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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
25, 2003
Blood Indicator
Casualties
and the Stock Market
By JASON LEOPOLD
I
hope the stock market
gets hammered. I hope the Iraqis set fire to as many oil fields as possible.
I hope oil prices in the United States surge and shortages persist.
I hope the antiwar protestors become disobedient. I hope the economy
never recovers. I hope Iraq doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction.
I hope our troops make it home alive.
This is the only
way to drive home the point that war is brutal no matter who the enemy
is. After the bombs dropped on Baghdad and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers
surrendered to U.S. and British troops, the pundits on CNN, Fox News
and MSNBC reported that the war could end within a month.
“Nonsense,”
I said.
This war would be
an easy victory for the U.S. and its allies, the cable news outlets
said. Kind of like watching the Los Angeles Lakers pummel the Los Angeles
Clippers. Reaction here to the commentaries and the real-time images
was swift. The stock market soared. Oil prices plummeted. It appears
that the outcome of the war is measured by how well the Dow Jones Industrial
Average performs
Since last Wednesday, I have been glued to the television, watching
in shock and awe how the pundits on the cable news outlets reported
on the conflict like it was some sort of sporting event. The television
and print reporters covering the war failed to ask any questions about
Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and where they were
hidden. It’s as if the media forgot the reasons the Bush administration
said we were invading Iraq in the first place.
Then last weekend, the realities of war set in. A few military helicopters
crashed. U.S. and British soldiers died. On Saturday, a dozen American
soldiers were captured and may have been executed in an ambush by Iraqi
soldiers, which was aired on an Arab news station. President Bush warned
that if U.S. soldiers were executed it would violate the Geneva Convention
and that those responsible would be prosecuted for war crimes.
Excuse me for being cynical, but for a president who only last week
promised to eradicate Saddam Hussein’s regime and everyone who
fights on behalf of it, why would Iraqi soldiers abide by the rules
of war? What’s the incentive? The way they see it they’re
dead men walking.
Reaction here to the two-dozen U.S. and British casualties in the four-day
war has been anger, frustration, even disbelief. And the ground war
against Iraq’s elite Republican Guard—which promises to
bring even more U.S. and British combat deaths—hasn’t even
started yet.
What this proves is that the public can’t and won’t accept
the loss of U.S. life in exchange for the Bush administration’s
goal of overthrowing Saddam and liberating the Iraqi people. Nor should
they.
Sure, the U.S. will prevail. We will win this war. Saddam will be history.
Iraqi’s will be free. But it will come at a cost. Only when the
reality of war sets in, when mothers lose their sons, wives lose their
husbands and children lose their fathers and mothers will people start
to question the motives of invading a country that so far has proved
to be nothing more than a nuisance to the U.S., not a threat.
Yesterday's Features
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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