TROUBLING INFORMATION

Fall of Baghdad (April 5-10, 2003)

April 30, 2003 / Iraq, War

Patrick Nicholson in Umm Qasr:
"The Cans and Buckets Are Empty, and the People are Desperate" (The Independent, 4/5/03):

I visited Umm Qasr as part of a Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod) emergency response team, and had been led to believe it was a town under control, where the needs of the people were being met.

The town is not under control. It's like the Wild West, and even the most serious humanitarian concern, water, is not being adequately administered.

Everywhere I went in Umm Qasr, people asked me for water. Wherever you look, people are carting around buckets and drums.

While tankers are being sent into the city by the Allied forces, people in the town told me that the water was being sold by the Iraqi drivers at 250 dinars for 20 litres -- the average Iraqi earns 8,000 dinars a month. The standard humanitarian quota for water in emergency situations is a minimum of 20 litres per person each day. . . .

There is a lot of anger toward Westerners in Umm Qasr, triggered by bitter disappointment at their "liberation". They feel they have been given false expectations and are scared by the breakdown in social order in the town. I saw no obvious Allied presence and the normal structures of schools, government and police has disappeared. But the people are hopeful for a future without Saddam Hussein. However bad the situation today, they told me, it was better than under Saddam's regime.

"Viewing the War as a Lesson to the World" -- David Sanger in The New York Times, 4/5/03:

Mr. Bush's aides insist they have no intention of making Iraq the first of a series of preventive wars. Diplomacy, they argue, can persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs. Intensive inspections can flush out a similar nuclear program in Iran. Threats and incentives can prevent Syria from sponsoring terrorism or fueling a guerrilla movement in Iraq.

Yet this week, as images of American forces closing in on Baghdad played on television screens, some of Mr. Bush's top aides insisted they were seeing evidence that leaders in North Korea and Iran, but not Syria, might be getting their point. . . .

Some hawks inside the administration are convinced that Iraq will serve as a cautionary example of what can happen to other states that refuse to abandon their programs to build weapons of mass destruction, an argument that John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, has made several times recently.

The administration's more pragmatic wing fears that the war's lesson will be just the opposite: that the best way to avoid American military action is to build a fearsome arsenal quickly and make the cost of conflict too high for Washington. . . .

Several of the hawks outside the administration who pressed for war with Iraq are already moving on to the next step, and perhaps further than the president is ready to go. R. James Woolsey, the former director of central intelligence, said on Wednesday that Iraq was the opening of a "fourth world war," after World War I, World War II and the cold war, and that America's enemies included the religious rulers in Iran, states like Syria and Islamic extremist terrorist groups.

"Watch Out for Hijackers" -- Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, 4/6/03:

Saddam Hussein's regime will soon be finished, and the moment for building the peace will be upon us. As soon as it arrives, there will be people who will try to hijack this peace and turn it to their own ends. Mr. Bush must be ready to fend off these hijackers, who will come in two varieties.

One group will emerge from the surrounding Arab states -- all the old-guard Arab intellectuals and Nasserites, who dominate the Arab media, along with many of the regimes and stale institutions, like the Arab League, that feel threatened by even a whiff of democracy coming from Iraq. These groups will be merciless in delegitimizing and denouncing any Iraqis who come to power after the war -- if it appears that they were installed by the U.S. . . .

The other hijackers are the ideologues within the Bush team who have been dealing with the Iraqi exile leaders and will try to install one of them, like Ahmad Chalabi, to run Iraq. I don't know any of these exiles, and I have nothing against them. But anyone who thinks they can simply be installed by America and take root in Iraqi soil is out of his mind.

Mr. Bush should visit the West Bank. It is a cautionary tale of an occupation gone wrong. It is a miserable landscape of settlements, bypass roads, barbed wire and cement walls. Why? Because the Israeli and Palestinian mainstreams spent the last 36 years, since Israel's victory in 1967, avoiding any clear decision over how to govern this land. So those extremists who had a clear idea, like the settlers and Hamas, hijacked the situation and drove the agenda.

Defense Department domination of military decisionmaking:
parallels between the Kennedy and G.W. Bush administrations (Jean Edward Smith, "Firefight at the Pentagon," New York Times, 4/6/03):

With John F. Kennedy, however, civilian power at the Defense Department came to its apogee. The combination of an inexperienced president and a take-charge secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, led to a total shake-up. The secretary imported a coterie of hard-driving academics -- including two Harvard law professors, John McNaughton and Adam Yarmolinsky -- to help him take effective operational control of the sprawling defense establishment.

For the first time, the office of the secretary had the requisite staff and intellectual capacity to wrest military decision-making from the services. Under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, civilian judgment supplanted battle-tested precedent, and the United States carried out the eminently logical but tactically catastrophic escalation in Vietnam.

In the decades after, presidents tended to be hands-off and the relative power of the civilians in the Pentagon ebbed. The Powell doctrine of overwhelming force came to hold sway, and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war the military called the shots. Political control was not relinquished -- Dick Cheney, then the secretary of defense, fired the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mike Dugan, for talking out of turn -- but for the most part traditional command relations resumed.

Until now. The current administration bears an uncanny resemblance to that of John F. Kennedy: an inexperienced, somewhat detached president and a decisive, high-profile secretary of defense have teamed to once again assume operational control. Donald Rumsfeld's defense intellectuals -- an oxymoron akin to "military music" -- have done precisely what Robert McNamara's whiz kids did in 1961: substitute their theoretical concepts for traditional doctrine. The ideological slant is different -- this time it's neoconservatism -- but the effect on the decision-making process is the same.

History rarely repeats itself, and the failures of Vietnam do not necessarily mean today's transition is unwise or unworkable. What we saw last week, however, was that this time the men with the stars on their shoulders aren't going to take it sitting down.

US troops in South Korea may withdraw from positions that would be vulnerable to North Korean attack if tensions increase.
"U.S. Seeks Troop Pullback" (Lee Chul-hee in The JoongAng Daily, 4/5/03:

The United States has officially informed South Korea that it intends to pull back its troops from inter-Korean border areas during the second half this year, government sources said yesterday.

"In a video conference on March 24, Richard Lawless, the Pentagon's top policymaker on Korea, told his South Korean counterpart, Lieutenant General Cha Young-koo, about Washington's intention to move the U.S. 2d Infantry Division to the area south of the Han River during the second half of this year," a senior government official said on condition of anonymity. . . .

General Cha tried to persuade Mr. Lawless that relocating the 2d Infantry Division this year is impossible, due to the difficulty of finding an alternate site, the official said. General Cha also stressed that the relocation should be implemented after the North Korea's nuclear aspirations are resolved.

Mr. Lawless reportedly did not mention any force cut.

The U.S. 2d Infantry Division, about 15,000 strong, is the largest American unit in South Korea. Most of the division is deployed in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi province, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the inter-Korean Military Demarcation Line. The division headquarters is in Uijeongbu, 35 kilometers southeast of the border.
Stationed within range of North Korea's conventional artillery, the troops have been seen as a "tripwire," assurance of automatic U.S. involvement in the event of a North Korean attack. U.S. officials, however, recently have reacted sensitively to this description. Washington has long demanded that Pyeongyang withdraw its conventional weapons deployed along the border.

Aid groups won't cooperate with a postwar government lacking UN involvement; Jay Garner wavering, too (Ed Vulliamy and Kamal Ahmed for The Observer, 4/6/03):

A colony of potential US administrators has assembled in waiting, along a stretch of Kuwaiti seaside villas, speaking well or not-so-well of the man regarded as the real architect of the new order, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy to Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, or 'Wolfowitz of Arabia' as he's been dubbed.

But Washington itself is riven over these arrangements, with hostility again spilling over between Powell and Rumsfeld, as in the lead-off to war. The infighting has been so acrimonious that - The Observer is told - Garner has even told associates he has considered resigning before he has begun.

The debates are over the role - or not - of the United Nations, and the part that Iraqi exiles are to play. Pentagon sources tell The Observer that they are determined to sideline the UN and to impose the Rumsfeld plan. 'This war proceeds without the UN,' said one official. 'There is no need for the UN, which is not relevant, to be involved in building a democratic Iraq.'

UN official Shashi Tharoor said that the body was keen to join the humanitarian relief effort and participate in governing the country, but only if mandated by the Security Council.

However, many relief organisations - including Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontiers - have said they will refuse to operate under such arrangements. Thirteen leading non-governmental aid groups have sent a letter to George Bush urging him to 'ask the UN to serve as the humanitarian coordinator for Iraq'.

"U.S. Set to Take Government Reins In Parts of Iraq" -- Glenn Kessler and Peter Slevin in The Washington Post, 4/8/03:

U.S. officials said the dispatch of "free Iraqis" from the north to the south -- including Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi -- was designed to prevent chaos as looting was reported in southern Iraq. As U.S. forces make progress in eliminating armed resistance, they must find ways to stabilize and administer villages, towns and cities no longer under Hussein's control. Defense officials believed the moment was ripe to bring in Iraqi assistance.

But Chalabi's associates believe his arrival could also bolster his position in the scramble for leadership in the post-Hussein period, a goal long sought by his supporters in the Pentagon. "The forces advocating working with him got a huge shot in the arm over the weekend," said Randy Scheunemann, executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. "It changes the complexion of the exile leader debate pretty dramatically."

The State Department has strenuously opposed a leading role for Chalabi, a London-based banker who left in Iraq in 1958, believing he lacks credibility and support. But State Department officials said yesterday they were willing to accept this new assignment for Chalabi and his compatriots because it was necessary to stabilize the country and get broader Iraqi involvement in what has been viewed overseas as a largely U.S.-led operation. . . .

Other Pentagon officials also said they were not trying to anoint Chalabi, but that the war had evolved to the point where U.S. commanders could spare the planes to fly the Iraqis in and make the effort to incorporate them into the battle plan. Also, there was a political assessment in Washington that now would be a good time to do something more that would show the Iraqis coming forward and participating in their own liberation.

Oakland police
fire dummy bullets at antiwar protesters, bystanders (San Francisco Chronicle, 4/8/03):

In one of the fiercest Bay Area demonstrations since the Iraq war began, dozens of war protesters were injured Monday at the Port of Oakland when police fired tear gas and projectiles to break up a crowd that failed to heed warnings to disperse.

The largest of several protests across the region that targeted federal and corporate institutions seen as profiting from the war, the skirmish resulted in the arrests of 31 of about 500 protesters who blocked a port gate for more than an hour -- and prompted two Oakland city councilwomen to call for an investigation into police behavior. . . .

Among the injured were nine members of the longshore workers union who were waiting to get into their work site and not participating in the demonstration, said union representative Clarence Thomas. A union official, Jack Heyman, was arrested.

Gunter Grass on the war (Los Angeles Times, 4/7/03; reproduced by Common Dreams):

Disturbed and powerless, but also filled with anger, we are witnessing the moral decline of the world's only superpower, burdened by the knowledge that only one consequence of this organized madness is certain: Motivation for more terrorism is being provided, for more violence and counter-violence. Is this really the United States of America, the country we fondly remember for any number of reasons? The generous benefactor of the Marshall Plan? The forbearing instructor in the lessons of democracy? The candid self-critic? The country that once made use of the teachings of the European Enlightenment to throw off its colonial masters and to provide itself with an exemplary constitution? Is this the country that made freedom of speech an incontrovertible human right?

It is not just foreigners who cringe as this ideal pales to the point where it is now a caricature of itself. There are many Americans who love their country too, people who are horrified by the betrayal of their founding values and by the hubris of those holding the reins of power. I stand with them. By their side, I declare myself pro-American. I protest with them against the brutalities brought about by the injustice of the mighty, against all restrictions of the freedom of expression, against information control reminiscent of the practices of totalitarian states and against the cynical equations that make the death of thousands of women and children acceptable so long as economic and political interests are protected. . . .

Many people find themselves in a state of despair these days, and with good reason. Yet we must not let our voices, our no to war and yes to peace, be silenced. What has happened? The stone that we pushed to the peak is once again at the foot of the mountain. But we must push it back up, even with the knowledge that we can expect it to roll back down again.

