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Today's
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February
5, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
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February
5, 2004
Report from Occupied
Iraq
"We
Don't Want the Army USA"
By KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH
The first evidence that I saw of the U.S. invasion
of the Middle East came before I had even gotten there. While
waiting to get on my last flight, from Amsterdam to Amman, Jordan,
I was surprised to hear several voices speaking English with
southern U.S. accents.
I looked up to see a group of five or
six Americans waiting for the same flight. I wondered why they
were flying to Jordan. The answer came in the three letters clearly
printed on one of their identification tags.
"KBR"--the initials of Kellogg,
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the huge oil services corporation
Halliburton. Halliburton--whose former CEO is Vice President
Dick Cheney--has received billions of dollars in no-bid contracts
for the so-called "reconstruction" of Iraq. Not long
after I returned, Halliburton wrote a $6.3 million check back
to the U.S. government--after admitting that an executive had
taken a multi-million-dollar kickback from a Kuwaiti company.
At the airport, I noticed another group
of KBR workers sitting a few rows away. It looked like the majority
of people on the airplane were Americans, and among us were many
workers for KBR.
* * *
FROM AMMAN, we had a 13-hour drive to
Baghdad, since no commercial airlines are flying into Iraq. On
the road, our driver Tareq told us of the frustration and anger
that he and other Iraqis feel toward the U.S. occupation of their
country. Like many other Iraqis I would meet, Tareq initially
felt hopeful that the U.S. invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein's
regime would bring an end to years of war and suffering.
Since the invasion--in which one of Tareq's
brothers was killed--he has become bitter and angry as the U.S.
failed to reconstruct the infrastructure, bring work, provide
stable access to electricity or clean water, or create any security
for Iraqis. Tareq told me that he and other Iraqis "just
want to live."
"I love my home, and I want to live
here," he said. "But we don't want the Army USA."
After crossing the border into Iraq,
we got our first sighting of U.S. troops. Sticking out of the
top of an armored vehicle, sitting behind a huge gun and wearing
a ski mask, the first soldier I saw looked terrifying. I could
only imagine how Iraqis felt to see these troops patrolling their
country.
There was another such vehicle in front
of the first, and we soon saw the reason for the troops' presence
on the road--stretched out in front of them was a long convoy
of oil tanker trucks. Two more Army escort vehicles drove in
front of the convoy.
* * *
AS WE neared Baghdad, I began to see
more and more with my own eyes what this occupation looks like.
Not far from Baghdad is the Abu Ghraib prison, which was notorious
under Saddam Hussein's regime. It is now a main detention facility
for the U.S. Seeing the prison--with its high walls, guard towers
and rows of razor wire--took my breath away.
Activists at the Occupation Watch center
in Baghdad have spoken with detainees released from Abu Ghraib,
who tell of the misery inside the prison. Essentially, the prison
consists of four walls and a huge yard inside, which is filled
with plastic tents. These are where the prisoners stay--in the
120-degree days of summer, and the 30-degree nights of winter.
We would pass Abu Ghraib again, and each
time, we saw groups of Iraqi men and women gathered outside,
looking for loved ones who might be detained inside. Entering
the city, the first thing that I saw was a long line of cars
waiting for gasoline.
In Baghdad, it is not unusual for drivers
to have to wait hours for gas. According to several people I
met, many people show up at gas stations at night with blankets,
so that they can sleep in their cars to get gas in the morning.
This would be hard to imagine in the U.S., and until the occupation,
it was inconceivable in Iraq, which has the second-largest proven
oil reserves in the world.
Iraqis are well aware of how oil-rich
their country is--and are infuriated with the fact that they
must wait hours for gas that is imported from outside of the
country by the U.S. "This is why Iraqi people are angry
at Army USA," Tareq said, as he pointed at the line of cars.
"Why?" he asked.
Once inside Baghdad, the havoc caused
by the U.S. invasion and occupation was overwhelming. Traffic
is completely chaotic, with most of the traffic lights I saw
out, due to a lack of electricity--and the few that were on are
disobeyed. There is barbed wire everywhere, as shopkeepers surround
their businesses with it to ward off criminals and looting--another
sign of the lack of security.
