How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,927712,00.html

Arundhati Roy
 April 2, 2003
The Guardian
Wednesday 

On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles. 
On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11." 

To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said. 

According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess. 

It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically and financially through his worst excesses. 

But why should poor AJ and his fellow soldiers be burdened with these details? It does not matter any more, does it? Hundreds of thousands of men, tanks, ships, choppers, bombs, ammunition, gas masks, high-protein food, whole aircrafts ferrying toilet paper, insect repellent, vitamins and bottled mineral water, are on the move. The phenomenal logistics of Operation Iraqi Freedom make it a universe unto itself. It doesn't need to justify its existence any more. It exists. It is. 

President George W Bush, commander in chief of the US army, navy, airforce and marines has issued clear instructions: "Iraq. Will. Be. Liberated." (Perhaps he means that even if Iraqi people's bodies are killed, their souls will be liberated.) American and British citizens owe it to the supreme commander to forsake thought and rally behind their troops. Their countries are at war. And what a war it is. 

After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Allies"/"Coalition of the Willing"(better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army! 

Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It's more like Operation Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees. 

So far the Iraqi army, with its hungry, ill-equipped soldiers, its old guns and ageing tanks, has somehow managed to temporarily confound and occasionally even outmanoeuvre the "Allies". Faced with the richest, best-equipped, most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen, Iraq has shown spectacular courage and has even managed to put up what actually amounts to a defence. A defence which the Bush/Blair Pair have immediately denounced as deceitful and cowardly. (But then deceit is an old tradition with us natives. When we are invaded/ colonised/occupied and stripped of all dignity, we turn to guile and opportunism.) 

Even allowing for the fact that Iraq and the "Allies" are at war, the extent to which the "Allies" and their media cohorts are prepared to go is astounding to the point of being counterproductive to their own objectives. 

When Saddam Hussein appeared on national TV to address the Iraqi people after the failure of the most elaborate assassination attempt in history - "Operation Decapitation" - we had Geoff Hoon, the British defence secretary, deriding him for not having the courage to stand up and be killed, calling him a coward who hides in trenches. We then had a flurry of Coalition speculation - Was it really Saddam, was it his double? Or was it Osama with a shave? Was it pre-recorded? Was it a speech? Was it black magic? Will it turn into a pumpkin if we really, really want it to? 

After dropping not hundreds, but thousands of bombs on Baghdad, when a marketplace was mistakenly blown up and civilians killed - a US army spokesman implied that the Iraqis were blowing themselves up! "They're using very old stock. Their missiles go up and come down." 

If so, may we ask how this squares with the accusation that the Iraqi regime is a paid-up member of the Axis of Evil and a threat to world peace? 

When the Arab TV station al-Jazeera shows civilian casualties it's denounced as "emotive" Arab propaganda aimed at orchestrating hostility towards the "Allies", as though Iraqis are dying only in order to make the "Allies" look bad. Even French television has come in for some stick for similar reasons. But the awed, breathless footage of aircraft carriers, stealth bombers and cruise missiles arcing across the desert sky on American and British TV is described as the "terrible beauty" of war. 

When invading American soldiers (from the army "that's only here to help") are taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi TV, George Bush says it violates the Geneva convention and "exposes the evil at the heart of the regime". But it is entirely acceptable for US television stations to show the hundreds of prisoners being held by the US government in Guantanamo Bay, kneeling on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs, blinded with opaque goggles and with earphones clamped on their ears, to ensure complete visual and aural deprivation. When questioned about the treatment of these prisoners, US Government officials don't deny that they're being being ill-treated. They deny that they're "prisoners of war"! They call them "unlawful combatants", implying that their ill-treatment is legitimate! (So what's the party line on the massacre of prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan? Forgive and forget? And what of the prisoner tortured to death by the special forces at the Bagram airforce base? Doctors have formally called it homicide.) 

When the "Allies" bombed the Iraqi television station (also, incidentally, a contravention of the Geneva convention), there was vulgar jubilation in the American media. In fact Fox TV had been lobbying for the attack for a while. It was seen as a righteous blow against Arab propaganda. But mainstream American and British TV continue to advertise themselves as "balanced" when their propaganda has achieved hallucinatory levels. 

Why should propaganda be the exclusive preserve of the western media? Just because they do it better? Western journalists "embedded" with troops are given the status of heroes reporting from the frontlines of war. Non-"embedded" journalists (such as the BBC's Rageh Omaar, reporting from besieged and bombed Baghdad, witnessing, and clearly affected by the sight of bodies of burned children and wounded people) are undermined even before they begin their reportage: "We have to tell you that he is being monitored by the Iraqi authorities." 

Increasingly, on British and American TV, Iraqi soldiers are being referred to as "militia" (ie: rabble). One BBC correspondent portentously referred to them as "quasi-terrorists". Iraqi defence is "resistance" or worse still, "pockets of resistance", Iraqi military strategy is deceit. (The US government bugging the phone lines of UN security council delegates, reported by the Observer, is hard-headed pragmatism.) Clearly for the "Allies", the only morally acceptable strategy the Iraqi army can pursue is to march out into the desert and be bombed by B-52s or be mowed down by machine-gun fire. Anything short of that is cheating. 

