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 Two
- April 8: Ali Hassan al-Majid, known to US intelligence as "Chemical Ali," is apparently killed by a US bombing raid on a residence in Basra.
Iraq war and occupation
Al-Majid, who was also reported dead after the "decapitation attack" on Baghdad in March, is said to have been the architect of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program, and may have been the one to authorize the use of cyanide gas in the village of Halabja in 1988. "We believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end," says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. However, even though US officials claim that his body was actually found, in reality, al-Majid is not killed in the raid. In late August, he will be taken into custody by US forces. In 1992, Democratic congressman Henry Waxman detailed the deep connections between al-Majid and various American right-wing corporations, organizations, and politicians. (WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, CNNMSNBC, Buzzflash)
US tanks shell a Baghdad hotel, killing 3 journalists
- April 8: An American tank shells Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, home to hundreds of journalists and their crews.
Iraq war and occupation
(The Pentagon initially claims that an Iraqi, not a US, tank shelled the hotel; French journalist Caroline Sinz is able to verify that the attack was indeed carried out by US armor. The Pentagon later claims that the tank was fired on from snipers posted on the roof; the unit's tank commander never mentions any fire coming from the hotel.) 3 journalists die in the attack. Sinz also confirms that no snipers or Iraqi soldiers were on the roof of the hotel, as US military officials allege, and no shots were fired from the hotel, as the Americans also claim. (Sky News correspondant David Chater observes that the Palestine Hotel was home to the "black sheep" of the journalistic crowd: "...that's where we were, that's where we were penned, the Palestine Hotel -- everyone knew that the media were based in that one hotel, high-rise hotel, very prominent on the east bank of the Tigris. No missing it, no missing a target like that. And the Pentagon knew, everyone knew apart from the grunts on the ground. Of course, they hadn't been told, we weren't on their maps, but there you go....") Sinz's cameraman manages to actually film the American tank shelling; he told Sinz, "I have everything, it's an American shooting. The Abrams tank shoot against us." - Sinz believes the attack was deliberate and designed to intimidate the media: "It was the proof that it was really them [the Americans] that shot, if we not have had that image to prove. The American army would never have recognized that it had shot the Palestine Hotel because there would have been no traces, no proof. So I believe that it really bother them that we filmed that because they were forced to recognize the shot against the Palestine Hotel. It meant that the Americans entered Baghdad, and that they shot voluntarily against the press, because I am sure of that, in order to frighten them, to tell them, today we are here, there is a new power being established, and we [the press] cannot go too far! ...[T]hey do it because they want to do it like that. They want to shoot against the press to say be careful, we are in Baghdad and now everything is possible, and you must be careful." About the military's control of the media, Sinz says, "[T]he Americans show what they want to be filmed, the Iraqis show you what they want to be filmed, but the freedom, there was no freedom of the press in Baghdad." One image that never made it on American television was the film Sinz's camera crew took of US bulldozers loading the piles and drifts of dead Iraqis: "[T]he Americans had set up a media post at Saddam's palace, and right in front of Saddam's palace was a mass grave that was dug out in the field, to bury all the cadavers from the Republican Guard, and the soldiers that guarded all the palaces. There were so many cadavers, and it smell[ed] so bad, and they buried them all in a mass grave. My translator, who was Muslim, he did not understand, and said, 'It is there where they bury them? In a mass grave, like that?' So he stood in the field and recited a Muslim prayer since it would be the only prayer that these people would have for their burial...."
- The BBC's Ben Brown also observes the American assault on the Palestine Hotel, home to a number of journalists: "[T]he American Marines came under fire from a building across the river, and they all ran down to the river and were firing wildly at this building. I thought that that highlighted the difference between the Americans and the British army, having spent some time with both. The British were far more restrained. ...I thought the Americans were very jumpy and occasionally trigger-happy, frankly, and one of our British TV colleagues was killed by American fire. We as the media felt very nervous approaching American checkpoints all the time." International reporters watch group Reporters Without Borders says, "We can only conclude that the US Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists." British reporter Robert Fisk says bluntly that the attacks "look very much like murder." (CBC, CBC, Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- April 8: French TV reporter Caroline Sinz interviews three US Marines after the tank attack on the Palestine Hotel, and finds that they are woefully ignorant and misled about the situation in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
Sinz says, "[T]hey ask me, where are the French army, the Russian army, where are they? Not in Baghdad? ...[T]hey believe that the world was in Iraq to fight with them against the regime of Saddam Hussein, against the Americans. For three months, they had no news from their families. The Army chiefs kept them in the dark, and they thought they were fighting against [I believe Sinz means 'alongside'] the whole world. It is us that informed them that the Americans were alone, with the English, and a few Australians. There is nobody else. And they discovered after three months of silence and of isolation from the outside world, they discovered the truth, another reality of the war! They told us how they came all the way from Kuwait at full speed in the desert shooting at everything and at anything that moved. ...They were young people that were just starting the military service. ...They just wanted to go back home and every day that was not the case, they stayed in Baghdad. The journalists were very anxious, the people in Baghdad were anxious and these young soldiers were very, very anxious." (CBC) - Days later, the Committee to Protect Journalists investigates the shelling of the Palestine Hotel, which resulted in the deaths of two journalists and the wounding of three others, and concluded that, while the attack on the journalists was not deliberate, it could have been avoided.
Iraq war and occupation
CPJ found that Pentagon officials as well as ground commanders in Baghdad knew that the hotel was filled with journalists and were intent on not hitting it, but those concerns were apparently not communicated to the tank commander who fired on the hotel. CPJ's Michael Massing says, "[T]he US government continues to maintain that US troops were fired on from the hotel. Nobody can corroborate that -- and none of the journalists saw any evidence of that." (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson) - April 8: The XTF, the artillery brigade turned WMD-hunting unit, has been forced to scale back its efforts becaue of a critical lack of personnel.
