[Peace-discuss] News notes 030413 (part 1 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

        Notes on the week's news from the "War on Terrorism"
        for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, April 13, 2003 --

        On this date in 1743 Thomas jefferson is born in Virginia.  "I
	tremble for my country when I reflect that Godf is just; that his
	justice cannot sleep forever..."

Then there was Safa Karim. She is 11 and she is dying. An American bomb
fragment struck her in the stomach and she is bleeding internally,
writhing on the bed with a massive bandage on her stomach and a tube down
her nose and - somehow most terrible of all - a series of four dirty
scarves that tie each of her wrists and ankles to the bed. She moans and
thrashes on the bed, fighting pain and imprisonment at the same time. A
relative said she is too ill to understand her fate. "She has been given
10 bottles of drugs and she has vomited them all up," he said. The man
opens the palms of his hands, the way Arabs do when they want to express
impotence. "What can we do?" they always say, but the man was silent. But
I'm glad. How, after all, could I ever tell him that Safa Karim must die
for 11 September, for George Bush's fantasies and Tony Blair's moral
certainty and for Mr Wolfowitz's dreams of "liberation" and for the
"democracy", which we are blasting our way through these people's lives to
create? [R. FISK, INDEPENDENT/UK 4/8/03]

THEME OF THE WEEK. Unless some miraculous conversion has taken place, for
which there is no particle of evidence, the US will move to establish in
Iraq the kind of "democracy" it has imposed in the regions under US
domination for a century: top-down forms of democracy run by narrow
sectors that are subordinated to "US interests" -- which doesn't mean the
interests of the population of the US.  Even the most ardent defenders of
US policies in the region concede that these are the consistent outcomes.
How they'll deal with [Iraqi demands for self-government] we'll have to
see -- though we shouldn't just watch: we can affect what happens,
materially. It's conceivable that enough internal activism within the US
could compel the administration to turn Iraq over to its own people. It's
even conceivable that such activism could raise the [US] leadership to the
elementary moral level of providing huge reparations to Iraqis for what
the US has done to them for the last 20 years. That's a long haul. The
same could be true with regard to the "backyard" [i.e., Latin America].
But it won't come by magic. [CHOMSKY]

[1] WHERE FROM HERE? Patrick Cockburn of the Independent writes that the
entry of American tanks into Baghdad will be the high point of its success
in Iraq, after which it will have trouble forming a stable and credible
government. Following a halting start, the US military has swept away
Iraqi forces with ease, suffering a minimum of casualties. But the
political aftermath will be more difficult. The US will be widely seen to
be imposing a government which lacks both international legitimacy and
support among Iraqis - many of whom, Cockburn writes, still blame it for
the earlier imposition of the Baathist regime. When US forces leave the
country, the Kurd, Shia, and Sunni factions will vie for power, drawing in
neighbouring Turkey, Iran, and Syria which all have an interest in the
outcome. Cockburn says prospects for postwar stability would be enhanced
by a massive infusion of US economic aid and transfer of the task of
political reconstruction to the UN, neither of which the Bush
administration is likely to do. [INDEPENDENT/UK 0408]

[2] THIS IS NOT FROM THE ONION. Rick Schmidt, founder of IHOG, the
International Hummer Owners Group, said: 'In my humble opinion ... it's a
symbol of what we all hold so dearly above all else, the fact we have the
freedom of choice, the freedom of happiness, the freedom of adventure and
discovery, and the ultimate freedom of expression. Those who deface a
Hummer in words or deed deface the American flag and what it stands for.'
'[The war in Iraq] definitely helps,' said Clotaire Rapaille, a consumer
research consultant for G.M. and other automakers. 'Put four stars on the
shoulder of the Hummer and it will sell better. The Hummer is a car in
uniform. [NYT 0405]

