THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
April 2003
Week One
"We won. Rebuilding is for losers. Time to party! Then it's off to Syria for the next invasion." -- satirist Stephen Colbert, on The Daily Show, quoted by Frank Rich, p.87
- Spring: Republican senator Curt Weldon travels to Paris to meet with an Iranian he simply dubs "Ali."
War with Iran
In reality, Ali is Fereidoun Mahdavi, a secretary to Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar. Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi, himself a former minister under the regime of the Shah of Iran, are peddling a spurious tale of stolen uranium traveling between Iran and Iraq, a tale already disproven by numerous intelligence agencies. Weldon is apparently unaware of the agenda behind the meetings, which he believes are opportunities for him to secure important military information. Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi are apparently attempting, again, to manipulate American policy in the Persian Gulf in a way that profits Iran at the expense of the US, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries. As documented in other areas of this site, Ghorbanifar has had some success in this area before, having helped the US set up its arms-for-hostage deal under the Reagan administration that would eventually become known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Ghorbanifar has long been viewed as an unreliable "fabricator" by the CIA. - The tale Ali spins for Weldon is, in the words of Raw Story reporter Larisa Alexandrovna in January 2006, "was as intricate as it was false." An intelligence source says that Mahdavi told Weldon of a scheme by Iranian intelligence to steal enriched, weapons-grade uranium from a secret stockpile hidden by Saddam Hussein. According to Mahdavi, an Iranian intelligence team had infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program. And according to Ghorbanifar, the mission was a success, but the Iranian agents fell victim to radiation poisoning on their way back to Iran.
- Weldon immediately notifies CIA director George Tenet, according to Weldon's 2005 book Countdown to Terror, a lurid "non-fiction" account filled with unfounded speculations and baseless speculations about complex conspiracies in and out of the United States. "Tenet appeared interested, even enthusiastic about evaluating Ali and establishing a working relationship with him," Weldon writes. "He agreed to send his top spy, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director of operations, along with me to Paris for another debriefing of Ali. ...On the day of our scheduled second meeting with Ali in Paris, Kappes bowed out, claiming that 'other commitments' compelled him to cancel. Later, the CIA claimed to have met with Ali independently. But I discovered this to be untrue.... Incredibly, I learned that the CIA had apparently asked French intelligence to silence Ali."
- Weldon's tale is not true, according to a number of CIA and other sources. The CIA does investigate Mahdavi's claims, tasking Paris station chief Bill Murray for the job. Murray ultimately found Mahdavi, like his boss Ghorbanifar, to be a "fabricator." (The CIA originally thought Ghorbanifar, not Mahdavi, was "Ali." It is possible that both Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi used the pseudonym, or that Weldon used the same pseudonym to stand for both men.) Murray himself meets with Mahdavi, who escorts Murry to Iraq to retrace the footsteps of the Iranian infiltrators, but it soon "became apparent that Ali and his sources were fabricators and were trying to extract large sums of money," says an intelligence source. The story becomes murkier after Murray denies ever taking part in a trip to Iraq. "I did not make any such trip," Murray says. "I met with the source, found that he was not credible, forwarded the information he gave us to Washington, where it was thoroughly analyzed by many people and found not to add anything new to what we knew about Iran. The sensational charges that the source made could not be substantiated."
- Weldon, believing that the CIA had for some reason squelched the story instead of investigating it, takes the story to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who in turn pressures the CIA to investigate further. "CIA reluctantly, after pressure from Rumsfeld, followed up by detaching one of their weapons experts from the team that was hunting WMD in Iraq," says a former CIA officer. Other sources say that this second investigation resulted in another wild goose chase.
- Alexandrovna writes that "Weldon seems to be more of an innocent bystander taken in by an internationally known con-man and the lure of spook-like activities than an inside player with an agenda or material participant in these events. The Ali composite seems to have used Weldon as a conduit by which to provide the CIA with information." It was Ghorbanifar who came up with the idea of the eponymous "Ali," knowing that the CIA had already issued so-called "burn notices" labeling him as a fraud and a liar as far back as 1984. In addition, his role in the Iran-Contra scandal made him a figure of suspicion among American intelligence agencies.
