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Recent
Stories
April
15, 2003
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
April
14, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush's War Without End
Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning
Wayne
Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?
Shahid
Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free
Hani
Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks
Terry
Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train
John
Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda
Patrick
Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence,
Misery and Poverty in Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/14
April
12 / 13, 2003
Carol
Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph
Story
Wayne
Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj.
Gen. Buford Blount III
John
Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling
of the Saddam Statue
Kathy and
Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine
William
Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation
Wallace
Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin
Ann
Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial
Case
Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar
Zeljko
Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars
Ishikawa
Jun
The Song of Mars
Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board
Adam
Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and
the News
Poets'
Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/12
April
11, 2003
Omar
Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam
Ron
Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded
David
Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq
Paul
de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field
Anthony
Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy
Mas'ood
Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
Michael
Neumann
Now What?
Michael
Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream
Stew Albert
Oh Freedom
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/11
Website
of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds
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
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
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
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
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't
Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental
Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures
Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"
Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
May Have Violated Federal Law
Anthony
Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle
Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
Ahmad
Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
Summit
Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
a Baghdad Hospital
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
The CIA is Back on Campus
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
Shake Gerry's Hand?
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
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
Other Mideast Regimes
Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
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
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April 16,
2003
The Destruction
of Iraq
Hey, It's Good
for Business
by
KURT NIMMO
It's now obvious what the Bushites have in mind
for Iraq.
Iraq is in the process of self-destruction,
pushed over the edge by Bush and the neocons. They believe chaos
is a form of freedom, a reaction to decades of Saddam's dictatorial
rule. But this explanation is mostly for public consumption.
Bush and his architects will endeavor
to build a new Iraq -- a McDonaldized Iraq ruled by westernized
overlords and serviced by US corporations. This can only happen
if the methodical process of destruction is allowed to unravel
centuries of Iraqi culture and decades of Saddam's iron-fisted
rule.
The International Committee of the Red
Cross complains about the violence and unchecked looting. It
cannot distribute humanitarian aid. It says US inaction to bring
the chaos under control is a breach of the Geneva Convention.
Naturally, the US does not care about
the Geneva Convention.
This should be obvious -- from the use
of cluster bombs to the illegal detention of political prisoners
at Gitmo Bay in Cuba -- Bush and the Pentagon are violating the
Geneva Convention right and left and at every turn. It is absurd,
almost comical, for the International Committee of the Red Cross
to make these claims -- they should know by now that the US has
no intention of respecting international law. Not only is the
Red Cross irrelevant, but so is most of humanity. Iraq -- as
Mesopotamia and the cradle of civilization -- is the poster child
or irrelevancy. Soon it will serve as a role model for all Arabs.
Another incidental international organization,
the United Nations, is now carping about the engineered chaos
in Iraq. "The coalition forces seem to be completely unable
to restrain looters or impose any sort of control on the mobs
that now govern the streets," Veronique Taveau, a UN spokesman,
complained to the Guardian.
Mr. Taveau, unfortunately, insists on
playing by old, time-tarnished rules. He seems entirely clueless
about the nature and intentions of the Bushites. It's not an
inability that constrains the US forces in Iraq. No, it is something
else altogether.
The Bush global engineers have issued
top-down orders -- allow the Iraqis to self-destruct, do not
intervene. "We saw a similar mixture in Kosovo and Sierra
Leone but initial disorder does give way to stability,"
explained a Tony Blair sidekick. Rumsfeld was a bit more succinct.
"Stuff happens," he mused. "And free people are
free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
"Freedom is a gift from the Almighty
God," added Bush.
Freedom to loot, murder, and rape --
that is the gift Bush's God has bestowed upon the Iraqi people.
Bush's God lives by the balance sheet and the bottom line, not
compassion or even the now irrelevant articles of the Geneva
Convention. Bush's God resides in the Old Testament. It gathers
sustenance from destruction and genocide. It eagerly fills graveyards
and coffers. It dispenses multi-billion dollar reconstruction
contracts.
The US has awarded, without competition,
a contract worth up to $7 billion to Kellogg, Brown & Root,
a subsidiary of Halliburton, a company run until three years
ago by Dick Cheney. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans believes
the US private sector should play a major role in rebuilding
Iraq and develop its plentiful energy resources.
"There will be companies that have
an opportunity to bid on contracts," Evans said in an interview
after a luncheon speech to the American Society of Newspaper
Editors. "The coalition countries certainly should have
an opportunity to be involved in whatever rebuilding opportunities
there are."
