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Today's
Stories
January 17 / 18, 2003
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
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?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 17 / 18, 2004
Iron Hammers in Iraq
How
to Destroy Democracy
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
The name of the celebrated crackdown on Iraqi
guerrillas and civilians by US occupation forces is Operation
Iron Hammer. One wonders what boneheads conceived it, because
it has been a disaster that is destroying the final attempts
by some intelligent Americans to get the Iraqi population to
move to the side of the invaders. I have just had an email from
a person in Iraq that I can't quote directly because it might
give him away. Now this fellow is 100 percent Flag, Patriotism,
Army and all that is Good about America. We have been friends
for almost twenty years, and never have I known him to be in
the slightest fashion critical of any commander-in-chief ; even
Clinton, whom I knew he despised. And he wrote me that "Brian,
this war sucks . . ."
On 13 November last year, Fox News, the
Bush administration's media outlet, which would be a joke were
it not so effective in brainwashing the public, announced on
Pentagon cue that occupation troops "launched a planned
and coordinated operation codenamed Iron Hammer that targeted
pro-Saddam loyalists...Based on intelligence...US infantry set
a number of traps all over Baghdad. Several of those traps...were
activated almost simultaneously Wednesday night. In the most
dramatic action, about a dozen Bradley armored vehicles used
25mm cannons to destroy a warehouse used by anti-US forces in
southern Baghdad. A special forces AC-130 Spectre gunship also
took part from the air, targeting the warehouse with precise
fire. 'The facility is a known meeting, planning, storage and
rendezvous point for belligerent elements currently conducting
attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure,' the Pentagon
said."
Baloney. Let's take it from the top.
"A planned and coordinated operation." Well, my goodness,
so it was actually planned and coordinated, was it? Do you know
what was in the 'warehouse' that was riddled dramatically with
cannon-shells?
Nothing. It was empty.
And after the Bradleys had a yippee shoot
the empty warehouse was attacked by a C-130 firing 105mm shells.
This is what in Vietnam we used to call 'Puff, the Magic Dragon'.
Puff, in early Vietnam days, was an old DC-3 aircraft filled
with machine guns, then it morphed to a Hercules transport with
much more firepower.
The warehouse was a storage facility,
said the Pentagon. But there were no stores. The warehouse was
a meeting and planning place, said the Pentagon. But nobody was
meeting or planning. The warehouse was a rendezvous point, said
the Pentagon. But nobody was rendezvousing. The entire fireworks
show was a pointless (and very expensive) farce, and alienated
hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iraqis (although some laughed
at what they considered an absurd demonstration of petulant impotence.
Why not wait until guerrillas were using the building and send
in infantry to kill them?). It didn't kill a single member of
the resistance, but at least it didn't kill people who had nothing
to do with guerrilla strikes against occupation troops. Unfortunately,
this is what is being done by US soldiers with increasing frequency,
and it's time somebody asked official questions about this type
of operation.
We keep being told that shootings of
civilians are in accordance with the Rules of Engagement. Here
is part of a Reuters' despatch of September 22 : "US troops
followed military rules when they fatally shot a Reuters television
cameraman last month as he videotaped near a US-run prison in
western Baghdad, a military spokesman said Monday. "Although
it's a regrettable incident, the investigation has concluded
US forces personnel acted in accordance with the rules of engagement,"
Lt-Col George Krivo said by telephone from Baghdad...Krivo, spokesman
for Lt-Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US-led ground forces
in Iraq, said the military was not publicly releasing the report
and declined to give details on any of the specific findings.
Krivo refused to divulge the rules of engagement that he said
[were] followed in Iraq."
So: the army won't tell anyone how a
media representative was killed ; it says the incident was "regrettable"
; and it refuses to give details of the findings of a military
tribunal or let anyone know on what basis the shooting was approved.
And we are expected to believe that the killing was lawful because
we are told it was lawful by the people who did the killing.
("That's some catch, that Catch-22," [Yossarian] observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.)
Why no details? It can't be because of
a threat to national security, the usual excuse for refusing
to provide information, for there are no national security implications
of any sort. It can't be because relatives of a US soldier might
be grieved were it made known what really happened, as no US
soldier was killed or wounded. It can't be because there were
'intelligence methods' at risk (another catchall justification
for refusing to tell the public what's going on), as there was
no intelligence - in any sense - involved. What are we left with?
Just the plain answer that there is something very murky that
the Pentagon wants to keep quiet at all costs.
Then there is the more recent case of
killing Iraqi civilians as they drove past a convoy last week.
