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Today's
Stories
February
3, 2004
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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February
3, 2004
How the Other Half
Lives
Embedded
in the Real World, Back in Iraq
By NICK HALFINGER
Right now, the Coalition Provisional Authority,
or C.P.A., has its hands full trying to run Iraq. There are resistance
forces to track down, elections to inhibit, and a multitude of
infrastructure problems and social ills to get abreast of. They
don't have the time or personnel to officially certify journalists,
and so for the moment we are more-or-less free to do as we choose,
and the C.P.A. actually helps us as best they can, when we ask
them for interviews or information.
The only exception, so far, has been
a friend who writes for a free paper in New York, who was told
he could not 'embed' with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad,
because reporters from that journal have been 'banned'. We are
still trying to figure out exactly why.
For these reasons, myself and another
journalist from the United States decide one day to go ahead
and arrange ourselves a visit with the Occupation forces, while
we still can, to provide the 'other side of the story'. We have
yet to move amongst ordinary American soldiers, and so we set
up to be 'embedded' at a place called Logistical Staging Area
Anaconda.
L.S.A. Anaconda is situated sixty kilometers
north of Baghdad, on the site of what was formerly an Iraqi airbase
under Saddam. It has been appropriated by the US Army, and they
have moved into the old hangars, mess halls, and offices as if
it were their own construction.
In fact, it feels almost exactly like
being inside a massive military facility in the middle of the
Arizona desert. There is an internal bus system to transport
the 13,000 personnel about the 32-square mile environs, and at
every junction are the usual signs one sees at an army base:
unintelligible acronyms and numbers of units and battalions.
The base, and the people who live on
it, are completely sealed off from the small villages around
the area by earthen berms, machine-gun posts, and piles of razor
wire.
We have come here specifically to report
about the Combat Army Surgical Hospital, or C.A.S.H, that is
set up at Camp Anaconda. It is a complex of heated tents connected
by round plastic tunnels, right next to the sprawling airfield,
where hulking C-130 transport planes land and take off constantly.
The staff are nurses, doctors, medics, and surgeons from all
parts of the USA.
Most are about to return home, as the
Occupation Forces are in the process of a massive changeover,
with those who have been here for a year now being replaced by
new units. They are proud of their work at the hospital, proud
to serve in the military, and ready to see their families again.
They are glad that the nightly mortar attacks have grown fewer
since the blazing, miserable summer, and they are sad about all
the people that they have seen die after being wounded.
We have been with them only a few hours
when the loudspeaker calls for an Iraqi translator to go to the
Emergency Room. We follow him through the canvas curtain into
a long tent arranged with gurneys, tables, and medical supplies.
A doctor explains to us what has happened.
The crew of a Black Hawk helicopter had witnessed a man waving
a rifle at them. They claim to have fired warning shots, and
when he did not desist, opened fire with a 50-caliber machine
gun. The man is shortly thereafter wheeled into the E.R., gasping
in pain.
He looks to be in his seventies. The
lower half of his left arm has been almost totally blown apart
from the rest of the limb, and it hangs by bloody sinews from
his elbow. The doctors set to work with an organized, energetic
calm, calling out what they are doing as they work. A tall, dark-haired
doctor is in charge, and he never loses his cool. "Get an
I.V. in his leg." "Yes, sir." "I need another
dose of anaesthetic. " "Is he allergic to anything?"
The man howls as the I.V. goes in. He turns his head to one side,
and I meet his gaze for a brief second, his eyes glazed with
agony. A mixture of empathy and shame washes over me. What the
hell am I doing in here? "Tell him he's going to lose his
arm." A portable X-ray machine is wheeled in and placed
over the victim. Everyone steps back as they turn it on. "Do
we have a blood type?" "It's on the way, sir."
At that moment a colonel comes in and immediately tells me to
stop filming. "This is an E.P.W., an Enemy Prisoner of War.
It's against the Geneva Convention to photograph an E.P.W."
I don't bother telling him that the U.S. is in almost daily violation
of the Geneva Convention here in Iraq, its latest audacity being
to arrest the entire family of a suspected resistance leader
who is still at large, and to hold them until he surrenders.
This is a flagrantly illegal move, the sort of tactic employed
by 12th century Crusaders, and it was dutifully reported on the
news wires without a peep of criticism. But I stop filming the
operation.