Fluor Corp. and Parini Corp. have received
contracts from the Army Corps of Engineers to provide up to $100
million worth of work to the military in the region. In other
words, US and British corporations will help construct bases
and military installations designed to destroy a large number
of dark-skinned people and various distinct cultures in the Middle
East.
Meanwhile, the State Department's Agency
for International Development is acting as a pimp for US corporations
hungry to turn a buck on the devastation of Iraq. For instance,
Stevedoring Services of America and Bechtel are in the running
and stand to earn billions. Both contributed to the Republicans
and Bush. Bechtel is a refuge for former Reaganites and members
of the Defense Policy Board where until recently Richard Perle
held sway.
As for exploiting Iraq's oil -- "for
the benefit of the Iraqi people" -- this would "almost
invariably fall to the nation's energy capital of Houston, where
President Bush has deep connections," writes Stewart Yerton
of New Orleans' Times-Picayune. "Evans dismissed the idea
that awarding oil contracts to Texas energy firms would create
perceived conflicts of interest. 'This is an administration of
total integrity,' he said. 'That's all that needs to be said.'"
It also needs to be said that the closed
process of selecting corporations -- mostly kept under wraps
in the name of national security -- to rebuild a methodically
destroyed Iraq will result in the squandering of billions of
dollars. Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has
written a book on federal contracting, told the Chicago Tribune
the "cost-plus" contracts being awarded by the Bushites
could result in overstaffing and over billing. "A lot of
money is going to be wasted, and a lot of money is going to be
made," Singer said.
Meanwhile, the coolies who will rebuild
Iraq's roads, airports, hospitals and other infrastructure --
much of it either bombed or assiduously stripped to the bone
by looters -- will come from the Philippines where annual income
is around $1,000 per year and unemployment is all too common.
"Imported Filipino laborers and engineers, many working
for less than the US minimum wage, helped build the detention
center holding al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba," reports the Taipei Times.
Instead of traditional United Nations
peace-keeping troops invited to restore order where Bush and
Crew have deliberately sowed chaos and destruction, it now appears
the Reston, Virginia, rent-a-cop outfit Dyncorp will be called
to "re-establish police, justice and prison functions in
post conflict Iraq," according to Insight Magazine.
"We know we want something a little
more corporate and more efficient with cleaner lines of authority
and responsibility," a Pentagon official told the New York
Times.
As Pratap Chatterjee of GNN writes, "[a]rmed
DynCorp employees make up the core of the police force in Bosnia.
DynCorp troops protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai, while DynCorp
planes and pilots fly the defoliation missions over the coca
crops in Colombia." As for allegations that Dyncorp was
involved in a sex-slavery scandal in Bosnia -- and accused of
spraying Ecuadorian peasants with deadly herbicides -- well,
that's the cost of doing business in the Third World.
Stuff, after all, happens.
In fact, it would seem the Bushites "want
something a little more corporate and more efficient with cleaner
lines of authority and responsibility" across the Middle
East, beginning with Iraq and -- if threats issued by Rumsfeld
last week are to be taken seriously -- moving eventually to Syria.
The neocons make no bones about their pathological desire to
attack and "regime change" Syria, Iran, Libya, North
Korea, possibly Saudi Arabia, and even Cuba. That's a whole lot
of infrastructure that will need to be rebuilt in the smoldering
wake of cruise missiles, JDAMs, bunker-busters, and MOABs.
But it's not simply food warehouses,
electrical grids, hospitals, and hardware stores ransacked and
burned to the ground. It's history itself. "They lie across
the floor in tens of thousands of pieces, the priceless antiquities
of Iraq's history," writes Robert Fisk. "The looters
had gone from shelf to shelf, systematically pulling down the
statues and pots and amphorae of the Assyrians and the Babylonians,
the Sumerians, the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks and hurling
them on to the concrete."
Instead of history and culture, Iraq
will burgeon with strip malls and sweatshops. Its oil and minerals
will go to the powerful corporate interests represented by George
Bush and Dick Cheney. In due time Syria and Iran will be subject
to the same process and the freedom of Bush's corporate God will
eventually ring out in those benighted lands as well.
If not the sound of freedom, it will
be the sound of a million cash registers instead.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent online
gallery. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
We highly recommend regular visits to
Nimmo's website, Another
Day in the Empire
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
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