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Recent
Stories
April
15, 2003
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
April
14, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush's War Without End
Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning
Wayne
Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?
Shahid
Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free
Hani
Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks
Terry
Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train
John
Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda
Patrick
Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence,
Misery and Poverty in Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/14
April
12 / 13, 2003
Carol
Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph
Story
Wayne
Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj.
Gen. Buford Blount III
John
Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling
of the Saddam Statue
Kathy and
Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine
William
Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation
Wallace
Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin
Ann
Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial
Case
Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar
Zeljko
Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars
Ishikawa
Jun
The Song of Mars
Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board
Adam
Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and
the News
Poets'
Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/12
April
11, 2003
Omar
Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam
Ron
Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded
David
Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq
Paul
de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field
Anthony
Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy
Mas'ood
Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
Michael
Neumann
Now What?
Michael
Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream
Stew Albert
Oh Freedom
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/11
Website
of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds
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
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
Other Mideast Regimes
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'
Basement
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
Hot Stories
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!
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April 16,
2003
CounterPunch
Diary
Contract with
Iraq
by
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
They put US troops round the Oil Ministry and
the headquarters of the Secret Police, but stood aside as the
mobs looted Baghdad's Archaeological Museum and torched the National
Library. It sounds like something right out of Newt Gingrich's
Contract with America, only here the troops protecting the American
Petroleum Institute are lobbyists and politicians, lobbing tax
breaks over the wall.
As regards culture, Newt & Co, you'll
recall, reached for their guns whenever the word came up. What
libraries here that have survived in any useful condition here
have FBI snoops asking to see what the brown furriners have been
reading. No need to worry about the locals. By the time the attack
here on public education is over, the sort of people who once
used public libraries to make their way up in the world won't
be able to read.
US troops also sat back and allowed mobs
to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry
of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade,
the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. Meanwhile
these same troops lost no time in protecting such important assets
as the North Oil Company, the state-owned firm running Iraq's
northern oil fields. Colonel William Mayville, told the embedded
press that he wanted to send the message, "Hey, don't
screw with the oil."
There's nothing out of place about the
complacency with which Rumsfeld and the others have regarded
the looting of Baghdad, extolling it as somehow the forgivable
portent of freedom. "It's untidy," the endlessly loquacious
Rumsfeld confided. "And freedom's untidy. And free people
are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."
Freedom to loot, the conversion of public
assets into private property, is a core "free-enterprise"
tenet, raised to the level of religious belief in recent years,
in contrast to the more preferable posture of the Robber Barons
of yesteryear who viewed themselves more realistically as fellows
smart enough to figure out the combo to the safe.
We've just come through a decade of spectacular
looting of the sort that made Bush and Cheney millionaires.
In the late Nineties the executive suites of America's largest
companies became a vast hog wallow. CEOs and finance officers
would borrow millions from some cooperative bank, using the money
to drive up company stock prices, thereby inflating the value
of their options. $1.22 trillion was the total of borrowing by
non-financial corporations between 1994 and 1999, inclusive.
Of that sum, corporations used just 15.3 per cent for capital
expenditures. They used 57 per cent of it, $697.4 billion, to
buy back stock and thus enrich themselves, which was surely the
wildest smash and grab in the history of corporate thievery.
Any of this relevant to what's going
on in Iraq? Most certainly, and we don't mean merely that Ahmad
Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress will be unable,
if he installed in Iraq as the US's local puppet, to visit nearby
Jordan where the fragrance of financial impropriety lingers ,
concerning a $200m (£127m) banking scandal in Jordan recently
detailed in The London Guardian by David Leigh and Brian Whitaker.
In 1992, Chalabi was tried in his absence and sentenced by a
Jordanian court to 22 years' jail on 31 charges of embezzlement,
theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.
Capitalism, as Joseph Schumpeter hopefully
pointed out, is premised on destruction. Lay waste the old, roll
out the new. The missionaries of the free market and of Christianity
hastening into Baghdad are intent on reinventing the place along
capitalist lines under the overall spiritual guidance of the
Judeo-Christian tradition. That means tolerating, nay, encouraging
mobs to wipe out the past, whether in the form of ancient Islamic
manuscripts or public institutions.
Sweden's largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published an interview
April 11 with a Swedish researcher of Middle Eastern ancestry
who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield. Khaled Bayoumi
told the newspaper, "I happened to be right there just
as the American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering."
He described how US soldiers shot security guards at a local
government building on Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the
Tigris, and then "blasted apart the doors to the building."
Next, according to Bayoumi, "from the tanks came eager
calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to them."
At first, he said, residents were hesitant
to come out of their homes because anyone who had tried to cross
the street in the morning had been shot. "Arab interpreters
in the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted
in the building," Bayoumi continued. "The word spread
quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only
300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards
the tank crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which
was in a neighboring building, and the plundering continued
there. "I stood in a large crowd and watched this together
with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared
not to interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The
next morning the plundering spread to the Modern Museum, which
lies a quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds
there, one that plundered and one that watched with disgust."
Anyone who saw how "free enterprise"
was nurtured in the former Soviet Union will be able to presage
Iraq's future. The brunt of the UN sanctions imposed after 1991
was always born by the poor, even as Saddam's plumbers installed
gold taps in his bathrooms. These poor, after their brief taste
of the freedom to loot (honored by Ari Fleischer, who probably
had different views of the looting in Los Angeles after the Rodney
King verdict a few years ago), will relapse into abject poverty.
Gangster entrepreneurs will take over, under western approval
and with fervent editorials in the Wall Street Journal about
the New Iraq, whose prospects are about as rosy as when Ulagu
the Mongol laid the place waste in 1248.
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
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