Many war-related things in the news, none of them good:
Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BAGHDAD – Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians
may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys
of the country. None of the local and foreign researchers were willing to speak for the record,
however, until their tallies are complete.
Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces
have fought since Vietnam.
Though it is still too early for anything like a definitive estimate, the surveyors warn, preliminary
reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and homes point to a level of civilian casualties far
exceeding the Gulf War, when 3,500 civilians are thought to have died.
"Thousands are dead, thousands are missing, thousands are captured," says Haidar Taie,
head of the tracing department for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad. "It is a big disaster."
By one measure of violence against noncombatants, as compared with resistance faced by
soldiers, the war in Iraq was particularly brutal. In Operation Just Cause, the 1989 US invasion
of Panama, 13 Panamanian civilians died for every US military fatality. If 5,000 Iraqi civilians died
in the latest war, that proportion would be 33 to 1.
-So much for a bloodless war of liberation.
duelling pieces on Iraq suggest a coming difficulty between Iraqis and the American occupation:
Boston Globe:
By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 5/21/2003
BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi National Congress sharply criticized the United States yesterday for delays in
forming a transitional government to run the country. Entifadh Qanbar, the chief spokesman for the group,
said at a news conference that the congress would try to establish an interim government within a few weeks,
regardless of whether the United States supported such an effort. The congress is one of several groups that
attempted to orchestrate opposition to Saddam Hussein from outside Iraq before he was overthrown. 'It is not
up to the Americans to delay this government,'' Qanbar said. ''This is a sovereign issue of Iraqis. We are allies
of the United States. We do not take orders from the United States. . . . We are going forward in our plans'' for a
meeting of representatives of all major Iraqi parties by the end of this month to form a government.
Washington Post
The War Isn't Over
By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, May 22, 2003; Page A35
Saddam Hussein is alive and well and inside Iraq in the minds of his most dedicated followers.
In the dictator's name, they have launched guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces and aid shipments.
They have reorganized into secret cells. They draw strength from the reluctance of the Bush
administration to run a full-scale military occupation to deal with the jarring reality that the
Second Gulf War is not yet over.
The swift U.S. battlefield victory over an Iraqi army that melted away is now being described by
administration insiders as a "catastrophic success." As the phrase suggests, the speed of the
Iraqi collapse helped create an appalling aftermath, in which a capable and compact U.S. war-fighting
force has not been able to establish a credible pacification program.
Washington Post
Thursday, May 22, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, May 21 -- L. Paul Bremer III, the chief U.S. civilian in Iraq, said today selection of an interim Iraqi government is at least seven weeks away, prompting aspiring leaders from Kurdish and returned exile groups to warn that Iraqis are tiring of the six-week-old U.S. occupation and want swift movement toward self-rule.
The new timeline laid down by Bremer would call for an Iraqi national convention in mid-July to pick an interim government that would have limited functions under U.S. tutelage until elections could be organized. That is weeks later than U.S. officials had once predicted. Moreover, the interim government's responsibilities are still the subject of disagreement between U.S. officials and their increasingly dissatisfied Iraqi allies.
The delay appeared to be the result of enduring security problems in parts of Iraq, most notably here in the capital of 5 million people, and a lingering sense among U.S. officials that the process to choose even a temporary and circumscribed postwar government had not been sufficiently inclusive.
-so much for a free, self-governing, and stable Iraq.
Interesting development:
I have been appointed to a position as student representative on the Committee for Socially
Responsible Investment. Starting in the fall,
I will be able to fight for GCOW's demands on
divestment from military corporations. I also
intend to push for a number of progressive
causes, so anyone who has suggestions should
post them here.
Group Searching for WMD Comes Up Empty-Handed
By Barton Gellman
(c) 2003, The Washington Post
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.
The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal arm of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war.
Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff — biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops — arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin. Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 — hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to fire them, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.
Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said in interviews.
- With the clear knowledge that Tony Blair told me I'll be sorry, I'll go ahead and say it: TOLDYA SO. Since the Bush Administration decided to go after Iraq, the anti-war movement has been saying that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, that he posed no threat whatsoever to America either through terrorists or himself. And now, despite the lies and fabrications forced upon the U.N and the world, the truth has finally came out.
Nice to know that 139 Anglo-American soldiers and god only knows how many Iraqis died so that George Bush could win re-election in 2004. Nice to know that the American people bought it. I don't know about you, but I'm voting for a Democrat next year.
Another scary news update:
Senate Panel Votes to Lift Ban on Small Nuclear Arms
By JAMES C. DAO
WASHINGTON, May 9 — A sharply divided Senate Armed Services Committee voted today to repeal a 10-year-old ban on the development of small nuclear weapons, asserting that the United States must begin looking at new ways of deterring terrorist groups and so-called rogue nuclear powers like North Korea.
