April 2003

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Saddam: Letter to Iraq?

London paper claims to have received faxed note from Saddam

My colleague Paul Demko, curator/beefcake-boy of TCB's Live Nude Weblog!, sends along news that an Arabic newspaper in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, is publishing a letter from Saddam:

 The one-page message contains a reference to "betrayals" that led to the US military victory, an appeal to Iraqis to cast aside any differences and a warning that US-installed leaders will not bring them freedom.

Here is the translated text of that letter, from the Middle East Media Research Institute website.

According to this ITV (UK) report, Al-Quds Al-Arabi's editor, Abdel Bari Atwan, thinks the letter is real.

And here's the just-posted AP wire story.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 30, 2003 4:05 PM

 

Mission to Moscow: Putin Shows Up Blair

And a note on the oily elephant in the room

The fruits of Tony Blair's meeting with Vladimir Putin are summed up in the headline of today's Guardian report: "We Are Not With You and We Don't Believe You."

Here's something else. Yesterday the Guardian and others carried reports of Tony Blair's warning to France that it could find itself on the wrong end of a new Cold War. This follows an allegation earlier in the week that France had been briefing Saddam on its dealings with the US.

Question: How is it that France and Russia have been so consistently in the forefront of international opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, and why are theirs the first western states to come up whenever charges of secret aid to Saddam are bandied around?

During the war I've thought back often to a comment Noam Chomsky made in one of the talks collected in his recent book Power and Terror. This is from a Q&A session at Berkeley in March 2002:

We know [Saddam's] crimes are not the reason for the intended conquest. Nor is it his development of weapons of mass destruction. If those aren't the reasons, what are the reasons? Well, the reasons are pretty obvious. Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.... Certainly the United States is going to deny those resources to its adversaries. Right now France and Russia have the inside track... and the United States is looking to take it over. [emphasis added]

I've been meaning to look up some online backgrounders on the recent history of France and Russia's relationship to Saddam and to Iraqi oil; I'll try to post a few in the next few days. Meantime, if any of you have seen good accounts of this backstory, please send them along with a link to sperry@citypages.com, and thanks.

PS: A few hours ago Al-Jazeera posted this polemical primer on the US's interest in Iraqi oil.   

Posted by Steve Perry at April 30, 2003 9:28 AM

 

Bush: A President Even Ray Charles Can See Through?

Did Brother Ray diss the Great White Father?

There's a debate raging in blogdom--and here at Twin Cities Babelogue--over Ray Charles's performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner the other night. Did Ray give W the finger in his pocket? Our own Steve Monaco, producer/director/curmudgeon of A Movie A Day, has one of the definitive posts on the subject, and a link to a video clip of the performance.

Also at TCB, the bloggers' combine I call home:

See what Jack Sparks, our new alt-country blogger, has to say about the Dixie Chicks flap. 

Drop by two other very fine war blogs at TCB, Civil Liberties Watch and Not-So-Private Ryan. 

Or just take a peek at the whole TC Babelogue directory by visiting tcb.citypages.com.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 30, 2003 9:28 AM

 

Shocking! Bushmen Cut Deal With Iranian Terrorists

Or why some wars on terror are more equal than others

The group in question is the Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO). According to an (admittedly choppy and badly translated) account from Jihad Unspun,

The US's deal to allow them to keep their arms is not for MKO's protection, but it will be used as a counter military force to the future Iraqi military and the Islamic groups in Iraq. MKO, a Marxist group, is anti-Islamic. It will also be used by the US to destabilise Iran and will be used to threaten Iran if it does not conform with its foreign policy in the region, especially regarding Israel.

Under the deal, signed on April 15 but confirmed by the United States Central Command only today, United States forces agreed not to damage any of the group's vehicles, equipment or any of its property in its camps in Iraq, and not to commit any hostile act toward the Iranian opposition forces covered by the agreement.

Who are they?

The Iranian group, which is led by a woman and has an estimated 10,000 members in Iraq, has no known ties to Al Qaeda, but its members killed several American military personnel and civilian contractors in the 1970's and supported the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

It has carried out dozens of bombings that were aimed at Iranian military and government workers, but that also killed civilians. It was added to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations in 1997.

Read the rest.

Thanks once again to reader Ted Dibble.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 30, 2003 9:03 AM

 

Iraq Reconstruction: It's Not Just for Building Contractors

It's also a booty call for America's best legal minds

"Western law firms see big business in Iraq," says the story at Forbes.com. 

Posted by Steve Perry at April 30, 2003 8:53 AM

 

Independent: How the Road to War Was Paved with Lies

Raymond Whitaker has a great tale to tell: how the US and Britain systemically falsified and distorted intelligence evidence to justify their war:

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own conclusions."

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 9:02 PM

 

Mailer: A War on Behalf of White Male Ego

Norman Mailer has an essay in the Times of London today:

The question posed at curtain-rise has not been answered. Why did we go to war? If no real weapons of mass destruction are found, the question will keen in pitch.

Or, if more likely, such weapons are uncovered in Iraq — not a tenth, not a hundredth of what we possess — but, yes, if such weapons are there, it is also likely that even more have been moved to new hiding places beyond Iraq. If that is so, horrific events could ensue. Should they take place, we can count on a predictable response: "Good, honest, innocent Americans died today because of evil al-Qaeda terrorists." Yes, we will hear the President's voice speaking before he even utters such words. (For those of us who do not like George Bush, we may as well recognise that putting up with him in the Oval Office is like being married to a mate who always says exactly what you know in advance he or she is going to say, which also helps to account for why the other half of America loves him.)

