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 2004, Week Two
Page Two
North Korea says they are on the brink of nuclear war with the US
- April 9: North Korea says the standoff over its atomic ambitions is on the brink of nuclear war as Vice President Dick Cheney heads to the region for talks with key Asian allies. North Korea's official news agency accuses Washington of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea. Cheney is expected in Tokyo tomorrow on the first leg of an Asian tour that also takes him to China and South Korea. North Korea describes six-party talks held in Beijing in February as "fruitless," their harshest assessment so far of the meeting that brought together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. "The US demand that the DPRK (North Korea) scrap its nuclear program first is the main obstacle in the way of solving the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US," the Korean Central News Agency says in a commentary. "It is a well-known fact that the second round of the six-way talks held in Beijing last February proved fruitless due to the US demand that the DPRK dismantle its nuclear program first." Washington is demanding the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear prorgammes, both plutonium and enriched uranium schemes, before it will offer concessions to the impoverished state. Pyongyang denies having a uranium program and has said it will freeze its plutonium weapons program in return for simultaneous rewards from Washington. A new round of six-party talks is expected before the end of June while working parties are supposed to be set up to resolve address contentious issues. South Korea's foreign ministry said all participating countries were ready for working level talks apart from North Korea, which has yet to agree to take part. In the commentary, the North Korean news agency says that Pyongyang has no choice but to boost its nuclear weapons drive in the face of US intransigence and its "moves to put the strategy of pre-emptive nuclear attack into practice." (Agence France-Press/Spacewar)
- April 9: The formerly implacable enemies, Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, are uniting to support the besieged insurgents in Fallujah with donations of blood, money, and medical supplies. "This is the last food in my home," says one aged Iraqi woman, pulling a wooden cart laden with rice, sugar and a five-gallon can of cooking oil. "I give it for my brothers in Fallujah and everywhere in Iraq. God bless them. They are my brothers. They didn't do anything, the mujaheddin." She also gives money to a Shi'ite cleric. "I was going to buy for Arbaeen," she says, naming the Shi'ite holy days that commence this weekend. "But our blood is boiling for our brothers!" The cleric, Hassan Toaima, says, "Look! This is strong proof that the people of Iraq will end wars between Sunni and Shiite before they begin. And we welcome Iraqis of all religions -- Jews, Christians, everyone -- to come and help the people of Fallujah and Karbala and Mosul and Nasiriyah and Basra." "sunni and Shiites together," muses Baghdad council employee Ziyad Hamid. "Unity existed before, but now it's becoming stronger still." Khuder Anbari, an imam of a Sunni mosque in Sadr City, says, "There is no connection. Each is its own phenomenon. But finally both of them are aiming for the benefit of the country, because the enemy is the same." The Sunni-Shi'ite divide, already narrower in Iraq than in some parts of the Muslim world, is by all accounts shrinking each day that Iraqis agree their most immediate problem is the occupation. Many here say that, whatever value there was in deposing Saddam Hussein, the Americans have exhausted their goodwill and fueled suspicions by staying too long and producing too little progress.
- "There is an old Iraqi saying -- very old," says Hussein Ali Tukmachi, a sign painter in Kadhimiya. "Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my brother and my cousin against a stranger." Iraqi laborer Moneer Munthir is a good example of how the resistance has grown up in the ordinary citizenry, and is crossing religious and ideological lines. For months he has battled depression, rage, and frustratrion. "But in the last two weeks, these feelings blow up inside me," he says. "The Americans are attacking Shiite and Sunni at the same time. They have crossed a line. I had to get a gun." Munthir and some colleagues have turned to planting bombs inside the bodies of dead dogs along the highway. He is not a member of any organized resistance group. "Our group is small, just friends, and we don't even have a name." Khalif Juma, a vegetable seller, says he and his cousins bought a crate of Kalashnikov rifles last week. "To be honest, we weren't like this before," he says. "But we're religious people, and our leader has been threatened. We would be ashamed to stay in our houses with our wives at a time like this." There is no way to estimate the size of the mushrooming insurgent force, but demonstrations in several cities by armed and angry people indicate that it probably runs in the tens of thousands. Many people said they did not consider themselves full-time freedom fighters or mujahedeen; they have jobs in vegetable shops, offices, garages and schools. But when the time comes, they say, they line up behind their leaders, with guns. "I'm in my shop right now," says Juma, "but if anything happens, I'll close up and take my weapon and join them. I'm ready." Juma says he supports the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, but is not part of Sadr's Mahdi Army. Juma says he receives his instructions from an imam in a mosque near Kufa, Sadr's hometown.
- Ala Muhammad, a Baghdad mechanic, is a member of Sadr's Mahdi Army. He just joined a few days before. "If the Americans come this way, we will fight them," Muhammad says. "I'm going to defend my house, my street, my land, my religion." A whole generation of Iraqi youth is coming of age in the bitter heart of the resistance. When the four American security consultants were ambushed and killed in Falluja, it was a mob of boys that set the bodies on fire and dragged two to a bridge where they hung them over the Euphrates River. In Fallujah, 16-year old Soran Karim says that killing Americans was not just a good thing, "It is the best thing. They are infidels, they are aggressive, they are hunting our people." A 12-year old friend chimes in, "We just want to play football -— or marbles. But the soldiers don't let us go out." A 13-year old boy adds, "We may be scared of their weapons. But we're not scared of them." Before the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, young men in Fallujah were told they were the vanguard, the elite, top prospects for top jobs because of their tribal connections and Sunni alliances. Now, they are adrift, subject to the most aggressive American tactics and the full brunt of occupation. Like the angry youth of the West Bank and Gaza, Iraqi children are increasingly surrounded by music, images, leaflets and praise for fighters. "The men of Falluja are men for hard tasks," sings Sabah al-Jenabi, a popular Iraqi performer, in a song that made the rounds even before the killing of the contractors. "They paralyzed America with rocket-propelled grenades. The men of Islam will fight the Americans like leaderless soldiers. We'll drag Bush's corpse through the dirt."
- Laborer Abdul Razak al-Muaimy says, "I train my son to kill Americans. That is one reason I am grateful to Saddam Hussein. All Iraqis know how to use weapons." Like so many other parents, Muaimy says American soldiers had humiliated him in front of his children. "They searched my house," he says. "They kicked my Koran. They speak to me so poorly in front of my children. It's not that I encourage my son to hate Americans. It's not that I make him want to join the resistance. Americans do that for me." Muaimy says his 10-year-old son did not take part in the violence against the contractors. But, because of all the miseries he knew Americans had brought, he would have. "He said: 'Dad, it was exactly like what they did to us. They burned our women, they burned our children, they burned our men.' My son said this time we killed and burned four of their dead but hopefully one day we will kill and burn them all. Just imagine, he is only 10, and he says that." (Washington Post, New York Times/CommonDreams)
- April 9: General John Abizaid, the US's top military commander in Iraq, says he will not be "the fall guy" if violence in the country worsens, as word leaks out that US generals are "outraged" by their lack of soldiers. America's generals consider current troop strengths of 130,000 in Iraq inadequate, reports neoconservative columnist Robert Novak. Abizaid, commander of Central Command, told his political bosses earlier this week that he would ask for reinforcements if requested by the generals under him. His words override months of public assurances from the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other civilian chiefs that more troops are not necessary. Rumsfeld indicates that troop numbers will be bolstered at least temporarily, by leaving in place units that had been earmarked to return home as part of troop rotation, while still sending replacements. But officers who will not speak out in public have let it be known that major reinforcements might be impossible to find. US forces are so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that "there are simply no large units available and suitable for assignment," Novak wrote in his column in the Washington Post. Relations between the uniformed military and the Pentagon's civilian chiefs are currently worse than at any time in living memory, according to Novak, who cites a former high-ranking national security official who served in previous Republican administrations. Many still in uniform bitterly recall the public dressing-down earned by the then army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, when he told Congress a month before the invasion, in February 2003, that "several hundred thousand troops" might be needed to occupy Iraq. That estimate was slapped down as "wildly off the mark" by the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. Thomas White, the army secretary and a former general himself, publicly backed General Shinseki. White was sacked shortly afterwards by Rumsfeld.
