[Peace-discuss] News notes 030420

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes on the week's news from the "War on Terrorism" 
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, April 20, 2003 

-- the fourth anniversary of the second Columbine (Colorado) massacre. The
first occurred in 1927, when six miners were killed and 60 were injured
when state police fired into a 500-person rally during a strike at the
Columbine Coal Mine.  Also in Colorado, on this day in 1914, thugs
employed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. & other mine operators -- and sworn
into the State Militia just for the occasion -- attack a union tent camp
in Ludlow with machine guns, then set it afire.  Five men, two women & 12
children die as a result. The Cleveland Leader, echoing the sentiments of
much of the US press, wrote, "The charred bodies of two dozen women &
children show that Rockfeller knows how to win!"  Sounds familiar.

	<http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/calmast.htm> 

[1] THAT'LL SHOW 'EM. Israel said on Thursday [4/10] it hoped the fall of
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would teach the Palestinians the lesson
that they must instal new leaders and stop their uprising for independence

 Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz hammered home his government's wish
that the U.S.-led war on Iraq would not only eliminate one of Israel's
sworn enemies but chasten Palestinian militants into laying down their
arms. "I hope that in the era after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's
regime, the Palestinians will understand that the world has changed," he
told reporters 
 an Israeli political source said there was little doubt
that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was pleased that the rule of Saddam, one
of Israel's fiercest foes, was coming to an end. He said, however, Sharon
and aides "don't want to provoke (the Arab world) or annoy the Americans
right now" by trumpeting the link between Saddam's demise and Israeli
interests.

[2] THE SMELL OF MENDACITY. Britain and the United States have bypassed
the United Nations to establish a secret team of inspectors to resume the
search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a sign of the
desperation in London and Washington to find a "smoking gun" to justify
the war that the Anglo-American team has already conducted three
inspections in the past two weeks. No banned weapons have so far been
found. The decision to set up a new group of inspectors, dubbed US-movic
because they are an American-led rival to Unmovic, will infuriate the UN.
Kofi Annan, the secretary general, pointedly reminded Britain and the US
this week that Unmovic still has a mandate to carry out inspections. Last
night the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, added his criticism by
saying that war against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the
first shot was fired. In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix
accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating"
evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign. Mr Blix told the Spanish
daily El Pais: "There is evidence that this war was planned well in
advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the
[weapons] inspections." He said Iraq was paying "a very high price in
terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of
banned weapons could have been contained by UN inspections. The role
played by the new inspectors, who set up a base in Kuwait a week before
the war began, was disclosed to the Guardian by David Kay, the former head
of Unscom, the arms inspections team which left Iraq in 1998 after Iraq
accused it of being infiltrated by spies. No mention has been made of the
new group by ministers or military spokesmen, who have indicated that
weapons inspections are carried out by military forces. But the group,
headed by Charles Duelfer, a former deputy head of the Unscom weapons
inspectors, has travelled extensively in Iraq. It is understood that Mr
Duelfer's team was called in to inspect weapons and papers found at an
airbase in Iraq's western desert two weeks ago. In the past week it has
made two separate visits to sites on the road between Kuwait and Baghdad.
US and British special forces are also engaged in fierce exchanges in
largely unnoticed fighting in Qaim, a strategic town on the border with
Syria. British defence officials were unusually coy last night about the
fighting, which involved units of Iraq's Special Republican Guard,
according to senior US military sources. One explanation is that Iraqi
forces are trying to protect either material which could be used for
chemical or biological weapons or evidence of Iraq's attempts to develop a
nuclear bomb. Another is that they are defending senior members of the
regime trying to escape to Syria. The failure to find any weapons of mass
destruction after three weeks of war has raised questions about the casus
belli. But British intelligence officials said it might be months before
evidence was uncovered. A cabinet minister has told the Guardian that
Saddam Hussein's failure to use chemical weapons was not an indication of
their absence. They had been dismantled and their contents hidden around
the country. "The regime has not had time to reassemble the things," a
British official said. "You will not find a factory of gleaming missiles,"
a source said. "They would have been broken down ages ago." Mr Kay
described the new inspectors as a "robust group of people". "There are
special forces teams that carry out [immediate] inspections. But they are
not as technically based as the Kuwait team, who are heavily science-based
civilians." A spokesman for Mr Blix, Ewen Buchanan, said the US-led team
had tried and failed to recruit some of his staff. Paul Rogers, professor
of peace studies at Bradford University, said the existence of the secret
team would lead to a major dispute. "You are more likely to find what you
want if you do it yourself," he said. "If this team finds a smoking gun,
people will not believe it." The disclosure is likely to embarrass British
ministers, who are officially committed to allowing Unmovic a role. Adam
Ingram, the armed forces minister, would only say yesterday that Britain
and the US had set up a "machinery" for resuming inspections. "It may take
some time," he added
 [GUARDIAN 0412]