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 5:27 PM

 

NYT: War's Over, Fun is Back!

On Tuesday afternoon the paper of record made it official: Iraq, Schmiraq--the public figures of America need not act solemn and burdened anymore! Under a photo of Diana Ross looking almost human in a resplendent red dress, the Times's web page bore the happy news:

The Return of Fun
Singer Diana Ross and just about everyone else arriving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its Costume Institute gala tried to live up to the exhibit's theme, "Goddess."

More on VC (Victory for Celebrities) Day.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 5:08 PM

 

Fisk on Journalists as Targets

Robert Fisk has a column on the killing and wounding of journalists by the US military.

Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain--a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed--after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week.

Samia, a brave and honourable lady who has reported the cruelty of the Lebanese civil war at first hand for many years, was almost destroyed as a human being by that tank crew.

At the time, General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division, told a lie: he said that sniper fire had been directed at the tank--on the Joumhouriyah Bridge over the Tigris river--and that the fire had ended "after the tank had fired" at the Palestine Hotel. I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired. There was no sniper fire--nor any rocket-propelled grenade fire, as the American officer claimed--at the time. French television footage of the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing. The soundtrack--until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the tank barrel--is silent.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 4:48 PM

 

Spanking Al-Jazeera Ashleigh

She won't discuss the emperor's clothes anymore

Image from AshleighBanfieldLive.com

Drudge and Limbaugh and the rest are all over MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield, who recently criticized US coverage of the war in a speech at Kansas State. Now she's been reprimanded by her bosses. On Monday a network flack said, "She and we both agreed that she didn't intend to demean the work of her colleagues, and she will choose her words more carefully in the future."

The Hollywood Reporter has the best summary.

And here's a link to a Real Audio file of the speech at Kansas State. You'll want to advance it to the 6-minute mark to skip over the introductory remarks.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 9:09 AM

 

US Troops Fire Into Demo Crowd, Kill 13

This is getting to be a familiar refrain: In the town of Fallujah, near Baghdad, US troops fired into a crowd of demonstrators marching to commemorate Saddam's birthday:

A spokeswoman at US Central Command said: "Members of the 1st Battalion of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division came upon a group of Iraqis armed with AK47s last night. The Iraqis fired on them. The troops returned fire."

But witnesses said that the US soldiers were not threatened by the demonstrators. Mohammed Hamid, a resident of the town which is 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of the capital, said: "The shooting broke out when 500 protestors carrying portraits of Saddam and Iraqi flags approached a school manned by US troops."

PS: The Guardian says the troops opened fire after "someone in the crowd threw a stone at US soldiers."

PPS: The US is sending an additional 4,000 military police to Baghdad.

"There is no security so far. We hear so much shooting, and we see so many robberies,'' Sahad Bakhnam, a water-plant manager attending the meeting, told a reporter. "We cannot start schools in these circumstances.''

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 9:08 AM

 

Lind: Now the Real War Begins

William S. Lind, one of the co-authors of a seminal 1989 essay on the changing face of warfare, has posted an essay at Counterpunch about what to expect in Iraq going forward:

[N]ow the real war starts. There are three basic forms it may take... The first is simple chaos.... A second form the real war may take is a War of National Liberation, a guerrilla war to free Iraq from foreign occupation....  

The third and, in my view, most likely form the real war may take is Fourth Generation warfare. Washington thinks it has destroyed the Iraqi regime, but it may find it has also destroyed the Iraqi state and cannot create it again. (The best chance of doing so is probably to use the remaining Ba'ath party structure, if it can be co-opted, but the Bush administration will probably reject this on grounds of "moral principle.")

In place of the state of Iraq, we will find ourselves facing a vast array of competing loyalties, based on religion (Sunni or Shiite), ethnicity, tribe, clan, source of income or source of local security (gangs and warlords), and simple appeals to fight the Crusaders from non-state actors such as al Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and countless imitators. As in Afghanistan, the puppet government we establish in Baghdad will have no authority outside Baghdad, maybe not much in Baghdad, and will survive only because it is propped up by American troops. Iraq will become for us what the West Bank is for Israel, an ulcer that drains us physically, mentally and morally. Further, if an intifada against America arises in Iraq, it may well spread elsewhere in the Arab and Moslem world, aimed at any local government that supports the United States.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 9:07 AM

 

Contracts: Friends Helping Friends Help Themselves

The lede paragraph in this AP story about changing USAID regulations for post-war rebuilding contracts says it all:

The agency awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts deleted its requirement for a security clearance after realizing it awarded a project to a company that lacked one, an internal report says.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 8:14 AM

 

UK Defense Chief: Let's Wait on Next "Discretionary" War

Brit military needs post-coital cigarette and nap

Sir Michael Boyce, who is about to retire as the UK's top military commander, said yesterday that Tony Blair could not follow W into another war before the end of 2004 without "serious pain":

Admiral Boyce said that the Armed Forces could not handle another "discretionary" war, a conflict waged "by choice", if it were launched in 2004. Speaking to defence journalists as part of his farewell, Admiral Boyce said that if the United Kingdom were threatened, every man and woman in the Services would fight to defend the country. However, a war in the style of the Iraqi campaign was not something that could be repeated again and again.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 29, 2003 7:28 AM

 

The Journalist as Non-Citizen

Late last week Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Henry Norr, the 57-year-old columnist fired by the San Francisco Chronicle for participating in an anti-war demonstration.

Read the transcript.