- A new account of the war, In the Company of Soldiers, reveals that in May 2003 Pentagon planners "that US troop levels would be down to 30,000 by late summer [of 2003]." Underlining the mood of crisis, private security contractors in Iraq -- many of them US and British military veterans -- have abruptly dropped professional rivalries and begun sharing information and even resources, creating what US officials called the largest private army in the world. Such co-operation was born out of unhappy necessity, a source at one of the leading security companies says, criticizing the Pentagon and occupation officials for failing to share intelligence on threats with guards they had hired to protect everything from power stations to the chief US administrator, Paul Bremer. Information sharing is being made easier by the close ties in the special forces community, where many British, US and other western military commandos have known each other for years. "unfortunate thing is it had to happen this way," says the industry source. "This informal communication is necessitated by lack of communications and intelligence sharing between the Pentagon, Coalition Provisional Authority and private security." Asked if private security firms were working together because they trusted each other more than some coalition militaries, the industry source declines to comment, saying: "Let's not go there." (Daily Telegraph)
Iraqi insurgents capture 4 Italians and 2 Americans, and hold them as hostages; others, including Australians and Japanese, are also held hostage
- April 9: Iraqi insurgents say they have seized four Italians and two Americans on the western outskirts of Baghdad. A journalist sees two captive foreigners, said by the insurgents to be Italians, in a mosque in a village in the Abu Ghraib district. One was wounded in the shoulder. Both were weeping. US soldiers in a tank in the area near the village of al-Dhahab al-Abyad say they knew some Americans had been taken hostage, but have no details. "That's why we are sealing off the road," says one soldier. Insurgents say they have captured four Italians traveling in a four-wheel-drive vehicle with weapons in it. They say they had seized the Americans in a separate attack. They take the journalist to a mosque, surrounded by about 40 fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, where they said all the hostages had been taken. The two foreigners coan be seen from a distance, but the fighters do not allow them to be filmed. (Reuters/My Way News)
- April 9: Afghanistan's northern city of Maimana, a key city of that region, falls to anti-government forces, weakening the US-sponsored Karzai government's hold on the country and contributing to the possibility of civil war engulfing the embattled nation. Maimana, the provincial capital of the region, falls to the forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum takes the city from pro-government forces even though he is a special advisor to the Karzai regime. Dostum is known for his ruthlessness in destroying his opposition, including crushing prisoners under tanks. Karzai's spokesman Jawed Ludin says Maimana is in the hands of "irresponsible armed individuals from neighboring provinces and areas around Maimana. ...General Dostum is an adviser to the president. However, that does not give him the right to deploy forces or get involved in any military operational issues." The overthrow of Maimana follows a major uprising in the supposedly secure city of Herat, which resulted in Karzai's forces being driven from the city by forces commanded by warlord Ismail Khan. Taliban forces continue to run virtually unopposed in the southern and eastern regions of the country. With landmark elections due in September, analysts say the fighting shows that Karzai had little control of most of the country. "First in Herat, and now in the north, we're seeing war lords taking on the central government and succeeding," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group. "With the elections pending, this shows that Karzai is going to have a really big problem on his hands." Ahmed continues, "This violence has far-reaching consequences, it's very worrying. ...In the south, the insurrection is being run by poor individuals who have not profited in the slightest from the war two years ago. Now we're seeing powerful commanders also confronting the government. This is a far more dangerous development than anything we've seen in the south." As a leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Dostum is a firm favorite with the US. He was rewarded with the job of deputy defense minister in Karzai's first cabinet. (Guardian)
- April 9: Veteran Middle East journalist Nir Rosen warns that despite the current "detente" between Iraq's Sunnis and Shi'ites, once their unity against the common foe, the US occupation, has succeeded in any sense, the two factions will turn on one another. Rosen writes, "sunnis view Shi'ites the way that many white South Africans viewed blacks, and now feel disenfranchised, seeing the 'barbaric heathens' threatening to rule their country. ...Sunnis fear a Shi'ite takeover of Iraq if anything resembling a democratic election takes place." While Rosen says the Shi'ites merely dislike the Sunnis, they, in turn, are exhibiting a growing hatred for the Kurds, "blaming them for attempting to divide the country with their calls for federalism and autonomy. Arab Shi'ites have already started supporting Turkmen in the north, who are often Shi'ite as well, in their bloody clashes with Kurds."
- Rosen continues, "A war of words has begun in the newspapers belonging to the religious parties. Sunni papers insist that Sunnis are a majority and warn of the 'Persians' who are coming in by the millions to claim citizenship. For successive Sunni governments, the Shi'ite Arabs of Iraq have been Persians, and the leading Sunni clerics of Iraq continue that tradition. Shi'ite newspapers warn of the 'crimes of the Wahhabis' and remember the Wahhabi assaults from Arabia that threatened Iraq's Shi'ites in the 19th century." He notes the prime unifying factors bringing the Sunnis and Shi'ites together in temporary truce: "The only things they agree on are the need for an Islamic government (though they disagree on what it will look like) and their insistence that the Jews and Americans are to blame for all their woes." Shi'ites, in their turn, are confident that only the Americans stand in the way of their asserting political dominion over the entirety of Iraq.
- For their end, Americans are all but clueless in their lack of understanding of Iraq's religious and political landscape: "What happens in the 'Green Zone' of the occupiers behind their walls is a land of make-believe that does not affect the rest of Iraqis living in the 'Red Zone,' which is the rest of the country. The people who work for the occupation in the Green Zone rarely venture beyond its walls, and Iraq is as alien to them as they are to Iraqis. The Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, is known by soldiers as 'can't produce anything' because, as one army major explained, 'it is understaffed, getting funds is a long and drawn out process, they are out of touch with the reality on the ground and their mission is unrealistic given their constraints.' Morale is low among the soldiers, who have no mission and now view Iraqis as 'the enemy' through a prism of 'us and them.' An officer returning from a fact-finding mission complained of 'a lot of damn good individuals who received no guidance, training or plan and who are operating in a vacuum.' Congressional staffers put in six months to spice up their resumes, former military or State Department officials fish for contracts with General Electric or KBR after they finish their stint. They don't have to deal with many Iraqis. In the Rashid cafeteria for military and civilian servants of the occupation, non-Iraqis serve the food. When they do deal with Iraqis, they have interesting choices. The deputy minister of interior has been diverting arms and stockpiling them privately. He is accompanied by two doting American intelligence agents. Perhaps he is their last hope, should all else fail. The Americans here all complain 'we don't have an Iraqi [Hamid] Karzai,' as though the US-approved leader of Afghanistan is a success.