Neela Banerjee on
oil and the reconstruction of Iraq (New York Times, 4/6/03):

If popular opinion in the Middle East is united on anything, it is that oil -- not terrorism, not regional stability and not any intention to bring democracy to the Iraq -- is the real reason the United States decided to oust Saddam Hussein. In Jordan, a longtime ally of Washington, a recent poll showed that 83 percent of people there think that the United States wants to control Iraq's oil. . . .

Throughout the 1920's, Britain, France and the United States (which denounced the "imperialism" of the other two) jockeyed for control of Iraq's oil. It was not until after World War II that Iraq began to gain some measure of control of its own. It was a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the first meeting of which was held in Baghdad in 1960, and nationalized its oil industry in 1972. . . .

So far, the Bush administration has consistently said that Iraqi oil belongs solely to the Iraqis, but it has also said it intends to control how the country is rebuilt. On Tuesday, industry experts who had spoken to administration officials said that Philip J. Carroll, a former chief executive of Shell Oil Company, the American arm of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, had emerged as the leading candidate for the job. The administration declined comment. . . .

One move that would be welcome, at least by the Iraqis and some Arab leaders, is if the United States opened the books on how the oil revenues are used, regional experts said.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch found that oil money usually subverts democracy by making a country's leaders unaccountable to its citizens. The United States could work with Iraqis to disclose the sources of oil revenue and the awarding of contracts, the report said. The group also encouraged independent auditing of the oil company's books, and the creation of a trust fund, similar to a system Norway has for investing a portion of the profits to benefit future generations.

William Hartung on the grotesquely inappropriate Jay Garner (Tompaine.com, 4/8/03):

Nothing embodies the Bush administration's shortsightedness and moral bankruptcy more than its plan to employ former Air Force Gen. Jay Garner as the head of the Pentagon's rebuilding effort for Iraq. Not only does Garner have interests in companies like SY Technologies, which stand to profit from the war in Iraq, but he is a longtime associate of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a right-wing, pro-Likud think tank that has long supported "regime change" in Iraq while denigrating the Camp David peace process as an inappropriate way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If the Bush administration were to consciously set out to pick a person most likely to raise questions about the legitimacy of the post-war rebuilding process, they could not have selected a better man for the job than Jay Garner. But if they truly want a stable, democratic Iraq, they should send Mr. Garner packing and start immediate bargaining to bring the United Nations -- and anti-war allies like France, Germany and Russia -- into the center of the rebuilding process.

Bush and Blair's joint statement after their April 7 meeting in Belfast (London Times, 4/8/03:

As the coalition proceeds with the reconstruction of Iraq, it will work with its allies, bilateral donors, and with the United Nations and other international institutions.

The United Nations has a vital role to play in the reconstruction of Iraq. We welcome the effort of UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in providing immediate assistance to the people of Iraq.

As we stated in the Azores, we plan to seek the adoption of new United Nations Security Council resolution that would affirm Iraq's territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief and endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq.

We welcome the appointment by the United Nations Secretary General of a special adviser for Iraq to work with the people of Iraq and coalition representatives.

The day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly. As early as possible. We support the formation of an Iraqi interim authority, a transitional administration, run by Iraqis until a permanent government is established by the people of Iraq.

The interim authority will be broad-based and fully representative, with members from all Iraqis ethnic groups, regions and Diaspora.

The interim authority will be established first and foremost by the Iraqi people, with the help of the members of the coalition, and working with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

As coalition forces advance, civilian Iraqi leaders will emerge who can be part of such an interim authority. The interim authority will progressively assume more of the functions of government.

It will provide a means for Iraqis to participate in the economic and political reconstruction of their country from the out-set.

Coalition forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to help the Iraqi people to build their own political institutions and reconstruct their country, but no longer. . . .

Concise
political biography of Ahmed Chalabi by Patrick Cockburn in The Independent, 4/8/03:

Ahmed Chalabi is one of the great survivors of Iraqi opposition politics. He has a controversial past, a long list of enemies but is also politically agile, tough and persistent. . . .

Mr Chalabi's weakness is that there is no evidence the INC has any support among Iraqis. He will find it difficult not to be seen as an American pawn if he has a prominent position in any interim administration.

The coalition's moral high ground is now; so what next to preserve it? Deborah Orr in The Independent, 4/8/03:

Perhaps, as Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, says, the Iraqi mothers of children killed by cluster bombs may "one day" thank the Allies. I'd say instead that in a curious way, we are now approaching the high water mark of the invasion's moral force. In the next few weeks the US and Britain are likely to receive as much thanks from the liberated people of Iraq as they will ever get.

The "battle for hearts and minds" must end when the battle does. Above all, as the regime collapses, Iraqis will be sickened by the propaganda they have been fed, and suspicious of propaganda that may be fed to them in the future. What the people of this country need now is the space to make up their own minds, and follow their own hearts, instead of the assault on these organs moving from the physical and psychological to the purely psychological.

When the war ends, it is important that Iraqi civil society is given time and space to make its own evaluation of what has been done, and whether the Iraqi people would have chosen it had they been able to. The US-UK forces should take all the help from other countries they can get in maintaining the order necessary for this process.

It is important, too, that the international community listen to the conclusions of the Iraqi people. Much can be learned from such an action, as long as the US-UK leaders don't persist with their belief that they know all the answers already.

"UN Postwar Role Remains Blurred" (Matthew Tempest in The Guardian, 4/8/03):

Tony Blair and the US president, George Bush, have once more failed to clarify the UN's role in a post-Saddam Iraq, in their third meeting in less than three weeks.

Speaking at a joint press conference at Hillsborough castle in Northern Ireland, the two men were pressed repeatedly on what a "vital role" for the United Nations may mean.

Mr Bush defined it both as "food, medicine, aid, contributions" and "helping the interim government stand up until the real government shows up".

Mr Blair intervened to say that the "important thing is to not get into some battle over a word here or there, but for the international community to come together ... rather than endless diplomatic wrangles."

But, taking only four questions in a 25-minute press briefing, Mr Bush warned: "When we say a vital role for the UN we mean a vital role."

"Anger, Despair . . . Arab World Backs Saddam" (Donna Abu-Nasr in The Guardian, 4/8/03):

In Egypt, they queued to sign up for jihad after learning US tanks were rolling into Baghdad. In Oman, they erupted with cries of "God is great" when they heard an Iraqi official denying it. And across the Middle East, Arabs urged Saddam Hussein not to give up.

Despite the dismay many Arabs feel about the US incursion into the heart of Iraq, some are still holding out hope that President Saddam will live up to his promise to slaughter the allied troops at the gates of Baghdad. . . .

In Muscat, men watched the news with angry and resentful faces. One shouted: "Where is your army, Saddam?" Another, not believing the television pictures, grumbled: "These Americans are relying on false propaganda!"

A short while later, many felt vindicated when the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, denied allied reports.

Scores of Egyptians lined up outside Cairo's Lawyers' Syndicate, a professional union that has been organising people to join the war, more determined to join other Arabs who have gone into Iraq to wage jihad alongside the Iraqis. "As Arabs, we cannot see this and not move," said a man who refused to give his name. "We are selling ourselves for a higher cost, for God, not for Saddam."

Ali Oqla Orsan, head of the Arab Writers' Union in Damascus, said: "If the allied forces occupy Iraq, it would signal the beginning of a liberation war against the colonialists."

Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper on Bush's "roadmap" and
prospects for progress on the Israel/Palestine conflict (interview by Kathleen and Bill Christison in Counterpunch, 3/29/03:

Halper is an Israeli anthropologist, until his retirement a year ago a professor at Ben Gurion University, a transplant 30 years ago from Minnesota, a harsh critic of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and, as founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), one of the leading peace and anti-occupation activists in Israel.

Halper tries to be upbeat. He sees the "roadmap" drawn up by the U.S. and its Quartet partners as a promising document because, among a few other straws to grasp at, it actually uses the word "occupation," which Israel itself refuses to use. He wants to mobilize and coordinate pro-Palestinian groups in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere around the world to insert themselves into the process and try to work with their governments to have some input in implementing the plan. He recently talked to a State Department official who was hopeful. But for the most part, what Halper says is gloomy and pessimistic.

Congress is the principal problem in the U.S., he believes, which makes it particularly hard for President Bush. For Bush really to move on the issue, it would "cost him a lot of political capital." He thinks it's an open question whether Bush will ever be willing to pay that cost, so he is latching onto the "roadmap." But then, right after declaring the roadmap a promising document, he says, "Either you just get rid of the occupation, period, or the two-state solution is gone. If Israel keeps the main settlement blocs, it'll control 90% of the West Bank." But the roadmap shows little promise of "just getting rid of the occupation, period."

At the end, Halper returns to the issue of Israeli fears and his blunt assessment of where Israel's actual thinking is centered. "It's not fear," he says. "We're just pissed off [at the Palestinians], the way whites were with blacks in the southern United States. They just don't know their place."

"A Road Map to Nowhere, Or Much Ado About Nothing" (Uri Avnery in Counterpunch, April 5, 2003):

The objectives are very positive. They are identical with the aims of the Israeli peace movement: an end to the occupation, the establishment of the independent State of Palestine side-by-side with the State of Israel, Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian peace, the integration of Israel in the region.

In this respect, the Road Map goes further than the Oslo agreement. In the Oslo "Declaration of Principles" there was a giant hole: it did not spell out what was to come after the long interim stages. Without a clear final aim, the interim stages had no clear purpose. Therefore the Oslo process died with Yitzhaq Rabin. . . .

[W]ho is this "Quartet" that has to decide at every point whether the two parties have fulfilled their obligations, and a new phase can be entered?

At first glance, there is a balance between the four players: the United Nations, the United States, Europe and Russia. . . . The United States are close to Israel, Europe and Russia are acceptable to the Palestinians. . . .

[However], the Quartet must take all decisions unanimously. The Americans have a veto, which means that Sharon has a veto. Without his agreement, nothing can be decided. Need more be said?

The truth is, in this whole document there is not one word that Sharon could not accept. After all, with the help of Bush he can torpedo any step at any time.

To sum up: Much Ado about Nothing. As evidenced by the fact that neither Sharon nor the settlers are upset.

Harpers Weekly Review, 4/8/03

"In Search of Horror Weapons" -- New York Times editorial, 4/9/03:

In making the case for the invasion, the administration suggested that Iraq's arsenal might be quite large: up to 500 tons of nerve and mustard agents, and 30,000 munitions capable of delivering them; materials to produce 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; and mobile or underground laboratories to make germ weapons. If so, it should be possible to find them with the help of Iraqi scientists and officers. But for any findings to be credible in the battle for global opinion, neutral analysts -- from the United Nations or technically proficient nations like Finland or Switzerland -- will be needed to verify the laboratory results and ensure a strict chain of custody to avoid charges of tampering with the evidence.

Seumas Milne on
the new incentives for weapons proliferation to avoid Iraq's fate (The Guardian, 4/10/03):

The wider global impact of this war was spelled out by North Korea's foreign ministry this week. "The Iraqi war shows," it declared, with unerring logic, "that to allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather sparks it", concluding that "only a tremendous military deterrent force" can prevent attacks on states the US dislikes.

As the administration hawks circle round Syria and Iran, a powerful boost to nuclear proliferation and anti western terror attacks seems inevitable, offset only by the likelihood of a growing international mobilisation against the new messianic imperialism. The risk must now be that we will all pay bitterly for the reckless arrogance of the US and British governments.

"Arab Fears Will Delay Recognition" (Brian Whitaker in The Guardian, 4/10/03):

Arab states, grappling to adjust to the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, are unlikely to recognise a new Iraqi government for at least several months, diplomatic sources said yesterday. . . .

There are also questions about Iraq's membership of the Arab League, which could be temporarily suspended. Iraq's permanent representative at the league's headquarters in Cairo will be expected to leave after the fall of the regime, but it is unclear what will happen then. . . .

