McCarthy's ghost
By Gary Younge, The Guardian, March 27, 2003
Democracy is under threat in the United States; anyone who objects to the conflict in Iraq is not allowed to say so -- It's drive time with WABC's rightwing talkshow host, Curtis Sliwa, and Bill is on the line from the Poconos in Pennsylvania with a tale so funny he can hardly share it for giggling. He was carrying an American flag and yelling support for the troops in a delayed St Patrick's Day parade over the weekend when he saw one woman carrying a sign saying: "No blood for oil". "She was wearing black and she was an older lady," says Bill. "And then our sheriff saw her and she didn't have a permit. So they put her in the back of the truck car and hauled her away." On its own, Bill's story would be aberrant - the tale of an overzealous legal official and an unfortunate woman in smalltown America. Increasingly though it is becoming consistent. The harassment, arrest, detention and frustration of those who are against the war is becoming routine. Relatives of victims who died on September 11, who are opposed to the war, have been prevented from speaking in schools. Last month Stephen Downs was handcuffed and arrested after refusing to take off a Give Peace a Chance T-shirt in a mall in Albany. He was told he would have been found guilty of trespass if the mall had not dropped the case because of the bad publicity.

Fomenting Unrest in Jordan
By Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice, March 26, 2003
Iraq Vice-President Ramadan Chastises Jordan -- It is good for the people to see the King and Queen having a hamburger at Planet Hollywood.  -- King Abdullah -- So spoke the Jordanian Hashemite ruler while in London. These words outline so emphatically how oblivious the burger-munching king can be of his subjects back home. The hamburger is the symbol of western middle-class food fare but it is hardly such in Jordan, where hobis (flat bread), homos (chickpea paste), and a cucumber, tomato salad is the common fare. Indeed two of Jordan’s six hamburger restaurants extraordinaire, McDonalds, have closed in Jordan. (1) Hamburgers are a food of those with upward mobility in Jordan. But upscale Planet Hollywood hamburgers and jet-setting to London are pipe dreams for most Jordanians. Truly this was a foot-in-the-mouth gaffe by an out-of-touch monarch although much has been made of his previous escapades as a masquerading taxi driver attempting to probe the pulse of his nation. Jordanians seldom dare to openly criticize their monarch. Monarchy is the guise of dictatorship. There are no elections to choose a ruler in Jordan. The prime minister, his (little chance of a woman in this patriarchy) cabinet, and senators are appointed and dismissed at the king’s caprice. The elected parliament is a sop to farcical democratic pretences. Dissent is only tolerated within tight limits set by the oligarchs. Exploitation of tribal rivalries and an effective security and intelligence apparatus help to maintain regime stability. As with his father King Hussein, the cult ruler image is perpetuated. Larger-than-life photos of the king are ubiquitous throughout the kingdom. TV news inveterately begins with a roundup of the latest exploits of the king. More often than not he appears in diplomatic role, soliciting aid and business for his natural resource-poor realm.

Waging War: Bush's impossible dream
By William S. Lind, United Press International, March 18, 2003
President George W. Bush is dreaming the impossible dream. In his effort to ensure lasting American global leadership in the 21st century, he has so far only succeeded in isolating his own country from its traditional allies and supporters around the world. . . . the administration in Washington has isolated itself from several of its oldest allies, provoked a serious split in NATO, and left itself very much on the defensive in the face of an inspections process that continues to find no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- and thus no causus belli, or justification for war for the United States. . . . Is this simply ineptitude, or is something larger going on here? I suggest the latter. For some time, elements in the administration have been looking far beyond Iraq. They have spoken with increasing openness about re-making the entire Middle East, installing "democratic" governments that would be friendly not only to the United States but to Israel. . . . America is to become not just "the only superpower" but a "hyperpower" which no one can hope to resist. China is to be cowed by an arms race she cannot afford; non-state elements will fall to American Special Forces; the U.N. will be a tool of American world dominance. . . . America will be the New Britain, perhaps the New Rome. Or, more likely, the New Spain. The Spanish analogy is not one most Americans will know, nor one the new Wilsonians will much care for. But it may prove apt. . . . What finally stopped Hapsburg Spain and, later, France under King Louis XIV and Napoleon and Germany under Hitler from establishing the universal monarchy was a fundamental characteristic of the international state system: whenever one nation attempts to attain world dominance, it pushes everyone else into a coalition against it. . . . That dynamic, not any love for Saddam, is what is behind German and French opposition to the Bush administration's plan for war with Iraq. That is what is drawing others, including Russia, into supporting the French and the Germans. . . . The real question is not whether the American drive for world hegemony will succeed; it will not. The question is why we are attempting it in the first place.

