America's Body Politics

"...the survival of liberty."

For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of — you know, we all deal in "macro" in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, "Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?" Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is.

It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over — by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about.

That's wards — you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous. As you maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the number of survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment and the better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities.


"...the unfinished work of American freedom."

We're going to learn more and I think you're going to see, it's going to — it's — I'm trying to be optimistic. We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going to have mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed. Maybe that will do it.

Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick. And the third thing is Europe — Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us.

Certainly, nobody — it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit — our — we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here.

But he could get through that.

That will be another year, and the damage he's going to do between then and now is enormous. We're going to have some very bad months ahead.

Seymour Hersh | We've Been Taken Over By a Cult

One group of people who are refusing to go home are the drivers of cars stuck in queues, sometimes as long as two miles, waiting to buy petrol. "I have been waiting in my car since 4.30pm yesterday and I have not moved a metre," said Abu Ali Anwar. He opened the door of his car to show the heap of blankets on which he had been sleeping overnight.

He added furiously: "We are not moving because the police at the petrol station are taking bribes of 25,000 dinars (£9) to let other drivers jump the queue."

Most Iraqis talk more about the problems of survival than the election. "We are suffering from many crises: lack of food, electricity and fuel," Mr Anwar said. "It was bad enough under Saddam but now it is 10 times worse. I graduated from college but I have to work as a taxi driver and I do not have enough money even to buy shoes."

Patrick Cockburn | The streets of Baghdad are empty. It feels like a city preparing for war

Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.

America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.

Robert Fisk | This election will change the world. But not in the way the Americans imagined

Note While Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, Juan Cole and others keep us abreast of the U.S.'s Iraqi elections, Dave Winer wins kudos for uncovering this 1967 New York Times article [pdf]. Welcome to the future past.

"And To All..."

"...a good night?" Steve Bell

So let's be absolutely clear: The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible. This is what famed Argentine writer Rodolfo Walsh, writing before his 1977 assassination by the military junta, described as "planned misery." And the longer the United States stays in Iraq, the more misery it will plan.

But if staying in Iraq is not the solution, neither are easy bumper-sticker calls to pull the troops out and spend the money on schools and hospitals at home. Yes, the troops must leave, but that can be only one plank of a credible and moral antiwar platform. What of the schools and hospitals in Iraq—the ones that were supposed to be fixed by Bechtel but never were? Too often, antiwar forces have shied away from speaking about what Americans owe Iraq. Rarely is the word "compensation" spoken, let alone the more loaded "reparations."

Naomi Klein | You Break It, You Pay For It

"I hope and pray that every family member of those who have died so bravely knows how deeply I feel their loss."

Donald Rumsfeld

The Art of War...

Nowhere to hide...

The Modern Era has nurtured a dream in which mankind, divided into its separate civilizations, would someday come together in unity and everlasting peace. Today, the history of the planet has finally become one indivisible whole, but it is war, ambulant and everlasting war, that embodies and guarantees this long-desired unity of mankind. Unity of mankind means: No escape for anyone anywhere.

Milan Kundera | The Art of the Novel (1988)

War dehumanizes people – soldiers and civilians alike – and, for this reason, I have never understood the willingness of parents to allow their children to become part of such a dispirited, hostile, life-destroying system. I can understand how a teenager – whose limited life experiences are not sufficient to see what is implicit in warfare – might fall for the heroic imagery that gets reinforced in computer games. I do not understand this child’s parents – with many more years of awareness – not protecting him or her from this force that devastates the lives even of its survivors.

Butler Shaffer | The Exploitation of Soldiers

"It's like watching your son playing in traffic, and there's nothing you can do. You can't reach him."

Janet Bellows

Meanwhile, back in Fallujah...

At the peak of the assault, the Americans held no more than 35-40% of Fallujah (largely the north on or around the 18th of November). Thereafter, they appear to have been steadily repulsed and in fact the coalition forces currently have been repulsed to where they were on November 13th or thereabouts and to the outskirts of Fallujah.

Abhay Mehta | The End of Warfare

The reason for fighting | I never got straight | But I learned to accept it | Accept it with pride | For you don't count the dead | When God's on your side.

