Palestinians on Abbas: Taking a wait and see approach
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, April 29, 2003
The appointment of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister has been welcomed in the United States as a boost to prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. President Bush made Abbas' confirmation a condition for releasing the U.S.-sponsored peace initiative known as the "road map." But even though the Palestinians have done what was demanded, serious questions remain about how much effort and political capital the Bush administration is willing to invest in a renewed drive for Mideast peace. Abbas has gained a measure of credibility in Western eyes because he is perceived as a reformer willing to crack down on Palestinian groups who attack Israeli civilians. Among Palestinians he is viewed with much less enthusiasm. Palestinians would prefer to elect their leaders democratically rather than have them appointed. Unfortunately elections scheduled for last January were canceled by Palestinian officials, who cited Israel's refusal to withdraw its tanks from the heart of Palestinian cities. As a result, Abbas is seen by many Palestinians as a candidate imposed from the outside. Palestinians have also been disgusted by mismanagement and corruption within the Palestinian Authority since long before the international community took up the banner of reform, and many view Abbas as part of that problem.

Oil for Food: An Imperial Equation
By Hassan Tahsin, Arab News, April 28, 2003
Kofi Annan’s decision to halt the oil for food program prior to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq without a decision from the Security Council and solely on American orders is considered a breach of the United Nations Charter. This is by far the worst and most dangerous decision that any secretary-general has made since the inception of the United Nations. American foreign policy planners have worked since the eighties to bring down and destroy Iraq. Like lambs being led to the slaughter, they lured the political leadership to wage war against Iran. Then after having been overstrained, politically, economically and socially they were again enticed to invade Kuwait, bringing on another Gulf War, followed by international sanctions and the consequent obliteration of the Iraqi nation. It would have been so easy to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime with Kuwait liberated but the American plan was to make sure that the regime stayed in place. Then came the new military invasion campaign — the reasons for it varied between the Anglo-American political leadership, finally resting on the need to get rid of Saddam, his weapons of mass destruction and to give Iraq American-style democracy ensuring it becomes a protιgι of Washington. During the Second Gulf War, Iraq was bombed more than 200 times with deadly ethylene gas and depleted uranium. According to reports of the oil for food program’s executive committee, widespread harmful radiation affected more than two million Iraqis; hundreds of radiation-related injuries have been recorded. During the Iraqi invasion, American forces purposely targeted vital areas that affect the nation and not the political leadership. An electricity station was hit and so was a water purification plant. In Basra, British forces blew up a food storehouse that the Iraqi government had stockpiled in anticipation of a military siege. The action wasn’t accidental as it occurred after the British entered Basra.

Ya Hussein
By Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 24 - 30 April 2003
Iraq's Shi'a population are shaping up to be a force to be reckoned with.  A look at the complicated relationship between the occupation forces and Iraq's majority sect . -- When Hussein Al-Sadr, the director of the London-based Islamic Institute and a prominent Shi'a leader was asked by an Arab newspaper this week to define democracy he said: "it is to give the Iraqi people the right to express their true opinions about the US presence in their country." On Tuesday, Iraq's Shi'a population -- estimated at 15 million -- demonstrated this when hundreds of thousands flocked to the city of Karbala to commemorate the battle of Karbala, in which the Prophet Mohamed's grandson, Imam Hussein, was martyred in the year 680. To Iraq's Shi'a, this public show of force marked the end of almost 25 years of systematic targeting of Shi'a institutions, leaders and rituals. According to observers of the Iraqi scene, such a massive mobilisation of Shi'a influence and power is also a political display. This was visible in many a banner during the two day demonstration of faith, which carried strong anti- American slogans. "The message is simple; the Shi'a of Iraq will not accept that Saddam be replaced by another force which denies them their basic rights and shows disrespect for their political aspirations," one Iraqi analyst told Al-Ahram Weekly on Monday. As Iraq's different secular forces begin to re-group, organise their rank and file and promote their political activities for the first time publicly, the religious establishment emerged as the most organised structure to channel overwhelmingly anti-US public sentiment and reflect the free will of ordinary Iraqis. Indeed, fears continue to grow in Washington that the religious establishment might step in to fill the power vacuum and thus undermine the US's presence in the country. But in its attempt to curb the influence of religious leaders, the US is risking the creation of more enemies.

