Disobey

(Yesterday afternoon, 50 or so were out protesting at Denel in 
Kempton Park, esp. Palestine solidarity and APF comrades. Anyone 
know of protest sites if the war begins next week?)

Disobey
by John Pilger
March 13, 2003

How have we got to this point, where two western governments take
us into an illegal and immoral war against a stricken nation with
whom we have no quarrel and who offer us no threat: an act of
aggression opposed by almost everybody and whose charade is
transparent?

How can they attack, in our name, a country already crushed by more
than 12 years of an embargo aimed mostly at the civilian
population, of whom 42 per cent are children - a medieval siege
that has taken the lives of at least half a million children and is
described as genocidal by the former United Nations humanitarian
coordinator for Iraq?

How can those claiming to be "liberals" disguise their
embarrassment, and shame, while justifying their support for George
Bush's proposed launch of 800 missiles in two days as
a "liberation"? How can they ignore two United Nations studies
which reveal that some 500,000 people will be at risk? Do they not
hear their own echo in the words of the American general who said
famously of a Vietnamese town he had just levelled: "We had to
destroy it in order to save it?"

"Few of us," Arthur Miller once wrote, "can easily surrender our
belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the
State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is
intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

These days, Miller's astuteness applies to a minority of warmongers
and apologists. Since 11 September 2001, the consciousness of the
majority has soared. The word "imperialism" has been rescued from
agitprop and returned to common usage. America's and Britain's
planned theft of the Iraqi oilfields, following historical
precedent, is well understood. The false choices of the cold war
are redundant, and people are once again stirring in their
millions. More and more of them now glimpse American power, as Mark
Twain wrote, "with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand
and its loot-basket and its butcher-knife in the other".

What is heartening is the apparent demise of "anti-Americanism" as
a respectable means of stifling recognition and analysis of
American Imperialism. Intellectual loyalty oaths, similar to those
rife during the Third Reich, when the abusive "anti-German" was
enough to silence dissent, no longer work. In America itself, there
are too many anti-Americans filling the streets now: those whom
Martha Gellhorn called "that life-saving minority who judge their
government in moral terms, who are the people with a wakeful
conscience and can be counted upon".

Perhaps for the first time since the late 1940s, Americanism as an
ideology is being identified in the same terms as any rapacious
power structure; and we can thank Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice for that, even though their acts of
international violence have yet to exceed those of the "liberal"
Bill Clinton.

"My guess," wrote Norman Mailer recently, "is that, like it or not,
or want it or not, we are going to go to war because that is the
only solution Bush and his people can see. The dire prospect that
opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana
republic where the army will have more and more importance in our
lives. And, before it is all over, democracy, noble and delicate as
it is, may give way . . . Indeed, democracy is the special
condition that we will be called upon to defend in the coming
years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of
the corporation, the military and the complete investiture of the
flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascist atmosphere
in America already."

In the military plutocracy that is the American state, with its
unelected president, venal Supreme Court, silent Congress, gutted
Bill of Rights and compliant media, Mailer's "pre-fascist
atmosphere" makes common sense. The dissident American writer
William Rivers Pitt pursues this further. "Critics of the Bush
administration," he wrote, "like to bandy about the word 'fascist'
when speaking of George. The image that word conjures is of Nazi
storm troopers marching in unison towards Hitler's Final Solution.
This does not at all fit. It is better, in this matter, to view the
Bush administration through the eyes of Benito Mussolini.
Dubbed 'the father of fascism', Mussolini defined the word in a far
more pertinent fashion. 'Fascism,' he said, 'should more properly
be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and
corporate power.' "

Bush himself offered an understanding of this on 26 February when
he addressed the annual dinner of the American Enterprise
Institute. He paid tribute to "some of the finest minds of our
nation [who] are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our
nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed
20 such minds. I want to thank them for their service."

The "20 such minds" are crypto-fascists who fit the definition of
William Pitt Rivers. The institute is America's biggest, most
important and wealthiest "think-tank". A typical member is John
Bolton, under-secretary for arms control, the Bush official most
responsible for dismantling the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,
arguably the most important arms control agreement of the late 20th
century. The institute's strongest ties are with extreme Zionism
and the regime of Ariel Sharon. Last month, Bolton was in Tel Aviv
to hear Sharon's view on which country in the region should be next
after Iraq. For the expansionists running Israel, the prize is not
so much the conquest of Iraq but Iran. A significant proportion of
the Israeli air force is already based in Turkey with Iran in its
sights, waiting for an American attack.

Richard Perle is the institute's star. Perle is chairman of the
powerful Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon, the author of the
insane policies of "total war" and "creative destruction". The
latter is designed to subjugate finally the Middle East, beginning
with the $90bn invasion of Iraq.

Perle helped to set up another crypto-fascist group, the Project
for the New American Century. Other founders include Vice-President
Cheney, the defence secretary Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary
Paul Wolfowitz. The institute's "mission report", Rebuilding
America's Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new
century, is an unabashed blueprint for world conquest. Before Bush
came to power, it recommended an increase in arms spending by $48bn
so that America "can fight and win multiple, simultaneous major
theatre wars". This has come true. It said that nuclear war-
fighting should be given the priority it deserved. This has come
true. It said that Iraq should be a primary target. And so it is.
And it dismissed the issue of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass
destruction" as a convenient excuse, which it is.