Bob Dylan | With God on our Side

Note: Limited Internet access continues and unseen, unanswered mail piles up. No telephone till January, courtesy of our national telecoms hog. Dean, you're a saint... I don't know if that's theologically possible but, what the hell, we make our own rules around here.

For the innermost decision, | That we cannot but obey - | For what's left of our religion, | I lift my voice and pray: | May the lights in The Land of Plenty | Shine on the truth some day.

Leonard Cohen | The Land of Plenty

After Action Satisfaction

Click graphic for international version

Advertising signs that con you | Into thinking you're the one | That can do what's never been done | That can win what's never been won | Meantime life outside goes on | All around you.

Bob Dylan | It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

On second thought, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the status of icon—not of the war in Iraq but of the new era of supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of course, a different Marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of 2-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble. Inside the US, these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared only briefly, if they appeared at all. Yet Miller's icon status has endured, kept alive with human interest stories about fans sending cartons of Marlboros to Falluja, interviews with the marine's proud mother, and earnest discussions about whether smoking might reduce Miller's effectiveness as a fighting machine.

Impunity - the perception of being outside the law - has long been the hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have deepened since the election, ushering in what can only be described as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are assaulting civilian targets and openly attacking doctors, clerics and journalists who have dared to count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales—the man who personally advised the President in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva Conventions are "obsolete"—as Attorney General.

Naomi Klein | Smoking while Iraq burns

My own most striking Iraqi image was part of the footage screened by the BBC correspondent Paul Wood, "embedded" with a marine unit in the recent Falluja operation. The scenes were familiar enough: jerky Saving Private Ryan shots of street fighting showing marines peering into a cellar, fearing grenades or shooting, and running for cover. But then the soundtrack picked up the voices of perhaps three or four fighters - chanting the Arabic words "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," (God is Great) - who presumably believe that this is the moment of their death. Falluja has since been declared a success and Red Crescent aid convoys are returning to the ruins. But those haunting cries linger on, as resonant a representation of martyrdom as any Iraqi fighter could pray for: they'll make an unforgettable addition to those split-screen clips on Arab TV channels of Americans in Falluja and Israelis in Gaza, reportage-as-propaganda displaying the twin evils of crusaders and Zionists and their Muslim victims.

Ian Black | World watch

Note: No blog's complete without the above Klein piece and the gob-smacking blather of Dan Rather (reporting as a newsman). The flood of fascist propaganda fed Americans is an essentially national phenomenon, interesting because of its noticeable effect on U.S. citizens, most of whom are now more weirdly detached (yet, paradoxically, involved) with the world around them than ever before.

Such is the fast-developing world of the PNAC [pdf]. You've all become Jehovah's Witnesses. Yes, you too. You might think you're Jewish, but George W. Bush is in charge and it's his reality we're living now.

I'll be quiet over the next few weeks. I'm moving and will be without a dial-up connection for a while. Our local monopoly, Telkom, wants ZAR700.00 a line. That's more than $100.00. With my telephone account running at about the same, $200.00 is a bit much, coming on top of a move. I don't have it. But I'll probably cut back on other things. Like smoking and U.S. agitprop.

Yeah, sure...

Addendum EastSouthWestNorth has been there...

"Americans celebrate war in their movies. We like to see visions of evil being defeated by good. When the people at home glimpse the reality of war, that it's a bloodbath, they freak out. We are a subculture they created and programmed to fight their wars. You have to become a psycho to kill like we do. To most Marines that guy in the mosque was just someone who didn't get hit in the right place the first time we shot him. I probably would have put a bullet in his brain if I'd been there. If the American public doesn't like the violence of war, maybe before they start the next war they shouldn't rush so much." The public could start by looking at the messy details of this war, such as those shown in this series of weekly posts.

Yup. And to underscore the point, al-Jazeera tells us 6,000 people may have died in Fallujah alone.

The United Colors of War

Night vision...?

"Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here? | I'm a-tryin' to kill somebody or die tryin'. | But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close | And I saw that his face looked just like mine."

The Fat Man lay in his own blood. He was an Iraqi insurgent who'd hidden in an alley next to a garbage dump waiting for the Army to come by. A couple 25 mm high explosive rounds, shot from a Bradley, blew off his left leg, leaving a stump of bone, and, from the looks of it, punched a hole through his midsection. Two or three others died with him. A group of insurgents managed to drag the others away, but the Fat Man was too big. His arms were still splayed back from where his comrades tried to pull him through the narrow alley.

