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Recent
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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
April
2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Politics of Casualties
David
Lindorff
Making America Safer...for Iraqi
Fighters
William
Blum
Some Observations on the Recent Behavior of the Empire
Gustavio
Sierra
The Morning After the Slaughter at
Nasser
Patrick
Cockburn
Playing Into Saddam's Hands
Robert
Jensen
Peter Arnett: Whipping Boy of the
Pentagon
Jeremy
Brecher
Uniting for Peace Update
N.D.
Jayaprakash
The Siege of Basra
LaDawn
Haglund
You Can Jail the Resisters, But You
Can't Arrest the Resistance
Robert
Fisk
Truth and Subterfuge
Jemima
Khan
I'm Ashamed to be British
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
Stew Albert
Total War
Website
of the Day
Traitor List: Sign Up Now!
April
1, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Rumsfeld: "Get Me Rewrite"
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
Website
of the Day
A Collectible War
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
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April 5,
2003
A
Call to War or Slaughter?
Would
You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) to War If...
By WILLIAM A. COOK
American families have always responded to the
call of their President to send their sons and daughters to fight
on behalf of the country. The cries of alarm resound over the
years: "Remember the Alamo," "Remember the Maine,"
"Remember Pearl Harbor," "Remember the Gulf of
Tonkin." While it's true that some of these alarms have
turned out to be fabricated cries that covered the true intentions
of the government at the time, witness the most devastating lie
that gave rise to the "Gulf of Tonkin," the American
people have shown remarkable trust in their leaders believing
that the values expressed in the Constitution must be upheld.
In making this sacrifice on behalf of
the democracy that grants them freedoms they hold sacred, American
families depend primarily on the availability of information
supplied by the mainstream media, both print and television.
If Americans knew at the time that the Maine blew up from an
internal explosion and not an unprovoked attack by Spain, they
would not have supported going to war against Spain. If McNamara
had made available to the press what he knew about the situation
in Vietnam, 55,000 lives would not have been lost. There can
be little question that accurate, informed, and honest information
should and must be supplied to the American public. But that
is not the case, as the brouhaha in the White House Press Corp
makes perfectly clear. When reporters need to have their reports
checked by the very people they are reporting  about, when CNN demands of
its press corps that they can print nothing that is not reviewed
by central headquarters in Atlanta, when NBC, owned by one of
the major suppliers of military hardware in the country GE, fires
Peter Arnett for making a news analysis report on Iraqi TV, the
free press in America no longer exists. This accounts for the
relatively strong support the President has received from the
American people. They are the silent victims of the controlled
news coverage available in the major newspapers like the administration's
own voice, The Washington Times, and the corporate controlled
speaking heads on TV, the Kudlow's and Kramer's, the O'Rielly's,
and the Savage's. What would be the situation if Americans knew
the truth? Let's ask the question.
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that, as the CBC news reported, "Law
experts around the world have condemned the war as illegal."
Would you want to jeopardize your offspring to the potential
of a war crimes trial not unlike that at Nuremberg?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that the plans for this war were laid out
in special reports that date back to 1992? The Cheney Defense
Department designed the Defense Policy Guidance report in the
waning days of the first Bush administration. This report, with
input from Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearle among others, became
the basis for another document, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy
for Securing the Realm," that was prepared for Benjamin
Netanyahu as a guide for Israeli foreign policy development by
Richard Pearle and Douglas Feith among others. These same figures,
now all holding major policy positions in the Bush Junior administration,
brought their recommendations to Clinton in 1997/8. He refused
to consider them. This means, in effect, that the reasons for
going to war now -- the imminent danger Saddam poses, the Iraqi
connection with al'Qaeda, the threat to America of weapons of
mass destruction, the failure of Iraq to comply with UN resolutions
-- are fabrications to provide a basis for war against Iraq as
a means of achieving what these men considered to be advantageous
to Israel, yet using the American military as proxy to accomplish
their goals.
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you had known that it negates article 51 of the UN
Charter that requires a nation to be invaded before it can go
to war against another country or it must have compelling evidence
that the country intends to attack it, e.g. proximity of that
nation's forces to its borders? By negating the UN Charter, the
United States opens the door for any nation to do the same. Witness
the provocative behavior of North Korea. Without the UN, and
without the United States accepting the decisions of the UN,
the people of this nation put themselves at risk and open the
door to anarchy throughout the world.
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that the Iraqi people had no intentions of
throwing roses in front of our liberating tanks? Would you have
sent your son or daughter to war if you knew that the Iraqi people
held dear their nation state and would look upon America's entrance
across their borders as an hostile act, not an act of salvation?
Yet our soldiers were brain washed to believe that they would
be received as liberators as many have told the imbedded reporters
in question and answer sessions. Why were these deceptions perpetrated
on the American people?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that the military planning was being done
by Chicken hawks (i.e. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Pearle, and Feith) who
had to overrule real military planners when conceiving the Iraq
war plan? Would you have sent your son or daughter to war if
you knew that the brilliant plan touted as "Shock and Awe"
had the potential to achieve the opposite? That politics would
alter its approach in order to minimize world reaction? That
the combination of the myths of Iraqi love for the US invaders
and the "Shock and Awe" treatment would solidify Arab
opinion against this Anglo-American intrusion and ensure weeks
and months of mayhem and death?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that Bush Senior supplied Saddam with the
very weapons of mass destruction that we now seek? If the nations'
press had published the information in Alan Friedman's book,
A Spider's Web, written in 1993, the American public would
know that the junior Bush is out to protect his Father from censure
for forwarding cluster bombs and missile technology through Pinochet
to Saddam illegally and sending over 5 billion of our tax dollars
to Saddam with full knowledge of the CIA, an outfit he had formerly
headed.
