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Recent Stories
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
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
29, 2003
Bombing the Phone System
Another
Little Degradation
By ROBERT FISK
It's
difficult to weep about a telephone exchange. True, the destruction
of the local phone system in Baghdad is a miserable experience for tens
of thousands of Iraqi families who want to keep in contact with their
relatives during the long dark hours of bombing. But the shattered exchanges
and umbilical wires and broken concrete of the Mimoun International
Communications Centre scarcely equals the exposed bones and intestines
and torn flesh of the civilian wounded of Baghdad.
The
point, of course, is that it represents another of those little degradations
which we (as in "we, the West") routinely undertake when things
aren't going our way in a war. Obviously, "we" hoped it wouldn't
come to this. The Anglo-American armies wanted to maintain the infrastructure
of Baghdad for themselves --after they had "liberated" the
city under a hail of roses from its rejoicing people--because they would
need working phone lines on their arrival.
But
after a night of massive explosions across the city, dawn yesterday
brought the realisation that communications had been sacrificed. The
huge Rashid telecom-munications centre was struck by a cruise missile
which penetrated the basement of the building. The exchange in Karada,
where Baghdadis pay their phone bills, was ripped open. No more. Because
"we" have decided to destroy the phones and all those "command
and control" systems that may be included, dual use, into the network.
So
yesterday, most Baghdadis had to drive across town to see each other;
there was more traffic on the roads than at any time since the start
of the war. Down, too, went Baghdad's internet system. Iraqi television,
a pale shadow of itself since the Americans bombed the studios on Wednesday
night, can be watched only between an increasing number of power cuts.
So
what's next? Each day, of course, brings news of events which, on their
own, have no great import but which, together, add a sinister, new dimension
to the coming siege of Baghdad.
Yesterday,
hundreds of tribesmen from across Iraq gathered at the Baghdad Hotel
before meeting President Saddam Hussein.
The
Iraqi tribes, ignored by the military planners and Washington pundits
who think Iraq is held together only by the Baath party and the army,
are a powerful force, their unity cemented by marriage and a network
of families loyal to President Saddam who provide a force as cohesive
as the Baath party itself.
Tribesmen
guard the grain silos and electricity generating stations around Baghdad.
Two of them were credited with disabling an Apache helicopter captured
last week.
And
yesterday, tribal leaders came from all over Iraq, from Ninevah and
Babylon and Basra and Nasiriyah and all the cities of Mesopotamia.
President
Saddam has already issued one set of orders which tells the tribesmen
"to fight [the Americans and British] in groups and attack their
advance and rear lines to block the way of their progress ... If the
enemy settles into a position, start to harass them at night ..."
Another
sign of things to come. At least 20 international "human shields"
--hitherto "guarding" power stations, oil refineries and food
production plants --decided to leave Iraq yesterday. So did all Chinese
journalists, on instructions from their government. Not all the optimistic
claims from the Iraqi government, a victory against US Marines outside
Nasiriyah was among them, could change their minds.
The
nightly attacks long ago spread into the daylight hours, so the sound
of aircraft and rockets --I have several times actually heard the missiles
passing over the central streets --have acquired a kind of normality.
A few stores have reopened. There are fresh vegetables again. And like
every blitzed people, Baghdadis are growing used to what has become
a dull, familiar danger.
Is
this "shock and awe", I sometimes ask myself?
Yesterday's Features
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
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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