The man behind the new Iran-US entente on Iraq
By Ali Nourizadeh, The Daily Star, March, 22, 2003
On the eve of his recent trip to Tehran to attend an Iraqi Shiite conference, Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi contacted the Iranian Embassy in London. Chalabi spoke with the embassy’s adviser for relations with Iraqi opposition groups, Hossein Niknan, who used to be Iran’s charge d’affaires in Beirut. The INC leader asked the Iranian diplomat to issue a multiple entry visa for his public relations consultant whom he said would be traveling with him to Iraqi Kurdistan through Iran and back again. Under strict orders from Tehran to comply with all Chalabi’s requests, Niknan did not hesitate to accede to this one even though the PR man in question was not Iraqi but American, Francis Brooke by name. Brooke, who was traveling with Chalabi, is a well-known American Middle East specialist and is rumored to be close to US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Chalabi was surprised to see Niknan take such an interest in Brooke’s case; the American was granted a special multiple entry visa similar to the one issued to Chalabi himself. When the pair arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, the Iranian authorities not only waived the newly introduced fingerprinting rule ­ introduced in response to a US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) decision to fingerprint all Iranians entering the US ­ as far as Brooke was concerned, Chalabi felt that his companion was being made even more welcome by immigration officers and Iranian Foreign Ministry officials than he was. Brooke was so warmly received wherever he went in Tehran that journalists who met with Chalabi were intrigued. They noted that Iranian officials ­ from the departments of security and foreign affairs, the Revolutionary Guards and the presidency ­ were even more interested in Brooke than in the INC leader himself. A young Iranian journalist who asked a Foreign Ministry official just back from a meeting between Brooke and a senior Iranian National Security official whether Chalabi’s PR consultant had indeed delivered a letter from the US administration to the Iranian leadership said that the Foreign Ministry man replied: “All I can say is that he (Brooke) is an important person who knows many secrets. We believe he is in contact with Washington decision-making circles. We therefore have to use the opportunity of his being in Tehran to convey our point of view to the Bush administration vis-a-vis the war on Iraq ­ especially since the US government has closed off all other avenues open to us.”

They are fighting for their independence, not Saddam
By Seumas Milne, The Guardian, March 27, 2003
Resistance to the US-British occupation will not end with this regime -- The Anglo-American war now being fought in the Middle East is without question the most flagrant act of aggression carried out by a British government in modern times. The assault on Iraq which began a week ago, in the teeth of global and national opinion, was launched without even the flimsiest Iraqi provocation or threat to Britain or the US, in breach of the UN charter and international law, and in defiance of the majority of states represented on the UN security council. It is necessary to descend deep into the mire of the colonial era to find some sort of precedent or parallel for this piratical onslaught. However wrong or unnecessary, every previous British war for the past 80 years or more has been fought in response to some invasion, rebellion, civil war or emergency. Even in the most crudely rapacious case of Suez, there was at least a challenge in the form of the nationalisation of the canal. Not so with Iraq, where the regime was actually destroying missiles with which it might have hoped to defend itself only a couple of days before the start of the US-led attack.
But there is little reflection of this reality, or of Anglo-American isolation in the world over the war, in either the bulk of the British media coverage or the response from most politicians and public figures. Little is now heard of the original pretext for war, Iraq's much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction, and regime change - that lodestar of the US hawks which Tony Blair struggled to dissociate himself from for so long - is now the uncontested mission of the campaign. Having lost the public debate on the war, Blair has demanded that a divided nation rally round British troops carrying out his policy of aggression in the Gulf.

US Will Lose The Iraq War - Says Scott Ritter
By Fintan Dunne, GuluFuture.com, March 25, 2003
Thorn in the side of the American administration, and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, has warned that America will lose the Iraq war and the American military: "will leave Iraq with its tail between its legs." In an interview with Irish radio, Mr. Ritter said that the conflict would become an "absolute quagmire," and the US-UK advance would stall outside Bhagdad and fail to capture the city. "We find ourselves... facing a nation of 23 million, with armed elements numbering around 7 million --who are concentrated at urban areas. We will not win this fight. America will loose this war," said Mr. Ritter. According to Mr. Ritter, too many in the Pentagon have listened to: "the blithering of Iraqi expatriates," whose agenda coincides with neo-conservatives in the White House. "We're in Iraq --carrying out the right-wing neo-conservative motives of a handful of people. The Richard Perle's, Paul Wolfowitz's; the Dick Cheney's. And we've allowed them to hijack our foreign policy," he told Irish broadcaster, Vincent Browne on the RTE1 radio "Tonight Show." He warned that Shia Muslims in the South were not fighting because of intimidation by the Iraqi government, but because of nationalistic and religious reasons. "They're doing it because, the American Crusader Infidel has invaded and violated Holy Iraq, and they will resist us, and they will resist us strongly," said Mr. Ritter. "We are not liberating Iraq, we are destroying Iraq," he added later in the interview. Scott Ritter, is a former U.N. weapons inspector and author of the book "Endgame." Ritter, a ballistic missile technology expert, worked in military intelligence during his 12-year career in the U.S. armed forces. In 1998, Ritter resigned from the U.N. Special Commissions team to protest Clinton Administration policies that he said subverted the weapons inspection process.