Written by Wolfowitz, this guide to world domination puts the onus
on the Pentagon to establish a "new order" in the Middle East under
unchallenged US authority. A "liberated" Iraq, the centrepiece of
the new order, will be divided and ruled, probably by three
American generals; and after a horrific onslaught, known as Shock
and Awe.

Vladimir Slipchenko, one of the world's leading military analysts,
says the testing of new weapons is a "main purpose" of the attack
on Iraq. "Nobody is saying anything about it," he said last
month. "In May 2001, in his first presidential address, Bush spoke
about the need for preparation for future wars. He emphasised that
the armed forces needed to be completely high-tech, capable of
conducting hostilities by the no-contact method. After a series of
live experiments - in Iraq in 1991, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan - many
corporations achieved huge profits. Now the bottom line is $50-60bn
a year."

He says that, apart from new types of cluster bombs and cruise
missiles, the Americans will use their untested pulse bomb, known
also as a microwave bomb. Each discharges two megawatts of
radiation which instantly puts out of action all communications,
computers, radios, even hearing aids and heart
pacemakers. "Imagine, your heart explodes!" he said.

In the future, this Pax Americana will be policed with nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons used "pre-emptively", even in
conflicts that do not directly engage US interests. In August, the
Bush administration will convene a secret meeting in Omaha,
Nebraska, to discuss the construction of a new generation of
nuclear weapons, including "mini nukes", "bunker busters" and
neutron bombs. Generals, government officials and nuclear
scientists will also discuss the appropriate propaganda to convince
the American public that the new weapons are necessary.

Such is Mailer's pre-fascist state. If appeasement has any meaning
today, it has little to do with a regional dictator and everything
to do with the demonstrably dangerous men in Washington. It is
vitally important that we understand their goals and the degree of
their ruthlessness. One example: General Pervez Musharraf, the
Pakistani dictator, was last year deliberately allowed by
Washington to come within an ace of starting a nuclear war with
India - and to continue supplying North Korea with nuclear
technology - because he agreed to hand over al-Qaeda operatives.
The other day, John Howard, the Australian prime minister and
Washington mouthpiece, praised Musharraf, the man who almost blew
up west Asia, for his "personal courage and outstanding leadership".

In 1946, Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg
trials, said: "The very essence of the Nuremberg charter is that
individuals have international duties which transcend national
obligations of obedience imposed by the state."

With an attack on Iraq almost a certainty, the millions who filled
London and other capitals on the weekend of 15-16 February, and the
millions who cheered them on, now have these transcendent duties.
The Bush gang, and Tony Blair, cannot be allowed to hold the rest
of us captive to their obsessions and war plans. Speculation on
Blair's political future is trivia; he and the robotic Jack Straw
and Geoff Hoon must be stopped now, for the reasons long argued in
these pages and on hundreds of platforms.

And, incidentally, no one should be distracted by the latest
opportunistic antics of Clare Short, whose routine hints
of "rebellion", followed by her predictable inaction, have helped
to give Blair the time he wants to subvert the UN.

There is only one form of opposition now: it is civil disobedience
leading to what the police call civil unrest. The latter is feared
by undemocratic governments of all stripes.

The revolt has already begun. In January, Scottish train drivers
refused to move munitions. In Italy, people have been blocking
dozens of trains carrying American weapons and personnel, and
dockers have refused to load arms shipments. US military bases have
been blockaded in Germany, and thousands have demonstrated at
Shannon which, despite Ireland's neutrality, is being used by the
US military to refuel its planes en route to Iraq.

"We have become a threat, but can we deliver?" asked Jessica Azulay
and Brian Dominick of the American resistance movement. "Policy-
makers are debating right now whether or not they have to heed our
dissent. Now we must make it clear to them that there will be
political and economic consequences if they decide to ignore us."

My own view is that if the protest movement sees itself as a world
power, as an expression of true internationalism, then success need
not be a dream. That depends on how far people are prepared to go.
The young female employee of the Gloucestershire-based top-secret
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), who was charged this
month with leaking information about America's dirty tricks
operation on members of the Security Council, shows us the courage
required.

In the meantime, the new Mussolinis are on their balconies, with
their virtuoso rants and impassioned insincerity. Reduced to
wagging their fingers in a futile attempt to silence us, they see
millions of us for the first time, knowing and fearing that we
cannot be silenced.

***

Oil war: 23 years in the making

Analysts see attack this week or next

'We're just waiting on the president'

By Linda Diebel

Washington - Any day now, there will be bombs falling on Baghdad.

Conventional bombs like nothing the world has ever seen.

"The bombs will still be ringing in their ears when the 'Third Mech' shows
up,'' says U.S. military analyst John Pike, of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and
whatever's left of his so-called elite Republican Guard after the first days
of aerial pulverization.

"The Third Mech will be driving down the main drag in Baghdad.''

Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, describes an assault on Saddam's
regime that begins with "shock-and-awe'' aerial bombardment, and quickly
moves into crush mode with the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized) rolling
up from the Kuwaiti desert and U.S. Marines storming the port city of Basra.

"Chances are 90 per cent it will go pretty quickly, and 10 per cent it will
turn into one big holy mess,'' predicts Pike.
But, before turning to the combat debut of bombs that weigh about 9,000
kilos and can take out an entire battalion, consider why the United States
is going to war.

Consider who drew up U.S. goals and objectives in the Persian Gulf, when,
and why.

Consider oil.

This particular operation - Pentagon working title: "OpPlan 10-03-Victor" -
has been on the drawing board for a year, according to defence officials.
The immediate goal is disarming Iraq and getting rid of Saddam. It's
expected to begin soon, this week or next. Hard to hold back more than
300,000 U.S. and British troops, in place and pumped to go.

But the long-term goal, say big-picture analysts, has been in the works for
far more than the 23 years since former U.S. president Jimmy Carter linked
American security - "the vital interests of the United States'' - to the
Persian Gulf and its oil, and threatened military intervention.

This war, say analysts, is about power and oil. It's about control of the
Gulf states by means of strategic Iraq and, by extension, a final post-Cold
War shakeout to give the U.S. more economic clout over China and Russia by
controlling the oil spigot.

This is the moment, Thomas Barnett, from the U.S. Naval War College, wrote
recently in Esquire magazine, "when Washington takes real ownership of
strategic security in the age of globalization.''

The Persian Gulf has the world's biggest oil reserves. After Saudi Arabia,
Iraq has the second-largest proven reserves.

"The only precedent to what is shaping up now is the Roman Empire,'' says
Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College. "There is only one power. I don't think Britain, France or Spain
even came close in other centuries to the United States today.

"If the United States controls Persian Gulf oil fields, it will have a
stranglehold on the world economy,'' adds Klare.

Washington is betting, Klare believes, that "controlling Gulf oil, combined
with being a decade ahead of everybody else in military technology, will
guarantee American supremacy for the next 50 to 100 years.''

These ideas aren't new.

For years, a small and powerful group, with corporate and political links,
pushed the idea of controlling Persian Gulf oil. They did it publicly, at
think-tanks and in the media. Now, this coterie of like-minded strategists
controls both the Pentagon and the strategic aims of President George W.
Bush's White House.

"You've got a team in the White House that is unafraid of world public
opinion because they know it is unreliable, self-serving and hypocritical,''
says George Friedman, chair of the intelligence organization, Stratfor.

Originally, this was the "Kissinger plan,'' says James Akins, former U.S.
ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He lost his state department job for publicly
criticizing administration plans to control Arab oil back in 1975 when Henry
Kissinger was secretary of state.

"I thought they were crazy then and they're crazy now,'' Akins tells the
Star, adding that Congress studied plans to control Persian Gulf oil and
concluded the idea was absolute madness.
"I thought this whole thing was dead. But now you've got all these
`neo-cons' in power, and here we go again,'' says Akins, a Washington-based
consultant. "They figure once they take over Iraq, they don't have to worry
about the Saudis.''

Akins adds: "These people with their imperial ideas see themselves as part
of the Great American Empire."

The players have moved steadily through the Republican presidencies of
Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush and Bush himself.

They include: Vice-president Richard Cheney, a former oilman, like Bush, and
defence secretary during his father's Persian Gulf War in 1991; Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, once Reagan's personal emissary to the Middle
East when Saddam was a U.S. friend and staunch ally; Rumsfeld's deputy Paul
Wolfowitz, who began publicly calling for war against Iraq after the 9/11
terror attacks; and Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon's Defence Policy
Board, nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness'' for his political stick-handling.

They are joined by think-tankers from organizations such as the Project for
the New American Century, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS) and the American Enterprise Institute. Bush recently chose an
American Enterprise Institute forum, rather than the White House, to deliver
a major prime-time speech to the American people to make the case for war.

Bush often mentions Iraqi oil, a jarring focus for a president on the brink
of war.

"We will seek to protect Iraq's natural resources from sabotage from a dying
regime and ensure they are used for the benefit of Iraq's own people,'' he
said in last week's radio address.

Colin Robinson, an analyst with the Washington-based Centre for Defence
Information, says: "The United States can stand well-accused of trying to
dominate the whole region for its oil. But conspiracy theories are usually
too complicated for everybody to carry them off."

Friedman says the 1991 war left unfinished business, the "status quo'' of
Saddam in power. Not so this time, he says, in a war which, as U.N.
diplomats dither, has already begun.

In recent weeks, British and U.S. warplanes strayed outside "no-fly'' zones
to bomb Iraqi surface-to-air missiles. Robinson describes these zones, set
up by the U.S. and Britain after Desert Storm as "barely legal'' in terms of
international law.

As well, U.N. officials report violations of the demilitarized zone between
Iraq and Kuwait by U.S. soldiers.

But the real devastation should begin within days.

"We've got everything we need. We're just waiting on the word, the decision
from the president," Maj.-Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry
Division, told the Washington Post last week from Kuwait.