[3] THE UN-PROBLEM
 Blair said in Washington last month that the United
Nations should be "closely involved," and "should endorse any
post-conflict administration." Blair was voicing the general view of a
large number of U.S. allies in the war and its opponents, such as France,
Germany, and Russia. Franco Frattini, the foreign minister of Italy --
another U.S. ally -- said Sunday, "We're working to give the United
Nations a primary role, and not just in the humanitarian effort. Iraq must
be put in the hands of the Iraqis as quickly as possible." But there are
signs that the Bush administration itself is divided on the U.N.'s role.
Some sources say there is uncertainty in the administration over how to
approach the huge problem of rebuilding the shattered and demoralized
Iraqi nation. In the past few days U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
has said Washington had begun "a process of dialogue" with the United
Nations to agree on an "appropriate" role for the world body. And
presidential foreign policy adviser Condoleezza Rice declaring that a U.N.
role was not currently under discussion. Rice said the countries that had
shed blood in the conflict had earned the right to have the lead in
determining Iraq's future. U.S. plans for a post-Saddam Iraq, as explained
by senior officials, envision U.S. and coalition (in this case British)
forces remaining in Iraq to maintain security, with day-to-day affairs
administered by the newly created U.S. Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Aid. The office was established by the Defense Department and
is run by retired Army Gen. Jay Garner, who will report to Gen. Tommy
Franks, commander of the U.S.-led war. Administration officials have said
that the country will be divided into three "provinces" each with a U.S.
governor. One of the sticking points is that no one knows how long with
troops will remain in Iraq. The next phase is to appoint an interim
administration, which will be broad-based and include Iraqi exiles. The
administration will have no executive powers, but will gradually take over
responsibilities from Garner's office. The third and final phase will be
the election of some form of representative government. But, again, there
is not even a tentative target date for Iraq's emergence as a democratic
nation. Blair was involved in drafting this plan, but feels the
involvement of the United Nations should be an important component part.
He is believed to favor a U.N.-managed formula that mirrors the
Afghanistan formula. He would like the interim government to be
established by a U.N. conference on Iraq along the lines of the Afghan
conference in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001. Blair would like the new
political formula for democracy in Iraq to be endorsed by a Security
Council resolution. But Bush administration officials are still simmering
over the Security Council's refusal to endorse the war, and diplomatic
sources say the president will need a lot of persuading to seek Security
Council approval of the reconstruction. The sources say the administration
continues to maintain its distance from countries that opposed the war.
Last week, the State Department gave a top level briefing on the progress
of the war, including its reconstruction plans, and invited only the
ambassadors of the coalition of the willing -- the nations that supported
the war. Powell has said he could agree to an Iraq conference, but
Washington sources say Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his senior
civilian advisers would probably block even this move. [UPI 0407]

[4] WHO INVITED HIM? U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday that
he expected the United Nations to play an important role in rebuilding
Iraq after the war and said this would bring legitimacy to the effort.
[REUTERS 0407]

