Saturday, 29 March 2003

• For starters, a fine piece in The Onion, poking fun at the relative thoughtfulness of pro- and anti-war commentators, highlighting how substantive(?) the pro-war denunciations of the other side have been.

• Reviewing the performance of the media so far, a column from an industry newsletter, Editor & Publisher, lists 15 stories they’ve already bungled, boldly trumpeted reports that turned out, well, not to be true—among other gems, repeated claims that "this time" Basra and Umm Qasr really are securely in American/British hands.

• In contrast, here are a handful of Robert Fisk’s recent dispatches, taking us through events of the past week, as experienced in Baghdad:

  first, The shocking truth about ‘shock and awe’, an overview of claims by Anglo-American officials that haven’t quite matched what he could see;

  then Saddam starts to sound more like his hero, Uncle Joe, noting that apart from the bombast, a surprising number of the claims made by Iraqi officials have turned out to be true;

  In the long hours of darkness, Baghdad shakes to the constant low rumble of B-52s, which is just what it sounds like;

  ‘It was an outrage, an obscenity’, from the scene of the first of the two marketplace bombings this week; and finally

  Raw, devastating realities that expose the truth about Basra, upon seeing the first film to make it out of Basra, demonstrating that despite Anglo-American claims, the town remained clearly under Iraqi control and whatever uprising there may have been didn’t last long.

• Additional eyewitness reports on the first (at least 14 dead) and second (at least 52 dead) Baghdad marketplace bombings. Although promising to "look into" the possibility that U.S. missiles or bombs had gone astray, American officials have said the damage may have been caused by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire or surface-to-air missiles. After all, how could our precision-guided munitions land anywhere other than on Saddam’s troops and facilities? Well, given that the U.S. command did acknowledge today that multiple cruise missiles have been striking in Saudi Arabia (yes, really—in Saudi Arabia, and more than once), I’d say off by a mile or two within Baghdad isn’t much of a stretch. Incidentally, they’ve agreed to stop sending the missiles through Saudi airspace on the way to targets in Baghdad for the time being, until any "systems problems" are worked out. Too bad they’re not offering the same consideration to civilian neighborhoods within Baghdad.

• So how are Iraqis responding to what they’re seeing? Articles on "civilian deaths, rising anger" have appeared in the LA Times (regarding the airstrikes in Baghdad) and Chicago Tribune (urban warfare within Nasiriyah). (Both web sites require free registration; you can see copies of both articles on the truthout.org site. And from The Guardian, Jubilation turns to hate as aid arrives. All of these articles offer blood-curdling quotations regarding their feelings about America from the Iraqi civilians we are supposedly liberating. Those uttered near Iraqi government officials should, of course, be treated cautiously, but the others sound much the same.

  Our own military personnel had been led to expect something different. A Marine injured in an ambush told a reporter "he was surprised by the resistance, after having been briefed by his commanders to expect mass surrenders." And it’s not that his commanders had been knowingly lying to him; they’d been fed the same line. General William C. Wallace, in charge of all Army ground operations in Iraq, charged that "Pentagon strategists had misunderstood the combativeness of Iraqi fighters…‘The enemy we’re fighting against is different from the one we’d war-gamed against’."

• Here’s an example, related to that misinformation about Iraq, of what drives me nuts about mainstream liberal commentators. Paul Krugman says a lot of things I agree with; I’m glad William Safire isn’t the only one writing op-eds for The New York Times. But Krugman will twist himself into illogical knots to maintain his conviction that no matter how destructive the results, actions taken by U.S. government officials reflect benign intent that unfortunately falls short now and then. When things go wrong, he’ll say it’s because of mistakes and short-sightedness. And he’ll criticize those mistakes, but he won’t entertain the possibility that what happened was precisely what they were TRYING to do. Makes me crazy. Anyway, he wrote yesterday about Dick Cheney, whose fingerprints are all over both this war and the California energy crisis a couple of summers ago. Krugman points out (second copy, if you don’t want to register with the Times), accurately enough, that what Dick Cheney said at the time about the energy crisis (that it had nothing to do with manipulation of the market by Enron and other energy traders, and everything to do with "overregulation" by California), and what he said before the war about Iraqi eagerness for "liberation," were both untrue. Then he tries to explain how Cheney made such mistakes:

  Right now, pundits are wondering how Mr. Cheney—who confidently predicted that our soldiers would be "greeted as liberators"—could have been so mistaken. But a devastating new report on the California energy crisis reminds us that Mr. Cheney has been equally confident, and equally wrong, about other issues…In the last two years Mr. Cheney and other top officials have gotten it wrong again and again—on energy, on the economy, on the budget. But political muscle has insulated them from any adverse consequences. So they, and the country, don’t learn from their mistakes—and the mistakes keep getting bigger.

  Look, Dick Cheney is not stupid, and he has at his disposal the most extensive intelligence-gathering network in the history of the planet. When he indignantly insists that Enron is not extorting the State of California, and ordinary Iraqis are eager to be invaded, he’s not mistaken. He’s LYING to us! Oh, well. This is why people like Krugman are allowed to criticize the powers that be on the opinion pages of the Times.

• Of course, some instances of official depravity become too conspicuous to be ignored. Richard Perle is one of the circle of "chickenhawks" who are behind this war:

  Mr Perle, known as "The Prince of Darkness" for his unrelenting opposition to nuclear-arms control during his years as a top Pentagon official in the 1980s, is a vocal proponent of removing Saddam Hussein by force, and an architect of the Bush administration doctrine of pre-emptive attacks.

  His role in the Bush administration has been as chair of the Defense Policy Board, a body that advises Defense Secretary Rumsfield. Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (who broke the story of the My Lai massacre during Vietnam) recently published an article in The New Yorker tracing Perle’s interaction with arms dealers and Saudi financiers, and criticizing his involvement with a venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, that specializes in the "homeland security" industry, while he was pushing for government policies that would make the company a lot of money. Perle responded by calling Hersh a "terrorist" on national TV, and also promising to sue him. Well, the ruckus got people’s attention. Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times about Perle’s conflict of interest with another company—it turns out he’s being paid by Global Crossing (while serving as chair of the Defense Policy Board) to lobby for Defense Dept. approval of a merger deal. Congress began asking questions, and yesterday he had to resign as chair of the Board. So chalk up one for the good guys, right? Sure, but don’t get too excited—he’s still a member of the Board. Secretary Rumsfeld considers use of that position to benefit companies one is paid by to be par for the course—after all, several other members of the Board do the same. In any case, Rumsfeld says he knows Perle "to be a man of integrity and honor." Read about it in Counterpunch and The Independent.

• While we’re on the subject of hypocrisy, an editorial in The Independent points out that although President Bush is right to condemn Iraq’s treatment of captured soldiers, "his outrage rings hollow" given U.S. treatment of "detainees" from Afghanistan at Guantanamo: "Mr Bush’s call for US prisoners to be treated humanely would command more credibility and wider sympathy if his administration had appeared more amenable to accepting rules that most other civilised countries accept."

• A column in Le Monde provides some context for the present war. Gilles Kepel notes in Washington and Pandora’s Box (translated here into English) that both this war and the one in Afghanistan stemmed from efforts in the early 1980’s to create a proxy force to confront some enemy on our behalf—sponsoring Osama and the other mujahideen to oppose the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and bolstering Saddam in order to contain Iran. In both cases, the monsters we created to attack others turned out to be hard to control.

• And finally, a bunch of fun stuff from Michael Moore, who reminds us that "anytime you’ve got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up." Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, hosted Moore during her show yesterday. Although it’s primarily a radio show, it’s also webcast in video; the hour that includes Moore is available in both high-speed and low-speed streaming video. The segment featuring Moore begins at 23:20. If you missed it, or want to see it again, his one-minute speech at the Academy Awards is played at 23:35. Then there’s a 15-minute speech, beginning at 25:40, that he gave a few days later at Riverside Church in NYC—some fine rabblerousing there. And the segment wraps up with a 15-minute interview with Moore, beginning at 43:00.

