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Recent
Stories
April
23, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
April
22, 2003
Edward
Said
The Appalling Consequences of the Iraq
War are Now Clear
Sam
Hamod
What's the Deal with This War?
Kurt
Nimmo
Shi'a Will to Power
Gary
Leupp
At last! The Necessary Evidence
Carl
Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort,
We Subside
John
Stanton
Iran's Reza Pahlavi: a Puppet of the US and Israel?
Ramzy
Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?
Steven
Sherman
About That Cuba Letter
Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult
Stew
Albert
Creep
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/22
Website
of the Day
Critical Media Literacy in Times of War
April
21, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
An Administration in Contempt
Gary
Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus
and Kanaka WaiWai
Roger
Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action
Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door
Col. Dan
Smith
Early Lessons from Iraq
Jo
Freeman
After the Protest Comes Politics
Michael
Berry
The Friedman Absurdities
Gray
Brechin
Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss
Bob Riedel
The Taliban from Texas
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/21
April
19, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Rape of History
Saul
Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's
War, Wait for Armageddon
Michael
J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia
Pablo
Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance
Omar
Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat
Anthony
Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World
Mickey
Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage
Will
Potter
When Police Attack Journalists
William
MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism
Neve
Gordon
Haunted by History
Adam
Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace
Dr.
Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/19
Song of
the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra
April
18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom":
This One's Not About Oil
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become
Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
Hussein
Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV
Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles
Matania
Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President
of Israel's Supreme Court
Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us
Joe
Allen
My Lai Revisited
Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/18
Website
of the Day
Meet the Victims of War
April
17, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in
the Patriot Missile System
Joanne
Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications
for the Pentagon
Issam
Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman
to Baghdad
Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism
Robert
Fisk
The Army of Occupation
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim
Biljana
Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where
is the Truth?
Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire
Stanley
Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like
Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation
Harold
A. Gould
Iraq After the War
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/17
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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April 26,
2003
Meet the New Boss, Same as the
Old
"No one
is totally clean"
by MICKEY Z.
"When the Second World War/came
to an end/We forgave the Germans/And we were friends/Though they
murdered six million/In the ovens they fried/The Germans now
too/Have God on their side." --Bob Dylan
In his inexhaustible quest to turn Operation Iraqi
Freedom (sic) into another Good War, President (sic) Bush has
taken a page from post-war Germany. As reported by everyone from
the Wall Street Journal to the World Socialist Website (WSWS),
the U.S. is installing former Ba'ath Party officials into positions
of power throughout Iraq, i.e.
Zuhair Al-Noaime is Baghdad's new police
chief. Prior to this role, he joined the Iraqi police in 1966
and held the rank of general. According to the British Independent,
the former informer networks of the Ba'athist political police,
the Mukhabarat are now operating in Baghdad "neighborhood
watches." Fah Haran, the new mayor of the northern Iraqi
town of Bayji, was a leading Ba'athist. Ghalib Kubba, appointed
by the British to run Basra, is (according to the Los Angeles
Times) "a partner of Uday Hussein [Saddam's son]. It's well
known. All commercial people from the first class in Iraq, all
of them are  partners of Saddam Hussein."
"The Christian Science Monitor reported on April 21 that
the Bush administration refused to endorse a proposal by exiled
Iraqi lawyers for large-scale prosecution of Ba'athists"
said James Conachy on the WSWS. A lawyer told the Monitor: "There
is a bit of ambivalence [in the Bush administration] about moving
ahead with it. There's a fear that if they [the Iraqis] have
an independent structure for the judiciary, it would interfere
with political plans."
Marine Lieutenant Colonel William Schafer
summed up the situation for the Wall Street Journal: "You
could say that everyone here worked for Saddam Hussein because
if you didn't, you didn't survive. No one is totally clean, so
you look at the levels of what people did."
All this (and more) takes place as the
U.S. media drones on about the successful model of German "de-Nazification."
To accept this premise, however, would be to ignore the fact
that immediately upon the defeat of Germany, the United States
went about recruiting Nazis to help with the next good war...against
the USSR.
Besides higher profile criminals like
Klaus Barbie and Reinhard Gehlen, some those "recruits"
included: Alois Brunner (a.k.a. "Georg Fischer"): Sentenced
to death (in abstensia) by the French government for crimes against
humanity, he was known for his lack of compassion for Jewish
children, labeling them "future terrorists" who must
be murdered. SS officer Baron Otto von Bolschwing: A senior aide
to the notorious Adolf Eichmann, von Bolschwing assisted in drawing
up the SS's "first comprehensive program for the systematic
robbery of Europe's Jews." Under his orders, some of the
many Jewish victims in a 1941 Bucharest pogrom were butchered
in a meat packing plant, hung on hooks, and literally branded
as "kosher meat," while others-including a five-year-old
girl-were skinned alive and left hanging by their feet like slaughtered
livestock. Von Bolschwing himself stated that in 1945, "he
volunteered his services to the Army CIC, which used him for
interrogation and recruitment of other former Nazi intelligence
officers." SS Obersturmführer Robert Verbelen: Sentenced
to death in abstentia for war crimes, including the torture of
two U.S. Air Force pilots, after the war, Verbelen served in
Vienna as a contract spy for the U.S. Army-which was completely
aware of his background. Dr. Kurt Blome: The admitted leader
of Nazi biological warfare research, a program that included
experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps. In 1947,
he was acquitted of crimes against humanity and then hired by
the U.S. Army Chemical Corps "to conduct a new round of
biological weapons research." Dr. Arthur Rudolph: Blome's
colleague, Rudolph was accused "in sworn testimony at Nuremberg
of committing atrocities at the Nazis' underground rocket works
near Nordhausen but was later given U.S. citizenship and a major
role in the U.S. missile program."
Investigative reporter Christopher Simpson
explains another aspect of this model of "de-Nazification":
"Many leaders of Wall Street and of the U.S. foreign policy
establishment had maintained close ties with their German counterparts
since the 1920s, some having intermarried or shared investments.
This went so far in the 1930s as the sale in New York of bonds
whose proceeds helped finance the Aryanization of companies and
real estate looted from German Jews...U.S. investment in Germany
accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power." Such investment
increased "by some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while
declining sharply everywhere else in continental Europe."
These pre-war business liaisons carried right on over into the
post-war tribunals. "The dominant faction of America's establishment
had always opposed bringing Germany's elite to trial," Simpson
adds.
The impact these "former" Nazis
had on shaping U.S. policy towards the USSR was vast. The number
of humans who suffered and died because of the resultant Cold
War is beyond calculation.
Today's powerless and disenfranchised
might wonder: What role will "former" Ba'athists play
in the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and elsewhere?
Mickey Z.
is the author of The
Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet
and an editor at Wide Angle.
He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.
Today's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
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