And now we have the siege of Basra. About a million and a half people, 40 per cent of them children. Without clean water, and with very little food. We're still waiting for the legendary Shia "uprising", for the happy hordes to stream out of the city and rain roses and hosannahs on the "liberating" army. Where are the hordes? Don't they know that television productions work to tight schedules? (It may well be that if Saddam's regime falls there will be dancing on the streets of Basra. But then, if the Bush regime were to fall, there would be dancing on the streets the world over.) 

After days of enforcing hunger and thirst on the citizens of Basra, the "Allies" have brought in a few trucks of food and water and positioned them tantalisingly on the outskirts of the city. Desperate people flock to the trucks and fight each other for food. (The water we hear, is being sold. To revitalise the dying economy, you understand.) On top of the trucks, desperate photographers fought each other to get pictures of desperate people fighting each other for food. Those pictures will go out through photo agencies to newspapers and glossy magazines that pay extremely well. Their message: The messiahs are at hand, distributing fishes and loaves. 

As of July last year the delivery of $5.4bn worth of supplies to Iraq was blocked by the Bush/Blair Pair. It didn't really make the news. But now under the loving caress of live TV, 450 tonnes of humanitarian aid - a minuscule fraction of what's actually needed (call it a script prop) - arrived on a British ship, the "Sir Galahad". Its arrival in the port of Umm Qasr merited a whole day of live TV broadcasts. Barf bag, anyone? 

Nick Guttmann, head of emergencies for Christian Aid, writing for the Independent on Sunday said that it would take 32 Sir Galahad's a day to match the amount of food Iraq was receiving before the bombing began. 

We oughtn't to be surprised though. It's old tactics. They've been at it for years. Consider this moderate proposal by John McNaughton from the Pentagon Papers, published during the Vietnam war: "Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China or the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might ... offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided - which we could offer to do 'at the conference table'." 

Times haven't changed very much. The technique has evolved into a doctrine. It's called "Winning Hearts and Minds". 

So, here's the moral maths as it stands: 200,000 Iraqis estimated to have been killed in the first Gulf war. Hundreds of thousands dead because of the economic sanctions. (At least that lot has been saved from Saddam Hussein.) More being killed every day. Tens of thousands of US soldiers who fought the 1991 war officially declared "disabled" by a disease called the Gulf war syndrome, believed in part to be caused by exposure to depleted uranium. It hasn't stopped the "Allies" from continuing to use depleted uranium. 

And now this talk of bringing the UN back into the picture. But that old UN girl - it turns out that she just ain't what she was cracked up to be. She's been demoted (although she retains her high salary). Now she's the world's janitor. She's the Philippino cleaning lady, the Indian jamadarni, the postal bride from Thailand, the Mexican household help, the Jamaican au pair. She's employed to clean other peoples' shit. She's used and abused at will. 

Despite Blair's earnest submissions, and all his fawning, Bush has made it clear that the UN will play no independent part in the administration of postwar Iraq. The US will decide who gets those juicy "reconstruction" contracts. But Bush has appealed to the international community not to "politicise" the issue of humanitarian aid. On the March 28, after Bush called for the immediate resumption of the UN's oil for food programme, the UN security council voted unanimously for the resolution. This means that everybody agrees that Iraqi money (from the sale of Iraqi oil) should be used to feed Iraqi people who are starving because of US led sanctions and the illegal US-led war. 

Contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq we're told, in discussions on the business news, could jump-start the world economy. It's funny how the interests of American corporations are so often, so successfully and so deliberately confused with the interests of the world economy. While the American people will end up paying for the war, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and corporations involved in "reconstruction" work will make direct gains from the war. Many of them are old friends and former employers of the Bush/ Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice cabal. Bush has already asked Congress for $75bn. Contracts for "re-construction" are already being negotiated. The news doesn't hit the stands because much of the US corporate media is owned and managed by the same interests. 

Operation Iraqi Freedom, Tony Blair assures us is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via corporate multinationals. Like Shell, like Chevron, like Halliburton. Or are we missing the plot here? Perhaps Halliburton is actually an Iraqi company? Perhaps US vice-president Dick Cheney (who is a former director of Halliburton) is a closet Iraqi? 

As the rift between Europe and America deepens, there are signs that the world could be entering a new era of economic boycotts. CNN reported that Americans are emptying French wine into gutters, chanting, "We don't want your stinking wine." We've heard about the re-baptism of French fries. Freedom fries they're called now. There's news trickling in about Americans boycotting German goods. The thing is that if the fallout of the war takes this turn, it is the US who will suffer the most. Its homeland may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable to attack in every direction. Already the internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets, Coke, Pepsi and McDonald's - government agencies such as USAID, the British department for international development, British and American banks, Arthur Anderson, Merrill Lynch, American Express, corporations such as Bechtel, General Electric, and companies such as Reebok, Nike and Gap - could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and re fined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs and channels the amorphous, but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of corporate globalisation is beginning to seem more than a little evitable. 