This kind of newsroom thinking is not confined to times of war; it's only ratcheted up a bit. There are countless pinheads in the working media who seem to believe that the everyday rights and obligations of citizenship are not compatible with the practice of solid, "objective" journalism. Once I actually heard some self-serious crackpot--I forget who--pronounce it his duty as a journalist not to vote and thereby despoil his perfect neutrality in all matters. 

That's objectivity for you. There are a dozen better terms for what journalists ought to strive for--fairness, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and sound analytic judgment pop to mind--but you don't hear any of them half as much as you hear the chant of "objectivity." The underlying vision here is as absurd as it is impoverished: the reporter as blank slate. Knowing too much, thinking too much, bringing "an agenda" or a "spin" to reporting besides the one your sources would like to see featured--all these things are frowned upon in every j-school of quality. That's bias! To the greatest extent possible, one must be without preconceptions.

Ignorant, in other words. Ignorant and pliable. Hence the kind of journalism that prevails in most corners of American media--hundreds, thousands, of little blank slates running around inviting "newsmakers" to write on them whatever they wish.  

Posted by Steve Perry at April 28, 2003 7:22 AM

 

The WMD Problem: A Spy's-Eye View

Interesting piece at Counterpunch, in which a former CIA analyst of 27 years, Ray McGovern, speculates as to whether the US would plant evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction if it fails to find any. The best part, though, is a thumbnail history of past intelligence frauds and forgeries concocted by the US. Definitely worth reading.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 28, 2003 6:43 AM

 

Dowd: To the Victors Go the Best Parties

The ballad of Rummy and Powell drones on

In case you missed it, Maureen Dowd had the latest on the Odd Couple in her Sunday column.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 28, 2003 6:17 AM

 

The Future of the Internet, Revealed

When I check out the morning press my first stop is usually the London Independent, which ever since 9/11 has been one of the finest English-language news sources on the web for Americans interested in a slightly more unvarnished view of events. Thanks in part to the traffic in wartime US readers, the site has risen from around 2500th on the net in Alexa rankings back in February all the way up to the top thousand--number 967 at the moment.

As of today, much of the site is paid-access only. A friend wrote me the other day to say that the London Guardian is planning a similar move. And you can bet the other major US/UK papers will be watching the experiment with interest. Meantime, too bad for the rest of us.  

Posted by Steve Perry at April 28, 2003 5:37 AM

 

The Saddam-bin Laden Connection

Still no WMDs? No problem. Let's resurrect al Qaeda.

The Telegraph's penchant for unearthing documents useful to Bush and Blair has once again proven uncanny. After several days' worth of stories about alleged ties between Saddam's government and an anti-war member of the British Parliament, George Galloway, the Sunday Telegraph published a story that was widely touted as proving the Iraq-al Qaeda connection at last.

Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime.

Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998.... The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.

Read the Telegraph's main story. Read excerpts of the documents they obtained.

And if you do, you'll notice that there is not a lot of smoke coming out of this gun. If the document is genuine, then it appears Saddam's government did invite an al-Qaeda emissary to Baghdad in 1998. What does this prove? It would have been more surprising if they had never been in touch. Saddam and bin Laden shared common enemies, foremost among them not the US but bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia.

The Telegraph asserts that their documents "show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qaeda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia," but none of the excerpts they publish refer to the US at all. They do refer to bin Laden as "the Saudi opposition leader," which suggests that this was how Iraqi intelligence perceived his value.

But so far as ongoing collaboration is concerned, bin Laden and Saddam still make for strange bedfellows in innumerable ways. Saddam's was a secularist regime, a sin scarcely less egregious than the decadence of the US and the betrayals of the Saudis in bin Laden's eyes. This is not to say they couldn't have contemplated acting in concert in certain matters, but against the US? I don't think so. Saddam had a very good thing going with the sanctions system. They caused him no personal hardship, only the Iraqi people; and if anything they shored up his shaky standing by making a lot of Iraqis despise the oppressor from without more than the oppressor from within. Saddam no doubt took glee whenever bin Laden struck at the US, but getting himself involved is something else entirely--he had everything to lose and nothing to gain from making himself into a target again. 

According to the Times of London, British intelligence doesn't buy the connection. Referring to the meeting the Telegraph's documents allude to,

Officials told The Times that there had been intelligence indicators about that time of a possible visit to Baghdad by someone purporting to represent al-Qaeda. There had been no evidence of any follow-up meetings to suggest that Baghdad had forged a long-term partnership with al-Qaeda.

Read the rest.

Here's a related story. In its Sunday-Monday editions, the LA Times published a two-parter on the Ansar al Islam bases in northern Iraq that the US called al Qaeda training camps. The dispatches aren't particularly concise, but the headline treatment on Sunday's story sums them up. "Militants' Crude Camp Casts Doubt on US Claims-- Ansar al Islam's bases show that the Al Qaeda surrogate posed no serious threat beyond its mountain borders, despite what Powell asserted before the war."

Read part one.  Read part two.

But then none of this will matter in American media, where Saddam and bin Laden were already joined at the hip because the Bush administration implied as much repeatedly. 

Finally, a question I haven't seen anyone ask yet: How is the Telegraph is in a position to "find" (their verb of choice) all these juicy documents when no one else is turning any up? If you've seen anything about this, send it on.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 28, 2003 5:02 AM

 

Bush Dada

The Bush Wars site of the weekend

For you faithful BW readers, yes, this is a recycled post from yesterday. But I think it bears highlighting again.

