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Just as Bush was
hyping his plan to invade Iraq in early March 2003, a friend e-mailed me the
William Rivers Pitt article
Blood Money, detailing
in chilling terms the visions and goals of the Project for a New American
Century (PNAC), an ultra-right wing “think tank” that has been
trying since 1979 to implement U.S. “reform” and control of the
Middle East—Middle Eastern oil fields, specifically, and through their
control, control of the economy of the entire planet—through force of
arms, to fulfill its goal of what PNAC so innocently terms “American
world leadership.” Bits and pieces
of innocuous news, things buried in the financial section, on the second or
third pages of the national or international affairs sections, suddenly fell
together as I saw Bush’s Iraqi invasion, so weakly justified but so quickly
pumped up and executed, as a critical piece of the PNAC master plan. I have
been derided as a “conspiracy nutcase” and admit my overview, a
terrible vision of fascism (that is really all it can be termed) threatening to
eat us alive, is indeed virtually impossible to conceive. Still I feel
compelled to shout to the world: know this and fight it with everything you
have. Please read through these articles—just a fraction of what is out
there on the subject—and tell me you don’t get the same feeling.
July 17, 2003: The role of Donald Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans (OSP) (is that a Naziesque name or what?) jumps out at me as the pivotal hub of the Bush Administration's whole parallel war-planning, war-hyping, war-implementing secret government. I have created a new category of articles detailing this organization and its evil workings. It is, basically, PNAC’s policies enabled, made official without really being official at all.
See the larger original at The Intelligence Chain by Nigel Holmes, Mother Jones, January/Feburary 2004.
The Lie Factory Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.
Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest Mother Jones, January/February 2004
Rumsfeld's personal spy ring Eric Boehlert Salon, July 16, 2003 (subscription, but click on the “day pass” option, watch a brief commercial, then read the articles for free for 18 hours) The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear. . . .
Lack of planning contributed to chaos in Iraq Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel Knight-Ridder, July 12, 2003 . . . The Pentagon group [OSP] insisted on doing it its way because it had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with U.S. friends and allies. The problem was that officials at the State Department and CIA thought the vision was badly flawed and impractical, so the Pentagon planners simply excluded their rivals from involvement. . . .
They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. . . .
The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA: Devising bad intelligence to promote bad policy Robert Dreyfuss The American Prospect, December 16, 2002 Even 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. . . .
Right Web The architecture of power that’s changing our world The web site “explores the many ties that link the right-wing movement’s main players, organizations, corporate supporters, educational institutions, and government representatives to each other in a new architecture of power.” Includes biographies of PNAC signatories on numerous statements, but also goes beyond PNAC in profiling an assortment of right-wing individuals and organizations. Established by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, which works “to make the U.S. a more responsible global leader and global partner.”
. . . The neo-conservative movement it is called, an ideology fostered by a cabal of powerful and influential members of the establishment that today sit at or near the top of the White House, Pentagon, National Security Agency and State Department. Like a virus that was given new life, the once dormant group, for years denied the claws of power, suddenly awoke and spread through all levels of the US government with the appointment of George W. Bush in 2000. . . .
How We Got into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer Bernard Weiner, May 27, 2003 Readable history and analysis of PNAC and its goals and strategies.
Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and their blueprint for U.S. power Christian Science Monitor Click on the thumbnail photos to read a biography of each of the so-called neocons, among the major players in PNAC. Also includes links to Spheres of Influence, neoconservative think tanks, periodicals and key documents.
Neocons dance a Strauss waltz Jim Lobe Asia Times online, May 9, 2003 . . . Suddenly, political Washington is abuzz about Leo Strauss, who arrived in the US in 1938 and taught at several major universities before his death in 1973. . . .
PNAC Links Archive compiled by forum members at Democratic Underground, July–November 2003 Lots and lots of links to news, commentary, and analysis of PNAC and its plans.
Leo-Cons; A Classicist’s Legacy: Empire Builders James Atlas New York Times, May 4, 2003 Explains the connections among late University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss, author Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind, 1987), and the cadre currently pulling the strings in the White House. Accompanying photos at Father Strauss Knows Best, by Tom Zeller. Available for a small fee from NYT archives.
The Weird Men behind George W. Bush Michael Lind New Statesman--London, April 12, 2003 . . . As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies—such as the selection rather than election of George W Bush, and 11 September—the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the US population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment. . . .
