[Peace-discuss] News notes 040523

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes from last week's "war on terrorism" -- prepared
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, May 23, 2004.
	(Sources indicated at end; caps are my comments.)

Like blood from a wound through clothing, the stain of the torture scandal
spread through the USG this week, outlining corruption in all is organs.
Torture, murder, rape and humiliation are revealed as policy from
Guantanamo to Kandahar and at secret CIA prisons around the world.
Meanwhile our chief magistrate, half lethal clown and half condign
successor to Caligula, prepares to assure us in a speech tomorrow night
(from a secure, military location) that all is in order. [CGE]

TO TAKE AN EXAMPLE ALMOST AT RANDOM OF AMERICAN PRISON MURDERS. "The
deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who
was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon
report. Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated
after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another
detainee died 'while undergoing stress technique interrogation,' involving
smothering and 'chest compressions,' according to the documents." [DENVER
POST 5/19]

RUMSFELD (WHO'S SAID, "I'm not going to address the 'torture' word") HAS
COME UP WITH A RESPONSE.  Mobile phones fitted with digital cameras have
been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Business newspaper reported today. Quoting
a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that
some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib
prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones. "Digital cameras,
camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military
compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US
military" is in the works. Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse,
which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were
published on Friday in the Washington Post newspaper. The photos emerged
along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they
were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to
eat food from toilets. [NEWS.COM.AU 5/23]

WHO MAKES THESE DECISIONS? The NYT reports Sunday that after being
presented with a catalog of the abuses at Abu Ghraib last fall, the U.S.
military asserted that many of the prisoners were not entitled to the full
protections of the Geneva Convention. [SLATE]

ELSEWHERE this week, the murder of children, for which we are responsible,
was partularly noticeable.  The US killed kids at a wedding party in
western Iraq, claiming they were terrorists, and our Israeli clients fired
into an unarmed crowd of protesters in the midst of Israelis occupation
forces' sack of the city of Rafah, which has killed dozens. The demolition
of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip [resembled] actions the Nazis took
against Jews during World War II.  [The comparison is not mine but that of
Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, [who said] a
picture of an old Palestinian woman on the rubble of her home reminded him
"of my grandmother in the Holocaust."] [CGE]