The tank crew that brought the man in
are at the other end of the tent, clustered around a television,
watching American programming. They seem unconcerned by the cries
of pain twenty feet away.
Occasionally local Iraqis will bring
injured people to the front gate of the base, asking for help.
The policy, explains a medic, is to save Life, Limb, or Eyesight.
If any of these are in danger of being lost, the patient is admitted.
There was a girl that was burned on her back when she fell into
her family's oven. She was admitted, received surgery and skin
grafts, and is apparently doing fine.
There are also three children staying
at the C.A.S.H. who were injured in an "accident".
A Bradley opened up with its 25mm heavy machine gun on a house
that contained civilians. They claim to have been counterattacking
after receiving fire, and hit the wrong location. Seven people
were killed, and two of the three survivors will probably never
walk again.
The children have been recovering for
a month now, and they are wheeled out to the mess hall to eat
along with everyone else. Their uncle and father have come to
visit them, and the two men stand calmly beside the table in
their colored robes and headscarves, amongst a sea of khaki-clad
U.S. military.
I try and speak with the father when
we both step outside to smoke. He is, understandably, the least
polite Iraqi that I have met.He seems barely able to He describes
in detail what happened, how the Americans shot up his house
and family. He has a very composed and noble bearing, that of
a respected village elder, with a deep, sullen rage beneath his
calm. All he wants to talk about is the attack, and I don't know
if he has forgiven the killers or not. Probably not.
The children seem in good spirits, however.
They know all the hospital staff, and wave to everyone. They
eat a lot, which is a good sign. After the meal they are returned
to their quarters in the Moderate Care Unit, and their relatives
leave the base.
Not much happens for several hours. The
atmosphere, to us visitors, is stifling and slightly uncomfortable.
Not that anyone there is unpleasant, it's just that they are
all career soldiers, conservative politically and somewhat narrow
in world-view. We are also trying to watch what we say, as we
don't want anyone to overhear our real opinions about what's
going on in Iraq, which we absolutely have a better understanding
of than these folks, the majority of whom have spent an entire
year on this one patch of ground without going "outside
the wire", as leaving the base is called.
One woman tells us about all the media
that have already visited. "The Guardian from England was
here," she says, "that's why we don't always trust
journalists. They wrote about 'Iraqi resistance fighters' ".
She rolls her eyes, incredulous that they would use such language
to describe people that she believes are all "Saddam Loyalists".
In fact, everyone we talk to at the base
thinks of the resistance in Iraq as being monolithic, an army
of lunatics bent on returning Iraq to Saddam Hussein. This runs
counter to everything we hear on the street in Baghdad, where
it is common knowledge that there are religious groups, straight-up
nationalists, and generally angry people that all take part in
attacking American troops, in addition to the former Baathists.
L.S.A. Anaconda is indeed a different world from the one that
we have been living in.
The only person we encounter who expresses
any criticism of the American occupation is a forklift mechanic
from Wyoming that we meet during dinner. We try and give him
an idea of the daily difficulty of life in Baghdad, and he shakes
his head angrily. He says he was very disappointed that the U.S.
had entered the war so hastily, without the backing of the U.N.,
and now, he feels, they are paying the price with a chaotic country
on their hands.
Later that night, back at the C.A.S.H.,
we watch a piece of video on a laptop with a group of soldiers.
It has been filmed by a Blackhawk's crew several weeks past,
when they had spied some Iraqis setting up an R.P.G. near the
base in the middle of the night. The screen shows grainy, black-and-white
images of three men getting out of trucks and preparing to attack.
The helicopter is so far away that the men can't even hear the
engines, but they themselves are easily visible to the long-distance
night lenses of the gunner. "Watch right here," says
a man next to me, "this part is beautiful." The image
shakes as the helicopter's M60 fires, and one of the grainy figures
of a man bursts into fragments of flesh as the bullets hit him.
The next two would-be attackers are finished off with the same
ease, as they try to escape in trucks, their vehicles exploding
into flames immediately upon being hit. The assembled viewers
duly murmur cheers of approval.
It hardly seemed like a fair fight, and
reminds me of a conversation I had with a Shi'a sheikh the week
before. "When the Americans first arrived," he said,
"We expected to see Rambo. You know, big, brave, fearsome
men. But now we see that the American soldiers are not any braver
than Iraqis. They just have very, very good weapons."