- Interestingly, Weldon writes that he spoke with "Ali" on the telephone after being approached by a former Democratic congressman, whom he does not name, and his longtime friend, Ron Klink. Weldon says he decided himself to meet face-to-face with the mysterious "Ali" after "the information became more detailed and critical...." Alexandrovna writes, "Why such highly important information would be provided to Klink and then Weldon as opposed to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee remains unclear."
- On December 9, 2001, Ghorbanifar also met with neoconservative Michael Ledeen, apparently to make similar claims about Iraqi uranium being spirited away by Iranian operatives. "I approached a variety of government officials, lots of them, and told them that I had a reliable source that told me about how and where the Iranians stole enriched uranium from Iraq," Ledeen said after the meeting with Ghorbanifar and others. Like Weldon, Ledeen says that the CIA and the State Department inexplicably ignored the information. Summing up both the Weldon and Ledeen incidents, one intelligence official describes the series of events and the market of intelligence trafficking: "If you were going to launder intel to make up a war, you could easily send some fool on an errand." (Raw Story)
- Spring: Scholar Michael Tomasky releases an eyeopening study entitled Whispers and Screams: The Partisan Nature of Editorial Pages.
Conservative media slant
Through exhaustive researching of the editorial publishings of four different leading American newspapers -- the "liberal" New York Times and Washington Post, and the "conservative" Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, and concludes that while both sets of newspapers are more or less equally partisan in supporting or criticizing a given president's (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) particular policy initiatives, the conservative papers are far more virulent in their criticism of their opposition. Additionally, the conservative papers are far less willing to criticize Republican administrations; the liberal papers, by contrast, are quite willing to criticize Democratic administrations. The conservative papers are far more willing to indulge in attacks of a personal, vituperative nature than the liberal papers (the conservative papers routinely use terms like "Clintonite pod people," "Kremlinologists," and "Democratic sheep," with no equivalent examples from the liberal papers, which attempted to maintain a tone of respect towards Bush even when disagreeing with his policies). Tomasky notes that one of the reasons why the Whitewater scandal gained so much ground among the mainstream media is because the "liberal" New York Times joined conservative outlets in criticizing the Clinton administration, so much so that conservative columnists and reporters routinely included phrases such as "But even the New York Times agrees that...." (The Times was later forced to admit that much of its criticism of Whitewater and the Clintons was based on misinformation and lies from shady, unreliable sources, many of them associated with the "get-Clinton" Arkansas Project. More about the Arkansas Project can be read in the appropriate pages of this site. It is notable that most other news outlets, particularly those with a conservative slant, never acknowledged the falsity of much of their Whitewater-based reporting.) Tomasky notes that, while it is reckless to speculate that the Times' anti-Clinton slant drove the impeachment proceedings, it is quite likely that, had the Times focused more of its criticism on the illegalities of the Kenneth Starr investigation and less on Clinton, the Democrats who went along with the impeachment proceedings might have fought harder against the impeachment of their president. - Tomasky concludes that it is obvious the conservative papers, at least the editorialists, consider themselves "on the team" with the Bush administration and the GOP in general, whereas the more liberal papers consider themselves far more independent and conduct themselves accordingly. Both the Times and the Journal consider themselves, not so much as independent news organs, but as activists in the conservative cause. Tomasky notes that former Newt Gingrich communications director Tony Blankley is the Washington Times' editor for its editorial page, and says it is virtually inconceivable for the New York Times to name, say, Tom Daschle's communications director to such a post. Tomasky writes that the ideal of an independent media unaffiliated with any political cause or party is merely "a stalking horse for liberal hegemony," and "offers rules the conservatives have no interest in playing by." Whether the reading public accepts the new paradigm, and a more advocacy-based, politically activist mainstream media becomes the American norm, or whether the public loses its taste for partisan journalism and demands a return to independent, non-partisan reporting, remains to be seen. (Michael Tomasky)
- Spring: Actors Tyne Daly and John Valentine decide to record a radio adaptation of John Hersey's Hiroshima, and approach National Public Radio to air the broadcast.
