in weeding out al-Sadr's supporters, others will certainly come forward to replace those who'd been killed, and what's more, public support for the insurgents would grow:

Iraqis, who once placed their faith in Washington, are now despairing. In times of uncertainty, people understandably turn to their immediate communities for support. They will abandon the lofty sentiments of a pluralist, multiethnic united Iraq. The prospect of civil conflict is now more real than at any time since Saddam’s ouster.

the editorial goes on to assert that the US would have avoided the scale of the disaster if it had been "more informed and more sensitive to the complexities and subtleties of Iraqi society." what is now needed is for the international community to step in through the participation of the UN in the reconstruction of Iraq. however, as the editorial rightly notes, this would mean the cooperation of those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" previously jeered at by Dubya and his warmongering lot, and who have since been proven right -- "Such a humiliation for America would be disastrous for his re-election bid."

Seumas Milne goes even further in his opinion piece in The Guardian, and states that the debacle in Iraq "will drive home the forgotten lessons of empire" to the Bush and Blair administration:

For Britain, Iraq has turned into its first full-scale colonial war since it was forced out of Aden in the late 1960s. And the pledge by US commanders to "pacify" the mushrooming centres of Iraqi insurrection echoes not only the doomed US efforts to break the Vietnamese in the 60s and 70s, but also the delusionary euphemisms of Britain's own blood-soaked campaigns in Kenya and Malaya a decade earlier.

Senator Robert Byrd has hit the nail right on the head when he compares the debacle in Iraq to Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" in his commentary featured in Antiwar.com:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

as Senator Byrd states, someone had indeed blundered -- Bush and his warmongering acolytes have made one of the biggest mistakes in American history to lead the country without the endorsement of the UN into an unjust, morally repulsive and illegal war against a country crippled by years of sanctions. what the Bush camp had claimed would be a cakewalk has been nothing but chaos, and to quote Byrd, "the war in Iraq was not destined to follow the script of some idealized cowboy movie of President Bush's youth, where the good guys ride off into a rose-tinted sunset, all strife settled and all wrongdoing avenged." the ones to suffer the consequences of this huge blunder are the US occupation soldiers and the civilians of Iraq.

Byrd goes on to caution the Bush administration against persisting in hanging on to control of Iraq rather than handing it back to the UN, and then to the Iraqis. rather than pouring in more US troops, Byrd argues that what is imperative is to get the US out of the -- here we go again -- quagmire:

Pouring more U.S. troops into Iraq is not the path to extricate ourselves from that country. We need the support and the endorsement of both the United Nations and Iraq's neighbors to truly internationalize the Iraq occupation and take U.S. soldiers out of the cross-hairs of angry Iraqis.

just as Iraqis are being punished for protecting their own land, and wanting to have the freedom to rule their country according to their will, Al-Jazeera has reported that 15 Palestinians who were trying to block bulldozers from destroying their farmland for the building of the controversial "security fence" in the West Bank have been wounded by Israeli occupation troops. the Israeli troops had barged into Palestinian territories and destroyed the olive crops, thus ruining the livelihood of the already impoverished Palestinians. meanwhile, a group of women staged a protest outside the UN offices in Gaza, where they burned an American flag to protest against US action against Iraqis in the past few days, and denounced "the grave violations perpetrated against the Iraqi people" by the US forces in a letter to Kofi Annan. if the Bush administration is courting a bloodbath in the Middle East, it couldn't have done any better in inflaming the passions of the people there with their actions and support for state terrorism perpetrated by Israel. Hamas has already been reported to have condemned in a statement the "arbitrary killings" carried out by Americans against "our Iraqi brothers", and has called on Arab countries and Muslims to "protect the Iraqi people, and put an end to the aggressions".