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that the vast majority of countries around
the world are adamantly against the invasion? If you knew that
the "coalition of the willing" includes the UK although
its citizens are 80% against the war? That Australia has supplied
2000 troops even though its population is over 90% against the
war? That others have been bribed or coerced into allowing their
names to be put on the list? That some, like Slovenia, did not
know that their country had been placed on the list?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that Cheney's former company, Halliburton,
from which he receives a million per year in compensation even
after his resignation, has already signed contracts for itself
and its subsidiaries for contracting work in Iraq, before the
war had started? Would you have sent your son or daughter to
war if you knew that Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, the Washington
Group among others have also received similar contracts, all
without a public bid process and all without consideration of
existing Iraqi firms who are to be liberated by our forces? Would
you believe that all these companies are major financial supporters
of the Republican Party? Would you believe that these contract
negotiations began as early as 1997?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that Richard Pearle had arranged for his own
company to gain contracts in Saudi Arabia and Iraq to ensure
security strategies there even as America was preparing for war
and as he served as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board? Would
you have problems with those in charge of defense policy working
out deals that would benefit them personally because of the actions
they were proposing and because of their influential positions
and prior knowledge? Is this what your son or daughter is defending
and dying for?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that Richard Pearle and Douglas Feith, in
their 1996 report to secure the "realm" for Israel,
a realm that includes the land it now holds (and more by implication,
"Our claim to the land to which we have clung for
hope for 2000 years is legitimate and noble."), defies
the many UN resolutions demanding that Israel return the lands
it captured in 1967. Perhaps this will force the US to bring
Israel before the UN to ensure that it complies with its resolutions.
Would knowledge that this same report calls for Israeli troops
to give "hot pursuit" into all Palestinian areas, to
actively destabilize Iraq even to the "redefining"
of it, to strike Syrian military targets in Lebanon with the
use of "proxy forces", and to establish a policy of
"preemptive" strike that ensures Israeli dominance
in the mid east, all efforts that require US financial and military
support, would that knowledge give pause in sending sons and
daughters to war?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that Colin Powell used plagiarized material
to make his case for war before the UN? Would you have sent your
son or daughter to war if you knew that Blair's document detailing
Saddam's WMD was fabricated as well? Would this knowledge have
caused you to pause and question everything this administration
says?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that the President has pretensions to be an
executer of God's Master Plan? That he sees himself as an instrument
in bringing about the prophecies described in the Book of Revelation?
That both the Iraqi population and the American people are his
to use as he fulfills this mythological vision? Would you want
your children fighting in a war that is the brainchild of right-wing
Christian zealots and Israeli Zionists?
Would you have sent your son or daughter
to war if you knew that Donald Rumsfeld's righteous indignation
at Iraq's alleged abuses of the Geneva Convention protocals failed
to mention that the United States did not sign Protocal 1 of
1977, a Protocal added to the original human rights documents
of the Geneva Accords. This Protocal provides for Protection
of Victims of International Armed Conflict. Indeed, Rumsfeld
had been chastized by the Commisssion on Human Rights for US
abuses to the Geneva Convention protection relative to the prisoners
held in Guantanomo in a statement that noted, "The Secretary
seems unaware of the requirements of international humanitarian
law." In short, the US does not abide by the principles
that protect prisoners yet cries foul when another state, that
also failed to sign the Protocal, doesn't play according to the
rules.
This litany of failures to the American
people demonstrates how great is the failure of the American
press. What had been an objective instrument to bring information
and analysis to the people is now in the hands of corporate interests
whose profits are dependent on ensuring acceptance of policies
and legislation that will increase their power and wealth. The
American democracy has been bought. Freedom of speech is possible
for those with the wealth to assert it in the media they control.
The majority of Americans depend on the
mainstream media for their information, both newspapers and TV.
But as one can see from the above, they cannot find the truth
there. American democracy depends on a free flow of information
to inform the citizenry. Absent accurate information, citizens
become puppets of those willing to control. The magnitude of
this issue cannot be overstated. American families have sent
their children to war believing in their leaders as honest and
trustworthy men. They are not. When one considers that the United
States has become an invading power of a nation that did not
attack or provoke it, that it has done so against the deliberative
judgment of all the world's communities, that it has become the
dominant force in the world willing to determine who should rule
and willing to inflict its judgment on all, that this posture
was conceived by a handful of men who have gained control of
the American government and forced it to their will, that these
same men have personal fortunes to gain as a direct result of
their influence, then the America that was defined by the Constitution
no longer exists.
The media's responsibility is to search
out the truth and present it to the public. When it does not,
it has committed the sin of omission. When it allows the people
to believe the lies perpetrated by this administration, to have
them believe in the righteoousness of its policies, it has become
the very embodiment of evil.
William Cook
is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern
California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was just published by
Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
Today's Features
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
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