Ok SpyMaster, you're getting to be a real bad boy here. Upsetting Queen RedT was vile enough, but now you're undermining the core of REAL American values by .... er... by saying something... mmm... bad. Well, definitely NOT good and proper anyway, and that's good enough! Anyway, IT MUST be so, cuz Reducto proved that you're "looking for hate and whatever advances your warped worldview....... and don't realize how otherworldly you sound". So, there!!!
But this cannot go on, my friend, you've been *found* like Saddam in his spider hole. Our fierce guardian of Murka values, Reducto, has spotted YOU little rat trying to gnaw at the very fundamental values of Texas, like freedom of oil grabbing, truth about disgusting french fries and other WMDs, opportunities for ALL (corporations) to make lots of bucks on the back of the minimum wage Americans and the zero wage monkeys - errr, tourists, or arabs or wherever them goddam camels come from. All majestically supervised, defended and preserved by Dog Almighty Emperor Bush.
Look man, this is just no good. *I*, as an alien (a "French bastard" to quote RedTigress), have some right (to a degree) to make y'all smile with my dumb cheese-eating war-avoiding monkey genetic deficiencies. But YOU, as an American have no such excuse and are only but a downright TRAITOR!!!
How dare you quote that "under Bush, more Israelis have been killed between 2001 and 2004 than in prior 30 years"? This is criminal talk, man.
Guantanamo Resort for you, fir sure!
Hey CompleteDik! why don't you go post your encyclopedia somewhere else?
I'm very grateful for your enlightening me in my English (hey, it's not my mother tongue, so give me a break - I pretty much manage to understand what ppl say and get myself understood as well).
However, no matter how I keep looking at it, I don't see its relevance to the *politics* topic - unless of course you're trying to hint at Bush about learning the English lingo.
One header every now and then is ok, but a daily whole bunch of them is known in the Usenet world as "SPAM".
911 alert: urgent replacement brain needed for Reducto
The latest value-packed entertaining block buster feature from Reducto is titled "The Iraq-as-Vietnam lie is becoming truth". Check it out, it'll make your day. Here are the first few paragraphs.
"And the President has only himself to blame. "
Dear oh dear, don't say that, Reducto, you SCARE ME!!!!
"Because of political pressure, Bush is straying from what needs to be done in Iraq-- win."
Ok, I can see where ya coming from, brother. You got a point here.
"U.S. military officials in Iraq said that because of political sensitivities, (ouch! not them again pesky things!) overall policy decisions about the standoff in Fallujah are being made by the White House, and Marine commanders have been reluctant to make public pronouncements about what should be done. But privately, many say they believe the only way to eliminate the insurgency is through a series of large raids."
Absolutely! A couple of H-bombs should do the trick neat and proper, I say!
"They note that a cease-fire agreement signed April 19 has largely been ignored by people in the city. Although the deal called for such heavy arms as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to be surrendered to the Marines, all they have received is a small assortment of rusty, inoperable weapons."
LOL, now this definitely sucks! How dare the enemies send in old rusty weapons in, ROFLOL? I mean, we US troops are sending them BRAND-NEW bombs every night. And, out of the goodness of our hearts too: every night we give them a grand light show spectacle to keep them poor ppl from bumping into camels and things in the middle of the night.
"More significantly, Marines note, insurgents were supposed to stop attacking U.S. positions. But front-line Marine posts are fired on almost daily in some places, prompting the Americans to respond with everything from sniper fire to precision-guided 500-pound bombs dropped by Air Force fighter jets."
Right on again! Those poor Marines who were hopelessly *trapped* all around Falluja were *FORCED* to bomb the hell out of the city with round the clock air force jets because some damn terrorist snipers dared defend their besieged city! This is outrageous, and we will NOT stand for it! Bomb the rathole, I say, and be done with it! There can't be more than a few 10s of thousands ppl and camels in there, so what's the big deal, eh? Even just a good ole' A-bomb will solve all the problems. Come on Pres. Bush, I know you've always secretly wanted to get rid of the nuclear arsenal surplus: here is your chance - drop a few on Falluja, and the US will show their goodwill to reduce their nukes stockpile.
