Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May 1 / 3, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders, Useless
Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin American
Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq: Abu Ghraib
as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and Sharon
Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked, Shocked,
Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists and
Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome Death
of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the Banality
of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the Ultimate
Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know--Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag--Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De--De--Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre--Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean--Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
| Weekend
Edition
May 1 / 3, 2004
A Year from "Mission Accomplished"
An
Army in Disgrace, a Policy in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad.
Wisps
of grey smoke were still rising from the wreckage of four Humvees caught
by the blast of a bomb which had just killed two US soldiers and wounded
another five. It seemed they had been caught in a trap.
When
the soldiers smashed their way into an old brick house in the Waziriya
district of Baghdad last week, they were raiding what they had been
told was an insurgent bomb factory, only for it to erupt as they came
through the door. The reaction of local people, as soon as the surviving
American soldiers had departed, was to start a spontaneous street party.
A
small boy climbed on top of a blackened and smouldering Humvee and triumphantly
waved a white flag with an Islamic slogan hastily written on it. Some
other young men were showing with fascinated pride a blood--soaked US
uniform. Another group had found an abandoned military helmet, and had
derisively placed it on the head of an elderly carthorse.
A
year after President George Bush famously declared "major combat"
in Iraq over, how is it that so many Iraqis now have such a visceral
hatred of Americans? One reason is that the photographs of brutality
and humiliation of Iraqi detainees by British and American troops, which
have so shocked the rest of the world and angered Arab countries, have
come as little surprise to Iraqis. For months it has been clear to them
that the occupation is very brutal; for weeks they have been watching
pictures of the dead and injured in Fallujah on al--Jazeera satellite
television which CNN did not broadcast.
Iraqis,
who are cynical about their rulers, may also suspect that real as well
as simulated torture is going on in Abu Ghraib prison, where US intelligence
calls the shots. They may suspect that, as under Saddam Hussein, the
humiliation and ill--treatment were quite deliberately inflicted to soften
up prisoners before they were interrogated. More graphic pictures of
real torture are said to have been taken as well those shown on US television
last week.
Saddam
should not have been a hard act to follow. Iraqis knew that he had ruined
their lives through his disastrous wars against Iran and Kuwait, and
were glad to be rid of him. Even the supposed beneficiaries of his rule,
the Sunni Arabs of cities such as Tikrit and Fallujah, could not see
why they were so much poorer than the people of other oil states such
as Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.
Watching
the dancing, jeering crowd in Waziriya was Nada Abdullah Aboud, a middle--aged
woman, dressed in black. She had a reason for hating Americans, though
she claimed she did not do so. "I do feel sorry for the young soldiers,
though they killed my son," she said quietly. "They came such
a long distance to die here." It turned out that her son, Saad
Mohammed, had been the translator for a senior Italian diplomat working
for the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority. She said: "My son
was driving with the Italian ambassador last September near Tikrit when
an American soldier fired at the car and shot him through the heart."
Saad
Mohammed was one of a large but unknown number of Iraqis shot down by
US troops over the past year. There seems to have been no rational reason
why he had been killed. But the high toll of Iraqi civilians shot down
after ambushes or at checkpoints has given Iraqis the sense that, at
bottom, American soldiers regard them as an inferior people whose lives
are not worth very much.
Iraqis
make very plain what they think about the occupation in private conversation,
but Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, and the US military command,
shut away in their headquarters in Saddam's old Republican Palace, had
no idea of the growing hostility towards them until April. Then, when
they started the sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, they discovered that
aside from the Kurdish minority, Iraqis had turned decisively against
the occupation.
Another
simple reason for disillusionment with the US is simply the Americans'
failure to restore normal life. Iraqis in Baghdad continually say that
Iraq recovered more quickly from the damage inflicted by the first Gulf
War under Saddam in 1991 than it did after the second war in 2003.
Baghdad
is a city on edge. Shopkeepers keep their stock at home in case there
is another outbreak of looting. The police are back on the streets and
there is less casual crime than last year, but it is still more dangerous
than it was under the old regime.
Abu
Amir, a shopkeeper in the middle--class Jadriyah district of the capital,
said: "Under Saddam I sometimes did not make money in my store,
but I could go home in the evening without worrying if my son had got
back safely. Now there is looting everywhere. If you walk in the streets
maybe you will be shot by the Americans or by criminal gangs fighting
each other."
A
curious achievement of the US over the past year has been to revive
Iraqi nationalism in Iraq. This had been largely discredited by Saddam.
But Fallujah and the pursuit of Muqtada al--Sadr, the radical Shia cleric,
has meant that nationalism is once more respectable.
The
extraordinary political weakness of the US in Iraq became evident as
never before last week. Despite having an overwhelming military force
available to take Fallujah and Najaf, the US did not dare do so. It
had become evident even in Washington that to crush the resistance in
either city -- not a difficult task against a few thousand lightly armed
gunmen -- would spread rather than end the rebellion.
Even
so, it was extraordinary to see Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a general in
Saddam's Republican Guard -- disbanded like so much else in Iraq last
May -- being driven into Fallujah on Friday in full uniform past cheering
crowds. The old Iraqi flag, now dropped by the US--appointed Iraqi Governing
Council, was being waved from his car window.
It
is a measure of how far the Governing Council is out of touch with ordinary
Iraqi opinion that they should have voted to change the flag in the
first place. Mohammed, an engineer trying to patch up a broken sewage
pipe in Baghdad, still had time to express his fury at the change. "Of
course the occupation is a disaster," he said. "We understand
the Governing Council are American agents. But a man has to be the worst
of collaborators to change his country's flag."
On
30 June the US will be handing over very little to Iraqis. Security
remains firmly in US hands; so does control of money. One of the biggest
US mistakes was not to hold elections earlier, something British and
US officials admit in private could have been done. This would have
produced a legitimate Iraqi authority to which Iraqi security forces
could have given real loyalty. Dr Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing
Council, says: "Iraqis are never going to fight other Iraqis under
the orders of an American." This was amply borne out when half
of the US--trained security forces deserted or mutinied in early April.
The
tide is going out for the US in Iraq. They were not able to use their
military strength against Fallujah and Najaf. They have very little
political support outside Kurdistan. They can no longer win. It may
be one of the most extraordinary defeats in history.
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