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Recent
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April
1, 2003
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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April 3,
2003
A Crooked Mirror
Presstitution
and the Theater of Operations
By URI AVNERY
George Bush, we are told, is a deeply religious
person, and so is his yeoman, Tony Blair. It is a pity that they
do not read the Bible more.
One of the most beautiful Hebrew sentences
can be found in I Kings XX. When he threatened Israel, the King
of Syria boasted of his mighty army and demanded surrender. King
Ahab replied with four immortal Hebrew words, rendered thus in
English: "Let not him that girdeth on (his harness) boast
himself as he that putteth it off."
Retroactive Terrorists
Schoolbooks in dozens of languages must
now be rewritten.
The old books said that the men and women
of the French resistance in World War II were heroes. These civilians
went out in the night to bomb German trains, kill German soldiers
and execute collaborators. The instructions came from London.
They knew that if they were caught, they would undergo gruesome
tortures and be put to death. American and British movies sang
their praise.
The Russian partisans, whose slogan was
"Death to the Invader!" made the life of the German
soldiers hell. The  partisans were hanged in droves. The
original guerillas--for whom this Spanish word meaning "little
war" was coined--attacked Napoleon's soldiers. Goya immortalized
them in his magnificent painting. A whole generation of Israeli
children was taught to admire the Irgun and Stern Group fighters,
all civilians, of course, who blew up the installations of the
British army and killed its soldiers. It appears now that they
were all vile terrorists.
Presstitution
In the Middle Ages, armies were accompanied
by large numbers of prostitutes. In the Iraq war, the American
and British armies are accompanied by large numbers of journalists.
I coined the Hebrew equivalent of "presstitution"
when I was the editor of an Israeli newsmagazine, to denote the
journalists who turn the media into whores. Physicians are bound
by the Hippocratic oath to save life as far as possible. Journalists
are bound by professional honor to tell the truth, as they see
it.
Never before have so many journalists
betrayed their duty as in this war. Their original sin was their
agreement to be "embedded" in army units. This American
term sounds like being put to bed, and that is what it amounts
to in practice.
A journalist who lies down in the bed of an army unit becomes
a voluntary slave. He is attached to the commander's staff, led
to the places the commander is interested in, sees what the commander
wants him or her to see, is turned away from the places the commanders
does not want him to see, hears what the my wants him to hear
and does not hear what the army does not want him to hear. He
is worse than an official army spokesman, because he pretends
to be an independent reporter.
The problem is not that he only sees
a small piece of the grand mosaic of the war, but that he transmits
a mendacious view of that piece.
In the Falklands and the first Gulf wars,
journalists were simply not allowed to reach the campaign area.
It seems that a bright fellow at the Pentagon had an idea: "Why
keep them out? Let's allow them in, they'll be told what to write
and broadcast and eat out of our hands like puppies."
Shame
Since the age of 19, I have been a journalist.
I was always proud of it. On innumerable forms I wrote "Profession:
Journalist."
I am ashamed when I see a large group
of journalists from all over the world sitting in front of a
many-starred general, listening eagerly to what is called a "briefing"
and not posing the simplest relevant question. And when a courageous
reporter does stand up and ask a real question, no one protests
when the general responds with banal propaganda slogans instead
of giving a real answer.
Remember the virtual surrender of the
Iraqi 51st division? The "uprising" of the people of
Basra that never was? The thousand and one other lies, that have
gone with the wind? Where were the journalists when all this
happened?
Almost all the journalistic reports of
this war are a crooked mirror. We see in it a manipulated, distorted
and mendacious picture. Therefore, praise be to the few who,
like Peter Arnett, are ready to sacrifice their career on the
altar of truth.
The bottom of the
barrel
I am ashamed of being a journalist. I
am doubly ashamed of being an Israeli journalist.
In this war, all sections of the Israeli
media have sunk to a new low. No criticism at all gets published.
The opponents of the war have effectively been silenced. Even
in the American media, some voices of dissent are being heard.
In Israel, this is not possible. It would be worse than treason.
The only exception I know of is the TV
reporter San Semama, who stole into Iraq, was caught by the Americans,
imprisoned in a jeep and starved for 48 hours. He saw what was
really happening. Parts of his reports were published here and
there, and then the curtain of silence came down. All the rest--journalists,
pundits, the bunch of ex-officers and so on--appear on our screens,
hour after hour, and repeat like parrots the American propaganda-line,
even when it is manifestly ridiculous.
Toy soldiers
I am especially allergic to "military
correspondents". They are indeed a unique human species,
the ultimate he-men, the ultimate soldiers. They are also ridiculous
frauds.
I saw them first in our 1948 war, when
I was a combat soldier. When we were lying in the mud and crawling
among the thorns, from time to time we saw such a "soldier",
clean shaven, in a fresh uniform, wearing a helmet and radiating
all the martial virtues. These were the military correspondents,
attached to brigade headquarters, associating with senior officers,
far from the front line.
(I really shouldn't complain. When I
published my combat-diary after the war it became a run-away
bestseller overnight--simply because not one of these toy soldiers
was able to write an authentic book about the war.)
The theater of operations
I read somewhere that the briefing room
of General Tommy Franks was created by a professional designer
for a quarter of a million dollars. The American army does invest
a lot of money in designing this theater.
I assume that much bigger sums are paid
to the professional designers who shape the public appearances
of President Bush. One should pay attention to the scenery--much
more interesting than George W.'s words.
For some months now, Bush is almost always
seen against a background of soldiers. The stage designer sees
to it that the soldiers are all around the President, so that
from any photo angle the admiring faces shine behind him.
A few days ago, the designers achieved
a special effect: behind the President there stood a white Coast
Guard ship, with red-uniformed sailor tastefully dispersed on
it in photogenic groups. Other sailors were in front and on either
side of the President. No scene from opera could have been better
arranged. I would not have been surprised if the President had
started to render an aria. But he only uttered his usual inanities.
The Great Patriotic
War
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union,
Stalin understood that the Russian people would not lay down
their lives for Marxism-Leninism. Overnight he changed his message.
Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Field Marshal Suvorov and
Prince Kutuzov were resurrected in order to win the masses for
what was officially named the Great Patriotic War.
Saddam Hussein does it now. He calls
upon his people to stand up and kill the invaders--not in the
name of the Ba'ath party (whose founders were Christians) but
in the name of Allah and the Muslim homeland.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli journalist. His essays are included in The
Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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