..... on and on.... refer to Reducto's blog for the full featured version
The liberal tree huggers are crying about the high price of gas, and trying to blame President Bush. However, I am a scientist -- a compassionate conservative scientist, and I know a thing or two about the science behind the "high gas prices." I studied at T.J.C.-T.D.I. to obtain my knowledge of environmental science. The Texas Junior College and Truck Driving Institute, or T.J.C.-T.D.I., is one of the most noteworthy schools in all of Texas when it comes to truck driving, and I am proud to have taken a course in environmental science at that school. Because I am one of the few Republicans to have ever taken an environmental science class, my training has allowed me to serve on the board of many conservative corporations as an Environmental Consultant. I have advised many Republicans candidates on science-stuff issues. So, I think I know what I am talking about when it comes to science stuff.
Why are gas prices so high? That is a damn good question. Being a scientist, I examine high gas prices in a scientific manner. I first break down the nomenclature of the given subject.
"Gas" is the short for "GASOLINE", or the word "Gas" could be in the form of a "Gas" in such states as: "Neon Gas", or "Poison Gas." But, when we speak of "Gas" today we are speaking of "GASOLINE." ( scientific fact - Gas is a term that can also be used in referring to the noxious fumigation that spews from the orifice of the human anal cavity in the form of flatulence, i.e. poots, air biscuits, and/or farting.) Now that we know the "Gas" of which we speak is "GASOLINE" or "PETROLEUM" we can now move on.
"GASOLINE" is pumped out of "GAS PUMPS" at "GAS STATIONS," or a "QUICKIE-MART" type of market outlet where they have those nudie magazines that I like to read. Does the "GASOLINE" actually come out of those "GAS PUMPS" by magic? That's a damn good question, but the answer is "NO." In the Republican scientific world we used to believe that the "GASOLINE" was magically placed in those tanks by what we called "GAS FAIRIES." Using today's technology we now know that it was silly to believe in GAS FAIRIES, and we have since made the startling scientific discovery that "GASOLINE" is a derivative of "OIL" which is made by tiny elves who live in the center of the Earth.
What the hell is "OIL"? That is another damn good question! "OIL" is the shortened name for "OILY SUBSTANCE." We now know that "OIL" is in the ground, or as we scientist say," OIL" is in the nether regions of the earth's crust. How do we get "OIL" from these regions that lay far-far under ground? Good damn question again!
We get "OIL" by letting "PATRIOTIC BIG OIL COMPANIES" drill into the crust of the earth. These "PATRIOTIC BIG OIL COMPANIES" use big-ass drills to drill into the earth. This process is called, "THE BOHR RADIUS." The cost is great, because they have a lot of expenses in using this process. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of "PATRIOTIC BIG OIL COMPANY EXECUTIVES" watching the commie union laborers and employees to ensure that the "OIL" is found. Also, the expense is greatly enhanced by "GOVERNMENT RED TAPE, DUMB LABOR LAWS, SILLY ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS, OVER REACHING POLLUTION LAWS, MASSACHUSETTS LIBERALS LIKE JOHN KERRY, HIGH TAXES ON THE WEALTHY, OSHA, and the EPA." So, we see that GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT is what causes the price of OIL to increase, which in turn causes GASOLINE prices to increase. In other words, BIG GOVERNMENT is drilling the PATRIOTIC BIG OIL COMPANIES deep into their ASS. (i.e. backside, pooter, poop chute)
What about those damn Arabs? Boy, now there is a good damn question! The Arabs are a group of people that live in "ARAB COUNTRIES" and ride around on "MAGIC FLYING CARPETS." They formed a group known as,"O.P.E.C." which stands for," ONLY PETROLEUM EASY COMMERCE." This is a "CARTEL", which means that these Arabs got together to sell their "OIL" as one, or in other words, they (Arabs), are drilling the fecal matter out of us! ( a scientific fact- fecal matter is also referred to as: poop, do-do, and/or shit.) ( a scientific fact- some MEXICANS have OIL also, but alas they are not white like us either! Hell, they don't speak English!)
What is the answer to high "GASOLINE" prices? Boy, now there is a good damn question! We must do as President Bush has suggested. We must drill in our NATIONAL PARKS and ANWR. We must be willing to allow more pollution to obtain more "OIL". We must have the fortitude to kill off some damn bears, deer, rabbits, moose, or any other animal for the sake of "OIL". We must drill and drill long, and hard and deep. President Bush knows the best way to handle this problem is by giving more money and tax breaks to "BIG OIL COMPANIES," for afterall they know about "OIL" and contribute heavily to President Bush's campaign!