It's become clear that the war against terror is not really about terror, and the war on Iraq not only about oil. It's about a superpower's self-destructive impulse towards supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony. The argument is being made that the people of Argentina and Iraq have both been decimated by the same process. Only the weapons used against them differ: In one case it's an IMF chequebook. In the other, cruise missiles. 

Finally, there's the matter of Saddam's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. (Oops, nearly forgot about those!) 

In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam 's regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it? 

Excuse me while I laugh. 

In the fog of war we're forced to speculate: Either Saddam is an extremely responsible tyrant. Or - he simply does not possess weapons of mass destruction. Either way, regardless of what happens next, Iraq comes out of the argument smelling sweeter than the US government. 

So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged, bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC, BBC-CNN late into the night. Here's all of us, enduring the horror of the war, enduring the horror of the propaganda and enduring the slaughter of language as we know and understand it. Freedom now means mass murder (or, in the US, fried potatoes). When someone says "humanitarian aid" we automatically go looking for induced starvation. "Embedded" I have to admit, is a great find. It's what it sounds like. And what about "arsenal of tactics?" Nice! 

In most parts of the world, the invasion of Iraq is being seen as a racist war. The real danger of a racist war unleashed by racist regimes is that it engenders racism in everybody - perpetrators, victims, spectators. It sets the parameters for the debate, it lays out a grid for a particular way of thinking. There is a tidal wave of hatred for the US rising from the ancient heart of the world. In Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia. I encounter it every day. Sometimes it comes from the most unlikely sources. Bankers, businessmen, yuppie students, and they bring to it all the crassness of their conservative, illiberal politics. That absurd inability to separate governments from people: America is a nation of morons, a nation of murderers, they say, (with the same carelessness with which they say, "All Muslims are terrorists"). Even in the grotesque universe of racist insult, the British make their entry as add-ons. Arse-lickers, they're called. 

Suddenly, I, who have been vilified for being "anti-American" and "anti-west", find myself in the extraordinary position of defending the people of America. And Britain. 

Those who descend so easily into the pit of racist abuse would do well to remember the hundreds of thousands of American and British citizens who protested against their country's stockpile of nuclear weapons. And the thousands of American war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam. They should know that the most scholarly, scathing, hilarious critiques of the US government and the "American way of life" comes from American citizens. And that the funniest, most bitter condemnation of their prime minister comes from the British media. Finally they should remember that right now, hundreds of thousands of British and American citizens are on the streets protesting the war. The Coalition of the Bullied and Bought consists of governments, not people. More than one third of America's citizens have survived the relentless propaganda they've been subjected to, and many thousands are actively fighting their own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the US, that's as brave as any Iraqi fighting for his or her homeland. 

While the "Allies" wait in the desert for an uprising of Shia Muslims on the streets of Basra, the real uprising is taking place in hundreds of cities across the world. It has been the most spectacular display of public morality ever seen. 

Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people on the streets of America's great cities - Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. The fact is that the only institution in the world today that is more powerful than the American government, is American civil society. American citizens have a huge responsibility riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our allies, our friends. 

At the end of it all, it remains to be said that dictators like Saddam Hussein, and all the other despots in the Middle East, in the central Asian republics, in Africa and Latin America, many of them installed, supported and financed by the US government, are a menace to their own people. Other than strengthening the hand of civil society (instead of weakening it as has been done in the case of Iraq), there is no easy, pristine way of dealing with them. (It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers".) 

Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot dictators are not the greatest threat to the world. The real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the US government, currently piloted by George Bush. Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself. 

Despite the pall of gloom that hangs over us today, I'd like to file a cautious plea for hope: in times of war, one wants one's weakest enemy at the helm of his forces. And President George W Bush is certainly that. Any other even averagely intelligent US president would have probably done the very same things, but would have managed to smoke-up the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the UN with him. Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for decades. He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire. 

Now that the blueprint (The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire) has been put into mass circulation, it could be disabled quicker than the pundits predicted.

Bring on the spanners. 
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/ir-nuke.html
 

Published on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 by
CommonDreams.org 

Dear Bring Them Home Now Members, 
I read of your actions and anguish with pain of my
own. Your loved ones in Iraq will never know the Iraq,
the people, I love: Mesapotamia, the cradle of
civilization. Your loved ones have been lied to and
led to destroy something beyond precious. The country
that brought the world all we call civilized: writing,
algebra, mathematics, the wheel, the first time piece,
the first written laws. 
Abraham, father of Christianity, Islam and Judaism was
believed born at Ur, where the great ziggurat, built
in the mists of time, has been sprayed with graffiti
by US soldiers. Abraham is believed to have been
suckled on two fingers - one which gave forth milk and
the other honey - thus, 'land of milk and honey'. The
US army is building a vast base there. Sacrilege for
which history will never forgive. 'Bring down their
statues and destroy their high places' says the Book
of Numbers. A 'Crusade' indeed. 

