Send Hans Blix to Nes Ziona: Civilians Attacked With Poison Gas
By James Brooks, Dissident Voice, February 13, 2003 
Some of the victims were demonstrators. Some were children in their homes, trying to get away from the gas seeping under the door. Some were old men walking down the street. One of the victims was a thirteen year-old boy, playing in a schoolyard when a gas canister enveloped him in a cloud of poisonous smoke. Like many of the others, he suffered recurring severe convulsions for days. Ambulance drivers responding to one of the gas attacks found people on the street jumping around, thrashing their limbs in uncontrollable spasms. The victims seemed unaware of their actions and surroundings. One driver said, "If they had anything in their hand - a woman carrying her child might throw him down without realizing it. She'd just drop him and start clawing at herself from the gas." Many adults were required to restrain each violently convulsing victim. These attacks with an unknown poison gas were reported in a prestigious regional newspaper by respected journalists. They appeared on European wire services, and on at least one US military Web site. They were repeatedly documented by an award-winning human rights organization affiliated with the UN. Graphic film documentation of the victims' suffering is available on VHS and DVD. Three days after the attacks began, the leader of the targeted people publicly alleged the use of "poison gas" against civilians and demanded that it stop. Yet the attacks broadened in scope and continued for the next six weeks, until they ceased as mysteriously as they had begun. These facts are all in plain sight. But chances are you've never heard about this chemical warfare against innocent civilians. It was not the work of Saddam Hussein, or the Russians, or terrorists, at least as the term is generally understood. It didn't occur in the 1980s, and it didn't require the satellite data and battle planning that the US military provided Iraq for its chemical warfare against Iran. These poison gas attacks were perpetrated just two years ago, by Israeli troops against civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

UN and Iraq
Editorial, Arab News, February 13, 2003
Suppose there is a sequel to UN Resolution 1441 authorizing use of force against Iraq and France, a permanent member of the Security Council, vetoes the resolution and Germany, non-permanent member, opposes it, what would happen? If you listen to the dire warnings issued in Washington and London, the UN will go the way of the League of Nations and the whole world would collapse into Somalia-like chaos. Of all the arguments put forward by the bomb-Baghdad brigade to get the UN on board, the most absurd is the parallel with the League of Nations. According to this argument, Iraq is now shaping up for the UN’s credibility as the 1930s Manchurian crisis did for the League of Nations. This would give the impression that the League of Nations failed in its mission and had to fold up because it was not able or unwilling to give a dubious legal cover for Japanese (read American) invasion of Manchuria (read Iraq) in 1931. Of course there can be “new history” as there is a “new Europe.” Even the concern for UN “authority” expressed by President George Bush and his allies in the UK strains one’s credibility. Both US and UK have all along been threatening that they would invade Iraq “with or without UN backing”. Long before Resolution 1441 was passed, there was the claim that Resolution 678 (demanding Iraqi disarmament and passed in the wake of the first Gulf War) was all-encompassing in its sweep giving wide powers to the US and UK (not to the UN) to pounce on Iraq any time they wanted and in any way they chose.

Terror in the shadows
By Yossi Melman, Ha'aretz, February 13, 2003 
Saddam Hussein has refrained from using terror organizations to attain his goals, which runs counter to U.S. claims about Iraq's indirect links to Osama bin Laden. -- Ahmad Fadheel Nazal Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a 36-year-old Palestinian with an amputated leg, and Mullah Krekar, a preacher in an Oslo mosque, says American intelligence, are the link connecting Saddam Hussein and his government to Al-Qaida and international Jihad terror. In his speech last week before the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell named Zarqawi and his Al-Ansar Al-Islam organization, whose spiritual leader is Mullah Krekar. However, Powell presented mainly circumstantial evidence: Zarqawi was given medical treatment in Baghdad and the Al-Ansar organization runs a training camp in northern Iraq. On Monday, Powell reiterated his accusations before a congressional committee. But intelligence sources in Israel and Europe, and independent experts, cast considerable doubt on the American claim. They says the links between Iraq and the terror networks, if they exist, are not as straightforward as Powell would like us to believe. Their opinion, in part, reflects careful scrutiny of Saddam Hussein's regime relations with terrorist organizations.

