October 2004

October 29, 2004

Hey, Hey, USA, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

About eighteen months ago, this blog considered the justification for the Iraq war that was at that time all the rage -- viz., that even though none of the Bush Administration's pre-war justifications had proven valid, the invasion was still justified, as the overthrow of Saddam's regime meant the saving of many Iraqi lives -- and found it seriously wanting, even on its own terms.

Looking back now, that post seems fairly tame: "somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed directly", "if the United States needs to forcibly put down the disquieted masses", "if a war against the U.S. occupation breaks out".

The Bush regime, in demonstrating that it won't ever set its standards too high, also trotted out the, "We're not as bad as Saddam," jargon as the Abu Ghraib scandal began to unfold.

Now, The Lancet has published the results of a house-to-house survey in Iraq, finding 100,000 more Iraqis "died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise".

"...violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces -- with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships."

It's not known how many Iraqis Saddam killed in his quarter-century in office, but some estimates have ranged up to 300,000 -- about 12,000 per year. His most heinous crimes, of course, committed while he was on friendly terms with the Reagan and Bush I Administrations.

So Bush II has managed to rack up one-third of Saddam's quarter-century total in just eighteen months' time.

It's well worth noting, too, that the Lancet survey studied the fifteen months prior to the war, and the eighteen months following the war. But UNICEF estimated, in 1998, that the U.S.-UK sanctions regime was killing 90,000 children per year -- and public health conditions in Iraq have actually worsened since the war.

So by not only initiating the war, but also in failing to address urgent sanitation, medical, and infrastructure needs; the Bush Administration actually killed about 200,000 people.

The Bush Administration is so chastened by this news that it's now preparing to "whack" the city of Fallujah.

Ah, but they're better off dead, right? It's okay, isn't it, to summarily execute suspected "terrorists" and "insurgents"? Yeah, apparently so. However, "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children."

Ah, but it's okay to whack nigger women and little nigger children, right? Yeah, apparently so.

October 28, 2004

Things That Go "Boom!"

Why is the story of the looted explosives at Qaqaa is even a story? What's new here? The U.S. military and the Bush administration have a long history of incompetence in protecting things that blow up.

** The U.S. didn't bother to guard Tuwaitha, Iraq's main nuclear facility. (This is kind of odd considering we were about to be engulfed in an Iraqi mushroom cloud.) CNN reported on May 8, 2003 that residents were emptying drums of yellowcake on the ground and using them to hold water. The IAEA said the looted material could be used by terrorists to create a "dirty bomb."

** More than a year ago, on October 14, 2003, the New York Times reported, "The two most recent suicide bombings here and virtually every other attack on American soldiers and Iraqis were carried out with explosives and materiel taken from Saddam Hussein's former weapons dumps, which are much larger than previously estimated and remain, for the most part, unguarded by American troops..."

** As recently as two weeks ago, a CNN headline read "Nuclear materials 'vanish' in Iraq", and inside says, "Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons have disappeared from Iraq, the chief of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog agency has warned."

So what's the big deal about an extra 380 tons of explosives that blow up our troops?

October 27, 2004

Still "Abusing" Prisoners

Non-Iraqi prisoners captured by U.S. forces on the Iraq battlefield are not entitled to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions, according to a recent legal opinion from the Justice Department.

In confirming the legal opinion first reported in The New York Times, Justice Department officials said the guidance is consistent with their previous position taken regarding battlefield detainees in Afghanistan.

"This administration has made it clear from the outset that members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not necessarily enjoy the protections of the Geneva Conventions," a senior Justice Department official said. "Al Qaeda members and other foreign terrorists in Iraq illegally would not be entitled to the Geneva Convention protections. That's consistent with our opinion on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Never mind, if you must, that by any definition imaginable the "Multinational Force" in Iraq is comprised of "foreign terrorists".

What happened to all of the, "This is not America," whinging which accompanied the Abu Ghraib photos? What happened to the, "This shows the nature of the enemy we are fighting," hot air which accompanies each new beheading?

And just what is torturing "enemy combatants" supposed to achieve? We already know it's of no useful intelligence value. We can't but assume that it will make it that much more unlikely that any American soldiers or civilians caputed somewhere in the world will be treated humanely.

