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Recent
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April
1, 2003
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
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Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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April 2,
2003
"It Looks
Like the Bombing of a City, But It Isn't"
Some Observations on the Recent
Behavior of the Empire
By WILLIAM BLUM
* Perhaps the most Orwellian quote to
come out of the Vietnam war, now a classic, was "We had
to destroy the village in order to save it." Now comes Mr.
Rumsfeld, speaking of US "precision bombing" in Iraq:
"It looks like it's a bombing of a city, but it isn't."(1)
* The sharp reduction in advance airline
reservations and heavy cancellation of existing reservations
immediately following the invasion of Iraq(2) illustrates that
people associate the terrorist threat with what the United States
actually does in and to the world; not, as Bush keeps telling
us, that terrorists just hate America because of its democracy
and its freedom (as he calls those things), its wealth, its secular
government, its plain simple goodness, and other tales fit for
schoolbooks. But we already knew that that was not so. There's
a wealth of evidence to disprove Dubya's lame rationalization.
* The US decision to not continue its
military campaign in 1991 and overthrow Saddam Hussein was likely
due to the great uncertainty of who or what would replace him.
Washington didn't want a Shiite government, which might join
forces with neighboring Iran; nor a Kurd government, which would
upset ally Turkey; nor any kind of even-nominally democratic
government, which would upset Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; nor any
kind of progressive government, which would upset Washington.
But for the current war this problem has been solved, with a
remarkably simple solution -- Washington itself will replace
Hussein.
* In 1997, National Security Advisor
Samuel Berger declared that the US sanctions on Iraq "are
the most pervasive sanctions every imposed on a nation in the
history of mankind"(3) For over a decade we were told by
the Empire that if Iraq would only destroy its weapons of mass
destruction, the sanctions would be lifted. US hostility to the
resumption of arms inspections put that claim into serious doubt;
moreover, it should be kept in mind that Libya was told for many
years that if they turned over certain suspects in the bombing
of PanAm 103, the sanctions against Libya would be lifted. Libya
turned the men over. The sanctions remained in place.
* Can Iraq expect "liberation"
and a markedly improved life after the Empire takes over? Let's
look at the results of the Empire's recent onslaught and occupation
of Afghanistan.
1) warlords are active again
2) opium cultivation is once again booming
3) a man hand-picked by Washington is
president; both the president and several of his ministers are
actually Afghan-Americans
4) countless homes and other buildings
have been destroyed by US bombing
5) thousands of innocent civilians have
been killed as well as thousands of others engaged in combat
who were only defending the country they lived in from a foreign
invasion; not one of the many dead has been shown to have had
any connection to the September 11 attack; most of the so-called
"terrorists" at the training camps had come to Afghanistan
to aid the Taliban in their civil war, a religious mission, none
of Washington's concern
6) crime and violence are once again
a danger in the cities' neighborhoods, which had been made safer
by the Taliban
7) the country is occupied by foreign
troops who often treat the population badly; US forces seize
Afghans and take them away without explanation and keep them
incommunicado indefinitely; some are sent to the 21st century's
Devils Island in Guantanamo Base, Cuba
8) in Kabul, the number of children suffering
from malnutrition is almost double what it was before the American
invasion(4)
9) the quality of women's lives has very
slightly improved, but is still far below what women enjoyed
under the government the United States overthrew in the 1980-1990s
* "A man who allegedly wanted to
harm people of Middle Eastern descent because of his anger over
the World Trade Center attack has been arrested in a string of
New York workplace shootings that left four people dead."
(5) How does this differ from US armed forces killing people
in Iraq and Afghanistan? The American servicemen will not be
charged with murder.
Notes
(1) Sidney Morning Herald, 3-25-03
(2) Washington Post, March 27, 2003
(3) White House press briefing, Nov.
14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
(4) New York Times, March 2, 2003, Sect.4,
p.2
(5) Washington Post, March 31, 2003
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military
and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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