You won't know much about this if you rely on US media (52 words
in the Washington Post, for example), so here is the (war-supporting)
Daily Telegraph (London) of January 10 on the incident. "For
Iraqi drivers...mile-long [US] supply convoys trundling slowly
across the immense desert landscape present a frustrating impediment,
often doubling journey times. Rather than wait, many attempt
to pass the military columns, watching and waiting for a soldier
astride a mounted machinegun to wave a casual 'OK'. But passing
lines of trucks and humvees is always a tense affair, with drivers
on both sides fearful of their opposite numbers. "I was
in a taxi with four other people including the driver,"
said Mr Ahmed. "We were stuck behind a US convoy just outside
Tikrit when the soldier on the rear vehicle lifted his hand from
the trigger of his gun and clearly motioned us to pass. Cautiously
we overtook on the right-hand side, then suddenly the gunner
on the front vehicle swivelled his gun towards us and started
firing." Mr Ahmed said he ducked under the taxi's dashboard
as bullets ripped through the car, killing the driver. When he
recovered consciousness the car had careered off the road. In
the back seat he found the other passengers, including a mother
and her six-year-old son, had also been shot dead. "The
soldier just kept firing for five to six seconds, but the convoy
didn't stop for us," said Mr Ahmed. "I was hit in the
lung"."
A US army spokeswoman, Major Aberle,
said "We would love to get to the bottom of this".
Well, why not get to the bottom of it, Major Aberle? You are
in the most efficient army in the world, with every space-age
device and appliance. You can identify what convoy was at a particular
spot within a given time-frame. There are such things as convoy
logs, check points, continuous radio communication, and that
old-fashioned thing called leadership which when properly applied
results in commanders at all levels knowing what is going on
in his or her command. Are we seriously saying it is impossible
to find out in which convoy a machine gunner killed four people?
Is it possible for a soldier to engage a civilian car with a
sustained-fire weapon for five seconds (a very long time ; almost
70 rounds of lethal lead), causing the vehicle to crash, without
some record being kept of his action?
If the answer is No, then let's have
the explanation. If the answer is Yes, then it is obvious discipline
has gone to hell in a handcart. Is it possible that a machine
gunner who opened fire on people he suspected of being terrorists
did not report the fact that he had done so? ("Hey, I killed
four terrorists : a taxi-driver terrorist, and another terrorist
and a woman terrorist and her son, a six year-old terrorist.")
This was a major incident --- or at least it was to those who
were killed, and their families. The car crashed after the machine-gunner's
bullets ripped through the occupants ; is this not worthy of
reporting to higher authority? What are the rules of engagement?
Could it be that a yippee shoot resulting in the death of civilians
can take place without the killings even being notified up the
chain of command? If the machine-gunner reported the incident,
then what was done about the report?
Are we to believe that a soldier of a
country that is proud of democracy and freedom can wipe out four
civilians without being taken to task concerning his action?
Lt-Col Steve Russell, whose battalion area includes Tikrit (he
who is ever-ready with a media comment), pronounced "I believe
we have a moral obligation to find out what occurred." Yes
indeed, there is a moral obligation. And there is also a legal
obligation for the occupying power to abide by Article 27 of
the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that "Protected
persons [i.e., civilians under the control of the occupying power]
are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons...They
shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected
especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof .
. .".
Unfortunately the Fourth Geneva Convention
is irrelevant because there is no declaration by the occupying
power of its Rules of Engagement. Do these Rules include permission
to kill civilians? We don't know. But who in America dares ask
a question in public about US killings of Iraqi civilians?
Few people in America can or will ask
that sort of question, and certainly no such query is being posed
by any of the Democrats who want to be selected as their party's
nomination to contest the presidency this year. (And how many
US academics have dared declare their opinions about the war
on Iraq? How many of them have moved their backbones from the
supine to the vertical position? But that's another story.)
To criticize a US soldier is to court
political death. Not one politician (and few academics) in the
whole country would dare state, for example, that it is scandalous
that three US soldiers should have beaten Iraqi prisoners. These
criminals were discharged from the army but suffered no other
penalty for their vicious conduct. One of the soldiers, Master
Sergeant Girman, "was charged with knocking a prisoner down,
repeatedly kicking him, and encouraging her subordinates to do
the same." 'HER'? Master Sergeant Girman, it seems, is a
woman, and there is no doubt she was guilty of disgusting cruelty
against a fellow human being. The mind reels. There was no publicity
about this squalid affair, but it is a much more important story
than the staged propaganda non-rescue of pretty Jessica Lynch.
Operation Iron Hammer, conceived by boneheads,
continues to destroy the credibility of the United States day
by day. The very title conveys a 'them and us' diktat, dividing
occupation forces from those whom they were supposed to be liberating.
There are few ordinary people in Iraq who now believe that American
soldiers are their friends. No wonder. And there are few of us
out here who believe the official accounts of US killing of civilians,
simply because the evidence of countless incidents of deliberate
and accidental mayhem is so compelling.
Occupation troops have killed fifteen
civilian police in three botched operations since September,
the latest of which was on January 10 when, as Reuters reported,
"US soldiers shot and killed two Iraqi policemen embroiled
in a family feud after mistaking them for assailants, the US
military said Saturday. A military spokesman said soldiers...were
sent to respond to reports that two families were fighting. When
they arrived they saw two men carrying weapons and wearing long
coats firing at a house. "As the soldiers approached the
men attempted to flee", said Major Josslyn Aberle..."The
soldiers pursued them, shouting warnings and firing warning shots
but the men did not respond. They killed one outright and another
died before reaching hospital"." So the soldiers shouted
warnings. In Arabic? What did they shout? Were the soldiers themselves
being threatened? How were the men supposed to respond to "warning
shots"? This was a shambles, resulting in crashing morale
for the Iraq police and yet even more bitter contempt and loathing
for occupation forces.