[3] MESSAGE FROM DAD? Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State
under George Bush Sr, told the BBC: "If George Bush [Jr] decided he was
going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last
in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that
now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away
with that sort of thing in this democracy." [INDEPENDENT/UK 0414]

[4] MURDERERS CHARGED. The parents of a British student shot in the head
by Israeli troops April 11 accused the Israeli government of "deliberate
recklessness". Tom Hurndall, 21, is in a critical condition in Bir Sheva
hospital and may be brain damaged after being shot by a sniper on Friday.
Hurndall, age 21, from Machester, England, had been standing between
Israeli troops and Palestinian children when Israeli soldiers opened fire,
according to a fellow activist from the International Solidarity Movement
who witnessed the scene. Hurndall was declared brain dead after arrival at
a Gaza hospital. Yesterday his father, Anthony Hurndall, 52, said: "The
Israeli government and the Israeli military will have something to answer.
There will be questions. I want to know what happened. I want it to be
brought to light." Speaking with his wife Jocelyn at home in north London,
before leaving for Israel, Mr Hurndall, a lawyer, referred to suspicions
that the Israeli army has begun targeting "human shields". "I think the
army is deliberately careless if not deliberately reckless as to who they
target," he said. Tom Hurndall is the third Western activist shield to be
seriously hurt in the last month. Rachel Corrie, from the US, was killed
by a bulldozer she was trying to prevent from moving last month. Brian
Avery, 24, an American, was shot in the face in the West Bank, in Jenin,
last week. [INDEPENDENT/UK 0413]

[5] THE POLLS - AND WHAT AMERICANS REALLY THINK. According to the latest
New York Times/CBS News Poll 
 a majority remains opposed to a policy of
pre-emptive attack like the one President Bush invoked in invading Iraq,
and see the White House, emboldened by its success, as now likely to turn
the nation's military might on North Korea, Syria or Iran 
 Bush's
"approval rating" [is] a figure that typically gyrates with changing times

 Americans are exactly divided, 42 percent to 42 percent, on which party
would do a better job in managing the economy 
 respondents expressed
concern about the decline of the economy under Mr. Bush 
 just 46 percent
said they approved of his handling of the economy 
 Bush's father, at a
similar point after the previous war in Iraq, also enjoyed relatively
favorable marks for his management of the economy. That perception, along
with his own approval rating - which was even higher than the figure
enjoyed today by his son - swiftly deteriorated as images of the war were
supplanted by concerns about a troubled economy 
 About 6 in 10 said they
thought it was very likely or somewhat likely that the success of the war
in Iraq would prompt the United States to intervene in Korea or Syria,
while 3 in 10 said it was not very likely. Half foresaw a very or somewhat
likely military intervention in Iran 
 a majority of Americans said future
interventions should be done as part of an international coalition. And
while most Americans said that the United States had the responsibility to
ensure that a new government is put in place in Iraq - and to police the
country to guard against looting - they said the rebuilding effort should
be led by an international coalition. Two-thirds of respondents said the
United Nations, rather than the United States, should have lead
responsibility in rebuilding Iraq. And the nation has yet to embrace the
tactical doctrine of pre-emption Mr. Bush advanced to justify the war in
Iraq and, potentially, an invasion of Syria, North Korea or Iran. For
example, 51 percent said the United States should not invade another
nation unless it was attacked first. And 48 percent said it was wrong for
the United States to try to change a dictatorship to a democracy 
 among
Americans who said they believed another country posed a serious threat to
the United States, North Korea was of far more concern than Syria: 39
percent of those respondents named North Korea, compared to just 5 percent
who cited Syria. One percent named Iran 
 81 percent of respondents said
that Iraq probably had weapons of mass destruction, and of those in that
group, 27 percent said they believed the weapons had been spirited off to
another country
 [NYT 0415]

