No News is Bad News
By Benjamin Counsell, Palestine Monitor, April 14, 2003
A recent opinion poll produced by the Guardian/ICM found that twice as many of the British public sympathise with the Palestinians as those who support Israel, with the Palestinian sympathisers registering 28% and Israel just 14%. The overwhelming majority took a more neutral position. The Guardian also reported that the findings 'are in line with recent polls in France, Germany and Italy which show that European public opinion is generally more sympathetic to the Palestinians.' This lack of support amongst the public has prompted Israel to launch a new offensive in the PR war. It may seem surprising that so many people do not hold a position in the Israel/Palestine conflict. But a recent report from the well respected Glasgow University Media Group shed a little light on the underlying reasons for this fence-sitting. In this report, Greg Philo says 'On TV news, journalists sometimes used the word 'occupied' but did not explain that the Israelis were involved in a military occupation. It is perhaps not surprising then that many in the audience did not understand the nature of the 'occupation'. In the sample of 300 young people, 71% did not know that it was the Israelis who were occupying the territories. Only 9% knew that it was the Israelis, and that the settlers were Israeli. There were actually more people (11%) who believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories and that the settlers were Palestinian.' He adds 'It is clear that a lack of discussion on the news of the origins of the conflict and the controversial aspects of the occupation would operate in favour of Israel.' But how can so many people be so ignorant of the basic background facts of a conflict that has been on-going for so long and has received considerable media coverage since the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000? An objective look at Britain's principal media outlet, the BBC, gives us a few ideas.

Perle the Impervious
By Harold Meyerson, LA Weekly APRIL 11 - 17, 2003 
A one-man encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with Bush’s Washington -- Richard Perle looks to be a genius at breaking, or at least bending, the rules, but recently he found one to live by: If you have to resign in disgrace, it’s best to do so in the opening weeks of a war. Perle, who stepped down late last month as chairman of the Defense Policy Board — an unpaid panel of strategists and pooh-bahs who advise the seemingly unadvisable Donald Rumsfeld — didn’t have to slink away under cover of darkness. Indeed, he didn’t even have to leave. Though he’s acknowledged representing a number of concerns with crucial business pending before the Defense Department, he continues to sit on the panel, having forfeited only his right to gavel it to order. A senior figure among the neoconservative intellectuals and polemicists currently bidding to take over the world, and among the wheeler-dealers who exploit their government connections for big bucks, Perle personifies almost everything that’s wrong with Washington today. Somehow, he manages both to lack all conviction and yet to be filled with passionate intensity. Perle gives both cynicism and idealism a bad name. But Perle’s had a run of bad press over the past few weeks. First, The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh reported that Perle’s far-flung business ventures had led him to lunch with Adnan Kashoggi, the notorious Saudi arms dealer implicated in the BCCI scandal. Then The New York Times reported that Perle was representing Global Crossing, yet another telecom phenom gone bankrupt, in its efforts to persuade the Defense Department to drop its objections to its proposed sale to a Hong Kong firm. If the DOD, the FBI and other bean-counting bureaucrats could be convinced that the sale did not compromise national security, Perle stood to pocket a nice $600,000, on top of his $125,000 retainer. The day after Perle stepped down, the Times followed with a further report that Perle also represented Bernard Schwartz’s Loral Space and Communications firm, which the DOD has been upset with ever since some confidential rocket technology turned up in a Chinese missile that Loral had helped the Chinese government assemble....Given that, Perle’s client list, particularly if Hersh is right, reads almost like an existential hedge fund — “If everything I believe is wrong, here’s a way to cover my bets.”

Bomb before you buy
By Naomi Klein, The Guardian, April 14, 2003
What is being planned in Iraq is not reconstruction but robbery -- So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How about upgrading from Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom bullying at the WTO, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields of pre-emptive wars? -- On April 6, deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: there will be no role for the UN in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably longer than that". And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's coalition responsibility." The process of how they will get all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction". But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather than rebuilding, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neo-liberals can design their dream economy: fully privatised, foreign-owned and open for business. The $4.8m management contract for the port in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services, and there are similar deals for airport administration on the auction block. The United States Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to distributing textbooks. The length of time these contracts will last is left unspecified. How long before they meld into long-term contracts for water services, transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatisation in disguise?