- "...In the bathroom of the country director of an important Washington-based and US-funded democratization institute I found, in the bidet by the toilet...a thick orange book entitled 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Koran,' a brochure explaining that Arabic is written from right to left, and a guide to focus groups. It is from these focus group results that the people in the Green Zone learn 'what Iraqis want.' A motivated and well compensated man with experience in Asia and Eastern Europe, the country director was dejected, his advice ignored by the CPA, the tribal leaders he lectured about democracy interested only in securing contracts with the Americans. He seemed to be missing the point when he was lecturing to the Farmers' Union about civil society, while the war was going on in Iraq. He was looking forward to November, he said, when he would return home to 'vote Bush out of office.' ...Americans have their own myths, having dispensed with the weapons of mass destruction ones, they are still blaming the phantom Jordanian Mussab al-Zarqawi for all the attacks, because they cannot blame Saddam Hussein anymore, but the Zarqawi story seems to have worked with the media, which remain as gullible today as they were when they bought the initial lies about weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. They have the myth of Iranian influence in Iraq they can blame for the Shi'ite uprising as well, and they have the myth that arresting Muqtada [al-Sadr] will quell the newest revolt. Meanwhile, the Americans hold over 10,000 Iraqi men prisoner.
- "...It is common practice for soldiers to arrest the wives and children of suspects as 'material witnesses' when the suspects are not captured in raids. In some cases the soldiers leave notes for the suspects, letting them know their families will be released should they turn themselves in. Soldiers claim this is a very effective tactic. Soldiers on military vehicles routinely shoot at Iraqi cars which approach too fast or too close, and at Iraqis wandering in fields. 'They were up to no good,' they explain. Every commander is a law unto himself. He is advised by a judge advocate general who interprets the rules as he wants. A war crime to one is legitimate practice to another. ...Americans are confused why Iraqis dislike them. On the ground, it is clear. 'Americans think they can just throw new paint on the walls and it will win people over,' said one expert. It is hard to be patient when mosques are raided, when protestors are shot, when innocent families are gunned down at checkpoints or by frightened soldiers in vehicles. ...Iraqis have become experts in walking over the concertina wire that divides so much of their cities, first one foot presses the razor wire down, then the other steps over. They are experts in driving slowly through lakes and rivers of sewage. They are experts in sifting through mountains of garbage for anything that can be reused. It is hard to relax when the soldier in the Humvee or armored personnel carrier in front of you is aiming his machine gun at you, when the soldier at the checkpoint is aiming his machine gun at you. Iraqis in their own country are reminded at all times who has control over their lives, who can take them with impunity. An old Iraqi woman approached the gate to Baghdad International Airport, or BIAP, as Saddam International Airport is now known. Draped in a black ebaya, she was carrying a picture of her missing son. She did not speak English, and the immense soldier in body armor she asked for help did not speak Arabic. He shouted at her to 'get the f*ck away.' She did not understand and continued beseeching him. The soldier was joined by another. Together they locked and loaded their machine guns, chambering a round, aiming the guns at the old woman and shouting at her that if she did not leave 'we will kill you.'"
- Rosen observes that Iraq is all but lawless. "When Americans are not killing Iraqis, the Iraqis are killing each other. The violence is relentless. Explosions from bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and artillery, as well as guns firing can be heard all day and night, but their locations are usually impossible to determine, even if one is foolish enough to search for them after dark, when gangs and wild dogs own the streets. There are systematic assassinations of policemen, translators, local officials, and anybody associated with the occupiers. The pace of the violence is normal and mundane, so nobody cares." Rosen concludes, "In the beginning of the occupation a taxi driver was asked what he thought of the events in Iraq. He looked away and started crying. Asked if somebody in his family had died, he replied: 'We all died.' Now taxi drivers talk only of the latest explosion, and how much they hate the Americans and want to kill them. One taxi driver drove by a mosque and saw Americans in the courtyard. 'Look what they're doing!' he shouted hysterically, 'they even enter inside mosques! They are dirty Jews, I swear if I had an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] now I would shoot them!' Only the fools are optimistic in Iraq. If the Americans stay, more innocent Iraqis will be killed by them and more Iraqis will die fighting them. More American boys will die for nothing far away from home, where there is even talk of the draft being reinstated to compensate for a military stretched thin. Should the Americans withdraw, Iraqis will not rejoice for long before they turn on each other in the competition for power, but the American retreat will be viewed by radical Islam as a success akin to the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan in 1989, giving their movement a fillip in the 'clash of civilizations,' a theory with no basis made real thanks to Osama bin Laden and Bush. Americans should have learned on September 11 that they are not immune to the consequences of their government's irresponsibility." (Asia Times)
- April 9: Chief Justice Antonin Scalia is the subject of complaints filed by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press over Scalia's insistance that two print journalists Wednesday covering Scalia's speech at a high school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi erase their audio recordings of the event. At other Scalia events in the same city, broadcast journalists were asked to turn off their cameras. "In what can be only described as an ultimate Constitutional irony, Scalia was praising the Constitution and its First Amendment while a federal marshal harassed reporters and curtailed their right to gather news at a public appearance," says SJP's Joel Campell. According to the SPJ, Scalia told students at Presbyterian Christian High School: "You may wonder what makes our Constitution so special. I am here to persuade you that our Constitution is something extraordinary, something to revere." SPJ President Gordon McKerral says the students attending Scalia's speech should realize that actions speak louder than words. "It's unfortunate that Justice Scalia provided a lesson in disrespect for the First Amendment to the US Constitution he claims to so dearly love," McKerral says. "This incident makes his remarks ring hollow and places him above the law, the epitome of arrogance for a judge, much less a US Supreme Court Justice." Jon Broadbooks, executive editor of the Hattiesburg American and vice president of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, tells his newspaper: "We are deeply concerned over the manner in which this incident was handled. When we have answers to some of our questions we will determine an appropriate next step." Judith Haik, president and publisher of the Hattiesburg American, says she is "very disappointed that one of the strongest voices for the people of the United States did not speak out in protection of First Amendment rights." (Editor and Publisher)