Iraq war and occupation
Today one of the two mobile exploitation (MET) units, the units designated to perform intensive inspections on suspected WMD sites, rolls into a site located in a small town just south of Baghdad. Instead of chemical weapons, they find drums of gasoline. Then, operating on a tip from an Iraqi man who claims to have been a scientist working on WMD programs, they hustle to a suspected site in Karbala, 60 miles southwest of Baghdad. They find nothing, and spend 24 hours finding the man who passed the information. XTF commander Colonel Richard McPhee isn't sure whether to keep visiting the sites on the so-called "master list," or depend more on intelligence garnered from people like the Iraqi who claims to be a scientist. McPhee's boss, General James Marks, tells McPhee to do what he needs to do, and not to worry about flying to Kuwait to ask permission to do his job from the senior military commanders. A disgruntled Marks writes in his diary, "WMD testing -- keep expectations low." (Bob Woodward) - April 8: Rumsfeld designates his chief civilian deputy, Steve Herbits, to create a list of potential people to take the position of presidential envoy to Iraq, a significant upgrade over Jay Garner's position.
Iraq war and occupation
The new envoy will be more like a super-administrator, or perhaps a viceroy. Rumsfeld knows that he doesn't want Garner to take the slot. The original list, created by Rumsfeld's deputy Ryan Henry, contains over 100 names. The list includes former GOP senator and Reagan chief of staff Howard Baker, former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown, former California governor Pete Wilson, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating, and former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. A few Britishers are on the list, including former foreign secretary Lord Carrington, and a couple of Democrats, including former Clinton treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, though neither the Brits nor the Democrats are serious options. Absent from the list is anyone who has any experience in postwar stabilization operations, such as former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, because they worked under the Clinton administration. After conferring with Rumsfeld, Herbits whittles the list down to ten. Herbits likes former secretary of state George Shultz, the former head of the Bechtel Corporation. Though he is 83 years old, he is still mentally nimble, and has a tremendous amount of gravitas and a strong international reputation. On the downside, Shultz may have too much sympathy for the State Department, and that isn't what Rumsfeld, obsessed with his feud with State, wants. But Herbits has a dark horse candidate: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. - Herbits writes a four-page memo for Bush blaming State for the failure to achieve "a broad-based consensus for action" in Iraq -- even though Defense has run the entire operation and Rumsfeld has worked tirelessly to keep State's involvement to a minimum -- and noting that the quick appointment of the right presidential envoy, or administrator, to head Iraq's interim government will go a long way to head off any possible civil war. Herbits touts Wolfowitz, who has absolutely no experience in anything approaching international relations outside of the theoretical, as being able to bring "clarity to the world" about Bush's vision of freedom for Iraq, and thwart "traditional Department of State resistance to seeking change for the region." In essence, Wolfowitz's appointment would be a thumb in State's eye. And Wolfowitz has the requisite neoconservative credentials to represent Bush in his new client state. Wolfowitz is also one of Ahmad Chalabi's strongest Washington backers. Herbits clearly sees Wolfowitz presiding over an interim US-led government before turning the reins over to Chalabi. Herbits even says, with a straight face, that Wolfowitz's Jewishness is a plus, because it would show that the invasion and occupation was not about religion, and would demonstrate Bush's "cultural sensitivity." The suggestion that a nation of Muslims would react badly to the idea of a Jewish ruler forced upon them by an occupying country apparently never crosses Herbits's mind.
- Rumsfeld takes Herbits's name off the memo and faxes it over to Bush with a note indicating that the memo has his full support. Herbits discusses it briefly with Dick Cheney over lunch at Cheney's house. Rumsfeld has already shown Cheney the memo "Good paper," Cheney says.
- But Wolfowitz doesn't have everyone's support. Condoleezza Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, sees any endorsement of Wolfowitz as a tantamount endorsement of Chalabi, and Bush doesn't want to be that obvious in supporting Chalabi. Additionally, Wolfowitz doesn't have a good reputation as a manager -- while he is a strong academic and thinker, he can barely run his own office. And both Rumsfeld and Bush's senior advisors realize that Wolfowitz, as a Jew, would be a tough sell to both the Iraqis and the Arabs of the Middle East. Wolfowitz's name is quietly dropped from consideration. "Probably the Jewish factor weighed heavily in their minds," Wolfowitz later tells an Iraqi-American friend. (Bob Woodward)
Fall of Baghdad; Saddam Hussein flees
- April 9: Baghdad falls; Hussein's rule is ended. The US military and media cooperate to stage a photo event of Marines toppling a huge iron statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square while crowds of Iraqis cheer,
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"proving" how grateful and welcoming the Iraqi people are to their American "liberators;" later photos prove that the entire event was staged, with a very small number of Iraqis, numbering in the dozens, actually present and the entire courtyard containing the statue ringed with US tanks and troops. The American media, of course, proclaims it a spontaneous act of joy and defiance by happy, liberated Iraqis. INC leader and US military doyen Ahmad Chalabi is one of the select few to take part in the ceremony, as are a number of his aides. Australian peace activist Reverend Neville Watson, an eyewitness to the event, calls it a "rent-a-crowd," and the Independent's Robert Fisk, another eyewitness, describes it as "the most staged photo opportunity since Iwo Jima." - The site of the statue toppling was carefully chosen by media and PR representatives within the military because of its location directly across from the Palestine Hotel, the main site of the live-feed television cameras in Baghdad. The US media is, as usual, remarkably complicit. NBC's Tom Brokaw compares the scene to "all the statues of Lenin [that] came down all across the Soviet Union." Fox reporter David Asman tells his viewers, "If you don't have goose bumps now, you'll never have them in your life." Many reporters compare the toppling of the statue with the fall of the Berlin Wall after prodding from Donald Rumsfeld, who says, "one cannot help but thikn of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain." NBC's Tim Russert leads the pack, saying, "Not since the fall of the Berlin Wall have I seen anything quite like this. You think about seminal monents in a nation's history...indelible moments like the fall fo the Berlin Wall."