Conservative media slant
Daly and Valentine assemble a star-studded cast to record the award-winning book, which tells the story of the first atomic bombing through the eyes of six Hiroshima survivors. NPR, supposedly a "liberal" news outlet, turns Daly and Valentine down, saying that the broadcast "clearly represent[s] a reaction to looming events [the Iraqi war] and from a news perspective it [is] premature." The show eventually airs on the much smaller Pacifica Radio Network in August, and prompts powerful reactions from its listeners, including real-life Hiroshima survivor Shigeko Sasamori, who says, "Everybody, not just presidents and congressmen, need to be educated about how war is a horrible thing. But time passes, and they forget.... I have a mission to tell people how terrible it was so that people can recognize that war is nothing good.... I have to help people understand -- not just understand, take action so that there is no more war. No more Hiroshima." (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- April: Democratic senator Ernest Hollings tries to add $1 billion for port security to a bill authorizing $79 billion for the invation and occupation of Iraq. The GOP Senate leadership shoots down the amendment.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Currently between 1% and 2% of the material shipped into the US through its ports are being inspected; the rest comes in unscathed. Weeks later, Democratic senator Jon Corzine introduces the Chemical Security Act, a strong bill that would mandate companies owning nuclear and/or chemical facilities work up anti-terrorist measures that would protect these plants from terrorist attacks; Corzine's bill is opposed by the industries involved, and so that bill is scrapped in favor of Republican James Inhofe's Chemical Facilities Security Act, introduced in mid-May, which renders such anti-terrorist measures voluntary and not under government scrutiny, and even prohibits the EPA from investigating any "improvements" the industries may make. "Unfortunately, the bill does very little to secure Americans who work and live around these facilities," says Corzine. "The bill may provide an illusion of security, but it's little more than a fig leaf that would leave chemical plants highly vulnerable to terrorism." A similar Inhofe bill, the Nuclear Infrastructure Security Act, supplants the far tougher Nuclear Security Act submitted by Senate Democrats. (GoxExec, Mark Crispin Miller) - April: An Iraqi insurgent group announces in March 2004 that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is killed during this time during a US bombing raid in northern Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
While it is possible that al-Zarqawi was injured during the attack, reports of his death will later prove to be in error. This will not be the first time that al-Zarqawi's death is announced, including a number of claims by the US to have killed al-Zarqawi in this or that attack. Sheikh Jawad Al-Kalesi, who will later claim, also erroneously, that al-Zarqawi will be killed in the Kurdish northern region of Iraq at the beginning of the US-led war on the country, later says, "Zarqawi has been used as a ploy by the United States, as an excuse to continue the occupation. saying that it was a pretext so they don't leave Iraq." Reports of his capture in 2004 by Iraqi forces, who subsequently release him because of a failure to realize his identity, have been called "plausible" by US officials, but these reports remain unverified. (Wikipedia) - April: The extremely conservative and prowar Heritage Foundation publishes an article by Ken Jowitt in its Policy Review journal, which succinctly sums up the rest of the Arab world and the likely changes thrust upon its various entities by the regime change in Iraq.
Middle East unrest
Jowitt says in part, "It is true that a more democratically included Iranian middle class exists. The problem? Most of it lives in Los Angeles. As for the part remaining in Iran, unlike the Polish middle class at the time of Solidarity's revolution against the Communist Party, the Iranian middle classes have no experience organizing against or fighting the regime. Even Iranian students who have a much more favorable base for organizing have been singularly ineffective in their demands for a more moderate mode of rule. - "In Syria, efforts in liberalization will immediately threaten the rule of Bashar al Assad, his family, the group of generals that support him, the merchants that depend on him, and most of all the minority group that rules Syria, the Alawis, a quasi-Muslim sect that the Sunni majority regard as heretics and unbelievers. Should the Assad regime fall, his family and fellow Alawis would be exposed to widespread murderous violence.
- "The majority of Jordan's population is Palestinian, not Hashemite, Bedouin, and Circassian. How will democracy square with the direct electoral threat it poses to the Hashemite dynasty in general and to King Abdullah's family rule in particular? In a similar fashion, democratization, even liberalization, directly threatens Mubarek's determined efforts to groom his son Gamal as successor and guarantor of his authoritarian family rule in Egypt.