- April 9: Author Ron Suskind says that President Bush's press conferences are far too scripted, and attacks the Bush administration for intimidating journalists. For each press conference, the White House press secretary asks the reporters for their questions, selects six or seven of the questions to answer and those reporters are the only ones called upon to ask their questions during the press conference, Suskind says. This system makes it so that the president has answers already prepared for questions that he knows will be asked. "He needs unmanaged time in front of the nation right now," Suskind says. "The White House has to engage in a way that it hasn't engaged in before." Suskind also says that the White House uses intimidation to force writers into only writing favorable stories about the administration. "If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,'" Suskind says. "[The White House is] pissed, and...angry." Suskind, author of the book The Price of Loyalty, engaged in a debate with Michael Barone, senior writer for US News & World Report. Barone says that Bush's scripting of his conferences is justified because "90 percent" of the press corps is Democratic. Suskind calls Barone's estimation of the press' political affiliation "absurd." Barone insists that, even though the US media routinely savaged Bill Clinton without the facts to back up their attacks, that the media is systematically "anti-Republican." Barone also engages in an analysis of the upcoming presidential elections, saying that the vote may once again end up with one candidate winning more electoral votes but losing the popular election. He also says that the Bush campaign, which has raised more money than any campaign in history, is being outfunded by the Kerry campaign, which has actually raised less than half the money available to Bush. Barone also defends the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, and makes the startling assertion, "The casualties we've had [in Iraq] are much more like the casualties for training during peacetime than during war." (USC Daily Trojan)
- April 10: US military commanders are seeking a cease-fire and a truce with Fallujah insurgents, through the auspices of the Iraqi Governing Council. The US demands the turnover of the people responsible for killing the four US private consultants two weeks earlier, along with the turnover of all foreign militants. No word is available as to what the US is offering in return. Meanwhile, insurgents inside the besieged city are demanding that US troops pull out, or they will kill and mutilate American civilian Thomas Hamill, captured the day before. They say they will call a truce once US forces leave the city, an action that is unlikely to happen. Nearly 60,000 Fallujah residents, about a third of the population, have fled over the past two days. "Our only demand is to remove the siege from the city of mosques," a spokesman said in a videotape given to the Al-Jazeera television network that shows footage of Hamill. "If you don't respond within 12 hours...he will be treated worse than those who were killed and burned in Fallujah" -- referring to the Americans whose bodies were mutilated and two of them hanged from a Euphrates River bridge. On the tape, Hamill gives his name and says he is 43 and from Mississippi. Part of the footage has no audio but shows him standing in front of an Iraqi flag emblazoned with the words "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great." A TV announcer quotes him as saying his captors were not mistreating him. "I am in good shape. I work for a private company that supports the military action," the voice-over says, a likely reference to private US firms that provide security in Iraq. "I want my family to know that these people are taking care of me, and provide me with food, water and a place to sleep." Two US soldiers and several contract employees are still unaccounted for, and militants continue to hold a Canadian aid worker and a Jerusalem Arab, but promise to release three Japanese hostages, whom they had previously threatened to bury alive. Other hostages, including Australians and Germans, are still held captive. Members of the Governing Council have expressed increasing anger over the US siege, calling it a "mass punishment" for the city's 200,000 residents. A Shi'ite member suspends his council seat in protest, and a Sunni council member says he will quit if the Fallujah talks fall apart. (AP/Guardian, AP/St. Augustine Record)
- April 10: In light of the spreading resistance to US occupation in Iraq, Middle East experts believe that there is virtually no hope of achieving Bush's stated goal to spread US-style democracy through the Arab world, and the US will do well to merely avoid a crushing, Vietnam-like defeat. "It was going to transform the Middle East, remember? Now all we want to do is save our butts," says former US ambassador David Mack, vice president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan research center that concentrates on Arab states. While Bush seems committed to "staying the course" and as yet, Americans are not united in demanding an American pullout, staying in Iraq is likely to foment more and more violence. Pulling out is not a good option either; most observers believe that Iraq will descend into chaos, becoming a hotbed of terrorism and destabilizing its neighbors. Those neighbors include pivotal US allies in the Persian Gulf, such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, where instability could pose troubling implications for the global economy. In a recent radio address, Bush denounced the Iraqi insurgents as "a small faction" and "a band of thugs" who are "attempting to derail Iraqi democracy and seize power." Bush vowed to defeat them and insisted that sovereignty will be turned over to an as yet unidentified Iraqi government as scheduled on June 30. Bush emphasized as well that US forces will remain in Iraq "as long as necessary" to help restore stability there. "America is fighting on the side of liberty," Bush said, "liberty in Iraq and liberty in the Middle East." Ultimately that will make the lives of people there better and thus make America and the world more secure, he said.
- But senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were casting doubt on administration policy, say they are growing concerned about the American public's long-term patience with the war. Antiwar protester John Maxwell sums up the feelings of the Americans who oppose the war: "It's falling apart, we have no real control over there. I think America should say, `We made a huge mistake,' and bring the troops home." Senior US officials say a US retreat would embolden radical Muslims, who would claim credit for defeating America. It might also spark Sunni-Shiite clashes in oil-rich Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bush's stated goal that a free and stable Iraq could improve the Middle East was "a reach," according to Ole Holsti, a professor of political science at Duke University. But "at this point, to leave a mess leaves the neighborhood even worse than it was. And it does nothing for our credibility." Mack, of the Middle East Institute, agrees. "If Iraq descends into the kind of chaotic situation that we allowed to take place in Afghanistan" after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, "you're going to have this huge black hole spawning terrorism, narcotics trafficking, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," he says. US friends in the region, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, say the United States made a lot of mistakes "but for God's sake, don't pull out now," Mack says. "They're terrified of the regional instability." Not everyone thinks withdrawal is a bad idea. Charles Pena, of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that opposes most US entanglements abroad, says the United States should cut its losses, leave Iraq and refocus on the al-Qaeda terror network and other threats to the homeland. Washington could threaten that US forces will return if US interests are threatened, he says. "This [war] is no longer about US national survival -- if it was to begin with," says Pena. He said a chaotic Iraq wouldn't necessarily pose a threat to US vital interests. And while Iraq might descend into chaos if the United States leaves, "our staying doesn't guarantee that it won't."