Some Arabs suspect that a new Iraqi government could be induced by the Americans to recognise Israel, which at present has full diplomatic relations with only two of the 22 Arab League members - Egypt and Jordan.

Criticizing the president (Theodore Roosevelt in The Kansas City Star, 5/7/1918):

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Gideon Rose on unrealistic expectations and
the Iraqi National Congress (Slate, 4/10/03):

The administration's postwar plans for Iraq are still being fought over internally, but three distinct themes appear to feature prominently: promoting democracy, limiting American involvement, and keeping the rest of the international community at arm's length. Many observers find this troika somewhat baffling, because they see no way of achieving all three objectives simultaneously. What they fail to appreciate are the magical powers attributed by administration hawks to the Iraqi opposition, and in particular to one opposition group known as the Iraqi National Congress. Just as before, people like Pentagon adviser Richard Perle think the INC can leap easily over the obstacles others worry about and will thus be able to transform Iraq in a flash.

Unfortunately, the INC is as ill-prepared to pull off a postwar miracle as it would have been for a wartime wonder. It can boast some heroic individual members, such as the dissident intellectual Kanan Makiya, but it has negligible military power, administrative capacity, or local backing. Iraq experts joke that the group has fewer supporters on the Tigris than on the Potomac.

"Power Vacuum That Has Taken US by Surprise" (Ewen MacAskill and Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian, 4/11/03):

The Iraqi opposition parties, long-time bitter rivals, resumed their squabbling yesterday within 24 hours of statues of Saddam being toppled in Baghdad. A putative bid to establish an early interim government at a special meeting of the exile groups billed for Nassiriya, in southern Iraq, has already created chaos.

The US state department and the Pentagon were at odds yesterday concerning the Nassiriya meeting - for which a date has not been fixed - and over who should be in the new government. . . .

The row in Washington over Mr Chalabi's suitability for power is symptomatic of a lack of preparedness by the US. The meticulous planning that went into the military campaign has not been matched by post-Saddam preparations. This follows a predictable US pattern, in which its military prowess has not been matched by peacekeeping or nation-building. . . .

One of the biggest divisions is between Mr Chalabi's INC and the powerful Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), which played a big part in earlier anti-Saddam revolts and which has a big following among Shias. Sciri has thrown into doubt whether the Nassiriya meeting will go ahead.

Sciri said yesterday it had yet to decide whether to participate. A spokesman said a boycott was unlikely, contradicting a spokesman who said 24 hours earlier the group would not attend in protest at the US military presence in Iraq.

"We are discussing this because we must know who the participants are, what the aims and plans for this meeting are, then we'll decide," said Mohsen Hakim, an aide to the Sciri leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Bakir Hakim. "I doubt that Sciri will boycott the meeting."

The ayatollah has spent the past 20 years in the Iranian capital, Tehran, which makes him suspect to US officials. The ayatollah, who has a 10,000-strong militia under his sway, said he will soon return to Iraq.

"This Pyrrhic Victory on the Tigris" (David Clark in The Guardian, 4/11/03):

The repercussions of this war will not be confined within Iraq's borders. The idea of an international community based on multilateral rules and institutions lies in ruins as the prospect of a world dominated by the hegemonic preferences of a solitary power hoves into view. The real tragedy will not lie in the imposition of American authority on an unwilling world as much as in the embittered response of those who refuse to submit to it.

The Arab world has been inflamed by this war and will draw the conclusion that since American power cannot be confronted on its own terms, it must be dealt with asymmetrically. Like the young Catholics who signed up to fight for the IRA after Bloody Sunday, young men from Cairo to Amman will now beat a path to the door of anyone able to provide them with the means to hit back. As of today, that door is Osama bin Laden's. The dividing line between Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, once so clear, has become even more dangerously blurred as a result of our actions.

None of this is inevitable. But there is precious little evidence to suggest that the White House is interested in taking the sort of steps needed to prevent it. Bush may agree to the publication of the road map for a Middle East peace settlement, but he has no intention of taking the journey. He talks about a democratic Iraq, but his first priority is a compliant Iraq.

"Iraq Will Preoccupy and Pin Down the US for Years" (Martin Woollacott in The Guardian, 4/11/03):

The war has made politics more global by emphasising the centrality of American power, by offering the first test since Vietnam of what happens when an American endeavour is opposed by most of the rest of the planet, by engaging the US and the Muslim world more intimately, although not amiably, and by showing how American and European political developments can no longer even begin to be divorced from one another.

It has taken one stage further the processes which began with September 11. The world, to put it another way, is even more wired together, for good or ill. There is irony in the fact that this unilateralist war has produced a situation which will both confirm the Bush administration in its unilateralist instincts, and at the same time entangle it in inevitably more complex multilateral situations. The preparations for the war, with the juggler dropping first the plate marked United Nations and then the cup marked Turkey, are an indication of difficulties to come.

Josh Marshall (Talkingpointsmemo.com, 4/10/03):

"Shock and Awe" wasn't a misplaced phrase. We just had the date wrong. It came yesterday, with the collapse of Baghdad. And it came not in Baghdad or Kirkuk or Basra but in Cairo, Beirut, Riyadh, Amman and other capitals around the Arab world.

Iraq War Links

(Last updated May 2003)

Tower of
Babel Links Page (More links than here)
Guardian Iraq links page

Move to Baghdad (April 1-4, 2003)

April 30, 2003 / Iraq, War

"Democracy Delayed" -- Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, 4/1/03:

In about a week, the Bush administration has done in Iraq what the Johnson administration took more than a year to do in Vietnam: opened a credibility gap. This one is about "the plan," which the Bush administration describes as both "brilliant" and on schedule. As anyone can see -- and as some field commanders keep saying -- it is neither. . . .

So if, as Don Rumsfeld and others say, the U.S. effort remains on schedule, then the question is why was this the schedule in the first place? In other words, wouldn't it have been better to keep the diplomatic effort going -- the additional month asked for by the six swing votes on the Security Council -- so when war came, it came swiftly? An additional month would have meant that all U.S. forces would have been in the region, ready to go. As it is, the 4th Infantry Division still is not in place.

"Bush's Treatment of Congress Angers GOP, Too" -- James Kuhnhenn in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/1/03:

Consumed by waging war, the Bush administration is increasingly giving the Republican-controlled Congress the back of its hand, acting as if the legislative branch were a constitutionally mandated annoyance.

Administration officials have abruptly canceled appearances before congressional committees and refused lawmakers' requests for information. Now President Bush wants to sidestep congressional oversight of how he spends nearly $75 billion that he is seeking for the war and homeland security.

"Nice try," scoffed Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R., Ill.), during a hearing on the spending plan. "There are a lot of precedents we don't want to accept here." . . .

To many lawmakers, Bush's request for flexibility is only the latest example of administration disdain, if not contempt, for Congress. Time and again, Republicans and Democrats say, the Bush administration has stiff-armed lawmakers or scorned their committees.

In Basra,
"Everyday Life Goes on Despite Siege" (Keith B. Richburg in The Washington Post, 4/1/03):

The residents of Basra have been described by the U.S. military as "human shields," being held in the city against their will by members of the Iraqi military and militia. But the soldiers here say that most of those leaving the city appear to be going out just for the day to the markets in Zubair, a town about 10 miles southwest of here, and returning voluntarily.

"They're not coming out to stay," said a soldier guarding the bridge. "They're not leaving with their household goods. A lot of them are going out to get tomatoes. It's not a great outflow of refugees."

Some reports from U.S. and British officials said Basra residents who did leave had family members held back as hostages to ensure their return. But the soldiers, and reporters who stood with them on the bridge, saw entire families leaving together -- men, women, children and infants -- and the flow was in both directions.

"US Draws Up Secret Plan to Impose Regime on Iraq" (Brian Whitaker and Luke Harding in The Guardian, 4/1/03):

A disagreement has broken out at a senior level within the Bush administration over a new government that the US is secretly planning in Kuwait to rule Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned.

The government will take over Iraq city by city. Areas declared "liberated" by General Tommy Franks will be transferred to the temporary government under the overall control of Jay Garner, the former US general appointed to head a military occupation of Iraq.

In anticipation of the Baghdad regime's fall, members of this interim government have begun arriving in Kuwait.

Decisions on the government's composition appear to be entirely in US hands, particularly those of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. This has annoyed Gen Garner, who is officially in charge but who, according to sources close to the planning of the government has had to accept a number of controversial Iraqis in advisory roles.

Hugo Young on American idealism in The Guardian, 4/1/03:

From top to bottom, Americans do believe democracy is good for everyone, even if some may have to wait for it longer than others. But here comes the crux of the American dilemma. Even if we're prepared to grant the existence, deep in American purposes, of more idealism than is usually admitted, its fulfilment has become unattainable. America's understanding of the world has become so self-centred, and its reputation so corrupted, that its ability to export liberal democracy either by example or by force now looks to be non-existent.

"It Will End in Disaster" -- George Monbiot on prospects for postwar Iraq in The Guardian, 4/1/03.

The twenty-one countries bombed by the United States since the end of World War Two (New Internationalist):

China 1945-46, 1950-53

Korea 1950-53

Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69

Indonesia 1958

Cuba 1959-61

Congo 1964

Peru 1965

Laos 1964-73

Vietnam 1961-73

Cambodia 1969-70

Lebanon 1983-84

Grenada 1983

Libya 1986

El Salvador 1980s

Nicaragua 1980s

Panama 1989

Bosnia 1995

Sudan 1998

Former Yugoslavia 1999

Iraq 1991-??

Afghanistan 1998, 2001-??

Harpers Weekly Review, 4/1/03

Iran-Contra as precursor to Al Qaeda: Bruce Sterling in Wired Magazine, 4/3/03:

Considering the audacity of . . . [Iran-Contra's] challenge to Constitutional authority, its principals have done surprisingly well in the years since. Oliver North gave up his uniform to become what he always had been at heart: a right-wing political agitator. Elliot Abrams now manages Venezuelan revolution, counterrevolution, and counter-counterrevolution for the State Department. And, of course, John Poindexter is in charge of the Department of Defense's Total Information Awareness program.

But the real success story is the Contras, or rather their modern successor: al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's crew is a band of government-funded anticommunist counterrevolutionaries who grew up and cut the apron strings. These new-model Contras don't need state support from Washington, Moscow, or any Accessory of Evil. Like Project Democracy, they've got independent financing: oil money, charity money, arms money, and a collection plate wherever a junkie shoots up in an alley. Instead of merely ignoring and subverting governments for a higher cause, as Poindexter did, al Qaeda tries to destroy them outright. Suicide bombers blew the Chechnyan provisional puppet government sky high. Cars packed with explosives nearly leveled the Indian Parliament. We all know what happened to the Pentagon.

The next Iran-Contra is waiting, because the contradictions that created the first have never been resolved. Iran-Contra wasn't about eager American intelligence networks spreading dirty money in distant lands; it was about the gap between old, legitimate, land-based governments ruled by voters and the new, stateless, globalized predation. The next scandal will erupt when someone as molten, self-righteous, and frustrated as John Poindexter uses stateless power for domestic advantage. That's the breaking point in American politics: not when you call in the plumbers, but when you turn them loose on the opposition party. Then the Empire roils in a lather of sudden, indignant fury and strikes back against its own.

"A Spurious 'Smoking Gun'" -- Chris Smith on the forged Niger uranium letters and the media's indifference to them (Mother Jones, 3/25/03):

It was one of the White House's strongest arguments for war.

For months, administration officials had been touting a series of letters purporting to show Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. If the letters weren't exactly a smoking gun, Washington hawks contended, they were at least irrefutable proof that Iraq still had nuclear ambitions.

Then, two weeks ago, it all came crashing down. The letters, it was revealed, were hoaxes -- crude forgeries discredited by nuclear weapons experts and disowned by the Central Intelligence Agency. Further, the Agency asserted that it made its concerns known to administration officials in late 2001, shortly after telling the White House about the letters. For more than a year, Washington had used evidence repudiated by its own intelligence advisors to build a case for war.