Monday, 24 March 2003

Sorry for the long delay between updates. I guess, like many of us, I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed—yet also taking heart from the ongoing refusal of so many to accept an immoral and unnecessary war. We were not able to stop this war before it started, but all of those people who have now come to their first protests, who have recognized the hypocrisy of their own government and grown skeptical of its claims, who have begun voicing their objections for the first time among their friends and family…they’re not all going to fall quietly back into line once this war is over. The point of all the opposition was not only to prevent the war, but to change the conditions that made it possible, and the war itself is provoking a response that may do exactly that.

Given how much material has accumulated since last time, I’m dividing it into three categories: (1) the continuing growth of opposition; (2) further examples of bad faith, manipulation, and outright lying by our government; and (3) less-reported aspects of what’s happening in the war itself.

But first, two quickies: a funny (or maybe not so funny) contribution from Tom Toles, and a recommendation that when it comes to broadcast journalism, you consider listening to CBC Radio One from Toronto (99.1 FM, or online). At the height of the media frenzy last Wednesday night, while the American networks quickly ran out of anything substantive to say and resorted to endless repetition of the same news and self-absorbed "expert" commentary and rehashing of the statements of American officials, CBC was actually reporting: treating official pronouncements with skepticism, providing context through reviewing relevant events from years ago, interviewing ordinary residents of Baghdad via telephone. The contrast with CNN was remarkable.

• The Opposition

  Official resignations: a third U.S. diplomat quits in protest over the war; the leader of the Commons resigns from Tony Blair’s Cabinet, with a scathing statement in Parliament; a sixth ministerial aide (and ninth official overall) resigns from Blair’s government; the chair of the Boone County (Missouri) Republican Party quits (resignation letter).

  During the final debate in Commons on going to war, 139 Labour members rebel against Blair and vote for an amendment declaring that the case for war has not been made. The amendment fails, but the revolt breaks (by 18) the record set just three weeks earlier (see Feb 27 update) for the largest rebellion among one’s own party in the history of Parliament.

  Millions of workers throughout Europe take part in a 15-minute strike in protest against the impending war, shutting down factories and transportation systems in Spain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.

  A group of nearly 1000 U.S. military veterans, some ranking as high as Vice Admiral and Brigadier General, issue an open letter to the President, opposing a war at this time.

  The Buffalo Report published another excellent eyewitness commentary on the February 15 rally in NYC, this one by Robert Lopez.

  The final count of locations participating in the March 16 global candlelight vigil for peace was over 6800, in 140 countries. Many of these groups are continuing to gather regularly (including in Buffalo—7:00 PM on Sundays, in Delaware Park). On the 16th, I was driving from Connecticut back to Buffalo. Before hitting the road, I printed maps to several vigils taking place along my route; at 7:00 I was closest to the one in Liberty, NY (population 4000), so I joined the group gathered there in front of the movie theater on Main Street. Sometimes the Internet can be a good thing.

  Even the Buffalo Common Council finally passed a resolution against the war (though considerably watered down). The count of cities and counties passing such resolutions and listed at the Cities for Peace web site has reached 161.

• The Lies

  When is a coalition not a coalition? Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the coalition backing this war "is larger than the coalition that existed during the Gulf War in 1991," claiming 44 nations in the current coalition, with 34 participating in the first Gulf War. To his credit, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post decided to count. Guess what? It’s not true. The 44 includes nations that are providing only verbal support, no troops or logistical assistance—such as Afghanistan, Albania, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Honduras, Rwanda and the Solomon Islands. The administration also claims the support of ~10 countries that have declined to be named publicly. (One highlight of the CBC broadcast I mentioned above was a reporter’s characterization of the U.S.-led alliance as a "coalition of the anonymous.") Only the U.S., Britain and Australia are providing troops. But every one of the 34 countries on the list for the previous war contributed military personnel or vessels. Those that provided only money, or logistical assistance, or verbal support, are not included; adding all of them would bring the total over 100. The list for the current war is further padded by countries that didn’t exist at the time of the first war (for example, six countries now listed as supporters were then part of the Soviet Union, listed as a single member of the 1991 coalition).

