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Recent Stories
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
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
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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Stories.
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March
26, 2003
Kurdish Commanders Uimpressed by Pentagon
"Perhaps
They're Not Invincible"
By PATRICK COCKBURN
General
Nasrudin Mustafa, commander of the Kurdish forces north of Kirkuk, was
just finishing a sentence, saying: "There is nothing new happening
on my front." But as he spoke the last word there a thunderous
roar, his headquarters building shook and the door of his office rattled
on its hinges.
A
US aircraft had just bombed the long, dark ridge on the Iraqi side of
the front line which protects the city of Kirkuk and its oilfields.
General Mustafa, who usually plays down the significance of skirmishing
between his men and the Iraqi army, looked briefly impressed, saying:
"Well, I haven't seen that before."
War
is slowly coming to northern Iraq and is likely to be hastened by the
setbacks to the US-led coalition in the south of the country.
Major-General
Henry Osman of the US Marines arrived yesterday, the first openly visible
sign of the several hundred American troops who have been landing under
cover of darkness for the past three days. Kurdish officials reported
bombing near the city of Mosul, and a Reuters television crew heard
a powerful explosion near Arbil. So far the Kurds ? Iraqis themselves
and with decades of experience of warfare against Baghdad behind them--are
singularly unimpressed by the US and British coalition assault.
Struggling
to say something polite about Allied strategy, Hoshyar Zebari, a veteran
Kurdish leader, said: "People in Iraq are beginning to think that
they [the US and Britain] are not invincible. There have been no major
victories: Umm Qasr and Basra have not fallen as was announced."
He
criticised the Allies for making a headlong dash for Baghdad without
securing the cities on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers or trying to
use the support of local people opposed to President Saddam Hussein.
He
said: "The impression Iraqis are getting is that there are no Iraqis
involved in this campaign, but this is an occupation."
The
criticism is somewhat self-serving. The Kurds, with perhaps 70,000 peshmerga
under their command, believe the longer the war goes on the more likely
that the US will have to call on them, along with small numbers of US
troops, to open a northern front against President Saddam.
This
would help the Kurds to return to the provinces of Kirkuk and Mosul,
from which 300,000 of them were ethnically cleansed by President Saddam,
and give them a strong hand to play in post-war settlement.
So
far, the war has been very unlike the triumph of the US-led forces in
1991, Kurdish leaders point out. Iraq has had a string of little successes
such as the downing of a helicopter, the capture of US ground troops,
and there has been no uprising of Kurds and Shia Muslims as there was
after the Gulf War.
The
latter has not happened because the US did not want it and Iraqi security
has been much tighter than it was 12 years ago.
Disappointment
with Allied performance so far is wide-spread among Kurds and not confined
to their leaders. In Sifaya, a village of smugglers and farmers on the
Zaab river, a mile from Iraqi government-controlled territory, people
watch every step of the war on local television.
These
days, they have suspended smuggling to Mosul because it is too dangerous
and they have drawn up their boats on the bank of the Zaab.
But
they think President Saddam is a long way from falling. Khalil Ibrahim,
a local leader, said: "The war is too cold. It is not warm enough
yet."
Even
in Kurdistan, where the US is popular and where President Saddam committed
some of his worst atrocities, there are flickers of Iraqi patriotism.
A Kurdish official, who has devoted years to opposing the government
in Baghdad, admitted: "It would have been better if the invasion
had been with the mandate of the UN and not just by the US and Britain.
"Iraqis
won't like to see American soldiers ripping down posters of Saddam Hussein
though they might like to do it themselves. They didn't enjoy watching
the Stars and Stripes being raised near Umm Qasr."
So
far, the northern front has been a fiasco. A month ago the US was expected
to land 62,000 troops, their armour and transport and 310 aircraft and
helicopters in Turkey.
This
would be the northern pincer of a two-pronged attack on Baghdad with
the other pincer advancing from Kuwait in the south.
But
the refusal of the Turkish parliament to sanction US use of Turkish
bases lopped off the northern pincer.
But
the sudden appearance of General Osman at a press conference in the
headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Salahudin yesterday
marked an escalation of US involvement in northern Iraq.
He
announced, in a statement written in peculiarly lumbering prose, that
he was there to establish the military co-ordination and liaison command.
This will "synchronise humanitarian support operations, assist
in the deconfliction of humanitarian and military activities, and co-ordinate
relief in northern Iraq". It will operate in south-east Turkey
and northern Iraq.
In
reality, General Osman is here to prevent the Turks fighting the Kurds,
and vice versa. The Turkish government has said it wants to send troops
into Iraqi Kurdistan to stop an outflow of refugees into Turkey. There
is no sign of such refugees, but the presence of General Osman, based
in Salahudin and Silopi in Turkey, will, the Kurds hope, make it more
difficult for the Turkish army to invade them. There are thousands of
Turkish troops already massed on the border.
Today's Features
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
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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