big day for Condoleezza Rice today as she faces the September 11 Commission. Justin Webb's rightly notes in his report on BBC News that her testimony is "a kind of make or break day for her reputation and perhaps for the future of the Bush presidency." it's hard to imagine how Rice could salvage herself now, since as Julian Borger reports in The Guardian, Gary Hart, a former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior terrorism expert, has claimed that he had delivered a final desperate warning of an inevitable terrorist attack to Rice just 5 days before the September 11 tragedy. Hart said that Rice's reply was that she would "discuss it with the vice-president," but he felt that the response was a brush-off. Hart had chaired the US commission on National Security/21st Century, established by Clinton in October 1998 and scheduled to report to the incoming president in early 2001. according to Hart, his report recommended the establishment of a national homeland security agency, as he had predicted that the US was in danger of an attack of a massive scale. however, his recommendations were ignored by Dubya and his team. if the Bush administration was as "focused" on the threat of Al-Qaeda as Rice has claimed (and presumably will be arguing for again during the testimony), it does seem completely out of character for them to reject the recommendations and warnings given by Hart. Hart's assertions add more weight to those of Richard Clarke -- and Rice is in for a hard time during her questioning as the allegations by senior officials will certainly be a key feature of the testimony.

more importantly, as Sidney Blumenthal argues in his commentary in The Guardian, Condi Rice's "negligence and incompetence encompasses the entirety of the Bush foreign policy." Blumenthal reminds us of Rice's failure in developing the Middle East peace plan back in January 2002, when she rejected the proposal developed by Flynt Leverett (director of the initiative) which was similar to Clinton's one during his presidency, simply because she felt it was "politically untenable" for Dubya who would possibly have to face the opposition of Ariel Sharon to enact it. throughout the subsequent negotiations, Rice intervened to insist that whole burden of accountability must be put on the Palestinians and none on Israel. the eventual announcement of the road map in March 2003 was pretty much due to the commitment of Blair, who knew that he had to return to his electorate with some semblance of a peace initiative, so that they would be convinced to support him through Iraq. Blumenthal concludes:

The story of the Middle East debacle, like that of the pre-9/11 terrorism fiasco, reveals the inner workings of Bush's White House: the president -aggressive and manipulated, ignorant of his own policies and their consequences, negligent; the secretary of state - proud, instinctively subordinate, constantly in retreat; the vice-president - as Richelieu, conniving, at the head of a neoconservative cabal, the power behind the throne; the national security adviser - seemingly open, even vulnerable, posing as the honest broker, but deceitful and derelict, an underhanded lightweight.

last but not least -- William Rivers Pitt has come up with a list of 20 very pertinent questions in Truthout which he wants to see answered by Condi Rice during her testimony. would the Commission grill Rice adequately, or would this merely be a burlesque played out for the media? on verra.

2004-04-07T12:41:00.000Z

utter chaos in Iraq: Al-Jazeera reports that more than a dozen US marines have been killed, and the casualty toll for Iraqis have been rising after clashes between the occupation forces, Sunni resistance and supporters of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in at least 8 towns and cities in Iraq -- that makes a total of 30 American soldiers and more than 130 Iraqis killed since the last weekend. this would be the first time that the Shia community is fighting back with arms... and evidently, this doesn't bode well for the occupation troops (or other foreigners in Iraq for that matter), as they now have to fight both the Sunnis and Shias on two separate fronts. meanwhile, the occupation forces have tightened the seige around the town of Fallujah after the uprising yesterday -- 52 Iraqis have been killed, with more than 100 others (including children) injured, since the US warplanes have taken to attacking residential neighbourhoods, as reported by Al-Jazeera's Ahmad Mansur. civilians, mind... of course, it's the US -- i keep forgetting that these cunts are exempt from human rights law, including the Geneva Conventions relative to the protection of civilian persons in the time of war. or is it just too verbose for that daftie Dubya to read, given his limited linguistic abilities?

you've got to hand it to the Bush administration for united the Sunni and the Shia community after so many years of enmity -- according to Robert Fisk's article in The Independent, after the US attacks on the Sadr city (a strongly Shia area) which resulted in the deaths of about 40 Iraqis and 8 Americans, letters allegedly written by Sunni townspeople of Fallujah were distributed to the people in Sadr, with the message, "We support you, our brothers, in your struggle." this unusual unity between Shias and Sunnis is further corroborated in Karl Vick's report in The Washington Post:

On Monday, residents of Adhamiya, a largely Sunni section of northern Baghdad, marched with followers of Moqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whose call for armed resistance was answered by local Sunnis the same afternoon, residents said.