So, besides being antithetical to any sort of moral compulsion, what is the fucking point of it all? Pure racist sadism? Are Ashcroft and Rumsfeld jerking off to all the photos of naked A-rabs piled up in mounds? This is, really, the only explanation that makes any sort of sense.

U.S. officials have acknowledged some prisoners were moved out of Iraq but refused to say where they were taken.

Safely out of the Supreme Court's Guantanamo-seeing eyes, presumably.

October 22, 2004

Most Bush Supporters Are Raging Ignoramuses

That may as well be the headline for the new study from the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

For Christ's sake:

72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%).

and:

75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found.

Can someone please explain how a sentient human being, even one whose only news source is Fox, still think Iraq had WMD?! That's nearly half of Bush supporters.

And here's one last gem highlighting how completely clueless these people are:

57% of Bush supporters assume that the majority of people in the world would favor Bush's reelection.

Puh-leeeeeze. In the unlikely event of a Bush loss on November 2, there is going to be a gigantic fucking world party.

October 14, 2004

Go The Distance

We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government-run health will lead to poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice.

Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.

So said George Bush during the third and final Presidential debate.

Okay. But if that's your "opinion", how if we apply the same logic to, I dunno, say, warfare?

Rather than letting some fat-assed chicken-hawked "officials" in "the nation's capital" make military decisions, let those doing the work make such decisions.

More importantly, so long as we're "privatising" more and more of warfare's "services", how if we do it correctly -- according to market theory?

In other words, rather than taxpayers footing the bill for private companies' operations in-theater, let the companies themselves "assume the risk" of doing business. That's the miracle of the market, right?

Halliburton wants to go to war in Iraq? Good, let Halliburton buy the fucking military machinery and materiel at "market prices". Let Halliburton hire the entire necessary soldiery at "market prices". Let Halliburton pony up a coupla hundred billion dollars to carry out the war's operations. Let Halliburton pay for so-called "externalities" (e.g., cleaning up environmental side-affects of manufacturing weapons and of making war). Let Halliburton pay "market rates" for access to the public's airwaves, that it may demonise a hapless leader in order to find willing takers for its plan to devastate a defenceless citizenry.

Let Halliburton lobby the United Nations for permission to invade sovereign countries. Let Halliburton assemble a "coalition of the willing" -- willing individuals considering the job to be worth the pay, not national soldiers compelled to go fight and die even when their home government's participation in a "coalition" is opposed by 90% of its population. Let Halliburton's CEO stand trial for war crimes. Let Halliburton pay reparations to the aggrieved country.

Once Halliburton has done all of this -- and rebuilt the Iraqi oil sector with its own money; while successfully "pacifying" the ungrateful niggers it's "liberated" from their homes, schools, occupations, and lives -- then, sure, let Halliburton reap whatever profits remain to be taken out of the Iraqi "market".

It is, after all, the American Way™.

October 12, 2004

Do As He Says, Not As He Does

"I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics." -- George W. Bush, during last week's debate

But:

The Bush administration plans to delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

"Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications" of a large-scale offensive, the official said. "We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."

October 07, 2004

Back To Fantasyland

Let's start off with the obligatory proviso that even if Saddam had maintained WMD stocks, facilities, and programmes -- which the Bush Administration knew full well, before the invasion, was not the case -- it would not have justified the Administration's brutal, barbarous attack upon the country's civilian population and infrastructure (including with its own banned weapons -- Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs, and Napalm).

That out of the way, we can get down to cases.

About a year ago, we were afforded a hearty chortle when, explaining away the dearth of WMD in Iraq, we were told that Saddam had "put in place a double-deception program aimed at convincing the world and his own people that he was more of a threat than he actually was."

The point of the "double-deception", we were told, was to deter an attack from the United States. The "bluff" was so elaborate, we were told, that Saddam had even issued "pre-war Iraqi communications collected by U.S. intelligence agencies indicating that Iraqi commanders...were given the authority to launch weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops as they advanced north from Kuwait."

Saddam, we were told, "may have misled the world", and "is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD programme as an elaborate bluff that backfired." [Emphases added.] No examples of these misleading and/or ambiguous statements were offered.