[6] YOU CAN DO ANYTHING WITH AMERICANS IF YOU SCARE THEM. Ina Urness, 71,
of Higginsville, Mo., said in a follow-up interview that she approved of
the administration's moving pre-emptively against nations that posed a
threat to the United States. "We ought to nip it right in the bud, because
it's better them than us," she said. "Get over there and get them before
they can have a chance to turn those missiles loose on us over here." [NYT
0415]

[7] YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITH ARABS IF YOU KILL THEM. At least 10 people
were shot dead and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, a
hospital doctor said, with witnesses claiming US troops had opened fire on
a crowd after it turned against an American-installed local governor 

Three witnesses questioned by AFP and casualties who spoke to hospital
staff said US troops had fired on the crowd, which was becoming
increasingly hostile towards Governor Mashaan al-Juburi as he was making a
pro-US speech 
 "We didn't fire at the crowd, but at the top of the
building," the [US] spokesman added. "There were at least two gunmen. I
don't know if they were killed. The firing was not intensive but sporadic,
and lasted up to two minutes. A man who said he was a witness told a
different story. "We were at the market place near the government
building, where Juburi was making a speech," said Marwan Mohammed, 50. "He
said everything would be restored, water, electricity, and that democracy
was the Americans. "As for the Americans, they were going through the
crowd with their flag. They placed themselves between the civilians and
the building. "The people moved toward the government building, the
children threw stones, the Americans started firing. Then they prevented
the people from recovering the bodies," he told AFP. At the hospital,
where angry relatives of the dead and wounded voiced hatred of Americans
and Westerners, a doctor gave a similar account from patients. "Juburi
said the people must cooperate with the United States. The crowd called
him a liar, and tempers rose as he continued to talk. They threw objects
at him, overturned his car which exploded," said Dr. Said Altah. "The
wounded said Juburi asked the Americans to fire," he said. Ayad Hassun,
37, another witness, said the trouble broke out after the crowd
interrupted Juburi's speech with cries of, "There is no God but God and
Mohammed is his prophet." "You are with Saddam's Fedayeen," retorted
Juburi, to which the crowd chanted that "the only democracy is to make the
Americans leave." He explained that 20 US soldiers escorted Juburi, an
opposition leader installed as Mosul governor, back into the building as
the situation ran out of control with the crowd's protests growing louder.
"They (the soldiers) climbed on top of the building and first fired at a
building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People
started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them," Hassun said.
"Dozens of people fell," said the witness, whose own shirt was
blood-stained. According to a third witness, Abdulrahman Ali, a
49-year-old labourer, the American soldiers opened fire when they saw the
crowd running at the government building. A few hours after the incident,
the building was guarded by US troops as an angry crowd was kept 100
metres (yards) away. In an interview Monday, Juburi said a deal with local
Arab tribal chiefs saw most of Saddam Hussein's forces peacefully put down
their arms and disband in Mosul, which fell to US control last Friday.
Juburi, head of the Damascus-based Patriotic Iraqi Party, said he had
regularly addressed Mosul's residents over radio and television before
entering the mostly Arab city with Kurdish forces. "Every day, I said I
would threaten no one's security, whether they were a member of the Baath
Party, intelligence, police or supporters of Saddam. Mosul residents trust
my family," he said. [AFP 0415]

[8] BARBARIANS AT THE GATES. The coalition forces were guarding the Iraqi
Oil Ministry building while hundreds of Iraqis ransacked and ran off with
precious heirlooms and artifacts from a 7,000-year-old civilization. Rummy
blew off the repeated requests of scholars and archaeologists that the
soldiers must protect Iraqi history in the museum as zealously as they
protected Iraqi wealth in the oil wells. The secretary of defense made it
clear yesterday that he was not too worried about a few old pots in the
big scheme of things. He said it was "a stretch" to attribute the looting
of the museum to "a defect" in the war plan. "We've seen looting in this
country," he said at the Pentagon briefing. "We've seen riots at soccer
games in various countries around the world. . . . To the extent it
happens in a war zone, it's difficult to stop." The government should have
taken 20 seconds, when it was awarding the Halliburton contract, to
protect the art, the books and the hospital supplies. Even when they had
the museum as an awful example, the war planners let more of Iraq's
priceless intellectual history be destroyed, as looters and arsonists
ransacked and gutted the National Library. [DOWD, NYT 0415]

