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Friday, April 04, 2003
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Sober Replies to Speculative Questions: "His father, Leo Brooks Sr., is a former Army major general, who after his retirement in 1984 was named Philadelphia's managing director, the city's top appointed position. He held that job during the confrontation with the radical group Move in May 1985, which ended when the police dropped a bomb on a rowhouse, causing a fire that killed 11 people. Mr. Brooks announced his resignation 10 days after the incident, and he was cleared of all criminal liability by a Philadelphia grand jury three years later. General Brooks's brother Leo Brooks Jr. is also a brigadier general and commandant of cadets at West Point, the academy's No. 2 position. At West Point, Vince Brooks stood out among a group of standouts. In his senior year in 1979-80, he was elected first captain, the leader of the 4,338-member corps of cadets, a title held before him by John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and William Westmoreland, among others. He was the first black cadet in the academy's 177-year history to hold the position. Twenty-two years later he was the first member of his class to be nominated for flag rank. He was confirmed by the Senate last year as a brigadier general, the third member of his family to wear a star on his shoulders."
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Sunday, March 30, 2003
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Ritter says US will lose in Iraq: "We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable," he said. "Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added. "We find ourselves... facing a nation of 23 million, with armed elements numbering around 7 million --who are concentrated at urban areas. We will not win this fight. America will lose this war," said Mr. Ritter.
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Saturday, March 29, 2003
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Friday, March 28, 2003
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Power tool: ... Tomahawk missiles. Since they were first used in the 1991 conflict, they have become the ultimate symbol of US military power. Oliver Burkeman reveals how a hi-tech weapon that promised blood-free combat changed the way America thinks about war
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Haunting Thoughts After a Fierce Battle: "I have my wife and kids to go back home to... I don't want them to think I'm a killer."
... Many of the Iraqis, he said, attacked headlong into the cutting fire of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
"I wouldn't call it bravery," he said. "I'd call it stupidity. We value a soldier's life so much more than they do. I mean, an AK-47 isn't going to do nothing against a Bradley. I'd love to know what Saddam is telling his people.
"When I go home, people will want to treat me like a hero, but I'm not," he went on. "I'm a Christian man. If I have to kill the other guy, I will, but it doesn't make me a hero. I just want to go home to my wife and kids."
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Monday, March 24, 2003
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sunspot.net - maryland's online community: "Michelle Waters, the oldest of the dead Marine's four sisters, criticized the U.S. government for starting the hostilities. "It's all for nothing, that war could have been prevented," she said last night in the living room of the family home, tears running down her cheeks. "Now, we're out of a brother. [President] Bush is not out of a brother. We are.""
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Tuesday, March 18, 2003
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The New York Review of Books: The Right Way: Michael Walzer "The right way to oppose the war is to argue that the present system of containment and control is working and can be made to work better. This means that we should acknowledge the awfulness of the Iraqi regime and the dangers it poses, and then aim to deal with those dangers through coercive measures short of war. But this isn't a policy easy to defend, for we know exactly what coercive measures are necessary, and we also know how costly they are."
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UN Resolution 1441 Does Not Authorize Force: "According to the UN charter, there are only two possible situations in which one country can take military action against another. The first is in individual or collective self-defence - a right under customary international law which is expressly preserved by Article 51 of the UN charter. The second is where, under Article 42 of the charter, the security council decides that force is necessary "to maintain or restore international peace and security" where its decisions have not been complied with. In other words, where a UN resolution clearly authorises military action. "
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Monday, March 17, 2003
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The Man Who Would Be President: "When the regime finally changes in Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein is dead, in custody or in exile, 70 years of Iraqi independence will end, political authority will pass into the hands of George W. Bush and Western rule will be planted on Arab soil for the first time since the French and British left the region in the middle of the last century. What then happens to Iraq's 23 million people, its oil and its relations with its neighbors will remain the personal responsibility of Mr. Bush and his successors in the White House until one of them chooses to surrender it."
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Sunday, March 16, 2003
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t r u t h o u t - Massive Human Slaughter: "Civilian Iraq is utterly defenseless and totally unprepared for the carnage that is about to be visited upon them. It is murder plain and simple, murder on an unimaginable scale. There is no "war" looming, no "conflict" with Iraq, and no "standoff." What exists is a vast military force poised to inflict death and destruction on a major population center...