  We’ve often heard that this war is about promoting democracy in the Middle East, that once established in Iraq it will spread to neighboring countries; Bush has claimed that "a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region." Just one problem: our own State Department says it won’t happen. A secret report leaked to the Los Angeles Times concludes that democracy is unlikely to spread. See the original LA Times article (requires free registration), or a copy elsewhere, or a summary of the LA Times article in The Guardian.

  For unvarnished gall, this one’s my favorite: a few days before starting the war, Bush commemorated the 15th anniversary of Saddam’s 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. He met at the White House with survivors still suffering aftereffects, and said in his weekly radio address that "The chemical attack on Halabja…provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam Hussein is willing to commit, and the kind of threat he now presents to the entire world." In response to the 1988 attack, Congress had attempted to impose sanctions on Iraq. I wonder if any of those survivors Bush met with asked him why his father blocked the effort to impose sanctions, as vice-president and then president, and why the U.S. has yet to provide any medical aid (see For victims of Hussein’s gas attack, ‘the killing has never stopped’, from the Boston Globe). As one Kurd who lost his entire family in the attack, and now suffers from lung cancer himself, says: "we were of no use or interest to Britain and America back in the 1980s. USA and UK supported Saddam back then because Iran was a threat to them. But now they have new plans for Iraq and suddenly they talk about the Kurdish suffering…They don’t care about Kurds, none of them. Mountains remain our only friends" (see Where have they been for the past 15 years?, from KurdishMedia.com).

  For more background on the erstwhile U.S. support for Saddam (and long history of double-crossing the Kurds), see A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making. The CIA supported the 1963 coup that first brought the Baath party to power; among the Baathists who colluded with the CIA was Saddam himself, then 25 years old. In 1968, the CIA backed another coup, one that brought a close relative of Saddam’s to power, leading indirectly to his own assumption of power.

• The War

  The always-eloquent Robert Fisk has remained in Baghdad to write about what’s happening there. Here are two of his extraordinary dispatches, describing the first night of heavy bombardment, and a visit the next day to injured civilians in the hospital. Another British reporter still in Baghdad, Suzanne Goldenberg, visited a survivor of a U.S. laser-guided missile detonation that destroyed five homes in a residential neighborhood, who survived because he happened to step outside just before the explosion: "He had little patience yesterday for American claims that they were not fighting Iraqi civilians. ‘America is always doing something wrong, and then saying it’s a mistake’, Mr Daem said. ‘But I think they just want to kill us, to kill everyone in Iraq.’"

  About those video clips showing happy Iraqi’s welcoming their American liberators: don’t be too sure they act the same once the tanks and the cameras pass by. Excerpts from an article by a Reuters reporter in Basra:

  As the convoy of British tanks and trucks rolled by, the Iraqi boys on the side of the road were all smiles and waves. But once it had passed, leaving a trail of dust and grit in its wake, their smiles turned to scowls. "We don’t want them here," said 17-years-old Fouad, looking angrily up at the plumes of gray smoke rising from the embattled southern city of Basra…

  "There is fighting in the center, on the streets. It is terrible," said Hussein, a 24-year-old engineer who works for the state-run southern oil company. Hussein said he escaped from the city on Saturday with his wife and young son. More civilians streamed out of Basra on Sunday, in trucks and battered cars crammed full with household belongings. The sound of machinegun and artillery fire echoed behind them. "We don’t want Americans here. This is Iraq," said Hussein.

  Meanwhile, in the Kurdish north, the Ansar al-Islam suicide car bombing that killed an Australian photographer has received plenty of attention, but the events leading up to it have not. American forces have been working with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the main Kurdish faction. Two Islamic groups also control small patches of land in the northeastern corner of Iraq, near Iran. Ansar al-Islam (Partisans of Islam) has been battling against PUK, and is accused by the U.S. of harboring al-Qaeda fighters driven out of Afghanistan and serving as a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam. (None of the reporters seem too sure whether or not the accusations are true.) The other group, Komali Islami (Islamic Group), has been trying to maintain peaceful relations with both Ansar and the PUK, and directs its antagonism mainly toward Saddam.