First comes aerial bombardment, an extraordinary 1,500 bombs every 24 hours
during the time it takes heavy mechanized divisions to move up from Kuwait
to Baghdad.

Big heavy bombers, from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, buttressed by
screaming navy and air force jets will pound Iraqi sites, picked by aerial
drones and U.S. and British Special Forces already in Iraq.

Defence contractors are eager to test out new gadgetry. One new bomb is the
9,000-kilo MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Burst).

"Well, it's very efficient,'' says Friedman. "Let's say you've got a large
concentration of Republican Guard units, instead of having to do repeated
bombing sorties, you can take out a battalion (500 to 600 troops) with one
bomb.''

Friedman's sources in theatre tell him there are "terrific fights between
defence department officials and field commanders who are raring to go
now.''

He says time is the enemy of troops in the field. Sandstorms at the end of
March, for example, could play havoc with laser targeting systems.

Without the anticipated "northern front'' through Turkey, there are plans
for C-130s to ferry troops to northern Iraq, as well as missions for U.S.
Marines and Special Forces to secure oil sites throughout Iraq.

"The U.S. military cannot be defeated on the conventional battlefield,''
says military analyst Pike.

But what about the variables?

How much of a threat is Saddam? What about chemical and biological weapons?

"We gonna find out,'' says Pike.

Meanwhile, Iraqi exiles, opposed to Saddam, have been meeting with U.S. and
British oil executives, promising access and leases in return for political
power.

And, the U.S., as Friedman points out, on the brink of world hegemony, is
going to find out who its friends are.

"I do so enjoy Canadians (against the war) getting so obsessed with human
rights, and then pay no attention to places like Venezuela,'' says Friedman,
who thinks Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is next on Bush's military agenda.

"I read the Canadian press and I wonder what planet your country is on.

"We have allies, and we are going to see who they are,'' he concludes. "If
France, if Canada, can't support us in opposition to Saddam Hussein, you
can't say you are our allies. Canada consistently says it's an ally of the
United States of America ... we'll see, won't we?''


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%20e71b27a&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035778907789
&ca%20ll_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

***

Los Angeles Times March 14, 2003

Democracy domino theory 'not credible'

A State Department report disputes Bush's claim that ousting Hussein will
spur reforms in the Mideast, intelligence officials say.

By Greg Miller

Washington -- A classified State Department report expresses doubt that
installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the
Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for
a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document.

The report exposes significant divisions within the Bush administration over
the so-called democratic domino theory, one of the arguments that underpins
the case for invading Iraq.

The report, which has been distributed to a small group of top government
officials but not publicly disclosed, says that daunting economic and social
problems are likely to undermine basic stability in the region for years,
let alone prospects for democratic reform.

Even if some version of democracy took root -- an event the report casts as
unlikely -- anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that elections in the
short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled governments hostile
to the United States.

"Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve," says one passage of the
report, according to an intelligence official who agreed to read portions of
it to The Times.

"Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to
exploitation by anti-American elements."

The thrust of the document, the source said, "is that this idea that you're
going to transform the Middle East and fundamentally alter its trajectory is
not credible."

Even the document's title appears to dismiss the administration argument.
The report is labeled "Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes."

The report was produced by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, the in-house analytical arm.

State Department officials declined to comment on the report. Intelligence
officials said the report does not necessarily reflect the views of
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or other senior State Department
officials.

Daunting Challenges

The obstacles to reform outlined in the report are daunting.

"Middle East societies are riven" by political, economic and social problems
that are likely to undermine stability "regardless of the nature of any
externally influenced or spontaneous, indigenous change," the report said,
according to the source.

The report is dated Feb. 26, officials said, the same day Bush endorsed the
domino theory in a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute
in Washington.

It's not clear whether the president has seen the report, but such documents
are typically distributed to top national security officials.

"A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of
freedom for other nations in the region," Bush said.

Other top administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney,
have made similar remarks in recent months.

But the argument has been pushed hardest by a group of officials and
advisors who have been the leading proponents of going to war with Iraq.
Prominent among them are Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary,
and Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an influential
Pentagon advisory panel.

Wolfowitz has said that Iraq could be "the first Arab democracy" and that
even modest democratic progress in Iraq would "cast a very large shadow,
starting with Syria and Iran but across the whole Arab world."

Similarly, Perle has said that a reformed Iraq "has the potential to
transform the thinking of people around the world about the potential for
democracy, even in Arab countries where people have been disparaging of
their potential."

White House officials hold out the promise of a friendly and functional
government in Baghdad to contrast with administration portrayals of
President Saddam Hussein's regime as brutal and bent on building his stock
of biological and chemical weapons.

The domino theory also is used by the administration as a counterargument to
critics in Congress and elsewhere who have expressed concern that invading
Iraq will inflame the Muslim world and fuel terrorist activity against the
United States.

But the theory is disputed by many Middle East experts and is viewed with
skepticism by analysts at the CIA and the State Department, intelligence
officials said.

Divisions in Iraq

Critics say even establishing a democratic government in Iraq will be
extremely difficult. Iraq is made up of ethnic groups deeply hostile to one
another. Ever since its inception in 1932, the country has known little but
bloody coups and brutal dictators.