In conclusion, in scientific terms we must, "Allow the drilling of National Parks and ANWR by BIG OIL COMPANIES. This is will allow the COMPOSITION of the EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE to obtain maxium pro-growth, and therefore due to the ALPHA DECAY being so will obtain a high OUTPUT of OIL. In other words, Let BIG OIL COMPANIES DRILL AND DRILL SOME MORE.
Gagged by Google. Is Google becoming another Bush propaganda puppet?
Company Y-Que sells T-shirts. They propose t-shirts with a range of printed stuff on them. Seems like Google has decided that it's no longer cool to advertise t-shirts with anti-Bush-administration logos/phrases.
In case you're too lazy to go to the full article (which you can find here) here is the email Google sent Y-Que:
Date: 04.21.04 - Email from Google - "The following merchandise found on your website constitutes a list of items that must be removed from your site, ads and keywords in order to continue advertising with Google AdWords:
Recall Bush - White T-shirt (with radio control on head) Dumb and Dumber White T-shirt - Bush and Blair: The Movie You're Fired - George W. Bush White T-shirt Dump Cheney White T-shirt - "Halliburton" tattooed across head Miserable Failure T-shirt - George W. Bush Kerry sucks (too) - T-shirt
This list is by no means exhaustive, so other merchandise similar in nature to the items listed above must be removed as well." -end
Amazing.
SpyMaster is an Anti-Semite fucking retarded moron motherfucker!!!
Spymaster, you've really done it, LOL, you anti-semite vermin! Join the club - hey, it's easy: everyone not called Rsheinfield, RedTigress or NoGuru is by nature anti-semite.
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading RedTigress's reply to a comment by SpyMaster, here are some excerpts. I'm not quoting everything, so be sure to go check the original full version of this masterpiece of fascism, racism and sheer vomit of hatred - you'll find it in the comments on WinstonSmith's article titled "... They hate us because of our freedom..."
Ok, here goes:
"FUCK YOU, PINHEAD! YOU WANT TO SEE ALL JEWS MASSICRED! DON'T YOU!
FUCK YOU!"
Well, well, now that RedTigress is lifting her skirt, we can see what's really under it, and it isn't a pretty sight.
"I don't think I was talking to YOU, buster! Was I? Is your name WinstonSmith? eh? EH? No? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Got that, SpyMaster? You're NOT to address Queen RedT unless she asks for your opinion first. Just like in the days of kings and queens. That's called democracy and freedom of speech à la Sharon.
"Don't you DARE accuse me of such a heinus accuzation. I don't want to see ANYONE massicred, you fucking retarded bag of shit that can only parrot the same fucking accusation at me over and over, without any kind of proof that it's the truth!"
Funny how this reminds me of something. Like RedT repeating ad nauseum I'm anti-semite even though I'm not. And when she couldn't find a quote to prove it, she stooped as low as misquoting me. It went something like this:
- WhyNot (after a few back and forth arguments): yadda yadda...You're a stupid bitch... - RedT (her reply, quoting me): yadda yadda...and so now "I am a stupid Jew bitch" yadda yadda.. - WN (reply): See, you're doing it again. YOU put "Jew" in there, not me. - RedT (no reply)
"And by the way, Jews make up less than ONE PERCENT of the people in the middle east, let alone the world! Arabs are the remainder of that middle east equation. Who's trying to fucking wipe out who????????"
There are a lot more arab ppl murdered by Israelis than Israelis by arabs. Get your equation right, with the relevant components in it.
"Let me get something straight with you, muther fucker: Pray you never meet me in person. Got it? Wish and hope and pray."
Right. If that doesn't sound like racist and fascist comment, I wonder what does. Lemme get this straight:
- SpyMaster (pretty reasonable argument, ending up with): I'm sick of the Zionist Nazi hatred of Arabs - RedT (reply [snip disgusting vomit of hatred going on and on] and conclusion): It's scum like you that helped the Nazis lead my people to Auchwitz!!! I hate you.
Well, RedT has pretty much summed herself up and quite accurately. I knew she was a bitch, I don't think she's stupid (although when one is so obnubilated by one's narrow-minded views and so paranoid they keep classifying ppl into slots they don't even begin to belong to, *intelligence* becomes rather pointless. It's bordering on idiocy). Now she clearly shows herself as being fascist and racist.