- The planned June 30 handover promises to be more symbolic than real, for Pentagon planners intend to keep US military forces in Iraq indefinitely. There's no agreement yet on how to form an interim Iraqi government, pending the completion of a mission to Baghdad by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, a 70-year old Algerian diplomat. The leading option, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is to expand the US-appointed, 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. But Powell acknowledged this week that, whatever form the Iraqi government takes, it will need US military backing to survive. "They are going to need us for security for some time to come," Powell told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. Bush's best hope to lower the US profile appears to be to internationalize the effort by asking the United Nations to craft a political solution and protect UN workers organizing elections next year. But the price could be more, not fewer, US troops and ceding some political control to the world body, something Bush has so far refused to consider. Mack says Bush's credibility to sell such solutions to Americans has been damaged by prewar claims from Vice President Dick Cheney and others that US troops would be welcomed in Iraq. "This was going to be a permissive environment," Mack says. "Plus, there was a ready-made alternative to Saddam and his regime. And it wasn't even going to cost us very much money." All such assurances turned out to be illusions. (Knight Ridder/San Jose Mercury News)
- April 10: Former Australian diplomat Gregory Clark writes, "The naivete of US goals in the Middle East is mind-boggling. Washington wants to impose US-style democracy on a region where it opposes the one emerging democracy -- Iran -- while supporting a range of blatant autocracies. For strange domestic reasons, it puts almost as much emphasis on having the status of women improved, little realizing that it once worked furiously to overthrow the two Islamic regimes that did try to liberate women -- pre-1992 Afghanistan and Ba'athist Iraq. And so on." (Japan Times)
- April 10: An overwhelming number of Japanese lawyers, journalists, and ordinary citizens are demanding that Japan's government immediately recall the members of Japan's Self-Defense Force (SDF) from Iraq. The calls for removal of the SDF have been intensified by the capturing of three Japanese hostages by insurgents in Fallujah. Shigekazu Iwai, president of the 4,000-member Tokyo Bar Association which has opposed the SDF deployment in Iraq, says, "The SDF should withdraw from Iraq immediately also in order to save the lives of the three hostages. ...It is obvious that the dispatch of the SDF to Iraq violates the Constitution. The troops should be withdrawn to correct this violation, not to bow to the demands of the terrorists." The 30,000-member Japan Federation of Newspaper Workers' Unions issues a statement demanding an immediate SDF pullout, saying the government should place top priority on saving the lives of the hostages. It criticizes the Japanese government's decision not to withdraw the troops, saying, "The dispatch of the SDF is actually precipitating confusion in Iraq." Nagasaki Prefecture NGO Network, an umbrella organization for six nongovernmental organizations in the prefecture, demands the immediate withdrawal of the SDF troops, saying, "The incident was caused by the SDF dispatch to Iraq, which resulted from misinterpreting the Constitution." One citizens' group has released a letter asking for their withdrawal, which reads in part, "If anything happens to the hostages we will take it that they are victims of the government." Protests and demands for withdrawal are erupting all over Japan. (Japan Today)
- April 10: For the last week, Iraqi TVs have been flooded with images of dead, bloodied children, some of the hundreds of casualties from the Fallujah fighting. Radio news announcers accuse Americans of refusing to allow injured civilians to get help for their wounds. Newspapers ask if the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians is not a greater crime than the horrific deaths and mutilations of four Americans. In this one week, Fallujah has come to symbolize for Iraqis everything that is wrong with the US-led occupation of Iraq. "When the four Americans were murdered, almost all Iraqis were horrified, and understood that the reaction must be strong," says Iraqi journalist Dhrgam Mohammed Ali, referring to the killing March 31 of four private security guards whose bodies were then mutilated, dragged through Fallujah and hung from a bridge. "But now, we see women and children dying, trying to escape and not being allowed to, and many stop remembering the dead Americans. Instead, they wonder why four dead Americans are worth so much, while hundreds of dead Iraqis are worth so little." There is no official toll of dead and wounded Iraqis in Fallujah since the US Marines began trying to take control of the town on April 6. Estimates range as high as 450 deaths and more than 1,000 wounded. US officials acknowledge that many of the dead are innocent civilians, and Fallujah, a town of 300,000 according to residents, but only 110,000 according to a year-old medical census, by Wednesday was a cause across much of Iraq. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt again defends American tactics, saying that Marines had been fired upon from mosques and from crowds containing women and children. He said Marines had tried to avoid civilian casualties, firing back in dangerous situations only in self-defense.
- Today, as residents started escaping the city, they tell tales sure to inflame. The residents refuse to give their names, saying that even talking to an American right now could endanger their lives. One, a doctor, says: "I was in my home for days, unable to leave, even to treat the sick, for fear of being shot. One morning, I decided I had to make it to the hospital, but just before I left, I saw my neighbor walk from his house. An American sniper shot him, once in the head. I was afraid to go out to him, to treat him. I watched him die." Another, a young woman, asked why the Americans had to take out their anger on a whole city. "They are angry, yes, but we were not all guilty, and yet we were all punished. Every time they shot another man, his brother, his father, picked up a weapon and swore to kill Americans." Kimmitt denies that the Marines had engaged in collective punishment. But at least in Iraq, Kimmitt's words fall on unwilling ears. "On one level, many believe that two groups of foreigners have invaded to ruin a chance for peace, both Americans and the foreign fighters,"says Iraqi journalist Abbas Ali Saki. "But also, more commonly, Iraqis are looking at the images of Fallujah, and wondering if they're looking at the future of the rest of Iraq, should we ever anger the United States." (Knight Ridder)
- April 10: Democrats and political observers are angrily denouncing the IRS's decision to issue a number of tax-related press releases that contain language identical to that used in Bush campaign statements, calling the press releases an improper use of government resources to subsidize political propaganda. "America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation," the message on the releases says. Asked whether the message was referring to either Bush's or Kerry's tax policies, Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols says: "No, it is a reference to anyone who suggests that raising taxes is the right thing to do. There have been many who suggest that taxes should be raised. We don't share that view." Kerry spokesman David Wade says the language appears to be an improper use of official government resources for political purposes. "Once again, there are questions to be asked about American taxpayers subsidizing political propaganda to distort the debate in our country and to whitewash President Bush's failed economic policies," Wade says. "Those are questions that should be answered by the government itself, but they certainly don't refer to John Kerry's plan to provide middle-class tax relief and create incentives for American businesses which create good jobs here at home." Nichols says there was nothing improper with including the message on the tax releases. "That is nonsense, baseless and groundless," he says. Treasury's decision to include the message on the bottom of several "April 15th Tax Day Reminder" releases follows the department's in-house analysis of Kerry's tax proposal last month. The analysis, requested by House Republican Leader Tom DeLay, was posted on the department's Web site March 22.