Some of his guts - perhaps an intestinal tract - were splattered on the wall. His eyes were open, peering out from his dirty face and scraggly beard, staring at the heavens. A traditional red-and-white checked Arab keffiyah headdress was wrapped around his waist, and a bag with slots for RPG rounds - all empty - lay on the ground next to him.

The Fat Man was the first dead person that many soldiers had seen. They grew solemn as they leaned over his body and peered into his eyes, but never too close, never close enough to touch his skin or take in too deep a whiff of death.

[...]

The soldiers went through the door and down an alleyway, scanning the roofline for movement. Gunfire started a couple blocks away.

Ward wiped sweat from his eyes.

"They've got this shit figured out," he said. "They're running around the back of a house as we bust in through the gate."

Outside, the bodies Wright had seen were lying in the street.

One of them had been run over by a Bradley, leaving a mound of meat and bones in the sunlight. A large green bag lay next to the remains.

Howard took out a camera and clicked a few pictures.

Bentley ran over to grab the bag. He gave it a yank, and an arm rose out of the pile, but the strap would not give. With his friends looking on, Bentley pulled harder and harder, and the arm flapped in the air. Another soldier joined in the tug of war, and the arm leapt up, disgorged from its body, and Bentley fell back a little, bag in hand.

"F------ Hajji," he muttered, using grunt slang for Iraqis.

[...]

They found Sims lying on the kitchen floor, his blood pouring across dirty tile. An empty teapot sat on concrete stairs nearby. A heart, drawn in red with an arrow through it, adorned a cabinet.

Someone grabbed a radio: "Terminator Six is down."

"The b-------," Bentley said. "We've got a blood trail leaving the building, going into the next house."

A group of soldiers ran out the door, looking for revenge. Others gathered blankets.

They couldn't lift Sims' body, so they called in Howard, who lugged the squad's heavy machine gun but whose broad shoulders were sagging from the news.

Once Sims was laid on the floor of a Bradley outside, six soldiers and a reporter climbed in, slowly at first, trying not to step on the body. Someone outside yelled at them to cram in, if they had to step on Sims' body, do it, god damn it, do it.

Gunfire was pounding back and forth.

The hatch closed. The soldiers stared at each other. The soldiers stared at the ceiling. The soldiers stared at the hatch. The soldiers stared at anything but the mound on the floor.

Wright was sobbing and shaking. Howard had tears streaming down his cheeks.

Tom Lasseter | The battle of Fallujah Parts 1 and 2

"And I couldn't help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink, | That I was just a puppet in a play. | And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke, | And a cannon ball blew my eyes away."


Distractions...?

The US media prattles about the difficulties encountered by the US marines. It never calls them bullies who occupy another people's country, subduing patriots with superior technology to kill civilians and destroy their homes and mosques. On November 15, an embedded NBC cameraman filmed a US soldier murdering a wounded Iraqi prisoner in cold blood. As CNN showed the tape, its reporter offered "extenuating circumstances" for the assassination we had witnessed. The wounded man might have booby-trapped himself as other "insurgents" had done. After all, these marines had gone through hell in the last week.

The reporting smacks of older imperial wars, Andrew Greely reminded us in the November 12, Chicago Sun Times. "The United States has fought unjust wars before — Mexican American, the Indian Wars, Spanish American, the Filipino Insurrection, Vietnam. Our hands are not clean. They are covered with blood, and there'll be more blood this time." Falluja should serve as the symbol of this war of atrocity against the Iraqi people, our Guernica. But, as comedian Chris Rock insightfully points out, George W. Bush has distracted us. That's why he killed Laci Peterson, why he snuck that young boy into Michael Jackson's bedroom and the young woman into Kobe Bryant's hotel room. He wants us not to think of the war in Iraq. We need a new Picasso mural, "Falluja," to help citizens focus on the themes of our time, not the travails of the Peterson case.

Saul Landau | Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock | At seein' the metal brace that helped him stand. | But as he turned to go, he called his mother close | And he dropped his medals down into her hand.