Thanks for clearing this out for everyone, RedTigress.
The fun of health care: REDUCTO's still waiting for an asshole transplant!
Reducto's brilliant diatribe on the appalling UK health care system eventually led to the conclusion that the problem was that of a government funded one. Before I go on, let me quote his own bolded highlight conclusion:
"Waiting lists are the inevitable consequence of a politically driven, tax-funded, centrally run health service. Users have no customer power over the system. Since the amount people pay (through taxation) is unrelated to the volume of services they use, they have every incentive to demand as much service as they can get, however marginal or even unnecessary..."
Right! Piss social security off, make it all private, and problem's solved! Hey, ppl who can't afford private health care simply die, so that's real neat cuz it means they don't fill up waiting rooms for weeks and weeks! Bonus: since you don't really want sick ppl to be on health care (hey, the suckers cost money instead of bringing the dough in), the less sick ppl around, i.e. the quicker they kick the bucket, the more the healthy ones can contribute to the private health care system in an efficient economic way, therefore reducing the overal premiums. Everybody wins! Absolutely brilliant!!!
Oh by the way... not meaning to throw spanners in the works, but France has the WHO number 1 rating of health care in the world. Now, guess what, Reducto: it's totally governmnt controlled and funded.
Even though she'd be considered here as an *alien* by your standards, my American wife - who has severe health problems - gets 100% free medical care: doctors, dentists, medications, hospital X-rays and scanners, ophtalmologist, glasses, ..., you name it). While living in the US, she couldn't even afford to go see a GP.
But watch out on those Cheetos, Reducto, don't overdo it: I don't think France's system is *that* generous that it will allow you here for a free butthole replacement!
Beware, because of severe cheeto overdose, the originally deadly WMDs have now acquired never heard of before chemical potency inside the infernal Reducto guts.
" Israel’s military chief said in an interview published on Monday" ....
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Saddam Hussein's regime of transferring key materials for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs to Reducto's asshole in convoys of 18-wheel trucks to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors."
How the 18 wheel trucks made it down Reducto's basement is still being investigated.
So strange Sadam didn't use any of these WMDs to fight the US invasion. But I forget, Sadam doesn't have the kind of Reducto/US *intelligence* for this: when attacked, he dumbly buries all his weapons in the sand! Of course, silly me, sounds so logical it escaped me at first!
US in legal challenge on EU GM ban - Fuck America!
Ok guys, I'm starting to really *have it* with the US governement and its imperialist corporations. Here is the article, followed by my thoughts on it: ----- Washington is to ask the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to levy fines of at least $1.8 billion for export losses due to the EU’s de facto ban on genetically modified crops.
According to a report in today’s Guardian, the US is set to press ahead with a complaint against the EU’s five-year moratorium.
The US has previously threatened to launch the case at the WTO in a bid to pressure Europe into reviewing its five-year unofficial ban on GMOs.
And Washington seems to be trying to keep the pressure on Brussels as it moves towards accepting some GM maize varieties.
Yesterday member states met to discuss the growing of maize BT11, no agreement was reached leaving the Commission to deal with the matter.
The Brussels executive is likely to approve the growing of the crop.
If successful the US challenge would leave other non-EU countries open to the threat of legislation for refusing to accept GM imports.
The WTO will hear the case in June, according to the Guardian report.
The case puts the WTO in a difficult position, because it risks upsetting American trade interests or imposing massive fines for a very popular EU ban.
Written by Andrew Beatty ------ Well, fuck me dead! Those American corporation cunts don't only have the hide of producing GM crap to try mutate humankind into fuckin cheeto-faced mongrels, they are now telling people who don't want to eat their shit they'd better think twice about it or else.
I think the EU should stop pussyfooting around with America. And so should the rest of the world. Obviously, diplomacy does NOT work with the US government- all they do in return is insult their partners for having no guts. The very words "diplomacy/discussion" has disappeared from the US dictionary.
Ok, fine. You assholes cannot admire anything but sheer brute and stupid force. Let's give up diplomacy and treat you on YOUR terms. The 25 member EU is only weeks away, but I truly look forward when it englobes Russia and China, and we can start kicking american asses around in a grand way and shove their fuckin GM burgers up the white house's leading asses.
by: I. Fester Auspice, Former Reagan White House Staffer, Poet Laureate
(Crawford, Texas) I was treated this past Saturday to a day of fishing in Crawford, Texas. I, along with the television fisherman, Roland Martin, were to be the guest of President Bush at his ranch. As many of you know, I have been an ardent supporter of this president, and I am enamored with his folksy, cornball ways. I find it refreshing that a man like President Bush, with the immense wealth of his family and his elitist education at Yale, can be such a lovable down-home semi-stupid redneck.
