Sharon's policy toward the Palestinians during the war against Iraq 
By Sergio Yahni, Alternative Information Center, March 28, 2003 
Palestinians and Israelis expected an escalation in Israeli violence toward the Palestinian people with the opening of the hostilities in Iraq. However, the opposite actually happened. There was no escalation and reality continued its bloody course. However, the enforced Palestinian reality is abnormal and this abnormality continues: targeted and non-targeted assassinations, home demolitions, destruction of productive fields and continuous siege. Palestinian reality is abnormal with most of the Palestinian people depending on international humanitarian aid in order to subsist. This is the biggest achievement of the Sharon government, in the framework of the war in Iraq. Sharon and Mofaz have transformed the abnormal and criminal into normalcy in the mind of the international public opinion. This wasn't the first choice of the Israeli government which preferred to end the Palestinian uprising once and for all. However, the US interests in the region imposed this choice. The US prefers not to open a second front in the region, and Sharon was forced to accept this. Columnist Aluf Ben writes in March 27 in the Haaretz newspaper: "From the day he became Prime Minister, Sharon has set down a clear order of priorities in relations with the United States: The Palestinian issue comes first and everything else is secondary. The Prime Minister needs American support in the conflict with the Palestinians, and is willing to pay for it in areas where American interests differ from those of Israel."

The damage is closer than we think
By Bob Kerr,  Providence Journal, March 26, 2003
We will have some rebuilding to do after this war. We all know it. The destruction is devastating. We will have to start with our collective intelligence. It is getting blasted. The collateral damage has been ugly. What happened to that fierce independence of mind and spirit that we once prided ourselves on? When did we put on the blinders and surrender to the kind of empty-eyed, unquestioning allegiance that would make the Founding Fathers cringe? We have run to the safety of pat phrases and empty platitudes. We don't want to question for fear of the answers.
We take our news of the war in Iraq from reporters who are "embedded" with the military units. We marvel at the live instant coverage. But there is little there, because access is so controlled. Reporters are caught saying "we" when referring to the units they are with. The most devastating footage of the war so far has come from an Arab network in Qatar, and our government asked U.S. networks not to show it. Yet there seems no great outcry at this sanitized presentation of the war. It is more comfortable, easier to digest. There are fewer disturbing questions. We hear of Bulgaria joining a "coalition." And Estonia. Is Liechtenstein in or out? It would be comic if not so desperately sad.

Imploding strategy
Hani Shukrallah, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 27 March - 2 April 2003
A week into the war and it is the planners of the illegal invasion who are in shock -- The US/British invasion of Iraq, now in its seventh day, has proved, if anything, even more "unpredictable" than American military officials promised it would be, and this in ways they could not have imagined a week ago. The invasion was to be conducted with "breathtaking" speed. The world was to be given a demonstration of new smart weapons, so precise they would flush the Iraqi leadership out of its deepest bunkers. Shi'ites in the south would rise up in rebellion, welcoming their liberators on the streets of Basra, in scenes reminiscent of the "liberation" of Kabul. Saddam Hussein's regime would crumble. Iraqi military commanders, with whom "coalition" military chiefs hinted they were in secret communication, would disband their forces and disappear quietly rather than face trial as war criminals -- as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to threaten in the early hours of the invasion, when he warned all those who fought beside Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that they would face the same fate as Iraq's president if they fought back. The duration of the war would be counted in hours rather than days. It did not quite work out that way. By day seven the only urban centre the coalition forces can claim to have seized is the tiny port of Umm Al-Qasr, straddling the Iraq-Kuwait border. This, after six days of fierce fighting.
Speaking to reporters at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday Rumsfeld warned: "This campaign could well grow more dangerous in the coming days and weeks as coalition forces close on Baghdad and the regime is faced with certain death." "But the outcome is assured," he added, in what has become an Anglo-American mantra.