At about midnight, an American G.I. is
brought in who has been hit with a mortar while on patrol in
Bacuba. The metal has gone right through his leg, and I film
the operation, wherein the surgeons flush out the cavity, make
several X-rays, and pack the limb with cotton swabbing. Later
that night the soldier is returned to the O.R. and his leg amputated.
We spend the night on cots in the Minimum
Care Facility, along with a few soldiers recovering from minor
illnesses and superficial injuries.
The next day we spend tracking down two
people: the Public Affairs Officer of Camp Anaconda, who is in
charge of helping journalists, and the Army doctor in charge
of C.S.C., or Combat Stress Counseling.
We are looking for the P.A.O. because
we want to arrange a ride back down to Baghdad with a convoy
that evening or the next morning. We find him in his office and
he promises to try and arrange it.
The woman in charge of C.S.C. is easily
found as well. We are interested in her work, which is helping
soldiers who are having psychological problems. She is by trade
an Occupational Therapist, and she tells us about the difficulties
experienced by soldiers in the field, and the process of evaluating
and treating them. The majority are treated and resume their
duties, she explains, and her office has a 98% return rate. A
surprising number are experiencing stress that has little to
do with Iraq and is more due to problems back at home: their
partners are becoming distant, they are missing house payments,
their children are doing poorly in school, etc.
There was a "spike" in stress-cases
during the summer, when it was announced that the tours of duty
would be extended to a full year, instead of the six months previously
stated. People began to fall apart at the thought of spending
another half year in the heat, dust, and nightly mortar attacks
of Camp Anaconda.
We ask about the suicide rates among
the soldiers in Iraq. "That's a sensitive topic," she
says, but she responds candidly. The suicides have risen during
the war, and realistically speaking, they will continue to happen.
It is a stressful, difficult business, and some will not be able
to cope. It is a part of war. Her job is to train the commanders
how to spot a person who is a possible suicide, and get them
to her staff for help.
She tells us that during the Vietnam
War, the C.S.C. units were rendered inactive. Could that have
something to do with how many veterans of that conflict came
home profoundly damaged? Absolutely, she responds. In fact, her
office also employs "Preventative Teams", that live
among the front-line infantry troops, trying to determine if
any of the combat-fatigued soldiers is in danger of "losing
it". The Preventative Team's job sounds fascinating, and
we both express interest in writing a story about these field-
psychologists.
Like everyone else we meet at L.S.A.
Anaconda, the therapist is amazed that we move about in Iraq
so freely, without weapons or security. She has been "in
country" a whole year, without leaving the base. When we
tell her that if a military convoy can't take us back to Baghdad,
that we may return by taxi, she almost falls out of her chair.
"You can do that?" she exclaims. "Sure,"
replies my associate. "I once took a bus all the way to
Mosul."
However, no taxi will be needed, as the
P.A.O. later informs us that he has succeeded in securing us
a ride down to Baghdad at 0600 the next morning with a supply
convoy. So we return to the C.A.S.H. to retrieve our bags, as
we will sleep that night in special quarters reserved for journalists,
closer to the convoy vehicles, and easier to get to early the
next day. We are just saying our goodbyes to the doctors and
nurses when a mortar round thuds, somewhere nearby. The hospital
staff usher us into a store-room along with them, and everyone
puts on flak-jackets. Most barely seem concerned at all, they
are so used to it. We wait for half an hour, while a few more
explosions are heard outside. And then it is over. Everyone says
that during the summer, this happened three times a night sometimes.
It is raining when we leave the hospital,
and I can't help but think: what job I would want to be doing
if I had to be in the military? At least as a doctor, you would
actually be helping people. But being stuck on this base, trapped
like a rat when the mortars come in...I know it sounds crazy,
but I would almost rather be in the field, in the infantry or
the Special Forces or something. At least then you would get
to move around and see the country. But you also might get killed
or lose an arm or a leg.
Basically, life at the base seems like
what every one of my friends who joined the Army after high-
school described to me: an oppressive, thankless life, overworked
and underpaid, the only thing holding you together being the
people around you, with whom you develop incredibly strong bonds.
Other than that it totally sucks, and war makes it even worse.
Fuck this. We're going back to Baghdad,
back to the real world, back to Iraq.
Nick Halfinger
is the pen name of a freelance filmmaker working in Iraq.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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