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Recent
Stories
April
1, 2003
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
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
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
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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April 2,
2003
Playing Into
Saddam's Hands
Bush Doesn't Understand Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN
The US soldier, surrounded by Kurdish militiamen
on a green plain in the heart of Iraqi Kurdistan, was a worried
man. Since the Kurds are the one community in Iraq unanimously
in favour of the Anglo-American invasion, he could not have
been in a safer place. But the soldier refused to give his name,
eyed a plate of kebab suspiciously before rejecting it, and
pleaded with us to give no clue to his identity "in case
terrorists should find out where my wife lives in Georgia and
do something to her".
It would be easy to sneer at the soldier's
ill-directed fears. But his general timidity and uncertainty
about all things Iraqi was surely more sensible than the extraordinary
arrogance of those who planned the invasion in the belief that
Saddam Hussein would go down like a pack of cards, with little
involvement of the Iraqi people during the war or in a post-war
settlement.
Iraqis I spoke to a few days after the
start of the invasion were much quicker than the outside world
to notice its slow pace and inability to crack President Saddam's
real levers of power. Indeed, the whole US attack plan has played
straight into the Iraqi leader's hands.
There is a curious symmetry between the
Pentagon's plans and those of President Saddam. The US intention
was to avoid the cities and head for Baghdad. President Saddam's
plan, which was more or less public knowledge, was to retreat
into the cities where the US could not use airpower and wouldn't
know the terrain as well as the defenders.
President Saddam and Washington were
also at one on another important issue. He was always frightened
of internal uprisings among the Kurds and the Shia Muslims,
who together make up three-quarters of the population. The great
rebellions of 1991 had almost brought him down. Over the years
he has taken minute precautions to make sure it would not happen
again by sending an army Baath party members and security men
into every village, town and city district. In fact Washington
was against any uprising, as it had been in 1991. It was frightened
that a rebellion by the Kurds in Kirkuk and Mosul provinces
would provoke Turkish intervention.
In the south, the US was against an uprising
among the Shia because it might benefit Iran, the supporter
of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
which is the most powerful Shia organisation in the country.
The US also felt that to allow Iraqi political organisations
to share in the expected easy victory would compel Washington
to give them a share in power after the war. "It would
have interfered with their plans to remake Iraq after their
own vision," said one opposition leader.
There also seems to have been a misunderstanding
about the nature of President Saddam's government. Though his
ruling Baath party came to power through a military coup in
1968, it was never a classic military regime where the army
holds power. President Saddam, despite his military uniforms,
had no formal military training. He has always depended on his
security services, the Baath party and a complex network of
clan and tribal alliances to keep him in power. These were
the sinews of his rule, and by deliberately not capturing cities
at the beginning of the invasion, the US and Britain ensured
that he remained in control of the vast majority of the Iraqi
population.
The failure to take a city like Basra
early in the campaign also meant, as one Kurdish commander
put it, there were "no visible coalition gains to show the
Iraqi people".
This does not mean that President Saddam
is going to win. His regime was always deeply unpopular among
Iraqis. His political strengths are also his military weaknesses.
The Fedayeen Saddam may be able to stop deserters by shooting
them in the head, but it has failed to make the Iraqi regular
army fight.
American and British casualties have
been very low. Effective guerrillas like the Chechens or Kurdish
peshmerga would have chopped the long Allied supply columns
to pieces. Sniping by Baath militia is more of an irritation.
President Saddam has always been an
expert in keeping political control, but his military record
is more dubious. He only just came out ahead in the Iran-Iraq
war, despite being supported by the US and much of the rest
of the world. His Republican Guards have never been tested against
a superior adversary.
But the mistakes made in planning the
invasion are important because they point to a hubris and an
ignorance among the civilian leadership of the US Defence Department
that have already spilled over into their plans for the post-war
construction of Iraq. The Pentagon has reportedly rejected a
list of State Department officials to run Iraq ministries and
has instead produced its own list of luminaries such as James
Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, to run the Iraqi Information
Ministry.
It was only three years after the British
captured Baghdad in 1917 that the great Iraqi rebellion erupted
in 1920, which was bloodily repressed. If the US tries to impose
a neo-imperial regime like the one planned, an uprising will
come even sooner.
There is a bizarre and dangerous flippancy
about Washington's approach to the consequences of its invasion
in Iraq and the region. The refusal of Turkey to allow the use
of its bases, thus lopping off the northern pincer of the invasion,
should have been a warning of how far the US occupation of Iraq
will be resented and fought. Yet in the last few days Donald
Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, has warned Syria and Iran
not to interfere in Iraq. "If this was serious, then he
should have done something to really frighten them," a
Kurdish leader told me. "Instead they think it is empty
bluster and will interfere all the more."
It is all very different from 1991.
That Gulf war was very much a conservative war. Its aim was
purely to reverse the invasion of Kuwait and restore the status
quo. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr
Rumsfeld never seem to have grasped the sheer radicalism of
what they are doing. Their plans for the future of Iraq are
not only radical but approach fantasy. There are few more complicated
societies in the world. Not all its problems are the result
of President Saddam or the Baath party. The idea of Mr Woolsey
somehow heading a Ministry of Information--or any other former
US official-- in a country whose language he does not understand
is laughable.
Admittedly such fantasies have been encouraged
by some members of the Iraqi opposition, who were happy to tell
the US that American troops would be welcomed by cheering crowds
hurling flower petals. A few may even have believed this, but
most would have considered it as an obvious ploy to get Washington
to overthrow President Saddam.
By exercising its military might the
US should be able to overthrow the government in Baghdad. Its
small victories over the last two weeks have largely been the
result of American miscalculations. The US army's most senior
ground commander, Lt-Gen William Wallace, annoyed the White
House last week by saying: "The enemy we're fighting is
not the enemy we war-gamed against."
It could also be said that the Iraq
the US and Britain invaded is not the country they thought it
was.
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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