Bush planned Iraq ‘regime change’ before becoming President by Neil Mackay Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002 A Scottish newspaper reviews the then newly unearthed “secret blueprint for US global domination,” PNAC's document titled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century (PDF--90 pages) (HTML). Quoted at the end of the article, Tam Dalyell, Labour MP, “father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said, ‘This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.’”
U.S. and the Triumph of Unilateralism
by Jim Lobe
Asia Times Online, Sept. 20, 2002
An obscure article also detailing the contents of the Defense Policy
Guidance—PNAC’s official foreign policy recommendations, Pax Americana.
The Thirty Year Itch by Robert Dreyfuss Mother Jones, March/April 2003 “Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance.” Very readable history and analysis.
Of Gods and Mortals and Empire
by William Rivers Pitt
Feb. 21, 2003 truthout editorial
Pitt’s first overview of the PNAC and its plans, followed up a week later by
Blood Money
by William Rivers Pitt Feb. 28, 2003 truthout editorial
The article that has so far most clearly defined the Project for a New American
Century and its role in foreign policy decisions, the chilling implications of
that foreign policy on life in the United States, and the principal players.
Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
Right from the “horses’” mouths: war, war, and more war is recommended.
The official web site presents innocuous-sounding plans couched in language
like “American world leadership.”
The War Behind Closed Doors
“The People, The Clashes — and Ultimately the ‘Grand Strategy’ — behind
George W. Bush’s Determination to Go to War with Iraq”
PBS/Frontline Sections include Analyses: A New Approach to the World: “
Experts assess the Bush Doctrine, the strategy for Iraq and the Middle East,
and whether the United States can afford to go it alone,” Interviews:
“Insiders, policy experts, and White House observers talk to Frontline
about Bush’s strategy for Iraq . . . and beyond,” and Chronology: The
Evolution of the Bush Doctrine: “A look at the people, the events, the
major statements, and the internal policy battles in the development of the
Bush Doctrine.” Also includes a Discussion area where you can leave your
thoughts.
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm Report by Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000 The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, July 8, 1996 Study Group Leader: Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute “. . . Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq . . .”
Tony and the Truth Transcript of BBC documentary, interviews and investigative reporting by John Ware revealing Tony Blair’s complicity in manipulating intelligence to justify a rush to war in Iraq. Click here for HTML if you have a problem with the straight text in your browser.
The Quagmire As the Iraq war drags on, it’s beginning to look a lot like Vietnam. Robert Dreyfuss May 5, 2005, RollingStone.com
The news from Iraq is bad and getting worse with each passing day. Iraqi insurgents are stepping up the pace of their attacks, unleashing eleven deadly bombings on April 29th alone. Many of the 150,000 Iraqi police and soldiers hastily trained by U.S. troops have deserted or joined the insurgents. The cost of the war now tops $192 billion, rising by $1 billion a week, and the corpses are piling up: Nearly 1,600 American soldiers and up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, as well as 177 allied troops and 229 private contractors. Other nations are abandoning the international coalition assembled to support the U.S., and the new Iraqi government, which announced its new cabinet to great fanfare on April 27th, remains sharply split along ethnic and religious lines.
But to hear President Bush tell it, the war in Iraq is going very, very well. . . . “The establishment of a free Iraq is a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.” Staying on message, aides to Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, later suggested that U.S. forces could be reduced from 142,000 to 105,000 within a year.
In private, however, senior military advisers and intelligence specialists on Iraq offer a starkly different picture. Two years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is perched on the brink of civil war. Months after the election, the new Iraqi government remains hunkered down inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, surviving only because it is defended by thousands of U.S. troops. . . .
Read the rest to understand the true extent of the chaos and unrest—and the increasingly precarious position of the invaders—in the “new” Iraq.
Facts to counter the dumb argument that ‘Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein’:
Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death Shocking suppressed film documents blatant mass murder of Afghanis by American troops. “The film has been broadcast on national television in countries all over the world and has been screened by the European parliament. Human rights lawyers are calling for investigation into whether U.S. forces are guilty of war crimes. But no U.S. media outlet has broadcast the film.” Share this link with your Congresspeople and demand an investigation. Works just fine with dial-up, no waiting.
Baghdad Burning Girl Blog from Iraq... let’s talk war, politics and occupation. Up to the minute inside view of what is going on there.
