Bumper sticker of the week (spotted in Albuquerque, New Mexico): “Ask your mother what democracy was like.”
I wouldn’t wish this week on anyone, but here are a few stabs at rounding up some stray cows (with presidential herding metaphors in mind).
Iraq: Does anyone remember that presidential aircraft-carrier landing only weeks old, that Top Gun appearance, that airborne “victory lap”? Remember “victory”? Now, it seems, we’re back at war, low-level admittedly, but yesterday an Apache helicopter was shot down (only one went down from enemy fire in the official war) and a jet crashed as well as American troops launched actual attacks on enemy encampments. In Sunni-dominated northern Iraq, American troops patrol, bust down doors, shoot into the dark, handcuff noncombatants, and so on, undoubtedly creating an ever more powerful sense of Iraq as an occupied country, perhaps the very thing that the unknown but increasingly organized attackers want to happen.
As for the mood in Iraq, Danny Schecter offered this tidbit yesterday in his daily weblog which can be found at www.mediachannel.org:
“The full extent of the attacks on US soldiers is not being reported. But a private security service called Centurion RAS is keeping tabs for its clients. ‘Very reliable and specific intelligence indicates the high likelihood of an impending major attack against Coalition forces and/or Westerners within Baghdad. Clients have been advised to keep their body armor and helmets in their rooms at night. These are to be worn as protection against ‘falling debris and protruding obstacles should evacuation of the building become necessary.
“‘Clients have been advised to increase their personal security awareness levels with particular emphasis on not hanging around in the main lobby area when entering and exiting the hotel. The pattern has shown a daily increase rising from 4 – 8 – 11 – 12 – 14 – 18–up to a new level yesterday of 26 separate attacks. The attacks were initially seen as being individual sporadic isolated incidents. However there are suggestions now that the attacks appear to be orchestrated and organized. It is certainly very apparent that the US military now appears more tense and alert.'”
In a conversation with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk of the Independent, just back from Baghdad, offered a vivid description of rising resistance in Iraq. (The whole interview can be found at the AlterNet website):
“‘Clients have been advised to increase their personal security awareness levels with particular emphasis on not hanging around in the main lobby area when entering and exiting the hotel. The pattern has shown a daily increase rising from 4 – 8 – 11 – 12 – 14 – 18–up to a new level yesterday of 26 separate attacks. The attacks were initially seen as being individual sporadic isolated incidents. However there are suggestions now that the attacks appear to be orchestrated and organized. It is certainly very apparent that the US military now appears more tense and alert.'”
In a conversation with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk of the Independent, just back from Baghdad, offered a vivid description of rising resistance in Iraq. (The whole interview can be found at the AlterNet website):
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clearer example of an army that thought it was an army of liberation and has become an army of occupation. It’s important perhaps to say – I did mention it in [a recent] article that a number of those soldiers who were attached to the 3rd infantry division who were military policeman, American ordinary cops like one from Rhode Island, for example – they had a pretty shrewd idea of what was going on.
“One guy said to me, every time we go down to the river here – he was talking about the river area in Fallujah – it’s a tributary of the Tigris – it’s like Somalia down there. You always get shot at and you always get stoned, I mean, have stones thrown at them. Some of the soldiers spoke very frankly about the situation in Baghdad. One man told me – I heard twice before in Baghdad itself, once from a British Commonwealth diplomat and once from a fairly senior officer in what we now have to call the coalition, C.P.A., the Coalition – for the moment forces or whatever it’s called – Authority, the authority that’s hanging on there until they can create some kind of Iraqi government – they all say that Baghdad airport now comes under nightly sniper fire from the perimeter of the runways from Iraqis. Two of them told me that every time a military aircraft comes in at night, it’s fired at. In fact some of the American pilots are now going back to the old Vietnamese tactic of cork screwing down tightly on to the runways from above rather than making the normal level flight approach across open countryside because they’re shot at so much. It’s a coalition provisional authority I’m thinking of, the C.P.A., previously an even more long fangled name. There is a very serious problem of security.
“The Americans still officially call them the remnants of Saddam or terrorists. But in fact, it is obviously an increase in the organized resistance and not just people who were in Saddam’s forces, who were in the Ba’ath Party or the Saddam Fedayeen.”
By the way, the Los Angeles Times had the first good piece I’ve seen parsing out where the money for the occupation and its “public works” is coming from. After sorting out the figures, Warren Vieth writes (Bypassing Oil Dearth, U.S. Finds Funds for Iraq):
“Much of the money is being drawn from a $4-billion stash of frozen assets and confiscated loot once belonging to ousted President Saddam Hussein and his cronies. The remainder is coming from international donors, the U.N. “oil-for-food” program and U.S. taxpayers, who are covering the cost of keeping military forces in Iraq and launching the initial round of reconstruction work.
“Peter McPherson, the Treasury Department’s top official in the country, said Iraq presents challenges unlike those encountered in Poland where the international community prescribed a harsh regimen of fiscal austerity.'[H]ere, they’ve already got massive unemployment. They’ve already had the shock treatment. So it’s a different puzzle than perhaps the world has seen.’
“So far, the Bush administration has managed to step up the flow of funds without igniting public indignation in the United States, where members of Congress are seeking assurances that the cost to American taxpayers will be limited.”
Oh, and speaking of shock treatment and dreams of floating an Iraqi occupation on oil, here’s a little shock for today. Agence France Press reports a post-war first:
“An Iraqi oil pipeline was burning after being sabotaged as the country’s crude was set to return to the world market, and despite an offensive by US-led forces against opponents of their occupation regime. Fires blazed on the major pipeline from Iraq’s northern oilfields after what residents said were twin bomb attacks aimed at sabotaging exports through Turkey.”