... We hear day after day that "Time is running out." Running out on what, on who? On Saddam Hussein? On a five thousand year old city? On 24 million men, women and children? Or is time running out on the spirit of America? On the soul of our people? Why is it that the world no longer cherishes American values? Could it be because we no longer cherish them ourselves? "
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Audacious Mission, Awesome Risks Bold War Plan Emphasizes Lightning Attacks and Complex Logistics "The plan is probably one of the most risky in our history as it launches us off into terra incognita for the U.S.: our first preemptive or preventive war; our first attempt to democratize an Islamic state; and establishment of a very narrow beachhead in the midst of a billion undefeated Muslims"
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Saturday, March 15, 2003
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Friday, March 14, 2003
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Germans Revisit War's Agony, Ending a Taboo: " the new awareness of the Allied bombings and the devastation they wrought has become an important element in German opposition to the expected American war on Iraq. What people like Ms. Lang and Ms. John, both antiwar activists in Dresden, have been saying is something like this: We have direct knowledge of the gruesome effects of war and we don't want anybody else to experience what we have experienced."
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Bombs and Blood: Bob Herbert - "We should outlaw the term collateral damage. Above all else, the damage done by the weapons of war is to the flesh, muscle, bone and psyches of real people, some of them children. If we're willing to inflict such terrible damage, we should acknowledge it and not hide behind euphemisms."
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"Many Thousands" of US Troops Could Die in Iraq: "A consensus appears to be emerging that U.S. deaths during an operation in Iraq will likely run into the thousands. The two concerns most often cited to account for significant U.S. fatality rates are the likelihood of urban combat and of Saddam Hussein's use of chemical and biological weapons."
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Thursday, March 13, 2003
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The New Yorker: Seymour Hersh: "Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq....
Perle, in crisscrossing between the public and the private sectors, has put himself in a difficult position—one not uncommon to public men. He is credited with being the intellectual force behind a war that not everyone wants and that many suspect, however unfairly, of being driven by American business interests. There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war. "
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The Lie Of The U.S. Military -- Tough gritty American soldiers protect freedom of liberal S.F. columnist? Or the other way around?
More than ever before in recent history, the otherwise worthy U.S. military is right now in service not of the people, not of the national security, but of the current government regime and its corporate interests. Has it always been this way? Of course. But this time, with our smirky Enron president and cash-hungry CEO administration, it's never been so flagrant, or insulting, or invidious.
Our soldiers are not protecting our freedoms. They are not preventing more terrorism. They are not guaranteeing continued free speech. Because the only true threat to such freedoms is coming from within.
There is every indication that our own government, more than any other in the Western world, is the one that would like our free speech quelled, dissenting voices silenced, proofs of wrongdoing or proofs of corporate greedmongering that are used as a cheap excuse to massacre an estimated half-million Iraqis, eliminated....
What is keeping America free is not the military -- it is independent thought. It is the progressive provocative evil "hippie vibe" that refuses to let Bush completely molest the nation.
Because BushCo would love nothing more than for everyone to shut the hell up so it can bomb in peace. And they are trying. E-mail snooping, Homeland Security, the draconian Patriot Act, new wiretap..."
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Monday, February 24, 2003
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Allies hushed up weapons' destruction: "THE highest-ranking defector ever to turn informant on Saddam Hussein's government told United Nations weapons inspectors in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks after the Gulf war. But UN inspectors hushed up that part of Hussein Kamel's story - which he also told to debriefers from British and United States intelligence - because they wanted to keep the pressure on Iraq to tell more. The revelation, reported in the US magazine Newsweek, raises new questions over claims by the US and Britain that Iraq has failed to account for vast stores of chemical and biological weapons. "
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Saturday, February 22, 2003
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Iran sues U.S. in world court for helping Saddam kill Iranians - SPIEGEL ONLINE A strange spectacle in court: As the USA prepares for a war against Iraq, it is being sued by Iran for its previous close relationship to Saddam Hussein. At the International Court of Justice, Teheran is accusing the United States of delivering dangerous chemicals and deadly viruses to Baghdad during the eighties.
The Hague - The oral deposition in Iran's suit against the United States in the matter of the destruction of Iranian oil platforms in 1987/88 began on Monday. The suit was presented to the highest court of the United Nations in 1992 and has been handled in writing ever since.
Teheran accuses Washington of the destruction of three oil platforms in the Persial Gulf. The US argues that the attack was in retaliation of Iranian attacks of ships sailing under the American flag. The court has scheduled three weeks to hear arguments from both sides.
The Iranian representatives accuse the USA of having provided Iraq with raw materials for chemical and biological weapons at the end of the 80's. The US government had delivered dangerous chemicals and deadly viruses to the Iraqi government for its war.