WASHINGTON — Bill Keller knew that rebuilding Iraq’s shattered telecommunications network meant throwing money into a black hole.
As the clock ticked down to the U.S. transfer of power last June, reconstruction projects were hopelessly mired in delays, and financial controls at the Iraqi Communications Ministry appeared nonexistent. Yet instead of putting the brakes on spending, top U.S. officials urged that contracts be accelerated, Keller said.
“We were squandering the money we were entrusted to handle,” said Keller, who at the time was a deputy advisor to the ministry. “We were a blind mouse with money.”
This apparent indifference toward accountability in spending Iraqi money was common among American officials last year as they rushed to sign contracts in the waning days of U.S. control of Iraq, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
In recent audits and interviews, June 2004 has emerged as a month when both money and accountability were thrown out the window — something like a Barneys warehouse sale in the Wild West, with the U.S. playing the role of frenzied shopper and leaving Iraqis to pay the bill. . . .
War in Iraq: Casualties Continually updated listing of American casualties with picture, age, hometown, unit, and cause of death. Can list by date, or alphabetically. Also provides an up to date count of coalition forces by country and graphical displays of troop statistics. Part of a larger web site at CNN.com that documented the war in detail up until Bush declared “mission accomplished” in May 2003—as though the war has not been worth documenting since then.
Hands Off Venezuela In Solidarity with the Venezuelan Revolution Bush’s pathetic lie about “spreading democracy and freedom” is particularly egregious in the context of his hateful posturing toward the democratically elected and popular president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Keep up with the latest in the struggle by Venezuelans to maintain their sovereignty, attain better wages and working conditions, and implement their own economic reforms and trade agreements on this very thorough website.
This is a story of private jets flying out of Germany, of kidnappings on European streets, and of torture. It has a cast of lawyers, spies, suspected terrorists, innocent bystanders and an ex-CIA boss who believes that “human rights is a very flexible concept.” . . .
Apparently there are no limits to the evil that is BushCo. The people need to know the truth about this.
Chaos inside the Triangle of Death James Cusick [Scottish] Sunday Herald Intelligence report details true conditions in Iraq a couple of months prior to the “election” there—“a divided, war-torn country, nowhere near being ready to hold free and fair democratic elections in January.”
The intelligence also challenges the claims of US military commanders, in Iraq and the Pentagon, that clearing up the insurgency “stronghold” of Fallujah will improve the prospect of legitimate elections. The military problems facing the coalition and limited Iraqi forces go well beyond Fallujah, as the intelligence graphically highlights.
As the election approaches, we are bombarded with stories about swift boats, dereliction of duty, and who’s the most macho leader. Missing from the discourse is a critical examination of why George W. Bush failed to heed warnings before September 11, why he sat paralyzed for 7 minutes after being informed of the attacks, how he subsequently turned Iraq into a deadly cauldron, and committed—then covered up—war crimes in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Iraq.
The central theme of the Republican Convention was Bush’s bona fides as a tough president who will save us from another terrorist attack. Instead of examining why we went to war with a country that posed no threat to us, the agenda was replete with rhetoric about fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we wouldn't have to fight them here.
Significantly absent from the patriotic speeches was the “t” word. Not even a brief acknowledgement that prisoners in American custody were mistreated. Torture is on the back burner. Every so often, another official report comes out, with more disturbing revelations, but never directly implicates Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld.
Even the release of Seymour Hersh’s new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, has garnered scant attention in the daily fare of television staples, where most Americans get their news. But Rumsfeld noticed. Four days before the book’s release, without having read it, the Department of Defense issued a rare but characteristically preemptive attack on the book.
Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that his department was alerted to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in January 2004. Rumsfeld told Bush in February about an “issue” involving mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, according to a Senior White House aide.
These claims are disingenuous. The roots of Abu Ghraib, writes Hersh, lie in the creation of the “unacknowledged” special-access program (SAP) established by a top-secret order Bush signed in late 2001 or early 2002. The presidential order authorized the Defense Department to set up a clandestine team of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a “high-value” Al Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world. . . .
Iran-Contra II? Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris Washington Monthly, September 2004 Detailed account of “a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran.”
In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers in [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas] Feith’s office, which more senior administration officials first tried in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up. . . .
the back-channel . . . involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials. Ghorbanifar is a storied figure who played a key role in embroiling the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair. . . .
