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Recent
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April
1, 2003
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
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
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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
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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:
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Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
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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
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David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
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Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
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Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
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Gloria
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Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
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March 25,
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Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
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What
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Bill and
Kathleen Christison
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Bruce
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Why
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Uri Avnery
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Jason
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Blood
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Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
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March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
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Peacekeepers
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Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
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John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
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Anthony
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Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
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March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
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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
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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?
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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
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March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
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Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
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Vanessa Jones
Paint
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Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
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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
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Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
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Kathy Kelly
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Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
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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
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Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
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April 2,
2003
"Ask Bush
Why He Did This?"
The Morning After the Slaughter
at Nasser
By GUSTAVIO SIERRA
Special Correspondent
for Clarin
Translated
from the Spanish by Daniel Patrick Welch
Saja is five years old, her stomach slashed open
by a piece of shrapnel. She is en critical condition. In the
next bed, Duha is heavily sedated. His mother says he is twelve
years old and his only sin was to go to Al Nasser market to buy
the pencils he needed for school. Now he might lose a leg, and
has another wound in his head.
Three-year-old Sajas was with his 12
year old brother when the explosion caught them. His brother
died instantly. He survived because a doctor picked him up and
carried him to the hospital. He suffered a serious chest wound.
The are in the pediatric ward of the Al Nour hospital center,
in the heart of the working class Shu-Ala neighborhood, the scene
late Friday of the worst attack on civilians to date as the war
enters its eleventh day. Director Hagi Razuki gives the cold
breakdown in numbers: 58 dead, 47 wounded. Among the dead are
16 children and 7 women. Five more children are in critical condition
and are unlikely to survive.
A few yards away, in the men's ward,
there is a young man of 20, seriously depressed and in intense
pain. He manages to stammer his name several times before we
believe that he is actually Saddam Hussein Jasem, like the Iraqi
leader. He had gone to buy vegetables when the explosion caught
him by surprise. He lost his left arm. It was not amputated at
the hospital due to gangrene: he arrived in the operating room
with nothing below his shoulder. "Only God knows why this
happened to me," he says through a translator before closing
his eyes.
Two nurses in white wraps down to their
ankles and covered also in white scarves to their waist come
in with a cart to care for the wounded. Hasam, a man of 50 with
one arm completely shredded and a deep wound on his leg still
bleeding through the gauze, asks to speak a moment. "The
journalists need to know that it was a massacre," he says
in a firm voice. "They killed and wounded civilians with
no provocation. There are no soldiers here, no barracks. They
killed mothers and young, innocent children. Ask Bush why he
did this."
What they call the Massacre of Hasam
took place a little after six thirty Friday evening, the muslim
holy day. Two bombs or missiles landed--no one knows what they
were--as a crowd had gathered in the traditional Nasser fruit
and vegetable market, in the center of the largest of the working
class shi'ite enclaves on the outskirts of Baghdad. Shu-Ala is
about an hour from downtown by a few highways that, in the middle
of war, are completely packed with traffic. On one side of the
district there are a few farms, on the other a highway leading
to Mosul.
The next morning, a crowd wanders through
the market, among the twisted shards of the stalls, pools of
blood and a group of young men erecting a huge structure to serve
as a makeshift morgue where the remains of the dead will be collected
before burial. When I ask if anyone speaks English, Mushtak surprises
me with a "Yo hablo espanol." He is a student of modern
languages at the University in Baghdad. He was at home when he
heard the explosion. He arrived a few minutes later.
"It was horrible. There were bloody
bodies everywhere. We couldn't tell who to help first. I could
see many who were already dead. A friend and I picked up a kid
we knew and ran to the hospital with him, which is about five
blocks from here. He's hanging on, but he's in real bad shape,"
he says in broken Spanish.
He takes me on a tour of the barrio.
A typical suburban working class neighborhood as in any major
Arab city. I don't know why, but it made me think of a certain
section of San Miguel, outside Buenos Aires. The houses are low,
all finished in a sort of light brown stucco. Only the main streets
are paved; some alleyways are very narrow, lined with even more
modest houses, separated by wire fences. The area is full of
women covered in black from head to foot, and children kicking
a ball or a can. men are talking in small groups. In plain view
there are no military objectives, no communications installations
or infrastructure which might justify an incursion by U.S. troops.