Bob Dylan | John Brown

No Direction Home

How does it feel...?

Once upon a time you dressed so fine | You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? | People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall" | You thought they were all kiddin' you.

Three million people had to die in south-east Asia before that arrogant American imperial misadventure ended. How many now?

In this newspaper, Allawi's deputy prime minister called Falluja a necessary exercise, to root out "Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters", parroting Donald Rumsfeld's pathetic line that all the "terrorists" come from across the border, or are "dead-enders" from Ba'athist days. But the only deadly dead-ender is someone who could mendaciously argue thus.

All Iraqis watch as their homes and mosques are desecrated by soldiers who shoot injured men in the stomach in pre-emptive lunacy that mirrors that of their leader. They and a billion Muslims watched as Americans forbade families from burying their dead, and allowed stray dogs to gnaw the corpses of pregnant women and toddlers on the mean streets of what was once Falluja, during Id al-Fitr, Islam's Holy Feast. No one is taken in by the lies and arrogance and greed of this racist war.

Rana Kabbani | No one is taken in by the US lies

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has called the health conditions in and around Falluja "catastrophic." One hospital staff member who recently left the city reports that there were severe outbreaks of diarrheal infections among the population, with children and the elderly dying from infectious disease, starvation and dehydration in greater numbers each day. Dr. al-Jumaili, Dr. al-Ani and journalist Badrani each stated that the wounded and children are dying because of lack of medical attention and water. In one case, according to Dr. al-Jumaili, three children died of dehydration when their father was unable to find water for them. The US forces cut off the city's water supply before launching their assault.

"The people are dying because they are injured, have nothing to eat or drink, almost no healthcare," said Dr. al-Ani. "The small rations of food and water handed out by the US soldiers cannot provide for the population." For the thousands living in makeshift camps outside the city, according to Firdus al-Ubadi of the Red Crescent Society, hygiene and health conditions are as precarious as in Falluja. There are no oral rehydration solutions or salts for those who are dehydrated, she says.

Miles Schuman | Falluja's Health Damage


To be on your own...?

You used to laugh about | Everybody that was hangin' out | Now you don't talk so loud | Now you don't seem so proud | About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

"These people will change their minds about the liberators when they, too, have had a family member killed by them."

"The American warplanes came continuously through the night and bombed everywhere in Fallujah! It did not stop even for a moment! If the American forces did not find a target to bomb, they used sound bombs just to terrorize the people and children. The city stayed in fear; I cannot give a picture of how panicked everyone was."

He is shaking with grief and anger. "In the mornings I found Fallujah empty, as if nobody lives in it. Even poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah—they used everything—tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground. Nothing is left."

Several men standing with us, other refugees, nod in agreement while looking at the setting sun, the direction of Fallujah.

Abu Hammad continues, "Most of the innocent people there stayed in mosques to be closer to God for safety. Even the wounded people were killed. Old ladies with white flags were killed by the Americans! The Americans announced for people to come to a certain mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed!"

One of the men standing with us, a large man named Mohammad Ali is crying; his large body shuddering with each bit of new information revealed by Abu Hammad.

"There was no food, no electricity, no water," continues Abu Hammad, "We couldn’t even light a candle because the Americans would see it and kill us."

Dahr Jamail | Fallujah Refugees

The key factor to remember here is that the United States is not in Iraq to ensure a transition to peace and stability prior to a complete withdrawal; it is there because of Iraq’s immense geopolitical (including oil-related) importance to US security. The United States, as earlier columns in this series have argued, has always intended to build a number of permanent military bases, quite apart from its much larger numbers of occupation forces. This has not changed.

In this light, a reasonably clear plan of action may emerge from current US difficulties – one that represents a significant tactical shift. If even partial elections are held in January, US troops will quickly reduce high-profile counterinsurgency operations and withdraw from Iraq in numbers. The remainder — still likely to be tens of thousands of troops — will be located at a few large, well-protected bases far from major urban centres but conveniently close to current oilfields and areas of future exploration. The cities will be virtually abandoned in the hope that the diminished US presence will undercut the motivation of, and support for, the insurgents.