The other day I asked for links to the best Bush flash animation and manipulated-sound files on the net, and reader Claude de Bogdan has sent along a gem--his own page of found-speech sound collages featuring Bush, Ashcroft, and others. Some of them are brilliant, and all are fun. Download 'em all!

They're at happytime world.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 26, 2003 10:27 AM

 

Good North Korea Analysis

If the Bush administration believes North Korea really has nukes now, writes Asia Times correspondent Marc Erikson, it decreases the likelihood that the US will go to war with Pyongyang.

Incidentally, Asia Times is also featuring an interesting essay on SARS, China, and geopolitics.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 26, 2003 10:23 AM

 

Legs of Responsibility

Bushisms revisited

 www.unansweredquestions.net

Jacob Weisberg at Slate continues to update his archive of Bush malaprops. A few recent ones:

"I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region."—Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

"Perhaps one way will be, if we use military force, in the post-Saddam Iraq the U.N. will definitely need to have a role. And that way it can begin to get its legs, legs of responsibility back."—the Azores, Portugal, March 16, 2003

"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself."—Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003

"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 8, 2003

"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like."—Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002

Check out the complete archive.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 26, 2003 10:05 AM

 

Dead People Got No Reason to Live

Okay, we know the Pentagon is not even trying to count the Iraqi dead, civilian or military--at least not officially. And we have heard that the popular Iraq Body Count tally of civilian deaths is flawed in method.

So have any of you run across what seem to be informed estimates of the death count in Iraq? If so, please forward them along to me, with a URL if possible.

I don't plan to post a lot this weekend--I have heard that it's getting warmer outside, and I can see from my window that the trees are budding--but I'll throw up anything interesting I see in the meantime. And be sure to check out yesterday's item about The Deal if you haven't.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 26, 2003 8:32 AM

 

More About the "Secret Deal" for the Fall of Baghdad

I've posted several items in the last week about allegations that a secret arrangement between the US and elements of Saddam's government led to the rapid fall of Baghdad, and now the world press is taking up the story in growing numbers. Here's a sampling of the accounts that are popping up.

Express India says the Russians are speculating about it.

There's a lengthy analysis of the matter in Asia Times, whose correspondent claims that Saddam and his sons were out of the loop.

Gulf News of Dubai, conversely, claims that the deal struck by the US included safe passage for Saddam and family to a third country. I have a hard time buying the notion that Saddam would conspire in his own downfall; you?

Jalal Ghazi of Pacific News Service elaborates on the circumstantial evidence of a deal.

Elise Ackerman of the San Jose Mercury News writes that in Cairo, they think Saddam is still alive and well:

In a corner, Mustafa el-Meleyya, a 58-year-old taxi driver, snorted. ''Saddam is in Russia,'' he said. ''There was a deal between Russia and America.''

Newspapers and television stations, in particular the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, have been feeding that speculation with unsubstantiated stories that detail the mother of all betrayals: a Russian-brokered agreement between Saddam, or perhaps a member of his inner circle, and U.S. generals, or possibly the CIA.

Al Bawaba offers a provocative backgrounder on the deal theory, which quotes a Le Monde story that names the alleged Iraqi mastermind, Republican Guard commander Maher Sufyan.

"Nobody believes he's dead": The AP on Arab-Americans' views of what happened to Saddam.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 5:23 PM

 

Nobody Loves Tailgunner Joe

Joe Lieberman's candidacy for the Democratic nomination is dead in the water, and the Jewish paper The Forward says it's because American Jews don't want him.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 4:47 PM

 

BBC Chief: The US Media Have Been Wretched

BBC director general Greg Dyke has harsh and fitting words about the American media's behavior in the war:

"We must ensure that we don't become Americanised," he said.... In his first public comments since the war, Mr Dyke said America had "no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand up against" the White House and Pentagon. He said: "Personally, I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war."

Mr Dyke said that since the 11 September terrorist attacks, many American networks had "wrapped themselves in the American flag and swapped impartiality for patriotism".

He said: "I think compared to the United States we see impartiality as giving a range of views, including those critical of our own Government's position. I think in the United States, particularly since 11 September, that would be seen as unpatriotic." Mr Dyke said that on a recent visit to America he was "amazed by how many people just came up to me and said they were following the war on the BBC because they no longer trusted the American electronic news media".

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 10:47 AM

 

Ha'aretz: Reading Sharon

Aluf Benn has an essay about the many faces of Ariel Sharon:

"Sharonologists" can be divided into four schools. There are those, like Shimon Peres, Amnon Mitzna and their pals who long for government, who believe "he wants to, but can't" reach an agreement with the Palestinians. Some, particularly on the left, where they are hoping for American pressure, think he "can, but doesn't want to." Then there are those, in Europe and the Arab world, who say "he doesn't want to and can't." And finally, there are those, like Sharon himself, who say he "wants to and can" - which is exactly what the right fears.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 10:26 AM

 

Further Shocking News About Saddam Photo

Stop it, man--you're blowin' my mind!

A reader named Dave Powers has sent this troubling note, which professes to find a fourth horseman in the Saddam/Elvis photograph we have studied at such length:

Forget the face in the flag behind elvis' butt, doesn't anyone see the face in the star in the flag behind Sadaam's backside??????

Is that GW Bush?

Well, is it?

If you click on the picture, and then click on Previous Picture, you'll see a larger version. And he's right. Oh my. Question of the Day: What does it all mean? Email me your answer: sperry@citypages.com

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 10:08 AM

 

Scott Ritter: Galloway's a Crook--How Convenient

Scott Ritter, the outspoken former UN weapons inspector who faced a personal scandal of his own some months back, has an essay about the Galloway affair at the Guardian.

