Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
June 19 / 20, 2004
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on
Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Col. Dan
Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| June
19 / 20, 2004
Inside the
Green Zone
US is Paranoid
and Isolated
By
PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad.
An
Iraqi friend, who feared for his life because he was close to the Americans,
used to live inside the Green Zone, the heavily protected area in central
Baghdad where the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has its
headquarters. One day he fell into conversation with an American soldier
guarding one of the gates. The soldier said he was of Iraqi origin and
could speak Arabic. He added that security was not quite as tight as
it looked since prostitutes were regular visitors to the zone.
My
friend, a little alarmed, decided to investigate. He went to a house
which was being used as a brothel. He says: "In the toilet I found
that the women were writing pro-Baath party, anti-American and patriotic
slogans with their lipstick on the mirrors." Their clients could
not tell what they had written because it was in Arabic.
The
story illustrates the way in which the CPA officials became wholly isolated
from the real opinions of Iraqis. Arriving in the wake of the war last
year they cut themselves off inside Saddam Hussein's old palace complex.
They were as remote from the lives of ordinary Iraqis as if they lived
in a Martian spaceship which had temporarily touched down in the centre
of Baghdad.
This
isolation helps explain the CPA's repeated mistakes. When it arrived
14 months ago Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated
or occupied by the US. The CPA's own poll shows that just 2 per cent
of Iraqis say they feel liberated and 92 per cent say they are occupied.
The CPA may be the least successful organisation ever created by the
US government. It is certainly one of the strangest. "It is really
like living in an open prison,' said one CPA official.
Much
of the security is in the hands of private companies. One day I had
an interview with an Iraqi minister inside the zone. We had arranged
it over the phone. The meeting never took place. I was first asked who
I was by a friendly Nepalese soldier, then questioned by a nervous Algerian
and finally stopped by a paunchy security man who, from his accent,
came from Mississippi or Alabama.
"We
can't let in journalists," he said in a suspicious and hostile
tone. "They are a security threat." I asked exactly whom they
had threatened. The security man said: "They killed the president
of Afghanistan."
It
turned out he had read somewhere of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Afghan warlord,
being assassinated by two Moroccans with Belgian passports pretending
to be a television crew. I said these were hardly typical of the journalistic
profession but he was unconvinced.
Uncertain
where real threats come from, the guards of the CPA - both regular US
army and private security firms - treat all Iraqis as equally suspicious.
According to one former Iraqi minister a suicide bomber was able to
blow up Izzedin Salim, the head of Iraq's Governing Council, on 17 May
after his convoy had been prevented from passing through US security
into the Green Zone because a vital document was missing. His vehicle
turned around giving the bomber his opportunity.
The
difficulty getting into the Green Zone is less than that of CPA officials
getting out. It is now truly dangerous for them to do so but most remained
cocooned behind the walls even when it was less so.
One
official remarked: "What shocks me is the number of people in the
CPA who never even want to see the city where they live." Even
the plastic cutlery in the dining hall was imported and almost ran out
in April when insurgents destroyed the convoys bringing it in.
Presiding
over the CPA until 30 June when power is supposedly handed over to an
Iraqi government, is Paul Bremer. He has remained a remote figure to
his own staff as well as Iraqis. When a rocket hit the Republican Palace,
where the CPA has its headquarters earlier this month, officials wondered
if he would make a reassuring visit, but were not entirely surprised
by his absence.
It
is still unclear why Mr Bremer and the CPA showed such poor judgement.
The swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein showed few Iraqis supported him.
But Mr Bremer disbanded the army and persecuted the Baath party pushing
their members towards armed resistance.
By
last summer he had alienated the Sunni Arabs (20 per cent of Iraqis)
and by this spring he had infuriated the Shia (60 per cent). He turned
the hitherto marginal Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr into a respected martyr
and the hillbilly city of Fallujah into a patriotic symbol.
Many
able and intelligent CPA officials are mystified by the extent of the
failure, perhaps the greatest in American foreign policy. "Bremer
stuffed his office full of neo-conservatives and political appointees
who knew nothing of the country or the region," one said. "They
actively avoided anybody who did."
Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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