Progreso Weekly - July 7, 2005
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Landau&otherweek=1120798800
Mission accomplished: Iraq is broken
By Saul Landau
It's hard to believe that supposedly intelligent people like Senators
Joseph Biden (DE), Hillary Clinton (NY) and John Kerry (MA) call for
"staying the course" in Iraq and acting responsibly by sending more
U.S. troops with more fire power over there. Don't they understand
that American soldiers break, not fix? The more U.S. soldiers in Iraq,
the more damage they will do and the more enemies they will make. To
limit damage, to act morally and responsibly, remove the cause of
violence and chaos in Iraq: the U.S. military presence.
Since the early 1950s, U.S. Presidents have used troops and the CIA to
break other countries, not fix them. In 1953, the CIA shattered Iran's
integrity by overthrowing the elected Mossadegh government. Twenty-six
years later, Iranians overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah. In 1979,
Iranians showed the depth of their rage by also seizing scores of U.S.
officials as hostages. The Ayatollah's regime labeled the United
States "The Great Satan" - for screwing their country.
In 1954, the CIA smashed Guatemala by overthrowing a democratically
elected government and replacing it with a military gang that killed
and looted for forty years. Embraced by the Pentagon, these gangsters
in uniform slaughtered as many as 100,000 Guatemalans (mostly
indigenous peasants) and stole their land. The country has not yet
recovered.
On September 11, 1973, Richard Nixon helped rupture Chile by
"destabilizing" its elected government. For seventeen subsequent
years, Washington supported a bloody military dictatorship led by
General August Pinochet, a specialist in assassinating, disappearing
and torturing his opponents at home and abroad. In 1991, the civilian
government's National Truth and Reconciliation Commission listed
Pinochet's crimes: 3,197 people assassinated or disappeared, tens of
thousands tortured, hundreds of thousands forced into exile.
In March 2003, George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to break Iraq.
The U.S. arsenal destroyed the electricity and water supply, damaged
sewage treatment and other vital sanitary facilities and pulverized
bridges, other public places and thousands of homes. On May 1, 2003,
dressed in a jump suit, Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and
announced: "Mission Accomplished."
His critics, myself included, laughed at such braggadocio. We
misunderstood him. He had accomplished the standard post-WWII US
military mission: He broke another country.
The U.S.-led Coalition has not restored what it demolished in Iraq,
nor reestablished services to the level of Saddam Hussein's regime.
They imprisoned tens of thousands of Iraqis, subjecting many of those
to systematic torture.
Former prisoner Ali Abbas told journalist Dahr Jamail that to break
the will of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib "used
electricity on us" while millions of homes lacked electricity for
hours each day. "They also shit on us, used dogs against us...and
starved us." As Abbas told Jamail, "the Americans delivered
electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house" (Jamail
testimony at the World Tribunal on Iraq, June 25, 2005, Istanbul).
Estimates of Iraqis in prison range as high as eighty thousand, most
of whom have not been charged.
In 1991, during the first Gulf War, the breaking began. U.S. planes
and artillery delivered more than 300 tons of uranium tipped bombs and
shells to targets in southern Iraq alone. Residue from these weapons
turned into particles that people - including U.S. troops - inhaled.
In 2003, more U.S. toxic material rained down on the Iraqi
environment.
In September 2002, I saw dying kids in the Baghdad Children's
Hospital. Iraqi doctors had already surmised that only the presence of
depleted uranium could have caused such a profound spike in the cancer
rates among children.
In June 2005, Dr. Thomas Fasy of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
concluded that data from Iraqi hospitals indicated that depleted
uranium's effect had shown up dramatically in a more than 400% rise in
children's cancer in just over a decade. Uranium ions bond with DNA
and this, he said, has also caused a notable leap in children's
leukemia rates along with sharply elevated incidences of congenital
birth defects. The United States literally released cancer-causing
material into Iraqi air, soil and water.