I posted about Galloway last night; for more links, scroll down to yesterday's entries.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 10:07 AM

 

Al-Ahram Sums It All Up for You

Once again Al-Ahram Weekly of Cairo has put together a marvelous package of stories about the status of Iraq and the region.

Indefinitely at War, or why the US is not declaring victory

Reckoning with the Shias: Ya Hussein

A Brief Window of Triumphalism: The mood round Westminster has darkened considerably since the shooting stopped

The rape of Baghdad: 'Cultural Catastrophe' Hits Iraq

Why the US Needs Syria

Arab leaders huddle to discuss the US's new foothold in the Middle East: Closing Ranks

And finally, Edward Said: What is Happening to the United States?

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 9:01 AM

 

Where the Anti-Wars Were Wrong

A lot of us, myself included, thought that the public here at home was more stubborn in its resistance to the idea of war than it really was. The poll numbers in the weeks before the invasion showed an almost even split. But the right-wingers have been vindicated in their judgment: The main part of the shooting war was over with quickly, and everybody loves a winner.

But that goes both ways. A confused and waffling people are likely to be fickle in all their "opinions" about warmaking, and an unforeseen calamity in Iraq or elsewhere could test their dubious convictions on Bush's behalf all over again. The point is that a vast number of people are essentially fence-sitters in the whole matter, and they will tilt with the breeze. Hardly a mandate for Bush, and hardly an assurance that things will still look so sunny for him a year from now.

But in the meantime, a new poll affirms that the president is a mighty, mighty man.  

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 8:55 AM

 

Ace: Because They Said So

Alex Cockburn on New York Times reporter Judith Miller and American journalism's finest hour.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 8:54 AM

 

A Flash of Bush

Reader Will Doolittle comes through on my plea for fresh Bush satire. Check out "Idiot Son" and "Dr. Bushlove" at Eric Blumrich's Bush Flash.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 25, 2003 8:54 AM

 

I Ain't Marchin' Anymore

Or maybe I am: songs of war and confusion

Check out Melissa Maerz's five most incomprehensible war protest songs.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 10:10 PM

 

North Korea: Yes Nukes!

Pyongyang says it's got the bomb

The story's burbling out over the wire now. Here are the first dispatches from CNN and the WashPost.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 5:46 PM

 

The Galloway Affair

The allegations mount; why isn't the dog barking on this side of the Atlantic?

The Telegraph has posted another story that piles more charges on the head of anti-war British MP George Galloway. This one claims that

Saddam Hussein sought to protect George Galloway by severing the Iraqi intelligence service's contacts with the Labour backbencher, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.

This letter, found in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, explained that any disclosure of Mr Galloway's "relationship" with the Mukhabarat, which operated as both secret police and intelligence service, would do great harm to his political career.

Read the rest.

I'm a little surprised that the Bush administration doesn't already have its trained seals all over this story. It has manifest value for tarring anti-wars of all persuasions in the UK and US alike. But so far of the Big 7 US news outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, and USA Today--and if there's an eighth, it's the Drudge Report), only Fox is featuring the story on its web front page. Roger Ailes can smell the potential in it; will anybody else?

The American press will take its cue from the White House, as usual, so the question is really how much the Bush administration wants to make of this. And I suspect that hinges on their reading of the perils involved in attacking Galloway for private attachments to foreign governments. That sword may cut both ways with respect to the Bushmen's own ties abroad.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 5:41 PM

 

Get 'Em While They're Soft

Typically I don't use this space to sell products, but readers everywhere would be the real losers if I neglected to point this out.

That's right. You can own a matched set of Shock and Awe teddy bears. $14.95 gets you the pair, and if you care to become a dealer you can obtain 100 pairs for the low, low price of $950. I'm only sorry I failed to pass this along in time for Easter.

Thanks to Jeff St. Clair, Counterpunch

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 4:03 PM

 

The Creature Walks Among Us

Rev. Pat, the American Taliban

A nice piece about Pat Robertson's latest crusade from John Grebe, posted at Counterpunch.

Robertson's CBN television network has roots in the "Holy Land." Feeding war stories to his Jewish audience, Robertson pulled off a stunt that only a calculating pol could nail. First in Israel in '67, he called the Six Days War "so brilliant." But it was '82 when he wanted to broadcast. He recounted his adventures in southern Lebanon, in the service of profit and prophet. Robertson saw a grand design in broadcasting Christian television to the Lebanese. He claims the Lebanese shot rockets to knock out his TV transmitter repeater link to Beirut.

Robertson says his competitor's TV station was showing worldwide wrestling competition to 1.1 million viewers in Lebanon. Then, "somebody sent us a tape of female mud wrestling" and "somehow" his Christian station broadcast it to the Lebanese. "They" loved it, the Reverend said, before more rockets knocked out the mud wrestling. Religious extremism aside, Robertson fancies himself a statesman. He left out 1982 in Lebanon, when Christian Phalangist militia massacred 700-3,500 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Ariel "The Bulldozer" Sharon's Israeli troops surrounded and condoned it. Robertson wanted his Middle East TV in Arabic to "send a message of love and hope to that region."

"Why not begin educating [the Arabs]? Take their TV, and cut down their propaganda," suggests Robertson.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 3:22 PM

 

Spin the Bottle

In the past Bush Wars has issued reader advisories regarding popular wartime drinking games such as "The Noose is Tightening" and "Jubilant Iraqis."  Down a shot every time one of these phrases is uttered on TV, we warned, and you'd soon be dead.