Fast-forward to today, and the release of the final status report acknowledging once and for all what Iraqi defectors and UN Inspectors had been telling us for some years -- Saddam abandoned his WMD dreams in the early '90s.

But, what about Colin Powell's fabulous presentation? What about the absolute certainty -- not only of existence, but of quantities and locations -- of the Bush Administration? Never mind that.

As he was a year ago, sneaky Saddam is to blame for pulling the wool over the world's (or at least the Stateside mainstream media's) eyes. This time, though, his deceptions weren't in attempt to deter a U.S. invasion, but to deter Iran. And instead of intercepted communications, we now have this knowledge thanks to interrogations of Saddam and his top commanders.

While "the report does not state explicitly whether Saddam himself has acknowledged that he engaged in a deception operation about these weapons before the war," we are again told by the New York and Los Angeles Times that Saddam "hid behind ambiguities and evasions about whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons" and that, "Although Saddam often denied U.S. assertions that he possessed WMD in defiance of UN resolutions, for years he also persisted in making cryptic public statements to perpetuate the myth that he possessed the banned weapons."

Alas, just like last year, no examples are given. So here's a request to everybody out there in readerland: If you know of any examples of Saddam's "double-deceptions" and "bluffing" (including especially any cited in the 1,000 page Duelfer report, which yours truly has not yet had time to peruse), could you pretty please with sugar on top link them up using the comments form? Would also like to see some evidence -- or even any speculation, prior to today -- that Saddam was in any way worried about an Iranian invasion.

This smells as ratty now as it did last year.

Speaking of stinking, the LA Times asks, "If Saddam understood he had no stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, why did he limit the activities of the United Nations inside Iraq, violate UN Security Council resolutions, and defy the outside world?" Surely the LA Times (as well as its mainstream media kinfolk) are by now well aware that, as Glen Rangwala put it in 2002:

In its October 1997 report, UNSCOM stated that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance" (Annex I, para.33). Even up to its final inspection report on 15 December 1998, UNSCOM was recording how "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation". Non-cooperation was recorded in only 5 out of 427 inspections in the round before inspectors were withdrawn on the request of the US; those 5 instances resulted in minor delays, not inspection refusals.

So enough of the "Saddam wouldn't let us in" crap, okay? And, you know, given that it's now been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Saddam's WMD were destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War, enough of the "he repeatedly violated Security Council Resolutions ordering him to disarm" crap, too. Okay?

Similarly,

On the one hand, Duelfer says, Saddam recognized the need to disarm to achieve relief from UN sanctions. On the other, he felt the need to retain such weapons as a deterrent.

"The regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach," Duelfer says.

Uh, he "never resolved" the "contradiction"? How about, he abandoned his WMD programmes in the early '90s, and never attempted to re-start them -- even though "relief from UN sanctions" was not forthcoming? Even after the Americans ordered inspectors withdrawn and started bombing? That ain't "resolution"?

Moving on to his highness. Dubya's reaction to the report is as follows:

The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil for food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.

Is this the best you can do, George? We're supposed to believe that, even if the sanctions regime (which would have been lifted in 1998 had the Clinton Administration not chosen to play political games with Iraqis' lives) had collapsed, the world would have "looked away"? That the United States would not have maintained its illegal, unilateral "no-fly zones" and several-times-weekly bombing runs? That periodic inspections could not have been continued indefinitely? (Not saying that the shrill attention paid to Saddam's supposed WMD arsenal while ignoring all others' wasn't supremely hypocritical. Just that Saddam's "systematic gaming" of "the system" could easily have been subverted, even had sanctions been lifted.)

What you can do: Find examples of Saddam's "ambiguous" and "cryptic" statements regarding his WMD programmes! Failing that, e-mail the New York Times and LA Times, demanding either examples from their archives, or retractions of their ass-kissing regurgitations of State Propaganda.

October 01, 2004

Telling It Like It Is

It's really an indictment of American media that we have to rely on a reporter's private email correspondence for an unvarnished view of what's happening in Iraq. Below I've reprinted Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi's email to friends that's all over the Web, if only for easy future reference. It's a must read. Why hasn't this some of this stuff been published in the Journal? There are at least 3-4 good stories here -- not just her opinions -- that haven't been reported anywhere. Damn liberal media. Read on:

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost."

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

-Farnaz