I write in anguish not in anger. You were, as you have
eloquently said, sold a lie. The tragedy is that if
the US and UK Administration had spoken to any of
those who know Iraq we could have written the script
of all that has happened. But they wanted the oil and
would not, anyway, have listened. Iraqis are possibly
the most nationalistic nation on earth - and so
complex a society they make the Balkans look simple.
Every decision made at the top, makes your relatives
hated more - and it is not their fault, it is the
insensitive, crass stupidity of those making the
decisions others are forced to carry out. Lack of
knowledge of culture is turning even gentle university
professors into resistance fighters. Nobody has
apparently even told soldiers that to stand with your
arm up and palm out in Iraq, means 'welcome', so the
'liberated' drive through road blocks and get their
heads - and children's heads - blown off. 
The Pentagon regards Iraqis as non-people. 

They are people of the richest culture on the planet.
Now they have had their history, their past, present
and future destroyed. They have no records, no central
birth, marriage or death registry, no health registry
records, their passports are invalid, their
examination records are destroyed - they ARE now
non-people. With the water mostly off they cannot
wash. This is not alone a health hazard, but washing
is integral in Islam - before and after prayer, before
and after food - the body must be as clean as is hoped
the soul will become. One of your members sends her
son bottled water - who sends the Iraqis bottled
water? Even when it is available, Iraq's water is a
biological weapon. 

What about the thousands of 'disappeared'? Iraq has
become a vast Guantanamo Bay. What does this say abut
the democracy we are inflicting? Iraqi friends tell me
in despair that there are more 'disappeared' now than
ever under Saddam. What are we becoming? What is being
done in our name? A distinguished former UN Assistant
Secretary General and UN Co-ordinator in Iraq, Count
Hans von Sponeck, said to me in despair not long ago:
"The well of hate (for the US and UK) is filling up
..." And it is, worldwide. Bush's ludicrous 'war on
terrorism' - in actuality a war to grab whatever he
and his cabal wishes, for which your loved ones are
endangered and dying - where were the Afghans and
Iraqis on 9/11 'planes? Not a one - Pacifists are
becoming potential terrorists now, the anger worldwide
is so great. US and British citizens where ever they
are too are endangered. We are all targets now, for
possibly generations to come. Generations unborn may
continue to pay the price for Bush's delusional folly
- as they will in the deformities from depleted
uranium's attack on the genes in the Balkans,
Afghanistan and Iraq - and on those who serve there. 

I end with a memory of reconciliation. Three years
ago, I was asked by a group of anti sanctions
activists, here in the UK, if I would act as a guide
for them in a planned visit to Iraq. I jumped at the
opportunity and Sheffield Against Sanctions on Iraq
and I, joined former Greek First Lady, Margarita
Papandreou's sanctions busting flight from Athens to
Baghdad's proudly rebuilt, reopened airport. 'There
are tears in our eyes every time a 'plane lands' said
an Iraqi friend. Isolation had been as hard as the
deprivation of the sanctions years. I had traveled
numerous times, the up to twenty seven hour road
journey into Baghdad, but never flown. As we landed,
tears ran down my face. 

Due to the dangers of the flight, fears of being shot
down by the illegal patrols by the US and UK, all the
Olympic Airways crew were volunteers. The Chief
Steward sat next to me for landing and touched my
hand. I looked at him and his eyes too were full of
tears. "God I love this place, these people' he said.
He had lived there for some years until the 1991 war:
'I never thought I would see it again.' The airport, a
beam of new hope for the Iraqi people, is now another
Guantanamo Bay, shaming us all. 
To reconciliation: on the visit with the Sheffield
group, I had written magical, mystical, Ur into the
itinerary. We were a group of twelve and hired a
battered mini-bus to tour. On the road to Ur, I kept
missing the turning and eventually suggested to the
driver that we return to an army checkpoint and ask
directions. The dignified Shi'a soldier in charge said
he was about to go off duty and lived near the
turning, if we gave him a ride, he would point it out.
(The Iraqi army was so poverty stricken, most soldiers
hitched to and from duty. So much for WMD's.) 

The group had printed small fliers in Arabic with a
beautifully thought through mission statement, they
wanted to see, talk, learn, build bridges with the
people of Iraq. It was on green paper - Iraq's color -
though under the US, Iraqi policemen are now forced to
wear blue and white uniforms - like the Israeli
police. They have 'IP' in english on the sleeve. There
is no 'P' in the Arabic language. 
The soldier sat in front with the driver and one of
the group whispered to me: 'Should we give him one?'
'Absolutely" I said. 