This toxic metal had performed the coup de grace to the Iraqi health
system, already devastated by US bombing and embargo, Fasy said. The
cost of such breakage: human life (World Tribunal on Iraq, June 26,
2005).
In November 2004, U.S. soldiers carried out punitive action in
Falluja, a city of some 300,000 residents, an operation that surpassed
the 1936 Nazi bombing of Guernica in Spain. Falluja was reduced to
rubble. Thousands died.
On the economic front, Washington broke Iraq as well - of its
socialist habit. U.S. colonial administrator J. Paul Bremer forced a
constitution down Iraqi throats - to break their statist economic
system. He planned to privatize some 200 state-owned enterprises.
Management of port facilities at Umm Qasr went to Stevedoring Services
of America, a U.S. company. "Bremer studiously ignored the rapidly
rising unemployment and social disorder that arose from the
destruction of a social order." "If privatization isn't halted," wrote
Naomi Klein, `free Iraq' will be the most sold country on earth" (The
Nation, April 28, 2003).
But Iraqis resist. They continually sabotage the oil pipeline. Indeed,
such tactics have caused major oil companies to lose enthusiasm for
owning Iraqi oil. Besides, they do well under the current OPEC
arrangement - $60 a barrel - and have no wish to change it.
Iraqi workers also have not welcomed the selling of state-owned
factories to foreigners. Some work forces have even threatened to
assassinate prospective buyers. This does not make investors feel as
if modern Iraq provides a welcome climate (Naomi Klein, speech at Cal
Poly Pomona, November 2004).
The chaos that engulfs Iraq does not improve from the presence of U.S.
troops. Iraqis who testified in the Istanbul World Tribunal on Iraq
told about intense hatred of their people for the occupiers. The
Iraqis feel abused by far more than the publicized incidents at Abu
Ghraib. On routine U.S. patrols and raids, trigger-happy young
soldiers gun down innocent Iraqis. Pilots drop bombs on coordinates
where people live. The 2004 documentary Gunner Palace resembles scenes
from the TV show Cops. GIs bash down doors, charge into homes with
fingers on rifle triggers shouting "on the floor motherfucker," while
women scream and children cry. The humiliated and handcuffed men go to
prison. The soldiers then return to their posh living quarters and
count the days remaining before they can go home. Like the GIs in
Vietnam three plus decades ago, those in Iraq sacrifice lives, limbs
and psyches. But as the film makes clear, most don't know the purpose
of their military mission.
Indeed, Iraqis recall well how U.S. troops watched passively while
massive looting took place of their national, historic treasure [How
does one fix a broken Babylon? A crime wave swept the country and
Armed Americans shrugged. Women can no longer walk the streets in
safety as they once did. U.S. occupations have also pitted Sunnis
against Shiites, Kurds against Turkmen. Some Iraqi Christians have
fled in fear to Syria. Bush omitted these facts and ignored the
violence and chaos that define daily life. US personnel avidly train
young Iraqis into constabulary form - those that survive the regular
suicide bombings and other attacks aimed at the police.
This scenario - reality - does not penetrate the heads of key
Democrats who continue to talk about "our obligation" to fix Iraq.
Words don't fix broken lives or property. Commitment to democracy
calls for more than the United States appointing an Iraqi government
and calling it democratic or forcing an Iraqi election in which
millions bravely voted, but for what never got reported. The media and
the White House ignored the startling fact that the majority of Iraqis
voted against the U.S.-chosen Iyad Allawi and for the United Iraqi
Alliance, which demanded "a timetable for the withdrawal of the
multinational forces from Iraq" (The Nation, February 11, 2005).
Instead of picking up on the withdrawal demand, before more breakage
occurs, foolish Democratic Senators demand that Bush send in more
troops. Bush ironically appears as more moderate as he appeals for
patriotic unity in the form of flying the flag on July 4.
