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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
28, 2003
The Mother of All Bombs
Bush's
Promise of Sacrifice
By CAROL NORRIS
Just
before war broke out George Bush spoke to the world and said, "War
has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice." Coming from
a man of extraordinary privilege who has never felt the ravages of war,
these words rang hollow. The only thing that quieted the ringing of
his words was the roar of his subtext.
Attached
to Bush's script about sacrifice was a well--worn wish list that has
been tucked away in the pockets of those in his administration and their
friends for many years. It's a continuation of the once only dreamed
of wish list that has been checked off item by item since 9.11. And
while the Bush administration is not the first to use the costume of
war -- the war on terror, in this case -- to push through policy, it
is unparalleled in its brazenness and entitlement, and in the sheer
scope of demands made and gains gotten.
And
now as US war efforts have shifted to Iraq, the Bush administration
has fresh sacrifices to ask for, new items to check off its wish list
in the form of new legislation and directives to be noiselessly ushered
through and implemented as the eyes of the world are unwaveringly fixed
on Iraq and ads for duct tape sales.
But
if a pair of eyes does happen to stray and see the goings on of the
Bush administration, Bush & Co. are well protected in their irreproachable,
impenetrable armor of "sacrifice," "national security,"
"patriotism," and "terror," chilling questions and
dissent as they pass laws that are doing the same by eroding much needed
checks and balances.
It is Bush's promise of sacrifice -- the deployment of an arsenal of
domestic legislative bombs and the depletion of myriad foreign and domestic
policies -- and not the new 21,000--pound giant of the current war that
is The Mother of All Bombs because it will cause the mother of all damage.
The
sacrifices we will be asked to make are not relatively small, temporary
ones like having computer donation drives or rationing cell phone minutes.
Many will be ongoing and profound. And the new sacrifices will be heaped
on the vast sacrifices many of us have already made in the form of such
things as the quality of our children's education; the quality of our
retirement years; the longstanding freedoms guaranteed to US citizens;
and the quality of the daily lives, or in fact, the very lives of many
veterans and civilians the world over. Among other forfeitures, Bush
is proposing more cuts to our domestic programs than has ever been seen
in history.
Americans,
who are struggling to stay afloat amidst a floundering economy, whose
states are facing their worst budget crises since the Depression, are
asked to sacrifice. We, the overwhelming majority of whom are not getting
so much as a dribble from previous Bush administration tax cuts, nor
will most of us get a drop from his new mammoth tax cut proposal, are
asked to sacrifice.
We,
many of whose children don't have updated text books to read, whose
school buildings are crumbling and leaking and whose teachers are being
laid off in large numbers due to skewed budget priorities and now reallocation
of funds for the war, are asked to sacrifice. We, whose administrators
of our children's schools are forced to give private information about
every single school child to military recruiters or lose precious funding,
and whose administrators have sometimes run out of options except to
sell their schools to corporations to keep them minimally functioning,
are asked to sacrifice.
Mr.
Bush asks those of us who find ourselves, our friends and our children
increasingly falling ill to breast cancer, prostate cancer, childhood
leukemia, asthma, Alzheimer's and "mysterious illnesses" that
many scientists and doctors attest are from breathing toxic air and
drinking toxic water made more and more toxic by the Bush administration's
relaxation of industry regulations to pay back campaign contributors,
to sacrifice. All this as the Bush administration passes laws to prevent
us from accessing information about what toxic chemicals are near our
homes.
He
asks the 40+ million Americans who don't have access to affordable health
care and those of us who are paying exorbitant prices for medicines
to combat the above illnesses, to sacrifice. He asks many of our elderly
who find themselves forced to choose between electricity and expensive
prescription drugs because the pharmaceutical lobby has blocked the
introduction of readily available, affordable generic and non--patentable
alternatives, with the aid of the Bush administration, to sacrifice.
He asks this as he proposes changes to Medicare making it more difficult
for the elderly to appeal benefit denials, and as he slides in unrelated
clauses in security bills protecting pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits
regarding reportedly unsafe vaccines.
He
asks a country that has seen business cut a whopping 2.5 million jobs
since 9.11; whose poor are getting poorer; whose rich are getting richer
with tax cuts and loopholes and lucrative industry and military deals
to sacrifice as he introduces a plan that would make it much harder
for low income families to get government benefits, a plan that would
cut billions of dollars in child nutrition, food stamp, health care,
and school lunch programs.
He
asks a country whose middle class is dwindling, their hard--earned retirement
savings gone or greatly diminished, forcing many at retirement age to
continue working, to sacrifice. He asks many of us who find ourselves
almost obsessively watching "reality" shows and programs that
promise a few lucky people instant fame and fortune because we know
in our hearts that The American Dream for most of us no longer exists,
to sacrifice.