- But not all US journalists so eagerly fall in line. Detroit News reporter John Bebow says, "I don't think that there's any way any American civilian journalist or military person in Iraq felt anywhere near what the Iraqis felt. I mean, the stuff we rained down upon these people. The capacity that we have to kill is so chillingly efficient. We don't even begin to comprehend what those people felt. I saw them without their skulls. I saw them disemboweled. I saw them shot up and raked by helicopter fire." The Washington Post's Susan Glasser says, "[W]e were unprepared and the military was unprepared for the scenario because we believed the optimistic things we had been hearing from the military in Kuwait. 'In Basra they'll be throwing flowers, they'll be parades.'" BBC News correspondent Gavin Hewitt says that the US blew a tremendous opportunity to win the approval of the Iraqi people after the overthrow of Hussein: "A great sense of liberation hit west Baghdad the day after Saddam's statue came down. The streets were filled with people running alongside the tanks and saying, 'Thank you, Mr. Bush, thank you, Mr. Blair.' ...[T]he troops who I was with loved it. They felt a great sense of justification. But everywhere we went we saw solemn, uncertain faces, who didn't like the idea that although they may be being liberated, it was coming at the hands of the Americans and the British. The preparations for what was to follow were not sophisticated enough. For instance, there was no television station to let people know what the Americans were trying to do. There was a vacuum. ...I just do not think that enough energy went into making sure that within days you would see food coming in, that there were sufficient troops on the ground to provide security. All the emphasis was just get rid of Saddam, and essentially the people will be happy, and the future will take care of itself. That was a failure and has made winning the peace that much harder."
- In its seminal documentary of the early days of the invasion, Control Room, al-Jazeera's senior news producer, Samir Khader, says, "The Americans played the media element intelligently. ...It was a show. It was a media show. After having bombed Al-Jazeera, and some part of Abu Dhabi television, they did this show, they brought with them some people -- supposedly Iraqis cheering. Those people were not Iraqis. I lived in Iraq, I was born there, I was raised there, I can recognize an Iraqi accent.... The show was meant for the international media -- here we are in Baghdad. The war is finished." Khader's colleague Deema Khatib asks that, if the "mob" in the square was so spontaneous, "how come one of them had the flag of Iraq before 1991 in his pocket? Has he been waiting there for ten years with the flag on that square? I don't think so. But this is not something the US media will talk about."
- The saturation media coverage of the statue toppling successfully keeps other news reports from Baghdad off of American news channels; though some anchors briefly mention the "total anarchy" reigning throughout the city, no footage is aired; it seems as if no camera crews were even dispatched to cover the chaos. A later examination of the propaganda stunt by the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media concludes, "According to CNN and FNC [Fox News Channel], in other words, the war ended with the collapse of the statude of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square." After that, the report finds, "the battlefield itself disappeared," with all war coverage dropping off the screens. "Stories accompanied by visuals of fighting" dropped 76% on Fox and 70% on CNN.
- Bush, on a secure videoconference with Britain's Tony Blair, keeps hammering the aspect of the public relations aspects of the overthrow. "We've got to win the story in the peacetime era," he tells Blair. "We've won the war. We cannot have people define the peactime era for us." (Wikipedia, Consortium News, FactMonster, MidEast Web, Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Bob Woodward, Frank Rich pp.83-4)
CBS photo of the toppling of Saddam's statue
Overhead photo showing the staging of the photo shoot, and the empty plaza ringed by US tanks
(Photo courtesy of The Big Picture)
- It is axiomatic that Fox News is by far the most fervently pro-war and pro-Bush news network in America.
Conservative media slant
In their book Embedded, authors Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson say that, while many media critics blast Fox for its "jingoistic bias" and going "overboard" in promoting the war with its viewers, many military personnel prefer Fox's coverage to the other networks: "They embraced the network as their very own. They loved Fox. Their families and friends back home loved the cable channel. By tapping into the heartland's muscular nationalism, Fox's ratings increased dramatically." The editors note that most of Fox's coverage was provided by two reporters, Greg Kelly and Rick Leventhal, who were both cited by USA Today for their exemplary efforts in the field. Theirs is an excellent example of straightforward and relatively uncolored reporting from the field that would be "whipped up" into much slicker, more packaged coverage, often heavily edited by Fox editors and producers into a product that not only reported the news, but slanted the reporting in a way that favored the war and the administration that sponsored it. (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson) - Matt Schofield, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, gives a far more accurate portrait of the Iraqi fedayeen than either Arab or American audiences heard: "The fedayeens' image was really overblown.
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The Iraqi people were given this picture of them as superheroes. They'd show them on television jumping out of planes and shooting people as they're falling to the earth on parachutes and eating live animals -- just these intensely violent superfighters. They were all black, with this ninja look, and they were deadly, and they never missed. They were ruthless and they were there to protect the nation of Iraq. An image was built up around them that they were terrifying and Iraqis needed to be afraid of them, but their training actuallywasn't nearly as intense. This guy [a former fedayeen] told me that they didn't serve all day, every day. They were called in occasionally to serve by a patriotic song that would be played on the airwaves, and when this song played, that was the call for the fedayeen to report, but he said there was no superhuman training going on. He wasn't a fearsome-looking guy at all. He looked very afraid; he had the look of fear in his eyes. He wasn't the sort of man who, if you ran into him in the street, you'd be frightened for your life. He had been a theater major at Baghdad University. Every family had to give a son over to serve in the military. He was chosen because they thought he probably looked the part -- he doesn't know for what reason he was chosen for fedayeen. He says he never actively sought to be in the fedayeen; he was just drafted. ...In college, he played Othello. The role, when I met him, was Gilligan playing Othello. ...He's a man afraid to leave his home." (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson) - Peace activist Marla Ruzicka made a heroic attempt to catalog the number of Iraqi casualties, and got little help from the US military.
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The military's position is best expressed by Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who said, "It just is not worth trying to characterize by numbers" the casualties suffered by the Iraqi people: "[W]e are not out there to count up bodies." Ruzicka counters, "We have to see what happens to victims. That is what CENTCOM needs to do. Now there is no reason why the Pentagon can't do that. They know where the bombs are dropped. They have intelligence on the ground. It's an absolute no-brainer from a strategic point of view. From an American patriotic point of view, Americans do not want innocent people to suffer. I feel like what I'm doing is the most patriotic thing in the world." Ruzicka will die, the victim of a car bombing, in April 2005. (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson)
"Bush uses a volunteer army, filled -- in part -- with many young men and women who couldn't find decent paying jobs because of the shambles our Bush economy is in, to destroy a nation's infrastructure. The Bush Cartel conducts a secret contracting process, including a large no-bid contract for Dick Cheney's Halliburton, that dispenses million and billion dollar fees to Bush/GOP campaign contributors. The more of Iraq that is destroyed, the larger the contracts dispensed to corporate sponsors of the Bush royal dynasty. The larger the fees paid, the more that returns in the form of contributions to Bush and the GOP. It's a grand scam, ain't it? It's too bad our young men and women -- and thousands of Iraqis -- have to die in the process." -- Buzzflash, "A Perfect War"
- Shortly after the fall of the Hussein regime, France tries to mend its fences with the US.
