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Recent Stories
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
24, 2003
After "Shock
and Awe"
Spring Morning
in Baghdad
By KATHY KELLY
Here
in Baghdad, along the Tigris River, a gentle dawn and the sweetest of
birdsongs were more precious than ever following a horrific night of
intense bombardment. With the calm morning came relief after learning
that the families of friends who work at the hotel are “o.k.”
Abu Hassan, a pro at charades, pantomimed what happened in his home.
He pointed to the windows in my room, held up five fingers, touched
the floor and then affirmed, “Finished.” Five windows had
shattered. Then he swung his arms around to imitate a ceiling fan, also
“finished,” ? it had crashed to the floor, and next he crouched
down with his hands on his head to indicate what the children had done.
Riyadh then told us that his brother and father were “finished”
in the 1991 Gulf War ? making a gesture of falling asleep, which meant
that both had been killed during the war, and then he mimicked wiping
tears from his eyes to explain that his mother had wept through the
night, remembering past agony while quivering through the present one.
Abu Hassan and Riyadh live in the impoverished Saddam City section of
Baghdad.
At 8:00 p.m. last
evening, I sat on a second floor balcony of our hotel watching tracer
lights flash across the sky. The first round of bombing seemed distant
and in the calm that followed, Neville suggested that perhaps that would
be it for tonight. We joked about Neville’s prediction, quite
exact, that bombing would begin precisely 45 minutes after he lay down
to take a nap. “You’ll just have to stay awake now Neville,”
said Ed. Our levity was broken by thundering explosions that repeatedly
shook our hotel building.
I darted to my room,
swiftly poured a cup of coffee, pocketed a handful of cotton swabs,
grabbed my journal and a few books and then hurried down two flights
of stairs to join other hotel residents and staff in the ground floor
“tea room.”
I saw Marwan, age
12, and his nine year old sister, Dima, surveying the adult’s
faces. Thankfully, all of us were managing to appear calm, and Marwan
and Dima followed suit. A Christian woman made the sign of the cross
while a Muslim man unrolled his prayer mat (he hotel owner, a devout
Muslim, has invited his Christian neighbors to stay with us).
We settled in to
endure a long night of bludgeoning attacks on Baghdad. The cotton swabs
were handy for playing pick-up sticks and making a tic-tac-toe grid.
Cathy Breen produced a few lumps of clay which we made into markers.
Mohammed, our friendly cab driver, picked up a tiny pink lump and popped
it in his mouth, expecting it to be a gumdrop. Did he do it on purpose?
Anyway, it was a brilliant distraction that sent the children into gales
of laughter.
Tomorrow we’ll
plan a birthday party for Amal who turns 13. Last night, a cake appeared
in the tearoom in celebration of Mother’s Day. Tiny Zainab and
Maladh, daughters of the hotel night manager, have warmed up to me and
let me help their parents rock them to sleep. And so it goes. As Operation
Iraq Freedom storms on, we’ll liberate ourselves from any government’s
efforts to sever natural bonds between us.
As I write, I can
hear explosions in the distance. Clouds of smoke are billowing in every
direction. We’ve heard that last night’s casualty list includes
207 wounded, four of whom died in hospitals. News reports say that more
than 1,000 Cruise missiles were launched last night, and the US may
be planning to release many more tonight. On a beautiful spring day,
welcome to hell.
Kathy Kelly
is in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness's Iraq Peace Team. This article
originally aappeared on electronicIraq.net,
a joint project from Voices in the Wilderness and The Electronic Intifada.
Today's Features
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
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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