[9] BODYGUARD OF LIES. Just as [the Americans] failed to capture the most
brutal of the Bosnian Serb murderers, Messrs Karadjic and Mladic, so they
failed to find Osama bin Laden - or even Mullah Omar - and, given the
failure of American intelligence in Baghdad, it wouldn't be that
surprising if the whole of the Iraqi Cabinet managed to pass safely
through an American checkpoint in an orange pantechnicon. But it's Syria
that is being lined up for attack next, not the Saddam Cabinet. And the
signs were clear long ago. Take the article in The New York Times by Larry
Collins - joint author with Dominique Lapierre of O Jerusalem! - which
last month announced that the Syrian-supported Hizbollah resistance in
Lebanon had 10,000 missiles that could fly to Tel Aviv and "leave in their
wake devastation more terrible than anything Israel has ever known". The
missiles are a myth - I travel the roads of southern Lebanon every two
weeks and there are no such missiles, as the UN force there will confirm -
but this doesn't matter. And then it will be Libya who has the most
sophisticated C-B weapons. Or Saudi Arabia. Or anyone else Israel wants
attacked. [FISK, INDEPENDENT 0415]

[10] WHAT WOULD THEY BE DOING THERE? The United States has apparently
began a major military build-up along Iraq's western borders with Syria,
the [German] daily Bild cited confidential remarks by an unidentified US
general. New American troop contingents and heavy military hardware,
including A-10 fighter planes, M1 'Abrams' tanks, 'Apache' combat
helicopters and massive bomb arsenals, have been secretly deployed in the
Iraqi town of Ar-Rutbah . [INRA 0414]

[11] WE KNOW NAZIS. Unlike French President Jacques Chirac, German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has no plans to phone President George W Bush
in a bid to mend relations with Washington, government spokesperson said
on Wednesday 
 Schroeder's split with Bush dates to an announcement during
last September's German general election campaign that Germany would not
support a US-led war against Iraq. Bush pointedly did not phone to
congratulate Schroeder on his victory in the September 22 general
election. [SAPA-DPA] 

[12] FROM AN EARLIER LIBERATION. The amounts of pesticide sprays like
Agent Orange used during the Vietnam war have been largely underestimated,
according to a US study to appear in the British journal Nature. From 1961
to 1971, the US and South Vietnamese armies sprayed millions of liters of
toxic herbicides, mainly Agent Orange, to destroy the dense tropical
forests that served as camouflage for their adversaries. The chemicals,
which contained high levels of dioxins, built up in the food chain, and
according to the Vietnamese Red Cross, more than a million people still
suffer from the ill effects of the spraying missions. After combing
through data compiled by the US military on the use of these sprays, US
researcher Jeanne Mager Stellman and her colleagues have concluded that
the amounts used are at least 10 percent higher than originally thought.
"We located more than seven million more liters of spray, or about 10
percent more," said Stellman, a researcher at Columbia University in New
York. "What makes these 10 percent particularly significant is that they
were of the most heavily contaminated herbicides," she told AFP. According
to the study, the extent of the distribution of the pesticides at the
start of the Vietnam war was underestimated, with some 1.9 million liters
used between 1962 and 1965. The chemicals spread in the early stages of
the conflict were more concentrated and hence more dangerous than those
used later on, the study revealed. The study also gives more complete data
about where the pesticides were spread which could help serve as the
foundation for follow-up epidemiological studies on the long-term health
effects of the agents, the authors wrote. As many as 4.8 million people
could have been present during the spraying of the affected villages and
hamlets, the researchers noted. [AFP]

[13] SECURITY FOR US ARMS COMPANIES. Poland has signed a multi-billion
dollar contract to buy 48 American fighter planes. It is the biggest
defence contract signed by a former Soviet bloc country since the end of
the Cold War. The purchase of the US Lockheed Martin F-16s was agreed in
the presence of the country's Prime Minister Leszek Miller in the town of
Deblin, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Warsaw, on Friday. The $3.5bn
deal reportedly involves a compensatory investment programme and loans for
Poland worth over $12bn. "It's the contract of the century," said Polish
Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski at the signing ceremony. The French
AFP news agency says he described the deal as a "strengthening of
strategic links with the US". The package underlines the strong ties that
exist between the US and Poland, reinforced in recent months by Warsaw's
support for the war in Iraq. Poland needs the planes to meet the standards
of Nato, which it joined in 1999. Apart from the aircraft, the contract
covers spare engines, missiles and bombs - as well as training for Polish
pilots. Deliveries of the planes are to start in 2006. US and European
defence companies competed heavily for the contract. The British-Swedish
consortium BAE Systems-Saab which produces the Jas-39 Gripen, and France's
Dassault Aviation which makes Mirage 2000-5 also took part in the bidding.
Investments confirmed on Friday included a project by General Motors to
upgrade its Polish plant, which GM earlier said would raise annual exports
by $200m to about $600m, reports Reuters. Polish software firms
Computerland and Prokom are also part of the offset deal, but details and
actual investment figures have not yet been made public. Political leaders
in Poland are hoping the deals will create jobs and boost the country's
sluggish economy, which grew by only 1% last year. [BBC 0418]