This would be far from the original proselytising expectations of the United States in Iraq, yet would do nothing to check the view across the region that the US is determined to implant itself in the heart of the Arab world for the long term. The presence of US bases would continue to serve the interests of radical Islamists and insurgency campaigns.

Paul Rogers | No direction home

How does it feel | How does it feel | To be without a home | Like a complete unknown | Like a rolling stone?

Bob Dylan | Like a Rolling Stone

Note: For an early-November view of the Fallujah onslaught through the eyes of Lt. Col. Gary "He's called Satan" Brandl's 1/8 Marines, watch the BBC's Inside Falluja: Paul Wood's account of the assault (best with RealPlayer). Alternatively, read Hunting 'Satan' in Falluja hell. Read Firas Al-Atraqchi's How America Wages War in Iraq and, from Colombia's Laura Del Castillo Matamoros, an open letter to George W. Bush, Welcome to Your Colony, courtesy of Danny Dayus's World Crisis Web. And, bearing arch-neocon Robert Kaplan's words in mind (below), watch media focus swing from Iraq to Ukraine after reading Ian Traynor's US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev and Jonathan Steele's Ukraine's postmodern coup d'etat.

So Pure, So Wrong

hip-bone militia
like death you are pretty
bondage queen to the non-existent audience
she dances
like fire
walk with me, slowly
cut with me
deeply
kiss with me
oh, we should be
together forever
to kill the pain
obesession of purity
pure thoughts indeed
like a whore, you sell
your thoughts to fuck
that old man
that old woman
that young girl
who begs at the corner
whore, slut, wench
but i love you for it
just never lie dead on the floor
can't stop that screaming now
make my ears bleed
lick up sweet blood
so wrong
so wrong
so painfully right

Cathryn

Ash-Dead Kisses

girls behind mirrors
casting oh-so-perfect reflections
of perfection so perfect
there could be no other...
no other way of what?
no other way of harming myself with malicious thoughts
so dirty
face-cloth drama queen
with prettiness aside
left for her dessert of
pills, bullets and carving knives
that can carve away the disease
i hope it goes away
into crystal savage rooms
placed so purely next to me
opposite doors facing me
in my mind
red slippers
so beautiful
non-sensical
i hope i die
razor-blade break alongs
that flow beside the glass texture
of loving the white stuff
imprinted on your nose
that one last sniff
that makes it all
better
passed out on the floor
another girl lost in her fluids
of reds, blues and rainbows
detailed in the lines of her own dear selfish suicide

Cathryn

Face-cloth drama queens, crystal savage rooms, girls behind mirrors and the hip-bone militia... She writes this—and others—off the cuff now and goes to high school next year. Surely, after thousands of years, we can offer thirteen-year olds more than death by numbers?

Mind you, after reading the news...

Setting Justice to Rights

In an alarming shift, the reduced, fragile discourse of "human rights" is replacing the magnificent concept of justice. The difference is that notions of equality have been pried loose and eased out of the equation. It's a process of attrition. Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and powerful, and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that). Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aboriginals and immigrants.

It is becoming clearer that violating human rights is an inherent and necessary part of implementing a coercive and unjust political and economic structure on the world. Without wholesale violation of human rights, the neo-liberal project would remain in the dreamy realm of policy. But increasingly human rights violations are being portrayed as the unfortunate, almost accidental, fallout of an otherwise acceptable political and economic system. This is why in areas of heightened conflict - in Kashmir and in Iraq for example - human rights professionals are regarded with suspicion.

[...]

It's easy to blame the poor for being poor. It's easy to believe that the world is being caught up in an escalating spiral of terrorism and war. That's what allows the American President to say "You're either with us or with the terrorists". But we know that that is a spurious choice.

It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other. The real tragedy is that most people in the world are trapped between the horror of a putative peace and the terror of war. Those are the two sheer cliffs we're hemmed in by. The question is: How do we climb out of this crevasse?

For those who are materially well-off, but morally uncomfortable, the first question you must ask yourself is do you really want to climb out of it? How far are you prepared to go? Has the crevasse become too comfortable?

If you really want to climb out, there's good news and bad news...

Arundhati Roy — November 3, 2004 | Peace and the new corporate liberation theology

Why does it seem to take someone with literary gifts to see what journalism misses?