Censoring the dead
By Peter Preston, The Guardian, April 14, 2003
We can see corpses in TV dramas, but not the real casualties of war -- It is self-censorship of the most self-serving kind. We can cover our screens and front pages with pictures of little Ali Ismail Abbas, with his missing limbs and longing eyes, because - for all his agonies - he's alive. But we can't show other 12-year-old playmates and friends, because they're dead. What kind of sanitised reality, pray, is that? -- There is one thing missing as the cliches of conflict shrink back into their pockets of least resistance. No, not those fabled weapons of mass destruction. (Though they better start to turn up pretty damn quick.) The missing link, for those of us watching far away, is death: the bodies of the men and women who have died. Now that, in a way, is understandable. It is difficult to talk about bodies, or their bags, without straying into emotional quicksand. As the defence editor of the Daily Telegraph dryly observes: "The anti-war party seeks to inflate the number of those [killed in battle] by adding civilian deaths, which it also inflates." Statistics aren't neutral, here; they come bearing their unhidden agendas. But trading figures isn't beginning at the beginning. The real beginning is a much simpler observation. When you go to war, when you walk the battlefields, when you're there, you see the bodies of the fallen all around you. Part of the scenery. I remember the first (small) war I ever covered for the Guardian and arriving, one beautiful Cyprus morning, in a tiny northern village where Greek and Turkish Cypriots were still firing at each other, as they had been through the night. There was a house with a garden and a porch, and women standing outside wailing. Just below the porch was a pit, a trench, with loose earth scattered round its rim. And when you looked into the pit, there were four bodies there: twisted, bloodied, inert. The wailing fell into place. I remember, equally, the first larger war I covered, Indian against Pakistani, and driving one day across the flatness of the Punjab in the wake of a battle that had moved on. Burnt-out tanks, rotting cattle caught in the crossfire, bloated stomachs turned to the sky; and a scattering of jeeps combing the ditches, collecting the last of the dead. It was matter of fact, cause and effect. It was what happened after what had happened. Again, though, the corpses weren't incidental. They were an indelible part of the picture.

Warmongering on the D.C. Mall
By William Hughes, Palestine Chronicle, April 13, 2003
"'We have 'smoked' Afghanistan and then Iraq. Syria and Iran better watch out, we’re coming. This is a crusade and the enemy is militant Islam. If anyone gets out of line, we will simply say to Israel, 'Your hands are untied.'" -- (PalestineChronicle.com) - It had that old time “Gospel Revival Meeting” feeling, with plenty of country music tossed in the mix. Only this time, there wasn’t any big tent or a minister preaching. Happily, there was no collection taken up either. The flag-waving, triumphalist-sounding get together was entitled, “Rally for the Troops-Rally for America.” It was sponsored by the “Citizens United Foundation” and the “Young America’s Foundation.” The Washington D.C. event was held on Saturday, April 12, 2003. It started at noon and lasted for three long, hot hours. The main message: Syria and Iran could be the next targets for the Pentagon’s War Machine. The first speaker was ex-US Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN). He had recently quit the Senate to take up acting full time in Hollywood. He said the U.S.’ smashing of Iraq showed that we had the “fire power.” And, we will now prove to the rest of the world that we have the “staying power, too.” The gig was held on the Mall, in our nation’s capital, with a crowd of about 1,500 in attendance. Some guy named David Bossie, who was wearing a suit, was in charge. He used to be an investigator for Republican Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana’s Government Reform House Committee. Bossie made an emotional speech. He said the anti-war protesters, who were also in town marching that day, were “anarchists.” When he read a letter from President Bush, the crowd went really wild, cheering and waving their flags. They starting chanting in unison, “We love Bush!”...There was yet another video, entitled, “Let Freedom Ring.” It showed the monuments to our Founding Fathers. Then, suddenly, the scene shifted to Israel, and lots of Israeli flags, with someone (not Ariel Sharon) seen ringing a bell. I suppose the message, pure propaganda, was that Zionist Israel is “connected” to any so-called U.S. led “campaigns for freedom,” even though none of its storm troopers has ever fought with us in any of our wars-ever!