Even so, it is seen by some as holding more democratic potential -- because
of its wealth and educated population -- than many of its neighbors.

By some estimates, 65 million adults in the Middle East can't read or write,
and 14 million are unemployed, with an exploding, poorly educated youth
population.

Given such trends, "we'll be lucky to have strong central governments [in
the Middle East], let alone democracy," said one intelligence official with
extensive experience in the region.

The official stressed that no one in intelligence or diplomatic circles
opposes the idea of trying to install a democratic government in Iraq.

"It couldn't hurt," the official said. "But to sell [the war] on the basis
that this is going to cause 1,000 flowers to bloom is naive."

Some officials said the classified document reflects views that are widely
held in the State Department and CIA but that those holding such views have
been muzzled in an administration eager to downplay the costs and risks of
war.

One intelligence official said the CIA has not been asked to produce its own
analysis on the domino question.

CIA Assessment

At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, CIA Director George J. Tenet offered a
modest assessment of the prospects that overthrowing Hussein could prompt a
wave of reform.

"I don't want to be expansive in, you know, a big domino theory about what
happens in the rest of the Arab world," Tenet said. "But an Iraq whose
territorial integrity has been maintained, that's up and running and
functioning ... may actually have some salutary impact across the region."

The State Department report cites "high levels of corruption, serious
infrastructure degradation, overpopulation" and other forces causing
widespread disenfranchisement in the region.

The report concludes that "political changes conducive to broader and
enduring stability throughout the region will be difficult to achieve for a
very long time."

Middle East experts said there are other factors working against democratic
reform, including a culture that values community and to some extent
conformity over individual rights.

"I don't accept the view that the fall of Saddam Hussein is going to prompt
quick or even discernible movement toward democratization of the Arab
states," said Philip C. Wilcox, director of the Foundation for Middle East
Peace and a former top State Department official. "Those countries are held
back not by the presence of vicious authoritarian regimes in Baghdad but by
a lot of other reasons."

Bush has responded to such assessments by assailing the "soft bigotry of low
expectations."

In pushing for democracy in the Middle East, he is departing somewhat from a
long track record of U.S. presidents -- focused on preserving stability,
economic ties, and access to Middle East oil -- backing autocratic regimes.

Still, the Bush White House has been selective in applying pressure for
reform, favoring longtime U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

*

Times staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this report.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-domino14mar14001443,1,69
94015.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld


***

LA Weekly
February 28 - March 6, 2003

Iraq: Telling the Left From the Right American
leftists woefully ignore their Iraqi counterparts

By Frank Smyth

HOW MANY AMERICANS WHO OPPOSE THE LOOMING war know the
left from the right when it comes to Iraq? The only
two players on the field are not George W. Bush and
Saddam Hussein. For inside and outside the borders of
Iraq there is a political opposition to Saddam - and
while some of those opponents are now aligned with the
White House, others remain on the political left.

But don't expect to read or hear much about any Iraqi
leftist groups in the mainstream or even the
"alternative" press.

In past U.S. foreign-policy conflicts, American
activists frequently expressed their solidarity with
and support of embattled leftists, whether in Chile,
Nicaragua or El Salvador. But in this standoff with
Iraq, American leftists seem woefully ignorant of
their Iraqi counterparts and, consequently, of their
views on the present conflict. And for these Iraqi
leftists the current crisis transcends the prevailing
American leftist view, which reduces the matter simply
to either war or peace.

Today, Iraqi leftists play an important oppositional
role against Saddam. Foremost among them is the Iraqi
Communist Party, which at one time was that country's
biggest and broadest leftist mass movement, touching
the lives of literally millions. Even before Iraq's
short-lived, British-imposed monarchy was overthrown
in 1958, the Communist Party was organizing trade
unions and other civic groups.

The leftist party has also long been Iraq's most
diverse political movement, cutting across traditional
population lines to incorporate many disenfranchised
majority Shias and minority Kurds. Even though tens of
thousands of Communists and other leftists have
perished in Saddam's gulags and are still actively
targeted by the ruling Ba'athist regime, the Iraqi CP
today maintains a clandestine network across Iraq that
experts deem to be of significant scale and political
potential.

That network provides some of the best and most
detailed reporting on armed resistance and government
repression within Iraq. Indeed, human-rights
activists, from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty
International, rely heavily on the detailed reporting
that comes out of Iraq via this network. "[T]he bodies
of tens of people from the city of Basra, who were
executed by firing squads of the dictatorial regime in
late March 1999, are buried in a mass grave in the
Burjesiyya district near the town of Zubair, about 20
km southeast of Basra," reads the Iraqi Communist
Party Web site in an article about a brief anti-Saddam
uprising three years ago in the Shia-dominated,
southernmost city. "Some of the victims fell into the
hands of security forces after being wounded, or when
their ammunition had finished. But most of the arrests
took place during the following days when the
authorities . . . unleashed an unprecedented campaign
of police raids, house searches and detentions." The
report concludes that 400 to 600 people died in this
massacre. "The massacre culminated with security men
firing their handguns at the [h]eads of their
victims," says the report. "The horrific scene ended
with throwing the bodies of victims in a deep pit dug
with a bulldozer which was used later to cover up the
site in an attempt to hide the traces of the crime."