[14] SECURITY FOR US CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES. The Bush administration
awarded the Bechtel Group of San Francisco the first major contract today
in a vast reconstruction plan for Iraq that assigns no position of
authority to the United Nations or Europe. The contract, which was awarded
by the United States Agency for International Development, had set off a
heated contest among some of the nation's most politically connected
construction concerns. The award will initially pay Bechtel, a closely
held San Francisco company that posted $11.6 billion in revenue last year,
$34.6 million and could go up to $680 million over 18 months. But those
amounts could be only a fraction of what it costs to rebuild Iraq's
airports, water and electric-power systems, roads and railroads. The
reconstruction of Iraq, a task that experts have said could cost $25
billion to $100 billion 
 "We don't see the need for a U.N. operation at
all - the Iraqi interim authority will be the equivalent of a civilian
U.N. administration," said the senior administration official. As the
administration sketches out its postwar Iraqi plans, officials say that
the World Bank eventually can act as the neutral international body that
will be the accountant for oil revenues, replacing the United Nations,
which has overseen the oil-for-food program. This would require the
creation of an Iraqi authority that is accepted by other nations and
international organizations, including the United Nations. It would also
mean lifting United Nations sanctions, as proposed by President Bush on
Wednesday, and unfreezing Iraqi assets 
 The finalists had come down to
Bechtel, which rebuilt Kuwaiti oil fields after the 1991 Persian Gulf war,
and a bid from the Parsons Corporation, an employee-owned company in
Pasadena, Calif., which is one of Bechtel's largest rivals and which
performed extensive postwar reconstruction work in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Parsons's bid included a major role as a subcontractor for Halliburton's
Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary, but Halliburton never bid on the work as
a prime contractor. Other companies invited to bid included the Fluor
Corporation, the Louis Berger Group and Washington Group International 

The contract is one of several that had drawn criticism from lawmakers,
including Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and John D.
Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrats on the Government Reform and
Energy and Commerce committees. The lawmakers had demanded an
investigation by the General Accounting Office into how the contracts were
awarded 
 Just this week, the United States Army Corps of Engineers said
it would send out for competitive bids on a new contract to fight
continuing oil field fires and rebuild Iraqi oil fields, a job initially
awarded to Halliburton in a separate contract without seeking any other
bids. Halliburton is giant Texas company that had been run by Vice
President Dick Cheney until he quit to run for vice president. [NYT 0418]

[15] WHAT SHOULD LIBERALS DO? At the Brecht Forum event in NYC the other
night on civil liberties after 9/11, Ira Glasser, former director of the
ACLU and current NYCLU director Donna Lieberman both agreed that liberals
had too long relied on courts to protect freedom of speech and assembly,
and not enough on popular action. Glasser pointed out that historically
the courts have rarely been friends of free expression; there was that
great exception during the era of the Warren court, but that time is long
gone. And Lieberman pointed out that the reason that New York City
relented and gave a permit for the 3/22 peace march was that a couple of
hundred thousand people ignored the city's refusal to issue a permit for
the 2/15 demo and marched anyway. So it sounds like they'll be relying
more on popular agitation and less on litigation than they used to (which
is how the ACLU, founded in the wake of the Palmer raids, got going 80
years ago).

