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Recent
Stories
April
10, 2003
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
Ron
Jacobs
Bush and Rummy's Drunken Drive-by
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
April
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't
Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental
Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures
Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"
Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
May Have Violated Federal Law
Anthony
Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle
Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
Ahmad
Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
Summit
Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
a Baghdad Hospital
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
The CIA is Back on Campus
Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce
Gideon
Levy
America is Not a Role Model
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Jules
Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin
James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush
Shake Gerry's Hand?
Robert
Fisk
The Twisted Language of War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
John
Mackay
War and Art
Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
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Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
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Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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April 11,
2003
Franklin
Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
From
Bosnia to Iraq, the Evangelical Christian Leader Has Long Seen
Military Battlefields as His Personal Mission Field
by
MAS'OOD CAJEE
Franklin Graham is a spiritual Carpetbagger and
war profiteer who trades in souls. Those are near-fightin1 words
for a Southern boy from Boone, North Carolina who delivered the
invocation at President Bush's 2001 Inauguration.
Like the Yankee Carpetbaggers who flocked
to the South for political or financial advantage after the Civil
War, Graham plans to go to Iraq in the wake of the current war
to win Muslim souls.
Like the despised Carpetbaggers of yore,
Graham plans to exploit the humanitarian crisis for his own calculating
gain, by subjecting vulnerable Iraqis to his Faustian Christ-for-food
program.
Graham, who has called Islam "a
wicked religion", views the US military and its wars in
the Muslim world as the perfect vehicles for missionary work
in the difficult "10/40 Window". The 10/40 Window is
evangelical Christian-speak for the rectangle with boundaries
of latitudes 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator; encompassing
most of the Muslim World.
Graham and his Samaritan's Purse organization
have a record of exploiting wars and preying on victims for their
own missionary ends. They rode with IDF convoys into Lebanon
during Israel's 1982 invasion to reach Palestinian refugees,
preached pretentiously to Kurds fleeing Saddam's forces in 1991
and sheltered and proselytized young Bosnian Muslim girls who
had been raped by Orthodox Christian Serbs.
A thought that struck Graham in the Spring
of 1991 shortly before the Kurds were betrayed by America and
slaughtered in droves by Saddam's military is telling:
"What a time to preach the gospel
to these people! America is number one with them right now. They're
eager to listen to anything we have to say!"
Graham and his group have repeatedly
used the heightened vulnerability that war brings to target those
in uniform, POWs, refugees, and civilians with physical assistance
and "spiritual ammunition".
"I think we need to do all we can
to use [the US military] presence," Graham urged his followers
during the 1990 Operation Desert Shield , " to share with
the people of that region the faith that our nation was built
on."
During the Persian Gulf military build-up
in 1990 and ensuing war in 1991, Graham made creative use of
"embedded" fundamentalist Christian sympathizers in
the chaplain corps, officer corps, and rank and file.
Under the Cover of Operation Dear Abby,
in which the advice columnist urged Americans to write letters
of encouragement to anonymous soldiers, Graham's followers mailed
over 200,000 Arabic-language Christian tracts to US troops based
in Saudi Arabia.
"Let them know you are praying that
God will protect them," Graham instructed participants in
his grassroots letter-writing campaign to send Christian tracts
to Saudi Arabia. "Subtly drop the hint that while they are
in Saudi Arabia, they may have an opportunity to share it with
someone."
In December 1990, Graham followed with
a bolder campaign. His Samaritan's Purse organization helped
send over 30,000 holiday gift packages to men and women in uniform
that included a New Testament in Arabic.
Graham was later "touched most deeply"
by a letter from an A-10 Thunderbolt "Tank-killer"
pilot. "Just two weeks earlier I had been trying to kill
those guys," the pilot told Graham. "Then I found myself
in an army hospital talking with an Iraqi POW. I gave him the
Arabic New Testament."
Graham's activities had attracted the
attention of the Saudis and US General Norman Schwartzkopf, who
ordered a military chaplain to confiscate all of Graham's Bibles
and tracts and return them. Disturbingly, the chaplain later
confided in Graham that he and others largely ignored 3Stormin1
Norman2 Schwartzkopf's orders. Instead, the Saudi-based chaplain
brazenly requested Graham send more Arabic-language Bibles because
he had befriended a "believer who has organized a distribution
system for the tracts and the New Testaments."
In the current war in Iraq, an evangelical
Christian chaplain has been using coercive Graham-style tactics
at Camp Bushmaster near Najaf. Army 5th Corps chaplain Josh Llano,
apparently exploiting a water shortage which has forced soldiers
to go without bathing, has used a 500-gallon pool of pristine,
cool water under his control to gain converts.
"It's simple," Llano told a
Knight-Ridder reporter. "They want water. I have it, as
long as they agree to get baptized."
For his part, Franklin Graham has been
trying to be low-key as he eyes Iraq from his base in Jordan.
This week, most likely responding to a storm of criticism, Samaritan's
Purse softened language on its Web site about planned operations
in Iraq.
"As American and allied troops roll
into Iraq, Samaritans Purse has a well-equipped team already
on the ground in the Middle East ready to help thousands of suffering
families in the name of Jesus Christ," a statement on the
group's Web site read last week.
This week: "As war continues in
Iraq, Samaritan's Purse has a well-equipped team already on the
ground in the Middle East ready to help thousands of suffering
families."
Poised and ready to exploit war-weary
Iraqis, Franklin Graham continues his Carpetbagging, war-profiteering
ways.
Mas'ood Cajee
lives in Cambridge, Mass. He serves on the National Council of
the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Email: mcajee@yahoo.com
Today's Features
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
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