- That ignited criticism from Kerry and other Democrats and prompted the department's inspector general to launch a preliminary inquiry into the matter. "First the Bush Treasury Department did campaign research on the Kerry tax plan and now they are blatantly putting out Bush campaign statements that masquerade as a news release," says Democratic representative Charles Rangel. "This release has nothing to do with April 15 and everything to do with Nov. 2." Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Debra DeShong said there should be an investigation to determine whether the language represents a violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activities of government employees. "For them to say it's not political, you know, it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's not a goose," DeShong says. Democrats protested in 2001 when the Bush administration printed "Tax Relief for America's Workers" on tax refund checks sent to 92 million people. The checks refunded some $38 billion to taxpayers as part of the $1.35 trillion tax cut passed that year. At the time, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe called the wording a "Republican campaign slogan." The Treasury Department said the line informed taxpayers about the purpose of the check, distinguishing it from other federal payments like Social Security and veterans' benefits. The slogan is one of the centerpieces of the Bush campaign's statements on taxes. (AP/Detroit News)
- April 10: An unnamed Washington, DC cab driver has an interesting take on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and terrorism. Buzzflash reports, "Recently, while entering a cab in D.C., the taxi driver was yelling at the radio: 'It takes the village idiot to start a fire.' Reports on the number of dead in Iraq were being aired, and the driver turned to BuzzFlash and shouted: 'You know, only an idiot could unite the Sunnis and Shi'ites together against the United States.' The cab driver, who was an immigrant from an African nation, clearly made more sense than any political commentator on FOX News or CNN. 'You know this man Bush is the village idiot,' he added. 'Where I come from, if there is a big fire, they say the village idiot started it. This is because the village idiot cannot work in the fields or do anything else for work. So he has a lot of time on his hands and plays with matches and starts a fire, because he really doesn't know how to do anything else. Are you for this man Bush, your American village idiot?' he asked BuzzFlash. Good Lord, no!' we responded. 'Then tell me this,' the cabbie continued. 'Everyone who comes into my taxi is against Bush. Then who voted for him? This is what I want to know. It must be the White Taliban. That's what I call your village idiot. It must be the White Taliban Baptists from Texas. They must like the village idiot there. But in my country, you lock the village idiot up and make sure that he isn't able to play with matches.' BuzzFlash could not explain in the short ride to National Airport...why half of America was still supporting the village idiot. In fact, to this day, we still aren't sure. But, listening to this man with a frayed blue shirt, scratching a living out of driving a cab, we were embarrassed that we lived in a nation where half the population allowed the village idiot to play with fire and also approved of his arsonist undertakings. 'I had a woman in my cab the other day,' the driver told BuzzFlash as he helped get our luggage out of the trunk, 'and she was at a conference in Europe, and she said that she pretended she was a Canadian because people there were so upset with America. Can you believe that?' Yes, unfortunately, we can. That's what happens when the village idiot is put in charge of the most powerful nation on earth and given a box of matches." (Buzzflash)
- April 11: The US is preparing for a prolonged campaign to quell the twin uprisings in Iraq, issuing orders to attack any members of a rebellious Shi'ite militia in southern cities relentlessly while moving methodically to squeeze Sunni fighters west of Baghdad until they lay down their arms. Officials in Baghdad and at the Pentagon say the military is prepared, if no peaceful solution materializes, to use two distinct sets of tactics to counter what they viewed as two different insurgencies -— both of them dangerous and complex situations on difficult urban battlefields. The first campaign intends to retake a number of smaller cities around Baghdad, currently under Sunni militia control. The other will involve a series of short, sharp, local strikes at small, elusive bands of Shi'ite militia in southern cities, continuing until the militias are wiped out. Even as commanders suspend military operations in Fallujah and offer rebels in that city a cease-fire, allowing Iraqis to try to find a peaceful solution, and postpone any assault on Shi'ites in Najaf and elsewhere during religious holidays, they are preparing for campaigns against foes who showed unexpected discipline and ferocity this week. One of the prime objectives is to wipe out the "Mahdi Army," a band of irregular soldiers and guerrilla fighters under the nominal command of Moqtada al-Sadr. Another objective is to eliminate resistance in the Sunni Triangle without further alienating the local populace, a task acknowledged by a Pentagon official as very difficult: "This is an area that has harbored pro-Saddam individuals who benefited from the regime," he says. "Our challenge is to win their hearts and minds, to convince them that a better Iraq is in their future. But the challenge in that is to convince them while they're shooting at us and we're shooting back." (New York Times/National Security Message Boards)
- Aprill 11: The week's death toll among Iraqi insurgents and civilians in Fallujah tops 600. Most of the dead are women, children, and the elderly. Bodies are being burned in two soccer fields, which have been converted into mass grave sites. Hospital officials who provide the numbers of dead say that the death toll is probably far higher, as many people died inside their homes and their bodies cannot be approached without the searchers risking sniper fire. Other dead have been buried by their families and neighbors without the deaths being reported. Asked about the report of 600 dead, Marine Lieutenant Colonal Brennan Byrne says: "What I think you will find is 95% of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting. The Marines are trained to be precise in their firepower.... The fact that there are 600 goes back to the fact that the Marines are very good at what they do." Byrne's statement is directly contradicted by Iraqi doctors and humanitarian aid workers from around the world who are attempting to bring assistance to the besieged people of Fallujah. Over a third of Fallujah's 200,000 citizens have managed to flee the city. (USA Today)
- April 11: US military officials disclose that a battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support US Marines battling for control of the city. The refusal casts new doubts on US plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces. It was the first time US commanders had sought to involve the postwar Iraqi army in major combat operations, and the battalion's refusal came as large parts of Iraqi security forces have stopped carrying out their duties. The 620-man 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Armed Forces refused to fight April 5 after members of the unit were shot at in a Shi'ite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad while en route to Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, says Major General Paul Eaton, who is overseeing the development of Iraqi security forces. The convoy then turned around and returned to the battalion's post on a former Republican Guard base in Taji, a town north of the capital. Eaton says members of the battalion insisted during the ensuing discussions: "We did not sign up to fight Iraqis." Eaton won't characterize it as a mutiny, but rather "a command failure." The refusal of the battalion to perform as US officials had hoped poses a significant problem for the occupation. The cornerstone of the US strategy in Iraq is to draw down its military presence and turn over security functions to Iraqis. Over the past two weeks, that approach has suffered a severe setback as Iraqi security forces have crumbled in some parts of the country. In recent days nearly a quarter of the Iraqi army, civil defense, police and other security forces have quit, changed sides, or otherwise failed to perform their duties, a senior Army officer says. "I wouldn't say it is so widespread that it's the majority," says the officer. "But it concerns us."
- Eaton adds: "The lines are blurring for a lot of Iraqis right now, and we're having problems with a lot of security functions right now." A soldier with the 1st Armored Division, who has recently been engaged in combat in Baghdad, says many of the Iraqi security troops with whom he has worked are no longer reporting for duty. "I think what we are seeing is not some mass quitting and mutiny by ICDC [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], but rather just plain fear," the soldier says. "And all it takes is one Iraqi to take the lead in leaving, and they all do out of fear." When the 2nd Battalion graduated from training camp on January 6, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld hailed it as a major part of the future of Iraq. General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander on the ground in Iraq, attended the ceremony and said: "We are now into the accelerated period of providing Iraqi security forces, and these soldiers look very proud, very dedicated. I have high expectations that in fact they would help us bring security and stability back to the country." The battlefield refusal of the battalion -- one of just four that exist in the Iraqi army -- began Monday when it was ordered to travel about 60 miles to support the Marines, then locked in battle with fighters in Fallujah. The mission of the Iraqi troops was to help with secondary military tasks such as manning road checkpoints and securing the perimeter, Eaton says. One of the problems, Eaton said, was that the Iraqi troops were not told they would be given a relatively benign role, and assumed they were being hurled into the middle of a bloody fight, battling on the side of the Americans against Arabs. "The battalion thought it was going to be thrown into a firestorm in Fallujah," he says. Complicating communications, he said, was that the battalion had 10 new US advisers who rotated into their jobs April 1, just four days before the incident, replacing the advisers who had trained the unit for months. The battalion, traveling by truck and escorted by troops from the US Army's 1st Armored Division, passed through a Shi'ite area in northwest Baghdad. They were fired on, and six members of the unit were wounded, one seriously. A crowd of Shi'ites gathered and "surged" at the convoy, says Eaton: "They were stunned that they were taken under fire by their fellow population."