- "And Saudi Arabia, far from becoming an isolated Arab 'North Korea' in the allegedly democratic Middle East that will follow regime change in Iraq, the al-Saud family will maintain enormous economic leverage, even after 'democratic' oil flows from Iraq and the Caspian. And if, as I am suggesting, authoritarian family rule is the defining feature of the Middle East, how likely is is that a family like the al-Saud will look to Great Britain or Norway as a model for their family and kingdom?" (Heritage Foundation/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- Early April: The head of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, who leads a group of Iraqi exiles and is considered by many Washington neoconservatives to be their choice for leading Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, clamors to be allowed to enter Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
Though his patrons at the White House and the Pentagon support him, the US generals in the Middle East have no use for the corrupt Chalabi or his small army of exiles and mercenaries. Finally, General John Abizaid, the second-in-command of US forces in the region, says to reconstruction head Jay Garner, "Okay, let's put the son of a b*tch in there and see if he can do what all of them think he can do. And I'll tell you he can't." The US flies Chalabi and his band of irregulars, dubbed the "Free Iraqi Freedom Fighters," into the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah aboard a C-130 transport plane. General James Marks, head of the US task force to find and neutralize Iraqi WMDs, sees Chalabi as the exile is disembarking, and thinks that Chalabi is trying to emulate the famous look of General Douglas MacArthur -- leading a group of his people while wearing a black hat and bush hat. Looking over Chalabi's group, Marks thinks, "Check your wallets. Boy, that's a nasty crowd." Within days, reports start coming in of FIFF "troops" stealing, looting, and carrying out reprisals against personal enemies. Driving along a road in their Humvee, Marks and another intelligence officer, Colonel Jon Jones, spots a group of several bearded Iraqis gathered around a fire at the side of the road. They are roasting some animal -- sheep or dog -- on a spit and dancing around. Marks thinks it looks like a scene from the novel Lord of the Flies. James and Marks look at one another with the same thought: "Free Iraqi Freedom Fighters," they both say before driving on. (Bob Woodward)
Capture of Jessica Lynch and Shoshona Johnson by Iraqi forces; days later, US forces fake a dramatic "rescue" of Lynch for the media
- April 1: PFC Jessica Lynch, captured eight days earlier by Iraqi forces with others of her unit, is rescued by Marines at the hospital where she is being held.
Iraq war and occupation
The official story claims that Lynch fought her captors even after suffering multiple gunshot and stab wounds: "She did not want to be taken alive," says one military spokesman, who then regales reporters with lurid descriptions of her multiple gunshot and knife wounds. The real story is Lynch, along with several of her fellow soldiers, was injured when her vehicle overturned, and was captured and taken to a hospital by Iraqi soldiers; no gunshot or stab wounds are found on Lynch. The "daring rescue" was actually performed for the cameras; Iraqi forces had left the hospital the day before, and the film of US soldiers crashing into the hospital and firing at unseen (and nonexistent) adversaries was staged for the cameras, which were set up ahead of time. An Iraqi civilian had actually tried to return Lynch to her unit, but when their ambulance was fired upon by American forces, he fled back to the hospital. The Army now claims Lynch has suffered a permanent loss of memory and will never be able to recall the events of that particular time period, and the Lynch family has been forbidden to discuss the rescue with the media. (See the May 15, 2003 item regarding the hoked-up rescue of Lynch by the Marines for more information.) A year later, Lynch, whose memory is perfectly fine, will tell ABC's Diane Sawyer that it bothered her "that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. I mean, yeah, it's wrong." - Lynch, a willowy, winsome blonde, is given tremendous media coverage; her les telegenic, African-American compatriot, Shoshona Johnson, who was also captured in the same instance, is virtually ignored by the media and downplayed by the Pentagon. A third captive, James Kiehl, is so ignored by the media and the Pentagon that his father is forced to search the Al-Jazeera Web site to find images that might give clues as to his son's fate. (Kiehl died in the original accident.)