Al-Jazeera — a Threat to Western Media
By Faisal Bodi, Arab News/The Guardian, March 29, 2003
DOHA, 29 March 2003 — Last month, when it became clear that the US-led drive to war was irreversible, I — like many other British journalists — relocated to Qatar for a ringside seat. But I am an Islamist journalist, so while the others bedded down at the one-million pound media center at US central command in As-Sayliyah, I found a more humble berth in the capital Doha, working for the Internet arm of Al-Jazeera. And yet, only a week into the war, I find myself working for the most sought-after news resource in the world. On March 23, the night the channel screened the first footage of captured US POWs, Al-Jazeera was the most searched item on the Internet portal, Lycos, registering three times as many hits as the next item. I do not mean to brag — people are turning to us simply because the Western media coverage has been so poor. For although Doha is just a 15-minute drive from central command, the view of events from here could not be more different. Of all the major global networks, Al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing campaign, the blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the screaming infants and the corpses. Its team of on-the-ground, unembedded correspondents has provided a corrective to the official line that the campaign is, barring occasional resistance, going to plan.

Raw, Devastating Realities That Expose the Truth About Basra 
By Robert Fisk, Common Dreams/The lndependent, March 28, 2003
Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl – victim of an Anglo American air strike – is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress. An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape – filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad – is raw, painful, devastating. It is also proof that Basra – reportedly "captured'' and "secured'' by British troops last week – is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as they are unloaded from a government truck.

A Disaster Unfolding in Iraq 
By Stephen Zunes, Common Dreams, March 28, 2003 
One would have thought Washington had learned from the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco that you can't really trust exiles who assure you that their people will greet you enthusiastically as liberators and rise up against the regime. Despite optimistic predictions, there have thus far been no mass defections of Iraqi soldiers, there have been no spontaneous uprisings against Saddam Hussein and U.S. and British soldiers attempting to enter Iraqi cities have been met not by cheers and flowers but by bullets and grenades. And this has all taken place in predominantly Shiite-populated sections of southern Iraq long considered a center of opposition to Saddam's dictatorship. The reality is that no matter how brutal a dictator may be, people tend to defend their homeland against foreign invaders. Russians defended their country through staggering losses against an invading German army despite their suffering under Stalin. The Iraqis fought off the Iranian counter-attack during the 1980s even though Saddam Hussein's regime was as repressive then as it is now.

"UK/USA, It Means to Me: United to Kill US All"
By Gazwan Al Muktar, Dissident Voice, March 27, 2003
An Ordinary Iraqi Speaks Out -- Note: This interview was conducted just moments after reports emerged that US/UK forces bombed Iraqi television and a market place in a residential neighborhood in Baghdad, March 26, 2003. Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman and correspondent Jeremy Scahill spoke with Gazwan Al Muktar, a retired engineer from his home in Baghdad. This is a rush transcript. -- Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent: We’re joined on the phone by Gazwan Al Muktar, a retired engineer and ordinary resident of Baghdad , something that you almost never hear on the US networks. Gazwan, we’re hearing reports that a Baghdad marketplace has been bombed. As many as forty plus people being killed--again, the reports are just coming in--as well about Iraqi TV being hit. What are you hearing in Baghdad right now, Gazwan Al Muktar? -- Gazwan Al Muktar: Jeremy, we have been,--since the morning-- continuously bombarded since last night. We are being threatened this night with the severest bombardment since the start of the war. They have attacked the television station and the Iraqi Satellite Channel, which has resulted in the deaths of so many TV journalists and the TV technicians. Also they are threatening to bomb the--or attack-- the congregation of the TV satellite channels correspondents, or the international correspondents in the Ministry of Information. This is at the Press Center. And everybody, every journalist, is in a panic because this is a crime against the journalism. This is an unacceptable violation of the journalists who have immunity from being attacked or something, or bombarded. But apparently the US is intent is to continue bombarding so that no word will be coming out of Baghdad to show the severity of the bombing that we are being subjected to.