- Accounts differ on whether the other Iraqi battalion based at Taji also indicated that it would decline to go to Fallujah. Eaton says it was not involved, because it was not yet deemed ready to fight. But the other Army official said that a decision was made not to force the issue with that unit's commanders. "I don't think they pushed them to the brink where they said, 'Hell, no, we won't go,'" the official says. The two senior officers also differed on what motivated the refusal. The Iraqi rebuff was based on "pure fear," said the Army official. "They just got cold feet." Eaton, who visited the unit the day after the incident, disagrees. He notes that Iraqi troops have "fought very, very bravely" against Iran. He said that, in his view, the problem was caused by poor leadership and complicated by the fact that the unit was trained by US advisers who emphasized that their job would be to defend Iraq against outside forces. Eaton, who oversees the organization, training and equipping of the Iraqi army, the civil defense force, the police, security guards and border patrol, says the recalcitrant battalion's Iraqi leadership would be "reorganized." He also said that training would be different for future battalions, and handled almost exclusively by Iraqi officers, a group of which recently finished re-training in Jordan. "They will train their own men," he says. "Is it disappointing? Obviously," he says. "We're just going to work our way through it." (Washington Post)
- April 11: UK prime minister Tony Blair intends to send some 700 more troops to Iraq to head off a feared uprising of the Shi'ites in and around Basra. However, many British critics and military observers say that the British Army is already stretched to its "breaking point," and that sending further troops to Iraq could cause major problems. With 11,000 troops already in southern Iraq and a full quarter of its military deployed around the world, Britain is hard-pressed to find more troops for Iraq. After the 700 are deployed, Blair intends to tell the US not to expect any more soldiers from Britain. The US and Britain have agreed not to move British troops from the south into the more violent central and northern sections of Iraq, because it is imperative to keep the peace in the area of southern Iraq under British control. Bush is demanding 1,500 more troops from European countries, including France and Germany. The appeal for help from other countries follows months of complaints that Washington had excluded the international community from the reconstruction of Iraq. Blair is also expected to ask the UN's Kofi Annan to be more forceful in demanding UN involvement in the transfer of power scheduled for June 30. Army chief General Sir Michael Walker last month warned that British forces were currently recuperating from the battle to topple Saddam, and would not be able to mount a similar operation for at least four years. The standard two-year break between operational duties had been reduced to 10 months. Tory defense spokesman Gerald Howarth says the reinforcements might seem "prudent," but adds, "Our guys are already massively overstretched in Iraq and around the world, and they are desperately short on training. If we send another battalion, and more after that if this is ramped up further, how are we going to fill the gaps that are opening up elsewhere? We don't have enough numbers as it is, and the people we do have are not getting the time to get the proper training to do the job." (Scotsman)
- April 11: Senior British military commanders have publicly condemned US military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate. One senior Army officer says that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command. The officer says that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen -- the Nazi expression for "sub-humans." From his base in southern Iraq, the officer says, "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful. The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them." The phrase untermenschen -- literally "under-people" -- was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, slaves and gypsies. Although no formal complaints have as yet been made to their American counterparts, the officer says the British Government was aware of its commanders' "concerns and fears."
- The officer explains that, under British military rules of war, British troops would never be given clearance to carry out attacks similar to those being conducted by the US military, in which helicopter gunships have been used to fire on targets in urban areas. British rules of engagement only allow troops to open fire when attacked, using the minimum force necessary and only at identified targets. The American approach is markedly different: "When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area. They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers. The British response in Iraq has been much softer. During and after the war the British set about trying to win the confidence of the local population. There have been problems, it hasn't been easy but on the whole it was succeeding." The officer believes that America has now lost the military initiative in Iraq, and it could only be regained with carefully planned, precision attacks against the "terrorists." "The US will have to abandon the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach -- it has failed," he says. "They need to stop viewing every Iraqi, every Arab as the enemy and attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people. Our objective is to create a stable, democratic and safe Iraq. That's achievable but not in the short term. It is going to take up to 10 years." (Daily Telegraph)
- April 11: While taking an Easter vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush says of the mass uprisings in Iraq and the 50 deaths of US servicemen, "It's been a tough week" in Iraq. He says it's hard to tell when the violence will subside, but he sees no need for more troops, characterizing the violence in Iraq as the work of "a few people" and "violent gangs." Bush says, "It was a tough week last week, and my prayers and thoughts are with those who paid the ultimate price for our security," Bush says after praying with families of soldiers in Iraq at Fort Hood. Asked whether the violence would ebb soon, he replies: "It's hard to tell. I just know this: that we're plenty tough and we'll remain tough." Bush's tough week includes U.S. troops battling an insurgence by Sunni Muslims in Fallujah and Shi'ite Muslims in Baghdad and elsewhere, the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis, the capture of several Westerners now being held hostage, and some Iraqi security forces turning against the US-led coalition while some members of the Iraqi Governing Council criticize the military action. Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, says that there is a "crisis" in the country and that it is necessary to "purge some of the poison" in Iraq. "There is a lot of poison still in the society, and it's got to come out," he says. "And, frankly, it's better that it comes out now rather than later. It would have built up even more danger, I think, later." Richard Lugar, a Republican senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls for an increase in US troops in Iraq, saying that forces there are "stretched" and that "we probably need to send more." However, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US forces in Iraq, says there is no need for more troops. "The forces we have on the ground are adequate, with the management of the redeployment," he says. About 130,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, but that number can be temporarily increased by delaying the return home of some troops as replacements are rotated in. The military had planned to reduce that number to 115,000 this summer. Sanchez also acknowledges that the coalition has "significant challenges" in its efforts to build Iraqi security forces, many of which have refused to fight the insurgents. (Washington Post)
- April 11: In a letter to the Financial Times, Dr. Ian Rutledge, author of the book Addicted to Oil, observes that no one should be surprised by recent reports that oil prices could spike to as high as $105 a barrel. Classified reports from as early as April 2001 told Bush that "the energy sector is in a critical condition. A crisis could erupt at any time.... The world is currently close to utilizing all of its available global oil production capacity, raising the chances of an oil supply crisis with more substantial consequences than seen in three decades." The reports state that it is imperative that "political factors do not block the development of new oil fields in the Gulf" and that "the Department of State, together with the National Security Council" should "develop a strategic plan to encourage reopening to foreign investment in the important states of the Middle East." The report also warns that "there is strong opposition to any such opening among key segments of the Saudi and Kuwaiti populations." Rutledge writes that ESA Inc, the US's leading energy security analysts, "One of the best things for our supply security would be liberate Iraq," a comment echoed by neoconservative William Kristol in testimony to the House Subcommittee on the Middle East on May 22, 2002, that as far as oil was concerned, "Iraq is more important than Saudi Arabia." Rutledge writes, "so when, according to the former head of ExxonMobil's Gulf operations, 'Iraqi exiles approached us saying, you can have our oil if we can get back in there,' the Bush administration decided to use its overwhelming military might to create a pliant -- and dependable -- oil protectorate in the Middle East and achieve that essential 'opening' of the Gulf oilfields. But in the words of another US oil company executive, 'it all turned out a lot more complicated than anyone had expected.' Instead of the anticipated post-invasion rapid expansion of Iraqi production...the continuing violence of the insurgency has prevented Iraqi exports from even recovering to pre-invasion levels. In short, the US appears to have fought a war for oil in the Middle East, and lost it. The consequences of that defeat are now plain for all to see." (Financial Times/Truthout)
- April 11: In light of Condoleezza Rice's testimony, and the revealed contents of the August 6, 2001 presidential briefing, the Washington Post looks back at Bush's behavior during his month-long August 2001 vacation and finds that Bush did not seem worried. Nor did he take any measures to indicate that he was alerting the US to be on guard against terror attacks. Bush seemed "expansive" in interviews by reporters during his vacation, and seemed more interested in golf and relaxing than anything else. The Post writes, "The day before, the president had received an intelligence briefing -- the contents of which were declassified by the White House Saturday night -- warning 'Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.' But Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday. 'No mulligans, except on the first tee,' he said to laughter. 'That's just to loosen up. You see, most people get to hit practice balls, but as you know, I'm walking out here, I'm fixing to go hit. Tight back, older guy -- I hit the speed limit on July 6th.'" Rice told the commission, "The president of the United States had us at battle stations during this period of time."