[5] WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT? The Supreme Court upheld a state ban on cross
burning, ruling Monday the history of racial intimidation attached to it
outweighs the free speech protection of Ku Klux Klansmen or others who
might use it. A burning cross is a particularly powerful instrument of
terror, and government should have the power to stamp out or punish its
use as a weapon of intimidation, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote. The
protections afforded by the First Amendment ``are not absolute,'' she
wrote. The court voted 6-3 to uphold the ban, but was more narrowly split
on the question of whether the law violates the constitutional guarantee
of free speech. Justice Clarence Thomas joined the majority on the broader
opinion but dissented in the 5-4 ruling that the law does not violate the
constitutional guarantee of free speech. Thomas, the court's only black
member, agreed cross burning is abhorrent but said the court didn't even
have to consider the First Amendment implications because a state have a
right to bar conduct it considers ``particularly vicious.'' ``Just as one
cannot burn down someone's house to make a political point and then seek
refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and
intimidate to make their point,'' he wrote. At issue was a 50-year-old
Virginia law that makes it a crime to burn a cross as an act of
intimidation. A lower court ruled the law muzzled free speech. ``While a
burning cross does not inevitably convey a message of intimidation, often
the cross burning intends that the recipients of the message fear for
their lives,'' O'Connor wrote. ``And when a cross burning is used to
intimidate, few if any messages are more powerful.'' O'Connor was joined
by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens,
Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer. Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David
Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented on free-speech grounds. ``The
symbolic act of burning a cross, without more, is consistent with both
intent to intimidate and intent to make an ideological statement free of
any aim to threaten,'' Souter noted. The Virginia law does not draw enough
of a distinction, especially since it explicitly calls cross-burning
``prima facia evidence'' of an intent to intimidate, Souter wrote for the
three. That provision ``has a very obvious significance as a mechanism for
bringing within the state's prohibition some expression that is doubtfully
threatening though certainly distateful.'' The Supreme Court historically
has been protective of First Amendment rights of unsavory or unpopular
groups and causes, including the Klan, flag-burners, pornographers and
strippers. More than a decade ago, the court struck down a local law in
St. Paul, Minn., that prohibited placing symbols including a burning cross
or a swastika on someone else's property out of racial, religious or other
bias. The cross-burning case in Virginia evoked a mostly bygone era in the
South, when ``nightriders'' set crosses ablaze as a symbol of intimidation
to blacks and civil rights sympathizers. Virginia and other states tried
to outlaw the practice, but the laws have run into trouble on free-speech
grounds. During oral arguments in the case in December, Thomas recalled
what he called a centurylong ``reign of terror'' by the Klan and other
white supremacy groups, and called the flaming cross ``unlike any symbol
in our society.'' ``The cross was a symbol of that reign of terror,''
Thomas said in apparent exasperation that a government lawyer was
providing only tepid, legalistic justification for the Virginia law. ``My
fear is ... that you're actually underestimating the symbolism of, and the
effect of, the cross, the burning cross,'' Thomas said. The moment was
electric, in part because Thomas almost never speaks during the court's
oral Arguments, and because of his race. The case began five years ago,
with two separate prosecutions. In one case, two white men in Virginia
Beach, Va., ended a night of partying by trying to burn a 4-foot cross in
the yard of a black neighbor, James Jubilee. Jubilee later moved his
family out of the neighborhood because of concern for their safety. In the
other case, a Pennsylvania man was convicted of burning a 30-foot cross on
private land in rural southern Virginia during a 1998 Klan rally. Lawyers
for Virginia told the court the Klan rally was held after whites became
angry about mixed-race couples. In addition to Virginia, anti-cross
burning laws are on the books in California, Connecticut, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state and the District of Columbia.
The case is Virginia v. Black, 01-1107. [GUARDIAN 0407]

[6] WE TRIED NOT TO KILL SO MANY PEOPLE. In the worst friendly fire
incident of the war so far, two US F-15 bombers killed 17 Kurdish and
American soldiers and a BBC translator yesterday when they mistakenly
attacked an Allied convoy in northern Iraq 
 The slaughter on the road
above Dibagah will reinforce doubts about the ability of US pilots and
ground controllers to accurately identify targets on the ground in a war
in which the Iraqi authorities say 1,253 civilians have been killed,
almost all by bombs and missiles. [CP 0407]

[7] NEVER MIND (I).  Human remains found inside a makeshift morgue in a
former artillery complex appeared to be soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq
war, not victims of atrocities as first reports suggested. Investigators
from the US 75th Exploitation Task Force arrived at the site north of
Zubayr on Sunday morning from their camp in northern Kuwait to investigate
initial descriptions which suggested the morgue was a centre for torture
and execution. But after just a few hours, Chief Warrant Officer Dan
Walters, the leader of the task force's Criminal Investigation Division
unit, said a preliminary examination of the remains of 408 men in 664 thin
wooden coffins and some of the thousands of pages of documents in a
building next to the warehouse suggested that atrocities had probably not
occurred there. Rather, he said, Iraqis had apparently been processing the
remains and preparing to exchange them with Iran. "Their wounds were
consistent with combat deaths, not executions," said Mr Walters. "So far,"
he added, "there are no indications that war crimes were committed here."
Outside the warehouse, a bullet-riddled wall also turned out to be less
than the initial reports had suggested. "A search of the area did not
reveal any evidence that the wall was used as a firing wall or an
execution wall," said Mr Walters. An estimated one million people were
killed in the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, which Saddam initiated against the
fledgling Iranian Islamic government, his first war as president. The
conflict ended in an uneasy truce. But Iraq claimed victory in the war,
which nearly bankrupted the government and paved the way for the invasion
of Kuwait in 1990. It was in the war with Iran that Saddam ordered the use
of poison gas against enemy forces for the first time, as he did against
Iraqi Kurds. But members of the forensic team examining the remains said
they had found no trace of chemicals or biological agents. Brigadier
General Mirfeisal Baqerzadeh, the head of Iran's search and recovery
committee of those missing in action, had said that the bodies were found
in recent months in joint recovery operations in Iran and southern Iraq,
but that the exchange had not taken place because of the American-led
invasion. Some early news reports by correspondents travelling with the
British forces who stumbled on the site on Saturday suggested that it had
been used for torture. But Captain Thomas Jagielski, who heads the war
crimes team, said the suspected "torture chambers" were apparently
makeshift offices separated by hastily erected mud-brick partitions. Here,
Iraqis had apparently documented the identities of the dead. About 85 per
cent of the dead were Iraqis, Mr Walters said. The rest are believed to be
Iranian. The men are believed to have been killed sometime in the
mid-1980s. Mr Walters said efforts would be made in the coming days and
weeks to return the remains to the families of the Iranians and Iraqis.
[IRAQWAR.RU 0408]