HOW WE'RE FIGHTING THE WAR: MAKR AL-DEEB MASSACRE. The bombing started at
3am on Wednesday. The villagers from the tiny desert community of Makr
al-Deeb were fast asleep, exhausted after a day spent celebrating a
wedding. By the time the bombing had stopped and the advancing GIs had
finished marauding and shooting their way through the remains of the
village, the Americans had killed at least 42 innocent people. Among the
dead were 27 members of the Rakat family who were celebrating a double
family wedding. Many of their guests died as well, as did the band of
musicians who played throughout the wedding and one of Iraq’s most
popular singers, Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi. One of the few people to live
through the night was Haleema Shihab, the sister-in-law of the groom. She
described to reporters from her hospital bed how she was sleeping in bed
with her husband and children in the Rakat family villa when the bombs
started to fall.  "We went out of the house and American soldiers started
to shoot at us," she said.  "They were shooting low on the ground and
targeting us one by one."  Picking up her youngest child in her arms, with
two of her sons running at her side, she was hit by shrapnel from a shell
that landed nearby fracturing her legs. Her two boys were dead on the
ground beside her and as she lay next to them she was wounded again when
another round hit her in the arm. One of her children had been
decapitated.  "I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked
me," she said.  "I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My
youngest child was alive next to me."  Not long before daybreak, Shihab
saw GIs reduce the home of the Rakat family and the house next door to a
pile of rubble. When a relative carried her and her surviving child to
hospital, she learned that her husband Mohammed, had also died. Mohammed
was the eldest son of the Rakat family. One witness, Dahham Harraj, said:
"This was a wedding and the planes came and attacked the people at a
house. Is this the democracy and freedom that Bush has brought us?"  An
unnamed witness said that bombs fell on the village one after another and
three houses with the guests inside were hit.  "They fired as if there
were an armoured brigade inside not a wedding party."  A third witness
said: "The US military planes came and started killing everyone in the
house."  One of the causes for the mass killings is likely to have been
the failure by US forces to understand Iraqi culture. At weddings, many
Iraqis fire guns into the air as a sign of celebration. The Americans may
have misinterpreted what was happening and sent in their bombers and
infantry without pausing for thought. If they had stopped to think they
might have remembered an incident two years ago when 48 innocent Afghanis
celebrating a wedding were blown to bits by US jets. Another 100 were
injured. That time too, the guests had fired guns into the air to
celebrate the bride and groom. Ma'athi Nawaaf, a neighbour of the Rakats
whose daughter and grand children died in the attack, said: "We were happy
because of the wedding. People were dancing and making speeches."  After
the ceremony, guests heard jets and saw a military convoy approaching.  
"The first thing they bombed was the tent for the ceremony," Nawaf said.  
"We saw the family running out of the house. The bombs were falling
destroying the whole area."  Armoured personnel carriers then drove into
Makr al-Deeb, firing machine guns and backed up by helicopters.  "They
started to shoot at the house and the people outside the house," Nawaf
added. Chinooks later landed and dozens of troops charged out. Explosives
were set in the Rakat house and minutes later it and a neighbouring home
were a pile of smouldering rubble.  "I saw something that nobody ever saw
in this world," Nawaf went on.  "There were children's bodies cut into
pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces." Nawaf found his
grandson dead in his daughter's arms.  "The other boy was lying beside
her," he said.  "I found only his head. The Americans call these people
foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what
they are saying."  In the al-Qaim general hospital, Dr Hamdi Noor al-Alusi
said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children.  "I want to know why
the Americans targeted this small village. These people are my patients. I
know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?"  In the face of
such overwhelming evidence that they had killed innocent revellers, the US
stubbornly insisted that the raid was against a "suspected foreign fighter
safe house". A statement even claimed that "during the operation,
coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was
provided."  Brigadier Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the
US military in Iraq, said: "We took ground fire and we returned fire. We
estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of
engagement." Television footage showed a truck filled with bodies killed
in the attack. Men were seen lifting the bodies from the truck, wrapped in
blankets, and taking them to the desert for burial in deep pits. The
corpse of a little girl of six was seen wrapped in a white shawl. Other
bodies were shown with horrific injuries. Showing an astonishing arrogance
and lack of understanding for the culture or geography of the country his
men are occupying, Major-General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine
Division, mocked anyone who claimed his troops had massacred innocent
Iraqis.  "How many people go into the middle of desert to hold a wedding
80 miles from the nearest civilisation?" he said.  "These were more than
two dozen military-aged males. Makr al-Deeb has been a village for a long
time. Before the attack it had around two dozen homes. When Mattis was
asked about TV images of a dead child, he said he had not seen the
pictures and did not have to justify the actions of his men ...
Inevitably, the massacre at Makr al-Deeb -- taken with the US onslaught at
Fallujah which claimed hundreds of Iraqi lives and the on-going horror of
the torture, rape and killing of prisoners in US custody in jails like
Baghdad's Abu Ghraib -- erodes the moral foundations of the US invasion
down to next to nothing. The Arab media completely discounted the US
version of events, describing it as a "savage massacre". And the suffering
of the people of Makr al-Deeb will only fuel the resistance against the
occupying forces. Not far from where the victims lay buried, Ahmed Saleh
said: "For each one of those graves, we will get 10 Americans." [Sunday
Herald/UK 5/22]

COMMENT FROM BAGHDAD. "Of course not -- it couldn't have been a wedding
party. It was a resistance cell of women and children (one deviously
dressed in a wedding gown!). It wasn't a wedding party just as mosques
aren't mosques and hospitals are never hospitals when they are bombed.
Celebrating women and children are not civilians. 'Contractors' traveling
with the American army to torture and kill Iraqis ARE civilians. CIA
personnel are 'civilians' and the people who planned and executed the war
are all civilians. We're not civilians -- we are insurgents, criminals and
potential collateral damage." [riverbend 5/22]