Today, Iraqi Communists, and most Iraqi leftists,
firmly oppose the Bush administration's war plans -
but not necessarily war itself. Unlike many of their
American counterparts, Iraqi leftists offer a policy
alternative other than a vague call for "peace."
Instead of a unilateral U.S. invasion, Iraqi leftists
want the international community to back an Iraqi-led
military uprising against Saddam.

Short of that, Iraqi leftists would most likely
support a multilateral military intervention that
would not only overthrow Saddam but also hand him over
to an international tribunal that would try him on
charges of crimes against humanity.

Iraqi leftist groups also favor other positions
routinely ignored by most American leftists, including
vigorous U.N. human-rights monitoring inside Iraq.
Most American anti-war activists also downplay another
issue that Iraqi leftists are most worried about. What
might a post-Saddam Iraq look like? The Communist
Party and other Iraqi leftist groups refused to join
the recent U.S.-backed Iraqi opposition meeting in
London, pointing out that Washington has only been
planning to replace Saddam's regime with another
minority dictatorship. The Iraqis closest to
Washington remain deposed aristocrats, although the
Bush administration finally dumped the plan, backed by
the Pentagon alone, to restore exiled former
supporters of the Kingdom of Iraq, which prevailed for
27 years, to power as the Iraqi National Congress.

Instead of the U.S.-backed return of the old ruling
class, the Communist Party and Shia and Kurdish
opposition groups want U.N.-monitored elections inside
a post-Saddam Iraq leading to a federal representative
government. This is an ongoing struggle yet to be
adequately reported, unfortunately, in any U.S.
publication, and the issue represents a genuinely
democratic frontline with, so far, few if any so-
called American progressives on it.

American and Iraqi leftists also differ over whom to
blame for any coming war. The Iraqi CP blames not only
the Bush administration, but also the Iraqi
government. In this regard, the Iraqi Communist Party
ironically joins the Bush administration in
unequivocally demanding that Saddam fully cooperate
with U.N. inspections to prevent his regime from
developing more weapons of mass destruction. "The
rulers" of "the dictatorial regime in Iraq," reads an
Iraqi CP declaration, put "their selfish interest
above the people's national interest, refusing to
allow the [work] of U.N. weapons inspectors, and thus
preventing action to spare our people and country
looming dangers."

Any U.S. leftist who even remotely thinks that
Saddam's regime is - beside its heavy-handedness -
some sort of socialist alternative had better think
again. No matter how much Saddam relies on the
Stalinist model for his security services, the Iraqi
dictator has never held anything but contempt for
Iraqi leftists.

At 22, Saddam Hussein carried out his first
assassination plot, against a Communist-backed leader
in Baghdad who was the first president of Iraq. In
fact, the young man from Tirkit was not accepted into
the Ba'ath party until after he and others shot at
President Abdel-Karim Qassem, who was backed by the
Iraqi Communist Party and many trade unions. President
Qassem survived, while Saddam was wounded in the leg.

Instead of leftist principles, Saddam's ruling
Ba'athist ideology unabashedly champions ethnic
nationalism in order to build a greater nation based
on ethnicity. His Iraqi Arab Socialist Ba'ath party
explicitly excludes the one in every five Iraqis who
are ethnic Kurds. Moreover, the Ba'athists' Pan-Arab
message is shaped mainly by Arabs of the Sunni Muslim
faith like Saddam, and their form of Arab nationalism
has little appeal for Arab Muslims of the Shia faith,
who constitute three out of five Iraqis. Rather than
empower either Iraq's Shia majority or its Kurdish
minority, the Ba'ath party merely replaced Iraq's old
rulers, who were Sunni Arab-led monarchists based in
Baghdad, with new Sunni Arab-led rulers like Saddam
from rural regions north of the capital.

"A ruling class-clan rapidly developed and maintained
a tight grip on the army, the Ba'ath party, the
bureaucracy, and the business milieus," writes Faleh
A. Jabar, a University of London scholar and former
Iraqi Communist Party newspaper editor, in a recent
issue of the U.S. monthly The Progressive. "You had
either to be with the Ba'ath or you were against it."

Today most of Kurdish-speaking Iraq, in the north,
enjoys U.S.-enforced autonomy from Saddam's regime,
while Shias, in the south, still actively resist rule
from Baghdad. Take Basra, where Saddam's officials
routinely bring visiting U.S. peace activists. "We
were welcomed warmly into the home of Abu Haider, the
father of a young boy who was killed three years ago
by a U.S. Tomaha[w]k missile shot from a ship in the
Gulf," reads a pre-Christmas report from Pax Christi,
a faith-based group. Pax Christi's newsletter today
says that this U.S. missile attack occurred in Basra
in 1998. Undoubtedly true. But missing from that
newsletter is that in that same year Saddam's regime
interred dozens of anti-Saddam rebels and others in
secret graves in that same city, according to Iraqi
Communist sources.