One year since US President George Bush announced the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the plans for an imperial “new American century” have come seriously unhinged. The US is bogged down in Iraq, facing disquiet at home about its soldiers rising body count and an insurgency that the most powerful army in the world has failed to defeat.
As the November presidential election approaches, the corporate media is awash with op-eds speculating about “Bush's exit strategy” for Iraq, pretending that the Pentagon woke up one morning and was surprised to find it had put 150,000 troops in the middle of a country with the world's second biggest oil reserves.
In reality, there is no exit strategy. Unless forced out by Iraqis’ resistance or a domestic political crisis, the US will stick it out in Iraq until it has its prize — the oil, a stable client regime in Baghdad and the ability to use Iraq as a staging post for strengthening US domination of the Middle East. . . .
A Year After Iraq War
Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, March 16, 2004
A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished. Opinion of the United States in France and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war’s conclusion, and British views are decidedly more critical. Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America’s credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States. . . .
Iraq on the Record The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq Report prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), tenacious and cogent investigator and critic of BushCo for some time now, “a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq:” Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice. Database of “237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq.” Valuable site.
A Democracy Worth Reclaiming An interview with former Ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson. He’s down on our foreign policy but upbeat about America. Geov Parrish Seattle Weekly, February 4–10, 2004
Proving again that Martin Luther King Jr. had the right idea, the peaceful demonstrations by thousands of Iraqi Shiites demanding direct elections have been a far more effective challenge to the arrogance of the U.S. occupation than the months of guerrilla violence undertaken by a Sunni-led insurgency.
Led by clerics demanding real democracy, the protests have strongly raised this question: What right does the United States have to tell people that they cannot be allowed to rule themselves? . . .
Congressman Bill Delahunt: Iraq Watch Transcripts of the weekly Iraq Watch public debates organized by Delahunt (D-MA) and colleagues on the House floor, addressing “concerns about the rationale and ramifications of the invasion.”
Iraq Occupation Watch Exposing the impact of the military and economic occupation of Iraq Pivotal Bagdhad-based web site by an international coalition of peace and justice groups working with Iraqi counterparts. Exhaustive, definitive, and up-to-date reference for learning exactly what the situation is in all aspects of Iraq, including casualties, government, economy, culture, women’s rights, much more.
Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to “instill fear” in the local villagers. An Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans had just taken an old lady from her home to frighten her daughters and grand-daughters into believing that she was being arrested.
A battalion commander in the same area put the point even more baldly. “With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them,” he said. . . .
Dispatches from Iraq The U.S. Army Goes to High School Wendell Steavenson, Slate, December 23, 2003
Ibrahim Ahmed Hakmet is 16, a cocky, engagingly arrogant kid; slim, with close-cropped hair, a little acne on his temples, and a tendency to giggle at me, because apparently I remind him of his aunt.
A few days after Saddam’s capture, he was arrested by the Americans. About a hundred soldiers in armored Humvees and tanks surrounded the Amriyeh High School (a school for boys aged between 16 and 19). With the Iraqi police in attendance, they went from classroom to classroom matching faces to photographs and names to a list. They were looking for boys who had been at a pro-Saddam demonstration the day before. . . .
K Street on the Tigris Washington insiders are lining up to help corporate clients cash in on rebuilding Iraq, whether the Iraqis like it or not Michael Scherer and Jaideep Singh, Mother Jones, November/December 2003.
. . . without a democratic Iraqi government in place, key decisions about the country's future are being made by officials in Washington and Baghdad who work without much public scrutiny—but with plenty of input from companies that pay to get access. . . .
The US and British occupation of Iraq will end by 1 July next year at the latest, when the jointly-run civil administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), will be formally dissolved. Its authority and functions will be transferred to a joint US-British and Iraqi "Committee of Implementation", which will answer to the Iraqi transitional government. . . .
Newt Gingrich: Growing the Dictatorship in Iraq Kurt Nimmo, Dissident Voice, December 9, 2003 Scathing critique of the hidden agenda in Gingrich’s recommendation that Bush install an Iraqi figurehead as soon as possible:
. . . what Newt’s saying is that Bush needs to get a dictator in there pronto, another Saddam, a Saddam minus the Ba’ath Party and all that exhibitionistic Arab nationalism stuff, a Saddam who answers to Bush and the Zionist neocons and doesn't fund Palestinian suicide bombers.
