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Recent
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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
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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
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Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
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Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
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Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
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Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
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Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
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Anthony
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Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
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Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
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Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
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Steve
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War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
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David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
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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
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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
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Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
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Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
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Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
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Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
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Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
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St. Clair
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Norman
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April
4, 2003
Anthony
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Colin Powell's Shame
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Chuckman
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David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
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The Mantra of the Troops: Support
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Vijay
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There Are No More Arguments
Tom
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The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
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Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
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David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
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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
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War Web Log 04/03
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April 12,
2003
Capitalizing
on Death
Day of the Chicken
Hawks
by
HANI SHUKRALLAH
The Iraqi people fought and died for the sake
of us all -- martyrs in the Christian, no less than in the Muslim
sense of the word. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the
"chicken hawks" junta that seized the American administration
illegally by rigging the 2000 presidential election are totally
deranged, totally corrupt and totally cynical. Their blueprint
for world domination (set out in black and white in a September
2000 document) is a Mein Kampf. Their corporate linkages are
so blatantly venal as to be the envy of a Somoza, while their
intricate web of lies and deception would make an amateur out
of a Goebbels. Courtesy of another band of maniacal marauders
-- Bin Laden and co -- they got their Reichstag fire.
Condoleezza Rice was quoted in The New
Yorker last April admitting that soon after 9/11 she called together
senior members of the National Security Council and asked them
"to think about 'how do you capitalise on these opportunities'".
The martial madness has been unleashed.
It must be stopped -- no less than the survival of the human
species is at stake.
Mr Blair has been harping on about Chamberlain
and his appeasement. There is great irony in this, for the New
Labourite premier is nothing like the imperialist and self-avowed
racist Tories he so likes to emulate. His place in history will
not be that of an intractable Winston Churchill, nor even that
of a bungling Anthony Eden. He will have to look across the Channel
for his historical antecedents: a certain Marshal Petin.
Faced with wholly unexpected resistance
from the Iraqi people, the murderous thugs in Washington and
London had by the end of week two of the war removed the last
of their "Iraqi freedom" masks, showing the world the
monstrous face of merciless war criminals. Baghdad and Basra
were being systematically destroyed, thousands of "chicks"
-- women, children and men of all ages -- were "in the way",
and they were being systematically and cold- bloodedly put to
the slaughter.
Donny Rumsfeld, we are told, often quotes
the legendary Mafia boss, Al Capone. And in proper Mafia style
he began to eliminate witnesses; journalists, not "embedded
in" (read: in bed with) the war criminals' armed forces,
were to be eliminated.
So early Tuesday, the offices of two
Arab satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Abu-Dhabi, were deliberately
targeted. Later that same day, the Palestine Hotel, where most
foreign reporters working out of Baghdad have been based, was
shelled by tank fire. Three journalists, including Al-Jazeera's
Tarek Ayyoub, were killed.
John Pilger, writing in The Independent
of 6 April noted, "Covering this [killing of civilians]
in a shroud of respectability has not been easy for George Bush
and Tony Blair. Millions now know too much; the crime is all
too evident. Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons, a Labour
MP for 41 years, says the prime minister is a war criminal and
should be sent to The Hague. He is serious, because the prima
facie case against Blair and Bush is beyond doubt."
The murderous brutality of the bombings
of Baghdad and Basra, the images of killed and injured children
(will we ever know the real figures for Iraq's dead and maimed?),
the unabashed cruelty of the scenes of hooded, cuffed and viciously
manhandled civilian and military captives (so familiar from footage
of Israeli soldiers rampaging in the West Bank and Gaza) -- and
this by the very soldiers whose government officials were screeching
"Geneva Conventions" when a handful of American POWs
were paraded before television cameras -- none of it tells even
half the horror story unfolding before our very eyes.
We now know, despite all the subterfuge
and the criminal slavishness of the corporate media, that the
invasion of Iraq was planned even before the chicken hawks and
their paranoiac leader rigged their way into the White House.
We know of the Project for a New American Century, among whose
founders are none other than Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Dubya's
own maniacal 'thinker', Richard Perle and, who else, Jeb Bush,
the Florida brother who gave George the presidency.
We know of the chicken hawks' seminal
report: "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategy, Forces
and Resources for a New Century". We know that, far from
being concerned about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the
hands of Saddam Hussein (which Bush said were giving him sleepless
nights), the chicken hawks' blueprint for global domination openly
stated more than two years ago, "While the unresolved conflict
with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for
the presence of a substantial American force in the Gulf transcends
the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
We also know, thanks to Bob Woodward,
that on the morning of 12 September 2001 (that is before anything
at all was known about the culprits of the 9/11 atrocity), Rumsfeld
told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal
target of the first round in the war against terrorism".
Secretary of State Colin Powell stayed his hand -- for a while.
And now, after four weeks of death and
destruction, Baghdad has fallen.
On the way to this once magnificent seat
of Haroun Al-Rashid, The Guardian's James Meek came across Marine
Sgt Michael Sprague by a bridge outside the city of Nasseriya.
"A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins
of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth
place of Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when
the inhabitants of north-west Europe were still walking round
in animal skins," Meek observed. Sgt Sprague, from White
Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, noted Meek, never knew it was
there. Rather, he complained: "I've been all the way through
this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping
mall or fast food restaurant. These people got nothing. Even
in a little town like ours of 2500 people you got a McDonald's
at one end and a Hardee's at the other."
Back in the White House, George W Bush,
so mindful of the importance of the moment that, according to
USA Today, he gave up on sweets just before the invasion, is
no doubt communicating with God over how he, his chicken hawks
and Sgt Sprague from West Virginia are going to be lording it
over us all.
Hani Shukrallah
writes a weekly column for the Cairo-based al-Ahram
newspaper.
Yesterday'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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