The revelations could have delivered a damaging blow to the White House's political and diplomatic push for invasion. But the national media rapidly moved off the story, swept up in the administration's rush to war. And it all might have ended there, but for Congressman Henry Waxman. In a scathing letter sent to President Bush last week, the California Democrat demands an investigation into what Bush knew about the Niger forgeries and when he knew it. Waxman, who voted last year to give the administration authority to wage a war in Iraq, says there is reason to believe that he and other members of Congress have been misled.

"It is unfathomable how we could be in a situation where the CIA knew information was not reliable but yet it was cited by the President in the State of the Union and by other leading Administration officials," he says. "Either this is knowing deception or utter incompetence and an explanation is urgently needed."

Waxman, who says he signed on to Bush's war initiative in part because he was concerned about Iraq's nuclear aims, wonders how the forgeries could have been used as evidence of Iraqi malfeasance for so many months after they were officially debunked. At the very least, he writes, the recent revelations have created a perception that facts were withheld to bolster the President's case for war.

"Arab Hopes Rest on Toppling Saddam and Humbling the US" (Martin Woollacott in The Guardian, 4/2/03):

The chastening of America has begun and the likely outcome of the war is coming into view - one regime gone, in Baghdad, another humbled, in Washington. According to those who analyse Arab policy and follow Arab opinion from here, the hopes of Arab governments now centre on this prospect. . . .

Arab states wanted the quick war the US promised but also feared the triumphalist America which would have emerged from it. Now the least worst option for them would be the less confident US which a harder war might produce, one which would not contemplate further military adventures, would get out of Iraq quickly, and might redeem itself by a more even handed approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . .

[W]hat the Arabs have almost certainly got right is that even if the war takes a sudden turn for the better, post-Saddam America will be a very different place from the country that existed only two weeks ago, perhaps weaker, certainly more cautious.

"Emperor George" -- Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, 4/2/03:

This war is un-American. That's an unlikely word to use, I know: it has an unhappy provenance, associated forever with the McCarthyite hunt for reds under the beds, purging anyone suspected of "un-American activities". Besides, for many outside the US, the problem with this war is not that it's un-American - but all too American.

But that does an injustice to the US and its history. It assumes that the Bush administration represents all America, at all times, when in fact the opposite is true. For this administration, and this war, are not typical of the US. On the contrary, on almost every measure, they are exceptions to the American rule.

Britain pushes commitment to UN administration of postwar Iraq (Michael White and Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, 4/2/03):

Tony Blair is determined to show he has not lost control of the post-war agenda to hawks in the Bush administration by promoting the concept of a UN-sponsored conference for all groups in Iraq to start reshaping their country's future after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The conference would open during the period of American military rule that is expected when the fighting ends and would follow the model set by the Afghanistan conference in Bonn which preceded the formation of a post-Taliban government.

In a clear attempt to assert self-determination over quasi-colonial rule, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said yesterday that the goal would be "to place responsibility for decisions about Iraq's political and economic future firmly in the hands of the Iraqi people".

Amazing use of Times Square news ticker by Fox News during antiwar demonstration (Richard Cowen, "'Die-Ins' Target War and News Media," Northjersey.com, 3/28/03):

More than 200 people were arrested Thursday for blocking traffic in Manhattan during a day of civil disobedience called to protest the war in Iraq and the corporate media's reporting of the conflict. . . .

Fox News had its own response to the demonstrators. The news ticker rimming Fox's headquarters on Sixth Avenue wasn't carrying war updates as the protest began. Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them.

"War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!" read one message. "Who won your right to show up here today?" another questioned. "Protesters or soldiers?"

Said a third: "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them."

Still another read: "Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street" - a reference to the film maker who denounced the war while accepting an Oscar on Sunday night for his documentary "Bowling for Columbine."

The protesters said Fox's sentiments only proved their point: that media coverage, in particular among the television networks, is so biased as to be unbelievable.

David Broder on
Congressional pressure for a UN-led administration of a postwar Iraq ("Time to Heal the Breach," Washington Post, 4/2/03):

The messages from Capitol Hill are aimed at influencing what [Wisconsin Democratic representative Ron] Kind called "a raging debate" inside the Bush administration. The immediate question is whether postwar Iraq will be run by an American viceroy or a U.N. official. But the larger question is whether superpower America will seek to heal the breach with longtime allies that blocked U.N. action against Saddam Hussein, or walk away from the world body and seek to manage future conflicts with its own "coalition of the willing."

The Pentagon, which holds the upper hand in that debate because it is calling the shots in the war, already has designated a general to take over at least temporarily in Baghdad. [Delaware Democratic senator Joseph] Biden, who is blunt in his appraisal of the stakes, told me that he thinks Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are "seeking a twofer. They want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and break the grip of the United Nations."

Kind is slightly more tactful in his description, but said that, judging from his sources in the State Department, "This is the issue of the day. It will affect our relations with the Arab nations and the rest of the world for decades to come. And it has a direct bearing on our security. As powerful as our military is, if we're seen as the occupying power in a Muslim country, it makes us more vulnerable to terrorism."

Jay Garner's provisional provisional government
prepares to administer occupied Iraq (Susan B. Glasser and Rajiv Chandrasekaran in The Washington Post, 4/2/03):

The actual war in Iraq has left the country's government-in-waiting still in rehearsal. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, with a Kuwait-based staff already numbering in "the low hundreds," had expected to move quickly into Iraq after a swift war that toppled President Saddam Hussein and won over Iraqis grateful to the United States for liberating them from more than three decades of authoritarian rule.

But with military commanders warning of a longer and more difficult war, Garner's team also has been reevaluating its strategy. Plans to send a large number of U.S. civilians into Iraq are being postponed, given concerns about security even in areas of southern Iraq nominally under U.S. control. . . .

In Washington, meanwhile, disagreement over control of the program surfaced as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld vetoed the State Department's selection of eight current and former diplomats to join Garner's team. Some officials here complain that the Pentagon is seeking to dominate every aspect of Iraq's postwar reconstruction. . . .

"Some of us came out here thinking it would be a three- or four-month operation," one member of Garner's team said. "Now it's clear that we're going to be here, and eventually in Baghdad, for a lot longer than we expected." . . .

Garner's team is made up almost exclusively of Americans, many of them former or current officials. Aides come from the Pentagon, the State Department and other departments and agencies, including Treasury, Justice, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Army Corps of Engineers. The only non-Americans are a handful of British and Australian diplomats, and a small group of Iraqi exiles. The United Nations is expected to "play some part in the equation," an official said, but U.S. officials have made clear it will be a subordinate role.

Strange symmetry between US and Iraqi strategic goals thus far (Patrick Cockburn, "The Lessons that Washington Has Still to Learn," in The Independent, 4/2/03):

Iraqis I spoke to a few days after the start of the invasion were much quicker than the outside world to notice its slow pace and inability to crack President Saddam's real levers of power. Indeed, the whole US attack plan has played straight into the Iraqi leader's hands.

There is a curious symmetry between the Pentagon's plans and those of President Saddam. The US intention was to avoid the cities and head for Baghdad. President Saddam's plan, which was more or less public knowledge, was to retreat into the cities where the US could not use airpower and wouldn't know the terrain as well as the defenders.

President Saddam and Washington were also at one on another important issue. He was always frightened of internal uprisings among the Kurds and the Shia Muslims, who together make up three-quarters of the population. The great rebellions of 1991 had almost brought him down. Over the years he has taken minute precautions to make sure it would not happen again by sending an army Baath party members and security men into every village, town and city district.

In fact Washington was against any uprising, as it had been in 1991. It was frightened that a rebellion by the Kurds in Kirkuk and Mosul provinces would provoke Turkish intervention. In the south, the US was against an uprising among the Shia because it might benefit Iran, the supporter of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the most powerful Shia organisation in the country. The US also felt that to allow Iraqi political organisations to share in the expected easy victory would compel Washington to give them a share in power after the war. "It would have interfered with their plans to remake Iraq after their own vision," said one opposition leader.

There also seems to have been a misunderstanding about the nature of President Saddam's government. Though his ruling Baath party came to power through a military coup in 1968, it was never a classic military regime where the army holds power. President Saddam, despite his military uniforms, had no formal military training. He has always depended on his security services, the Baath party and a complex network of clan and tribal alliances to keep him in power.

These were the sinews of his rule, and by deliberately not capturing cities at the beginning of the invasion, the US and Britain ensured that he remained in control of the vast majority of the Iraqi population. The failure to take a city like Basra early in the campaign also meant, as one Kurdish commander put it, there were "no visible coalition gains to show the Iraqi people".

"America's Moslem Miscalculation" -- Fawaz A. Gerges on the Institute for War and Peace Reporting website (posted 3/28/03):

Washington's war has blurred the lines between mainstream, liberal and radical politics in the world of Islam, and with it squandered most of the empathy engendered after 9/11. A new realignment against the United States that brings together a broad spectrum of political forces is crystallising in Arab and Muslim lands. Distinguished Islamic institutions and renowned - and moderate - clerics have urged Muslims to join in jihad to resist the US-led onslaught.

Al-Azhar, the highest, oldest and most-respected institution of religious learning in the Muslim world, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, advising "all Muslims in the world to make jihad against invading American forces". Although Islam possesses no organised church, the significance of al-Azhar's call is comparable to a Papal call on Catholics to fight a just war to defend the faith. The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi, a reformist who was one of the first clerics to condemn 9/11 and who dismissed bin Laden's jihadi credentials as fraudulent, ruled that attempts to resist the US attack ON IRAQ are a "binding Islamic duty."

Until now Tantawi has been attacked by conservative and reactionary clerics as a pro-Western reformer. His new stance shows the extent of the realignment of political opinion in the world of Islam.

Another widely-respected Egyptian-born cleric based in Qatar, Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi, accused the Bush administration of declaring war against Islam - and behaving like "a god". Qaradawi, who also denounced al-Qaeda terrorism after 9/11, said fighting US troops is "legal jihad" and "death while defending Iraq a kind of martyrdom."

Moderates and radicals now appear to be fully united in opposition to the American war. In an editorial in al-Hayat, a leading secular-liberal writer warned of the "new American tyranny . . . an empire that cannot be questioned." Similarly, a leader in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, a well-organised and mainstream Islamist organisation with millions of members in several Arab countries, called on his followers everywhere to join in jihad in defence of Iraq. The Muslim Brothers have not been considered a militant group since the 1970s when they forsook violence and agreed to play by the rules of the political game.

Bin Laden must be laughing in his grave - or cave, whichever the case may be. His apocalyptic nightmare of a clash of religions and cultures is finally resonating in both camps. What was unthinkable a year and a half ago has happened: two versions of a just war theory, one Western and the other Muslim, are clashing over Iraq.

"Presidential Quarantine" -- Jeremy Mayer on American Prospect Online, 4/1/03:

What country could this president visit that wouldn't immediately erupt into massive civil unrest? A Bush visit to Western Europe would make 2001's violent anti-globalization demonstrations in Genoa look like a tea party. . . .

Bush's quarantine involves almost all of the Middle East, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and even some Asian countries. Polls in some Eastern European nations suggest less intense opposition to America, but those countries are geographically close to Western Europe -- a presidential visit to Bucharest would likely attract hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from Germany and France. A trip to a less stable nation, such as Egypt or Pakistan, could severely weaken or even bring down the host government.

The world's citizens are so helpless in the face of America's military supremacy and unilateral foreign policy that the only way they can express their anger is through civil unrest and boycotts. Even a visit to America's neighbors, Mexico or Canada, would produce scenes of unprecedented anti-American demonstrations.

And those images would matter here at home. In 1960, Kennedy used the anti-Nixon demonstrations abroad to argue that the nation was losing stature in the world. A foreign trip by Bush now would reveal to the average American in pictures -- so vivid that even FOX News couldn't spin them away -- just how bitterly our policies are opposed around the globe.

Once the war is over and the occupation begins, reporters will start to ask why our president isn't traveling anymore. Karl Rove will have to think of a place to send him. Outside of Israel or Afghanistan, the choices will be slim. Of course, Bush could safely go to a country where the government uses brutality to stop demonstrations. Which means that it has come to this: The American president, who once symbolized the value of freedom to many people around the world, can now only visit countries where dissent is crushed.