Bush's foreign policies
The French renounce their opposition to NATO control over the peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan. They go farther than Russia in agreeing to suspend UN sanctions on Iraq. French president Jacques Chirac warns Syria not to harbor Iraqi officials, and breaks the high-level silence between his government and the US by telephoning Bush. France's ambassador to the US speaks of the need to "turn this bitter page and think positively about what we have to do together." The White House response? A blizzard of stories, all leaked by "anonymous administration sources," hits the US media, making all sorts of false or unprovable assertions about the French. According to the stories, France sold nuclear weapons material to Iraq, France provided fake passports to fleeing Iraqi officials, France hid smallpox toxins on behalf of Iraq in secret laboratories. Predictably, the disdain among Americans for all things French, already high, spikes. - Another target of US punishment for failing to support the Iraqi invasion is Chile. After a long and bloody history of dictatorship and tyranny, Chile over the last decade has become a paragon of American-style democracy and free0market economics. The planned US free-trade agreement with Chile, designed not only to reward Chile for its transformation but to demonstrate to its South American neighbors that adherence to policies close to the US would draw that country closer to America, is indefinitely postponed.
- For refusing to support the war, Bush slight's Mexico's Vicente Fox by canceling the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration. He cancels a planned trip to Canada. He orders a trade agreement with New Zealand postponed due to "recent actions" by its government. He freezes military aid to 35 countries who refused to vote to exempt the US from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, including Lithuania, a new NATO member who actually sent troops to Iraq. (New Republic/International Herald Tribune/Washington Post/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
"And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign." -- Donald Rumsfeld, defenselink.mil, April 9, quoted by Brandi Mills
"Bush may be the smartest military president in history. First he gets Iraq to destroy all of their own weapons. Then he declares war." -- Jay Leno (International Herald Tribune)
"God likes the side with the most weapons, I've noticed." -- San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte, quoted by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson
"We defeated the Flintstones." -- Thomas Friedman (MSNBC/Newsweek)
- April 9: Bush nominates extremist and Federalist Society member William Pryor to the federal appeals court.
Partisan Bush appointees
Pryor has supported the display of the Ten Commandments in state courts, has fought for extended rights to pray in public schools, and has called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history. He has fought against the Voting Rights Act and has worked to undermine environmental laws and affirmative action efforts. Pryor, from his position as attorney general of Alabama, has consistently worked to support the racially troublesome "states' rights" movement, and led efforts to combat the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Clean Water Act; he has said that abolishing a Texas law forbidding homosexual relations would pave the way for "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest or pedophilia." Many of his most egregrious decisions have been overturned. (Ten months later, GOP senator Rick Santorum will echo Pryor's comments, and compare homosexual relations with "man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.") Pryor also has issues with judicial ethics from his founding of, and his presidency of, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a group founded to promote the election of Republican attorneys general; Pryor's group frequently solicits campaign contributions from the same corporations attorneys general are charged with regulating, and Pryor's involvement with the group is a clear violation of Alabama's Rules of Professional Conduct. Republican attorney general Grant Wood calls Pryor "probably the most doctrinaire and the most partisan of any attorney general [I have] dealt with in eight years, so people would be wise to question whether or not [Pryor is] the right person to be nonpartisan on the bench." The Washington Post says of Pryor's nomination, "Mr. Bush cannot at once ask for apolitical consideration of his nominees and put forth nominees who, in word and deed, turn federal courts into political battlegrounds." The Senate, in a contentious nomination battle, will confirm Pryor to the appeals court in June 2005 after his being named to the bench in a recess appointment by Bush. ( Washington Post, Independent Judiciary, Eric Alterman and Mark Green, Mark Crispin Miller) - April 9: At 1:30 am, Barre, Vermont police officer John Mott convinces the janitor of Spaulding High School to allow him to enter the building.
Attack on civil liberties
Mott enters the classroom of teacher Tom Treece and photographs a number of student projects concerning Iraq and other political materials. He subsequently accuses Treece, a social studies teacher and self-described pacifist, of indoctrinating his students with anti-Bush rhetoric. Mott tells the local media, "Having spent 30 years in uniform, I was insulted, I'm just taking a stand on what happens in that classroom as a resident and a voter and a taxpayer of this community." The superintendent defends Treece and criticizes Mott, rightly pointing out that he was not on duty and had no business entering the school, especially under false pretenses. During a heated school board meeting, the incident is thoroughly discussed. Mott turns out to be a representative of a small, radically conservative group called Citizens Advocating Responsible Education (CARE), which advocates defunding public schools in favor of vouchers, and is against most forms of academic freedom of expression. 75 of the school's 78 students sign a petition in favor of Treece. Within days of the incident, the photographs appear on Rush Limbaugh's Web site, and Treece is roundly attacked by conservative talk show hosts around the country. Treece is temporarily barred from teaching the public issues class that sparked the controversy, but remains at the school. (Ron Jacobs, Amy Goodman and David Goodman) - April 9: Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Sachs observes, "...Bush is
George W. Bush
presiding over the ruin of US foreign policy. A world united against the war in Iraq is only the start, since US diplomatic failures and neglect extend to virtually every area of foreign policy." (Financial Times/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- April 10: Kurdish troops occupy the northern city of Kirkuk, facing little
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resistance. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer says, "We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about." (Wikipedia, White House) - April 10: Abd al-Majid al-Kho'i, a moderate Shi'ite cleric, is murdered in Najaf, Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
The CIA, eager to encourage the emergence of pro-American Muslim leaders in Iraq, had had al-Kho'i, long exiled and living in London, flown into Iraq over the objections of CIA field officers who warned that conditions on the ground were too unstable to ensure the cleric's safety. Many Americans believe that al-Kho'i is murdered on the orders of hardline Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in order to eliminate any potential challenge to his leadership. (James Risen) - April 10: Iraqi refugee Dr. Renwar Reben warns against the effects of the US military victory in Iraq:
Iraq war and occupation
"The next chapter is going to be a conflict between the Iraqi people and the invaders, the pro-American regime in Iraq. Sooner or later, the Americans will face the revolutionary anger and aggressiveness of the Iraqi people." Dr Reben notes that most Iraqis believe the US was behind the Iran-Iraq war and the first Gulf War. "Iraqis also know America supported Saddam Hussein's use of a biological bomb against Kurds in 1988. At that time, George Bush, the father, vetoed against condemnation of Iraq for these actions." Reben also notes that many Iraqis blame the US for the suffering endured over the last 13 years because of UN economic sanctions. "Five thousand children died each month because of lack of medication and lack of sanitation." (Sydney Morning Herald) - April 10: Donald Rumsfeld sends his special assistant, Larry DiRita, to Kuwait, where DiRita takes part in a special briefing with Jay Garner, the head of the Iraqi reconstruction efforts.