Fisk goes on to state that the so-called "new" Iraq which is to be handed over to the Iraqis at the end of June is going to be an absolute mess, with virtually no freedom given to the Iraqis:

What good this will do "new" Iraq is anyone's guess. Vast concrete walls have been lowered across the road and military vehicles have been used to chase away civilians trying to bypass them. A prolonged series of Israeli-style house raids are now apparently planned for the people of Fallujah to seek out the gunmen who first attacked the four Americans. The corpses were stripped, mutilated and hanged.

Naomi Klein's point (in her article i'd mentioned in yesterday's entry) about how the Coalition forces are doing their utmost to provoke the Iraqis so as to use the chaos as a justification for a delayed departure of the occupation forces may just be right. the US nitwits are clearly trying to incense the large supporter base of al-Sadr -- Al-Jazeera has reported that the US is now claiming that al-Sadr is wanted for other "crimes" -- not merely for the assassination of a rival cleric, but also for the deaths of three other people, as well as -- get this -- the embezzling of "khums", or donations from worshippers to mosques and shrines in the south, worth a few hundred dollars. ironic, this... given that the US twats have seized Iraq's national wealth and are working to flog the pieces off to private companies -- mostly run by mates who pour money into the Neocon Republican party.

in fact, Mark LeVine, who's recently visited Falluja himself, has also claimed that the current instability in Iraq serves US corporate interests, thus adding more credence to Klein's theory. in his commentary in TomPaine.com, LeVine states that "without the chaos, Iraqis would not allow the country to be sold off wholesale, or allow the U.S. troops to remain after the June 30th 'transfer' of sovereignty." the messier it is within Iraq, the easier it would be for the US to impose neoliberal globalization strategies. the more the world's attention is focused on the spate of violence in the country, the less the US would be held accountable for appalling conditions in the hospitals and schools -- yet again another violation of the Geneva Conventions, LeVine rightly points out. moreover, the state of chaos "allows the mainstream press to focus on the overt violence without addressing what an unmitigated disaster the occupation is." to quote Colgate University professor Nancy Ries, the chaos in Iraq is "sponsored chaos", and more specifically:

[W]ar and occupation are wonderful opportunities for corporations to make billions of dollars in profits, unchecked by the laws and regulations that hamper their profitability in peacetime. Because of this, in the postmodern global era, global corporations and the government elites with whom they work have great incentive to sponsor global chaos and the violence it generates.

furthermore, the prolonging of the mess in Iraq would also make it impossible for the cultivation of civil society, thereby stifling alternative political discourse to counter the mainstream or imposed political order -- precisely what the Bushite overlords want.

tomorrow is a special day for Condoleezza Rice, as she will be grilled by the September 11 Commission about her role in the farce which includes preposterous claims, contradictions that a wee tyke could spot, and other allegations made by Richard Clarke that the Bush administration had ignored the threat from Al-Qaeda and instead used the September 11 tragedy to justify the Iraq war. given that Sibel Edmonds has also now stepped out to add weight to Clarke's claims, as well as confirm that Dubya and his acolytes were well aware that Al-Qaeda was planning to hit the US with planes, Condi Rice is certainly in for a whipping tomorrow.

all this isn't going to make the Texan short shrub feel all too comfy about his re-election bid. as Julian Borger notes in his article, the escalating violence in Iraq is becoming a thorn his Bush's flesh, with both Democrats and Republicans now calling for a serious rethink of US strategy in Iraq:

[W]ith even Republicans warning of the imminent danger of a civil war in Iraq, and the administration's handling of the terrorist threat under increasing scrutiny, the president's image as a wartime leader is taking a battering.

add to that the potential embarassment when Condi Rice has to testify under oath tomorrow, as well as the opinion polls' indication that support and approval ratings for Bush are plummetting, and you can see why the Bush camp is feeling hot under the collar, and why Edward Kennedy has termed Iraq as "George Bush's Vietnam".