Technology of antiwar protest: AP reporter Rachel Konrad in The San Mateo County Times, 4/3/03:

Throughout the world, technology is allowing activists to stage spontaneous rallies in reaction to the war.

Prohibitively expensive only a few years ago, gadgets ranging from the cell phone to the mini digital video camera simplify protests from Brussels to Manila.

Instead of relying on posters taped to telephone poles or slapped onto university walls, activists have crafted sophisticated Web sites with maps, weather and traffic updates and news on police crackdowns.

Before the invasion of Iraq began, the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center solicited volunteers to stage sit-ins in particular intersections. When sit-ins sparked police confrontations, the group published live video on its Web site.

Such tactics enabled the activists to shut down much of downtown San Francisco -- proof that new technologies have revolutionized civil disobedience, said Pam Fielding, co-author of The Net Effect: How Cyberadvocacy is Changing the Political Landscape.

Congress
resists Israeli concessions called for in the Bush/Blair "road map" for the Middle East (Jim VandeHei in The Washington Post, 4/4/03):

President Bush's latest bid for a Middle East peace deal is running into unexpected resistance from key allies in Congress. Republicans and Democrats are pressing the White House to adopt a more staunchly pro-Israel stance, even if it feeds the perception the United States is too closely aligned with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government. . . .

Sharon's government, and many in Congress, object to the non-negotiable nature of the document and to its demand that Israel and the Palestinian take parallel steps to move toward peace. Israel's position is that the Palestinians must prove they have stopped all terrorism, and activities that Israel believes promote terrorist activities, before it is required to take any steps, including the withdrawal of troops and stopping the expansion of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. . . .

Several Republican and Democratic leaders plan to send Bush a letter this month signed by dozens of members, imploring him to adopt a position more clearly backing the Sharon government. "There are concerns about Bush's" recent comments, said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq and co-author of the letter. "We think this is not the direction he ought to go."

Gregg Easterbrook on
Rumsfeld's opponents in the US Army and why they're leaking criticism of his war plans (New Republic Online, 4/1/03):

The Army dislikes Rumsfeld because the "revolution in military affairs" faction, of which he is grand vizier, wants to cut the Army's divisions and budget, while boosting funding for Air Force and Navy aviation. Making Rumsfeld, a former Navy pilot, look like he doesn't understand land warfare issues is essential to the Army counterattack. . . .

The Army wants to survive the budget wars, wants its share of advanced hardware, and wants respect; the "revolution" crowd coos over pilots and scientists while treating grunts as the hired help. Given that Rumsfeld's reputation rests on the fast, agile assaults the Army is now conducting, keep looking for leaks on multiple fronts.

"Held under House Arrest by Saddam for a Decade, Could This Cleric Be a Secret Weapon for the Allies?" Paul Valelly in The Independent, 4/4/03:

Iraq's most senior religious leader issued a fatwa yesterday urging the country's majority Shia community not to hinder the US and British armies. It could prove as significant a development for the invading forces as any of the military victories of the past few days.

The ruling, from Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani -- the foremost Shia authority in Iraq -- called on Muslims to keep calm, stay at home, not put themselves in danger and not to fight. It could add the decisive weight to the scales of war.

Certainly the fatwa provoked great optimism among the coalition's political and military leaders. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, of Allied Central Command in Qatar, said: "We believe this is a very significant turning point and another indicator that the Iraqi regime is approaching its end."

The Ayatollah, who is 73, has been under house imprisonment at his home in the holy city of Najaf by Saddam Hussein's secret police for almost a decade. He was freed two days ago when his guards fled as US forces advanced on the city.

Roundup of
Defense Policy Board conflicts of interest (André Verlöy and Daniel Politi, with Aron Pilhofer, at The Center for Public Integrity website (posted 3/28/03):

Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors.

The board's chairman, Richard Perle, resigned yesterday, March 27, 2003, amid allegations of conflicts of interest for his representation of companies with business before the Defense Department, although he will remain a member of the board. Eight of Perle's colleagues on the board have ties to companies with significant contracts from the Pentagon.

Members of the board disclose their business interests annually to the Pentagon, but the disclosures are not available to the public. "The forms are filed with the Standards of Conduct Office which review the filings to make sure they are in compliance with government ethics," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Ted Wadsworth told the Center for Public Integrity.

The companies with ties to Defense Policy Board members include prominent firms like Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton and smaller players like Symantec Corp., Technology Strategies and Alliance Corp., and Polycom Inc.

"Fear that 'Sleepers' Will Destabilise New Regime" (Rory McCarthy in The Guardian, 4/4/03):

Before the war few senior officers believed they would face such strong resistance from the paramilitaries ahead of the final battle for Baghdad. In fact, three groups, the Saddam Fedayeen, the Special Security Organisation and the Ba'ath party militia, emerged immediately, even in the very south of the country, as a significant fighting force. Militia groups are still holed up in the southern city of Basra, as well as other towns on the route north, including Nassiriya, Najaf and Kerbala.

The resilience of the militias has surprised commanders. Officers say they are more secular than insurgents in countries like Afghanistan and Chechnya, which are largely inspired by extreme interpretations of Islam. "They are not driven by ideology or religious fervour but recruited by the regime, armed and very highly paid," the British officer said.

The structure of the resistance appears to be much closer to an anti-western, hardline nationalist force. In the months after the war, they could emerge as a guerrilla vanguard for the growing anti-western feeling across the Arab world.

To prevent militia fighters from representing a future threat, coalition forces will have to arrange a much deeper purge of the Iraqi apparatus of power, and in particular the Ba'ath party, than was at first thought. That is likely to make the business of post-Saddam government considerably harder than imagined.

"Everyone in America--Myself Included -- Has Been Driven Insane by This War" -- Neal Pollack,
"Fighting Words", Portland Mercury, April 3-9, 2003:

Let's run down a list of incidents that I've heard about in the last month alone: A French woman in Houston, who's lived in her neighborhood for 20 years, wakes up on a Saturday morning to find graffiti on her garage door telling her to go back to France. A guy from Seattle arrives in San Diego and finds a threatening note from airport security because he's packed two "No Iraq War" signs in his bag. In Austin, the French owner of an antique shop hears on a radio call-in show that people want to blow up the miniature Eiffel Tower in front of his store. Radio stations in Kansas City and Louisiana stage Dixie Chicks bonfires and monster-truck CD stomps. At a rodeo in Houston, a guy starts a brawl because a kid and his friends don't want to stand while Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." plays over the loudspeaker. The guy tells the kid, who's half Mexican and half Italian, to "go back to Iraq."

Meanwhile, the FBI has warned that a full-blown war, now underway, will lead to an increase in "hate crimes." Arab Americans were already cowering before the war started. An 18-year-old Lebanese kid in Yorba Linda, California, had his jaw broken on February 22 by a mob of 20 teenagers who shouted "white power" as they beat him with baseball bats. A few days later, a Muslim woman in Santa Clara, California, was attacked in the laundry room of her apartment building. The FBI also reported that a Muslim father of six was assaulted February 21 in Irvington, New Jersey, by two men who accused him of being a terrorist. . . .

Welcome to insanity. The insanity of war. When President Bush referred to the Americans as a "peaceful people" in his 48-hour-showdown speech, I had to wonder: What "people" was he talking about?

"The President's Real Goal in Iraq" -- Jay Bookman in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/29/02:

[W]hy does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?

Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.

In an interview Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed aside that suggestion, noting that the United States does not covet other nations' territory. That may be true, but 57 years after World War II ended, we still have major bases in Germany and Japan. We will do the same in Iraq.

And why has the administration dismissed the option of containing and deterring Iraq, as we had the Soviet Union for 45 years? Because even if it worked, containment and deterrence would not allow the expansion of American power. Besides, they are beneath us as an empire. Rome did not stoop to containment; it conquered. And so should we.

"'Rolling' Victory Key to U.S. Endgame": Peter Slevin and Bradley Graham in The Washington Post, 4/4/03:

The Bush administration has devised a strategy to declare victory in Iraq even if Saddam Hussein or key lieutenants remain at large and fighting continues in parts of the country, officials said yesterday.

The concept of a "rolling" victory contemplates a time -- not yet determined -- when U.S. forces control significant territory and have eliminated a critical mass of Iraqi resistance. U.S. military commanders would establish a base of operations, perhaps outside Baghdad, and assert that a new era has begun. Even then, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers would remain to help maintain order and provide humanitarian assistance.

"American Tragedy" -- Jonathan Schell in The Nation, 4/7/03:

The path through domestic events to this same destination arguably begins with the impeachment attempt against President Bill Clinton, in which the Republican Party abused its majority power in Congress to try to knock a President of the other party out of the executive branch. The attempt failed, but the institutional siege on the presidency continued in the resolution of the freakishly close vote in Florida in 2000. In a further abuse of government power -- in this case the judicial branch -- the President was chosen by a vote not of the people of the United States but of the Supreme Court. The message of Republicans at the time in Congress and the Florida legislature was that if judges did not produce the result they demanded, they would bring on a constitutional crisis in the House of Representatives. A new conception of democracy was born: Freedom is your right to support what we want. Otherwise, you are 'irrelevant.' You can vote, but you do not decide. 'Unilateralism' was born in Florida.

The tragedy of America in the post-cold war era is that we have proved unequal to the responsibility that our own power placed upon us. Some of us became intoxicated with it, imagining that we could rule the world. Others of us -- the Democratic Party, Congress, the judiciary, the news media -- abdicated our obligation to challenge, to check and to oppose, letting the power-hungry have their way. The government of the United States went into opposition against its own founding principles, leaving it to the rest of the world to take up our cause. The French have been better Americans than we have. Because the Constitution, though battered, is still intact, we may still have time and opportunity to recoup. But for now, we will have to pay the price of our weakness. The costs will be heavy, first of all for the people of Iraq but also for others, including ourselves. The international order on which the common welfare, including its ecological and economic welfare, depends has sustained severe damage. The fight for 'freedom' abroad is crippling freedom at home. The war to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has provoked that very proliferation in North Korea and Iran. More ground has already been lost in the field of proliferation than can be gained even by the most delirious victory in Baghdad. Former friends of America have been turned into rivals or foes. The United States may be about to win Iraq. It has already lost the world.

Move to Baghdad (April 1-4, 2003) Read More »

War Momentum Slows (March 26-31, 2003)

March 31, 2003 / Iraq, War

"W.T.O. Rules Against U.S. on Steel Tariff"
(Elizabeth Becker in the New York Times, 3/26/03):

While the trade decision was called interim, with the final report expected next month, it is rare for an interim decision to be reversed. If the United States loses next month, European and other nations could impose trade sanctions of comparable value against the United States.

Last spring, Mr. Bush imposed tariffs of nearly 30 percent on most types of steel imported from Europe, Asia and South America, the biggest government action to protect an industry in several decades. While it was praised by the steel industry and trade unionists, the move was criticized by free trade advocates and companies that use steel in manufacturing.

The case against the tariffs was brought by the European Union, which accused the United States of illegally protecting the steel industry. . . . But there was no celebratory statement or any comment from the Europeans today. All spokesmen said they would not discuss an interim decision, but foreign officials also said Europe wanted to avoid creating a further division with the United States in a time of war.

"Blair, the War Criminal" -- British MP Tam Dalyell in The Guardian, 3/27/03:

The overwhelming majority of international lawyers, including several who advise the government (such as Rabinder Singh, a partner in Cherie Booth's Matrix Chambers), have concluded that military action in Iraq without proper UN security council authorisation is illegal under international law. The Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, resigned on precisely this point after 30 years' service. This puts the prime minister and those who will be fighting in his and President Bush's name in a vulnerable legal position. Already lawyers are getting phone calls from anxious members of the armed forces.