  On Saturday, the U.S. sent about 70 cruise missiles into both Ansar and Komali bases. Everyone was expecting an attack on Ansar, especially after Colin Powell had accused them at the UN of running a chemical arms factory (again, not clear whether the accusation was true), so most of their fighters had already headed for the hills. Since Komali was not expecting an attack, they had not fled, and somewhere between 60 and 100 of them were killed. I’ve seen two possible explanations for the attack: PUK factions are feeding the Americans misinformation so that American firepower will take out their rivals, much as has happened in Afghanistan; or it was an American initiative—as one PUK official said, "We don’t know why the United States attacked our allies in Komali Islami. We have no conflict with them; our only battle is with Ansar. In its war on terrorism, the United States does not seem to be able to distinguish between different Islamic groups. It seems to think that all the Islamic groups are terrorists." In any case, it seems likely that Komali will now join with Ansar in fighting against the PUK. Thus does the United States "eliminate" terrorism.

  The checkpoint where the car bombing took place had been an Ansar checkpoint; after the missile attacks, the PUK began an offensive and the checkpoint was part of what they seized. The Ansar car bomb came just a few hours later, in retaliation for the missile attack and the PUK offensive.

  The above information comes from articles in Newsday and the Christian Science Monitor. The family of one of the dead Komali fighers was interviewed by The Guardian. They were, as you might expect, bitterly critical of the American forces they thought had come to liberate them from Saddam; "This makes us love Saddam, not America."

Friday, 14 March 2003

• The continuing growth of the opposition:

  Coming up this weekend: rallies on Saturday (see links above), and on Sunday, a global candlelight vigil—taking place in over 3800 locations in 109 countries (update Sunday morning: 6154 locations in 135 countries). Presently there is one vigil scheduled in Buffalo, in Delaware Park (at Parkside and the Scajaquada); join that one or start your own.

  Last weekend was the woman-organized "Code Pink March" in DC; authors Alice Walker and Maxine Hong Kingston were among the 23 women arrested. Our own reader Jeanne Skotnicki took part (learned about it here!), and sent in her impressions.

  Much-loved radical historian Howard Zinn writes in the current Progressive that it looks as though we’re about to have a war, but that far from deflating the opposition, this war will only strengthen it, until it actually threatens the hold on power of those who are presiding over it:

  There is a basic weakness in governments—however massive their armies, however wealthy their treasuries, however they control the information given to the public—because their power depends on the obedience of citizens, of soldiers, of civil servants, of journalists and writers and teachers and artists. When these people begin to suspect they have been deceived, and when they withdraw their support, the government loses its legitimacy, and its power.

  He notes the ways this government’s legitimacy is already beginning to crumble.

  The government officials whose consciences has compelled them to resign now include a senior Austrialian intelligence officer who, having seen what the U.S. has been providing Australia, remains unconvinced that Iraq cooperates with al-Qaeda, or currently poses a risk to any nation, and another U.S. diplomat, who says "I cannot in good conscience support President Bush’s war plans against Iraq. Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president’s disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century."

  New York City has joined the many other cities and counties that have adopted resolutions opposing the war; at last count the total was 151, including, besides NYC, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle—and Washington, DC itself.

  And finally, a generally pro-Bush Newsweek columnist sees signs of disunity and cold feet within the Administration, amid worry over who’ll take the blame for things going badly.

• Under the circumstances, Bush has to take his friends where he can find them. When Pervez Musharraf seized power in Pakistan in a 1999 coup, the U.S. imposed sanctions. Pakistan may not be any more democratic now, but Bush lifted the sanctions today, saying that would "facilitate the transition to democratic rule." I thought that’s what imposing the sanctions in the first place was supposed to do, but in any case, I’m sure today’s move has nothing to do with Pakistan’s status as a swing voter in the Security Council.

• At the UN, Secretary General Kofi Annan has stated his belief that a war against Iraq without explicit Security Council authorization would be illegal. Many specialists in international law agree; one can also find some who don’t. In another example of media spin, see how careful selection of whom one asks controls the overall message of a story, producing vastly different results in The Guardian, BBC, and Radio Free Europe.