it's therefore no wonder why Alisa Solomon notes in her article in The Village Voice that a recent US army survey admitted that 72% of soldiers report that morale in their unit is low or very low, whilst suicide rate among service members is at an all-time high, and that various reports have estimated that 600 to 1,700 US soldiers have fled to avoid service in Iraq. Solomon focuses her article on US Army Privates Brandon Hughey and Jeremy Hinzman, who'd both headed northwards to Canada as political asylums from the US who are conscientious opposers of the war in Iraq -- and it looks like the numbers of such asylum seekers (who are more liable for heavy punishment if caught as the intention to desert is clear, in contrast to those who simply go AWOL for long periods) may increase significantly, as more people start to realise that the Bush Neocon camp has taken them for a ride, and that to go to Iraq now would literally be equivalent to suicide. one of the conscientious objectors Hinzman had this to say about his decision to leave -- a sentiment no doubt shared by many other servicemen:

"I could not simply claim that I was merely a victim of the times or that I was just following orders. Had I taken part in the occupation of Iraq, I would have been making myself complicit in a criminal enterprise."

in his commentary featured in The Independent, Menzies Campbell asserts his opinion that the UK ought to pull its weight and demand that better Iraqi plan is mapped out, so as to address the increasing sense of frustration at the political stagnation and absolute chaos in Iraq. he's spot on in arguing that the 30th June deadline to hand over power to the Iraqis lacks substance:

As currently envisaged, more or less the same people will remain in charge to oversee the election process, and the US will retain control of security. There is growing suspicion in Iraq that even after the proposed transition and elections next year, Iraq will be independent in name only.

to exacerbate the situation, the occupation forces are not exactly endearing themselves to the Iraqis with military strikes. as Campbell points out, most Iraqis have little faith in the handover effecting major change in their lives, given that the coalition forces will still be policing the streets, and the US will still have backstage control over the Iraqi Governing Council. Campbell concludes that the UK ought to do more to pressurise the US towards bringing the occupation to a close:

The only basis on which the occupation can be properly brought to a close is through democratic elections, and the best way of curbing the violence is by preparing for them.

Britain therefore should be pressing the United States to push ahead with election registration as far as possible in spite of the violence...

The UK should also be counselling the US to act with restraint even in the face of atrocity.

David Clark is less optimistic, and argues in his article in The Guardian that the invasion of Iraq did nothing "strik[e] a blow against terrorism"; rather, the whole unjust, illegal and morally repugnant campaign waged by oil-hungry, vendetta-seeking Neocon Republicans only served to unleash "the very forces of extremism it was supposed to destroy":

Successful counter-insurgency strategy always relies on two interrelated elements: a military campaign aimed at the perpetrators of violence, and a political campaign designed to isolate them from the wider population. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration violated both principles simultaneously.

the Bush administration's obsession with Iraq festered at the expense of concrete anti-terrorist protection strategies against Al-Qaeda, and this only allowed the group to consolidate its power and broaden its base of support. furthermore, the fact that many Muslims in the Middle East see Bush deliberately racially profiling and targetting Islam's followers, and has failed to act to further the Middle East peace process:

This perception of double standards has been compounded by the fact that no serious attempt has been made to address legitimate Muslim or Arab grievances. The roadmap for an Israel-Palestine peace settlement remains locked in the glove compartment, as Sharon continues the illegal annexation of Palestinian land under the pretext of building a security wall and pursues his own militaristic and unsuccessful war on terror.

this two-faced attitude has driven more disgruntled people into Al-Qaeda's camp, and the propaganda booboo on the part of the UK and US has generated more recruits and funds for Al-Qaeda than anything else could. a safer world in sight? come now.

2004-04-06T12:09:00.000Z

Iraq is in utter chaos. Julian Borger reports in The Guardian that the US forces ended up fighting on two fronts against Sunni and Shia militants less than three months before it is due to hand over power to an Iraqi government. while a force of 1,300 US marines and Iraqi troops tried to regain control of the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, Apache gunships targeted Baghdad, with helicopters firing into the Shia neighbourhood of Shulla to quell militants.