Blair accuses opponents of war of "appeasement" - in spite of the fact that, in many cases, their active opposition to Saddam's dictatorship well predates his. (I signed the 1987 early day motion against arms exports to Iraq. Blair and Gordon Brown didn't.) If anyone is the "appeaser" it is Blair, in his support for the US government's pre-emptive attack on Saddam. . . .

Many in the Labour party believe Blair has misunderstood the pressing danger. It comes not from Iraq, but from terrorism. If there is a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, it is this: Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein. On at least two occasions Bin Laden's organisation has tried to assassinate Saddam. The effect of this war, however, could well be to bring the pair together. This is a war that will strengthen terrorism.

"War" replaces "Sex" as #1 Web search (Guardian, 3/27/03)

The Internet and war coverage (Ben Hammersley in The Guardian, 3/27/03):

Could this be the first internet war? As the Spanish civil war brought us the first classic photojournalism, and the first Gulf war saw the heyday of CNN, and with it 24-hour rolling news, could this war be the birth of the internet as the primary source for news?

The world's major news outlets are finding it so. The readership of their online versions, including this paper's, has increased dramatically since the start of hostilities. With multiple journalists filing frequent reports from the battlefield, the only outlet wide enough, and fast enough to keep up is the net.

"The Other Superpower" -- Jonathan Schell in The Nation, 4/14/03 (posted 3/27/03):

As the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised a "campaign unlike any other in history." What he did not plan or expect, however, was that the peoples of earth -- what some are calling "the other superpower" -- would launch an opposing campaign destined to be even less like any other in history. Indeed, Rumsfeld's campaign, a military attack, was in all its essential elements as old as history. The other campaign -- the one opposing the war -- meanwhile, was authentically novel.

John Major on postwar Iraq (originally Wall Street Journal, 3/26/03; quoted in The Guardian, 3/27/03):

"Whatever the immediate postwar arrangements for governing Iraq may be . . . it is desirable for the UN to be involved as swiftly as possible in any interim administration. Some sounding board for local opinion . . . should also be put in place. This will be uncomfortable and rancorous since the views of the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds are unlikely to be as one; but the effort must be made -- and be seen to be made . . .

"The establishment of any longer-term government . . . is fraught with difficulty . . . The depth of bitterness between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds is such that any 'grand coalition' is impossible . . . Yet, unless military governorship or UN administration is to be lengthy, we must anticipate a legitimate government that may reflect the numerical dominance of the Shias . . .

"We would be wise to consult Arab opinion . . . We should discuss our plans with the EU, China and Russia, and seek their active political support: We may, after all, need them to open their wallets as well. As we do so, we should not neglect the views of our allies, Australia, Spain and Japan prominent among them. In victory, magnanimity may heal wounds."

"Analysts Say Threat Warnings Toned Down -- Guerrilla Tactics Were Predicted" (Washington Post, 3/27/03):

Intelligence analysts at the CIA and Pentagon warned the Bush administration that U.S. troops would face significant resistance from Iraqi irregular forces employing guerrilla tactics, but those views have not been adequately reflected in the administration's public predictions about how difficult a war might go, according to current and former intelligence officials.

"Anti-Hussein Officials Rebuke Unilateral U.S. Battle Strategy"
(Washington Post, 3/27/03):

SALAHUDDIN, Iraq, March 26 -- Iraq's U.S.-endorsed opposition has distanced itself from the Bush administration's war strategy, suggesting the plan to conquer the country without involving the Iraqi public has opened the way for military problems in the south.

Opposition organizations all desired direct Iraqi involvement in the war. Just how much popular resistance they could have mustered remains an open question. But from their offices here in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, the groups have expressed little surprise that Iraqi civilians appear reluctant to greet allied forces, much less take up arms to expel government militias and soldiers from their midst. . . .

"There's a total lack of Iraqi involvement," said Zaab Sethna, an aide to Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group based in London. "We have been surprised over the months the lack of cooperation with the opposition."

The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group based in Iran, said the Bush administration has shared none of its plans with the opposition. Its leader, Mohammed Bakir Hakim, told Iraqi Shiites on Tuesday to remain neutral in the war.

"We are not in favor of this war because it places the future of Iraq in foreign hands," he told reporters in Tehran.

"War Could Last Months, Officers Say" (Washington Post, 3/27/03):

Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday. . . .

Overhanging all developments in the war this week is the unsettling realization that thousands of Iraqis are willing to fight vigorously. During planning for the invasion, worst-case scenarios sometimes predicated stiff resistance, but "no one took that very seriously," an officer said.

"The whole linchpin of this operation was the reaction of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi ground force," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a specialist in war planning. "If they don't turn, and so far they haven't, we have a very different strategic problem facing us than when we went in."

Seymour Hersh on
the forged Iraq nuclear program documents ("Who Lied to Whom?", New Yorker, 3/31/03 (posted 3/24/03):

What went wrong? Did a poorly conceived propaganda effort by British intelligence, whose practices had been known for years to senior American officials, manage to move, without significant challenge, through the top layers of the American intelligence community and into the most sacrosanct of Presidential briefings? Who permitted it to go into the President's State of the Union speech? Was the message -- the threat posed by Iraq -- more important than the integrity of the intelligence-vetting process? Was the Administration lying to itself? Or did it deliberately give Congress and the public what it knew to be bad information?

"Missteps with Turkey Prove Costly" -- Glenn Kessler and Philip P. Pan analyze the diplomatic failure in The Washington Post (3/28/03)

One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said.

Turkey's rejection not only forced a rewrite of the war plan, but it undercut the administration's broader diplomatic efforts to win international support for an invasion. Diplomats said the image of Turkey resisting U.S. pressure emboldened smaller countries on the U.N. Security Council to reject a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military action. The failure of that resolution in turn made it impossible for the United States to recruit such close allies as Canada and Mexico to join the fight against Iraq, since they had tied their support to a new resolution.

Josh Marshall on
the pressure to finish the war quickly -- before Saddam gets stronger, but also before the United States is ready (3/29/03):

On CNN last night, Wes Clark made a interesting and ominous observation, which he said he based on recent conversations with various region experts. The gist of it was that we have a four or five week window to finish this up. And if we don't do it before then, a bad chain of events kicks off. Saddam starts to look strong, like he's making a stand against America, and so forth. Then Arab or non-Arab Muslim volunteers start streaming into the country to take up the fight. Basically, instead of just being angry and marching in their own countries because they think we're clobbering Iraq, they decide that Saddam's actually making a fight of it and go to get in on the action.

I can't say whether this is an accurate prediction or not. But it has the ring of truth to it -- in my ears at least. And, regardless, it's probably one of the issues that's being considered. Unfortunately, says the Galloway article, the 4th ID won't be ready for at least three weeks.

That the math doesn't add up too nicely, does it? Maybe we do have to hit Baghdad now to prevent some broader regional deterioration.

The one thing that seems really clear is this: We should not be in this position of having to decide whether to go in under-gunned or wait longer than we can really afford to. This is what's so nice about having the world's most powerful military, several times over: you shouldn't have to wing it. We should have had all the necessary troops and hardware in position when we pulled the trigger on this war, rather than having what turns out to be a critical component on the ground in Texas.

Why was that allowed to happen?

The
political costs of prolonged war for US and British leadership (Guardian lead editorial, 3/29/03):

A vice is slowly beginning to close on US and British political leaders who ordered or justified the launching of war on Iraq. This potentially fatal squeeze is the product of two opposed dynamics. One is the dawning realisation that the war will not be over quickly, may indeed drag on for months, and will certainly not be the "cakewalk" predicted by Kenneth Adelman of the Pentagon's infamous defence policy board. The other is the prospect of an accelerating humanitarian crisis. . . .

That the Pentagon has been obliged to double its ground combat forces after only a week, and must now wait for them to deploy, is a matter for considerable political shock and awe. This military deceleration now runs directly counter to that other powerful dynamic: a quickening human tragedy. Put simply, the longer the war rages, the more acute the suffering of the Iraqi people will become. And while the regime remains undefeated, the more deeply problematic will be efforts to distribute aid and the more furious the international outcry. . . .

[E]ven with the best will in the world, aid efforts will have limited impact while the conflict continues inconclusively. This is why, with the war lengthening and slowing, Iraq's human crisis seems certain to intensify. This is the inexorably closing vice that has the power to destroy thousands of innocent lives and some very prominent political careers.

More antiwar protests: Greece, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Malaysia (Guardian, 3/29/03)

Political damage to Blair enormous, but little chance of a leadership challenge soon (Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, 3/29/03):

So how great is the risk for Blair? He has certainly made a massive withdrawal from the electorate's goodwill bank. . . .

Still, on its own, none of this yet amounts to the tremor that might trigger his downfall. For one thing, there is no opposition to exploit the opening. The Tories are weak and they back this war as much as the government: if it is a failure, they will be discredited too.

Inside Labour, there is anger to be sure. . . . But none of this yet has the makings of a coup against Blair. The rebels have no leader: Robin Cook would be a natural focus, but he has disavowed all such plotting. Heavyweights Gordon Brown and John Prescott have remained onside, ensuring cabinet unity even in these toughest of times. And, loyalist ministers point out, the wider Labour faithful are in no mood for ditching a proven vote-winner. "People looked over the precipice a couple of weeks ago," says one, recalling the brief moment when there was talk of dumping Blair, "and they took several large steps back."

Gary Younge
interviews Hans Blix in The Guardian, 3/29/03:

Formal, self-deprecating, proper and precise, Blix has spent the last few months buffeted by the transatlantic diplomatic storms and emerged with the few hairs he has left on his head in place. Not for him an emotional response to the horrors of war that he believes, at least for now, could have been avoided. Offer him a range of adjectives to describe his mood at the breakdown of talks -- even as he argued that further inspections could still produce results - and he picks only "sadness" and "disappointment", not "anger" and "frustration".

"Sadness because now it was a matter of using force and destruction," he says. "Disappointment because I thought it was too early breaking off the attempts to achieve disarmament. I thought there should have been a little more patience." . . .

Yet despite the fact that there was little nobility displayed in the negotiations and that large numbers of the human race are perishing through military action despite his efforts, he does not regret picking up the phone to Kofi Annan four years ago while on an Antarctic cruise with his wife, and coming out of retirement to take on the job. "I was taken out of the refrigerator, literally," he said recently. "I have my career behind me."

The life ahead of him appears somewhat solitary. He lives in New York, his wife is in Sweden. At 74, he confesses to living the life of a "monk". His only indulgences are bordeaux and oriental carpets; his main hobbies, preparing Scandinavian fish dishes and making his own marmalade. . . .

Blix believes there was nothing he could have said that would have convinced the Americans not to go to war at this time. "They would have wanted a clear-cut guarantee that [the Iraqis] did not have weapons of mass destruction," he says. "I could not have given them a guarantee that if they had waited a few months more there would have been results."

So what was the point of it all, then? Of all the shuttling backwards and forwards, the weighing of words and the delivering of reports when so soon after his first report war seemed inevitable?

Blix's response is a masterpiece of the diplomatic understatement for which over a few short months he became a byword: "While we were disappointed that it didn't continue and that it came to war, I think we have shown that it was feasible to build up a professional and effective and independent inspection regime... it's just too bad it didn't work."

"Embattled U.N. Weapons Chief to Step Down" (AP story in The Guardian, 3/29/03):

His inspectors are becoming valuable commodities for the United States but Hans Blix isn't. The chief U.N. inspector, blamed by Washington for hurting its drive for international support in the run-up to the war, will be stepping down at the end of June.

U.S. officials say his departure could make it easier for the Bush administration to include some of the world's top arms experts in their hunt for Iraqi weapons.

At least three members of Blix's staff -- two experts in biological weapons and one who specializes in Iraq's missile programs -- have been approached by special U.S. military units who will oversee Iraq's disarmament.

It's a sign of recognition that the inspectors are well-trained and their expertise is essential. But the Americans have not made any overtures to their boss. . . .

Blix's last major report was devastating for U.S. efforts to convince the council that Iraq was a serious threat that needed to be disarmed by force. . . .

The Americans were outraged.