On the main street a stall is being built,
about 20 x 10 meters, next to a smaller one which will serve
as a kitchen. Under a canvas of many colors and stripes the families
of the victims receive the condolences of friends and neighbors.
Others sob quietly. All wear the necklace of the Sipje, the Muslim
rosary. Some boys run up to offer chai, a dark, very sweet tea
served in a small cup and drunk from a small plate into which
it is poured to cool.
Mushtak introduces me to a friend, Hussein,
about 18. He says he saw his father leave the house as he was
fixing a bicycle. "I heard a terrible noise, which made
me abandon the bicycle frame. I ran toward the market and saw
my father on the corner, hit. It looked like he was trying to
get back home. He was completely covered in blood. I couldn't
even tell where to check for wounds. He had gashes all over his
body. We carried him to the hospital, but an hour later the doctors
came out and told me there was nothing they could do for him,"
Hussein explained, his face in anguish.
A woman passing by clutches her head
and screams "Oh God, oh God." Two men shout Allah u
akbar ( God is great). Abdel hadi Adai approaches me and says
he is an engineer; he lost his brother in the tragedy. He can't
understand what happened: "The Americans have all the technology
to avoid mistakes like this. I saw how they bombed buildings
downtown. They did it with incredible precision. The bombs hit
in the center of the building and cause an implosion. They destroy
everything inside, but leave the exterior intact. So how did
they make this mistake? I can't understand it."
Abdel harbors the same doubts as many
here in this neighborhood. Even if the power of the explosions
and the number of victims left little doubt that these were allied
bombs, some questions still remain. For example, the diameter
of the crater left by the explosion is barely one and one-half
meters wide and less than a meter deep. Nor can anyone explain
how they could have been Iraqi missils. Yesterday the Pentagon
claimed that seven Tomahawk cruise missiles missed their targets
since the start of the war, though they denied that they had
hit civilian installations.
A Spanish journalist who speaks some
Arabic and who was in the hospital just after the attack says
she overheard two men who had just lost their brother. One, in
a moment of grief cried out "America la, America la; Iraq,
Iraq" (freely translated as something like "It wasn't
the Americans; it was the Iraqis"). She said his brother
then slapped him several times until he calmed down. Later, he
made him promise not to mention it again.
The rest of the people are making do.
Any questions they have will have to wait until after the war.
Some turn to the Imam Moussa Kahim mosque, quite a bit more modest
compared to the luxurious mosques elsewhere in the city. In two
rooms the bodies are being prepared for burial. This will take
place at noon, in the city's Shi'ite cemetery; entry is forbidden
to westerners.
In one room a ray of light shines through
the window, splitting the darkness. The bodies of two men lie
on a cement table. A cleric washes the bodies with a wet white
cloth. On the floor are three coffins. They are awaiting another
body and then they will begin the procession, in cars full of
wailing women dressed in black.
In the second room a woman washes the
body of a young girl. I see her from the corridor, through a
half open door. The girl can't be more than nine years old. On
her body can be seen three major wounds, on her head, shoulder
and leg. Another mother sits with her head in her hands, eyes
closed, in the darkest corner of the house. There is a very strong
odor, something like disinfectant. The woman rubs the white,
destroyed body with a white sheet soaking in spiced water. Everything
seems frozen for an instant, as if in a photograph. The ray of
light streams through the window, the only sign of life amid
so much death.
Traduccion Daniel Patrick Welch wpdanny@aol.com
Welch is a writer, singer and activist
living in Salem, MA with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde.
Together, they run The Greenhouse School . He has sung and recited
at recent antiwar events and was dubbed the 'singing poet' by
the Salem Evening News for his rendition of the stirring antiwar
classic "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" at a Poets
Against the War reading. Some of his articles and other 'fun
stuff' can be found at fringefolk.com/RFVD.html. Kurt Vonnegut,
in his recent interview comdemning much about how Americans are
taught to think (or not) suggested music as one of the few remaining
truly promising avenues for reaching people. Welch is available
for a limited number of engagements at antiwar events as scheduling
permits. He can be reached via return email or at wpdanny@aol.com
Today's
Features
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
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