so now the US reckons it can control the chaos by issuing an arrest warrant for Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in connection with the murder of a cleric Ayat Allah Abd al-Majid al-Khoei a year ago. what this has done has only angered the protesters further, and now al-Sadr's supporters are insisting that they'll protect their leader with their lives. the US has decided to call al-Sadr an "outlaw" (for lack of a better term, since they can't pin the "cardinal" sin of supporting Saddam or Al-Qaeda on the man)... which is a hoot, really -- to quote Raed in his blog (which - if you haven't been following it already - comes highly recommended), "How can anyone be an outlaw, when we don’t have a law?" furthermore, all the hogwash that the US is spewing about how they plan to hand over "sovereignty" to the Iraqis becomes harder to believe if they plan to achieve this by arresting a major Shia leader. Bush, Bremer, Blair and all their nincompoop twattish cronies are really planning to fuck themselves badly up the nether regions, aren't they? as Rory McCarthy observes in his article in The Guardian, al-Sadr is well-respected by the Shia community because "it was only this cleric's tightly-organised band of followers who laid down any law." the fact that al-Sadr enjoys broad-based support -- even from young men who reject the most conservative brand of Islam, and who believe that religion should remain separate from politcs -- ought to alert the daft Americans to his popularity and power. McCarthy states:

That the Shias are fighting the US military and its allies at all is a stunning condemnation of the past year's occupation. This was the group, after all, which suffered most acutely from Saddam's persecution and which has so much to gain from his fall. Mr Sadr's great strength is that he, above so many other competing Shia groups, has harnessed the bitter frustrations of the poorest sections of the Shia community and turned it into a powerful militant movement.

the protesters have articulated their disappointment with the Americans, who've offered nothing but empty promises; they've also felt let down by the governing council which they now regard to be full of "cowards". al-Sadr's movement, to quote one Iraqi student, "is the only one that calls for the rights of the Iraqi people. He has no ambitions for a position in government and no support from countries outside Iraq."

Naomi Klein takes a step further, and accuses Paul Bremer of deliberating provoking the Shias in the south in her article in The Guardian:

Make no mistake: this is not the "civil war" that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the US occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shia who support Moqtada al-Sadr.

Klein argues that al-Sadr's attraction to many young Iraqis, who see him as "a cross between Ayatollah Khomeini and Che Guevara", and who see him as a more militant alternative to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (currently busy lobbying the UN rather than confronting the US head-on) is worrying the US enough for the occupying forces to resort to provoking al-Sadr and his supporters to an all-out battle. now why provoke a sizeable discontent population? here's Klein's deduction:

Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the hand-over happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the US- appointed governing council.

however, Klein rightly points out that this provocation would also lead to Bremer destroying whatever credibility the US forces have amongst the Iraqis, as well as any faith the people have had in them.

in his article in The Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer argues that "it is the beginning of the end for the United States in Iraq," now with all foreigners being targeted by Iraqi militants, and with the general Iraqi populace having little faith (if at all) in the purported handover of power in June. Scheer rebukes the US for belittling the Iraqis' intelligence:

Just how dumb do we think they are? After all, Iraqis know their own tortuous history. Theirs is a country patched together at the end of a gun barrel by previous colonizers. The common denominator of those imperial designs was the exploitation of oil rather than the desire to produce a harmonious, let alone democratic, society.

Scheer also points out that both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden used to be supported by the US, and they are, simply put, "monsters of our creation". he also deplores the Bush administration's neglect of (or rather, refusal to deal with) the Palestinian situation, resulting in the deterioration of the Middle East process.

evidently, the Bush administration must reckon that the rest of the world are blind and daft as well... the editorial in The Los Angeles Times notes that the White House's response to the killing of 8 US soldiers in Sunday's uprising was to denounce "one individual who is seeking to derail democracy and freedom for the Iraqi people," although it is clear to anyone that it's more than one person responsible; rather, the Bush administration's ineptitude in planning for the occupation of Iraq has resulted in the current state of chaos. the editorial also points out that if the US holds back from its promise to hand over power to the Iraqis at the end of June, and tries to control Iraq through the Governing Council, "the multinational forces that could help defuse anger at the United States will not materialize, and the factional struggles inside Iraq will probably intensify." it concludes:

As time runs short, the difficulty of assembling a larger coalition intensifies. Fuming about "one individual seeking to derail democracy" is simply a denial of reality.

William Rivers Pitt focuses his commentary in Truthout on this denial of reality by the Texan midget shrub and his cronies as well. as it is, the full extent of casualties of the Iraq war and occupation have been hushed up by the US authorities, and every single justification provided by Dubya and his lapdogs for the invasion of Iraq have proven to be either exaggeration or porkies. Pitt notes that the reason why so many Americans were shocked by the recent spate of violence in Iraq is because "those Americans have been relying on the Bush administration for the straight dope."

