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Recent Stories
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
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
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
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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March
26, 2003
The Coming Siege of Saddamagrad?
The Coup That
Didn't Happen
By ROBERT FISK
Baghdad.
L
et us now praise famous men. Saddam Hussein was
keen on doing just that yesterday. And he proceeded to list the Iraqi
army and navy officers who are leading the resistance against the Anglo-American
army in Umm Qasr, Basra and Nasariyah.
Major-General
Mustapha Mahmoud Umran, commanding officer of the 11th Division, Brigadier
Bashir Ahmed Othman, commander of the Iraqi 45th Brigade, Brigadier-Colonel
Ali Kalil Ibrahim, commander of the 11th Battalion of the 45th Brigade,
Colonel Mohamed Khallaf al-Jabawi, commander of the 45th Brigade's 2nd
Battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Fathi Rani Majid of the Iraqi army's III
Corps ... And so it went on.
"Be
patient," President Saddam kept saying. Be patient. Fourteen times
in all, he told the army and the people of Iraq to be patient. "We
will win ... we will be victorious against Evil." Patient but confident
in victory. Fighting evil.
Wasn't
that how President Bush was encouraging his people a few hours earlier?
At other times, President Saddam sounded like his hero, Joseph Stalin.
"They have come to destroy our country and we must stand and destroy
them and defend our people and our country ... Cut their throats ...
They are coming to take our land. But when they try to enter our cities,
they try to avoid a battle with our forces and to stay outside the range
of our weapons."
Was
this, one wondered, modelled on the Great Patriotic War, the defence
of Mother Russia under Uncle Joe? And if not, how to account for--let
us speak frankly--the courage of those hundreds of Iraqi soldiers still
holding out under American air and tank attacks?
People, party, patriotism. The three P's ran like a theme through the
Saddam speech along with a bitter warning: as the American and British
forces made less headway on the ground, President Saddam said, they
would use their air power against Iraq ever more brutally.
So
what does it feel like to live these days in President Saddam's future
Stalingrad? Early yesterday, the cruise missiles and the planes came
back. The great explosions clapped across Baghdad in the darkness. One
of the Tomahawks smashed into the grounds of the Al-Mustansiriya University--25
students
wounded and one dead, so they claimed.
There were other sounds in the early hours. A blaze of automatic gunfire
on the Tigris Corniche--attempts to capture two escaping US airmen,
the authorities insisted--and then a full-scale gun battle not far from
the city centre at 2.30am. There were rumours. Armed men had come from
Saddam City--the great Shia slums on the edge of Baghdad--and had been
intercepted by state security men. No "independent confirmation".
A story that the railway line north of Baghdad has been cut. Denied.
But
the sheer amount of military and statistical detail coming from the
Iraqi authorities is beginning to make the US Centcom information boys
look like chumps. On Sunday, the Iraqi Minister of Defence, General
Sultan Hashim, gave a remarkable briefing on the war, naming the units
involved in front-line fighting--the 3rd Battalion of the Iraqi army's
27th Brigade was still holding out at Suq ash-Shuyukh south of Nasariyah,
the 3rd Battalion of the Third Iraqi Army was holding Basra. And I remembered
how these generals gave identical briefings during the terrible 1980-88
war against Iran. When we set off to check their stories then, they
almost always turned out to be true.
Does
the same apply now? General Hashem repeatedly insisted that his men
were destroying US tanks and armour and helicopters.
This
was easy to dismiss--until videotape of two burning US armoured personnel
carriers popped up on the television screen. Vice-President Taha Yassin
Ramadan has been obliging enough to explain the Iraqi army's tactics.
It was Iraqi policy to let the Anglo-American armies "roam around"
in the desert as long as they want, and attack them when they tried
to enter the cities. Which seems to be pretty much what they are doing.
From
Baghdad, with its canopy of sinister black oil smoke and air raid sirens,
the American plan appears to be rather similar: to barnstorm up the
desert parallel to the Tigris and Euphrates valley and try to turn right
at every available city on the way. If there's trouble at Umm Qasr,
try Basra. If Basra is blocked, have a go through Nasariyah. If that's
dangerous, try to turn right through Najaf.
But
the open road--the long highway to Baghdad lined with adoring Iraqis
throwing roses at GIs and Tommys--is proving to be an illusion.
By
this morning, the Americans could be outside Baghdad. But in military
terms they might as well be in Kuwait.
Perhaps,
in American and British terms, this is too pessimistic an assessment.
In Baghdad, it's easy to see not just how badly the Americans and British
have miscalculated, but it's also possible to imagine just how long
President Saddam and his army and Baath party militias can endure, a
sobering thought for those of us sitting in the Iraqi capital and only
too well aware that the Stalingrad symbolism might turn out to be real.
Saddam's tactics are clearly those of Stalin. Every day that passes
is a day of further pain for Washington and London.
You
could observe this cockiness when Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Information
Minister, spoke. Of Tony Blair, he said jovially yesterday: "I
think the British nation has never been faced with a tragedy like this
fellow." Mr Sahaf then presented a casualty list, which, however
imaginative it might turn out to be, was credible to the average Iraqi,
and perhaps to anyone. Civilian wounded and dead respectively: in Baghdad,
194 wounded (13 less than estimated); in Ninevah, eight wounded; in
Karbala 32 wounded and 10 killed; in Salahuddin, 22 wounded and 2 killed.
In Najaf, the figures were 36 and 2; in Qadissiyah, 13 and 4; in Basra,
122 and 14. In Babylon, the Iraqi government claims 63 wounded and 30
killed.
Sixty-two
dead civilians--if the statistics are correct--is not a massacre. But
there's nothing surprising about such a figure. It looks as if the Americans
and British are bleeding to "liberate" a people who are not
all that keen to be liberated by the Americans and British. A moral
problem, of course. But not so big a moral problem as it would be if
all this Iraqi suffering at the hands of the Americans and British turned
out to be about oil.
Alive
and well?
Saddam
Hussein's appearance on television yesterday failed to convince British
and American intelligence that the Iraqi leader was either alive or
well. But those who have met him most recently believe the TV footage
shows him to be in robust health.
"One
hundred per cent it is Saddam Hussein," a Lebanese political activist,
who met the President last month, said. "This is his accent, these
are his words, this is his speech and his style. This is his way. This
is him, without hesitation."
Toby
Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Warwick University, said Allied scepticism
was part of psychological warfare. He said: "The whole American
strategic plan is based on triggering a coup so they don't have to fight
in Baghdad. He's alive and as well as you and me." The makeshift
surroundings in yesterday's broadcast lent it credibility, Mr Dodge
said.
Today's Features
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
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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