He read it very slowly and carefully, then re-read it.
Along the way we had witnessed barely describable
carnage of the ongoing US-UK bombings of his region.
He turned round and said: 'Here in the south, it is
incumbent upon us to offer hospitality to travelers.
My home is simple, but I have five chickens, you will
eat well.' It was the eve of the great Muslim feast of
Eid and we knew for what those chickens were destined
- yet he was prepared to sacrifice them to strangers
from countries who were still devastating his. I
learned about shaming humility and reconciliation, at
Ur. 
Take your campaign to Iraq, take your anger and grief
to Iraq and share it with the mothers and fathers of
Iraq - that will Bring Them Home and bring real power
and reconciliation to all 'we the people' of our
precious planet. 
With warmest wishes, 
Felicity Arbuthnot. 
Felicity Arbuthnot has written and broadcast widely on
Iraq and with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for
John Pilger's Award winning documentary: 'Paying the
Price - Killing the Children of Iraq.'
 

Felicity Arbuthnot

If Tony Blair is making a list of topics to discuss with President 
Bush, 'accountability' should be well near the top. The lack of it, at US
Administration level, is stunning.

"It is just not worth characterizing by numbers", said Brigadier 
General Vincent Brooks, when asked how many Iraqis had died during the 
invasion. But from Guantanamo Bay to America's own casualties, 'life, 
liberty' - yet alone the 'pursuit of happiness' has become frighteningly 
endangered under the neo-cons pulling George W's strings.

At the recent World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Dr Doug 
Rokke, former senior Pentagon advisor charged with the 1991 uranium
clean up of Kuwait, described how injured US troops are being flown 'in their 
hundreds, in the dead of night' back to US bases 'throughout Europe', in order 
to disguise the magnitude of casualty figures. Public photographs of 
coffins of the dead have been proscribed and in stark contrast to the public 
honoring and grief of the Italian nation for their nineteen soldiers and 
carabinieri, killed in a suicide bombing in Nassiriyah, southern Iraq last week, 
the US military shuffles its fallen as quietly as possible into their final 
resting place.

With the death toll of US soldiers having exceeded, in just seven 
months, that of the first three years of Vietnam it is worth asking if even 
these figures are the full truth. Many of those who have joined the 
military in Iraq, do not hold American passports, but were, broadly, promised 
that they would be given them on return, for their efforts against the 'war on
terrorism'. According to Dr Rokke, should they die, their deaths are 
not factored in to 'U.S.' casualties. Further, Mazen Dana, the Award 
winning Reuters camera man, shot dead by US troops whilst filming outside 
Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in August - with full permission and press 
accreditation from the US Authorities in Baghdad - told his brother Nazmi, a 
chilling tale days before he died.

"Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered 
a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow 
comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said.

"He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in 
remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure 
that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from 
airing his finding."

"All international and local news agencies sent cables of condolences 
to his family, lauding his ...... determination to uncover the truth 
wherever it was", recorded veteran Middle East correspondent Awed Al Ragoub.

Truth is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to record in Iraq.
Last week, reported the Boston Globe, thirty major news gathering 
outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, 
destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The 
circumstances of the death of ITN's Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his 
colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US 
tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. 
Journalists' protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.

Iraq is now a vast Guantanamo Bay, with the disappeared unaccounted 
for, which was why Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib. Even 
prisoners under Saddam, were more accounted for. The full number of both prison camps and prisoners are simply unknown. With the bombing of the Red 
Cross building in Baghdad and resultant pull out of staff, the last shred of 
accountability for the detained has been removed. The Red Cross is enshrined in the  Geneva Convention as the neutral body who can interview and account for prisoners in war, held as hostage or in conflict zones. The tragedy of the Red Cross attack had a coincidental convenience for a U.S. human rights 
time bomb.

The Geneva Convention also has emotive words regarding environmental
destruction. Viet Nam with Agent Orange, torching of villages, rapes 
and even the decapitation of a baby by a US soldier to steal her  necklace, has
been recently chillingly revisited by a stunning, painstaking two year
investigation by journalists at the extraordinarily committed but 
relatively small town Toledo Blade newspaper.

'Will this be another Viet Nam?' has been a frequent haunting, 
relating to American body bags. Maybe. But little addressed is : 
environmentally, it is.
Distraught reports have come out of Iraq of fauna, flora, wheat, 
barley, agriculture, bushes being torched by US soldiers with, like Viet Nam, 
music blaring and redolent of Palestine's olive groves, Iraq's great dates 
palms being mown down. Iraq has maybe six hundred different kinds of dates, 
is the worlds biggest producer. Nothing is wasted: sugar syrup is made, the 
stones are polished and made into beads, the fronds become anything from 
brooms to intricate, evocative bird cages. The date harvest (about now) is a 
vivid, beautiful celebration; towns and cities display them in markets in 
their vibrant colors: from sand and gold to brown and near vermillion, in 
great, intricately woven baskets - made of the fronds. Date palms are near 
sacred.
Asking the way to a home, people will deliberate the location of the 
house and then , invariably say: "the garden has the tallest (smallest, most
twisted etc) palm ..."