[8] NEVER MIND (II). A facility near Baghdad that a US officer had said
might finally be "smoking gun" evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons
production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas as feared. A
military intelligence officer for the US 101st Airborne Division's
aviation brigade, Captain Adam Mastrianni, told AFP that comprehensive
tests determined the presence of the pesticide compounds. Initial tests
had reportedly detected traces of sarin -- a powerful toxin that quickly
affects the nervous system -- after US soldiers guarding the facility near
Hindiyah, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, fell ill. Mastrianni
said: "They thought it was a nerve agent. That's what it tested. But it is
pesticide." He said a "theatre-level chemical testing team" made up of
biologists and chemists had finally disproved the preliminary field tests
results and established that pesticide was the substance involved.
Mastrianni added that sick soldiers, who had become nauseous, dizzy and
developed skin blotches, had all recovered. The turnaround was an
embarrassment for the US forces in the region, which had been quick to say
that they thought they had finally found the proof they have been actively
looking for that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. A spokesman
for the US army's 3rd Infantry Division, Major Ross Coffman, had told
journalists at Baghdad's airport that the site "could be a smoking gun".
"We are talking about finding a site of possible weapons of mass
destruction," he added. The fact that the coalition forces have come up
with no clear evidence of WMD after capturing much of Iraq in 19 days of
fighting has raised questions over the war's justification. [IRAQWAR.RU
0408]

[9] ATTACKING THE REAL ENEMY (I). Oakland police fired rubber bullets to
disperse about 750 anti-war demonstrators on Monday in what was believed
to be the first use of the projectiles against U.S. protesters since the
American-led war on Iraq began. Several people suffered minor injuries and
demonstrators complained that police overreacted because protesters had
simply blocked access to a firm they claimed was profiting from the war in
Iraq when police shot rubber bullets and wooden pellets into the crowd.
One man lifted up his shirt to show a welt about the size of a baseball,
and several were hit as they were moving from the scene, as evidenced by
large bruises on their backs. "I have been to many protests over the
years, and I have never seen police resort to shooting people because they
didn't like where they were standing," said Scott Fleming, 29, a lawyer
hit several times in the back. "They had loaded guns and started
charging." An Oakland police spokeswoman said officers warned before
firing. At least a dozen protesters were arrested. "We gave our dispersal
order, we gave them an order, we gave them ample time to disperse," said
police spokeswoman Danielle Ashford. "When we give our dispersal order,
that's pretty much it. (If) there are safety issues involved, that's when
we step in." 
 "This was not professional, to say the least," said Joel
Tena, a constituent liaison for Oakland's vice mayor. "I was afraid for
the safety of the protesters and concerned that a nonviolent protest had
turned violent at the hands of police." Susan Quinlan was hit with pellets
twice in the back. "I never heard any warning to disperse. They pursued us
and shot us as we walked away," she said. Leone Reinbold, a spokeswoman
for Direct Action to Stop the War which organized the protest, said she
saw a policeman run his motorcycle into one woman and another man get hit
with a rubber bullet "We weren't there to confront the police. We set up a
peaceful picket line," she said. "The worst injury was to the long,
tried-and-true tradition in this country of picketing." Jerry Drelling, a
spokesman for American President Lines, the company that was the object of
the protest, said it has some government contracts but declined to provide
details. He said no one at the firm had been injured. "The Oakland police
department managed to keep the ingress and egress open so that worked out
pretty well," he said. "We're trying to run a business and you want to
keep the gates open." At a separate demonstration, San Francisco police
detained about 20 protesters blocking the Federal Building. Several people
also briefly blocked one of the city's main highways. Anti-war activists
in the San Francisco area said they were resuming protest actions on
Monday after a period of relative quiet in a city famous for its history
of dissent. Police arrested more than 2,000 people in San Francisco in the
first two days of the war. Also on Monday, New York police arrested two or
three dozen people who blocked the entrance to the Manhattan building of
the Carlyle Group, a firm with a stake in the defense industry. [REUTERS
0407]