"We gave him 70 sites to visit and he only went to seven," said one angry U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Blix said he couldn't remember how many sites he was given, but noted that intelligence from all countries including the United States resulted in "a relatively meager" amount of new information.

Latest marketplace bombing "a PR disaster" for invading coalition (Brian Whitaker in The Guardian, 3/29/03):

raq suffered another civilian tragedy and the invasion forces suffered another public relations disaster when an explosion in a crowded market area of Baghdad killed more than 50 people yesterday.

It was the second incident of its kind within two days. A similar blast killed 14 people in a marketplace on Wednesday. . . .

Whatever the actual cause, the damage to the US in terms of public opinion has already been done and will not be easily undone. TV stations - particularly the Arab satellite channels - showed pictures of the victims throughout the day, reinforcing the impression that the US is a greater immediate threat than Saddam Hussein.

"There Will Be a Severe Political Price to Pay If the Human and Financial Costs of This Conflict Mount Up" (lead editorial in The Independent, 3/29/03):

The implications of a long war are serious. The case for military action was sold with the implication that it would be short and relatively bloodless. Even on that basis, George Bush and his award-winning salesman Tony Blair could not persuade world opinion that it was necessary. Now that they appear to accept that the fighting will last months rather than weeks, with all the likely consequences in blood and suffering, support for the war, although it may have increased briefly once British troops were engaged, could recede. . . .

This newspaper opposed the decision to go to war, not from pacifism but because the potential benefits of removing a dictator and neutralising a theoretical risk of his arming terrorists were outweighed by the horrendous costs of war. We were prepared to accept that, had Saddam been assassinated in the first, opportunistic bombing raid and his subordinates come out with their hands up, the costs and benefits would have been more balanced. Now, however, those costs seem heavier than ever.

This is not simply a matter of the immediate human cost in death, injury, grief and fear. That will be multiplied by an unknown factor as it is translated into anti-American sentiment throughout other Arab and Muslim countries. In Iraq, meanwhile, it is becoming clearer that the feelings of the people towards their self-appointed liberators are more ambivalent than was allowed for in the world -view of the American right. That means the post-war situation in Iraq will be less tractable, and more expensive, than expected.

The financial cost of war is growing daily. Mr Bush's request to Congress for $75bn -- seven times the GDP of Iraq -- assumed that the conflict would last 30 days. It may last longer, in which case the hole in budget arithmetic in the US and the UK will grow wider. As he rewrites next month's Budget speech, Gordon Brown must be alarmed by the war's effects on a service-based economy on the brink of recession.

Nor is there any prospect that the costs of this war will be shared with the "plenty" of allies of which the President boasted unconvincingly. In 1991, nine-tenths of the costs of the Gulf War were borne by countries other than the US. This time, the coalition of the willing is not a coalition of the willing-to-pay.

Paul Peachey's
roundup of major misinformation reported in the Western press thus far (The Independent, 3/29/03): Tariq Aziz's defection, the quick capitulation of Umm Qasr, full-scale desertions from the Iraqi military, discovery of a "chemical weapons complex," the Basra "uprising," executions of British POWs.

Britain apologizes (to Britons) for
alleging Iraqi executions of British POWs (The Independent, 3/29/03):

The Government apologised yesterday to the families of two dead British soldiers over claims by Tony Blair that the men had been "executed" by Iraqi militiamen.

Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, expressed "regret" for any distress caused by the Prime Minister's condemnation of a broadcast on al-Jazeera television which showed the men's bodies.

Mr Ingram's apology is a serious embarrassment for Mr Blair, who highlighted the deaths of the soldiers during his press conference on Thursday with George Bush at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

"How to Know if the U.S. Is Winning" (Thomas Friedman in the International Herald Tribune, 3/29/03). Friedman suggests six criteria: Does the US occupy Baghdad without destroying it? Does it remove Saddam Hussein? Does it develop reconstruction plans that successfully address Iraqi resistance to US "liberation"? Does Iraqi territory remain intact? Can a reconstruction government claim popular legitimacy? And can it claim legitimacy among its neighbors? "If you see these things happening, you'll know that the political ends for which this war was begun are being achieved. If you don't, you'll know America is lost in a sandstorm."

Fergal Keane on
media and public opinion in the Middle East (The Independent, 3/29/03):

So much has changed in this Arab world since the last Gulf War. The arrival of satellite television stations such as Al-Jazeera has transformed the information landscape: the agenda is no longer dominated by Western news outlets or by the craven and awful state-controlled media. Hour by hour, Arab families follow the progress of this war, and it is being mediated for them by Arab reporters. The information war is being lost in the Arab world, partly because the old sources of information no longer hold sway, and at least partly because nobody here wants to give the coalition the benefit of the doubt.

"Antiwar Effort Emphasizes Civility Over Confrontation" -- on the major US antiwar organizations and their strategies since the war began (Kate Zernike and Dean E. Murphy in The New York Times, 3/29/03)

More protests: Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan, China, Cyprus, Germany (Guardian, 3/30/03)

More protests: Indonesia, China, Italy, the United States, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Russia, Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Ireland (BBC, 3/30/03)

"The Tragedy of This Unequal Partnership" -- Will Hutton in The Observer, 3/30/03:

[Tony Blair] is fighting a barely legitimate war that is already a military and diplomatic quagmire, where even eventual victory may not avert a political disaster. He knows his capacity to survive the diplomatic humiliations piled on him by the Bush administration is limited; you cannot long lead Britain's centre and centre-left from such a compromised position, wounding not only the country's profoundest interests but torching any linkage with the progressive project. For the first time his premiership is genuinely at risk.

It is a political tragedy, Shakespearean in the cruelty of its denouement. 9/11 accelerated trends in America that had been crystallising since the 1970s and which made the political structures in which successive British Governments have managed simultaneously to play both the American and European cards unsustainable. Blair was confronted with an invidious choice that nobody in the British establishment has wanted to make: Europe or America. Side with Europe to insist that the price of collaboration in the fight against terrorism had to be that the US observe genuinely multilateral international due process - and certainly say No to some of Washington's wilder aims. Or side with America insisting from the inside that it engaged in its wars multilaterally, and hope to bring Europe along in your wake.

Either choice was beset with risk, but it's hard to believe that siding with Europe, for all its evident difficulties, would have produced an outcome worse than the situation in which we currently find ourselves: a protracted war with no second UN Resolution, no commitment to UN governance of post-war Iraq, no commitment to a mid-East peace settlement. But Blair misread the character of American conservatism, its grip on the American body politic and its scope for rationality. He continues to do so, the miscalculation of his life.

Oliver Morgan in The Observer (3/30/03) on
weapons company president Jay Garner, picked by the Bush administration to lead postwar reconstruction in Iraq:

Jay Garner, the retired US general who will oversee humanitarian relief and reconstruction in postwar Iraq, is president of an arms company that provides crucial technical support to missile systems vital to the US invasion of the country.

Garner's business background is causing serious concerns at the United Nations and among aid agencies, who are already opposed to US administration of Iraq if it comes outside UN authority, and who say appointment of an American linked to the arms trade is the 'worst case scenario' for running the country after the war.

Garner is president of Virginia-based SY Coleman, a subsidiary of defence electronics group L-3 Communications, which provides technical services and advice on the Patriot missile system being used in Iraq. Patriot was made famous in the 1991 Gulf war when it was used to protect Israeli and Saudi targets from attack by Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles. Garner was involved in the system's deployment in Israel. . . .

Jack Tyler, an SY Coleman senior vice-president, confirmed that Garner still held his position at the company.

"Special Search Operations Yield No Banned Weapons" -- Barton Gellman in The Washington Post, 3/30/03:

Ten days into a war fought under the flag of disarmament, U.S.-led troops have found no substantial sign of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In some ways, that is unsurprising. The war is far from won, and most of Iraq's covert arms production and storage historically have taken place within a 60-mile radius of Baghdad. That is roughly the forward line of U.S. armored columns in their thrust to the Iraqi capital.

At the same time, U.S. forces have tested 10 of their best intelligence leads, four that first day and another half-dozen since, without result. There are nearly 300 sites in the top tier of a much larger list that the Defense Intelligence Agency updated in the run-up to war, officials said. The 10 sites reached by Friday were among the most urgent. If equipped as suspected, they would have posed an immediate threat to U.S. forces. "All the searches have turned up negative," said a Joint Staff officer who is following field reports. "The munitions that have been found have all been conventional." . . .

Bush administration officials are acutely aware that their declared war aims call for an early display of evidence. John S. Wolf, assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, recently said that the seventh floor of the State Department -- where Secretary Colin L. Powell and other top political appointees work -- was keen on swift discovery of a "smoking gun," according to someone present.

"The president has made very clear that the reason why we are in Iraq is to find weapons of mass destruction," Wolf said in a telephone interview yesterday. He added, "The fact that we haven't found them in seven or eight days doesn't faze me one little bit. Very clearly, we need to find this stuff or people are going to be asking questions."

Iraqi expatriots return from Jordan to fight (Stars and Stripes, 3/30/03):

AMMAN, Jordan -- Four busloads of Iraqi men left this city Tuesday for their homeland to join the fight against American-led invaders, a sign that U.S. and British forces may face opposition from ordinary Iraqis as well as from supporters of Saddam Hussein.

Few of the men said they were interested in keeping Saddam in power. Instead they talked about fighting for their communities, their families and their pride. They said they would not join the Iraqi military but would use their personal weapons to fight Americans. . . .

Jordanian officials said 4,330 Iraqis have returned to Iraq in the last 10 days, 429 in the last day. In contrast, no Iraqis fled to Jordan as refugees since the war began.

Although the numbers may not seem large, they underscore the growing sense of pride and admiration that is being expressed in this Arab capital for the way Iraqis have so far resisted American and British troops. Some analysts suggest that the return of Iraqis to their homeland also portends difficulties for the United States as it attempts to take control of Iraq and install a new government.

More protests on March 30: India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Korea, China, Morocco, Spain, France, Cyprus, Poland, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Britain (The Independent, 3/31/03)

The perils of clumsy US efforts to manipulate cleavages in the Middle East:
"On a Road to Nowhere" -- Fawzi Ibrahim in The Guardian, 3/31/03:

What is as dangerous as the daily bombardment of Baghdad is the call by Tony Blair and George Bush on the Shi'ites in Basra and Baghdad to rise up. It is one thing to call for a popular uprising, it is quite another to urge this religious sect to rise up. The implication is that the other sect, the Sunnis, who form some 40% of the population, not only support the Iraqi regime but are implicated in its crime. It seems that Mr Blair and Mr Bush are determined to ferment religious divisions and sectarian conflict. This can only play into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who wish to turn Iraq into another Afghanistan. But then, it was the US that supported and armed Osama bin Laden in the first place. So, no change there.

The political history that has shaped Iraq created a shared political awareness among the population - especially those in the cities - that is mutually acknowledged without having to be spoken. An awareness engendered by decades of tyranny and oppression. Such political awareness makes the attempt by the US and Britain to coax Iraqis into loving the invader laughable. The manner in which the politicians and the military explain how they intend to win the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi population is reminiscent of anthropologists' attempt to make contact with a previously undiscovered community in the deepest jungles of Brazil or Chile. It is modelled on the way wild animals are trained for a circus act, with a whip in one hand and a lump of sugar in the other. It is not only deeply offensive, it is profoundly racist. . . .

The last thing the Middle East needs is another war in addition to the war the Israeli government is waging against the Palestinian people. Just how many wars can a single region sustain at any one time? In what must be the most unconvincing and clumsy attempt to pacify Arab and world opinion, Mr Bush experienced a sudden and a very convenient conversion to Mr Blair's road map. If the road map had any credibility at all, it lost it the instant Mr Bush gave it his endorsement. It should surprise no one if the road map is seen as the road to nowhere.

Hosni Mubarak expects heightened Islamic militancy as war gets longer (AP story in Ha'aretz, 3/31/03):

Egypt's president said he could not stop U.S.-led warships from crossing the Suez Canal toward Iraq, and warned a drawn out war would lead to increased Islamic militancy throughout the world.