Opposing American imperialism is one thing. But
ignoring Iraqi fascism is quite another. In the wake
of the Gulf War, and after then-President Bush called
on the Iraqi people to rise up, mass armed rebellion
swept Iraq in the spring of 1991. More than a dozen
major cities fell into the hands of the Iraqi rebels.
Yet, as American forces stood by with arms crossed,
Saddam's troops and attack helicopters drowned the
rebellion in blood, taking at least 100,000 lives. The
anti-Saddam opposition was openly and tragically
betrayed by Washington.

American leftists and peace activists must not now
repeat the same sin. Only a quintessentially American
arrogance would lead leftists in a big country to
think that leftists in a smaller country don't matter.
Iraqi socialists and leftists have endured Saddam's
Ba'athist terror long enough to know the left from the
right in Iraq. And as our nation prepares to invade
their country, more Americans, especially peace
activists, should take the trouble to do the same.

Frank Smyth is finishing a book on the 1991 Iraqi
uprisings, which he reported on for CBS News, The
Economist and The Village Voice.
___________________________________________________________
The Guardian
March 5, 2003

Comment

Independent Iraqis oppose Bush's war

Not every group takes US cash. Some worry about their
people

Jonathan Steele

A new myth has emerged in the pro-war camp's propaganda arsenal.
Iraqi exiles support the war, they claim, and none took
part in last month's march through central London. So
if the peaceniks and leftwingers who joined the protest
had the honesty to listen to the true voice of the
Iraqi people they would never denounce Bush's plans for
war again.

Wrong, and wrong. A large number of Iraqis were among
the million-member throng, including two key
independent political groups. They carried banners
denouncing Saddam Hussein (thereby echoing the
sentiments of many non-Iraqis since this was not a
protest by pro-Saddam patsies, as the pro-war people
also falsely claim). They represented important
currents in the Iraqi opposition, and ones whom the
Americans have repeatedly tried to persuade to join the
exiles' liaison committee.

"No way," says Dr Haider Abas, London spokesman of
Da'wa, Iraq's moderate Islamic party. "When we met
Zalmay Khalilzad (the US special envoy for Iraq) we
told him we didn't want to give a cover to US military
operations. It's not our role. We won't be respected by
our people."

His party has other reservations. It fears the US will
retain control of Iraq long after Saddam is toppled and
will not hand power to Iraqis for months to come - and
then only to its placemen. Da'wa also doubts US plans
for ethnically based federalism, arguing that this will
create the risk of Balkan-style discrimination and
pogroms, when the reality of Iraq is that every major
city is culturally mixed. Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and
Arabs are found everywhere.

Saddam's repression cost Da'wa thousands of its members
over the past two decades. It argued for human rights
in Iraq long before Washington and London stopped
backing Saddam and took up the cause - another reason
why it distrusts US motives. Dr Abas says there is a
paradox in that while his party opposes the war he
believes many Iraqis inside the country have become so
desperate that they may support it. His argument
reflects the psychological dilemma which keeps Iraqis
awake at night. "People in hell think nothing can be
worse. They just want to end it. But we see the bigger
picture as well as fearing it will lead to death and
destruction for our families at home. We have two
problems with the United States. First, its track
record. In 1991, when the aim was simply to get Saddam
out of Kuwait, they destroyed the infrastructure of the
country. People couldn't understand why they bombed
power stations and bridges all over Iraq."

His other doubt is over US intentions. One camp in
Washington, he feels, wants to rebuild Iraq. The other
wants to keep it undemocratic by only removing Saddam
and his closest colleagues. "We don't know which camp
will win," he says. In the meantime, any Iraqi group
which ties its flag to a foreign invader's mast without
any guarantee of its postwar intentions loses its
patriotic and democratic credentials.

Salam Ali, another marcher and spokesman for the Iraqi
Communist party, has similar criticisms. The ICP, the
biggest party in Iraq before Saddam Hussein's regime
came to power, also lost tens of thousands of its
cadres when the Iraqi president turned against it. Its
strength cannot be reliably assessed, but its Da'wa
rivals concede it has widespread support among Iraqis
of all classes. Ali has just returned from northern
Iraq where his party's central committee was meeting.
They turned down yet another US invitation to come out
in support of the looming war and join the coordinating
committee to work with Iraq's postwar US governor. "We
reject the war on principled and moral grounds as well
as being the worst and most destructive alternative,"
the party said.

The ICP supports the approach taken by France and
Germany but says it should be integrated into a broader
framework for restoring democratic rights in Iraq in
line with earlier UN security council resolutions.
These are no less important than the recent resolution,
1441, which concentrates on disarmament and ignores
human rights. The party calls for a genuinely
independent conference of the opposition groups.

Like Da'wa, the ICP opposes the economic sanctions on
Iraq which the United States and Britain continue to
back in spite of the hardship they have caused to
ordinary Iraqis but not the regime. "We want sanctions
lifted and replaced by an effective UN mechanism for
controlling Iraq's oil revenue for the benefit of
people. We said the Oil for Food programme would
strengthen Saddam's hand," says Salam Ali. "Sanctions
have crushed people and weakened their will to resist.
If they are lifted, people can start living and
thinking politics again."

