US Insiders
Gloomy: War "Not Going According to Plan;" Allah 1, Jahweh, 0;
Rumseld Visits Geneva: Is He an Iraqi Asset?; British Revert to Barbarism
(As Usual); Will Bush Open National Hot Air Reserve?; US Navy Dolphin
AWOL
By ALEXANDER
COCKBURN
The
situation of the US/UK invading force can be assessed as difficult. The
US 3rd Infantry Division, the Marines, Division, the 101st Airborne
continue to be plagued by stretched supply lines which yesterday saw one
Marine unit entirely immobilized by lack of diesel fuel and the food down
to one �meal� a day, with the MREs being decried by the soldiers as not
fit for human consumption. Disorganization is rife. The 3rd Infantry
Division marches up one side of the Euphrates, while their baggage and
supplies proceed up the other, which renders bridges more �strategic�
than ever. The helicopter assaults on the Iraqi Medina division left, on
one account, seven still serviceable. Two helicopters were lost in the
attack and twenty-six were damaged.
It is becoming clear that last week�s violent sandstorm was a very
serious blow to the invaders. The Iraqis were able to reinforce their
defenses around Najaf and assault launch some damaging attacks. US high
tech equipment has been seriously degraded by the sand. Perennial
warnings about excessive reliance on hi-tech weaponry and the hype of a
supposed Revolution in Military Affairs are now returning in force.
The US/UK forces have taken no major town, are being harassed by guerilla
forces and now menaced by suicide units. Five US soldiers of the Third
Infantry Division were killed by one such unit on a highway north of
Najaf. The British are attempting to win hearts and minds in Basra by
aiming their artillery at the food warehouses, and attempting to reduce
the city by plague, endeavoring to cut off the water supply. A missile
killed 200 in a shelter in Basra, allegedly a �command and control
center� which may by US/UK-speak for a civilian shelter, as with the
Amariya shelter in Baghdad in 1991.
Even the very base of the supply line in Kuwait is a choke point, not
just in the crowded and potential dangerous Persian Gulf but in the port
of Kuwait, which has only 21 landing births.
Behind the steady stream of �All according to plan�, and �calm and
orderly advance� press releases being pumped out of Qatar (always
excepting Wallace�s dissenting squeak that the war wasn�t going according
to war-game scenarios), and the Pentagon there is extreme nervousness
among seasoned military observers. Serious reinforcements will take weeks
to arrive. Optimists suggest that the US Third Infantry Division will
soon engage and destroy the Iraqi Medina division and the road to Baghdad
will lie open. A less sanguine assessment is that the two divisions will
bog down in a First World War-style confrontation, with the US
disadvantage of those stretched communications. The third scenario is
that the Medina division will outflank the Third ID, take it in the rear
and overwhelm it. Then the exultant Arab street will erupt in the
humiliation of the Great Satan.
Allah, 1, Jahweh, 0.
And so it will all get much, much
nastier. The actual fighting component of the invading US/British force
is small because (as anonymous Pentagon officers are now bitterly
complaining) Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's preference for Special Forces
prevailed over Gen. Tommy Franks's recommendation of a far larger force;
also because huge peace demonstrations in Turkey lopped off the northern
half of the invading pincers. If urban fighting increases, US strategy
will veer toward old-fashioned saturation bombing. The temptation to
flatten significant portions of Baghdad by B-52 raids is growing sharply
as the land force gets seriously stymied.
As regards the small US/UK force trying to overwhelm Baghdad, imagine a
force far less than one of the recent peace demonstrations landing in
Corpus Christi, Texas, then advancing towards Phoenix through sandstorms,
bypassing all major conurbations and occasionally announcing it has
successfully seized significant portions of the deserts of the south west
and nervously threatening to declare war on Mexico if it intervenes. (On
this latter point note that the Iranian backed Islamic council has told
its adherents in southern Iraq not to rise; also that the Kurds are
conspicuously sitting on their hands.