"If there is one (Osama) bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens afterward," Hosni Mubarak said in reference to the al-Qaida terror network leader during a speech to army commanders in the city of Suez, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of the capital, Cairo.

Mubarak also warned that the war would have "catastrophic" effects on global economic, political and humanitarian conditions and that all Mideast states, including Israel, should be free of weapons of mass destruction.

Fundamentalists rally to defend, "Islamize" Iraq (Brian Whitaker in The Guardian, 3/31/03):

Although Saddam Hussein's regime is largely secular, religious militants throughout the region will probably make strenuous efforts over the coming months to "Islamise" the conflict - as happened during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group yesterday issued a statement announcing "the good news" that the first of its suicide bombers had arrived in Baghdad. Because of the extremely tight security in Israel, American and British troops in Iraq are likely to become an easier and more attractive target for the foreseeable future.

Seymour Hersh,
"Offense and Defense: The Battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon" (New Yorker, 4/7/03; posted 3/31/03):

On at least six occasions . . . [a senior military] planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans -- the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003 -- he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. Rumsfeld's faith in precision bombing and his insistence on streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. "They've got no resources," a former high-level intelligence official said. "He was so focussed on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart." . . .

In the planner's view, Rumsfeld had two goals: to demonstrate the efficacy of precision bombing and to "do the war on the cheap." Rumsfeld and his two main deputies for war planning, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, "were so enamored of 'shock and awe' that victory seemed assured," the planner said. "They believed that the weather would always be clear, that the enemy would expose itself, and so precision bombings would always work." . . .

In the months leading up to the war, a split developed inside the military, with the planners and their immediate superiors warning that the war plan was dangerously thin on troops and matériel, and the top generals -- including General Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, and Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- supporting Rumsfeld. After Turkey's parliament astonished the war planners in early March by denying the United States permission to land the 4th Infantry Division in Turkey, Franks initially argued that the war ought to be delayed until the troops could be brought in by another route, a former intelligence official said. "Rummy overruled him." . . .

There were reports last week that Iraqi exiles, including fervent Shiites, were crossing into Iraq by car and bus from Jordan and Syria to get into the fight on the side of the Iraqi government. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. Middle East operative, told me in a telephone call from Jordan, "Everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq. Not Saddam. They've been given the high sign, and we are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties a day and they die by the thousands, they're still winning. It's a jihad, and it's a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war." There were press reports of mujahideen arriving from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Algeria for "martyrdom operations." . . .

A Middle East businessman who has long-standing ties in Jordan and Syria -- and whose information I have always found reliable -- told me that the religious government in Tehran "is now backing Iraq in the war. There isn't any Arab fighting group on the ground in Iraq who is with the United States," he said.

There is also evidence that Turkey has been playing both sides. Turkey and Syria, who traditionally have not had close relations, recently agreed to strengthen their ties, the businessman told me, and early this year Syria sent Major General Ghazi Kanaan, its longtime strongman and power broker in Lebanon, to Turkey. The two nations have begun to share intelligence and to meet, along with Iranian officials, to discuss border issues, in case an independent Kurdistan emerges from the Iraq war. A former U.S. intelligence officer put it this way: "The Syrians are coöaut;rdinating with the Turks to screw us in the north -- to cause us problems." He added, "Syria and the Iranians agreed that they could not let an American occupation of Iraq stand."

"A Plan under Attack" -- Evan Thomas and John Barry in Newsweek, 4/7/03 (as accessed 3/31/03):

Last Wednesday, CIA officials gave a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill about the rising tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the Arab world. Particular emphasis was placed on Jordan and Egypt. As agency officials discussed the depth of hatred for U.S. actions, the senators fell silent. There were delicate discussions about the uncertainty, if the war was protracted, of "regime stability." After the briefing, "there were senators who were ashen-faced," said one staff member. "They were absolutely depressed." Much of what the agency briefed would not have been news to any close watcher of the BBC or almost any foreign news broadcast. "But they [the senators] only watch American TV," said the staffer. Most of the senators had been led to believe that the war would be quick and that the Iraqi populace would be dancing in the streets. It is hard to know the true level of discontent in the Arab world, and whether it can turn into revolution. But an extended and increasingly bloody Iraqi war is a risky way to find out.

War Momentum Slows (March 26-31, 2003) Read More »

The Peace Movement

March 30, 2003 / Iraq, War

"Keeping Hope Alive" -- William Hartung in The Nation, 4/7/03 (posted 3/25/03):

The chances of preventing George W. Bush -- a true believer in the cleansing powers of military force if there ever was one -- from going to war with Iraq were always small. But look what the global antiwar movement accomplished: We forced the Bush Administration to take the issue to the UN; we turned out millions of people in the largest coordinated protests in history; we helped embolden swing states like Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile, Angola and Pakistan to resist US bullying and bribery at the UN Security Council; we put the future of entire governments at risk when they attempted to side with the United States against the will of their own people. And the start of the war has not diminished the energy and creativity of our movement; if anything, it has sparked renewed determination among antiwar forces.

This doesn't sound like a peace movement that is losing. It sounds like a peace movement that lost the first skirmish but is poised to win the larger struggle to put the doctrine of aggressive unilateralism back in the trash bin of history, where it belongs.

The Peace Movement Read More »

No Immediate Evidence of Banned Weapons

March 28, 2003 / Iraq, United Nations, War

Charles J. Hanley, "Evidence of Iraq Weapons Remains Elusive" (AP article in The Hartford Courant, 3/25/03):

[T]he British government issued a dossier Feb. 3 on Iraq's "infrastructure of concealment," a paper praised by Powell in his own indictment of Iraq before the Security Council two days later. But the British dossier was subsequently determined to have been lifted in large part from published articles and a researcher's paper -- not from fresh intelligence.

Powell's UN presentation was densely detailed, speculating on the meaning of satellite photos, audio intercepts and other, unattributed information. But his claims drew a rebuff from Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector. Among other things, Blix said that a satellite photo the American secretary contended showed movement of proscribed munitions "could just as easily have been a routine activity."

By the time of his next report, March 7, Blix was referring to such U.S. statements as "contentions" and "claims."

Two months after U.S. officials said they had begun providing "significant" intelligence to the inspectors, Blix told the council he was still awaiting "high-quality information." He said no evidence had emerged to support U.S. contentions Iraq was producing chemical or biological weapons underground or in mobile laboratories.

The inspectors, privately, disparaged the "leads" they were receiving from the U.S. government.

No Immediate Evidence of Banned Weapons Read More »

US Rebukes Canada for Failure to Support War

March 26, 2003 / Canada, Iraq, War

US rebukes Canada for failure to support war (Gloria Galloway in the Toronto Globe and Mail, 3/26/03):

Washington's ambassador to Canada has delivered the sternest public rebuke by a U.S. representative since the Trudeau era, saying Americans are upset at Canada's refusal to join the war in Iraq and hinting there could be economic fallout.

At a breakfast speech yesterday to the Economic Club of Toronto, U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci said "there is a lot of disappointment in Washington and a lot of people are upset" about Canada's refusal to join the United States in its efforts to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. . . .

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien retorted that Canada is a "sovereign independent country" that makes its own decisions and that there is unhappiness all around over the war in Iraq.

"We, too, are disappointed" that the United States went to war in Iraq without the approval of the United Nations, Mr. Chrétien said.

US Rebukes Canada for Failure to Support War Read More »

The Larger Plan

March 26, 2003 / Iraq, Middle East, War

The larger administration plan for the Middle East, of which the Iraq war is the first stage (and how first-stage failures will be used to justify confrontations with other states): Joshua Micah Marshall,
"Practice to Deceive", Washington Monthly, April 2003:

[T]o the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy . . . . invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism . . . a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

In short, the administration is trying to roll the table -- to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative -- Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria -- while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments -- or, failing that, U.S. troops -- rule the entire Middle East.

The Larger Plan Read More »

United Nations Options

March 26, 2003 / Iraq, United Nations, War

UN Security Council meets today -- possible prologue to an emergency session of the General Assembly and consideration of a "Uniting for Peace" vote under Resolution 377? (The Hindu, 3/26/03):

At this stage, it is not clear if the 15-member Security Council will be pushing for a formal resolution at the end of this open session calling for an end to the hostilities and withdrawal of all foreign forces. Those in favour of such a resolution will have to first make sure they have nine votes to pass the resolution. Even then the U. S. and Britain will most certainly exercise their veto.

One scenario is that if a resolution is killed by a veto in the Security Council, the Arab League could call for an Emergency Session of the 191-member United Nations General Assembly.

To get this going, a petition signed by at least 97 States is required. This will not be difficult; and the chances of a resolution condemning the U.S.- led attack on Iraq passing the General Assembly is also high given the existing sentiments.

A resolution cannot be vetoed in the General Assembly. At the same time, resolutions are not legally binding unlike the case of the Security Council, but are seen as reflecting the views of the world opinion.

United Nations Options Read More »

Geneva Conventions?

March 26, 2003 / Iraq, War

Linda S. Heard on the hypocrisy of US protestations over Iraq's treatment of POWs (Counterpunch, 3/26/03):

There was no talk about the Geneva Conventions when contingents of Arabs and Moslems were flown to Guantanamo Bay, shackled, handcuffed, gagged, hooded and chained to their aircraft seats only to be thrown into chicken coops open to the elements.

There was no mention of any conventions when John Walker Lindt was interviewed while he lay on a stretcher in Afghanistan. Oh, yes. These were 'detainees'.

They are the disappeared whose lives were not dignified with the title 'prisoner of war', except for Lindt, of course, who got special treatment due to his American passport. The others were left to rot without contact with their families and no recourse to legal representation.

Donald Rumsfeld who is the very person, who once said that he doubted that most of them would ever be released, is now bleating in the most hypocritical fashion about the Geneva Conventions. . . .

And has the White House or the Pentagon ever said a world about Israel's breaches of the Geneva Conventions? Even as 10 per cent of Jenin was demolished, Palestinian refugees used as human shields and ambulances prevented from reaching the sick and injured, the Bush administration stayed silent.

Geneva Conventions? Read More »

Strategy: Win in Iraq with Lightweight Forces

March 26, 2003 / Iraq, US Military, War

"The Garbo Doctrine" (Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, 3/26/03):

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

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

Strategy: Win in Iraq with Lightweight Forces Read More »

Protests in the Middle East

March 26, 2003 / Bangladesh, Iraq, War

"Arab Governments Struggle to Control Protests against US" (Andrew Gumbel in The Independent, 3/26/03):

Popular fury over the war and continuing noisy street protests are threatening the stability of many autocratic governments in the Gulf region that rely on US support.

Protests also swept across Muslim countries in Asia yesterday. Bangladesh postponed its annual independence celebrations because of the war, while in Indonesia a small Islamist political party with admittedly limited means was deluged with volunteers after it advertised for fighters to go to Iraq to join the anti-American resistance.

Amid rising tensions in Saudi Arabia, the authorities floated a proposal to bring an early end to the war, saying it was in both sides' interests to stop the fighting and try to find another solution to their problems.

The initiative, being co-ordinated by the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Bahrainis, comes at a time when anti-American and anti-government sentiment has been simmering for years. It risks reaching boiling point if the war becomes protracted.

Protests in the Middle East Read More »

Fallout in Jordan

March 26, 2003 / Iraq, Jordan, War

King Abdullah threatened as Jordanian anger over the war intensifies (Justin Huggler, The Independent, 3/26/03):

King Abdullah is walking a tightrope. For years his small kingdom, trapped between Iraq and Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia, mostly desert with few natural resources, has thrived on its status as an American ally. But now he is under intense pressure from the United States to assist its invasion of Iraq. And equally intense pressure from his people to oppose it.

The fury all around the Arab world at the war in Iraq is seething here too. Jordanians at yesterday's protest were calling for the American and British embassies to be closed, and for the Jordanian government to open the border with Iraq so they could go and fight alongside the Iraqis against the invading Americans.

Fallout in Jordan Read More »