The full horror and lack of accountability is outside the scope of an
article, but was starkly outlined by an Iraqi academic - old friend, 
rabidly anti- Saddam - I met recently. She told me of a beloved alter-ego, the
sister she never had, who had gone to find medication for one of her 
two children. The two kids were in the back of the car and she trawled the
pharmacies for the medicine. (Hospitals are now , say Iraqi doctors, 
worse equipped than after the 1991 war, but under the new freedom no 
journalists are allowed to visit to record.) Finally, she found what she was 
needing.
Driving back over the 14th of July Bridge (hugely emotive and named 
after another revolution against the British) she was shot at by US troops, 
the car burned out and she and her children burned to the unrecognizable.
Baghdad, being a village of five million people, her husband quickly 
learned what had happened and ran across the town with friends and 
blankets, to cover and succor them in death. They were shot at, as they 
returned repeatedly, for three days, by the troops as wife and childrens' 
remains stayed in the car, before they could be collected and interred.

"For telling you this, I await the knock at the door, any day, like 
all academics do who speak out in this occupation", said my friend. 
Academics are being disappeared at stunning speed in Iraq. "You know" she 
said quietly, her eyes meeting mine: "many of us say we want Saddam 
and our country back."
 

Oorlog bedreigt cultuurschatten Irak   Weblog kunstnieuws van redactie kunstbus,  Geplaatst op zondag: 23 - 3 - 2003 Nu de oorlog in Irak in volle gang is, houden vele archeologen het hart vast. Irak is met zijn culturele erfgoed van beschavingen als de Babyloniërs, Assyriërs en Sumeriërs van grote archeologische waarde. Door de bombardementen ligt vernietiging op de loer. In het vruchtbare Tweestromenland tussen de Eufraat en de Tigris bevinden zich bekende historische plaatsen als Babylon, Ur en Hatra.  ‘Het land heeft een rijke historie, ook in islamitische zin’, aldus L. Dirven van het Amsterdams Archeologisch Centrum. Zij was vorig jaar nog in Irak en werkte enige tijd in de woestijnstad Hatra en het Nationaal museum in Bagdad. Een kleine opsomming leert dat bijna in elke Iraakse stad wel iets van grote cultuurhistorische waarde is te vinden. De Ctesiphon (gemetselde boog) ten zuiden van Bagdad, de Ziggurat (spiraaltoren) in Ur, het fort van Hatra, dat het religieuze centrum vormde van nomadische stammen, de koninginnegraven in Nimrud, de spiraalminnaret van Samarra.  Door de oorlog bestaat het gevaar dat Amerikaanse bombardementen het vaak duizenden jaren oude erfgoed raken. Dat gevaar is reëel. De woestijnstad Hatra ligt bijvoorbeeld dichtbij Mosul, dat afgelopen nacht door zware bommen is bestookt. De Ctesiphon staat vlakbij het Iraakse ministerie van Atoomenergie, een mogelijk doelwit van de Verenigde Staten.  De Ctesiphon schudde tijdens de Golfoorlog in 1991 al op zijn grondvesten, terwijl de Ziggurat in Ur, die in de 21e eeuw voor Christus is gebouwd, werd getroffen voor mitrailleurvuur. Een kerk uit de 10e eeuw in Mosul kwam gedeeltelijk verwoest uit de strijd. Archeologen hopen echter dat de precisiebombardementen van de Amerikanen grote schade zullen voorkomen.  De VS - en Groot-Brittannië - hebben weliswaar niet de Conventie van Den haag uit 1954 ondertekend, die de bescherming van culturele erfgoederen regelt, maar hebben wel aangegeven rekening te houden met de culturele waarde van Irak. De Amerikaanse archeoloog McGuire Gibson, die verscheidene opgravingen in Irak heeft geleid, heeft het Pentagon een lijst met honderden belangrijke monumenten in steden overhandigd. Gibson zei onlangs tegen de National Geographic niet zozeer bezorgd te zijn om de Amerikaanse bombardementen. Volgens hem is vooral de periode erna cruciaal voor de toekomst van het culturele erfgoed. In 1991, toen de oorlogsschade meeviel, vormden plunderaars de grootste bedreiging. Zij roofden regionale musea, bezochten met bulldozers archeologische opgravingsplaatsen of zaagden gewoon aan historische paleizen. Kort daarna werden de stukken te koop aangeboden.

‘Het was gewoon georganiseerde misdaad’, meent onderzoeker Dirven. ‘Ik heb verhalen gehoord van vrachtwagens met gewapende mannen die bewakers van archeologische sites bedreigden. Het was geen laksheid van de autoriteiten, maar een kwestie van te veel chaos en te weinig geld.’  Een Italiaanse archeoloog heeft vorig jaar vastgesteld dat na de Golfoorlog in 1991 750 stukken zijn verdwenen uit de regionale musea. Daarbij ging het vooral om kleinere objecten. Overal in de wereld duikt wel weer wat op. ‘Ik hoorde onlangs dat een collega in Londen nog een geroofd object in Londen aantrof’, aldus Dirven.  Archeologen vrezen dat de geschiedenis zich herhaalt. Dirven heeft haar hoop gevestigd op de belofte van de VS dat ze wederopbouw serieus gaan aanpakken. ‘Dan kan er op archeologisch gebied belangrijk werk worden verricht. Het is puur een kwestie van geld.’ Zie ook: http://www.brabantsdagblad.nl/,

Warplanes and armoured vehicles pounded suspected Iraqi guerrilla hideouts in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit yesterday as
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was forced to admit that Iraq was still a “war zone”. 