- Yet the Post writes, "But if top officials were at battle stations, there was no sign of it on the surface. Bush spent most of August 2001 on his ranch here [in Crawford, Texas]. His staff said at the time that by far the biggest issue on his agenda was his decision on federal funding of stem cell research, followed by education, immigration and the Social Security 'lockbox.' Of course, many of the efforts to thwart an attack would not have been visible on the outside. But some officials on the inside -- notably former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke -- say the administration was not acting with sufficient urgency to the spike in intelligence indicating a threat. And there is nothing in Bush's public actions or words from August 2001 to refute Clarke. During that month, Bush's top aides were concentrating on the president's political standing: His approval rating had slipped, his relations with Congress were tense, and Democrats had regained control of the Senate. The only time Bush mentioned terrorism publicly that month was in the context of violence in Israel. In public, Bush often engaged in playful banter. Reporters teased him about his golf game and whether he would take an afternoon nap. Bush teased them about their suffering in the Texas heat. 'I know a lot of you wish you were in the East Coast, lounging on the beaches, sucking in the salt air, but when you're from Texas -- and love Texas -- this is where you come home,' he said. A former Bush aide who remains close to the White House said the use of the term 'battle stations' by Rice was an overstatement as it is understood in what the White House constantly calls 'the post-9/11 world.' The former aide, who refused to be identified to avoid angering the president and his staff, said that some members of Bush's senior staff did not know the extent of the information he had been given about the al-Qaeda threat, and that even those in his inner circle did not imagine 'the scale, the precision, the magnitude' of the strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. 'In a pre-9/11 world, it was like, "Check it out and see what you find and get back to us after Labor Day,"' the former aide said. 'It wasn't just the president who was on vacation. It was the whole government. It was the Bureau [FBI] and the Agency [CIA], too. The attention to the threats was above and beyond normal, but it obviously wasn't enough.'"
- Naturally, White House spokesmen are eager to dispel any idea that Bush and his administration weren't on the job. White House press secretary Scott McClellan says Bush's actions in August were adequate and appropriate. "The intelligence was non-specific and pointed to attacks overseas," says McClellan. "We directed embassies and bases abroad to button up, and directed the domestic agencies to make sure they were buttoning up at home, as well.... If we had had any information that could have prevented the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the president would have taken strong and decisive action to stop them." The Post writes, "In retrospect, Bush's schedule for August 2001 seems quaint, the issues relatively small. On the first of the month, Bush announced a tentative agreement on an HMO patients' 'Bill of Rights.' The next day, he met with lawmakers about education. On Aug. 4, the issue was Medicaid; on Aug. 8, Bush helped to build a Habitat for Humanity home. Aug. 13 found him celebrating agricultural legislation, and the next day put him at a YMCA picnic. The rest of the month brought him to a fundraiser in New Mexico, a Harley-Davidson plant, a Target store, a Little League championship and a steelworkers' picnic. Security issues did arise, but nothing about domestic terrorism. During the month, Bush announced his support of peace developments in Northern Ireland, spoke of U.S. withdrawal from an arms treaty with Russia, complained about the 'menace' of Saddam Hussein shooting at U.S. planes over Iraq, and named Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers to be the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The possibility of terrorist attacks against the United States never came up.
- "In an Aug. 29 speech to the American Legion titled by the White House 'President Discusses Defense Priorities,' Bush spoke about higher pay for soldiers, an increase in military spending, military research and development, and the need to defend against missile attacks. 'We are committed to defending America and our allies against ballistic missile attacks, against weapons of mass destruction held by rogue leaders in rogue nations that hate America, hate our values and hate what we stand for,' he said. Bush vowed to the veterans, 13 days before the attacks: 'I will not permit any course that leaves America undefended.' Nor did terrorism have any place in a speech Bush gave at the end of August, after he returned to the White House from his Crawford ranch. The White House titled the Aug. 31 speech 'President's Priorities for Fall: Education, Economy, Opportunity, Security.' But the only one of these topics Bush discussed with more than a mention was education. 'One of the things that I hope Congress does is work and act quickly on the education bill and get it to my desk as soon as they get back,' he said. Reporters' questions also reflected the tranquillity. They asked Bush to comment on a Little League player who lied about his age, the slow pace of reaching an immigration deal with Mexico and the federal role in high-speed Internet access.
- The most extended treatment of security issues in the month of August 2001 came on the 24th, when Bush announced Myers's appointment as Joint Chiefs chairman. Again, Bush placed emphasis on missile defense. 'One of the things you will hear us talk about is the need to develop an effective missile defense system, and we do have money in the budget for that,' he said. In response to a question about whether the United States would increase its role in Middle East peace efforts, Bush directed Yasser Arafat 'to urge the terrorists, the Palestinian terrorists, to stop the suicide bombings.' Bush did mention Rice at the session -- but only to say that she and White House counselor Karen Hughes had 'briefed' him on the Chandra Levy matter after the two aides watched then-Rep. Gary A. Condit's television interview about the missing intern. In the White House Rose Garden on Aug. 3, before leaving for the ranch, Bush summarized the achievements of his first months in office and set a three-part agenda for September. His first goal was completing work on legislation dealing with 'education and the disadvantaged.' His second priority was the federal budget. And third, he said, 'beginning in September, I'll be proposing creative ways to tackle some of the toughest problems in our society.' There was no mention of terrorism or even foreign affairs as a priority. Nor was there for the rest of the month, except when the subject was Israel. On Aug. 13, while on a golf outing, he spoke with reporters at length about the heightened tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. But much of his public comments were in the category of lighthearted banter. After helping with the Habitat home on Aug. 8, Bush displayed a bloodied finger and cracked: 'It must be a slow news day if you're worrying about my finger.'
- "On Aug. 23, Bush took a trip to Crawford Elementary School, where he allowed the children to ask him questions. He spoke of golf, fishing, exercise and presidential perks such as the White House, the limousine and the Secret Service. Bush also volunteered his afternoon schedule: a meeting with Rice, a phone call to the Argentine president, lunch with the first lady, a visit with the family pets, a call to his personnel office and a lesson on trees. 'We've got a horticulturist coming out from Texas A&M to help us identify the hardwood trees on our beautiful place,' he said. In summary, Bush told the children: 'I've got a lot going on today.'" (Washington Post)