On March 4th, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist spoke to our veterans
and asked them to sacrifice. He later stated that during war, "we
all have to sacrifice in various ways.and it applies to groups like
the veterans."
Among
the veterans, the Bush administration asks the approximately 221,000
casualties of the Gulf War -- roughly 30% of all Gulf War veterans who,
almost assuredly, scientists tell us, suffer from the negative effects
of depleted uranium (DU), to sacrifice by way of an unbelievable $14.6
million cut in veterans' programs. (In 1991, when the war got such positive
press for being a "clean" war, the casualty number from the
Gulf War was 760.)
He
asks the Gulf War veterans, whose DU complications include such things
as respiratory problems, fibromyalgia, semen that contains significant
levels of uranium, passing problems and serious birth defects onto their
children, whose quality of life for some is all but nonexistent, causing
divorces, serious depression and suicide (which all--too often has been
denied or minimized by the government), to sacrifice.
(We
will gladly offer our thanks for helping us kick Saddam's ass last time,
says the Bush administration. But we don't have much else to offer.
Certainly not lifelong health benefits, because we're cutting those.
And all you "well--to--do" vets -- those that make over $26,000
a year -- we want you to pay a premium for benefits that were once free.
We have a new war to fight, you see, new DU bombs to build and new future
veterans, who are currently risking their lives in Iraq, to expose to
even higher levels of depleted uranium.)
Bush
asks the people of the world, whose environment he has significantly
helped to degrade by walking away from the Kyoto Treaty and relaxing
environmental protection standards, to sacrifice. He asks the people
of the Southern hemisphere, many of whom have been stripped of their
natural resources and ability to independently earn a living by the
strong--arming of Bush--aided big agribusiness and the intrusion of corporate
enterprise, toxins and control, to sacrifice.
He
asks the people of the world whose lives he has made immeasurably less
safe by walking away from the International Criminal Court, by ignoring
the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, by greatly undermining the peacekeeping
authority of the UN (apparently, happily so, if Richard Perle's editorial
entitled "Thank God for the Death of the UN" is any indication),
by eschewing respectful diplomacy and fractionalizing long--standing
alliances, by breaching the Chemical Weapons Convention with the promise
of using riot--control agents in Iraq, and by creating a monumental,
incalculably dangerous worldwide paradigm shift with his preemptive,
unilateral war, setting the stage for others to do the same, to sacrifice.
(India and Pakistan have reportedly said in the last few days that the
US cannot expect them to use diplomacy since the US didn't use it in
Iraq.)
He
asks Iraqis who were brutalized by the first Gulf War and continue to
be brutalized by 12 years of sanctions and 12 years of frequent US bombs
and a tyrannical leader, who are suffering from very serious health
consequences from the 320 tons of toxic depleted uranium left all over
Iraq in the Gulf War, with even more powerful and more toxic depleted
uranium reportedly being dropped at this moment, to sacrifice. He asks
them to be willing to sacrifice their homes, their families, their health
and their lives, to suffer through unimaginable shock and awe, to see
centuries old historical monuments razed to rubble in the name of liberation.
He
asks us all to sacrifice reason and rational discourse, to stay ever
fearful; to confuse the horror of 9.11 committed by one group of people,
as a rationale to kill an unrelated different group of people. He relegates
the millions upon millions of people the world over who are protesting
this war to a "focus group."
He
tacitly (or sometimes by force) asks Americans to stay quiet, to not
speak out about the truths around us as he gives orders that block and
erode our Constitutional right to seek truthful information through
various lawful means like the Freedom of Information Act, and as legislation
such as the Patriot Act II is in the works, which, if passed will make
the "inferences" of John Ashcroft law. And he asks us to rally
round him and remain terrified so that we will support the unjust killing
of others in the Iraq war in the all--too human, but misguided attempt
to save ourselves.
We know there are certain things we have to sacrifice. We're okay with
that. It's part of life.
But
we ask you, Mr. Bush, Mr. Frist, Carlyle Group members and all you especially
well--connected corporate folks as you sit high atop your Mother of All
Bombs, toasting your good fortune and surveying the sweeping, almost
inconceivable changes you've made to our world and its peoples in the
relatively very short time of your administration; as you look out over
the world that, except for a privileged few, is being destabilized,
shocked and awed, "disciplined," bribed, deleted from the
record, bombed, made irrelevant, ignored, alienated, starved, walked
away from, underfunded, fractionalized, devalued both literally and
figuratively, bullied, poisoned, silenced, marginalized and depleted
to smithereens by your policies and actions, what is there left to sacrifice
after this?
Carol
Norris is a writer and psychotherapist. She can be contacted
at writing4justice@planet--save.com.
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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