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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
27, 2003
The New Humanitarianism
Basra as Military
Target
By RAHUL MAHAJAN
Iraq's
desperate humanitarian situation has suddenly become a retroactive justification
for the war, even for the attacking of civilian targets. The need to
get aid into Basra has apparently prompted a British military spokesperson
to designate it as a "legitimate military target," language
reminiscent of Gulf War I, when the saturation bombing of Basra was
justified on the same basis.
As verifiable civilian
deaths mount toward 300 in this "war of liberation," the need
to establish American moral superiority is growing rapidly. Thus Donald
Rumsfeld's convenient rediscovery of the Geneva Convention and thus
the American media hysteria over al-Jazeera, which has the temerity
to provide balanced reporting of the war.
Thus also a recent
press conference by the execrable Andrew Natsios, head administrator
of USAID, in which he raised the already stunning mendacity of the Bush
administration to new heights. While beating his chest over the massive
preparations the United States has made to avert a humanitarian tragedy
in Iraq (always assuming the Iraqis don't screw things up by continuing
unaccountably to resist their liberation), he touched on the problems
of Basra, where only 40% of the people currently have access to potable
water.
The genesis of said
problems, according to him, is "a deliberate decision by the regime
not to repair the water system or replace old equipment with new equipment,
so in many cases people are basically drinking untreated sewer water
in their homes and have been for some years."
A deliberate decision
by the regime. We've seen some remarkable lies about Iraq from this
administration including Dick Cheney's statement that Iraq has "reconstituted
nuclear weapons", Ari Fleischer's that Iraq did not declare the
range of its al-Samoud 2 missiles, and an attempt to pass off crudely
forged documents as proof that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from
Niger.
But this. "A
deliberate decision by the regime." The mind boggles. Ever since
Iraq's water treatment system was left in shambles by the Gulf War,
where the deliberate targeting of the entire electrical power grid caused
water pumping to shut down and sewage to fill the streets of Basra,
the Iraqi government has scrambled desperately to repair its water system,
only to come repeatedly face to face with one huge obstacle: the United
States government.
Joy Gordon's excellent
article, "Cool War: Economic Sanctions as a Weapon of Mass Destruction"
(Harper's, November 2002), documents at length her conclusion that "the
United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most
basic humanitarian needs." Under the sanctions regime set up over
Iraq after the Gulf War, any country on the Security Council could block
or indefinitely delay any contract for goods submitted by the Iraqi
government. The United States has imposed far more blocks than all other
members put together; as of 2001, it had put half a billion dollars
worth of water and sanitation contracts on hold. The water treatment
goods it has blocked at one time or another include pipes (roughly 40%
of the clean water pumped is lost to leakage), earth-moving equipment,
safety equipment for handling chlorine, and no fewer than three sewage
treatment plants.
But there can be
no doubt that, in the inimitable words of Madeleine Albright, "we
care more about the Iraqi people."
If you're not convinced
yet, consider this. After coming under harsh criticism because of the
frightful inadequacy of its humanitarian preparations, the United States
has made some attempt to remedy the problem. The original plan was a
reprise of the Afghan operation dubbed "military propaganda"
by Doctors Without Borders, in which some tens of thousands of meals
would be dropped out of planes every day, and, in the miraculous manner
common in that part of the world, each meal would feed a multitude;
now, some shipments of wheat have been added to the original plan.
The same Andrew
Natsios wrote an indignant rejoinder to the Washington Post, claiming
full readiness of the United States to "help Iraq.". Tucked
away in the middle of his missive: "Saddam Hussein has doubled
monthly food rations since October, trying to buy the affection of his
people. As a result, families have stored food at home."
In other words,
for all the humanitarian triumphalism of the "coalition,"
for all its great desire to level Basra so that Iraqis can be fed, the
agency that has taken meaningful steps to avert a catastrophe is the
Iraqi government. It did so under the severest of constraints; for over
a year, revenue has been depressed and the Oil for Food program is dramatically
underfunded.
Saddam Hussein is
a brutal dictator who has subjected his people to horrible suffering.
There is little doubt about that. The fact that on at least the grounds
considered above he stacks up far better than the U.S. government, no
matter which administration, does not bode well for the future of the
Iraqi people.
Nor does this brave
new humanitarian world being created by the exponents of water privatization
and structural adjustment bode well for the future of anybody else.
On Iraq, the New Humanitarianism is clear: we had to destroy Iraq (over
the past 12 years, not just the last few days) in order to save it.
Who will we save next?
Rahul Mahajan
is a founding member of the Nowar Collective. His latest book is "Full
Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond." His articles
are collected at http://www.rahulmahajan.com
He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca
Yesterday's Features
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
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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