  Meanwhile, Robert Fisk reminds us that the UN General Assembly can, and has, stepped in when the Security Council fails to reach consensus. Ironically, that authority was pushed through by the U.S., to circumvent potential Soviet vetoes in the Security Council, but could now be used to condemn a U.S. attack on Iraq.

• And wrapping up this installment, two good overviews of the whole situation:

  From the March Mother Jones, a somewhat lengthy but very good analysis of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, reviewing the step-by-step progress since the 1970’s in consolidating American control of oil—not so much out of interest in the oil itself (the U.S. does have adequate alternative sources), but because of the geopolitical power conferred by controlling the oil that other nations need.

  From ZNet, a condemnation of the hypocritical reasons given for an attack, which reviews the support the same nations now busy warmongering have provided Saddam Hussein in the past.

Monday, 10 March 2003

• Opposition to a war continues to spread well beyond us chronic peaceniks and throughout the mainstream:

  Resignations in Britain have now reached the Cabinet level; Secretary for International Development Clare Short will resign over the "reckless" policy of going to war without an explicit mandate from the UN, and others are expected to follow. The Tories are also suffering resignations over the party’s support for the war: Conservative whip John Randall has quit his post.

  The Pope’s personal envoy told President Bush a war would be a "defeat for humanity" and neither morally nor legally justified, and objected to the invocation of God’s name as justification for an invasion.

  Jimmy Carter wrote a column for The New York Times, declaring that this would not be a "just war." The Times itself has taken a position against the war, somewhat tepidly on Friday, and much more strongly on Sunday. (The NYT site requires registration. It’s free, but if you’d rather not tell them who you are, you can also find copies of those three items here: Jimmy Carter, Friday editorial, Sunday editorial.)

  Many veterans have come out against the war; one fine example of their thinking is this column appearing in the Buffalo News, written by a local retired, Vietnam-era combat pilot.

  And most important, despite the load of crap we’ve been fed, the American public is coming around, too. The Republican Party conducted their own poll after Bush’s press conference last week, and found that 60% of all Americans oppose a war when the UN inspections process has not yet been completed, and for the first time, a majority of Republican party members also oppose an immediate war.

• The deceptions propping up the case for war continue to surface. The chief UN nuclear inspector (Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency) has determined that key evidence supposedly indicating an ongoing nuclear weapons program in Iraq has been fabricated, and is "not authentic."

• And despite what the administration may claim, we can also be sure the war is not about promoting democracy in the Middle East. Activists in Saudi Arabia are circulating a petition calling for an elected national assembly and an independent judiciary. Where do "the pro-Western Saudis cultivated by the U.S. Embassy" stand on this call for basic democratic structures? They oppose it—because free elections would be won by Islamic parties. "I don’t think the U.S. will like the outcome of democracy here," says one political science professor supporting the petition. Democracy is great…when the will of the people meets U.S. approval. But remember, this has nothing to do with oil and who’s willing to sell it to American companies on favorable terms.

• Meanwhile back home, given another opportunity to choose between democracy and favorable terms for oil companies, the Bush administration is granting the oil industry a waiver from water-pollution regulations applicable to all other construction sites. (The LA Times requires free registration; the article is also available here.)

Friday, 7 March 2003

• MoveOn.org has been collecting signatures for an emergency petition, to be presented to the UN Security Council on this Monday (March 10). They’ve collected hundreds of thousands of signatures in just a few days. Please read and sign it yourself.

  Also check out this smaller-scale petition drive, originated locally by UB student Brent Anderson.

• Returning to a favorite topic—why so much crucial, readily available, information never finds its way into U.S. corporate media—journalist Robert Fisk (an atypically serious journalist, and a very fine one) tells us How the news will be censored in this war. In the interest of fairness, you can also read a reply from CNN. Although the CNN editor responds to some of Fisk’s criticisms, note that he offers no response whatsoever to the example of the reporter trying to produce a story on Israeli forces firing on Palestinian ambulances. It would be one thing to insist that the reporter seek a response from Israeli authorities, but it’s quite another to refuse to let the story run unless the Israelis agreed to provide a statement.

• Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

  Here’s some amusing "proof" that Iraq has them and uses them.

  More seriously, it came out last week (via a report in Newsweek) that a high-level Iraqi defector whose disclosures are often cited as proof of Iraq’s former weapons program also reported at the time of his defection that the weapons had all been destroyed not long after Gulf War I. For some mysterious reason, that story hasn’t been widely picked up by other media. Read about it in Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed and Newsweek’s Iraq Report Falls on Deaf Ears.

  Meanwhile, our own government is planning to use some chemical weapons in Iraq, of a type that are clearly prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

  And speaking of mass destruction, just in case any of you aren’t familiar with it, you might want to peruse the original January 24 CBS News report on the Pentagon’s "shock and awe" plan for the opening stages of a war. 300-400 cruise missiles into Baghdad the first night (more than during the entire first Gulf War), and the same the next night. Including other "precision-guided" bombs, a total of 3000 warheads in the first 48 hours. As one Pentagon official said, "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad."

• As you probably have heard, France, Germany, Russia, and China—three of whom have veto power in the Security Council—have stated unequivocally that they would oppose a resolution authorizing military force against Iraq. The Guardian published a nice report on what the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia said.

• And finally, back home the rights of citizens continue to wither breathtakingly quickly: Lawyer Arrested for Wearing a ‘Peace’ T-Shirt. It seems the security guards at the Crossgates Mall outside Albany told him to remove his "Give Peace A Chance" t-shirt, and when he refused, had him arrested for trespassing. But even in Ashcroft’s America, protest still works. The next day, 100 protesters marched through the mall, saying that they would stop only when the charges were dropped. Shortly after, the mall management called the police and asked them to drop the charges, which the police have agreed to do. And incidentally, the original report on the arrest was placed in the "Oddly Enough" category of Yahoo’s Reuters news wire, where quirky but unimportant novelty stories go, but the protests changed that, and the article reporting that the police had dropped the charges was in the "Top Stories" section for the day. Protest does make a difference.

Sunday, 2 March 2003

An even longer one today. I just need to get these out more frequently if I’m going to keep them short and sweet. (Or government officials have to stop doing so many vile things.)
• Two student-organized events on campus this week:

  On Monday, a teach-in on legal issues related to the war—O’Brian Hall, Room 5 (basement level), 5:00–7:00 pm; contact Jason Cafarella for more info.

  On Wednesday, a full day of events, including rally, video screening, teach-in, and planning meeting.

• New forms of protest continue to proliferate. The organization called Baring Witness has been coordinating events all over the world like the one pictured here. "Our exposure of the vulnerable human flesh we all share has created a powerful statement against the naked aggression of our country’s policies."

• More details on why we no longer hear and see what’s happening in war zones: Patrick J. Sloyan won a Pulitzer prize for his reporting on Gulf War I, and tells us How the Mass Slaughter of a Group of Iraqis Went Unreported (buried alive, by the thousand, in their trenches at the front by plows mounted on U.S. tanks).

• Duct tape. Duct tape??? Are they serious? What could they have been thinking? Here’s one possible answer, from Al Kamen’s "In the Loop" column, in the Washington Post (thanks to Cheryl Bell for this one):

  Turns out that nearly half—46 percent to be precise—of the duct tape sold in this country is manufactured by a company in Avon, Ohio. And the founder of that company, that would be Jack Kahl, gave how much to the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees in the 2000 election cycle? Would that be more than $100,000?

• And what were they thinking a few years ago, when Iraq was our trusted ally and bulwark against the threat posed by…Iran? A Baltimore Sun article on newly released documents pertaining to Donald Rumsfeld’s visit in 1983 (as an envoy of Pres. Ronald Reagan) reminds us that in 1983:

  Hussein had invaded Iran, was seeking nuclear weapons and had used lethal mustard gas. He had harbored terrorists (though he had just expelled the infamous Abu Nidal) and had a well-established record of torturing and murdering domestic opponents. The U.S. response? It dropped Iraq from the list of nations sponsoring terror, renewed diplomatic ties, and provided intelligence and aid to Iraq to prevent its defeat by Iran.