For another, more expectable kind of shock, consider the list of possible American privatizers in a future Iraq (also reported by Agence France Press). In an economy that already is experiencing something in the range of 50% unemployment, I’d be curious to know exactly what Booz, Allen and Hamilton had in mind.
“Ten US companies have been asked to submit bids for a plan to reshape the Iraqi economy into a free-market system with a major privatization program. The US Agency for International Development selected the 10 firms for a streamlined bidding process in an effort to accelerate the restructuring the Iraq economy. The 10 firms in the competition are: BearingPoint; Booz, Allen and Hamilton; Nathan Associates; IBM Global Services; Development Alternatives, Inc.; Carana Corp; Abt Associates; Chemonics; Deloitte and Touche; and Financial Markets International The winning bidder ‘will provide macroeconomic reform advice, with a focus on tax, fiscal, exchange rate, monetary policy, and banking reform,’ according to the document.
“The contractor ‘will also seek to change policies, laws and regulations that impede private sector development, trade and investment.’ The firm also will help draft plans ‘to allow for the privatization of state-owned industries and firms and/or establishing a privatization entity.'”
Iraqgate: Oh, and then there’s Iraqgate. Just keep your eye on this one. It hasn’t hit the public yet, but it may. Someday that shot of CIA director Tenet seated like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval behind Powell as he recited his pack of half-truths and lies at the UN may be a classic. The CIA’s already swearing that, whatever the White House claims, they did send the news on the Niger uranium forgeries onwards, outwards and upwards. Responsibility is already being shuffled in every direction. It’s like musical chairs. The question is who will be the first left out when the music stops. Op-ed and editorial pages all over — see Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times this morning, for instance — are beginning to write about this with genuine irritation and prime-time news and Nightline to cover it. There’s the scent of scandal in the air and free-floating anger in the bureaucracy. This could be with us for the long haul and this could also blow.
There was a nice op-ed this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the true scandal of the (New York) Times, the Judith Miller/Ahmed Chalabi/Paul Wolfowitz et. al. story. (See Susan Lenfestey, In WMD Debate, Don’t Ignore Role of Times and an Iraqi Exile) Of course, the deeper scandal of the whole wmd story is still missing in action — the fact that when Saddam Hussein was really busy building up his wmd collection and using it, we were supporting him in every way possible, and “we,” of course, isn’t some vague entity but Don Rumsfeld and his pals in an earlier incarnation in the Age of Reagan. We were perfectly happy with Saddam’s invasions until he turned his army on our ally Kuwait (read: our oil lands). The latest news of the week on this was that — a la Watergate — the Republicans were trying to keep any future hearings closed and the Democrats being the Democrats were fretting away about whether to and how to take up this whole issue.
Dreams of future crimes: Further roiling already well roiled trans-Atlantic waters, the Bush administration has been pushing hard on a number of fronts to get itself global immunity from any future imperial acts gone bad. This week Don (the “don”) Rumsfeld threatened to boycott Belgium, home of NATO headquarters, unless the Belgian government does something about the country’s legal openness to lawsuits about war crimes anywhere on earth. (A suit of this sort was recently brought in Belgium against Gen. Tommy Franks.) It’s a threat that fits well — for those who remember it — with the informally dubbed “Hague Invasion Act” passed by Congress some months back.
In the meantime, the administration lobbied hard and successfully for another year’s Security Council exemption for any of its soldiers who serve on a UN peacekeeping force from the International Criminal Court. It also increased the pressure on various poverty-stricken nations to sign bilateral accords essentially waiving the right to surrender Americans who commit crimes on their territory for trial at the ICC. Ian Traynor of the Guardian reports (US plays aid card to fix war crimes exemption),
“The US is turning up the heat on the countries of the Balkans and eastern Europe to secure war crimes immunity deals for Americans and exemptions from the year-old international criminal court.
“In an exercise in brute diplomacy which is causing more acute friction with the European Union, the US administration is threatening to cut off tens of millions of dollars in aid to the countries of the Balkans unless they reach bilateral agreements with the US on the ICC by the end of this month.
“The American campaign, which is having mixed results, is creating bitterness and cynicism in the countries being intimidated, particularly in the successor states of former Yugoslavia which perpetrated and suffered the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazis. Threatened with the loss of $73m in US aid, Bosnia signed the exemption deal last week just as Slovenia rejected American pressure and cut off negotiations.”
Colum Lynch of the Washington Post reports (U.S. Confronts EU On War Crimes Court):
“The Bush administration charged the European Union with actively undermining U.S. efforts to shield Americans from prosecution by the International Criminal Court and warned that the impact on transatlantic relations will be “very damaging” if the EU does not stop.
“The United States has been struggling for a year to negotiate accords barring individual governments around the globe from surrendering Americans to the war crimes court, which went into force on July 1, 2002. So far, the United States has signed 37 immunity pacts, primarily with poor, small countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.”
To give credit where it’s due, as the Bush administration considers yet more strikes and wars (North Korea, Iran, Syria anyone?), it’s also showing remarkable imperial foresight. After all, impunity is an imperial trait, isn’t it? Tom
US clouds Iraqi civilian deaths
By Derrick Z. Jackson
The Boston Globe
June 13, 2003Whenever reporters asked about civilian deaths in the invasion of Iraq, US military officials reflexively plunged into a numbing prattle about the precision of our weaponry, precaution to avoid needless carnage, and promises to investigate possible mistakes.
In late March, after an American missile hit a marketplace in Baghdad and killed plenty of people – Iraqi officials said 58 – Major General Victor Renuart of Central Command said: ”With every one of those circumstances, we ask the component … who may have had forces involved, whether it’s land, sea, or air, to do an investigation, and that takes a number of days to do that. The air component in this case is completing his review. We think that will be complete within the next day or so. And as soon as … the review is completed, we’ll make that available.