This is not terrorism
By Fred Kaplan, The Guardian, April 3, 2003
Branding Iraqi attacks subtly suggests a 9/11 link -- When Iraqi soldiers dress in civilian clothes and set off bombs at US military checkpoints, or when they pretend to surrender and then fire at US troops, are they committing acts of "terrorism"? Bush administration officials have invoked the word. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer recounted such incidents, then said, "We're really dealing with elements of terrorism inside Iraq that are being employed now against our troops." Major-general Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations for the joint chiefs of staff, said the attacks "look and feel like terrorism". It is no mere matter of semantics to point out that these attacks have nothing to do with terrorism. Many definitions of that word are floating around, but they all agree that terrorism involves an attack on civilians or private property, not on soldiers or military installations. The US state department officially defines it as "premeditated, politically motivated violence propagated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience" (my italics). A similar defence department definition adds that terrorist attacks are designed "to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives". Paul Pillar, former deputy chief of CIA counterterrorism, cites the key ingredient of terrorism: "It is aimed at civilians - not at military targets or combat-ready troops." In other words, any attack on armed troops in wartime cannot, by definition, be terrorism. However, these attacks are clear violations of international law. Article 37 of Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, signed in 1977, prohibits "perfidy" - defined as "acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law." Specific examples include "the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender" and "the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status".

Strange path to Palestine
By Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, April 3, 2003
After this war, the history of the future will reveal unintended consequences -- 'Free Palestine' said the placards held up by some marchers on the anti-war demonstrations. Well, here's a surprise for them: this bloody mess of a war may result in a free Palestine. Let me explain, through this extract from the 2020 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Contemporary World History: "Curiously, the Iraq war can be seen as the turning point in progress towards an independent Palestinian state. American forces, with their overwhelming technological superiority, succeeded militarily in defeating Saddam Hussein, but, as one American general ruefully observed, the enemy was 'a bit different from the one we wargamed against'. The military campaign resulted in civilian casualties and damage to Islamic holy places that inflamed the whole Arab world. One young Egyptian sarcastically remarked to a western television interviewer: 'Thank you very much, British and Americans, because you're waking us up.' British troops compared their street-by-street struggle against paramilitary groups to Northern Ireland. This proved prescient. For the subsequent occupation of Iraq was like Northern Ireland, only worse. A large majority of Iraqis were delighted to be rid of Saddam Hussein; this did not mean they welcomed a colonial administration imposed by Washington, headed by a retired American general, and which included a minister of finance who was a former head of the CIA. British forces prided themselves on being more subtle in winning the 'hearts and minds' of a restless population, but they underestimated the depth of historic resentment directed specifically against Britain, the former colonial power in both Iraq and Palestine. A relatively small number of Iraqi paramilitaries and suicide bombers compelled the Anglo-American occupying forces to use tactics that, seen throughout the Arab world on al-Jazeera television, reminded Arabs everywhere of Israeli soldiers' behaviour in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Saddam's masters of concealment dig in, ready for battle
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, April 3, 2003
The road to the front in central Iraq is a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks and trucks hidden in palm groves, a train of armoured vehicles bombed from the air and hundreds of artillery positions dug into revetments to defend the capital. That a Western journalist could see so much of Iraq's military preparedness says as much for the Iraqi government's self-confidence as it does for the need of Saddam Hussein's regime to make propaganda against its enemies. True, there are signs of the Americans and British striking at the Iraqi military. Two gun pits had been turned to ashes by direct air strikes and a military barracks – empty like all the large installations that were likely to be on the Anglo-American target list – had been turned into grey powder by missiles. On a rail track south of Hillah, a train carrying military transport had been bombed from the air, the detonations blasting two armoured vehicles off their flat-bed trucks and hurling them in bits down an embankment. But other armoured personnel carriers, including an old American 113 vehicle – presumably a captured relic from the Iranian army – remained intact. If that was the extent of the Americans' success south of Baghdad, there are literally hundreds of military vehicles untouched for a hundred miles south of the capital, carefully camouflaged to avoid air attack.

Wailing children, the wounded, the dead: victims of the day cluster bombs rained on Babylon
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, April 3, 2003
The wounds are vicious and deep, a rash of scarlet spots on the back and thighs or face, the shards of shrapnel from the cluster bombs buried an inch or more in the flesh. The wards of the Hillah teaching hospital are proof that something illegal – something quite outside the Geneva Conventions – occurred in the villages around the city once known as Babylon. The wailing children, the young women with breast and leg wounds, the 10 patients upon whom doctors had to perform brain surgery to remove metal from their heads, talk of the days and nights when the explosives fell "like grapes" from the sky. Cluster bombs, the doctors say – and the detritus of the air raids around the hamlets of Nadr and Djifil and Akramin and Mahawil and Mohandesin and Hail Askeri shows that they are right. Were they American or British aircraft that showered these villages with one of the most lethal weapons of modern warfare? The 61 dead who have passed through the Hillah hospital since Saturday night cannot tell us. Nor can the survivors who, in many cases, were sitting in their homes when the white canisters opened high above their village, spilling thousands of bomblets into the sky, exploding in the air, soaring through windows and doorways to burst indoors or bouncing off the roofs of the concrete huts to blow up later in the roadways.

Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates
Published on Tuesday, April 2, 2003 by the Guardian/UK 
By Arundhati Roy, Common Dreams/The Independent, April 2, 2003
How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilization. -- On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colorful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles. On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11." To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said. According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess. It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically and financially through his worst excesses.

A Pure Sharonian War
By Abdulwahab Badrakhan, Dar Al-Hayat, April 3, 2003
Two weeks into this war, Americans have already managed to live up to the Israelis' reputation, and they might even surpass them, considering this war's terrorism and cruelty. Just like war criminal Ariel Sharon gathered his government to take a decision, American soldiers have received clear orders to kill Iraqi civilians whether men, women or children, as they all have become enemy targets. The slaughters spreading from Basra to Baghdad, and from Hallah to Najaf indicate that the only goal the Americans have come to achieve is to kill and occupy. Actually, the first week was more than enough to uncover the lies of the Americans, which the public opinion wanted to believe, so as to recreate in their minds 'their' own America. Hence, the scenario was: if the pressure represented by the mobilization of troops would push the Iraqi regime to give up its rights about the inspection for weapons, then the regime would certainly collapse if these troops infiltrated the borders and rushed towards Baghdad. Americans believed that the flyers they threw were sufficient to bring Iraqi officers and soldiers to rebel or to incite people to disobey and attack government forces...But this is not what happened. Hence, civilians and soldiers were no longer considered as natural allies cooperating with the invading forces, but rather as the enemy that must die. Americans did not prepare for anything logical. In fact, they sent their soldiers with the assurance that there will be no human losses among them, as they came on a 'liberation' mission. They got obsessed with the hot weather and its effects and took necessary precautions in case of chemical weapons, but what they did not take into consideration, was the enemy awaiting them. As a matter of fact, they thought they were coming to finish him, and expected nothing but a symbolic resistance, even in the cities they nominated to be "cooperative" with them. They were not aware that the forces of the authority had prepared to destroy such a possibility. More importantly, Americans did not think for a moment that others did not trust them, not even those they considered as "cooperative."

Wonder-Working Power
By James Heflin, Valley Advocate, April 3, 2003
George W. Bush, armed with the sharp sword of Christian fundamentalism, wades into battle -- George W. Bush's January State of the Union address was, for the most part, nothing out of the ordinary. But then my former governor (yes, I'm a Texan) dropped an unusual phrase: "...there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people." That phrase was not mere wordsmithing. I know it well. I know about polished church pews; I know about dress shoes that blistered my young feet and the smooth heft of the hymnal. As the son of a Southern Baptist minister, I know. I know about the exuberant, saloon-worthy piano, the cat-eye-spectacled old ladies sliding "power" into one syllable, and I know the rest of the phrase: "There is pow'r, pow'r, wonder-working pow'r, in the blood, [men echo] in the blood, of the Lamb, [men echo again] of the Lamb. There is pow'r, pow'r, wonder-working pow'r in the precious blood of the Lamb." Bush was stealthily passing the message to the flock, to my flock. The issues that have plagued that flock for a quarter century are integral to understanding the second self-professed "born-again" man in the White House, his political tactics and his war in Iraq. Its fans call it the "conservative resurgence." Its detractors call it the "fundamentalist takeover." The astonishing fact is that many, perhaps most, Southern Baptists are unaware that the foundation of their faith has been officially pulled out from under them through systematic, long-term political manipulation. The people of God trust each other; when someone breaks the rules, they pray, they try to reconcile. But the abandonment of civil behavior always trumps good will.

Is Israel More Secured Now that Iraqis are Dying?
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, April 3, 2003
"The pro-Israeli circle in the Administration, ferocious advocates of the pre-emptive war strategy and whose duel allegiances seem to disregard the interests of the American people, was almost complete .." -- Israel appears more at ease, now that American and British bombs are falling on Iraq, harvesting the lives of many innocents. Yet despite Israel’s unambiguous role in all of this, few have connected the dots regarding the role played by Israel and its mouthpieces in the United States. Israel’s task was to destroy one of the few remaining countries in the region that opposed the US proxy in the Middle East. Following Iraq, Israel was promised, that next would come Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance. Many conveniently blame the war on the ‘neo-conservatives’ in the American administration, some ‘embedded’ in the many think tanks that have tremendous influence on the decision-making process in Washington. But the relationship between the so-called neo-conservatives and the state of Israel is yet to be exposed. Those who recall events that preceded the war, know too well how the “doves” within the administration, at least for a short while, opposed the military option on Iraq vs. those who championed the ‘total war’ strategy starting in 1992 (not following September. 11, 2001 as many are lead to believe), as outlined in the ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine.’ Paul Wolfowitz, one of the most vibrant advocates of Israel’s policy in the US government was then the undersecretary for policy in the Pentagon.