Now a word about a popular wartime parlor game, Who's Next?

Meaning, who's next on Wolfowitz's list of nations most in need of regime change. Chances are you've played this game; I did, until I was stricken with a bad case of vertigo from trying to hold all the variables in mind at the same time. We already know that Israel is lobbying hard for an incursion to Syria. Meanwhile the Bushies are split as to whether it's Syria, Iran, or North Korea that most needs some tough love. So who's it to be?

My advice: Don't play this game. It's pure folly to try and guess what happens now; the plans on paper don't matter much anymore. The US has gotten itself into a phase in Iraq that could remain--well, let's say militarily sensitive--for a long time to come. It's very clear they didn't reckon on anything like the magnitude of Shia resistance they've encountered. The Shia uprising, in turn, has sucked Iranian evangelicals into Iraq to help in the crusade. And no matter how hard the US leans on Iran to keep them out, there are limits on what the Iranian government can do to control the movement.

So there's one source of inevitable, ongoing friction that the US did not plan on dealing with, and there will be others. The tensions between Turkey and northern Iraq's Kurds may be out of the headlines for the moment, but matters there are hardly settled. There is also the question of what Russia, France, and the rest of Europe will do to gain a seat at the table during the post-war reinvention of Iraq. Some Russian websites have asserted that Putin may be prepared to send in "peacekeeping" troops of his own, very much against the US's wishes.

Now we are at the point where the Bush administration's actions will be dictated by contingency and circumstance much more than by their own aims.

Here, by the way, is yesterday's New York Times piece about Iranian agents crossing into Iraq.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 3:18 PM

 

Saddam Mystery Solved?

BW reader makes strong case he's on Mars

Bush Wars readers have been tracking the movements of Saddam ever since the first time he was killed in the war. Last weekend I asked you to unpack another possible clue: Whose face is that in the flag behind Elvis's backside?

From About's directory of Saddam/Iraq humor.

Some guy named Ted swore that it was La Giaconda herself.

From Doug Shaw's math page!

Come on, Ted--you can't be serious. The figure behind Elvis has a coarser bone structure and bigger, deeper-set eyes than the Mona Lisa; if it's a painting we're talking about, the face looks a lot more like one of Chagall's peasants. But to be perfectly blunt, why would either of them be materializing as an apparition in the vicinity of Elvis's ass? That's just silly, Ted. 

Other vote-getters included ET, Odo, and Georgia O'Keefe (no idea why I didn't think of that myself), but reader Jose Cabanillas provided the hands-down best unified field theory of the face and the whereabouts of Saddam:

It is obviously the face on Mars. That would give credence to the claim in Men In Black that Elvis was really a space alien, and might explain where Saddam is now.

 

You can't deny the resemblance.

 

 

From CSICOP

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 11:33 AM

 

Guantanamo: A Great Place for Kids, Too

From this morning's Guardian:

Children younger than 16 are being held as "enemy combatants" in the American detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, the US military admitted yesterday, a practice human rights groups condemned as repugnant and illegal.

Three boys aged between 13 and 15 are among about 660 inmates at the controversial camp, a US military official told the Guardian, on condition of anonymity. The official would not disclose their nationalities but said they had been brought from Afghanistan this year on suspicion of terrorism.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 8:56 AM

 

Question of the Day: New Bush Web Satire?

I've posted these links before--and hell, I may post 'em again--but a good laugh is always a worthwhile thing. What follows is a sampling of Bush & Co. satire from around the web. It's all old stuff by now, but some of it will be new to more casual surfers.

And that leads to the question of the day: Seen any good Bush-gang flash animations or manipulated-sound files lately? If so, send them to me at sperry@citypages.com and I'll post the best of them. One thing, though: Please don't bother sending satiric single-image photos or cartoons; there are plenty of good ones around, but I'm looking for more ambitious stuff.

Meantime, here's a list of links I presented once before:

First an utterly scurrilous, shocking, and funny remix of Bush's State of the Union Address. If you only visit one of these links, make this the one.

Second, the more recent clip of Bush and Blair declaiming their Endless Love.

Here's the Operation: Terrortubbies cartoon.

Ashcroft sings. Bush picks his nose. No joke.

Dancing Bush.

A Blair riff in the mode of Dancing Bush.

ModernTV.com has a great pastiche on war as TV sports.  

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 8:55 AM

 

You Can't Get Good Help Anymore

Updates on Iran, the Shias, and Gorgeous George Galloway

I'll be in meetings and doing other work for much of the day today; meantime a few updates on stories mentioned here in recent days.

Bush has told Iran's Shiites to keep their noses out of the 51st state, or else.

US occupation forces are still having trouble with self-appointed Iraqi leaders--imagine the nerve of those people--who are complicating plans for a US-chosen government.

And the Brit MP who's been accused of taking money from Saddam's government says maybe his sticky-fingered associates did it, but not he.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 8:55 AM

 

While You're Here

Some of TCB's other war-related items

My two war-blogging confreres (er, con-soeurs?) here at Twin Cities Babelogue, Elaine Cassel and Sally Ryan, have been posting a lot of great things the past few days. Elaine's writing about the hydra-headed beast that is the Bush/Ashcroft Justice Department, and Sally is--well, the subhead of her blog says it: It's a citizen's wartime diary, with frontal reactions to the war in Iraq as well as frequent and provocative grace notes. Check out Civil Liberties Watch and Not-So-Private Ryan.