Washington had provided aid to Iraq in this, and other ways, in its war against Iran, said Iran's representative at the start of the oral depositions.
Mohamat Zahedin-Labbaf, as the spokesman of the Iranian delegation, emphasized that the US could not dispute the destruction of the platforms. The US version, that it had been a matter of defense against Iranian missile attacks of ships under the US flag doesn't hold water, he said.
In any case, the USA had violated the Friendship Treaty which both countries had signed in 1955. It is this Treaty which constitutes the legal basis for these proceedings, according to a 1996 decision by the highest court of the United Nations. Both delegations will be able to argue their positions in detail during the next three weeks.
Professor Bruno Summa, a German expert on international law, was sworn in as the new judge at the beginning of the proceedings on Monday. The longtime University Professor at the University of Munich was elected as one of the 15 regular judges of the Supreme Court in the Hague Peace Palace.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2003
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This is the presentation Sr. Joan Chittister gave at the UN Conference, in Geneva: "It is time for religious women to put the world on notice that we will not go on silently supporting war-either its victims or its executioners, not only to make safe the world but to make real the religions we revere, so that life before death can come, as God wants, for us all. Say yes to life. Yes to life. Always, always yes to life."
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Tuesday, February 18, 2003
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The Weapon We Gave Iraq - Depleted Uranium: "Iraqi researchers say that the epicentre ("Ground Zero") for DU effects is around the city of Basra, in southern Iraq. It was here, in 1991, that U.S. and coalition jets ravaged the retreating Iraqi army, leaving behind the smoldering hulks of thousands of vehicles. The U.S. and British air forces expended an estimated 300 tonnes of depleted-uranium ammunition in and around this area; it has since been dubbed the "Highway of Death."
The preponderance of birth defects among children born in the Basra region over the past decade defies explanation....
Should U.S.-led forces again invade Iraq, and should Canadians join them (something that has not been ruled out by Defence Minister John McCallum), they would probably move from Kuwait straight up the Highway of Death to Basra. The aerosol from the depleted-uranium-coated shells has long since dissipated from the hulks of Iraqi vehicles along the road. But Iraqi scientists believe the particles remain in the desert sands. Uranium possesses a radioactive half-life of 200 million years; it would still pose a serious risk.
Despite increasing evidence linking DU to degenerative health disorders, the British and U.S. militaries steadfastly refuse to suspend their use of such weapons."
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Friday, February 14, 2003
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Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences
By US Senator Robert Byrd, February 12, 2003
To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.
Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.
We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.
And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.
This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter.
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003
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Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal: "We sentenced Nazi leaders to death for waging a war of aggression," says International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. By contrast, Prof. Boyle wants merely to impeach George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft for their plans to invade Iraq and create a police state in America.
[But the alternative looks pretty grim too. See: Order of Presidential Succession]
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Tuesday, February 11, 2003
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Daniel Ellsberg's comments.. on Bush's reasons for first-use nuclear threats against Iraq:
... Bush administration has prepared us to the idea of responding to chemical or biological weapons with nuclear weapons. That turns out to have been the function of this new category, which at first puzzled me, of "weapons of mass destruction." I've been in the arms control field for nearly forty years now, and I'd never heard of this "weapons of mass destruction" category, which lumps together biological, chemical, and nuclear. Between chemical and nuclear there's an enormous difference of destructiveness, by a factor of at least a thousand. So what's the purpose of lumping them together in this new category, "WMD"?
... A whole lot of strategists of the ilk of Wolfowitz and Perle and so forth, since the Cold War ended, think, "Well, now, the gloves are off. The big stick is going to be nuclear. They've been looking for a chance to show that when we threaten nuclear weapons, believe the threat."
But this is what they cannot conceive. They don't understand Vietnam at all, even just from a military point of view. We couldn't get people to risk their lives to inform us about the Vietcong, but they would risk their lives to inform the Vietcong about us, so they knew every move we were making, and we didn't know any moves they were making. That didn't mean they could beat us from one year to the next, but it meant that we couldn't possibly beat them. We couldn't find them unless they wanted us to find them.
Well, that's going to be the same with al Qaeda. After Iraq, we are not going to be able to get any degree of cooperation from governments with large Muslim populations. Al Qaeda can grow and do what they want—they're safe, essentially. That doesn't mean they're going to beat the U.S., and it doesn't mean they're going to drive us out of the Middle East. But it does mean they're going to be able to kill a huge number of American civilians, much more than if we had the police and intelligence cooperation of Arab and Muslim states, which the Iraq war will destroy.