Hey ho, here comes the war
By Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, February 13, 2003
Anyone looking for reasons to doubt the urgency of, or even the justification for the attack on Iraq can find them in the multiplicity of erudite explanations, sophisticated historic parallels, rosy forecasts, expressions of rejoicing at the possibility of war as reflected in military and civilian "preparedness" - and, mainly, the attempt to present the mere doubt of the urgency of the war as evidence of cowardliness and moral turpitude.
The further the discussion moves from the direct questions regarding the means that must be employed so as to prevent or eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, the greater the suspicion that the pretexts and objectives of the war are merely excuses concocted for the sake of propaganda. In actuality, what we have here are the militant doctrines of an imperial power, economic self-interest and an attempt to ride the waves of the war to achieve petty political objectives. When one reads the analyses of military commentators and experts on violence and war, it is impossible not to intuit the air of enthusiasm and cheery anticipation: Hey ho, here comes the war that will sweep up everyone "from their outdated positions and open up new arenas" (Amir Oren, Haaretz, February 11). Along with other historical parallels raised to prove - or not prove - the point, it is permissible to add the euphoria that reigned in Europe immediately before the declaration of World War I: It was received enthusiastically among historians, military experts, politicians and intellectuals, who believed that the war presaged the arrival of a new and promising era.

Robert Fisk: Don't mention the war in Afghanistan
The Independent, February 5, 2003
The near collapse of peace in this savage land is a narrative erased from the mind of Americans -- There's one sure bet about the statement to be made to the UN Security Council today by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell – or by General Colin Powell as he has now been mysteriously reassigned by the American press: he won't be talking about Afghanistan. For since the Afghan war is the "successful" role model for America's forthcoming imperial adventure across the Middle East, the near-collapse of peace in this savage land and the steady erosion of US forces in Afghanistan – the nightly attacks on American and other international troops, the anarchy in the cities outside Kabul, the warlordism and drug trafficking and steadily increasing toll of murders – are unmentionables, a narrative constantly erased from the consciousness of Americans who are now sending their young men and women by the tens of thousands to stage another "success" story.

War, and the Color Purple
By Michael Gillespie, Media Monitors Network, February 13, 2003
"May our country, on the brink of war, take to heart the final refrain of  'America the Beautiful' - "America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." - Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967  -- Talking with a friend about the war madness that seems to infect the thinking of so many Americans: He says the fervor for war is mostly manufactured, hyped up by Bush administration neoconservative ideologues, celebrity Christian Zionist TV and radio preachers, and political operatives in mass media.  He says the mania for war is partly illusion, that the animus and bellicosity now so evident in broadcast media are purposefully exaggerated to further the neoconservatives' political agenda.  There is, of course, a great deal of truth in his observation. And, modern weaponry being so hideously destructive, there is something distinctly unseemly—uncivilized—about a people who are far too enthusiastic at the prospect of going to war.  Why are so many Americans, especially fundamentalist Christians, susceptible to the manipulations of racist thugs and fanatics who genuinely believe a genocidal war between East and West would best serve their interests? I've begun to wonder if some American Christians don't simply lack the ability to empathize at any great depth with the suffering of others.  The depiction of the typical American as a comfortable affluent snob, a citizen of the manicured suburbs who remains smugly ignorant of the world beyond U.S. borders as he drives his gas-guzzling SUV from home to office and back again, is a demeaning stereotype.  But there is a grain of truth in some stereotypes, and, sadly, this one seems to contain more than its share.  United States history since the Great Depression is for the most part a history of well-nigh spectacular success in most areas of human endeavor.  With the exception of the divisive and disastrous war in Vietnam, the American experience is a strange mixture of thoughtless, careless, and rapacious materialism, social progress, technological advancement, and unprecedented political and military success on the world stage.  Should it surprise that a people who are more or less strangers to deprivation, exploitation, oppression, and desperation, who have never evidenced a keen sensitivity to the plight of the American Indian, to whom North America once belonged in its entirety, are experiencing difficulty relating to the suffering of others?