“We are involved in an insurgency, and that’s pretty close to war,” Armitage said, as the US army continued Operation Ivy Cyclone, a new
drive to root out guerrillas in the hostile territory around Tikrit. 

But in a new attack by Iraqi insurgents in the volatile town of Falluja, west of Baghdad, another two US soldiers were killed and one was
wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated near their convoy. 

The latest American casualties came only a day after six soldiers were killed in the shooting down of a Black Hawk helicopter, prompting
the US assault on Tikrit. 

The air raids carried out yesterday as part of Operation Ivy Cyclone were the first since Washington declared major combat over in Iraq
on May 1. Since that date at least 149 US soldiers have been killed in action. During this weekend’s extensive operation, F-16
fighter-bombers swooped over Tikrit, dropping 500-pound bombs. Troops backed by Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles then
launched raids around the town. 

“This operation is a concentrated, uncompromising effort to locate and detain or eliminate any person … that seeks to harm coalition
forces or innocent Iraqis as they work together to bring stability and security to a free Iraq,” said a US army statement. 

 http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37966
 

2003/11/16  http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=192525&n=32 US blew up huge arsenal near Tikrit 16 November 2003 11:21:31 Þ.Ù  Mazham, Iraq, Nov 16 - A huge cloud of smoke rose to the sky followed by an earth-shaking blast as US troops blew up thousands of warheads -- just a fraction of the weapons Iraq's ousted dictator Saddam Hussein once stockpiled and which now are often used in anti-coalition attacks. "Our mission is to get rid of the stuff so it can't be used against us," said major Ron Zimmerman, operations commander of the 4th infantry division's 299 engineers battalion, which blew up the lethal weapons. "You just cannot fathom how much ammunition there is in this country," said Zimmerman. "If Saddam had spent one-tenth of what he spent on ammunition on the people, this place would be very different."  The spectacular explosion organized was fueled by 2,700 warheads, 2,500 rockets, 1,000 anti-tank shells and 2,400 depleted uranium rounds US troops piled up in a bunker near the village of Mazham, 190 kilometers (120 miles) north of Baghdad and 12 kilometers (seven miles) from Tikrit. The ordnance was collected in the area around Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and a hotspot of anti-coalition activity, where the 4th ID has its Iraq headquarters.  2003/11/16   commentary see below http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=192525&n=32

To:        du-watch@yahoogroups.co 16-11-2002
Subject: [DU-WATCH] DU cook-off
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 15:20:55 -0000
From:  "Amarie" <amarierosa@yahoo.com>

Since Iraq did/does not have uranium KEP's, the rounds reported in 
this very odd story would have to be US or British, or both. Given 
the location, they would be US rounds. 

Now why would this be? Damaged or otherwise rejected rounds somehow 
compromised during storage or transport? XO/UXO clean-up of 
battlefields?

If anyone believes they are Iraqi round, please make sure you itemize 
the calibers of the rounds and the platforms the Iraqi's had/have to 
fire these calibers in explaining your hypothesis. 

I don't think this is a XO/UXO action at all Its a 4 ID barbacue for 
family friends in the north.
Amarie

Last spring in Kosovo I was hosted by ethnic Albanians who went to secret
military training on the weekends and smuggled arms on other days, all for
money.

Do the US military believe they can overcome hostilities of Iraqis against
invaders and occupiers? How would the destruction of a miniscule part of the
total arsenal improve security in Iraq? Weapons don't fail to arrive where
and when needed.

1. How do we know it was Iraqi munitions? Was the collection shown to
independents and was verified to be Iraqi?

2. In all recent wars, the US disposed of munitions nearing expiry dates or
already expired. It is less 'controversial' than polluting own country from
military disposal sites. When, where and how did the Coalition forces
dispose of its depleted uranium ammo dudes collected in Iraq? For a material
considered illegal weapon -- and risky to health if not lethal according to
numerous government, military, and industrial documents in the US and other
Coalition countries -- one would expect a thorough documentation of
collection and diposal after an armed conflict in a foreign country.

3. Regardless of the source of the uranium munitions, this event proves an
utmost stupidity of the US military. They will be held responsible for
another genocidal action: pulverizing between 0.7 tonnes (in case of 30 mm
bullets) and 11 tonnes (120 mm ammo) of uranium in a foreign country! Most
of it must have burned into fine dust in the explosion. Tikrit and vicinity
became a nice place to live and raise children. Any dairy farms nearby?
There was one where looted yellowcake was generously spilled earlier this
year. Japanese reporter Takashi Morizumi showed it at the Hamburg
conference, but I can't find it at a website presenting his awesome work,
http://www.savewarchildren.org/exhibitPictures.html

4. Why would Iraqi forces be in possession of depleted uranium ammunition?
Don't tell me it was 30 mm bullets for A-10s and 120 mm darts for Abram
tanks (which, as we know, Saddam had in abundance but hid under a rose bush
from the UN inspectors).