The Agitprop War
The propaganda war is not going according
to Western plans either. There are plenty of excellent and courageous
correspondents and observers in Baghdad, not least Paul Wood of the BBC.
Robert Fisk�s account
"Bitter Truths of
Basra"on this site attests to the
importance of the Al Jazeera coverage in Basra. We have the truly
extraordinary situation that the Iraqi spokesman in Baghdad is being
given more credibility than the far wilder military flacks who have
seriously damaged their credibility with numerous baseless claims about
the capture of Iraqi towns, and preposterous British allegations that it
is necessary to destroy Basra in order to bring it vital humanitarian
supplies.
It should also be said that many reporters with major organizations are
doing a useful and professional job. We have been reading excellent
reports from UPI, Reuters and even AP, as well as Knight Ridder and other
papers.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld continues to perform valiantly as a
vital Iraqi asset, tremulously discovering the Geneva Convention on
treatment of prisoners or suddenly threatening war against Syria and
Iran. Another Rumsfeld propaganda coup: The retired general named as
civilian governor of occupied Iraq has visited Israel on a trip paid for
by a right-wing group that strongly backs an American military presence
in the Middle East. Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the co-coordinator for
civilian administration in Iraq, put his name in October 2000 to a
statement blaming Palestinians for the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian
violence and saying that a strong Israel was an important security asset
to the United States. This piece of information circulated the Middle
East with as much rapidity as the resignation of Richard Perle from his
chairmanship of the Defense Board and the supposed trip of Vice-President
Cheney�s daughter to become a human shield.
Chickens in a Darkening
Sky
So the sky is dark with chickens coming home to roost, and bedtime
reading is Thucydides' account of the disastrous Athenian siege of
Syracuse. Start with the amazed discovery of the White House, the Defense
Department and the permanently embedded US press corps that nations don't
care to be invaded, even if they have been misgoverned by a tyrant for
decades. How many Russians died defending the Soviet Union from German
invasion after enduring famine and Stalin's terror? This isn't 1991, when
Iraqis asked themselves, "Why die for Kuwait?"
Basra? "Military officials," ran a European press report,
"later admitted that they had vastly underestimated the strength of
Iraqi resistance and the loyalty of Basra's population to Saddam."
The report quoted a British officer as saying "there are significant
elements in Basra who are hugely loyal to the regime."
Kurdish-held northern Iraq? "Even in Kurdistan," reported the
London Independent, (in the person of my brother, Patrick Cockburn),
"where the US is popular and where President Saddam committed some
of his worst atrocities, there are flickers of Iraqi patriotism. A
Kurdish official, who has devoted years to opposing the government in
Baghdad, admitted: 'Iraqis won't like to see American soldiers ripping
down posters of Saddam Hussein though they might like to do it
themselves. They didn't enjoy watching the Stars and Stripes being raised
near Umm Qasr.'"
Rumsfeld Visits
Geneva
But perhaps the most grotesque chicken
now roosting in the coop came in the form of Rumsfeld's sudden discovery
of the Geneva conventions regarding prisoners of war. When five captured
US soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras,
Rumsfeld immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva
convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is
humiliating for them." True. But the United States does not hold the
high moral ground in leveling this charge.
In January 2002 the United States released a photograph of Guant�namo
detainees kneeling, shackled and hooded. The Red Cross said the United
States may have violated the Geneva conventions by releasing the photo,
since no "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure
from them information of any kind whatever." Under conditions of
sleep deprivation, bright light and other techniques, at least 25
prisoners in Camp X-Ray at Guant�namo have tried to kill themselves, some
more than once.
The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva
conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war" but
"unlawful combatants." But as George Monbiot of the London
Guardian remarks, "The same claim could be made, with rather more
justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded
their country. But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of
the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of
a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaeda) must be regarded
as prisoners of war."
On March 6 US military officials acknowledged that two prisoners captured
in Afghanistan in December had died during interrogation at Bagram air
base north of Kabul. A spokesman for the air base confirmed that the
official cause of death of the two men was "homicide." The
men's death certificates showed that one died from "blunt force
injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease."