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Friday, January 31, 2003
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Shock & Awe: Is Baghdad the Next Hiroshima?: "Have your heard of Harlan Ullman? Everyone in the White House and the Pentagon has. They may very well follow his plan for war in Iraq. He wants to do to Baghdad what we did to Hiroshima. "
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Saturday, January 25, 2003
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Capitol Hill Blue - Role reversal: Bush wants war,Pentagon urges caution Intelligence sources say some Arab nations have told US diplomats they may side with Iraq if the U.S. attacks without the backing of the United Nations. Secretary of State Colin Powell agrees with his former colleagues at the Pentagon and has told the President he may be pursuing a "dangerous course."
An angry Rumsfeld, who backs Bush without question, is said to have told the Joint Chiefs to get in line or find other jobs. Bush is also said to be “extremely angry” at what he perceives as growing Pentagon opposition to his role as Commander in Chief.
“The President considers this nation to be at war,” a White House source says,” and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason.”
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Friday, January 24, 2003
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The Unseen Gulf War by Peter Turnley - The Digital Journalist: "War is at best a necessary evil, and I am certain that anyone that feels differently has never experienced or been in it. I have always hoped that true images of conflict give one the opportunity to witness and reflect more fully on the full realities of war. After covering many conflicts around the world in past 20 years and witnessing much human suffering, I feel a responsibility to try to contribute to making sure with my images that no one that sees the brutal realities of conflict, ever feels that war is comfortable and/or convenient."
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Tuesday, January 14, 2003
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The National Youth & Student Peace Coalition "BOOKS NOT BOMBS!
National One-Day Student Strike - March 5th. The Bush administration is intent on plunging America into an illegitimate and pre-emptive war in Iraq that will only increase danger for Americans and the world. At the same time education, healthcare, and the economy are being neglected. Its time for youth and students to take a stand for America’s future! "
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Saturday, December 21, 2002
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Ex-Soldier, Now a Bishop, Deals With Blood on His Hands: "When he was in his 20's, before he went to seminary and became ordained, Bishop Packard was an Army lieutenant who led a platoon in Vietnam that set up ambushes. He and his men killed in each encounter anywhere from 12 to 15 North Vietnamese, Vietcong and perhaps Chinese mercenaries. They did it clinically and efficiently and then stacked up the bodies... He received the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars for valor. But he returned home disillusioned, "hating the war." He said he joined the seminary in 1971, not so sure that he wanted to be a priest, but "to study the ethical and moral issues that confronted me in Vietnam." It was in seminary that he found the solace and reassurance that he needed. "I violated the commandment, `Thou Shalt Not Kill,' " he said. "Nothing will be gained by intellectualizing this. I killed other people."
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Thursday, December 19, 2002
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A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy : "As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a possible Gulf War II, analysts agree that the bad publicity and popular fears about depleted uranium (DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm for its "silver bullet." US forces in Iraq will again deploy DU as their most effective - and most controversial - tank-busting bullet...
Another report by the British Atomic Energy Agency used an estimate of 40 tons of DU to create a hypothetical danger level, and predicted that that amount of DU - one-eighth of what actually was fired - could cause "500,000 potential deaths."
"I don't think we know if DU can be used safely, and until we know that, we shouldn't use it," says Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with Washington's Center for Defense Information."
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t r u t h o u t - Group Says U.S. Broke Law in Use Of Cluster Bombs in Afghanistan: "The U.S. military violated international law in Afghanistan by indiscriminately dropping cluster bombs on populated areas, killing at least 25 civilians and injuring numerous others, Human Rights Watch said in a report scheduled for release today. The group also said that another 127 civilians have been killed or injured in Afghanistan by unexploded cluster "bomblets" that have become "de facto antipersonnel landmines" across large areas of the country. Sixty-nine percent of those killed or injured, the group said, were children. "
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Saturday, December 14, 2002
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What kind of antiwar movement is this? | csmonitor.com: ""Not In My Name" is fast becoming the most popular refrain of today's antiwar movement. At the demonstrations I attended in London, thousands of placards declare that an attack on Iraq is "Not In My Name." In March, a huge variety of American antiwar groups set up an umbrella organization in New York called the Not In Our Name Project. One protester I talked to recently said: "Whatever Bush does or doesn't do in Iraq, it won't be in my name." This slogan sums up the current antiwar sentiment. Rather than trying to stop America's and Europe's warmongers in their tracks, antiwar protesters instead wash their own hands of war. Saying "not in my name" seems to be a way of declaring that, if and when war breaks out, we personally want nothing to do with it. This is as passive as it gets. It's almost like saying, "Do what you like, we know we can't stop you - just count us out.""