Roland Martin and I, along with 30 members of the Secret Service, were packed into Roland's 18 foot bass boat. We breathlessly awaited the arrival of President Bush. Due to the President falling behind John Kerry in the latest polls, Karl Rove determined that it would be best if the President dressed in his famous flight suit, helmet, and flight goggles for this fishing trip. I must admit to feeling that same rush of excitement come over me as President Bush strode onto the bass boat, just as he had landed aboard that aircraft carrier last year. "Mission Accomplished!" I cried out.
President Bush looked around the crowded 18 foot bass boat. "Those damn WMD's has to around here somewhere!" He said as he opened up Roland's tackle box lid, and pretended to be searching for WMD. All 32 of us laughed at President Bush's joke, in fact I laughed so hard I urinated on myself! That moment brought back memories of my days spent with President Reagan, The Great Communicator, and his renowned sense of humor.
One of the Hollywood liberal journalists had the audacity to ask President Bush about the Presidential Daily Briefing he received on August 6th. "The PDB on August 6th, hell I told them I don't remember anything about no PDB. Now, if they had asked me about a PBR on a certain day -- I'm certain I could remember that!" President Bush said aloud to all of us as he looked around the boat with his flight goggles secured over his eyes. We all laughed once more. The PDB, or Presidential Daily Briefing, was the briefing in question about 9-11 from the Commission members and that the commie liberal press wanted declassified. The PBR, PABST BLUE RIBBON, was of course a reference back to the drinking days of President Bush and his love for that brand of cheap beer. Once again as we all laughed I pissed my pants, and this time I also added a wee-bit of manly expulsion, or a poot, or as they refer to it down here, "A Texas Twister!"
Another asshole journalist asked President Bush about the fighting and loss of life in Iraq. "It's mainly just a bunch of - you know- thugs- isolated incidents by some Shi'ite cleric wearing a towel on his head. Secretary Rumsfeld tells me that it ain't widespread - you know - Sunnis - Kurds - damn it to hell, they've got some fun-ass names!" President Bush said as he answered the question from Roland Martin about how things were going in Iraq. I could tell by his voice that President Bush didn't come out here to talk about work!
"Speakin' of Shi'ites, I believe I. Fester shi'ited his drawers a while ago!" President Bush said as he cast out his line, and we all laughed once more. I must admit that President Bush is a charmer with his sense of humor, so as long as I am admitting things - I will admit to once again pooting and urinating on myself. I was piss soaked and laughing my old perverted ass off at the President. This is the reason that the Supreme Court put this man in the White House. They knew that President Bush has that common touch with the common folks who aren't adept at learning anything.
"I declare an end to major combat! Mission Accomplished!" President Bush said as he reeled in a fish and brought it into the boat. But, for some unknown reason that damn fish wasn't done fighting and it jumped off of his hook. The fish then went back underwater as we all looked at President Bush. The President had a very puzzled look on his face that the commie fish had not heeded to his proclamation. He turned to us all, and said, "That damn fish flopped more than John Kerry!" We all roared a laugh of relief, and I pissed on myself once again.
The solitude of being out here on this pond with President Bush and the other 31 men brought back memories of Reagan again. I remember how simple a man Reagan was when I worked for him in the White House. He was so uncomplicated, so average in thought, and just like President Bush -- so uncaring about the ramifications of his actions. Reagan, like President Bush knew that a man must fix the facts to match his convictions. That my friend is how any good conservative Republican views life in general. As the solitude of this day filtered slowly into me I looked at President Bush remembering a poem I wrote for Reagan. 'Not Today - Dammit!" ran through my mind.
The liberals cry, "The earth is getting warmer!" or, "The earth is being polluted by corporations!", or "Acid rain is caused by industrial pollution!" These so-called Chicken Little experts of the Left cry that the sky is falling each and everyday. In fact, I get so tickled at these liberal remarks that I piss all over my lab coat whenever I am sitting around my laboratory at RepublicanPress.com, and I have had too much BEEF EATER GIN.