  Our government is obviously deeply concerned by possession of "weapons of mass destruction" and by anti-democratic brutality. A State Department document from the time asserts:

  The United States finds the present Iranian regime’s intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims.

  Oh yes, deeply concerned. The date? March 5, 1984. Yes, 1984. "We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia."

  And another from the "short memory" file: what was Britain doing at the same time? Secretly funneling funds to arms manufacturers to pay for illicit shipments to Iraq, despite official denials: How £1bn was lost when Thatcher propped up Saddam.

• And what is the rest of the world thinking now?

  Canada’s Chretien attacks Iraq "regime change": the Prime Minister "told the United States to limit its ambitions in Iraq to disarmament. ‘If you start changing regimes, where do you stop, this is the problem. Who is next?…’ a visibly agitated Chretien told reporters. He said there was nothing about ending Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s rule in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441."

  Russian parliament speaker blasts U.S.: Speaker of the Duma Gennadii Seleznev said "proposals calling for the Iraqi leadership’s ouster were ‘ridiculous…Russia and the rest of the world strongly reject the return to the laws of the jungle where the strong eats the weak.’ Countries cannot change regimes just because they don’t like them, Seleznev told reporters…The Russian legislator said his country would use its veto power as one of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members to knock down any U.S. resolution allowing the use of force against Iraq for its failure to disarm."

  Even our own career diplomats are outraged, as shown in John Brady Kiesling’s letter of resignation (printed in The New York Times). He says, among other things:

  …until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security…September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?…I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration.

  It’s well worth reading the rest. (The Latin phrase he uses means "Let them hate so long as they fear.")

• So what is an "empire thrashing toward self-destruction" to do when allies begin peeling away, one after the other? Why, spy on them, of course. Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war: "Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members…Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer…written by a top official at the National Security Agency." Plenty more info, including the document itself and how they know it’s legit, at the site.

• Update on the on-again, off-again deal with Turkey (see previous updates): in Turkish Lawmakers Tugged by Their Public and the US, The New York Times reports on public opinion, and the choice the Turkish government faces between enraging its major ally and disregarding the demands of its own citizens. Here’s a sample (you’ll need to register with NYT—it’s free—to read the full article):

  "So, you gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons, and now you are going to invade his country to take them away?" asks Ibrahim Aydin, a 76-year-old farmer here. "What America wants is the oil." In explaining the reluctance here to support America, the reason offered most often is that Iraq poses no threat to Turkey. Standing at his apple cart in the town square, Serkan Ozkan said he thought the real threat to peace was not Mr. Hussein, but President Bush. "We’ve been living next to our Iraqi brothers for thousands of years, and they never constituted a threat against us," Mr. Ozkan said.

  The deal came up for a vote in the parliament yesterday, where it narrowly failed to win a majority due to abstentions: Turkey Rejects U.S. Use Of Bases. As with the vote in Britain last week, there were an unexpectedly large number of defections from within the ruling party. It’s not clear yet whether there’ll be yet another attempt to strike a deal—nor what will happen to the U.S. war strategy if it isn’t permitted to launch an invasion from Turkish territory.

• And finally, how are peace activists responding to all this (in addition to forming peace signs and anti-war messages with their naked bodies)? Here are three invigorating articles:

  So, Bush wants civil disobedience?: Author (No Logo) and activist Naomi Klein ridicules the Pentagon’s plans for promoting civil disobedience in Iraq, but suggests it might serve as a model for what we need to do here. The article includes some nice examples of actions taking place here and abroad that I hadn’t heard about.

  An athlete with the freedom to speak: A fine one from ESPN (not frequently a source of activist news, I suppose) about college basketball player Toni Smith’s ongoing refusal to face the U.S. flag during pregame ceremonies.

  Busted for Peace: When Cops Play Soldier, Protesters Become the Enemy: Another followup on the big protest in NYC, providing a few examples of the police abuse and harassment that has since been reported.