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Monday, December 09, 2002
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Guardian - Poisoning the air "Atropine is used for treating various heart and respiratory disorders. It is also the drug of choice in cases of organophospate (pesticide) poisoning, where massive amounts - up to 100 times the normal dose - may be needed to effect recovery. The UN sanctions committee, which of course includes Americans, took the view that the Iraqi orders were probably about adequate to meet the country's routine medical needs. But suddenly, as the US prepares to invade, along comes another order - seemingly very similar - which, according to American officials, far outstrips the amount Iraq could conceivably need for normal hospital use. Someone, somewhere, has clearly got it wrong.
There is also a lot that the US has not disclosed about the latest Iraqi order for atropine. For a start, there has been no public confirmation of the order from independent sources."
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The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq: "This Bosnian generation of liberal hawks is a minority within a minority, but they hold an important place in American public life, having worked out a new idea about America's role in the post-cold war world long before Sept. 11 woke the rest of the country up. An antiwar movement that seeks a broad appeal and an intelligent critique needs them. Oddly enough, President Bush needs them, too. The one level on which he hasn't even tried to make a case is the level of ideas. These liberal hawks could give a voice to his war aims, which he has largely kept to himself."
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Thursday, December 05, 2002
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The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA. Robert Dreyfuss. "as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department of Defense are also producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war. Much of the questionable information comes from Iraqi exiles long regarded with suspicion by CIA professionals. A parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation, in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, collects the information from the exiles and scours other raw intelligence for useful tidbits to make the case for preemptive war."
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New Scientist: "A war against Iraq could kill half a million people, warns a new report by medical experts - and most would be civilians. The report claims as many as 260,000 could die in the conflict and its three-month aftermath, with a further 200,000 at risk in the longer term from famine and disease. A civil war in Iraq could add another 20,000 deaths."
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Saturday, November 30, 2002
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Jet Purchase Splits Brazil: New Leader Wants Voice: "feelings are running high over what is perceived here as Pentagon meddling to prevent Embraer, the country's largest exporter, from selling planes to Colombia. Last month, the Colombian Defense Ministry invited Embraer to tender an offer for the purchase of 40 of its Super Tucano light attack aircraft, a $234 million deal. Almost immediately, however, Gen. James T. Hill, head of the United States Southern Command, sent a letter to the Colombian authorities warning that if they went ahead with that plan it might "negatively influence" Congressional approval of future military aid to Colombia. "I recommend the Colombian Air Force spend this money on more pressing requirements, such as modernizing its C-130 fleet," General Hill wrote. The C-130 is of American manufacture"
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Ideal Terror Weapons: Portable, Deadly, Plentiful Missiles: "The SA-7 is not as capable as the newer American Stinger, which proved devastating against Soviet aircraft during Moscow's failed occupation of Afghanistan. In fact, the threat of leftover Stingers in Afghanistan was so great that the Central Intelligence Agency offered to pay hefty bounties to anyone who would return one of the missiles during the American-led campaign to topple the Taliban and rout Al Qaeda there."
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Sunday, November 24, 2002
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Thursday, November 21, 2002
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How War Left the Law Behind: "How can the council's decision bind Iraq but not the United States?... Absent Security Council approval, the United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force except for self-defense. NATO, which led the Kosovo war, never seriously claimed a defensive rationale, and the United States has yet to advance such a justification concerning Iraq. Given the contradiction between the mandate of the Charter and the prevailing American view on Iraq and Kosovo, what has happened to the law? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Charter provisions governing use of force are simply no longer regarded as binding international law.... since 1945, dozens of member states have engaged in well over 100 interstate conflicts that have killed millions of people. This record of violation is legally significant. The international legal system is voluntary and states are bound only by rules to which they consent. A treaty can lose its binding effect if a sufficient number of parties engage in conduct that is at odds with the constraints of the treaty. The consent of United Nations member states to the general prohibition against the use of force, as expressed in the Charter, has in this way been supplanted by a changed intent as expressed in deeds. The United States is therefore correct: it would not be unlawful to attack Iraq, even without Security Council approval. It seems the Charter has, tragically, gone the way of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact which purported to outlaw war and was signed by every major belligerent in World War II. "
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Wednesday, November 20, 2002
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US forms Iraqi opposition army | csmonitor.com: "Critics say the new army is designed to provide a power base for the INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, who has the ear of Congress, the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, but has little support in Iraq and is dismissed by some State Department and CIA officials as a self-promoting solo act."