[10] ATTACKING THE REAL ENEMY (II). A federal jury convicted three Roman
Catholic nuns Monday of obstructing national defense and damaging
government property after they cut through fences and sprayed their own
blood on a Minuteman III missile silo last year. While the Dominican
sisters face up to 30 years in prison, federal prosecutors said they
expect terms closer to five to eight years. [DENVER POST]

[11] DEMS WIMP OUT (THAT'S NEWS?) Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry said last week we need regime change in this country. This week we
find out what he meant. Kerry campaign Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:
"Senator Kerry intended no disrespect or lack of support for our commander
in chief during wartime, and Senator Kerry is not criticizing the war
effort." (In 1997, he called for expanding NATO's no-fly zones to cripple
Iraq's air defenses, saying the Iraqi army was so weak that "even the
Italians" could defeat them.) [WASH TIMES 0408]

[12] CONTROL FOR CLASS. The latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll shows
that 77 percent of Americans say they support the decision to go to war
... Just 16 percent say they oppose having gone to war. The support is not
evenly distributed, however. More men support going to war than do women;
southerners are more likely to say they support the war than are
westerners 
 Roughly half or more of every demographic group measured now
supports the war. Opposition rises above one-third among only two groups:
African Americans and liberal Democrats 
 Whites are far more supportive
than are African-Americans 
 Viewed by age, the most ardent supporters of
the war are those between 45 and 54 [i.e., born in the '50s - post-Vietnam
generation]. [WP 0407] 

[13] CUI BONO? Two prominent US senators [sic] have asked the government
to investigate whether Halliburton, the construction company once headed
by Vice-President Dick Cheney, received special treatment from the Bush
administration when it was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in
defence department contracts over the past two years. They have also
requested a broader review of whether the administration has followed
federal procurement rules for pending contracts to rebuild postwar Iraq.
John Dingell, the ranking Democrat on the Senate energy and commerce
committee, and Henry Waxman, his counterpart on the government reform
committee, sent letters to the General Accounting Office, Congress'
independent auditing arm, about the matter earlier this week. Their
request comes as the US Agency for International Development is set to
award a contract valued at up to $600m (£387m, €565m) to repair roads,
bridges, power stations and other Iraqi infrastructure. The process has
raised controversy because USAid invited only a handful of well-connected
US companies to compete for the work. Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root
division last month was awarded an open-ended contract from the US army to
fight oil-well fires in Iraq without competition from other bidders.
Although the company is no longer a finalist for the rebuilding contract,
which is expected to go to Bechtel or Fluor, it will probably participate
as a subcontractor. Halliburton's involvement has drawn particular
scrutiny because its chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was Mr Cheney, who
still receives nearly $180,000 a year in deferred compensation from the
company. Mr Cheney has denied having any involvement in the contract
process. Still, the senators said the close ties between the
vice-president and the company raised concerns. "These concerns have
increased in recent days with the disclosure that Halliburton's subsidiary
Kellogg Brown & Root has been awarded lucrative defence department
contracts despite having a record of excessive costs and other problems,"
they wrote. They pointed to a prior GAO finding that Halliburton padded
government contracts, including an instance in Bosnia where it charged the
army $85.98 for plyboard sheets that cost $14.06. The company has also
been under investigation by the Justice Department for allegedly inflating
maintenance contracts at a military base in California. Halliburton denied
yesterday that it had received any special consideration. "With more than
60 years of government experience, Kellogg Brown & Root has a proven track
record," it said. Andrew Natsios, the head of USAid, said that federal
procurement rules required it to give preference to US companies for
government contracts. Mr Natsios also said that the bidders were limited
because of the need for special security clearances since the contracts
were tendered before the war had begun. But Mr Dingell and Mr Waxman
appeared to dismiss the explanation. "What, if any, national security
considerations were involved in light of the facts that the government's
contingency plans to invade Iraq were not secret and that these contracts
were announced while American troops were on the ground in Iraq?" [FT
0409]

[continued in part 2]