Iraq war and occupation
During the discussion of the benefits that the Iraqis will gain from the US efforts, DiRita slams his hand on the table and snarls, "We don't owe the Iraqis anything! We're giving them their freedom. That's all we should give them. We don't owe them any other benefit." (DiRita claims not to recall the outburst, but says he came to Kuwait to emphasize Rumsfeld's point that if the US comes in with large amounts of cash flowing into the country, the Iraqis will stand back and just pocket the money. Rumsfeld wants them to stand up for themselves.) In a meeting with Garner's senior staffers a few days later, DiRita asserts that the US will be leaving Iraq soon. "We went into the Balkans and Bosnia and Kosovo and we're still in there," he says. "We're probably going to wind up in Afghanistan for a long time because the Department of State can't do its job right. Because they keep screwing up, the Department of Defense winds up being stuck in these places. We're not going to let this happen in Iraq." The reaction from Garner's staffers, many of whom are State Department officials, is one of bemused amazement -- does DiRita even know that he's talking to a roomful of people from State? DiRita then claims, "By the end of August we're going to have 25,000 to 30,000 troops left in Iraq. Garner's people know that DiRita has no idea what he is talking about, and there is no chance that the US will be able to pull out that drastically that soon. One of Garner's senior staffers, Robin Raphael, who will take over the Ministry of Trade, thinks to herself, "What is Larry DiRita smoking? The poor baby. He just doesn't get it." (Bob Woodward) - April 10: OHRA head Jay Garner finds out from Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, Ryan Henry, that the White House is becoming involved in the dispute between Rumsfeld and Garner over the list of people to take over Iraq's ministries.
Iraq war and occupation
(See above items for more information.) The White House wants to know why Garner isn't putting Rumsfeld's people in place. They want the list of Rumsfeld's appointees, Garner believes, and believes that once they get that list, they will change it around, so it will take more time to get the team in place. "Fine," Garner says sarcastically to Henry. "Whenever you get them together and go get them trained and ship them over here, we'll welcome them with open arms." Garner doesn't think Rumsfeld and Henry have a clue about what they're trying to do. (Bob Woodward) - April 10: Ken Adelman, a Reagan administration official and ardent supporter of the war, pens an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled "Cakewalk."
Iraq war and occupation
Adelman's column gloats over the quick victory in Iraq, and reminds readers that in early 2002 he predicted an easy victory over the Iraqi military. He chastizes those who predicted a tougher fight or problems with the post-war occupation, writing, "Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters" was Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Adelman writes that his own confidence came from having worked for Donald Rumsfeld three times and "from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz for so many years." Later, according to Bob Woodward's April 2004 book Plan of Attack, Cheney phones Adelman to praise his article, and reportedly says to Adelman, "You demolished them." Cheney invites Adelman to join him, his wife, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby at a celebratory dinner. During the dinner, Adelman says he was worried that the war would never be launched, since support around the country seemed to be waning. Cheney tells Adelman that a war with Iraq was always in the plans, and though after 9/11 Afghanistan was first on the administration's list, Iraq was always a target. The table conversation turns to Colin Powell, the Secretary of State who has always advocated softer measures against Iraq, and Cheney and the others take turns laughing at Powell's "indecisiveness." The participants agree that Powell seems more concerned with his poll standings and popularity than anything else, and Cheney says that even though Powell gave a key speech at the UN in February to bolster the administration's case for war, "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do." Cheney says Bush is "driven" to implement American-style democracy in the Middle East. "Let me ask," Adelman inquires, "before this turns into a love fest. I was just stunned that we have not found weapons of mass destruction." "We'll find them," Wolfowitz says. "It's only been four days, really," Cheney says. "We'll find them." (Washington Post) - April 10: In an interview, British journalist Andrew Buncombe casts serious aspersions on the heroic "rescue" of Jessica Lynch earlier in the month.
Iraq war and occupation
Buncombe, who had been at the hospital where Lynch was being kept, says, "A big fuss was made, but the reality was that it was a very benign rescue -- I don't think a shot was fired. There were no Iraqi troops there. In terms of being 'liberated,' a big fuss was made to enable the Delta Force to rush in there. ...My sense is that the doctors at the hospital were geniunely concerned for her as a patient. She was put in the cleanest room in the hospital; she was given the best bed. The conditions in the hospital were appalling. The situation was wretched and they hadn't had any water for some time -- they hadn't had electricity there for several days. The place was pretty wretched and they treated her as best they could." Later, of course, the entire story will unravel and be shown up as a classic instance of US propaganda and duplicity. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman) - April 10: New York Governor George Pataki, a Republican, says at a pro-war rally,
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"The war started here on September 11, 2001," in another attempt to forge a link between Iraq and the September 11 bombings in the minds of the American people. (Truthout) - April 10: "The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together
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a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war." -- neoconservative Fred Barnes, quoted by Dave Zweifel
- April 11: As more sites supposed to have contained WMDs are inspected and found clean, Rumsfeld says,
Iraq war and occupation
"When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they'll look at it." David Corn writes incredulously, "If people have time? What had happened to his high-priority WMD mission? ...After all, the objective of this war supposedly was to make sure Saddam Hussein could not hand off chemical or biological weapons or nuclear material to terrorists who could use them against the United States. ...[T]he window of opportunity for WMD-craving terrorists had been wide open for weeks. ...Rumsfeld and the administration had apparently not planned seriously for this contingency." (Democratic Underground, David Corn) - April 11: Rumsfeld is livid about the media coverage of the chaos and looting erupting throughout Iraq in the aftermath of the overthrow of Hussein.