- Interestingly, when the media learns that Lynch was neither shot nor stabbed during her capture, as the Pentagon had first reported, it continues its complicity with the military's propaganda efforts, with talking heads festooning the airwaves speculating on whether she had been shot or knifed after being captured, and had possibly been abused or mistreated while in the Iraqi hospital. Right-wing journalists and bloggers lead an attack on those who question the Pentagon's propaganda, led by Andrew Sullivan, who characterizes a critical BBC reporter as a "far-lefty" and accuses him of trying to "smear" Lynch.
- The Lynch story is designed to distract the media from the rising number of questions about the poor quality of the war planning and, in some cases, execution. Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers had already had to appear on American news broadcasts to deny that US troops were stretched too thin. Stories of US troops mistakenly shooting up a van full of Iraqi women and children, of Apache helicopters being shot down, and of American soldiers killed by suicide bombers, anger and discomfit Pentagon flacks, and the Lynch story seems tailor-made for distracting the media. With the proper orchestration by the Pentagon and CENTCOM, it succeeds. CNN war reporter Tom Mintier later grumbles about the choice to subject Americans to saturation coverage of Lynch over the other, more overriding stories from the war, "I was a bit upset that they spend so much time giving us all of the minute by minute, this happened, she said this, we said that...and on a day when you have forces going into Gaghdad, it wasn't a part of the briefing. Seems like there is an effort to manage the news in an unmanageable situation. They tried it in the first Gulf war, this time it was supposed to be different." A carefully edited, action-packed video montage of the rescue is released by the Pentagon to concur with the story, and much of its contents appear unedited on American television news shows. The image of Lynch lying on a stretcher with an American flag folded on her chest quickly becomes one of the most emblematic images of the early war coverage. Britain's Guardian quickly labels the Lynch story "one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived." (Portsmouth Herald, Washington Post, Wikipedia, Charleston Gazette/The Forum, Frank Rich pp.80-2)
- April 1: The Los Angeles Times runs an article headlined "US Accused of Reckless Gunfire," about the killing of a British soldier by an American pilot during an erroneous attack on a British tank force.
Iraq war and occupation
Shortly thereafter, the Times sanitizes its Web version of the report, deleting key paragraphs and rewriting the headline to read, "U.S. Fire Angers British." The Web site The Memory Hole finds the original version of the article and compares the two. It notes that the deleted paragraphs included key information, such as: the US pilot strafed the British light tanks on its second pass, presumably not noticing the large Union Jack emblems on the machines; the soldiers waved at the pilot, trying to get him to notice that they were British soldiers, not Iraqis; five or six US planes were involved in the attack, though only one strafed the British tanks; and a British survivor said the pilot had gone "on a jolly." It is difficult to fathom the Times's decision to sanitize the article, except in the interest of sacrificing truth for the objective of downplaying the seriousness of the lethal error and not holding the US military accountable for the attack on the British. (Los Angeles Times/The Memory Hole)
- April 2: US forces reach the outskirts of Baghdad, where small units of Iraq's
Iraq war and occupation
Republican Guard puts up fierce resistance. Kurdish militia forces working in concert with US and coalition forces occupy the northern city of Mosul. (Wikipedia) - April 2: Donald Rumsfeld sends a one-page memo to the service secretaries, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, his undersecretary for policy Douglas Feith, General Tommy Franks
Iraq war and occupation
(commanding US forces in Iraq), and other key officials in the Pentagon directing them to support Jay Garner's reconstruction efforts "as required," and saying that Garner's mission is "to help create the conditions for transition to Iraqi self-rule and the withdrawal of coalition forces upon completion of their military objectives. One of Garner's staff members, Colonel Tom Baltazar, gets a copy, and is sourly amused. The memo was impelled by Garner's complaints that his group is getting no cooperation from the military commands. It is amazing, Baltazar observes, that even though the presidential directive of January 20 directs the military to support Garner's efforts, it takes a memo from Rumsfeld to actually get anything done. (Bob Woodward)
- April 3: US forces capture Baghdad International Airport. The invasion of Baghdad begins.
