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Recent
Stories
July
3, 2003
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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July
4, 2003
Attack on a Shepherd's
House
Heavy
Reckoning in Qaim
By LISA WALSH THOMAS
"If the cause be not good, the king
himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together
at the latter day, and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some
swearing, some crying for a surgeon ..."
King Henry V
William Shakespeare
Shrouded in mystery and the usual secrecy that
brands the Bush Administration, the June attack on a shepherd's
house in Qaim, Iraq, a few miles from the Syrian border, appears
to have had a malleable, amoebic cause, if any. What matters
from a human standpoint is that after U.S. missiles slammed into
the house where people slept, a young woman named Hakima Khalil
and her infant daughter lay dead.
The deaths of Hakima Khalil and her infant
daughter, Maha, may be looked at as fuzzy numbers added to the
unknown thousands of Iraqi civilians killed since the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq began. OR, the young woman and her child may
be stacked somewhere under the heading of "heavy reckoning."
Other family members escaped death by sleeping on cots outside
to avoid the desert heat.
As of June 25, no one, to the best of
my knowledge, can give a reason why Hakima and Maha had to die.
There were missiles, then helicopters, some kind of skirmish
with guards at the Syrian border, a convoy of people still unidentified,
and the destruction of four more houses. According to first accounts,
the U.S. believed the sons of Saddam to be in the convoy. Within
hours, that rumor was amended to a statement that high level
Iraqis had been the target. According to the Washington Post
on June 24, the trucks, all bombed, seem to have been filled
with smugglers.
Qaim, five miles from the Syrian border,
is an area where sheep are often smuggled into Syria, where they
fetch a better price.
Was the mightiest military on earth seeking
sheep smugglers when the two-hour blitz on Qaim began? Or were
Hakima and Maha, along with their home and their neighbors' homes
and the sheep that provided livelihood for the villagers, simply
collateral damage from an attack on a convoy that MIGHT have
included high level Baathists? U.S. officials originally assessed
the attack as being on high level Iraqi officials, then backed
away from that explanation. When pressed, Captain Aaron Barreda
of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is quoted as saying, "The
bottom line is it's an ongoing operation." (according to
Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post Foreign Service)
An ongoing operation to what purpose?
Are we not asking the question loudly enough? Was it a part of
this "ongoing operation" to bomb the villagers' houses
in the process of killing a four-vehicle convoy that MIGHT have
held an unarmed, fleeing high level member of the now defunct
Iraqi government?
Apparently, not even the villagers know
the identity of all those killed (possibly murdered; we aren't
told if they were armed or not) in the four trucks. Word at the
beginning was that DNA testing would be performed, suggesting
that perhaps someone as noteworthy as Uday and Qusay Hussein
might have been the victims. Now, the story about high level
officials has quickly begun to die.
The account from the villagers varies.
Most say the actual attack lasted about two hours but that helicopters
continued to circle the village all night. Several villagers
escaped death by running out of their houses before they were
bombed. Two people who escaped the targeted convoy were identified
by villagers as local smugglers. One victim was identified as
Jumaa Abu Zaatir, a smuggler from the Abu Eissa tribe. There
is no evidence, as far as I know, to indicate that Jumaa Abu
Zaatir was a man posing danger to either the U.S. or the people
of Iraq, though he is as dead now as if he posed a threat to
the entire Mideast. His crime was smuggling a few sheep over
the border.
Was the targeting of Jumaa Abu Zaatir
of appropriate significance to cause the death of a young woman
and her child. Is a local smuggler eligible for Rumsfeld's next
deck of playing cards?
As the story evolved from that told by
witnesses, the focus began to shift to Syrian border guards wounded
by the U.S. and then either taken into custody or taken in for
medical treatment, depending on which news source is read.
One resident, Asfug Arrak, age 29, claims
that U.S. helicopters continued to circle overhead for two full
days after the attack and the killings. What was LEFT in this
desert village to warrant such careful observation? Does the
mystery even HAVE an answer?
Now, the bizarre tragedy has twisted
itself into a tale of a border skirmish between the U.S. and
Syrian border guards. Little is heard of the village houses and
sheep demolished, the men killed in the convoy, or -- as if they
are the least of the attack -- Hakima and Maha.
Today, June 25, Syria has officially
protested to Washington over what the U.S. admits to be a military
strike near the border (Inal Ersan, Reuters). Apparently, several
Syrian border guards were wounded, though it is still not clear
on which side of the border the damaging strikes were made. If
the U.S. fired upon the guards within Syrian territory, is it
simply a case of further international law being ignored? Law
from which the U.S. is exempt? Does it matter anymore?
According to the Syrian Arab New Agency
(SANA), Syria is demanding the return of its five soldiers seized
after the U.S. special forces attacked the convoy of vehicles
again being said to carry "aides of toppled Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein."
What we know is that the U.S. continues
to hold five Syrian patrol guards as they treat three of them
for wounds sustained in the attack. What we know is that Syria
wants their men returned.
It's hard to make a cohesive story of
these scattered facts, given the great discrepancy between U.S.
focus and the villagers' focus. Who WAS killed in the convoy?
Will this uncertainty lead us to raise the level of debate on
pre-emptive strike theories? When there is a possibility that
a black-hatted guy MAY be in the marketplace does the marketplace
become fair game for a cluster bomb?
Eventually these questions will have
to be answered. Somewhere, someone wants to know whether there
were dangerous terrorists in the convoy or whether they were,
as claimed by the villagers, sheep smugglers.
Is the U.S. military to be recorded as
failing to capture Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Mullah
Omar, and the sons of Saddam while succeeding with overkill in
getting sheep smugglers?
Lying sprawled among these questions
are the bodies of a young woman and her child. One American soldier
gets killed by a sniper's bullet and it causes a stir of sorrow
and anger. It makes the news. Two young people lie dead in the
desert, and their names are not duly noted.
Hakima Khalil and Maha Hakima Khalil
and Maha Hakima Khalil and Maha
Will George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld
remember their names this time next week? Do they even know their
names tonight? Will these two names scratch their way across
a conscience, across a blunder of an attack that probably caught
sheep smugglers instead of terrorists?
Hakima was twenty years old; Maha was
one year old; May they be remembered as human beings who enjoyed
a total of twenty-one years on earth, Insha Allah. A heavy reckoning,
"if the cause be not good."
Lisa Walsh Thomas is a lifelong writer
and human rights activist. Her second book, "The
Girl with Yellow Flowers in Her Hair," is now available
through Pitchfork Publishing. Lisa can be reached at: saavedra1979@yahoo.com
Weekend Edition
Features
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
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