Tom Matrullo | Let us prey

Note: Reread The algebra of infinite justice (The Guardian September 29, 2001).

Since my return from Iraq, I have continued to watch the horror unfold on television. It's different seeing the violence decontextualized from the battlefield, now playing out in discrete video clips that run between ads for Chevys and the Olive Garden. Videos of militants staging beheadings against dungeon-like backdrops, with the perpetrators wearing masks and the victims in colorful jumpsuits, seem almost like grotesque TV shows.

One of the great ironies of the Bush administration, obsessed as it is with Christian values and the attendant crusade to punish what it deems obscene and lewd in the media (from Janet Jackson's breast to Howard Stern's speech), is that it has given us a war in which the airing of snuff films on national TV has become routine. The conflict in Iraq, as seen through news coverage, has begun to resemble the macabre underground 1980s video series Faces of Death. Throw in the images produced by the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib, and the administration has put itself in the running to successfully compete with the BDSM side of the porn industry.

Evan Wright | Dead-Check in Falluja [via InformationClearingHouse]

But this week, in defending embattled NBC television reporter Kevin Sites — the man behind the now-famous video from Fallujah showing a U.S. Marine shooting an injured insurgent — abuse is coming Mortenson's way in waves. "Yeah," he told me, "I’m getting my butt kicked around here a bit. I try not to take it personally."

Sites, still in Iraq with the Marines, is getting it even worse, from conservative commentators here at home to the troops (his former buddies) over there. "Sites wrote me first thing this morning," Mortenson informed me. "He seemed pretty down."

Darrin Mortenson | Shoot the Messenger [via InformationClearingHouse]

The importance of public opinion was stated quite frankly by Robert Kaplan, a leading neo-conservative, in the Atlantic Monthly last year. The most important battleground of America's new "combination warfare," he wrote, is the media:

"Indeed the best information strategy is to avoid attention-getting confrontations in the first place and to keep the public's attention as divided as possible. We can dominate the world only quietly, so to speak. The moment the public focuses on a single crisis like the one in Iraq… it becomes a rallying point around which lonely and alienated people in a global mass society can define themselves through an uplifting group identity, be it European, Muslim, anti-war intellectual, or whatever."

Therefore, public opinion — if strategically focused — can end this war. To understand this requires a different analysis than the usual one that assumes that there will be an "exit strategy" after Iraq is "stabilized." The war will end either when the U.S. military "wins" or it will not end at all.

Tom Hayden | How to End the Iraq War

Kevin Sites Comes Under Fire for Fallujah Killings

"Cover my back."

"These were the same wounded from yesterday," I say to the lieutenant. He takes a look around and goes outside the mosque with his radio operator to call in the situation to Battalion Forward HQ.

I see an old man in a red kaffiyeh lying against the back wall. Another is face down next to him, his hand on the old man's lap — as if he were trying to take cover. I squat beside them, inches away and begin to videotape them. Then I notice that the blood coming from the old man's nose is bubbling. A sign he is still breathing. So is the man next to him.

While I continue to tape, a Marine walks up to the other two bodies about fifteen feet away, but also lying against the same back wall.

Then I hear him say this about one of the men:

"He's fucking faking he's dead — he's faking he's fucking dead."

Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.

However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons.

Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.

"Well he's dead now," says another Marine in the background.

I am still rolling. I feel the deep pit of my stomach. The Marine then abruptly turns away and strides away, right past the fifth wounded insurgent lying next to a column. He is very much alive and peering from his blanket. He is moving, even trying to talk. But for some reason, it seems he did not pose the same apparent "danger" as the other man — though he may have been more capable of hiding a weapon or explosive beneath his blanket....

Kevin Sites | Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1

I hope Kevin Sites is watching his back. Blogs that have appeared on the internet since the freelance cameraman filmed a US Marine shooting and killing a wounded and prostrate Iraqi in Falluja do not make comfortable reading.

While Sites has many supporters, it is his detractors who are most chillingly eye-catching, suggesting they would like to do to him what the Marine he filmed did to the injured Iraqi. 'The Marines should have shot that goat-tee [sic] m***** f***** Kevin Sites,' said one message posted last week, while a second ventured: 'Kevin Sites should have a bullet in his f****** face.'