IRAQ, THE "FRONT LINE ON THE WAR ON TERROR"? There were big demonstrations
Friday throughout the Shiite world, including Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran and
Pakistan, against continued US fighting in Karbala, a key holy city for
Shiite Muslims ... There is some danger of joint US and Israeli policies
re-radicalizing Lebanese Shiites, and making the more militant Hizbullah
more popular than the sedate AMAL. All you have to do is fire helicopter
gunship missiles into civilian crowds in Gaza and then bombard Karbala,
and somehow it mysteriously angers a lot of Lebanese Shiites. In Iran, as
well, of course US military action in the holy shrine cities is a gift to
the hardliners. The latter have long tried to paint the reformists who
want more democracy as traitors in cahoots with America to destroy Shiite
Islam and Iranian culture. I said the other day I thought Bush was pushing
Europe to the left with his policies. I think he is at the same time
pushing the Shiite world to the radical Right, and I fear my grandchildren
will still be reaping the whirlwind that George W. Bush is sowing in the
city of Imam Husain. I concluded in early April that Bush had lost Iraq.
He has by now lost the entire Muslim world. [JUAN COLE 5/22]

WE CAN'T EVEN KEEP THE POODLE IN LINE. [In Britain] a leaked government
memo which revealed deep misgivings about America's "heavy-handed" tactics
... The damning document, produced by a team working for Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw, disclosed private reservations within Tony Blair's
administration about Washington's approach to the post-war occupation ...
"We should not underestimate the present difficulties," the document
states ... "Heavy-handed US military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf some
weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shi'ite opposition to the Coalition
and lost us much public support inside Iraq." The memo, reported in the
Sunday Times, adds: "The scandal of the treatment of detainees at Abu
Ghraib [prison] has sapped the moral authority of the Coalition, inside
Iraq and internationally." [SCOTSMAN.COM 5/23]

THE SORT OF SOVEREIGNTY WE WANT THEM TO HAVE. British and American troops
are to be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraq after the crucial 30
June handover, undermining claims that the new Iraqi government will have
'full sovereignty' over the state. Despite widespread ill-feeling about
the abuse of prisoners by American forces and allegations of mistreatment
by British troops, coalition forces will be protected from any legal
action. They will only be subject to the domestic law of their home
countries. Military sources have told The Observer that the question of
immunity was central to obtaining military agreement on a new United
Nations resolution on Iraq to be published by the middle of next month.
[OBSERVER 5/23]

WHO PROFITS? ...the UK government is paying out millions to "mercenary"
security companies to protect its staff stationed in the country ... a
private security company headed by former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm
Rifkind is making millions from a contract to protect Foreign Office staff
working in Iraq. ArmorGroup, the biggest security firm working in Iraq, is
one of two companies that have raked in a total of £15m between them for
providing round-the-clock cover in the treacherous environment of post-war
Iraq during the past year. Rifkind, the Tory candidate for Kensington and
Chelsea, sparked protests from political opponents last month when he took
over the chairmanship of ArmorGroup, which has 700 employees in Iraq.
Straw has admitted ArmorGroup and Control Risks are being paid a combined
total of £50,000 every day to protect bureaucrats stationed in Iraq ...
the security bill is swallowing up a huge chunk of the $18bn set aside by
the Americans for rebuilding the country ... Private security companies
have an estimated 10,000 guards in Iraq ... [SCOTSMAN.COM 5/23]

FOOLING SOME OF THE PEOPLE, ALL OF THE TIME? President Bush will make a
further bid to reassure the world of his Iraq policy tomorrow. During a
keynote address [IN THAT FORUM OF DEMOCRACY, THE ARMY WAR COLLEGE] in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he will outline his strategy for steering Iraq to
self-rule on June 30. His preparations for the televised address were
disrupted when he fell off his mountain bike during a 17-mile trek
yesterday, suffering minor cuts to his face and body. [SCOTSMAN.COM 5/23]

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION. The House easily passed a $447 billion military
package on Thursday. The plan includes an extra $25 billion President Bush
wants to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan for the next several months. It
would also expand the armed services -- by 39,000 -- for the first time
since the Cold War.

DISSENSION IN THE RANKS, SO TO SPEAK. Accusing top Pentagon officials of
"dereliction of duty," retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni says staying the
course in Iraq isn't a reasonable option [in an interview broadcast on 60
Minutes]. The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen, says
Zinni, because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all
along. "There has been poor strategic thinking in this...poor operational
planning and execution on the ground," says Zinni, who served as
commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000. Zinni
blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the
administration, known as neo-conservatives, who saw the invasion as a way
to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people ...
have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. "They promoted it and pushed [the
war]... even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match
their needs. Then they should bear the responsibility," Zinni tells [CBS].
In his upcoming book, "Battle Ready," written with Tom Clancy, Zinni
writes of the poor planning in harsh terms. "In the lead-up to the Iraq
war and its later conduct, I saw, at minimum, true dereliction, negligence
and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption," he
writes ... The fact that no one in the administration has paid for the
blunder irks Zinni. "But regardless of whose responsibility [it is]...it
should be evident to everybody that they've screwed up, and whose heads
are rolling on this?" [60 Minutes, 5/23]