Brad Zellar, the proprietor of Open All Night, has posted his personal compendium of war-weary Mekons songs. Take some time and browse around Brad's blog. He's got an unerring eye for the neglected and the affecting. No, it's not a war blog, but I think you'll find the scope and depth of what he's doing there a soul-balm for these times. It's my personal fave blog, anywhere.

Speaking of wartime entertainment--and what other subject is there, really?--Steve Monaco over at A Movie A Day has this withering paean to Bob Hope's mummy (the tabloid-worthy photo of Hope alone demands that you click over and take a look) on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Bob Hope's centennial can mean only one thing, of course: One hundred years from now, when the rest of us have shuffled off this mortal coil, Bob Hope will be celebrating his 200th birthday, with The Gipper at his side.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 9:51 PM

 

Question of the Day: Where is Raed?

And was it all a hoax?

In the past couple of days several readers have written to ask if there's any news of Salam Pax, the purportedly Baghdad-based blogger (see link at right) whose posts on the eve of war made his one of the most-read pages on the Internet. There have been no fresh posts at the site for a month now, since March 24, and readers are starting to wonder what may have happened to him.

I took a spin through Google News Headlines (as can you--go to news.google.com rather than using the default Google search engine) and it didn't turn up much of recent vintage. But here are a few things:

The Sacramento Bee published a story about Salam Pax and his disappearance on April 4.

This Toronto Star piece has the most detailed characterization of the author, calling him "a 29-year-old, gay, urbane Iraqi architect in Baghdad." (Scroll down--it's the second item.)

Righty-bloggers like Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit are claiming "Salam Pax" was a hoax. (Here's the cornerstone of that argument, from Steven den Beste--again, scroll down to find it--who theorizes that "Pax" may be Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, the son of a former Iraqi diplomat; the 28-year-old was arrested in NYC on March 25.)

The always-lively Fimoculous (one of the best digests of wide-ranging 'net links I know) features a link to this Where is Raed? thread on Metafilter.

And here's a bizarre and somehow chilling note: Al Jazeera posted a cheery, boosterish article about Where is Raed? just four days ago that does not even mention his disappearance.

So I'll throw it open to you: Has anyone out there run across accounts of what's happened to Salam Pax? Do you buy the hoax theory?

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 3:43 PM

 

Big Surprise: Journalists Are Looting, Too

You know, my wife has always wanted a priceless Mesopotamian relic...

I stole this from Cursor: American journalists have been caught mailing contraband Iraqi artifacts home. And here's an AP wire story on the same subject.   

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 2:51 PM

 

Holy Shiite

US underestimated strength of Shia resistance

Here's the Washington Post on the militant Shias that US nation-builders keep running into,

and here is the New York Times on reports that Iranian-trained agents are slipping into Iraq to fan the rebellion. 

Al Jazeera reports on the gathered Shia presence in Karbala:

"If America stays, it will suffer," shouted a group of some 3,000 people as they passed in front of a hotel housing foreign reporters. "No to colonialism, no to occupation," "No to America, no to Saddam, no to tyranny, no to Israel," they continued.

Around noon today central time, the US warned Iran to stay out.

The Associated Press offers this wire account of who's who among Iraqi Shiite leaders.

And the popular Shia cleric whose arrest I reported yesterday, Sheik Mohammed al-Fartusi--I know, it sounds like a character from Caddyshack--is back in the streets of Baghdad, according to the Manila Times:

In Iraq itself, a prominent Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, saying he was detained and beaten by US forces, charged Wednesday that American methods were "worse" than those used by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"Our arrest by the Americans was worse than the arrests that Saddam ordered against our students," Sheik Mohammed al-Fartusi told Abu Dhabi television. The cleric, whose followers said he was detained Sunday by US troops along with five other Shi'ites, reappeared in Baghdad on Tuesday to cheers from hundreds of supporters who had held protests for two days.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 12:59 PM

 

Stupid Democrat Tricks

Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch sent along a note pointing out this page, which contains the text of a proposal by a Democratic member of the House, Jose Serrano (NY), to repeal the 22nd Amendment that limits US presidents to two terms.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 12:04 PM

 

General Jay and the Museum

You miss interesting things if you ignore the right-wing press, and here's an example. A few days ago the Washington Times reported that General Jay Garner's office sent a memo on March 26 that made guarding the Iraqi National Museum a key priority in the taking of Baghdad.

The museum was No. 2 on a list of 16 sites that ORHA deemed crucial to protect. Financial institutions topped the list, including the Iraqi Central Bank, which is now a burned-out shell filled with twisted metal beams from the collapse of the roof and all nine floors under it.

"We asked for just a few soldiers at each building, or if they feared snipers, then just one or two tanks," said an angry ORHA official, one of several who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity.

Read the rest.

Could it be a fabrication conceived to humanize Garner in the eyes of Iraqis? Sure. Or it may be true, which would raise the interesting question of why and by whom Garner's recommendations were overridden.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 10:04 AM

 

General Jay on the Job

It's not ethnic cleansing when our pals do it

The Independent reports that General Jay Garner's boys are accused of standing by as the Kurds settle scores.

The Kurds, the victims of oppression by Saddam Hussein and previous regimes in Baghdad, are being blamed for a violent campaign of intimidation against the Turkoman population. Organisations representing the Turkomans say they want British and European troops to protect them because the Americans are acquiescing in what is taking place.