A dictator who will immediately recognize Israel. . . .
Don’t forget that “Newt put in a lot of time prior to the invasion, browbeating folks over at the CIA.”
Losing Hearts and Minds Unmoved by Bush’s visit, Iraqis blame the U.S. for civilian deaths, missing detainees and razed homes Brian Bennett and Vivienne Walt, Time, December 3, 2003
Iraqi Graffiti George Ziyad, World Press Review, December 2, 2003. The origins and realities of sparring political factions in Iraq.
Iraqometer Constantly updating counters track a dozen different aspects of the Iraq war: days since U.S. soldiers killed, civilian deaths, wounded GIs, billions spent, U.S. troops in Iraq, more.
Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories of the War CBC News, November 23, 2003 Full stories from 12 of the more than 50 journalists interviewed by CBC News give unique details of the reality of war.
Windfalls of War: Winning Contractors U.S. Contractors Reap the Rewards of Post-war Reconstruction The Center for Public Integrity, October 30, 2003 “More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. Those companies donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush—a little over $500,000—than to any other politician over the last dozen years, the Center found. . . . Indeed, most of the companies that won contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan were political players. . . . ” Very valuable research that gives solid evidence of the blatant cronyism of the frauds in charge, painstakingly pieced together on the basis of “73 Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals to USAID, the Pentagon and its various uniformed services and the State Department, as well as an analysis of the General Services Administration database of contracts from 1990 through fiscal year 2002—more than 7 million federal contract actions, in all.” See The Center for Public Integrity’s Windfalls of War Project for many more details and links.
IPS Neo-Cons Reports and analysis by Jim Lobe, Inter Press News Service Washington bureau correspondent who “has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise” after 9-11. Also see the rest of the IPS web site for reports and commentary on all aspects of U.S. foreign policy and its consequences.
Blueprint for a Mess David Rieff New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2003 Exhaustive piece that analyzes the reasons for the U.S. failure in Iraq, by the author of A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. “Despite administration claims, it is simply not true that no one could have predicted the chaos that ensued after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In fact, many officials in the United States, both military and civilian, as well as many Iraqi exiles, predicted quite accurately the perilous state of things that exists in Iraq today.” Topics: Getting In Too Deep with Chalabi, Shutting Out the State Department, Too Little Planning, Too Late, The Troops: Too Few, Too Constricted, Neglecting the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarianism Assistance, Ignoring the Shi’ites, and The Next Steps.
The time of withdrawal Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch.com, October 31, 2003 Eloquent case for leaving Iraq as soon as possible. “We are not and never have been the solution to the problem of Iraq, but a significant part of the problem.” Important points that refute the major BushCo justifications for its so-called war of liberation.
The writings of Karen Kwiatkowski Ms. Kwiatkowski is a former Air Force lieutenant-colonel and Middle East specialist in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith. She retired in 2003 and provides ample and damning testimony of an ideological right-wing shadow group running things behind the scenes. Also see Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint inside Pentagon, a brief summary written by Ms. Kwiatkowski for the Ohio Beacon Journal on July 31, 2003. Interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald in October 2003: Cheney’s hawks ‘hijacking policy’
The new Pentagon papers A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war
Karen Kwiatkowski salon.com, March 10, 2004 So important that salon has made the full article available without subscription.
. . . Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq. . . .
Juan Cole * Informed Consent “Thoughts on the Middle East, History, Islam, and Religion” by a Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Valuable analysis of Middle Eastern news. Scroll down to the well-researched “US Intelligence Failures on Iraq WMD Rooted in Trusting Chalabi, Likud, Neocons,” October 29, 2003. Also read Cole’s paper presentated at a conference on “Genocide and Terrorism: Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator,” at Yale, April 9, 2003: Al-Qaeda’s Doomsday Document and Psychological Manipulation
Hell for Halliburton Important weblog that is watchdogging Halliburton Corp. Excellent link-filled summary posted 10/21/03: Halliburton, again and again . . . when does it end? Update: the entry for Dec. 5, 2003, says the blog is closed “for the forseeable future.” The archives are, however, intact as of January 1, 2004.