[16] IT WORKS HERE.  The Bush administration took over Iraqi state
television yesterday, replacing tributes to Saddam Hussein with
conciliatory greetings from President Bush, the Pentagon and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair. U.S. officials said that within days, they hope to
open a second television channel in Iraq featuring subtitled versions of
the three major networks' evening newscasts, as well as PBS's "The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and Fox News Channel's hour-long politics show,
"Special Report With Brit Hume." [A friend comments, "Apparently, after
several days of viewing Fox News broadcasts across Iraq, Iraqis are
already agitating for a new regime that will kick black mothers off
welfare and eliminate the 'double taxation' on investment."] [WP 0411]

[17] SOME PEOPLE CAN'T TALK. Less than 24 hours after issuing a press
release highlighting the failures of the U.S. military's attempts to
oversee humanitarian intervention in Iraq, Voices in the Wilderness was
banned from meeting with the U.S. Civil Military Operations Center, or
with international journalists working out of the Palestine Hotel in
Baghdad. [VITW 0417]

[18] OTHERWISE OCCUPIED. Foreign ministers from the six countries that
border Iraq held a summit in Saudi Arabia. They denounced U.S. occupation
of Iraq and warned that U.S. threats against Syria would, in the words of
the Saudi minister, "lead to a vicious cycle of wars and turmoil." [WP
0419] The Arab press is now cultivating the idea that "if chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons are found in Iraq, it will be because the
American military planted them there." [NYT 0419]

[19] LIMITS TO DEMOCRACY. A Friday protest by Muslims on the streets of
Baghdad included Shiites and Sunnis with the message, "Out with U.S.
troops." [ALL] Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to Bush I, just
repeated the obvious: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an
election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We're
surely not going to let them take over."

[20] WHAT THE "WAR" WAS ABOUT. The New York Times leads Sunday with a
report that the Pentagon wants to keep four military bases in Iraq even
after it installs a local government there, projecting "American influence
into the heart of the unsettled region." [NYT 0420]

[21] WHAT THE "WAR" WAS ABOUT (II). In what Sam Smith of the Progressive
Review <prorev.com> calls "the poodle press," both the Washington Post
("Rumsfeld Stands Tall After Iraq Victory") and the NY Times ("After The
War, New Stature For Rumsfeld") run 2,000-word articles on Sunday on just
how powerful Donald Rumsfeld has become. [SLATE]

[22] WHAT WE WERE ABOUT, ACCORDING TO SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES: "Antiwar
Movement Tries to Find a Meaningful Message 
 Throughout the war, these
organizers worked hard to stay in harmony - if not quite in tune - with
the American public, emphasizing that this peace movement is patriotic and
mainstream. After violent [sic] protests at the beginning of the war
angered officials in several cities, they emphasized the civil in civil
disobedience. Now again, the challenge is to find a message that
resonates
"

[23] MEMORY HOLE. Roger Morris, a former State Department foreign service
officer who was on the NSC staff during the Johnson and Nixon
administrations, says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the
darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam
Hussein firmly on the path to power. Morris says that in 1963, two years
after the ill-fated U.S. attempt at overthrow in Cuba known as the Bay of
Pigs, the CIA helped organize a bloody coup in Iraq that deposed the
Soviet-leaning government of Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem.  [The CIA had tried
to assassinate Kassem in 1960 by sending the Iraqi leader a poisoned
monogrammed handkerchief.] 
 In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a
palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his
ambitious protégé in 1979. "It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived
by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really
primary," Morris says. He regards Saddam as a deposed U.S. client in the
mold of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and former Panamanian
dictator Manuel Noriega. [REUTERS 0420]

[24] WHAT AMERICANS ARE THINKING. Beneath the uniformity of a US media
high on victory in Iraq, a wave of books of a heretical flavor is flooding
the bestseller lists. At number five in the New York Times bestsellers and
climbing Amazon's chart is The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a collection
of essays by journalist Greg Palast, one of a triad known as the 'Angry
White Men' - a play on the title at number six in the chart, Stupid White
Men by film director Michael Moore, with 500,000 sales. The third in the
'axis of anti' is Noam Chomsky, whose controversial 9/11 - in which he
calls America 'a leading terrorist state' - has 205,000 copies in print.
The books are comfortably outselling titles which might seem at first to
better reflect the zeitgeist, such as Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia
Supports the New Global Terrorism and similar. [OBSERVER/UK 0420]

[25] REPEL THE DANGER THAT PEACE MAY BREAK OUT. Five Palestinians and an
Israeli soldier were killed in a major Israeli tank raid into the southern
Gaza Strip town of Rafah., a raid by more than 30 tanks and armoured troop
carriers backed by helicopter gunships 
 The Palestinian leadership
slammed the deadly raid as a deliberate attempt to undermine a promised
new peace push by the international community now that the Iraq war is all
but over. [AFP 0420]

  ==============================================================
  Carl Estabrook
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
  office: 217.244.4105 mobile: 217.369.5471 home: 217.359.9466
  <www.carlforcongress.org>
  ===============================================================