Most parties on the opposition committee set up under
Khalilzad's pressure last week are paid by the US
government. Da'wa and the ICP have not succumbed. Pro-
war pundits who claim to know the views of Iraqi exiles
should check they are not listening to opinions made in
Washington.

j.steele@guardian.co.uk

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

***

Manchester Times March 12, 2003

Thousands of U.S. fatalities expected in Iraq
By Philip Knight

Experts say likelihood of urban combat and exposure to WMD will result in
"many thousands" of U.S. military dead.

Low casualty rates in the Gulf War, Kosovo and Afghanistan have led
Americans to expect more of the same in Iraq.

Yet military experts are quietly warning that the impending war will likely
yield a high U.S. death toll.

Analysts suggest that the Bush administration is keeping silent on the issue
of casualties for fear of weakening public support for the war.

"I don't think the American public is prepared for the kinds of casualties
that might occur in Iraq," said NBC military analyst Col. Jack Jacobs
(ret.).

A consensus appears to be emerging that U.S. deaths during an operation in
Iraq will likely run into the thousands.

The two concerns most often cited to account for significant U.S. fatality
rates are the likelihood of urban combat and of Saddam Hussein's use of
chemical and biological weapons.

"If you want to get a regime to change, you have to go to Baghdad and the
casualties are going to be great" said P. Terrence Hopmann, director of the
Watson Institute's Global Security Program.

One senior military official confided, "if we have to fight a pitched battle
in Baghdad, it means we screwed up somewhere along the way."

Yet the latest intelligence seems to indicate that this nightmare scenario
is the one U.S. troops will be encountering.

Hussein is reportedly transforming Baghdad into an "Alamo-like" last stand,
and guns and rocket propelled grenades are being issued to the population.

U.S. intelligence has detected a substantial concentration of forces around
Baghdad "with the deliberate intention of creating an urban combat
environment," according to a Pentagon official.

Four of Iraq's six Republican Guard divisions are now concentrated in
Baghdad.

General Joseph Hoar, the former commander in chief of the military's central
command, remarked "all our advantages of command and control, technology,
mobility, all of those things are in part given up [in cities]."

The most comparable example of a modern urban war is the Russian offensive
against Grozny. In 1994, 1,200 poorly-equipped Chechen rebels held the city
against a Russian army of 30,000, resulting in many thousands of Russian
dead.

Whereas Grozny was comprised of a few hundred thousand people, Baghdad is a
city of 5 million.

The administration's expectation of low casualty figures is largely based on
the hope that Hussein's government will quickly implode in the face of a
U.S. attack.

"The secret within the not-so-secret plan is that the top decision-makers
are hoping that Hussein's regime will collapse," writes The Washington
Post's Ralph Peters. "But wise soldiers don't go to war with hope as their
primary weapon" (11/15/02).

"It is always possible that the Iraqi military will refuse to fight for
Hussein," notes Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, "but this is wishful
thinking . . . It is far more likely that they will fight, and tenaciously"
(Los Angeles Times, 8/30/02).

The complex web of tribal relationships and loyalties hold the key to
understanding the resistance U.S. troops are likely to encounter in Iraq.

Unlike most of the Shia or Kurdish conscripts who deserted or surrendered
during the Gulf War, the Republican Guard, as well as most of Baghdad's
population, is comprised of Hussein's own Sunni Arab tribe -- which by all
accounts remains fiercely loyal to his regime.

Military analyst Gwynne Dyer noted that the only reason Hussein survived the
Shia and Kurdish revolts after the Gulf War is because the Sunnis "closed
ranks around Saddam Hussein and fought to defend his regime."

More troublingly, according to London's Observer, the Pentagon believes that
"they will have 48 hours to find and kill or capture Saddam before he tries
to deploy any nuclear, biological or major conventional weapons he may have"
(7/14/02). Intelligence sources have already intercepted Iraqi
communications authorizing field commanders to use weapons of mass
destruction.

While some analysts have cited less than a thousand U.S. combat fatalities,
an emerging consensus of military experts appear to be warning of
substantially higher casualty rates given the likelihood of urban combat and
troop exposure to chemical or biological toxins.

The National Security Advisor report to the president advised "if Saddam
Hussein retaliates conventionally, estimates of U.S. casualties range from
the dozens to tens of thousands."

According to his discussions with a number of military experts, former
senator Gary Hart warned that if the Iraqis mount a resistance in the major
cities, American casualties could easily reach 50,000 to 100,000.

Military analysts such as Col. Jack Jacobs (ret.) warn of the potentiality
of casualties in the "many, many thousands, depending upon what kind of war
we fight and what kind of weapons are unleashed on our soldiers."

Likewise, Michael O'Hanlan, a military analyst with the Brookings
Institution, estimated that "the United States could possibly lose as many
as 5,000 troops if the Republican Guard fights as hard and as effectively as
its size and weaponry would plausibly allow."


Philip Knight is a foreign news analyst and columnist with Knight
Syndicate.com based in New York City.