Lunch with the FT: Dr Dalil Boubakeur
By Jo Johnson, Financial Times, March 28, 2003
The heat in the dark recesses of the hammam, the communal bathhouse of the Paris mosque, was infernal. Sweat pools sagged in giant welts on the ceiling. A radio belonging to the man selling sugary tea and cakes piped in the news from the front, audible over the muted thuds and low groans of men being pummelled, stretched and twisted into pretzels by moustachioed masseurs. "American tanks have advanced to 150km of the Iraqi capital, which has suffered a second night of massive bombardment," a sombre voice intoned. Frequented and financed largely by the Algerian community, the 1920s mosque, whose minaret and crenellated walls tower over the neighbourhood, bustled with activity. While the faithful attended evening prayers, tables in the mosque's trendy café were occupied by non-Muslim Parisians showing solidarity with a community that is living and breathing the war in Iraq. Dr Dalil Boubakeur, the 62-year-old rector of the mosque, is perspiring gently when I return to the Latin Quarter on Monday afternoon. He is in great demand. Next month, elections in most of the recognised mosques across France will create a new Muslim assembly, with an appointed governing council which the centre-right government has asked him to chair. The main aim of the council is to stem the spread of what Nicholas Sarkozy, the highly visible interior minister, terms the "Islam of cellars and garages". Boubakeur, who once drew fire from young Arabs for describing the Islam of the banlieues as a religion of "hotheads", will become spokesman for the 4m-5m people who form Europe's largest Islamic population. Through him, the French state will for the first time have a formal channel through which to deal with the country's Muslims - nearly 10 per cent of the population - at a time of rising communal tensions.

War in Iraq and Israeli occupation: A devastating resonance
By Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish, The Electronic Intifada, March 28, 2003
For all the physical devastation being produced by the war in Iraq, the political and diplomatic damage to the region and American foreign policy may be even more profound. Indeed, less serious attention seems to have been paid to the requirements of rebuilding political relations than repairing the infrastructure and society of Iraq. This conflict is further poisoning the already noxious political atmosphere between Arabs and Americans. It has intensified dangerous feelings of humiliation and outrage among the Arab public, while paranoid rhetoric about Western attacks against Islam is spreading from the religious fringe to the mainstream. Our government's failure to secure authorization for this war from the United Nations Security Council, largely dismissed as an unfortunate but minor detail here at home, has had a profound impact throughout the world. Almost no one in the Arab world accepts the administration's stated concerns about either Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or the brutality of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship. The consensus is that long-term American domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf region is the actual aim. As a result, while most Americans see ourselves as liberators, near-universal Arab perception is that ordinary Iraqis are fighting courageously against incredible odds to defend their homeland. The profound Arab sense of violation trumps particulars about who is in charge of Iraq, even the reviled Hussein.

Corridors of Power / Bumps in the road map
By Uzi Benziman, Haaretz, March 28, 2003
1. To each his own timetable -- Yesterday, some people in the Middle East were waiting with bated breath to hear what Tony Blair would say after his meeting with George W. Bush. Would his remarks indicate that he'd been able to persuade the American president to place the road map on the table now? Or, would they indicate that he'd accepted Bush's position that, for the present, lip service must be paid to the U.S. commitment to this process, but that it will not move ahead until the objectives of the war in Iraq are achieved and Saddam Hussein's regime is toppled? Among those who were anxiously awaiting the results of Blair's talks with Bush were Abu Mazen and the representatives of the Quartet, who played a key role in the former's selection as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. Ariel Sharon, on the other hand, was complacent about the meeting between the American president and the British prime minister: He's confident that the timetable for implementation of the road map will be set by Bush, in accordance with his judgment alone, and that therefore there is plenty of time before it will have to be dealt with.    2. What the implementation mechanism will look like -- Before the war in Iraq began, there was wide agreement that it could give a jump-start to a political process that would lead to an alleviation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yesterday, this premise seemed to have lost some of its persuasiveness. In view of the setbacks that the U.S. and Britain have encountered in Iraq, some of the foreign diplomats posted in Israel were wondering whether the war was becoming a burden rather than an asset in the effort to resolve the conflict here. While to Israeli perceptions, the obstacles encountered by the American and British forces in Iraq appeared reasonable and expected, some foreign diplomats were wondering if they presaged a long-term American (and British) entanglement in a distant and hostile country - a situation that could push every other matter, including the road map, off the American president's agenda.