Thanks to reader Ted Dibble.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 9:57 AM

 

Gorgeous George Under Siege

More about George Galloway, the anti-war British MP accused of taking payments from Saddam

Image from ipc.gov.ps

For now I'll just survey what the UK press has this morning. The story has yet to register in American media in a big way.

The Telegraph, which broke the Galloway story yesterday, adds further allegations. And the Media Guardian site writes that the paper is vigorously defending its allegations.

There are yet more allegations against Galloway, unrelated to Iraq, in this Times of London dispatch.

The Times also has an interesting backgrounder on the essential corruption of the oil-for-food program that supplied the funds allegedly paid to Galloway.

The Independent writes that Galloway is set to be dumped by the Labour party.

And finally, the Guardian offers an analysis of the case against Galloway.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 9:33 AM

 

Blix: US Worked Against Me

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix spoke out yesterday for the first time in a while, charging that the Bush administration actively undermined his inspections in Iraq.

He warned the Security Council that only UN inspectors, and not the teams being assembled by America, would be able to provide an objective assessment of any materials that might be found in Iraq....

The Council's members sparred openly over the role of the UN in identifying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And Mr Blix, who could now be the biggest obstacle to the removal of sanctions, which George Bush is seeking, rubbed salt in the wounds. London and Washington had built the case for invading Iraq on "very, very shaky" evidence, he said. He referred to documents alleging that Iraq had imported uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger that he later revealed to have been faked.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 8:38 AM

 

Newtie: State Department Sissies Undermining Our President

The man who almost singlehandedly re-elected Bill Clinton in 1996 is rushing to the aid of another president. On Tuesday Newt Gingrich took a break from thinking Great Thoughts just long enough to charge that Colin Powell's State Department is undercutting the manlier efforts of Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz et al.

"The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success," [Gingrich] told the American Enterprise Institute. "The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory."

Posted by Steve Perry at April 23, 2003 8:31 AM

 

On Saddam's Dole?

Anti-war Brit MP accused of business ties to Saddam regime

This bears watching: One of the more vocal anti-war ministers in the British Parliament, George Galloway, is being accused of receiving payments from Saddam's government. The story, which broke in this morning's Telegraph, claims that secret Iraqi documents "found" by the newspaper document payments of 375,000 pounds a year from the Saddam crew to Galloway's business ventures:

[T]he papers say that, behind the scenes, Mr Galloway was conducting a relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Among documents found in the foreign ministry was a memorandum from the chief of the Mukhabarat to Saddam's office on Jan 3, 2000, marked "Confidential and Personal".

It purported to outline talks between Mr Galloway and an Iraqi spy. During the meeting on Boxing Day 1999, Mr Galloway detailed his campaign plans for the year ahead.

The spy chief wrote that Mr Galloway told the Mukhabarat agent: "He [Galloway] needs continuous financial support from Iraq. He obtained through Mr Tariq Aziz [deputy prime minister] three million barrels of oil every six months, according to the oil for food programme. His share would be only between 10 and 15 cents per barrel."

Iraq's oil sales, administered by the United Nations, were intended to pay for only essential humanitarian supplies. If the memo was accurate, Mr Galloway's share would have amounted to about £375,000 per year.

The documents say that Mr Galloway entered into partnership with a named Iraqi oil broker to sell the oil on the international market.

Read the rest.

Read the Telegraph's withering editorial on "Gorgeous George, the Member for Baghdad Central."

You can just imagine how this would play for anti-wars on both sides of the Atlantic--it's commies-in-the-State-Department all over again. What an opportune thing, finding a document like this. Maybe too opportune? Remember that the "Coalition" already stands accused of bugging the offices of other UN Security Council members during the lead-up to war; it's not as if forged documents implicating a single individual would be breaking new moral ground.  

Posted by Steve Perry at April 22, 2003 9:44 AM

 

Leaning on Journalists

Al Jazeera is claiming that British forces near Basra recently detained one of their correspondents:

The Al-Jazeera correspondent said it was the third time British forces had harassed him. Weapons were pointed at [Al-Sayed] Mohsen and his driver. The Al-Jazeera correspondent said the British soldier [told him] US-led forces "were dealing only with listed journalists who accompanied coalition forces." [More...]

Got that? A free press belongs to those who have bought their way in.

Since the fall of Baghdad the US command has been accused numerous times of harassing and seeking to intimidate journalists, particularly of the un-embedded variety. The most publicized incidents have revolved around the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, the de facto headquarters of the international press corps in Iraq. During the main attack on Baghdad, US forces fired a missile into the hotel, killing two journalists; more tellingly, perhaps, a US commando team raided two journalist-occupied floors of the hotel some days later, holding reporters at gunpoint while their rooms were searched. A CentCom flack later said the troops were acting on intelligence reports that there were individuals "not friendly to the United States" staying at the hotel.

And the UK television network ITN is still trying to get answers about the death of their longtime correspondent Terry Lloyd on March 22, when he was killed near Basra--allegedly by US/UK troops.

Robert Fisk posed the question a couple of weeks ago: Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists?

The UK's Media Guardian site has this summary of journalists who have died, gone missing, or are being held in Iraq. The dateline on the story is April 16, but the list itself is current.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 22, 2003 9:23 AM

 

More Chemical Weapons Follies

Judith Miller wrote in yesterday's NYT that US forces had run across an Iraqi scientist who was making all sorts of useful statements. Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons stockpiles only days before the start of the war, he said, and yes, Iraq was by all means cooperating with al-Qaeda. The man also claimed to know the whereabouts of buried stockpiles of raw chemical agents. Miller made of the claims everything she was supposed to:

An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is ba