Would President Assad invite a cruise missile to his palace?
By Robert Fisk, The Indpendent, April 15, 2003
So now Syria is in America's gunsights. First it's Iraq, Israel's most powerful enemy, possessor of weapons of mass destruction – none of which has been found. Now it's Syria, Israel's second most powerful enemy, possessor of weapons of mass destruction, or so President George Bush Junior tells us. No word of that possessor of real weapons of mass destruction, Israel – the number of its nuclear warheads in the Negev are now accurately listed – whose Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has long been complaining that Damascus is the "centre of world terror". But Syria is a target all right. First came the US claim that Damascus was sending gas masks to the Iraqi army. The Syrians denied it – but what if it's true? Why shouldn't an Arab neighbour offer Iraqi soldiers protective clothing during an American invasion which has no international legitimacy? Then Syria was accused of sending, or allowing, Arab "volunteers" to cross into Iraq to fight the Americans. This is much harder for the Syrians to deny. I've met a few of them here in Baghdad, most anxious to return to their homes in Homs and Damascus, others – from Algeria and Morocco – telling me that they will be safe if they can reach the Syrian border because "there will be no trouble from there". But here, too, there's a whiff of hypocrisy. Whenever Israel goes to war, there are hundreds of "volunteers" from the United States rushing to Tel Aviv to join the Israel Defence Force, and America never complains. But then comes the nastiest accusation: that members of the Iraqi regime have fled to Syria for safety. Given Syria's increasingly warmer relations with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in recent years, and the joint nature of their Baathist past – the Syrian Christian Michel Aflaq was a founder of the Baath in the days when it was a creature of both nations – it's difficult to believe that the Tariq Azizes and Taha Yassin Ramadans couldn't seek refuge in Syria.

Library books, letters and priceless documents are set ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad
By Robert Fisk, The Indpendent, April 15, 2003
So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives ­ a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq ­ were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze. I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad. And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed? When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning ­ flames 100 feet high were bursting from the windows ­ I raced to the offices of the occupying power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some biblical [sic] library is on fire". I gave the map location, the precise name ­ in Arabic and English. I said the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the scene ­ and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.

The Roots of War
By Barbara Ehrenreich, The Progressive, April 2003
Only three types of creatures engage in warfare--humans, chimpanzees, and ants. Among humans, warfare is so ubiquitous and historically commonplace that we are often tempted to attribute it to some innate predisposition for slaughter--a gene, perhaps, manifested as a murderous hormone. The earliest archeological evidence of war is from 12,000 years ago, well before such innovations as capitalism and cities and at the very beginning of settled, agricultural life. Sweeping through recorded history, you can find a predilection for warfare among hunter-gatherers, herding and farming peoples, industrial and even post-industrial societies, democracies, and dictatorships. The good old pop-feminist explanation--testosterone--would seem, at first sight, to fit the facts. But war is too complex and collective an activity to be accounted for by any warlike instinct lurking within the individual psyche. Battles, in which the violence occurs, are only one part of war, most of which consists of preparation for battle--training, the manufacture of weapons, the organization of supply lines, etc. There is no plausible instinct, for example, that could impel a man to leave home, cut his hair short, and drill for hours in tight formation. Contrary to the biological theories of war, it is not easy to get men to fight. In recent centuries, men have often gone to great lengths to avoid war--fleeing their homelands, shooting off their index fingers, feigning insanity. So unreliable was the rank and file of the famed eighteenth century Prussian army that military rules forbade camping near wooded areas: The troops would simply melt away into the trees. Even when men are duly assembled for battle, killing is not something that seems to come naturally to them. As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman argued in his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Little, Brown, 1995), one of the great challenges of military training is to get soldiers to shoot directly at individual enemies.

As Baghdad Falls Howard Dean Folds Back into the National Security Establishment
By Charles Knight, Common Dreams, April 14, 2003
On April 9, 2003, the day that most American newspapers headlined the "liberation of Baghdad", Howard Dean, a Democratic presidential candidate notable for his opposition to Bush's war against Iraq, gave a speech in Washington which went a long way toward endorsing the Bush doctrine of preventive war. Dean has been a favorite candidate among anti-war Democrats because he believes an imminent threat from Iraq was never proven and therefore the situation did not justify the invasion. In his remarks to the Alliance for American Leadership, an invitation-only organization of foreign policy specialists most of whom were associated with the Clinton administration, Dean addressed the problems of possible nuclear proliferation to North Korea and Iran. As reported in the Boston Globe he made a point of saying that he would not rule out using military force to disarm either North Korea or Iran. In effect this supposedly 'anti-war' Democrat has announced his support for a policy in which Washington will decide which countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons and will reserve for itself the right to forcefully disarm those who do not voluntarily disarm by U.S. dictate. In this crucial regard Dean's position is in close accordance with the Bush doctrine of coercive disarmament and preventive war.