Iraq war and occupation
US troops pushing into Baghdad kill between 2,000 and 3,000 Iraqi soldiers in a single day, a huge bloodletting. In line with Pentagon policy, American news outlets refuse to air coverage of any dead or wounded Iraqis, even though embedded reporters were capturing hours of grisly footage of combat and slaughter. Instead, what is shown is video-game-like footage of "smart bombs" targeting buildings, and the loss of human life, both Iraqi and American, is termed "collateral damage" with no video footage accompaniment. (Wikipedia, Amy Goodman and David Goodman) - April 3: The latest 'Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations' from the US State Department predicts that US arms sales will exceed $14 billion, the largest total in almost twenty years.
Military-industrial complex
"A tragic indicator of the values of our civilization is that there's no business like war business," says Douglas Mattern of the War and Peace Foundation. "I believe arms sales will increase even beyond the staggering amount we have today, due to a continuing destabilization of the area and the lobbying for sales by the armament industry," Mattern continues. One writer describes a "charmed circle of American capitalism, where Tomahawk and cruise missiles will destroy Iraq, Bechtel Corporation (which once employed US Vice President Dick Cheney) will rebuild the country. And stolen Iraqi oil will pay for it." Natalie Goldring, executive director of the Program on Global Security and Disarmament at the University of Maryland, says that "US weapons contractors are likely to gain significant profits because of this war. ...They'll be paid to replace the weapons that are used or destroyed in the war. The companies will also trumpet their successes at next summer's Paris Air Show, searching for foreign buyers." She continues, "We have armed unstable regimes with our most sophisticated weapons, and have then used the widespread proliferation of the weapons as the argument for producing the next generation of more expensive weapons. The vicious cycle continues." (Inter Press Service/CommonDreams) - April 3: Former CIA director James Woolsey, a leading neoconservative, says the US is engaged in a world war, and that it could continue for years:
Neoconservatives
"As we move toward a new Middle East, over the years and, I think, over the decades to come...we will make a lot of people very nervous." He calls it World War IV (World War III being the Cold War according to neoconservatives like himself), and says it will be fought against the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al-Qaeda. He singles out the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, saying, "We want you nervous." This echoes the rhetoric of the Project for the New American Century, of which Woolsey is a supporter, and the singling out of Egypt and Saudi Arabia echoes the rhetoric of the Defense Policy Board, of which he is a member. In July 2002, a presentation to that board concluded, "Grand strategy for the Middle East: Iraq is the tactical pivot. Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot. Egypt the prize." (CNN) - April 3: Democratic frontrunning presidential candidate John Kerry angers Republicans by calling for "regime change" in Washington, prompting responses from Republicans who seem to challenge Kerry's right to criticize the president and even his right to run an opposing campaign.
Conservative smear campaigns
Kerry says that, after talking to foreign diplomats and world leaders recently, he has concluded that "it will take a new president" to repair the damage Bush has done because other leaders are not "going to trust this president, no matter what. What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert replies, "Senator Kerry's remark, equating regime change in Iraq with regime change in the United States, is not what we need at this time. What we need is for this nation to pull together, to support our troops and to support our commander in chief." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is even more harsh in his criticism of Kerry, prompting Democrats to remind him that during the Kosovo air campaign, DeLay did not spare then-president Bill Clinton: "We have a president I don't trust," DeLay said then, "who has proven my reason for not trusting him: He had no plan. We have a civil war that was falsely described as a huge humanitarian problem, when in comparison to other places, it was nothing." (Washington Post)
- April 4: Substances purporting to be chemical agents are found in a laboratory south of Baghdad;
Iraq war and occupation
although significant amounts of atropine, a nerve agent antidote, and documents detailing chemical warfare procedures are found, no forbidden materials are discovered. Most of the liquids found are pesticides; other materials identified as possible chemical agents are later determined to be ordinary explosives. (Wikipedia, TomPaine) - April 4: The Pentagon denies bombing Baghdad's power grid and denies any responsibility for plunging Baghdad into darkness.