Whose truth?
By Galal Amin, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 24 - 30 April 2003
The war against Iraq was not just fought in harbours, roads, and city streets, but on the airwaves. And truth was the victim. -- Since 11 September 2001, I have observed with alarm that many people have taken at face value what the media has said about this atrocity, its presumed perpetrators, and their aims -- even though much of what has been said flies in the face of common sense. A willingness to suspend belief is in evidence even among knowledgeable and otherwise prudent people. Many accept fantastical stories about Bin Laden and the people alleged to have carried out the bombings, despite the obvious disparity between the means available to those people and the exceptional planning and attention to detail that went into the attacks. Similar instances of gullibility came also to my attention during the war, a grossly inaccurate term for what the US has been up to in Iraq. Many accept unquestioningly the implausible claims made about Saddam Hussein, his links with the United States, and the US motives for waging the aggression. In both cases -- the 11 September attacks and the US campaign against Iraq -- those who believe the most outrageous reports are people who spend hours flipping television channels -- satellite and terrestrial -- missing out on nary a commentary or statement published by the print media. It startles me to see how educated people so easily fall prey to highly dubious information. On further reflection, though, it occurred to me that the sheer volume of information has something to do with the phenomenon. Most of us, unfortunately, treat the information carried by the media as though it were partial and objective. We try to separate -- perhaps too well -- commentaries, which may contain biased views, and factual reports, which are presumably impartial.

Carving Up The New Iraq
By Neil Mackay
Truthout/The Sunday Herald, April 15, 2003
Truthout Editor's Note: "The article below must be considered now the gold standard for coverage of this subject; it is the standard by which all other reports on this matter should be judged. - wrp"  -- IRAQ lies in ruins this morning. Its cities are bombed; its buildings have been torched by teenage arsonists; its shops, hospitals, factories and homes have been looted. This is Year Zero for Iraq. The old regime is gone and the United States is to rebuild this country literally from the ground up. Since the beginning of the year, America has had its reconstruction plan in place. Answering directly to Centcom commander General Tommy Franks, retired Lt Gen Jay Garner will be in command of the reconstruction effort. He will be aided by a series of military hardmen, diplomats and Republican party place-men who will help the United States create "Free Iraq'' -- aided by exiles who are returning to get their share of the spoils. This isn't a selfless exercise. In a special Sunday Herald investigation, we have charted the network of financial kickbacks, political pay-backs, cronyism, self-interest and ferocious ideology that underpins the entire reconstruction scheme. The US denies that men like Jay Garner are in effect the first wave of a military occupation. The Bush administration insists that it wants these men to work their way out of a job as quickly as possible. Some have mentioned three months as the possible length of their tenure in Iraq -- others, more realistically, claim five years is a more likely term, taking the length of the US occupation of post-war Japan as the best comparison. America will be entrenched in this nation for decades to come. The colonisation process has begun already. In this investigation we have traced the roots of the reconstruction process back to the ideologues -- the neo-conservatives now in the ascendancy in the US government -- who devised the scheme. These men see the US military as the "cavalry on the new American frontier'', they wanted Saddam "regime changed'' long before Bush took power and they have long dreamt of a permanent US satellite in the Gulf. They have also been brutally honest about having a say over Iraq's oil fields . Ideology is ideology, but in the US government political theory goes hand-in-hand with big business. The end result of the lofty musings of Republican hawks fashioning the concepts behind the new world order is money-grubbing for the yankee dollar. The world isn't just watching the spread of a political philosophy in Iraq, it is watching a conquest by and for US big business as well. The term "military-industrial'' complex brings to mind crazy conspiracy theories , but let's consider the term again. Each and every one of the companies in the running or in posession of contracts to reconstruct Iraq are either major Republican donors or have government staff working for them. The donations to the Republican party -- and also to George W Bush himself -- run into millions.

When the pipeline vision vanished 
By Jim Vallette and Steve Kretzmann, Al-Jazeera, April 15, 2003
Hunkered down in “Forward Operating Base Exxon” in the blistering sandstorms of central Iraq, soldiers of the 101st Airborne have at least one thing over their bosses in Washington – they’re honest. The Bush Administration, backed up by a chorus of pundits in the United States, vehemently denies that oil provides any rationale for war.  The denials are so absolute, so acerbic in tone, that it is hard not to conclude that they protest a bit too much. But whether or not the soldiers’ naming of the bases after oil companies shows a sense of humor or is a brilliantly subversive act of political theater, the fact is that oil is central to US policy towards Iraq – and it has been for decades. Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, successive US administrations have equated national security with access to, and control of, oil – particularly in the Gulf, which holds two-thirds of global oil reserves.  In other words, as long as the US needs oil, the US needs the Gulf. Faced with this fact, every President since Jimmy Carter has chosen to defend American “access” to the Gulf “by any means necessary”. “Regime change”, the Bush Administration hopes, would ensure the long-term availability of Iraqi oil for U.S. industry and consumers. The smell of oil permeates the possibility of war with Iraq: Iraq is the only country in the world that could conceivably begin to replace Saudi Arabia in the global oil economy; key Iraqi opposition figures are promising US companies access in the event of a regime change; and officials from Big Oil have met repeatedly with members of the Administration to plan a post-Saddam Iraq. The history of US-Iraq relations provides important context for understanding current events.  Several of today’s war hawks spent several years in the 1980s trying to get Saddam Hussein to sign an oil pipeline contract. Even though he was gassing Iranians at the same time, people like Donald Rumsfeld met with the “evil dictator” pitching a plan that would benefit their good friends in the oil industry.