We passed the "Green Zone,"
headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and
home of U.S. overseer Paul Bremer. There were rows of barbed
wire, tanks, machine gun nests, and signs saying "NO PHOTOGRAPHY."
The sight exposed the notion that the U.S. has come in peace
for the purpose of bringing democracy--and made it clear what
the U.S. presence in Iraq really is: a dictatorial military regime.
What overwhelmed me most upon entering
Baghdad, though, was seeing bombed-out buildings everywhere--among
them, a supermarket, a building for theater and television production,
an apartment building. The evidence of economic sanctions--the
13-year-long trade embargo that the U.S. imposed on Iraq through
the United Nations--was also everywhere, and more widespread
than the damage from the invasion.
Under the sanctions, all kinds of basic
goods--from medicine to construction materials--couldn't be imported
into Iraq. The result is that Baghdad, clearly once a majestic
city, is falling apart. Buildings are crumbling, and there are
pools of sewage in the streets because of damaged sewer systems.
Instead of reconstruction, this is what people in Baghdad see
every day: incredible destruction.
* * *
WE MET with people from the Occupation
Watch center, who designed our itinerary and accompanied us during
the week. Our first arranged meeting was with an Iraqi family
who lost a loved one to U.S. forces. The family invited us into
their home, and the brother of the man who was murdered told
us the story.
The U.S. troops came at 3 a.m. They used
two tanks to block off the street where the home that they planned
to raid was. The soldiers moved in, one of them kicking down
the outside door of the house.
The man who lived there, Ahmed Khalif
Salman, opened the front door, and a soldier shot him in the
chest immediately. The soldiers brought him--still alive--outside
to lie bleeding in the front yard. Then, the soldiers ordered
everyone out of the house and ransacked it, stealing money and
jewelry, and breaking furniture.
One of Ahmed's sons told us how the soldiers
tied him up while his father lay in the yard. When they were
done, the soldiers wrapped Ahmed's wound, dragged him by his
feet to a vehicle, threw him in and drove away. The family didn't
know where their husband and father was taken, and they searched
for him at detention centers and hospitals.
They finally learned that Ahmed had died,
and that the soldiers had dropped off his body at a hospital.
Ahmed was 46 years old and had five children. Fadela, Ahmed's
wife, told us, "Every family is suffering from this occupation."
Throughout the week, we heard other stories
about U.S. raids and Iraqis being detained. The details are all
the same: the soldiers come in the night, kick down the door,
order everyone outside, loot the house, take the father or son,
and leave. I thought of the families that I spoke with as I watched
President Bush's State of the Union address and heard him talk
about U.S. forces conducting "midnight raids" in Iraq.
All the army needs as grounds for a detention
is an accusation that an Iraqi is part of the resistance. These
families don't know where to go to find their loved ones, and
there is no recourse for U.S. abuses. Ahmed Khalif Salman's family,
for example, went to the Coalition Provisional Authority to make
his murder known--and the CPA did nothing.
In addition to meeting with the families
of loved ones who have been detained or killed under the occupation,
we met with others who told us horror stories from the U.S. invasion
last spring. In the U.S., we were told that the invasion was
conducted with "surgical" precision--and that while
mistakes were made, civilians were safe for the most part.
Not according to Vivian Salim. On April
7, 2003, Vivian's neighborhood came under attack by U.S. bombers.
She and her husband Nadeem got their children together and fled
the area by car. As they turned down one street, though, they
found a U.S. tank in their path.
The tank opened fire on the car, killing
everyone except for Vivian. When we asked if the tank had fired
any warning shots, Vivian broke down crying--as she told us that
the tank's first shot landed in her son's face.
* * *
DURING THE week, we had the opportunity
to visit two hospitals and meet with several doctors. We met
a young surgeon while touring Khadhimya Hospital, one of the
best in Iraq. He told us of the horrors of running the hospital
during the U.S. invasion, when the majority of civilians who
he operated on were victims of cluster bombs.
