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Recent
Stories
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
April
2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Politics of Casualties
David
Lindorff
Making America Safer...for Iraqi
Fighters
William
Blum
Some Observations on the Recent Behavior of the Empire
Gustavio
Sierra
The Morning After the Slaughter at
Nasser
Patrick
Cockburn
Playing Into Saddam's Hands
Robert
Jensen
Peter Arnett: Whipping Boy of the
Pentagon
Jeremy
Brecher
Uniting for Peace Update
N.D.
Jayaprakash
The Siege of Basra
LaDawn
Haglund
You Can Jail the Resisters, But You
Can't Arrest the Resistance
Robert
Fisk
Truth and Subterfuge
Jemima
Khan
I'm Ashamed to be British
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
Stew Albert
Total War
Website
of the Day
Traitor List: Sign Up Now!
April
1, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Rumsfeld: "Get Me Rewrite"
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
Website
of the Day
A Collectible War
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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April 5,
2003
Daisy Chain,
or
Ode to a Hate Mailer
by BEN TRIPP
It's easy to hate Arabs
If you hold their circumstances
And climate
And color
Against them.
The problem arises
When the man you set out to hate
Turns out to be a Sikh
Who the hell knows what a Sikh is
Or maybe a Hindu
Who the hell knows what a Hindu is
Or worse, he's Latin
And all you're left with
Is hatred of brown people.
But you already hate black people
And the French and the Germans
So who are you going to hang out with,
Me?
No, because I hate you.
Ben Tripp is a screenwriter, satirist and cartoonist.
He can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net.
Just Another Name
by STEW ALBERT
Fighting massive battles outside
Baghdad
conquering an airport
not suffering a single casualty
in whose fevered computer
did this conflagration take place?
The "elite Republican
Guard"
didn't scratch our arm
but a pregnant Iraqi woman in a car
with a bomb
just blew away three Americans.
Is this a war or an absurd play?
Last night, Pearl Jam's Eddie
Vedder
impaled a Bush mask on a microphone,
dozens of Denver fans walked out,
lots of booing.
He's on the wrong side of a video game.
Tell Rush L. to start burning Eddie's records.
Oh, freedom's just another
name
for an American tour to lose.
Headlines hail a glorious triumph
Americans surround Baghdad,
Rumsfield of Arabia
rules the desert,
but few Iraqis.
The biggest Baghdaddy of all
battles
is about to begin.
And so is a moment
called truth.
Stew Albert runs the Yippie
Reading Room. He can be reached at: stewa@aol.com
Shock TV, Day One
by ELIOT KATZ
After a night of embedded TV
reporters
riding atop U.S. military trucks
& modeling ziptight chemical jumpsuits
After a slow night of videotaped tank races
running Iraqi deserts toward Basra & Baghdad
a mid-east version of the televised OJ chase
a night of illusion making it seem this would be an easy war
requiring little of the bombing
that had been threatened & feared
today the "shock and awe" operation was launched
and it was truly shocking
watching fireworks & shooting stars
moving thru Iraqi night skies
watching smoke & mushroom-shaped fires rising
o'er the city's ancient skyline
but not a single report or picture showing effects
on city's 5 million residents or asking whether
this sort of unsanctioned awe is illegal terror.
On ABC News, a young reporter
named Richard Engel
is perched atop Palestine Hotel's 14th floor
his personal shock evident: "I am watching
half of Baghdad being destroyed" as 300+ cruise missiles
fly into buildings a few miles away--
Pentagon has confirmed this is "A-Day"
Engel is stunned and stumbling, he has never seen
anything like this before, he hopes his colleagues
in the Al Rashid hotel across Tigris River okay
Peter Jennings back home assures him generals
say 90% of missiles falling are smart bombs
& Engels in a line of journalistic poesy
expresses hope the other 10% are a bit clever as well
Jennings once again reassures the Pentagon
is committed to keeping this modern city intact
even though the dropping of cruise missiles & bunker bombs
the burning of offices & archaeological ruins
is a strange way to create urban glue.
Peter Arnett, vilified twelve
years earlier
for reporting Gulf War I on CNN from Baghdad,
is back in town working for NBC
Watching the fireworks of Gulf War II, Arnett notes
this is bigger than the last one
"they are taking out whole buildings
with these explosions." Arnett estimates 25 buildings
have been destroyed in last 10 minutes
I wonder whether these buildings waited
for civilians & young draftees to leave before exploding
in flames
before they crumbled to ground
crushing their inhabitants
After the WTC, isn't this kind of attack even the least bit
worrisome to America's press--can we hear
what concerned New Yorkers are saying?