Iraq war and occupation
"We did not have the power grid as a target," says a Pentagon spokesperson. "That was not our target." In reality, US air strikes targeted portions of Baghdad's power grid on April 1 and 2, and ground forces attacked the power grid south of Baghdad on Highway 6. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- April 5: Bush asks Congress for $2.5 billion in reconstruction funds for Iraq, but
Iraq war and occupation
requests that the funds be allocated directly to the White House, where it can be spent without Congressional oversight or public notice. A memo from senior Republicans says that the arragement would erect "a wall of executive privilege [that] would deny Congress and the [House Appropriations] Committee access to management of the fund." (Stephen Pizzo/Daily Misleader) - April 5: A civilian neighborhood in Basra, Iraq is bombed by US aircraft, because of intelligence that placed high-ranking Hussein official General Ali Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" because of his authorization to use chemical weapons against Iraqi civilians in 1988.
Iraq war and occupation
Al-Majid is not there (he is captured four months later). However, ten members of the middle-class Hamoodi family, who are not Ba'athists and have no connection to Hussein nor to terrorist groups, are killed, including a 12-year old daughter, a 13-year old son, an 18-year old son studying to be a doctor, a 19-year old daughter, a 10-year old grandson who had begged to stay the night at his grandfather's house, a two-year old grandson, and an infant granddaughter. The matriarch of the family, along with a 40-year old aunt who was to be married in a few weeks, and a 34-year old daughter who had come to her father's house because she was afraid of the fighting near her home, are also killed. In all, 10 of the 14 members of the Hamoodi family are killed, along with 13 other innocent Iraqis. Abed Hamoodi, the family patriarch who survived the bombing, says of the slaughter, "I consider what was done to be a crime of war. How would President Bush feel if he had to dig his daughters from out of the rubble?" Peter Singer asks, "Was [al-Majid's] death so important that it was worth killing twenty-three innocent people that was by no means sure of success? The death of a number of civilians -- it might be only one or two, it might be fifty -- is always predictable when a civilian neighborhood is bombed. The principle of proportionality seems to have been forgotten here. So, too, has the idea of fostering and encouraging respect for life throughout the world." Two days later, an unsuccessful attempt to kill the sons of Saddam Hussein kills 14 innocent civilians at or near a restaurant in Baghdad. Two months later, incorrect intelligence leads US warplanes to strike at a automobile convoy purporting to be carrying Hussein's sons; the convoy is made up of a group of Iraqi smugglers seeking to evade Iraqi taxes. Eighty people, including a number of innocent bystanders, are killed. Hussein's sons were not in the convoy. Journalist Seymour Hersh writes of the bombing that the military unit assigned to the operation is obviously "not interested in prisoners" and "obviously shoots to kill." (Peter Singer)
Salman Pak overrun; no evidence of biological warfare or terrorist training found
- April 6: The so-called "terrorist training camp" of Salman Pak, just outside Baghdad, is overrun and occupied by American troops.
Iraq war and occupation
No evidence that foreign terrorists were ever housed or trained at the camp is unearthed, nor is any evidence that Salman Pak was a biological warfare center found. The evidence does show that Salman Pak was a counter-terrorist training facility, used to train Hussein's forces in taking back jetliners hijacked by, among others, Islamic terrorists. It is likely that in the 1980s the camp was partially funded, and training provided, by CIA agents. (Seymour Hersh) - April 6: After almost a month of pressure from Donald Rumsfeld for Jay Garner to fire his entire slate of people Garner has designated to run Iraq's 23 ministries and replace them with
Iraq war and occupation
unnamed choices of his own from the Department of Defense, Ryan Henry, Douglas Feith's chief deputy, calls Garner with the list of new people Rumsfeld wants emplaced. "When are they going to get here?" asks Garner, who has been resisting Rumsfeld's attempts to replace his people. (See earlier items.) "Well, we don't know," says Henry. "We haven't even notified some of them yet." "Ryan, let's be realistic on this," Garner replies. "You'll never get them here on time." Major combat operations were winding down, and US troops were poised to enter Baghdad. "No," Henry says, "we're going to work this hard." Garner knows the entire idea is ridiculous. He has another suggestion. "Here's what you have to do to be successful. "You bring John Abizaid in the country and you promote him." As Tommy Franks's deputy, Abizaid was too far away from the action. "Make him a sub-unified commander, because you need a four-star [general]. And put me in charge of all the reconstruction, civil administration. Put [General David] McKiernan in charge of all the security and military operations." Rumsfeld refuses, without saying why; Garner continues to press, believing it would unify command in the theater, with both Garner and McKiernan reporting directly to Abizaid. Finally, Rumsfeld tells Garner, "I'm not talking about this anymore." Garner is unaware that Bush and Condoleezza Rice are opposed to naming a military man to lead Iraq's interim government. Imagine, Rice thinks. "President John Abizaid." Rice, a student of Soviet history, is sure that once Hussein is gone, with a little prompting the Iraqi government will right itself after a period of turmoil and inaction, just like the USSR did after Stalin's death. (Bob Woodward)
Ahmad Chalabi takes power in Iraq
- April 7: Two days before the Hussein regime is officially toppled, Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress is ensconced in power in Baghdad, accompanied by 700 Iraqi exiles trained as a "liberation force" trained by the US military in Hungary.