Iraq war and occupation
"I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it," he gripes during a Pentagon news conference. "I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it was just Henny Penny -- 'The sky is falling'. I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that is being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free." Rumsfeld punctuates his remarks to the gathering of reporters with PowerPoint slides of photographs from Iraq, captioned with phrases like "Iraqis share a laugh with a US Army soldier," "Happy Iraqis pose with a US Army soldier," and "Two young Iraqis give the thumbs-up sign to coalition soldiers." It's obvious that this is the kind of coverage Rumsfeld wants to see. "Let me say one other thing," he continues. "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?'" Rumsfeld gets a laugh from the reporters. "Is it possible there were that many vases in the whole country?" Two days later Bush echoes Rumsfeld in his own conference, saying, "You know, it's amazing, the statue comes down on Wednesday and the headlines start to read, Oh, there's disorder. Well, no kidding. It is a situation that is chaotic because Saddam Hussein created conditions for chaos." (See the April 12 entry for the devastating effects the endemic looting creates for Iraq.) - The rather desperate attempts by Rumsfeld, his generals, and White House PR flacks to downplay the effects of the looting are quite successful in the credulous mainstream media. "I don't think that anyone anticipated that the riches of Iraq would be looted by the Iraqi people," General Vincent Brooks tells reporters with a straight face, apparently forgetting that during the 1991 Gulf War, nine of Iraq's 13 regional museums were looted, flooding the antiquities market with treasures for years afterwards.
- On April 20, the Washington Times revealed that three weeks before the invasion, the Pentagon had issued a memo to the coalition command listing ten sites that were crucial to protect in order of importance; the Baghdad museum was #2 on the list. That story wasn't what the White House wanted to see in the news reports. So the administration and the military change the story: move along, nothing to see here. "As few as 17 items" are missing from the National Museum, according to General William Wallace, so where's the story? Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, a reliable administration shill, instantly claims that only 33 artifacts had in fact been stolen, and anyone who says otherwise is a Saddam-loving leftist, the same kind of person who is trying to claim that Iraq has no WMDs. No one knows where Wallace or Krauthammer get their figures.
- According to a UNESCO team of experts, between 2,000 and 3,000 items were looted from the Baghdad museum alone, and over a million volumes in the National Library and Archives were burned. Marine reserve colonel Matthew Bogdanos, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who will lead the US treasure-recovery team, believes that over 14,000 items were stolen; he will receive the National Humanities Medal from Bush in 2005 for his role in recovering some 5,500 of the missing antiquities. However, Bogdanos will say that many of the most priceless, and historically invaluable, items are irretrievably lost. (Bob Woodward, Frank Rich pp.85-6)
GOP operative Katrina Leung exposed as a Chinese spy
- April 11: Katrina Leung, a California Republican operative, is alleged to have operated as a spy for Communist China.
Republican corruption
Court documents show that Leung allegedly stole top US secrets while having affairs with two married FBI agents, even as she helped Canada's Nortel Networks sell millions of dollars worth of equipment to Asia. The US government has charged Leung with possession of classified documents with the intent of providing them to Chinese intelligence. Leung is also on the FBI payroll, and has been given over $1.7 million by the bureau over the last twenty years. Leung is said to have passed along details on FBI personnel, phone lists and intelligence on the whereabouts of Chinese fugitives, as well as failed to pay US taxes. In the early 1980s, the FBI was trying to tap Ms. Leung's deep knowledge of China, when it assigned a "handler" to her, 30-year FBI veteran James Smith, now retired. Smith now stands accused of treating classified secrets with gross negligence. Smith is one of the FBI agents alleged to have had an affair with Leung; the other is former Livermore Labs employee William Cleveland, also a retired FBI agent. Aside from being a Nortel employee and a Chinese double agent, Leung has also been a powerful operative for the California Republican Party, giving hefty donations to GOP candidates Richard Riordan and Bill Simon as well as to the national GOP, and recently being appointed a voting member of the state GOP's central committee by US Representative David Dreier. Leung's lawyers claim, "Katrina Leung is a loyal American citizen. For over 20 years she has worked at the direction and behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She repeatedly endangered herself in order to make significant contributions to the security and well-being of the United States and her fellow citizens." (Toronto Globe and Mail, Sacramento Bee, ConWebWatch) - April 11 - on: CNN announces that US troops have captured a major Iraqi official.
Iraq war and occupation
Most notably, the Iraqi is pictured as one of a number of Iraqi "war criminals" on a deck of playing cards. The Pentagon's "55 Most Wanted" deck of cards was created by five Army intelligence specialists. They are released by General Vincent Brooks at a news conference in Qatar. Brooks tells the press, "The deck of cards is one example of what we provide to soldiers and Marines out in the field with faces of individuals and their names." Brooks is lying to the press. Originally only 1,900 decks were originally printed, many finding their way to reporters, who eagerly use them in their news reports, but few US soldiers ever see them. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the soldiers "look at the cards as little more than a Pentagon public relations stunt." And that is exactly the purpose they serve. The cards win their way into the imaginations of Americans who support the war effort, and particularly the US journalists who can't get enough of using them in their nightly reports. Card deck cocreator Lieutenant Hans Mumm of the 3404 Military Intelligence Unit says, "As people started to get captured, they wouldn't say who the person was that got captured. They'd say, 'They captured the six of diamonds out of the deck of cards.'" As an intelligence and informational tool, the cards are virtually worthless; as a propaganda tool and a means of popularizing the war among American viewers, they are priceless. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
Aces from the deck of playing cards created by Pentagon PR staff
- April 11: US representative Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who closely tracks the drug and health care industries, says that the Bush administration is
Medicare and Medicaid cuts; health care
"carrying out a twenty-year intellectual jihad against Medicare with false claims that it is financially unsustainable and going bankrupt. The administration has been steadily weakening the program from within -- and is frankly trying to make Medicare less attractive by cutting out outreach services and basically demolishing what was generally a good customer service apparatus." (Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - April 11: Jules Crittenden, a reporter with the Boston Herald embedded with an infantry unit in Iraq, posts a diary entry on a journalistic Web site that could serve as a warning of just how far away from journalistic standards a reporter can get from being embedded with a troop unit at war.