The hospital would lose power at times--and
at one point during the winter, it lost heat. The hospital is
located in an area at a low elevation, so the sewer system was
designed to pump sewage uphill. But after deteriorating from
neglect under the sanctions, the pumps broke one by one. At one
point, the doctor said he found himself operating as he stood
in a pool of sewage.
The hospital lacks some of the most basic
equipment--including that needed for the sterilization of instruments,
so the doctors wash their tools in tap water. They have pleaded
with the Ministry of Health for assistance, but are still deprived
of basic necessities.
One of the most striking things about
the occupation was the contempt of U.S. authorities. A clear
example came when we drove past Baghdad's Shaheed Monument. This
powerful sculpture is a memorial to Iraqis killed in the Iran-Iraq
War, a catastrophic conflict that affected every family in Iraq.
The monument is very significant to Iraqis--the
only thing comparable in the U.S. is the Vietnam Wall memorial
in Washington. But now, the monument is occupied--and used as
part of a U.S. base.
The arrogant, all-powerful attitude with
which the U.S. Army brass is running its occupation infects U.S.
soldiers, too. Far from home, stuck in a foreign place and living
in constant fear of the people who they're told that they are
"liberating," some troops are directing their frustration
at Iraqis. I saw, for example, soldiers driving down the street
on patrol and pointing their guns at children.
Others, though, are just tired of being
in Iraq and are counting the days until they can return home.
I spoke with one group of military police, resting between dispatches.
They were from the Missouri National Guard Reserve, and never
expected to be deployed.
Most of them were fathers, with jobs
and lives back home, and they were waiting to get out of Iraq.
A couple had already done tours of duty in Germany, and now were
doing another in Iraq.
I also spoke with some soldiers at the
Green Zone, and they seemed tired and bored, wanting to go home.
I saw something interesting, though. There were big barricades
all around the entrance of the Green Zone, where many soldiers
hang out and stand guard.
Written on one of the barricades in permanent
marker were the letters "FTA." During the Vietnam War,
"FTA"--which stands for "fuck the army"--was
a slogan of resistance to the war among soldiers. It came to
embody the anger of young men who were being used as cannon fodder
for Washington's ambitions around the globe.
* * *
AMONG IRAQIS, the feeling overall is
a sense that they have no control over their country or their
lives. Whenever they drive, they are subject to U.S. checkpoints--or
are forced to defer to the constant U.S. patrols. Their electricity
comes and goes. With unemployment around 70 percent, work is
scarce.
I saw no evidence of reconstruction whatsoever,
and it appears that all U.S. forces are doing in Baghdad is conducting
patrols and house raids, killing and detaining people. The only
aircraft in the sky are U.S. helicopters or airplanes, flying
overhead with guns aimed at the people below.
I don't mean to portray the Iraqi people
I met as one-dimensional victims. On the contrary, they do the
best that they can to go about living their lives--and they do
so with warmth, laughter and dignity.
The problem is that the U.S. occupation
places obstacles in their way at every turn, and these confront
Iraqis every day. People who have tried to avoid conflict, or
who have given the U.S. the benefit of the doubt, feel betrayed
and confronted by the occupiers on a daily basis.
Such is the logic of colonialism: it
breeds anti-colonialism. As one professor told us after lamenting
the indignity of living under occupation, "Sooner or later,
we will all join the resistance."
Most of the Iraqis I met told me that
the occupation has gotten much worse since the invasion, and
they believe that there is still worse to come. This is why we
in the United States must demand an end to the occupation. There
can be no compromise: U.S. out now!
KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH visited Iraq at the beginning of January as
part of a peace delegation organized by United for Peace and
Justice, Global Exchange and Occupation Watch. A member of the
Campus Antiwar Network, Khury spent a week in Baghdad, where
he talked to families whose loved ones have been detained or
killed in the U.S. occupation--as well as students, professors,
labor leaders, doctors, lawyers, U.S. soldiers and others. He
wrote this report about his visit for Socialist
Worker.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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