Meanwhile: Mankind's first writing, from an accountant
By Alberto Manguel, International Herald Tribune, April 23, 2003
MONDION, France: In 1989, I traveled to Baghdad to write an article on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which the Iraqi Ministry of Culture planned to have rebuilt. The project never materialized, but I was able to explore Baghdad and its intricate labyrinth. One experience was memorable above all: the discovery, in the National Museum of Iraq, of two small clay tablets from the 4th millennium B.C. that had recently been unearthed in Syria. Each tablet was the size of the palm of my hand and bore a few simple marks: a small indentation near the top, as if a finger had been stuck into the clay, and below it a stick-drawn animal, meant to represent a goat on one tablet, and on the other, perhaps a sheep. Standing in the museum and staring at these ancient tablets, I tried to imagine how, on an unimaginably remote afternoon, a brilliant and anonymous ancestor recorded a transaction of livestock by drawing on clumps of dirt and in doing so invented for all future times the magical art of writing. Writing, I realized, much to a reader's chagrin, was the invention not of a poet but of an accountant. The hand that made those first signs has long turned to dust, but the tablets themselves survived until last week, when they disappeared in the looting of the museum. When I first saw them, in their display case, I was overcome by a vertiginous sense of witnessing the moment of my beginning. Historians tell us that other magicians in China and Central America also invented, at different times, systems of writing. But for me, this was the starting point.

By the Rivers of Babylon
By Hussein Shobokshi, Arab News, April 29, 2003
The red carpet will be laid out in the White House, candles lit, drinks served, and every one will waltz the night away next week. Sharon, the Israeli war criminal who is currently its prime minister, will be in town! He will be the guest of honor at the May function in Washington DC in celebrating the 55th anniversary of the creation of Israel. This will be another shameful chapter in America’s alliance with this war criminal, a relationship that has brought America nothing but mistrust and resentment from people all over the world. Sharon is supported in Washington by a group of neo-conservative politicians that have decided to put Israel’s interest above America’s, and there lies the big and dangerous problem. It’s been a month since the war on Iraq started, and there are no traces of the weapons of mass destruction yet. Sharon has been begging and lobbying the American administration to invade Syria and “look” for the Iraqi weapons there and, while it is at it, to pass through Iran. What sad times we live in when a group of madmen who in the name of a sick political-religious ideology (Zionism) have managed to hijack America’s foreign policy threaten and, in some cases, destroy its relationship with its allies and friends. Speaking of weapons of mass destruction, Sharon — better known in the White House as the man of peace — is currently in charge of a mega arsenal, and recently passed Britain to become the world’s fifth largest nuclear power and now rivals France and China in the size and sophistication of its nuclear armory. He currently possesses 500 thermo-nuclear weapons as a result of a nuclear program that began in the late 1940’s.

Grace News 
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, CommonDreams, April 29, 2003 
While it's unclear whether Grace News Network actually produces any news, it has produced a documentary movie titled "Israel: Divine Destiny" which it showed at the National Press Club in September 2002. The film is about "Israel's destiny and the United States' role in that destiny," according to Grace News Network. -- The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV news station for Muslim Iraq. It is being produced in a studio -- Grace Digital Media -- controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel. That's Grace as in "by the Grace of God." Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested control of Federal News Service, a transcription news service, from its former owner, Cortes Randell. Randell says he met Reagan at a prayer meeting, brought her in as an investor in Federal News Service, and then she forced him out of his own company. Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are housed in a downtown Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace News Network. When you call the number for Grace News Network, you get a person answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News Service." According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today." "Grace News Network will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes," GNN proclaims. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. government agency producing the television news broadcasts for Iraq, likes to say it is the BBC of the USA. BBG runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Sawa -- Arabic language radio for the Middle East. "Our mission is clear," BBG's Joan Mower told us. "To broadcast accurate and objective news about the United States and the world. We don't do propaganda, leafleting -- we are like the BBC in that respect." Well, then why hook up with Grace? BBG's Joan Mower said that Grace Digital Media is a mainstream production house used by all kinds of mainstream news organizations.