MidEast Web Inclusive resource in English, Arabic and Hebrew by Middle Easterners, including an e-zine, news, essays on strategies, education, religion and culture, reference tools, links to peace and justice groups, more. The Iraq Crisis page “provides an overview of Iraqi history and the history of the conflict between Iraq, the US and UN, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, obstruction of UN inspections and provides some key resource links,” including a detailed timeline of Iraq history and detailed maps of Iraq and Kuwait.
. . . The total figure of civilian deaths in the Iraqi conflict may never be known, but an investigation of random incidents reveals that whatever the total, the proportion of civilian to military deaths among Iraqis is overwhelming. A graphic illustration of this can be found in the corner of the Abu Graib cemetery on the edge of Baghdad. Here, during the days after the fall of Saddam's regime, families came to disinter the grievous legacy of that tyranny, in the form of their relatives' skeletons. But other huddles of people came, too--to bury, not recover, their dead. Most did so in family plots, but some were too poor to own such patches of land and instead placed their cadavers beneath mounds of earth in a paupers' plot outside the cemetery. The grave digger, Akef Aziz, explains that those from the military, or Fedayeen Saddam units, were also covered with an Iraqi flag. Out of a total of 916 graves in this plot, 17 are those of fighters. “They were coming in at least 30 or 40 a day,” recalls Aziz. “They were good times for us, because we are paid by the body.”
In war, collateral damage--as the parlance describes civilian casualties--has no human face, nor does it have a name. But here, on the following pages, are some of their stories. This is the bitter--but hidden--reckoning of war's aftermath. . . .
BAGHDAD , June 11 (IslamOnline.net & Al-Quds Press)--The U.S. occupation of Iraq has left Iraq’s workforce, some 10 million Iraqis in both the private and public sectors jobless, economic experts told the London-based Al-Quds Press news agency.
They charged the U.S.-led occupation authority of according the envisaged oil exports revenues to U.S. companies to carry out “bogus” reconstruction projects.
The laying-off of the Iraqi army, the dissolution of the defense, interior and information ministries left up to five million Iraqis unemployed.
More than 5,000 Iraqi army officers and personnel staged a demonstration Monday, May 26, protesting the decision by U.S. civil administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer to dissolve the Iraqi army and all affiliated bodies.
As commercial, industrial and agricultural activities were brought to a halt by the occupation, another five million joined the unemployment line, the experts told the London-based news agency.
Day in and day out, droves of jobless Iraqis take to the streets of Baghdad, calling for the restoration of order and stability in the war-scarred country and other basic services such as electricity, transport and water.
At the time the U.S. administration in Iraq promised to compensate the unemployed, it paid a handful of Iraqi employees with different ministries a meager $50 each.
The experts, who requested anonymity, said the unemployed towering rates have everything to do with the lawless country as persisting looting and anarchy brought the country's private sector to a standstill.
Unemployment, they added, might have forced the jobless to resort to looting and robbery. . . .
Shortly before American military forces invaded Iraq, a troubled Ellen Goodman raised a singularly important question about the Bush administration's propaganda campaign for war--“How we got from there to here.”
There, according to Goodman, was innocent 9/11 victimhood at the hands of religious fanatics; here, was bullying superpower bent on destroying a secular dictator. I assumed that someone as astute as Goodman would reveal at least part of the answer—that the American media provided free transportation to get the White House from there to here. But nowhere in her nationally syndicated column did she state the obvious 'that the success of “Bush's PR War” (the headline on the piece) was largely dependent on a compliant press that uncritically repeated almost every fraudulent administration claim about the threat posed to America by Saddam Hussein. . . .
To Kill Iraq Michael Parenti, Political Archives, May 2003 A scathing review of the many phony reasons as well as the outrageous realities of the rationale for invading Iraq, concluding with this advice:
What I have tried to show is that Bush is neither retarded nor misdirected. Given his class perspective and interests, there are compelling reasons to commit armed aggression against Iraq—and against other countries to come. It is time we dwelled less upon his malapropisms and more on his rather effective deceptions and relentless viciousness. Many decent crusaders have been defeated because of their inability to fully comprehend the utter depravity of their enemies. The more we know what we are up against, the better we can fight it.
THE most senior Republican authority on foreign relations in Congress has warned President Bush that the United States is on the brink of catastrophe in Iraq.
Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Washington was in danger of creating “an incubator for terrorist cells and activity” unless it increased the scope and cost of its reconstruction efforts. He said that more troops, billions more dollars and a longer commitment were needed if the US were not to throw away the peace. . . .