-I'm a fairly tolerant person, and I'm willing to acknowledge that people might have honest disagreements on defence policy, but I though that even the most hawkish of hawks would agree with me that making it easier for people to use nuclear weapons is insane.
The Bush administration's disturbing focus on building bigger and better weapons of mass destruction is terrifying, but even more so when you consider that the so-called "low-yield" bomb is in fact a 5 megaton warhead, one third the size of the Hiroshima bomb. One of these bombs could wipe out most small cities and take out almost half of even the largest of cities, while spreading radioactive material throughout the atmosphere and causing radiation poisoning, cancer, and birth defects.
How in the name of all that's sane is this supposed to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation? If regimes unpopular with the U.S were scrambling to get nukes after the invasion of Iraq, this proposal is only going to encourage them to consider using them on their nieghbors or possibly on the United States, if they feel that they themselves will be the target of a nuclear attack.
Please contact your senators and tell them to fillibuster this proposal.
I've been lucky enough this semester to get a few things published in the Spec on issues relevant to the war, but unfortunately they've printed their last normal issue of the year. I wanted to share an editorial I wrote which will be too dated come the fall, but I thought you'd enjoy it:
Democracy In Iraq: Freedom of Speech Amid the Rubble
By Steven Attewell
Consider these two faces of Baghdad: dozens of Iraqis pulling down giant statues of Saddam Hussein and waving American flags, and tens of thousands of Iraqis marching through the rubble of their homeland, calling for the American invader to leave their streets. Which of these is the true face of Iraq and which is the false?
Over the past week, the Bush administration and their cronies at Fox News have chortled themselves sick at the liberation of Iraq, barely pausing at the news of the destruction of the National Museum and the burning of the National Archives. Freedom is messy, Rumsfeld shrugged at a recent news conference, as gangs of young men with Kalishnikovs roamed through the hospitals of Baghdad stealing desperately needed medical supplies.
But bit by bit, the story of Iraq’s newfound voice and their desire to speak out against the U.S military occupation has seeped into the media, in spite of the soldiers who penned back CNN camera men in the hope that everyone would stop watching. U.S troops shot 12 Kurdish civilians in the city of Mosul when a mob demanding that the soldiers vacate the town hall and remove their flag from its staff surrounded the building and threw rocks. Outside of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, 20,000 Iraqis, Shiites and Sunnis marching together chanted “We are Sunni and Shiite brothers, we will not sell this nation” while inside a secret council of Iraqi “leaders” met with “Viceroy” Garner to decide the future of Iraq.
It would seem that the United States has done the impossible: it freed the Iraqis by sparking an independence movement against their liberators and it ended religious devision by fuelling a dislike of “secular government” common to both sects.
This situation provides a breath of fresh air for an anti-war movement that has been rocked back on its heels by the sheer force of American triumphalism. Ever since debate over the invasion of Iraq began, the mightiest weapon in the pro-war arsenal was the argument that American liberals were hypocritically denying the Iraqi people the right to democratic government and civil rights. Indeed, many of the nation’s supposed liberal leaders jumped on board the war wagon. But now that the fighting war is over and the occupation has begun, the tables have turned. Now the anti-war movement can stand by the freedom of Iraqis without endorsing the bombs that slaughter them, now the students, union members, veterans, preachers, and pacifists that stood in the cold and the rain amidst a hail of jingoistic slanders can begin to fight back in the name of human rights here and abroad.
Self-determination of peoples was American liberalism’s answer to imperialism, the thundering condemnation of all militaristic adventures from the Philippines to Grenada. It is time that we, as a nation and a generation, shook off the blind terror of 9/11 and told our silent Congress that pre-emption is not an American value, that the PATRIOT act does not protect democracy. The neoconservative vision of a new American Empire should be hauled out of the White house and exposed for the fraud it really is.
Thankfully for the Iraqi people, next year is an election year. It is within our power as the sovereign power of the republic to stand up against this national nightmare where dissent is choked off and innocent people are bound up in the silence of illegal confinement. There are anti-war candidates running for president, and there are many more who would be willing to stand against the evils unleashed by the Bush administration and free Iraq and America both, if we would lend our support. When we go to the voting booth this November, every one of us should remember that the Iraqi people have no ballot box to go to.
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, May 1 — The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
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The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as "national security letters" — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
- At some point, parallels with McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover start to become less rhetorical and more factual.
I find myself quite puzzled by the fact that the same people in the Bush administration who push for these incredibly sweeping government powers are normally quasi-libertarian conservatives who don't believe in "Big Government." Do you think they're hypocrites or just schizophrenics?