Suddenly, the freelance cameraman, veteran of Kosovo, Afghanistan and now Iraq, has found himself in the middle of a controversy that he did not invite and could not avoid - facing a petition of 24,000 names supporting the Marine who pulled the trigger and damning Sites to boot.

Peter Beaumont in The Observer | Why embedded journalists are being taken for a ride

These terrorists do not follow the rules of war. These terrorists kill innocent women by disemboweling them, cut of the heads of innocent truck drivers, detonate car bombs in crowds full of innocent people, and fly planes into buildings filled with innocent Americans.

It is my opinion that NOTHING should happen to this American Marine. He should be returned to his unit or be given an honorable discharge. We don't need our young men and women taking an extra second to decide if its right to shoot an enemy terrorist when that could mean that one of our soldiers could lose their life. The lives of our soldiers should be the single most important factor in this war against terrorism. The rights of terrorists can come second.

Petition to U.S. Congress

The above online petition (and its duplicate—yeah, you can sign both) in 'support' of the Marine withdrawn from active duty pending investigation into the death of one of four defenseless Iraqi fighters shot dead in Fallujah [.ram], has 155,000 signatories to date. And uncorroborated reports such as this, Insurgents (sic) Faking Dead Fires on Marines, filed today from the Headquarters United States Central Command (CentCom) and replicated by ABC News Online, suggest the likely outcome of the military investigating one of its own.

On the upside, tens of millions of readers support responsible journalism. It allows us to know what is going on about us. It allows our societies to continue functioning. As the NBC cameraman's blog entry shows and Peter Beaumont's article points out, Kevin Sites is a responsible, courageous journalist.

Note: Michael Schwartz plots the unravelling of the American 'conquest' of Fallujah, Xinhuanet reports resistance fighters holding 60 percent of the city, Abbas Ahmed Ibrahim offers a view from within (as does Xinhuanet's Abdul Rahman), and Dahr Jamail details further indiscriminate slaughter by U.S. troops in Ramadi.

Related (added 11.23.2004)

The videotaped shooting of a Fallujah combatant by a U-S Marine has evoked strong emotions in the Arab world and on Capitol Hill.

Texas Democrat Sylvestre Reyes ... says it's time to rethink the presence of embedded reporters in combat zones. During a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Reyes compared it to a football game, saying "we don't want to know everything that's going on on the field." Reyes says this is not censorship. In his words, "We should not be providing the Al-Jazeera the kind of propaganda they've had the last couple of three days."

Associated Press | Fallujah Video has congressman calling for reporter ban

The Blogging of the President

The Blogging of the President

While chastising him for the length of his posts, South African investigative magazine noseweek (paid subscription required to access articles) gives President Thabo Mbeki's weekly blog an extremely favourable review. And so it should. Amid the noise surrounding reports that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's allegations of Iran's nuclear proliferation program rest on 'intelligence' from walk-in sources—much like his Iraqi WMD stories, the unassuming South African leader this week blogs the quiet voice of reason.

Though diplomatic, Mbeki is incisively blunt and, in titling his entry Give Peace a Chance, calls the United States on its attempts to engineer war with Tehran. With Iran agreeing, subject to December 2004 negotiations, to work with several EU countries in adhering to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), U.S. propaganda has been ramped up (why does one find this agreement only on French diplomatic or Arabic sites?). Powell, whose shoes will soon be filled by fork-tongued Condi Rice and, God forbid, John Bolton, is currently doing duty as neocon propagandist in chief.

Mbeki, seeking observation of protections guaranteed Iran in terms of the NPT (including the peaceful use of nuclear power), notes: "We have been very concerned that the dispute relating to Iran should be solved without confrontation. Apart from anything else, we were and are convinced that such a confrontation would further undermine global peace and the possibility of reducing global tension, against the interests of all countries and peoples."

Reminding readers of South Africa's membership of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board, the blogging president recalls our country's experience of U.S. nuclear doublespeak.

Before our liberation in 1994, the US Government engaged our movement in discussions aimed at persuading us to discontinue the programme for the production of the missiles the apartheid regime had intended to use for the delivery of the WMDs. We agreed to this and kept our side of the bargain. The US Government had undertaken to provide the new democratic government in our country with the resources we would need to ensure the redeployment to other high-tech projects of the scientists, engineers and technicians who had been involved in the missile development programme. Sadly and regrettably, the US Government never gave us a single cent of the money it had promised, which necessarily impacted negatively on the development of science and technology in our country.