“I am concerned that the Bush Administration and Congress have not yet faced up to the true size of the task that lies ahead, or prepared the American people for it,” he said, writing in The Washington Post. Mr Bush should state clearly “that we are engaged in 'nation-building',” he said, a statement that would require the President to swallow one of his tenets of the 2000 election campaign. . . .
Mr Lugar also took a swipe at Mr Bush's victory speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln earlier this month, delivered under a banner that read: “Mission Accomplished.” He said: “President Bush should make clear to one and all that he will declare 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq not on the basis of our military victory or the date of our withdrawal, but on what kind of country we leave behind.” . . .
Khan Bani Saad, Iraq: THE small dank cells with cold stone floors, tiny windows and iron bars for a door used to house criminals and the victims of Saddam Hussein's regime. Now Khan Bani Saad prison, overlooked by watchtowers and surrounded by razorwire, is filled with families who are victims, not of the war, but of the peace.
Sabrir Hassan Ismael, a mother of six, held her three-year-old daughter Zahraa in the cell that is now their living room and bedroom, and cried: “Look at me; look at my family. We live in prison. We can't buy food because we don't have money. We have no gas to cook.
“We can't sleep because it's very hot. There are huge insects that bite us. All night my daughters cry and they can't sleep. I live without any hope. Just look at us.”
Outside children play in the foetid puddles, swirling dust and searing heat of the prison courtyard, where prisoners once walked in dread.
Before the end of the war Mrs Sabrir lived with her husband, a local mayor, on a farm in the town of Khanaqin, close to the Iranian border. They are members of the Arab Saraefien tribe that had survived unscathed through the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq. As opponents of Saddam they even welcomed the American invasion. . . .
AMERICAN guns, bombs and missiles killed more civilians in the recent war in Iraq than in any conflict since Vietnam, according to preliminary assessments carried out by the UN, international aid agencies and independent study groups.
Despite US boasts this was the fastest, most clinical campaign in military history, a first snapshot of "collateral damage" indicates that between 5000 and 10,000 Iraqi non-combatants died in the course of the hi-tech blitzkrieg.
Organisations such as the Red Cross, the Muslim Red Crescent, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN are all still carrying out surveys and are reluctant to commit themselves to a final figure.
All agree, however, the toll will exceed the 3500 civilians killed in the 1991 Gulf war and the 1800 to 2000 innocent Afghans known to have perished during the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban and wipe out al Qaeda's training camps. . . .
Two months after the Iraq war was launched, ask yourself this question: “Are the United States, Iraq and the world safer places?”
Terrorist acts are up, with bombings last week in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and we are told al-Qaeda is on the march again. The Israel-Palestinian conflict has turned into perpetual terrorism by both sides. America enters the Memorial Day weekend on high terror alert.
The CIA warned months ago that war in Iraq would increase terrorism, which is what made the war such an exercise in perversity. The bombings in Saudi Arabia were no surprise. The Saudis opposed Bush's war, and now the U.S.-Saudi relationship, so strong for so long, is unraveling.
Bush's advisers shed no tears over the Saudis. One of their aims in Iraq was to marginalize Saudi Arabia.
Those advisers wanted a war that helped Israel and think they've succeeded. Israel's hawks are soaring, and Ariel Sharon's clear plan is to take more Palestinian land while pretending to negotiate peace. There will be no Palestinian state with Sharon, and if Bush thinks war brought a deal closer, he is, as someone said recently of Newt Gingrich, “off his meds.” . . .
One month after the fall of Baghdad, the US has successfully liberated the people of Iraq from meaningful involvement in decisions about their own future.
A designer regime, concocted behind closed doors by Pentagon and State Department planners, is now being imposed on Iraq with great speed and without any kind of popular consent. Iraq's nascent “democratic transition government” is window-dressing for a military dictatorship charged with insuring that US policy goals -- especially the disposition of Iraq's vast petroleum reserves -- are protected from any troublesome outbreaks of democracy. . . .
Bush Tells UN: Iraq Is Ours This is what colonialism looks like by Fred Goldstein Workers World, May 20, 2003
. . . Consider the resolution for a U.S. and British colonial mandate submitted to the UN Security Council on May 8.