What must Iraqis feel at the sight of that flag on July 4? In its
name, the U.S. military has destroyed their cities, tortured their
people, shot many of them for no reason at checkpoints or wherever the
troops happened to be patrolling. Iraqis have scarce electricity, food
and water and no secure jobs. Yet, Bush keeps repeating that he
"liberated Iraq."
On June 28, addressing the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, Bush asked
implying that "our" people had given up a lot to wage his war : "Is
the sacrifice worth it?" He quickly answered his own question. "It is
worth it..."
The Iraq war has cost him nothing - perhaps a few hours of missed
video golf. "We have more work to do," he stated. Yes, Bush stands as
a national model of sacrifice and hard work! And Iraqis must think
that those Democrats who ask for more troops are either crazy or stark
opportunists. It will take them that much longer to restore some
integrity to their broken society.
[Landau testified before the World Tribunal on Iraq June 24-27, Istanbul.]
***
It Just Gets Worse
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times
Monday 11 July 2005
Back in March 2004 President Bush had a great time displaying what he
felt was a hilarious set of photos showing him searching the Oval Office for
the weapons of mass destruction that hadn't been found in Iraq. It was a
spoof he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television
Correspondents' Association.
The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking
under furniture for the missing weapons. Mr. Bush offered mock captions for
the photos, saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be
somewhere" and "Nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?"
If there's something funny about Mr. Bush's misbegotten war, I've yet to
see it. The president deliberately led Americans traumatized by the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001, into the false belief that there was a link between Iraq
and Al Qaeda, and that a pre-emptive invasion would make the United States
less vulnerable to terrorism.
Close to 600 Americans had already died in Iraq when Mr. Bush was
cracking up the audience with his tasteless photos at the glittering
Washington gathering. The toll of Americans has now passed 1,750. Tens of
thousands of Iraqis have died. Scores of thousands of men, women and
children have been horribly wounded. And there is no end in sight.
Last week's terror bombings in London should be seen as a reminder not
just that Mr. Bush's war was a hideous diversion of focus and resources from
the essential battle against terror, but that it has actually increased the
danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies.
The C.I.A. warned the administration in a classified report in May that
Iraq - since the American invasion in 2003 - had become a training ground in
which novice terrorists were schooled in assassinations, kidnappings, car
bombings and other terror techniques. The report said Iraq could prove to be
more effective than Afghanistan in the early days of Al Qaeda as a place to
train terrorists who could then disperse to other parts of the world,
including the United States.
Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst who served as deputy director of
the State Department's counterterrorism office, said on National Public
Radio last week: "You now in Iraq have a recruiting ground in which
jihadists, people who previously were not willing to go out and embrace the
vision of bin Laden and Al Qaeda, are now aligning themselves with elements
that have declared allegiance to him. And in the course of that, they're
learning how to build bombs. They're learning how to conduct military
operations."
Has the president given any thought to leveling with the American people
about how bad the situation has become? And is he even considering what for
him would be the radical notion of soliciting the counsel of wise men and
women who might give him a different perspective on war and terror than the
Kool-Aid-drinking true believers who have brought us to this dreadful state
of affairs? The true believers continue to argue that the proper strategy is
to stay the current catastrophic course.
Americans are paying a fearful price for Mr. Bush's adventure in Iraq.
In addition to the toll of dead and wounded, the war is costing about $5
billion a month. It has drained resources from critical needs here at home,
including important antiterror initiatives that would improve the security
of ports, transit systems and chemical plants.
The war has diminished the stature and weakened the credibility of the
United Sates around the world. And it has delivered a body blow to the
readiness of America's armed forces. Much of the military is now
overdeployed, undertrained and overworked. Many of the troops are serving
multiple tours in Iraq. No wonder potential recruits are staying away in
droves.
Whatever one's views on the war, thoughtful Americans need to consider
the damage it is doing to the United States, and the bitter anger that it
has provoked among Muslims around the world. That anger is spreading like an
unchecked fire in an incredibly vast field.
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