That was ten years ago. Several years later, South Africa sent its nuclear disarmament team to Iraq to assist the Iraqis and the IAEA assess and monitor compliance. The team found Iraq willing to work "unreservedly" with UN weapons inspectors and advised the IAEA accordingly.

Unfortunately this advice was ignored. Had it been respected, it would not have required a war to establish that there were no WMDs in Iraq.

When it comes to the Bush administration, the South African president's certainly a damned side more diplomatic than Madiba. He is, however, intellectually more astute and cutting. In short, he knows how to twist the blade. Pointing to Israel's aggressive refusal (going back to the 1981 bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor) to accede to Iran's South African-backed request to render the Middle East a nuke-free zone by way of implementing a two-state solution in Palestine, he highlights the irony of the U.S. permitting South Africa, under the apartheid regime, to ship up to 1,000 metric tons of yellow cake to Iran under CIA frontman and lickspittle, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He goes further, hammering the Western media now trumpeting Powell's allegations.

Scepticism about Iran's commitment not to produce nuclear weapons was stated as recently as Thursday, 18 November. An editorial in the 'International Herald Tribune' said: "Nobody knows whether Iran is really ready to give up its ambitions to have nuclear weapons. For now, there is no real assurance that Iran is not secretly moving ahead with enrichment experiments at a still secret location."

It is precisely this kind of speculation, driven by one strategic goal or another, whether stated or not, that led to the 2003 Iraq war.

'Nuff said. The South African president, roundly condemned in the mainstream press for spending either too much time abroad or too much time on the Internet, is a peculiar man. Unlike most leaders, but much like his predecessor, he is both a team player and a person who thinks for himself. With so-called progressives in America dead in the water, the Bush cabal is free to do as it pleases. And with Israel being supplied U.S. bunker busters in December, the neocons have their sites set on Iran. Let it not be said, when the United States overreaches itself in that country, that South Africa remained silent.

Note: For a good backgrounder on U.S. aggression towards Iran, read the first instalment in a two-part series by Flogging the Simian.

That Iraq is only stage one in a much larger global strategy has repeatedly been made clear by neocons and foreign policy hawks inside and outside the administration. In February [2003], Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that the administration would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea just as soon as Iraq was defeated.

Michael Flynn | The right flexes muscle with new U.S. agenda

Related

• Tom Barry | Is Iran Next?
  
• Guardian | Pentagon turns heat up on Iran
  
• New York Times | A 'Good-Cop, Bad-Cop' Approach on Iran
  
• PNAC | Regime Change in Iran
  
• American Enterprise Institute | The Mullahs' Manhattan Project
  
• Jerusalem Post | IDF: Iran has secret nuclear program
  
• Artuz Sheva | Iran and Korea the "Axis of Evil"
  
• The Daily Star | The paradox of anti-Americanism in Iran
  
• Tom Barry | Coalition for Democracy in Iran
  
• GlobalSecurity.Org | Iran's Nuclear Program
  
• Washington Post | U.N. Finds No Nuclear Bomb Program in Iran
  
• The Observer | Why America has got it so wrong on Iran

"This is a very serious matter, the world knows it's a serious matter, and we're working together to solve this matter."

George W. Bush | Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit

Screw Lagos...

Dispatches from the Green Zone

-----Original Message-----

From: Nobody [mailto:nobody @ server343 dot server-center dot net] On Behalf Of Awad
Sent: Friday, 19 November, 2004 19:23 PM
Subject: Re-Construction.

Dear Sir,
My name is Engr. Abdel Nasser Awad, I am a member of the Iraqi Interim National Government. I have information and the capacity, to influence the re-award of reconstruction contracts. I am acting on behalf of, and with the mandate of three senior officials. We will require you to represent our interests and present your company for the award of a reconstruction contract and subsequent payment. If you have the required interest and capability, please write me back, and you will receive the necessary details.

I await your response.

Regards,
Engr. Abdel Awad.

---

...I'm off to Baghdad. This looks genuine.