Conservative media slant
Crittendon writes of his experiences as "his" unit enters Baghdad, saying, "It was here I went over to the dark side." He serves as "spotter" for the unit, assisting in the targeting and killing of three Iraqi soldiers. Though Crittenden is unrepentant -- he writes, "I'm sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. ...Screw them, they weren't there." a reporter for FAIR, F. Marshall Maher, responds, "War correspondents are civilians, afforded specific protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention. By picking up a weapon or assisting in the fighting, they not only strip themselves of that protection, they also put every other journalist covering the war in jeopardy by blurring the line separating reporters from combatants." Crittenden is not the only journalist to forget that he is not part of the troops. CBS producer Chuck Stevenson, embedded with a Marine unit, writes exultantly, "This project is flat-out cool. It's Band of Brothers in real time. Through my long contact with the Marines (I have been a speaker at their media training seminars for ten years), I have been embedded with that noble service.... I came away with a dim view of many so-called international journalists, who so often report with their convictions rather than their eyes." NPR correspondent John Burnett says, "I couldn't shake the sense that we were cheerleaders on the team bus.... Much of the Marine command that I met saw us not as neutral journalists who had a job to do, but as instruments to reflect the accomplishments and glory of the United States Marine Corps. A press officer leaned back in the chow hall one day and scanned a color spread in Time on Marines preparing for battle. 'Money can't buy this kind of recruitment campaign,' he said." And journalist Chantal Escoto recalls, "I was a noncombatant, but I told them I'd be willing to pick up a gun if I had to. They're pretty easy to use. It's point and shoot." Crittenden was caught in late April bringing into the US a large painting stolen from one of Hussein's palaces; he defends his theft by saying it is "the time-honored tradition of soldiers of bringing home reminders of some of the most intense experiences of their lives." Journalist Amy Goodman responds, "Yes, pillaging certainly is time-honored -- among marauding soldiers, not journalists. But Crittenden had long since forgotten which helmet he was wearing." The painting was eventually returned to Iraq, though no criminal charges were ever filed against Crittenden. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- April 12: Congress approves the first installment of US reconstruction aid to Iraq,
Iraq war and occupation
totaling $2.4 billion. (T. Christian Miller)
Massive looting in Iraqi cities goes unchecked by US troops
- April 12: Looting in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra becomes endemic. Almost all government buildings with the exception of the Oil Ministry are left unguarded by US soldiers, and are plundered by Iraqi civilians.
Iraq war and occupation
Hospitals, museums such as the National Museum of Antiquities, and other buildings are looted to the bare walls. Priceless relics of Mesopotamian civilization, some of the oldest in the world, are destroyed or stolen, with no attempt to intervene by US troops. Freelance photographer and amateur archaeologist Robert Galbraith talks about the tragedy of the precious historical documents lost during the looting of the museums around Baghdad after the Hussein regime fell: "They were looting the national library of Iraq, and the looters had set up a shop in front of the g*ddamn place and were selling the most important documentation of our world history for pennies! These books needed a humidifier -- just like a Cuban cigar, and they were just selling them. Many of them probably dried up and blew away as dust. The scene reminded me of the grand library of ancient Alexandria, Egypt, which was torched. At the time, it was the most important museum in the world. ...There's a saying in our archaeological field: 'If you don't know your history, you will never find the future.' That's what's happening in Iraq. I believe that external forces are coming in and annihilating the history of a people, and that history is the soul of the people." An estimated 10,000 artifacts, many of them priceless and irreplaceable, are missing as of December 2003. Clay tablets with the earliest known examples of writing in the world are gone, archaeological sites have been bulldozed, and the National Library and National Archives, with precious documents and artifacts from as early as the days of Sumeria, were burned to the ground. Archaeologists and cultural historians equate the loss with that suffered when Crusaders burned the Library of Alexandria with all of its contents. - As a partial result of the endemic looting and destruction, Baghdad's overburdened electrical, water, and sewage systems collapse entirely. The same systems in other major cities either collapse or suffer serious damage.
- Interestingly, while US troops are specifically not ordered to protect hospitals or cultural sites, they are ordered to protect oil facilities, and one group of soldiers is ordered to destroy a disrespectful mosaic of the elder Bush on the floor of the al-Rashid Hotel. Nuclear facilities, hospitals, and museums around the country are looted, sometimes to the bare walls.
- Defense Secretary Rumsfeld downplays the extent of the looting, claiming that the media is sensationalizing it by running the same footage over and over again to make it seem as if more looting is taking place than is actually happening. "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?' Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?" When asked again about the looting, Rumsfeld retorts, "Stuff happens! ...Freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." Rumsfeld's airy dismissals hide the fact that almost every government building in central Iraq was looted to one extent or another, that thousands of irreplaceable historical artifacts were either stolen or destroyed, and that entire sections of the country's power grid and water supply were rendered useless by looters and thieves, who often steal every single item in a building down to the very building blocks. Pentagon officials will later admit that they did not plan at all for the massive looting and destruction that is occurring. Many commanders in the field point out that their men are not trained as police or security guards, and often US soldiers obey orders and maintain their posts even when mass looting occurs in front of them. One egregrious example is the fact that large numbers of US soldiers, along with fifty tanks, were detailed to guard the oil industry while leaving Baghdad's three dozen hospitals exposed; the hospitals were looted to the bare walls. On April 14, Bush dismisses the looting as Hussein's fault: "...Saddam Hussein created the conditions of chaos. He created conditions of fear and hatred. And it's going to take a while to stabilize the country." Bush refuses to admit that he ignored warnings such as the one from the Council on Foreign Relations that the quick imposition of security is vital for a democratic transition.
- One report from an intelligence officer on the WMD task force later reads, "In an urban environment -- without adequate security -- the task of eliminating looters, stopping deliberate destruction efforts, and safeguarding the team became a nearly impossible task."