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Monday, November 18, 2002
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Iraqi army is tougher than US believes "Baghdad will be key. It is within this sprawling city of five million that US troops will have to hunt down the Iraqi dictator and his close associates. With this in mind, all troops and security services loyal to the government will in the last instance be massed in and around the capital.
Caught between a potentially hostile Iraqi population bent on revenge and an invading army committed to regime change, those fighting alongside President Saddam will have little choice but to remain loyal to the end. The result could be the worst-case scenario for US military planners: an organised, committed and disciplined force with nowhere to go, defending a highly populated urban area. In front of the world's media, US troops would have the unenviable task of distinguishing these forces from the wider, innocent, civilian population. "
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Gay Army Linguists: "Editor: In "Gay Army Linguists Say They Were Ousted", you report that "nine Army linguists, including six trained in Arabic, have been dismissed from the military because they are gay, even as the military faces a critical shortage of translators and interpreters for the war on terrorism." While we down under debate Australian support for any United States-led war on terror, I would be ever so grateful if an American politician would explain why the Taliban's persecution of women is considered barbaric, yet persecution of gay military personnel by your government is deemed quite acceptable. MIKE LECLERC Sydney, Australia, "
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Tuesday, November 12, 2002
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USATODAY.com - Maintain CIA's independence: by James Bamford "As the White House searches for every possible excuse to go to war with Iraq, pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda. In this case, the agencies are being pressed to find a casus belli for war, whether or not one exists. "Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements, and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," Vince Cannistraro, the agency's former head of counterterrorism, told The Guardian, a London newspaper."
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Monday, November 11, 2002
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British Judges Criticize U.S. on the Prisoners Held at Guantánamo: "A panel of three senior British judges used extraordinary language in a ruling this week to criticize the United States' detention of prisoners from Afghanistan at Camp X-ray in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The three judges, ruling in a case involving a British subject held at Guantánamo, said detention of prisoners at the United States naval base there appeared to be a violation of both international law and the concept of habeas corpus developed centuries ago in England. Although the judges said the holding of prisoners at Guantánamo with no recourse to a court created an unacceptable "legal black hole," they acknowledged that they could do little about it. But it appeared evident that the judges were intent on sending a message to an appeals court in the United States that is considering the same issue."
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America's For-Profit Secret Army: "During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield was an American civilian under contract; by the time of the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure was one in 10. No one knows for sure how big this secretive industry is, but some military experts estimate the global market at $100 billion. As for the public companies that own private military contractors, they say little if anything about them to shareholders.... Private military contractors are flushing out drug traffickers in Colombia and turning the rag-tag militias of African nations into fighting machines. When a United Nations arms embargo restricted the American military in the Balkans, private military contractors were sent instead to train the local forces. At times, the results have been disastrous. In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of "ethnic cleansing" "
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Wednesday, October 09, 2002
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In Guantánamo: By Joseph Lelyveld. "On February 7 the President decreed that Taliban captives would be treated humanely "in accordance with the Geneva convention." He had the grace not to say that it was better than they and their al-Qaeda brethren deserved and that we are prepared to hold the lot of them at Guantanamo until the distant day, if it ever comes, when Islamic terrorist networks have been universally uprooted; but that, basically, appears to be the administration's position."
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Truth on Iraq seeps through- Robert Scheer : " Plainly put, Bush's big bad Boogeyman is a bunch of bull. In truth, the invasion is required not to meet a pressing threat to our security but rather to meet the threat to GOP control of Congress posed by a sagging U.S. economy and a stock market that has wiped out the savings of many Americans. That and the pent-up desire of frustrated wannabe imperialists among top Bush advisors to find a way to use our high-tech weaponry to micromanage the world. The CIA report makes it clear there is no plausible national security reason for pushing for war with Iraq at this time, other than the ill-advised imperial goal of directly controlling the world's oil supplies."
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Saturday, September 14, 2002
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In war, some facts less factual: "When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf -- to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid--September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier. But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border -- just empty desert.... "This administration is capable of any lie ... in order to advance its war goal in Iraq," says a US government source in Washington with some two decades of experience in intelligence, who would not be further identified. "It is one of the reasons it doesn't want to have UN weapons inspectors go back in, because they might actually show that the probability of Iraq having [threatening illicit weapons] is much lower than they want us to believe.""