Iraq war and occupation
Chalabi, who claims to have no interest in a political position, begins dispensing jobs, monies, and favors from his new offices in the Baghdad Hunting Club, a private enclave formerly favored by Saddam's son Uday. Pressure from the Bush administration to "force"Chalabi to take the position of president increases; one official says without irony, "George Washington turned it down many times. I wouldn't be surprised if the Iraqi people prevail on him." On May 5, US General Jay Garner will name Chalabi as one of five Iraqis likely to be appointed as the nucleus of a new interim government. Interestingly, the State Department, who has routinely been cut out of the planning behind the Iraq invasion, has no idea or advance warning of Chalabi's entry. (In These Times, Greg Palast) - April 7: Police blast a crowd of anti-war protesters at the Port of Oakland with rubber bullets, sandbags, wooden dowels, and concussion grenades, injuring six longshoremen who were not involved as well as a large number of protesters.
Antiwar protests
(One article, which states that it is "unclear whether protesters was injured," is accompanied by photographs documenting several injuries, including a young woman who was apparently shot in the face from close range and severely wounded.) 31 people, including 9 longshoremen uninvolved in the protests, are injured. The protesters were not violent, but were blocking access to the American Presidents Line pier, who they accuse of profiteering from the war in Iraq. City council aide Joel Tena, an observer of the protest, says he saw no provocation by the picketers. "I was there from 5 AM on, and the only violence I saw was from the police. ...It was scary. They were shooting indiscriminately," he says. "I have been to many protests over the years, and I have never seen police resort to shooting people because they didn't like where they were standing," says one protester, an attorney who was shot in the back as he was moving in the direction ordered by police. "They had loaded guns and started charging." - Another protester tells the same story: "I never heard any warning to disperse. They pursued us and shot us as we walked away." A protester who was not resisting arrest had gravel impacted into his face and severe back trauma from five policemen piling atop of him, one with a knee ground into his back. Many protesters suffer bloody and intensely painful wounds from the "non-lethal" munitions used by the police. Police spokeswoman Danielle Ashford justifies the police action because "there [were] safety issues involved."
- The action is the first police use of anti-crowd munitions against US demonstrators since the US invasion of Iraq. Mike van Winkle of the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) tries to brand the protesters as terrorists: "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act. ...I've heard terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people." CATIC had prepared for the protesting crowd as if they were rioting terrorists, using information gathered after 9/11 and instructing the police to take violent measures whether or not any resistance was offered by the protesters. (KTVU-TV/News from Babylon, Reuters/News from Babylon, IndyMedia/News from Babylon, San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Crispin Miller)
- April 7: Around 80 protesters peacefully demonstrating outside the Madison Avenue offices of the Carlyle Group are arrested by a sudden wave of New York City policemen.
Attack on civil liberties
Many are arrested even after they inform the police that they are willing to leave the area. They are held overnight without access to lawyers, and are grilled about their political beliefs. After many detainees file a lawsuit, all charges are either dropped or the charged defendants are acquitted. (Mark Crispin Miller)