CNN stays with pictures of
Baghdad smoldering
in flames and rolling black smoke
Would it be possible to turn cameras
to the ground and see whether any bodies are visible
running from falling ash and leaping heat
or perhaps lying peacefully in the street?
We are told operating electricity and open phone lines are signs
of U.S. accuracy--so doesn't anyone on CNN have the number
of an Iraqi family or peace witness to dial up?
When a new bomb falls, Wolf Blitzer indeed seems awed:
"Look at that explosion!" Even on right-wing Fox News,
a young correspondent in Baghad is unnerved,
says he felt shock waves running across Tigris River
to where he's standing. He has counted
about 30 missiles fallen
As his phone line is going dead, the guy notes
he has no reason to believe his situation is
worse than __________,
an unfinished, postmodern line just waiting for viewers
to fill in the blank--what do you think dear reader,
about this beautiful spring day of shock and awe?
Flipping channels, I notice
one reporter get carried away,
saying the pictures & explosions from Baghdad
"really did look like Dresden"
a comment which Donald Rumsfeld apparently saw as well
and disputed during his press conference, noting
the vast difference between dumb & educated bombs
According to Rumsfeld, carried in the opposite direction,
the hundreds of cruise missiles dropped this afternoon
exhibited "the humanity that goes into the targeting"
today
The mass bombing and depleted
uranium-tipped missiles
are thus part of a "humane effort" that was begun
after every single other option had been tried
Why do American reporters accept Pentagon war logic
that once battles have begun
it is too late to ask root questions any longer?
Why doesn't a single American reporter ask when such options
as these were tried: flood of human rights observers,
continued inspections, the endless nonwar imagination,
following UN-sanctioned international law to maintain moral
& practical precedent on this ever-shifting Earth?
Will the tough questions be arriving any time soon?
The president's spokesman Ari
Fleischer holds his own conference
and claims our unelected president regrets Saddam
has put innocent people in harm's way
Ari asserts "use of force is being used to help settle this
in the most peaceful way possible"
& not a single reporter vocalizes the obvious
though crowd does express surprise Bush doesn't care
enough about their daily work or war's damage
to bother watching televised pictures this historic day
Flipping channels, a young pilot returning to his ship
from first bombing mission
reports it was "really neat"
and a "heck of an experience" that he wasn't sure
he would ever have chance to enact
after consigned to TV watching Gulf War I.
Wall Street apparently agrees that shock & awe was neat--
market up 230 points! Anything, even death & destruction,
is better than uncertainty for investor confidence!
On CBS News, Dan Rather notes
we are seeing war
"with its million horrors, as Shelley once wrote,"
and it is nice to see a poet in day's linguistic mix
Rather observes Baghdad is burning,
"but only in specific places" as if
that would offer total comfort in NY or Chicago.
On NBC, Tom Brokaw interviews mother
of a U.S. Marine early casualty.
Before she says goodbye
she wants to make a point about television coverage--
the technology that brings war to the nation
brings 24-hour anxiety to parents & families
and Brokaw nods sympathetically, promising to remind viewers
more often that war is not about technology
but real human lives
and in another moment we are back to flashes and fires
and pops and smokes and tank treads and rationalizations
of former generals and right-wing hacks.
This is a war whose core legality
& morality hasn't been questioned
by a single US reporter all day any channel-- they are wearing
Pentagon's label "Operation Iraqi Freedom"
and half day later still no investigations on American TV
into civilian casualties on "A-Day"
"a spectacular light show"
We will have to check internet next few days
www.iraqbodycount.net to find inquisitive reporters
who bother to dig into such questions
At 7:30 New York time, CNN notes there are still
a few more hours of darkness in Iraq
for bombs of shock and awe to drop.
What if this entire war, no matter how quickly it ends,
no matter whether those bombs pass their IQ tests,
no matter whether only a few
western working-class troops are lost, no matter whether Iraqis
who do not lose family & friends eventually greet
American troops with dancing yellow roses--
what if nonetheless this war was a callous gamble with human
lives
launched in violation of international law & ethical ties--
how hold our leaders & "free press" democratically
accountable?
Perhaps the antiwar movement growing daily in creativity &
size
can sprinkle some visionary seeds & long-term strategies--
how choose a better one, of the many other worlds still possible?
Eliot Katz is the author of three books of poetry,
including Unlocking the Exits (Coffee House Press, 1999). He
is a coeditor of Poems for the Nation (Seven Stories Press, 2000),
and the poetry editor of Logos, an online politics quarterly
at www.logosjournal.com.
Today's
Features
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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