- "It was very likely, we thought, that there was going to be widespread civil disturbance," Middle East expert Robert Perito later says about a presentation to the Defense Policy Board before the invasion, in an October 2003 interview for PBS's Frontline. "It was also going to be necessary for the US to be prepared going in to deal with that. So my presentation was largely about the kinds of forces that we would need in order to deal with that kind of violence. The recommendations were to create a constabulary and a police force and rule-of-law teams that would be able to go in and deal with civil disturbance." Like other experts with similar recommendations, Perito was ignored. There was "no plan from higher headquarters," reads the 3rd Infantry's after-action report, "no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad." On Frontline, Lieutenant General James Conway of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force says that his forces could have stopped the looting "if we had been told to stop the looting and secure key elements of the city, we could have brought a force to do that." Army Secretary Thomas White says, "We immediately found ourselves shorthanded in the aftermath. We watched people dismantle and run off with the country, basically."
- Weapons and munitions dumps were equally left open for rampant plundering. A US soldier who witnessed some of the looting later tells the Los Angeles Times, "On our last day there, there were at least 100 vehicles waiting at the site for us to leave" so they could loot munitions. "It was complete chaos," says another soldier. "It was looting like LA during the Rodney King riots." One site that was open for looting was the al-Qaqaa nuclear research site, a prime facility before the Gulf War that Hussein had used to research developing nuclear weapons. A weapons expert says, "The fact that it had been left unsecured is very, very discouraging. It would be like invading the US in order to get rid of WMD and not securing Los Alamos."
- The Bush administration reacts predictably about the looting of weapons and munitions sites: by lying about the sites and attacking the messengers. Adminstration officials, aided and abetted by their right-wing punditry, tell listeners that all the explosives had been removed from the sites before the looters got there, a lie that is quickly disproved by, among other things, a Minnesota news crew's airing of film from April 18 that shows box after box clearly marked "explosives" and "al-Qaqaa." Then the spin shifts. Rudy Giuliani tells Today show listeners in October 2004 that the looting was the fault of the soldiers on site, not of the Pentagon leadership or Bush. Never mind that the troop levels are far too small to prevent any serious looting, never mind the raft of reports that recommended measures be taken to prevent looting, never mind any of it. "[T]his was a country as large as the state of California, with a population of 25 million people," White later says; "we were very concerned that there wouldn't be sufficient boots on the ground after the operation to provide for security and get on with the stabilization activities." There is no way to know how many US soldiers have been killed since the looting by explosives and munitions looted from al-Qaqaa and other weapons dumps.
- Jay Garner's designee to run the Ministry of Trade, Robin Raphael, privately says of the epidemic of looting, "Don't worry. The truth is we can't actually do this. So don't worry. We really just have to kind of put our finger in the dike, get there, and within weeks we're going to be on our knees to the UN and the international community." Raphael means to be reassuring. (Wikipedia, PBS, Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, David Corn, Peter Singer, Al Franken, Bob Woodward, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- April 12: Colonel Kevin Benson, overseeing postwar planning for US Central Command (CENTCOM), briefs Major General William Webster, the deputy commander of US ground forces in Iraq.
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Benson has prepared a "sequel" to his original postinvasion plans. The situation on the ground now appears far more complex and ominous than originally envisioned. Benson's new plan, called "Eclipse II," outlines a "most likely scenario" that includes "continued resistance" from Republican Guard units and other Ba'athist elements, and a wave of sectarian violence between Kurdish, Shi'a and Sunni Iraqis that includes what Benson terms "score settling" and "ethnic cleansing." Benson also predicts that Islamist jihadists will begin streaming into the country. When Webster asks Benson how long he expects "the whole thing" to last, Benson replies, "Boss, I think it's going to last three to five years." (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
"Well, the hot story of the week is victory. The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths. There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far. The final word on this is hooray." -- Morton Kondracke, quoted by Dave Zweifel, April 12
- April 13: The city of Tikrit, considered to be the last stronghold of forces loyal to
Iraq war and occupation
Hussein, falls with little resistance. It is realized later that most of the forces loyal to Saddam have melted into the countryside, to organize the insurgency that will appear within weeks. (Wikipedia) - April 13: Ahmed Chalabi, tabbed as the interim leader of Iraq by the Americans, tells the US media,
Iraq war and occupation
"After [General Jay Garner] finishes his job of restoring basic services, the interim Iraqi authority will be established. And that interim authority will be an authority of Iraqis, chosen by Iraqis. And it will be able to function as an authority in the country immediately after General Garner's job is finished, which should be only a few weeks." (Wikipedia)
- April 14: In an interview with Salon, Ron Reagan Jr. compares President Bush to his father, former President Reagan:
George W. Bush
"My father had decades of experience in public life. He was president of his union, he campaigned for presidential candidates, he served two terms as governor of California -- and that was not a ceremonial office as it is in Texas. And he had already run for president, against Ford in '76, nearly unseating the sitting president in his own party. He knew where he was coming from, he had spent years thinking and speaking about his views. He didn't have to ask Dick Cheney what he thought. Sure, he wasn't a technocrat like Clinton. But my father was a man -- that's the difference between him and Bush. To paraphrase Jack Palance, my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush." - He criticizes the administration's march to war, saying, "9/11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda -- and they didn't hesitate for a moment to use it. I mean, by 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, 'Let's hit Iraq.' They've used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling. ...Look, whether or not Saddam was a bad guy, or whether the Iraqi people were terribly oppressed, was never the issue. I mean I'm happy for the Iraqis, but that's not what this was all about. Nor was the military conclusion ever in doubt; this was the Dallas Cowboys playing a high school team. Their army was a third the size it was in '91, and it didn't give us much trouble then. And the weapons of mass destruction? Whatever happened to them? I'm sure we'll find some. They're being flown in right now in a C-130. There were, and will be, a lot of people killed over there. And if you don't care about the Iraqi casualties, what about the American? We stand to lose more people in the next months of occupation than we lost in the weeks of war. One of the reasons we escaped largely unscathed so far was because our military moved so fast. But now we're sitting targets -- we have to establish bases, patrol the streets, guard checkpoints. We're sitting targets for suicide bombers and other terrorists." He concludes with a blast against Bush himself: "Imagine coming to a man with just two years' experience in public office, and a ceremonial one at that. Imagine installing such a blank slate in the presidency of the United States! This is a regency, not a presidency." (Salon)