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Monday, September 09, 2002
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How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them: "the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. "
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Friday, September 06, 2002
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Senator Dianne Feinstein: More Questions Than Answers on Iraq: " I believe any action in Iraq at this time, without allied support, without United Nations support, and without a compelling case for just cause, would be both morally wrong and politically mistaken. I just returned from a trip to Europe.... I was shocked at how dramatically perceptions in Europe have shifted since September 11 toward our country. All of the sympathy and concern we received in the wake of the terrorist attacks has apparently vanished, replaced by the sense that the United States is becoming an arrogant and aggressive power, a nation that simply gives orders, a nation that neither listens nor hears. "
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Monday, August 05, 2002
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The Rush to War: Richard Falk - "here we are, poised on the slippery precipice of a pre-emptive war, without even the benefit of meaningful public debate. The constitutional crisis is so deep that it is not even noticed. The unilateralism of the Bush White House is an affront to the rest of the world, which is unanimously opposed to such an action."
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Thursday, July 25, 2002
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Is Fighting Iraq Worth the Risks?: "Iraqi forces would probably take a lesson from their defeat in 1991 and fight from the cities, where civilian casualties would greatly raise the cost of air strikes and buildings would provide disguise for weaponry and military personnel. "
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Wednesday, July 24, 2002
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U.S. to Block U.N. Torture Vote: "Concerned about the possibility of independent visits to U.S. civilian and military prisons, the United States sought Wednesday to block a vote on a U.N. plan meant to enforce a convention on torture. The United States wants negotiations on the plan reopened, a move human rights groups say could kill the proposal, which they believe is essential to ending torture around the world."
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Sunday, July 21, 2002
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Wider Military Role in U.S. Is Urged: "Bush administration has directed lawyers in the Departments of Justice and Defense to review the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and any other laws that sharply restrict the military's ability to participate in domestic law enforcement. Any changes would be subject to Congressional approval."
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Flaws in U.S. Air War Left Hundreds of Civilians Dead: "The American air campaign in Afghanistan, based on a high-tech, out-of-harm's-way strategy, has produced a pattern of mistakes that have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians. On-site reviews of 11 locations where airstrikes killed as many as 400 civilians suggest that American commanders have sometimes relied on mistaken information from local Afghans. Also, the Americans' preference for airstrikes instead of riskier ground operations has cut off a way of checking the accuracy of the intelligence."
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Monday, July 08, 2002
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U.S. Plan for Iraq Is Said to Include Attack on 3 Sides: "The document envisions tens of thousands of marines and soldiers probably invading from Kuwait. Hundreds of warplanes based in as many as eight countries, possibly including Turkey and Qatar, would unleash a huge air assault against thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and fiber-optics communications sites. Special operations forces or covert C.I.A. operatives would strike at depots or laboratories storing or manufacturing Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to launch them. "
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Friday, July 05, 2002
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'Combatants' Lack Rights, U.S. Argues: "Prisoners [even citizens] declared enemy combatants do not have the right to a lawyer and the American judiciary cannot second-guess the military's classification of such detainees, the Justice Department argued yesterday in a brief to an appeals court."
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Friday, May 24, 2002
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Sailors Sprayed With Nerve Gas in Cold War Test, Pentagon Says: "nerve or chemical agents were sprayed on a variety of ships and their crews to gauge how quickly the poisons could be detected and how rapidly they would disperse, as well as to test the effectiveness of protective gear and decontamination procedures in use at the time."
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Thursday, May 09, 2002
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Rumsfeld Sets Up Showdown Over Weapon: "The decision will pit Mr. Rumsfeld, who said the Crusader did not fit his vision for a lighter, more nimble Army, against the gun's influential manufacturer, United Defense, and its supporters in Congress, who have vowed to keep $475 million for the program in the 2003 budget. The Crusader, a mobile, rapid-firing howitzer that can shoot 155mm shells up to 31 miles, is the most prominent Pentagon weapons program to face cancellation since 1991, when Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney killed the Navy's A-12 fighter jet program. Litigation challenging that decision is pending."
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Monday, May 06, 2002
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Sunday, May 05, 2002
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Edward Hammond: Natl Academy of Sciences Suppresses Public Documents on Chem/Bio Weapons: " If these documents disappear from the public record it will be a sad day for the US National Academies and another blow to US transparency on CBW. In some ways a more disturbing one than others, because this involves expunging items previously available for public view and which form the basis of recommendations from a very high, quasi-public US scientific authority."