How is this possible? Didn't Don Rumsfeld and the Bush administration people say the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms as liberators? How did our involvement in Iraq come to look suspiciously like the eternal spiral of bloodletting that takes place between Israel and the Palestinians? Again, the surprise comes because the American people have been relying on the Bush administration for the truth, an act of faith that has been proven time and again to be a very bad idea.

Pitt is spot-on when he argues that the ultimate failure of Dubya and his acolytes is this:

There were no terrorists in Iraq before the invasion, but they are there now. There was no open warfare between the religious factions in Iraq before the invasion, but now blood runs in the streets. Bush and his people ballyhooed the 'international coalition' that participated in this invasion, but the truth is we are all alone. We slapped down the United Nations to such a degree that this body, which could help us by replacing our troops with a true international coalition, wants nothing to do with us. That hardly matters, because the Bush administration wants nothing to do with them.

the Iraq debacle has spiralled way beyond control, to a point where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't:

An immediate withdrawal will set the stage for an incalculable slaughter in an Iraqi civil war, more terrorism against the United States, half a dozen more wars in the Middle East, the world's petroleum falling into the hands of al Qaeda, and the potential for Pakistani nukes in the hands of bin Laden. Staying in Iraq, conversely, will bring us more dead and wounded American soldiers, more dead and wounded Iraqi civilians, more terrorism against America, and billions and billions more dollars poured onto the sand.

Pitt concludes that this calls for a long-term strategy, which could begin with the defeat of Bush in the upcoming US elections in November, and the installation of a new administration which will give more respect to the voice of the international community. the funds being frittered away in Iraq now (in essense, funds used to secure the business interests of Bush and his apparatchik) ought to be diverted towards fighting real terrorism. however, as Pitt states, "There are no good options for Iraq. None. This will be the legacy of this administration. Bush and his people have hung this heavy millstone around our necks, and we are sinking."

if Steven Rosenfeld is right in asserting in his commentary in TomPaine.com, then it would not be true to say that the Bush administration was simply unprepared for the problems that the occupation of post-war Iraq would bring about. Col. Tom Gross, chief planner of Jay Garner, was quoted as asserting that "there was a plan [for the post-war occupation at senior levels throughout government]... [but t]he administration chose not to accept it. Their plan was to put [Iraqi exile] Ahmed Chalabi in charge and run with it."

[T]he president's war cabinet—Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—didn't want to cede any decision-making powers to senior State Department or Pentagon officials.

these inner cabal then blocked off all avenues for other officials to actively make decisions. in fact, Rosenfeld's sources specifically focus on Paul Wolfowitz, who is apparently "obsessed" with Iraq since the mid-1970s, and who had been writing papers and articles urging that the U.S. military return to Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein since the early 1990s.

Linda Heard's contributed a very insightful commentary to The Arab News, where she looks at how Dubya's purported "war on terror" has been hijacked by the Israelis to justify their belligerent and atrocious acts against Palestinians:

A spin-off from Bush's "war on terror" has been to provide Sharon with the perfect gift — a moral umbrella for Israeli crimes — at least in the eyes of those gullible enough to fall for it.

while Heard agrees that terrorism has to be dealt with firmly, she points out that "first there should be a properly thought out definition of terrorism and a way of dividing those with a legitimate right to oust an occupying force from their own land from actual terrorists who are driven by bigotry or a fundamentalist ideology." the current ambiguity of the term has permitted Bush, Sharon and their acolytes to utilise it in their spin to suit their own political purposes. furthermore, Heard rightly notes that the "terrorism" tag can well extend towards states, and is not confined to individuals and groups -- she states the case of Hitler's Germany as a case in point, and goes on to argue that the Sharon government's incursion into Palestinian territories, the Bush administration's "shock and awe" tactic, etc. are state-sponsored terrorist acts:

Groups or individuals seeking to defend their country from invading foreign forces are legitimate freedom fighters. Those who take their fight to third countries for the purpose of targeting civilians, together with those who use bloody methods to dislodge their own governments, should be labeled "terrorists".