The resolution has a long list of provisions, including the right of the U.S. to spend the oil revenues of Iraq, the protection of the funds from any claim for debt owed to the other imperialist powers, mainly Russia and France, and a definition of the U.S. government and the British government under the unified command of the U.S. as "the Authority."
. . . This resolution is merely a modern version of the British Mandate of 1919-20, which legalized Britain's colonial rule of Iraq and Palestine after British troops occupied the region and, together with the French, divided up the defeated Ottoman Empire. . . .
Is President Bush's victory in Iraq coming undone like a cheap cowboy boot? Let's look at some of the unraveling stitches.
First, there's the situation on the ground in Iraq. After a series of attacks on GIs, the American “peacekeepers” adopted the same modus operandi they used in Bosnia: Forces have been under orders to travel as little as possible. It's especially critical to avoid casualties now, as body bags might upstage the administration's declare-victory-and-let's-cut-taxes blitz. Of course, the problem is that not much policing--let alone nation-building--gets done.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. shuffles the bureaucratic players into their various boxes at the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the Shiites are mobilizing. The multiple factions of Shiite Islam don't agree on much, except that the United States should leave. . . .
250 reservist medics ready to quit over Iraq posting by Michael Smith, Telegraph.co.uk, May 7, 2003 “The failure to persuade America to agree to United Nations backing for the stabilisation force will leave Britain providing a long-term force of at least 15,000 troops, putting more pressure on regular forces and leading to further call-ups of reservists. . . . A unit member said that morale was so low that between a third and a half of staff had decided to quit when they returned to Britain.”
Will American Brands Be a Casualty of War? Sean Silverthorne HBS Working Knowledge, April 21, 2003 “. . . popular U.S. brands could be in for a rough ride overseas should anti-American sentiment grow over President Bush's handling of Iraq. . . .” More unforeseen fallout from duplicitous self-serving foreign policy.
Newsfeed: Iraq
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automatically searches more than 9,000 global sources every 5 minutes for articles
relevant to Iraq and provides links. Also choose from many other topics listed in the menu on the left side of screen.
The Long Road to War
PBS Frontline in-depth chronicle of “key moments in the history of
America’s ongoing confrontation with Saddam Hussein,” including Saddam’s
Mind and Methods, the Failed Effort to Disarm Iraq, and the current situation.
Very comprehensive multimedia effort.
Ahmed Chalabi newswire
Who is Chalabi, the guy that Bush & PNAC are so hot to have at the head of the
New Iraq? Frequently updated collection of news articles chronicle corruption
and dirty dealings that seem somehow routine among this pack.
Halliburton: All in the Family CBSNews.com, 60 Minutes, April 27, 2003 The fact that 60 Minutes did a segment on Pentagon secret contracts for Iraq reconstruction, particularly regarding Cheney-related Halliburton and subsidiaries, is a hopeful sign that the REAL reasons for the war on Iraq will start to penetrate the public consciousness.
Saudi Politics.com
Feeling that “important sectors of the American polity have unleashed a
hostile campaign against Saudi Arabia, expanding on what had hitherto been
reserved generally for Arabs and Muslims,” the editors of this newsletter
“endeavor to contribute reason to the debate about Saudi politics”
and give a unique insight into unfolding events in the Middle East.
The Man Who Knew CBSNews.com, 60 Minutes II, February 4, 2003 Testimony by Iraqi weapons analyst Greg Thielman refuting Colin Powell’s statements to Congress in February 2002 as fabrications, as presented on 60 Minutes.
A new colonial “age of empire?”
by Lance Selfa
International Socialist Review 23, May-June 2002
Lengthy treatise on history and implications of colonialism, including its re-emergence in U.S. foreign policy.
Practice to Deceive:
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare—it’s their plan
by Joshua Micah Marshall
Washington Monthly Online, April 2003
Frightening insight into the scenarios we can expect as a result of the Bush Doctrine.
Letter to Iraqis from the Bureau of Indian Affairs by Dr. George Wasson Dissident Voice, April 12, 2003 Cynical letter of welcome from a Coquille/Coos tribal elder--a unique point of view that should not be overlooked.
Welcome Aboard the Iraqi Gravy Train
by Terry Jones The Observer, April 13, 2003
Caustic note of congratulations to the real beneficiaries of “regime
change” in Iraq: Kellogg Brown & Root, Bechtel, Dick Cheney, more,
revealing the complex links between private corporations profiting from
reconstruction and our high government officials.
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