We shouldn't be too quick to make a hero out of Zinni – who once
referred to Israeli PM and war criminal Ariel Sharon as a "big teddy bear"
-- but he's another indication of the us war leadership in disarray. [CGE]

ZINNI'S VIEW. The U.S. should not have invaded Iraq without UN backing,
there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein, and the invasion was
done without any real plan for rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq after the
war --recently retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, a decorated
Vietnam veteran who served with U.S. forces in Somalia and preceded Tommy
Franks and John Abizaid as commander of Central Command, the nerve center
of the U.S. military in the Middle East. He also served briefly as a
Special Envoy to the Middle East for the current Bush administration at
the request of his friend Colin Powell, until he became too critical of
administration policy. [UCLA 5/11]

WHEELS; OR, KERRY'S BEST QUOTE. Bush had an unsatisfactory meeting with
Republican representatives on Thursday. [From TPM:] According to several
participants, President Bush told Republicans that the Iraqis are ready to
"take the training wheels off" by assuming power.  That's a bit of a
condescending thing to say [acc. to Josh Marshall] about a country which
encompasses what is generally considered to be the cradle of civilization.
But then [CNN:] Bush fell off his bicycle Saturday while riding on his
ranch. [DR:] Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training
wheels fall off?'... Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on
or off the record. [TPM:] Let me translate this: Off the record John Kerry
quipped "Did the training wheels fall off?" But the quote was so good that
several reporters couldn't resist and passed it on to Drudge.

WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE? US film-maker Michael Moore has won the Palme
d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his movie Fahrenheit
9/11, an indictment of President George W Bush and his White House staff
in the wake of September 11, 2001 ... Tilda Swinton [one of the jurors:]
"It's very important that the jury gave the Palme d'Or to this film and
also for Michael Moore to have won this for a piece of brilliant film and
not just as a piece of political statement. The things he says can no
longer be said on American TV and this film has reclaimed and pushed
forward a realm of cinema which can place its arguments in front of the
public..."  Moore said the film has already been given a distribution deal
in Albania but still not one in the US. [Sunday Herald/UK 5/23]

DON'T EVEN TELL THE CONGRESS.  The Senate Armed Services Committee, which
is investigating abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison ... discovered
belatedly that their copy of the 6,000-page report on prison abuses
produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba might not be complete. The
copy they got after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7
[seemed to have] at least 2,000 pages missing. "We'd certainly like to
know why they're missing," said Republican Senator John McCain. Pentagon
spokesman Larry Dirita insisted, "If there is some shortfall in what was
provided, it was an oversight." [TIME 5/21]

WORLD WAR I JOURNALIST KARL KRAUS WROTE, "DIPLOMATS LIE TO JOURNALISTS AND
BELIEVE THOSE LIES WHEN THEY SEE THEM IN PRINT." In an editorial on 5/21,
the NYT wrote, "Before the war, Ahmad Chalabi told Washington hawks
exactly what they wanted to hear about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction ... The Bush administration should have known what it was
doing when it gave enormous credence to a questionable character whose own
self-interest was totally invested in getting the Americans to invade
Iraq." Not one word in the editorial about the role of the Times' star
reporter Judith Miller, who not only fed Chalabi's lies to the world, but
also was then cited by those very same "Washington hawks" and members of
the "Bush administration" who were able to attribute reliability to this
information because it had appeared in the "newspaper of record," The New
York Times. Nor a word about the editors of the New York Times, who
printed Miller's uncorroborated stories. [lefti.blogspot.com 5/21]