Another prisoner suffered from a blood clot in the lung that was
exacerbated by a "blunt force injury."
On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians
surrendered at Kunduz to Northern Alliance commander Gen.Abdul Rashid
Dostum. A major war crime, with powerful evidence of US participation,
ensued. Jamie Doran's 2002 documentary film Massacre in Afghanistan
records how 3,000 prisoners were loaded into container trucks, with the
doors sealed and the trucks left to stand in the sun for several days. An
Afghan soldier said he was ordered by a US commander to fire shots into
the containers to provide air, although he knew he would certainly hit
some of those inside. An Afghan taxi driver reports seeing a number of
containers with blood streaming from the floors. According to one of the
drivers, survivors of the transport ordeal were dumped in the desert near
Mazar-i-Sharif. As thirty to forty US soldiers looked on, those prisoners
still alive were shot and left in the desert to be eaten by dogs.
Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison.
"I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner's neck.
The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop
them." After an investigation, the German newspaper Die Zeit
concluded that "No one doubted that the Americans had taken
part." Doran, an Irishman, says in his film that the Pentagon and
State Department have tried "by any means possible" to block an
investigation.
Inflated Price of Hot Air
Dooms Festival
The amount of hot air being put out by
official US and UK spokespersons has led to an unexpected surge in the
price of this vital commodity. It is feared that unscrupulous
entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the recently deregulated market to
corner hot air stocks and hold them off the market, thus causing the base
price of hot air to rise. Democrats in Congress are calling on the Bush
administration to open up the national hot air reserve, now guarded by a
mixed force of Wall Street Journal editorial writers carrying their
trademark popguns, plus a rabble of fedayeen in civilian clothes press
ganged from the Standard, New Republic and CNN.
Evidence of the economic devastation threatened such by price rises
continues to pour in to the CounterPunch news desk. Here�s a typical
report (3/28) by Emily Tsao of The Oregonian under the headline:
Withering economy deflates Tigard Festival of Balloons
TIGARD -- The popular Tigard Festival of Balloons won't take flight
this year because of tough economic times and a lack of sponsorship, its
coordinator says. "Given the economic situation of last year,
sponsorships have been very hard to come by, and we are not in a
financial position to produce the festival at a level we have in the
past," Bruce Ellis, the event organizer, said Thursday. He said he
hoped to resume the event next year.
Every year for the past decade, the festival at Cook Park sent dozens of
hot air balloons into the sky. In recent years, the three-day free event
drew tens of thousands of people. Ellis said the festival cost about
$80,000 a year. Title sponsor KGW chose not to renew its contract last
year, he said.
The balloon festival, although no longer sponsored by the Rose Festival
Association, was sanctioned by it. That meant the Tigard event was listed
with other Rose Festival happenings but had an independent organizer.
Community members and organizations expressed disappointment over the
cancellation. "I am just sick," said Sydney Sherwood, a Tigard
city councilor. "It put us on the map and it gave us an identity.�
The Jampot Files (Just
Another Middle-Aged
Porker of the Right)
Dear Alexander Cockburn,
I remember old Hitchens as a cherubic Trot at Oxford in revolutionary
1968. One day he was outside All Souls College, haranguing the masses to
burn down fascist Oxford University. A window opened, and All Souls
Warden John Sparrow, noted reactionary and Athenian sympathizer, trilled:
'Chrissie, you aren't going to be late for tea, are you?' Chrissie was
somewhat embarrassed. By the way, in a recent piece, you alluded to your
Irish upbringing--does this mean you are kin to the great radical
journalist Claud Cockburn, who lived at Youghal? The old boy would be
proud of CounterPunch.
Yours,
Art Vander Pattaya,
Thailand.
Good one, Art! And yes, CC was indeed the Da.
Flight of the Dolphin?
This Just In:
Takoma, the Navy dolphin deployed in the war
theater, has gone AWOL. Those dolphins, remember, have huge brains.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03292003.html