Matters of Emphasis 
By Paul Krugman, CommonDreams/New York Times, April 29, 2003
We were not lying," a Bush administration official told ABC News. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." The official was referring to the way the administration hyped the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. According to the ABC report, the real reason for the war was that the administration "wanted to make a statement." And why Iraq? "Officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target." A British newspaper, The Independent, reports that "intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war." One "high-level source" told the paper that "they ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat." Sure enough, we have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. It's hard to believe that we won't eventually find some poison gas or crude biological weapons. But those aren't true W.M.D.'s, the sort of weapons that can make a small, poor country a threat to the greatest power the world has ever known. Remember that President Bush made his case for war by warning of a "mushroom cloud." Clearly, Iraq didn't have anything like that — and Mr. Bush must have known that it didn't. Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions — not just about Iraq, but about ourselves.

The Europe-U.S. divide
By PINA, YellowTimes.org, April 28, 2003
(PINR) -- The recent tensions between the United States and Western Europe show no sign of abating and further highlight the growing differences between these former allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the traditional threat to Western Europe dissolved. Throughout the '90s, the U.S. began to realize that without the threat of the Soviet Union, there was no state from which to protect the European continent. Furthermore, the U.S. could now pursue its envisioned foreign policy without having to be overly concerned with the opinions of those in Europe -- whether it be the public or the politicians and diplomats; without Europe being threatened, European states had no cards to play against the United States, as the French consistently had done in conflicts such as the one in Vietnam. Despite this lack of dependence, during the first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States continued to pursue its traditional role in European relations: in 1991, the Bush administration worked with Europe to attack Iraq in the Gulf War, and later in the decade the Clinton administration worked with Europe to attack Serbia in the Balkans. Throughout this decade, even though neither the Bush administration nor the Clinton administration necessarily needed Europe to achieve their interests, the link between European states and the United States was too strong to circumvent. While the U.S. did flex its muscles more during the decade after the Soviet Union's fall in 1991, by and large it continued to work with its traditional allies in Western Europe and through the multilateral institution of the United Nations. All of this changed with the election of George W. Bush in the fall of 2000. The coming to power of the Bush administration coupled with the September 11 attacks provided Washington the opportunity to reinstate full-scale power politics back into U.S. foreign policy. This policy change reflected the belief in Washington that the United Nations was becoming irrelevant. The U.N. was created to restrain large powers from colliding; the need for the United Nations was evident after World War II when, for the second time in 50 years, the power projections and interests of regional hegemons clashed and resulted in much bloodshed. The purpose of the U.N. was to prevent strong states from destroying each other again.

The Kishon of the territories
By Amir Oren, Haaretz, April 29, 2003
Police will be called up immediately to arrest a squatter in Tel Aviv, for example at the Bread Square protest in Kikar Hamedina, if the squatter dares to use a weapon to threaten anyone they regard as obstructing their intrusion. But in the territories, such behavior is welcomed by the authorities and the army is required to guard the guards, due to the pretensions about providing security for every Israeli, even if he or she is busy with illegal activity. -- Six months and two fatalities too late, the Israel Defense Forces this week evacuated the wildcat outpost known as Antenna Hill, south of Mt. Hebron. Evacuated and not dismantled, as an ongoing activity - preserving the achievement in IDF language - because the evacuation is never complete as long as the settlers return to become squatters in the place from which their belongings were removed. For some reason, the phenomenon of the outposts, or squats, has never spilled over from the West Bank into the Gaza Strip. Maybe the settlers there have conceded their eventual evacuation, or maybe they are deterred by the population density inside and the fence outside. As in certain orders, there are outposts that are simply illegal, which are not to be removed unless the court decrees so, and then there are the blatantly illegal outposts that everyone agrees should be removed without delay. But even when the principle has been set, the timing is always waiting for the right moment. It's not nice to do it soon after a terror attack in the area, and it's not worth it during those valuable periods when an operational infantry battalion is finally getting in some training. Nor is election eve a realistic time to evacuate outposts and when a new defense minister arrives on the job, it's illogical, and so on and so forth. But outposts kill - that's what happened on March 13 at the fake antenna, which as a sin to compound the crime was being guarded by the regional council's armed mercenaries until they were shot dead mistakenly by Magellan unit bullets and a missile from a combat chopper. By whom, and under what authority were the guards sent to protect the hill? There is no clear answer, just a detailed tale of relations between the army and police, the council and the security coordinator and Tamnun, the security company hired for the job.