Flames of hatred are high, and are fed
by factual reports that never see the light of day in Britain
or the US. Take this one, from Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly of 14
January. [Some material has been omitted, for space reasons.]
"It was simply not his day ; Mohamed
had no idea what was in store for him as he drove through the
Karada area of Baghdad on 7 August. He ran into the usual traffic
jam in the main shopping street, but what Mohamed didn't know
was that an American patrol had run into an ambush just two kilometres
down the road. Two soldiers had been killed; the perpetrators
escaped and the Americans had set up the usual roadblock - hence
the traffic jam. Unaware of the situation, Mohamed turned off
the main road into a side street, and the trap was sprung. "About
half a dozen soldiers rushed towards the car pointing weapons
in my face," he recalled. "I was terrified and stayed
in the car. Then they dragged me out of the car, threw me to
the ground and handcuffed me." In the heat of the moment,
while lying on the ground, he shouted the infamous American 'f'
word at the soldiers. Somebody hit him in the back. He was left
lying on the ground with guns pointing at him for about half
an hour. His car was searched but no weapons were uncovered...[They
found a bottle of Scotch.]
"[He] was taken to the American
headquarters in the Sajud Palace, a former residence of Saddam
Hussein's, and was left outside in the tennis court with other
recently-arrested for six hours before his first interrogation.
During the interview, a US officer questioned him about his relationship
with the terrorists. The conversation became quickly heated when
Mohamed, who speaks English, noticed that the Lebanese translator
was not translating his responses properly. Mohamed was hit from
behind on the back of the head and he vomited on the officer's
desktop: the interrogation lasted another two hours.
"Mohamed spent the following 36
days in a camp at the edge of the prison together with 500 prisoners,
surrounded by walls, barbed wire and watch towers...Mohamed,
the only prisoner who spoke some English, soon became the official
camp translator, and he also became friendly with some of the
soldiers. "A lot of them were homesick," was how he
described their state of mind. One of the soldiers had just lost
his father, and the wife of another had given birth; and none
of them had the chance to go home. "When I get home,"
a sergeant told Mohamed, "I will never again vote for George
Bush." The same sergeant, by now on friendly terms with
Mohamed, checked the computer regularly for any details about
his release. And finally the news arrived. "Tomorrow you're
to be released, and you'll be freer than any US soldier here."
"All the best, and sorry for the unpleasant situation,"
said an officer to Mohamed as he was leaving the prison, adding
that, "there was actually no reason for you spending the
last month here"." That's Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The recent and much-heralded (non)release
of civilians held captive illegally was a complete disaster and
caused untold suffering among thousands of families who have
no reason to be grateful for their "liberation". It
was spectacularly badly managed, and reflects appallingly on
the administrative capabilities of the 'Coalition Provisional
Authority', which appears incapable of conducting even the simplest
task efficiently. The message getting through to Iraqis is that
the occupying power acts with ham-handed incompetence mixed with
casual brutality. The current handling of the occupation is not
just faulty, it is ineffective to the point of political and
administrative chaos. The ever-changing Bush policies on future
governance would be laughable were they not so bungled that nobody
now knows what is to happen in six months time.
That is not the way to win trust and
respect throughout Iraq and the world. Along with the killing
of fleeing policemen and the occupants of taxis passing convoys,
it has exactly the opposite effect. But perhaps this doesn't
worry Bush and his people. We are only too well aware of the
overweening arrogance of those presently in power, and obviously
the daily addition of a few thousands to the millions worldwide
who detest the condescension and brutality of imperial Washington
matters little in their scheme of things. Cicero wrote (in the
First Philippic) "Let them hate me so long as they fear
me" and this is a fair summation of what Bush zealotry is
all about. The Bush administration loves the gun-blazing drama
of such stupidly-named operations as Iron Hammer, but Iraqis
know the dire results from first-hand experience of monstrous
slaughter.
As I end this piece, an item in the New
York Times of 13 January has appeared on the screen : ".
. . a bomb exploded on the median of Palestine Street after the
two Humvees had passed it, said Feras Ali, 42, a resident on
the block. The explosion shattered the windows of nearby houses.
The Humvees, which witnesses said did not appear to have been
damaged, then turned in the wide road, which was slick from a
driving rainstorm, they said. Soldiers opened fire on the family
in the station wagon traveling behind them, said the witnesses,
relatives of the victims, and Lieutenant Ali, the police officer.
The station wagon crashed into a wall about 200 feet past where
the bomb had exploded, and soldiers soon began pulling bodies
out, the witnesses said."
Iron hammer strikes again. It can be
concluded only that the secret Rules of Engagement permit this
sort of murder. The US has lost all credibility in Iraq, which
is facing a bleak future. But how long is random killing of civilians
to be permitted to continue? Is there a public figure who will
dare question it? Don't hold your breath.
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, the Nation (Pakistan),
the Daily Times of Pakistan and other international publications.
His writings are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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