5. Why would anybody on this list still want to rely on Greenpeace after the
scam with being propaganda mouthpiece for Pentagon? See my posting to
du-watch on June 24, 2003. Never mind measuring the obvious, those
responsible for the cook-off of uranium weapons should be taken straight to
a tribunal ...or asylium.

Piotr Bein

    Blackened, destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles hit by and 
    thus contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) weapons in the March 
    invasion of Iraq, are being melted down in a huge smelting facility near 
    Basra, in southern Iraq under the auspices of the British Army and being 
    turned into pre-fabricated bridges, litter bins and even pots and 
    pans¹, believes the Independent¹s veteran Middle East correspondent Robert 
    Fisk. He told the  .......... that the story in Basra is plausible and 
    consistent I believe it to be true, but I can¹t prove it¹, since due to 
    time restrictions  and travel complexities in current circumstances: I did 
    not get to the facility.¹

    Depleted uranium is a .... radioactive waste and, as such, should be 
    deposited in a licensed repository¹ states the US Army 
    Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) (June 1995.) 
    After the 1991 Gulf war, tanks hit with depleted uranium were taken to 
    a nuclear decontamination facility at Barnwell, North Carolina, built only 
    for the purpose of dealing with vehicles damaged and contaminated by DU 
    in the war. Those which could not be decontaminated were sent to a 
    special secure landfill site owned by Chem Nuclear or to the US Department 
    of Energy¹s similar Savanna River Site. The Barnwell Manager at the time, 
    Roger Johnson, talked of the vast amount of radioactive and toxic material 
    affecting vehicles.¹Something that takes only  four days can produce a lot of 
     material.¹

    The U.K. Atomic Energy Authority spokesman said at the time he was 
    astonished by the use of DU. The UKAEA was so alarmed they self initiated¹ 
    a Report which they sent to the Ministry of Defence in April 1991, warning 
    of a health and environmental catastrophy - and that if a residual fifty 
    tonnes of DU dust, resultant from the impact of weapons remained, they 
    estimated that there could be an excess half a million potential deaths¹ 
    from cancer Œin the region¹ within ten years. That three hundred and twenty 
    tons was left, has been confirmed by the Pentagon. Some scientists say it 
    could be nine hundred tons. The most recent conflict has, cite Reports, left 
    at least a further two thousand two hundred tonnes. 
    The UKAEA paper states Œ... DU can become a long term problem if not dealt 
    with and .. a risk to both the military and civilian population¹ the UKAEA¹s 
    calculations indicate a significant problem.¹ Further, localised contamination 
    of  vehicles and soil may exceed permissable limits and these could be hazardous 
    to both clean up teams and the local  population. 
    Inhalation of DU dust particles can lead to unacceptable body burdens (putting) the 
    public at risk. DU can also be a danger if taken into the body by ingestion or 
    through a cut. Furthermore if DU gets into the food chain or water, then this will
    create potential health problems.¹ 
    DU remains radioactive for four and a half billion years.

    Basra¹s cancers and birth defects, linked by experts to the 
    use of DU in 1991 are at epidemic levels. The effects of the further use 
    last year has yet to be assessed. The implications, for the population 
    and especially for those working in the smelting plant and breathing in the DU 
    dust can only be  imagined. DU if ingested or inhaled has the potential to 
    generate significant medical consequences¹, states the AEPI short 
    term effects of high doses can result in death, whilst long term effects of 
    low doses can result in cancer.¹

    Llew Smith MP (L. Blaenau Gwent) has tabled a question to 
    the Defence Secretary asking: "what methods are being used to 
    decontaminate Iraqi tanks and other military equipment disabled or destroyed 
    by the use of depleted uranium munitions in the southern sector of Iraq 
    under British military control.?" It is due for reply from 8 January.

    Professor Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor at the University of 
    Sunderland and a Government Advisor on Gulf war illnesses says: 'Taiwan 
    springs to mind, where radioactive material was used in building structures and 
    deaths and illnesses were so great, they had to be demolished. I would be very 
    unhappy about using these  materials, it would be a disater for workers, a disaster 
    for those living in the vicinity and it would be a real  toxic brew also containing 
    mercury, cadmium' and numerous other lethal pollutants.

    A spokesman foir the Ministry of Defence told the 
    .......... that they had no knowledge of tanks being melted down as a method of 
    disposal, cooenting: 'there are illegal smelting facilities all over Basra', 
    suggesting contacting their Basra Headquarters, who could not be reached by 
    the time of going to press.

    Robert Fisk comments cynically: "It makes sense. Maybe Iraqi housewives who 
    live through nights of power cuts can now spot their household utensils 
    glowing quietly in the darkness of the kitchen."