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Saturday, May 04, 2002
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Notes from Faculty Lecture on Bio/Warfare/Terrorism/Weapons: - Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law - long, sketchy, provocative. "I believe the FBI knows exactly who was behind [the anthrax] attack and they have probably concluded that yes, it was someone who was currently involved in illegal and criminal biological warfare research by the United States government. Either the Pentagon or the CIA or one of their private contractors. And for that reason they are not going to apprehend and they are not going to indict him because obviously he would spill the beans on the whole thing and implicate the Pentagon, CIA, whoever is behind this."
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Tuesday, April 30, 2002
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U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq Including Big Invasion Next Year: "The Bush administration, in developing a potential approach for toppling President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, is concentrating its attention on a major air campaign and ground invasion, with initial estimates contemplating the use of 70,000 to 250,000 troops. The administration is turning to that approach after concluding that a coup in Iraq would be unlikely to succeed and that a proxy battle using local forces there would be insufficient to bring a change in power. But senior officials now acknowledge that any offensive would probably be delayed until early next year, allowing time to create the right military, economic and diplomatic conditions. These include avoiding summer combat in bulky chemical suits, preparing for a global oil price shock, and waiting until there is progress toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
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Machines Are Filling In for Troops: "the Pentagon, energized by successes in Afghanistan, is moving ever closer to draining the human drama from the battlefield and replacing it with a ballet of machines. Rapid advances in technology have brought an array of sensors, vehicles and weapons that can be operated by remote control or are totally autonomous." [Evidently the "enemy" doesn't count as human.]
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Pentagon Revamping Command Structure: "The biggest change will be the creation of the Northern Command to coordinate responses to terrorist attacks within the nation's borders... The command would coordinate its activities with the White House Office of Homeland Security. The command would have a four-star general in charge of all military personnel involved in flying patrols over American cities, guarding the coasts and responding to major terrorist attacks"
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002
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U.S. Forces Out Head of Chemical Arms Agency: "The firing of Mr. Bustani follows the removal last week of Robert Watson, a British-born climatologist who had been outspoken on the threat of global warming, as the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was removed after pressure from Washington and at least one American oil company."
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Monday, April 08, 2002
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U.S. Warns Russia of Need to Verify Treaty Compliance: "But several arms control advocates called the action disturbing. "It's in our country's interest to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction from leaking out of Russia in any way we can," said Rose Gottemoeller, a former assistant secretary of energy for nonproliferation under President Bill Clinton and now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "So undercutting these programs is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot." The decision to send the cable was prompted by American concern over a range of actions by Moscow, including its recent refusal to share a bio-engineered strain of anthrax developed by Russia's scientists"
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Sunday, April 07, 2002
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Thursday, March 14, 2002
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Wednesday, March 13, 2002
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A Pretty Poor Posture for a Superpower: McNamara & Graham oped "Should the recently leaked Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, become official policy, we can expect nuclear weapons to spread around the world. We will live in a far more dangerous world, and the United States will be much less secure."
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Tuesday, March 12, 2002
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America as Nuclear Rogue: "If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. "
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Monday, March 11, 2002
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Nuclear Arms for Deterrence or Fighting?: ""Throughout the nuclear age, the fundamental goal has been to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. Now the policy has been turned upside down. It is to keep nuclear weapons as a tool of war- fighting rather than a tool of deterrence. If military planners are now to consider the nuclear option any time they confront a surprising military development, the distinction between nuclear and nonnuclear weapons fades away.""
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Call for New Breed of Nuclear Arms Faces Hurdles: "no earth-penetrating weapon can burrow deep enough to contain the ensuing blast and radioactivity. "The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout," "
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Sunday, March 10, 2002
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U.S. Nuclear Plan Sees New Weapons and New Targets: "Outlining a broad overhaul of American nuclear policy, a secret Pentagon report calls for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya."
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Tuesday, March 05, 2002
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The Uses of American Power: editorial " If Congress cranks up the Pentagon's budget as much as President Bush would like, the United States will soon be spending more on defense than all the other countries of the world combined. "
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Wednesday, February 27, 2002
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Tuesday, February 26, 2002
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Sunday, February 24, 2002
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New Agency Will Not Lie, Top Pentagon Officials Say: "Senior Pentagon and administration officials, responding to criticism of a new Pentagon office intended to influence public opinion overseas, said today that Defense Department officials would not be allowed to tell lies to promote American views."
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