It was an outrage, an obscenity
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 27, 2003
It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car. Two missiles from an American jet killed them all – by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be 'liberated' by the nation that destroyed their lives. Who dares, I ask myself, to call this 'collateral damage'? Abu Taleb Street was packed with pedestrians and motorists when the American pilot approached through the dense sandstorm that covered northern Baghdad in a cloak of red and yellow dust and rain yesterday morning. It's a dirt-poor neighbourhood, of mostly Shia Muslims, the same people whom Messrs Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against President Saddam Hussein, a place of oil-sodden car-repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafés. Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words. "Roar, flash," he kept saying and then closed his eyes so tight that the muscles rippled between them.

Palestinians: Long-term Hopefulness Still Dominates
By Kathleen and Bill Christison, CounterPUnch, March 25, 2003
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi -- Hanan Ahsrawi tells us bluntly that the principal aim of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and his right-wing, Zionist fundamentalist government is to make sure that no Palestinian state ever exists as a viable entity. Their goal, she says, “is not just dismantling the infrastructure, the structures of Palestinian statehood, but dismantling an identity: not just preventing formation of a viable Palestinian state but eliminating a nation and a people.” Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator and former spokesperson for the Palestinian negotiating delegation who is known widely in the United States as an articulate, plain-talking, down-to-earth spokesperson for her people, easily able to relate to American audiences and speak to Americans in their own political dialect. Ashrawi describes Israel as having returned to a strain of fundamentalist Zionism, reminiscent of 1948, that denies Palestinian identity altogether. It is attempting actually to deconstruct the Palestinian presence, to render it docile and compliant. Anyone who tries to assert himself, to stand up for Palestinian rights, is put down; no resistance is permitted. Israel, Ashrawi asserts, “is sending the message to the Palestinians that you are totally at our mercy, we’ve robbed you of any independence, you’re broken. Sharon has tried this before, and he’ll keep trying.” The message that Ashrawi sees is clear wherever you go in the occupied West Bank. When we flew from Amman to Tel Aviv a week ago, the small commuter airliner flew at just 8,000 feet on a bright, cloudless day, giving us a striking bird’s-eye view of Israel’s massive encroachment on this Palestinian territory. An Israeli settlement or outpost stands on virtually every hilltop, commanding the terrain around it, cutting off one Palestinian town from another. There are over 200 of these Israeli settlements in a territory of about 2,000 square miles, a huge insertion of a Jewish/Israeli presence and identity into a Palestinian landscape.

The End of Empire
By William Greider, The Nation, September 23, 2002
The imperial ambitions of the Bush Administration, post-9/11, are founded on quicksand and are eventually sure to founder, but for fundamental reasons not currently under discussion. Bush's open-ended claims for US power--including the unilateral right to invade and occupy "failed states" to execute "regime change"--offend international law and are prerogatives associated only with empire. But Bush's greater vulnerability is about money. You can't sustain an empire from a debtor's weakening position--sooner or later the creditors pull the plug. That humiliating lesson was learned by Great Britain early in the last century, and the United States faces a similar reckoning ahead. The US financial position is rapidly deteriorating, due mainly to America's persistent and growing trade deficit. US ambitions to run the world, in other words, are heavily mortgaged. Like any debtor who borrows more year after year with no plausible way to reverse the trend, a nation sinking deeper into debt enters into an adverse power relationship with its creditors--greater and greater dependency. These creditors are both private investors and governments from Europe and Asia; now none of them have any incentive to disrupt their lopsided relationship with the superpowerful leader of the world. After all, it works for them: Their exports have unfettered access to the largest consumer market in the world, producing trade surpluses and gaining greater market share. Their capital, meanwhile, reaps good returns on the loans and investments in the American economy. But history suggests that with sufficient provocation, the creditor nations will eventually assert their leverage over the United States, however reluctantly. That critical juncture is likely to arrive either because the American debt burden has become so great that additional lending would be too risky or because the creditor nations want to jerk Washington's chain, perhaps to head off reckless new adventures. Either way, it will be a humbling moment for American triumphalism.