OUTFLANKING BUSH FROM THE RIGHT. United States Democrat John Kerry
promised that, if elected president of the United States, he would pull
virtually all American combat troops out of Iraq ... by the end of his
first term ... "It will not be like Vietnam," Kerry said. "I will get our
troops home from Iraq with honour and with the interests of our country
properly protected." Republican Richard M Nixon used similar language
during the 1968 presidential race, but the war in Vietnam dragged on for
years after his election. Saying his goal would be achieved in his first
term, Kerry explained: "Look, you may have some deployments of people for
a long period of time in the Middle East depending on what the overall
approach to the Middle East is. I'm not going to tell you we won't shift
deployments from one place to another, but we're not going to be engaged
in an active kind of death zone the way we are today." Kerry also said he
is confident that if he becomes president, he could persuade countries
that sat out the Iraq war to contribute peacekeepers. But he said he would
not place US soldiers in Iraq under UN command, or under the command of
another country.  [AP 5/21]

WHAT DO IRAQIS THINK? An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge
in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric
fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see
US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers. The poll was
conducted by the one-year-old Iraq Center for Research and Strategic
Studies, which is considered reliable enough for the US-led Coalition
Provisional Authority to have submitted questions to be included in the
study. Conducted before the Abu Ghraib prisoners' scandal, it also
suggests a severe erosion of American credibility even before Iraqis were
confronted with images of torture at the hands of US soldiers. [FT 5/20]

FOR THE OCTOBER SURPRISE FILE. The Colombian government is attempting to
break the month-long strike at Ecopetrol, the national oil company, by
using military force. According to the Brussels-based ICEM, a global union
federation, Colombian troops have now been placed in and around
Ecopetrol's petroleum facilities. This follows upon the arrest of some 100
members and leaders of the union (known as USO) -- as well as death
threats made against USO members and supporters.

WHY SHOULD YOU BE DIFFERENT? In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal,
Reuters revealed on Tuesday that three Iraqis working for the company, and
another Iraqi journalist working for NBC News, were seized for no reason
in early January by the U.S. military and taken to a prison near Fallujah
where they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, among other forms
of mistreatment. [E&P 5/19]

ANOTHER OPPRESSION. Special Forces units (CIMO) of the Haitian National
Police (PNH) killed Lavalas demonstra-tors today in Port-au-Prince as a
larger U.S. Marine "peacekeeping" force of about 50 soldiers stood by.
About 6,000 Lavalas demonstrators in one of many separate marches tried to
converge near the Champ De Mars for a larger demonstration. The march had
been planned for some time and the organizations that planned the march
received written approval by the PNH to hold this demonstration on Haitian
Flag Day. [<www.HaitiAction.net/News/HIP/5_18_4.html> 5/18]

THE FIRST US PAPER TO SAY SO. . The octogenarian founder of USA Today, Al
Neuharth, recently editorialized as follows: "As a former combat
infantryman in World War II, I've always believed we must fully support
our troops. Reluctantly, I now believe the best way to support troops in
Iraq is to bring them home, starting with the "hand-over" on June 30. Only
a carefully planned withdrawal can clean up the biggest military mess
miscreated in the Oval Office and miscarried by the Pentagon in my 80-year
lifetime..."

SMOKING TRUNCHEON. The Iraq prisoner abuse scandal shifted Sunday to the
question of whether the Bush administration set up a legal foundation that
opened the door for the mistreatment. Within months of the Sept. 11
attacks, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly wrote President
Bush a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the
Geneva Conventions. "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete
Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders
quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote, according to the report in
Newsweek magazine. [AP 5/16]

OCTOBER SURPRISE FILE (II). The House on Thursday accused Iran of
"continuing deceptions and falsehoods" involving development of nuclear
weapons and said that Europe, Japan and Russia should cut commercial and
energy ties until Iran permanently end such activities. Among the few
dissenters in the 376-3 vote was Democratic presidential contender Rep.
Dennis Kucinich of Ohio [with Conyers and Paul], who said the nonbinding
resolution endorsed the administration's doctrine of preventive war. [AP]

  ==============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar
  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.newsfromneptune.com>
  ==============================================
  People who work hard to keep food on the table
  and are deluged with propaganda from infancy
  trying to get them to max out half a dozen credit cards
  to satisfy "wants" that are largely constructed
  by huge industries devoted to that purpose,
  cannot be expected to carry out individual research projects
  on every topic, or any topic. If people don't know the facts,
  that's our fault: we've failed as organizers and activists.
  So let's do more about it, instead of blaming people
  for what they do not do on their own --
  which would not be easy, by any means.  --Noam Chomsky
  ======================================================