So you ask, what gives me the authority to lecture on Science? Well, I'm glad you asked. I, Conrad Burns, have studied science, for a full semester in fact, at TJC-TDI the famous Texas Junior College and Truck Driving Institute. So, I think I know a thing or two when it comes to science related stuff like the environment and stuff like that. I have also written for prestigious conservative magazines, and I serve on the board of many Fortune 500 companies as an Environmental Consultant. (Editor's Note: Conrad owns stock options, and receives compensations from these Fortune 500 companies, including the makers of Beefeater Gin) When it comes to pollution I believe in the immortal words of the most famous Scientist of all, Ronald Reagan, when he said, "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." I raise my bottle of Beefeater Gin and drink to that!
America and the Iraq war, or thinking "inside out"
The seizure of United States foreign policy by neo-conservatives made possible the Iraq war. The result has been a disaster for the international community. After the Madrid bombs, Spanish citizens sounded the alert. Will Americans follow? ----------- “I take guidance solely from the inside out of what is being said. Not the opposite, but the inside out. The inside out…(shows) how things are really made”. (Juan Benet, In the Penumbra)
The murderous attacks of 11 March in Madrid reconfirmed the inanity of purely military action against terrorism. These attacks, the most serious in the history of terrorism in Europe, returned the Iraq war to the centre of Spanish political debate. In the midst of vast anger among Spanish citizens at the deceitful way their government handled information about the attacks, the general election three days later was won by the opposition PSOE (socialist) party, whose leader José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero has reaffirmed his promise soon to withdraw all Spanish troops from Iraq.
Thus, the Iraq war that had been strongly endorsed by José María Aznar’s Partido Popular government, to the overwhelming dismay of Spanish citizens, came suddenly back into view, along with the revelations in its aftermath over the political manipulation of intelligence about the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.
Yet as this recent history returns to mobilise citizens and haunt their leaders, it is important to emphasise that the debate over the existence of WMD in Iraq, or about whether Bush, Blair or Aznar exaggerated the threat, follows a false trail which distances us from reality. Such a debate entails the acceptance of an erroneous premise, and suits only those who seek to mislead national and international public opinion.
As Juan Benet warns, it rather befits us to analyse the “inside out” of things to see what they are actually made of – and to avoid being duped by them. In the case of the Iraq war, this implies not only analysing the question of WMD but two other aspects related to this war: the role of the United Nations and the division of the European Union.
Let us be clear: it was not the existence of WMD that provoked the Iraq war. On the contrary, it was precisely the absence of these weapons which prodded Washington to the military conquest of this country; it is this absence which has made the war appear as the simplest and least risky means to destroy an element of the “axis of evil” and to anchor the military power of the United States in the Middle East. After all, George Bush and the neo-conservatives who exercise a decisive influence on his foreign policy did not initially charge Iraq with possession of WMD. It was Iraq’s non-respect of Security Council resolutions, and the alleged connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaida’s terrorism, that provoked their ire.
Only later did the existence of these arms become a central argument, because it allowed the implementation of the doctrine of pre-emption embodied in the National Security Strategy of September 2002. This doctrine stipulates that neither a UN Security Council resolution nor an imminent military threat is necessary for the United States to launch a strike; it suffices that the American government, unilaterally, consider that the danger be sufficient.
In the case of Iraq, WMD furnished this “sufficient threat” and to brandish the fact of their existence became equally necessary to ensure the support of American public opinion and to counterbalance the opposition of the British public against the prospective attack. In a controversial interview in Vanity Fair in May 2003, the deputy secretary of state for defence, Paul Wolfowitz, acknowledged that putting WMD at the heart of the argument in favour of military action was a pretext to create harmony between different branches of the American government, rather than a genuine concern.
Another, more recent motif entertained by the Bush administration to justify the war launched in March 2003 is the resolve to liberate Iraq from the cruel tyranny of Saddam Hussein. These famous neo-conservative analysts, Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol, defend a position they call the Bush doctrine, “which reserves the right to put an end to these regimes (which attempt to develop WMD, threaten their neighbours or brutalise their own citizens), be it by diplomatic or military means”. But this argument could neither assert itself nor create consensus at the heart of the American administration, simply because the list of countries which fall under such a definition is too long.
Why Iraq?
Thus, if WMD was a belated and insupportable criterion for the Iraq war, what truly lay behind Washington’s decision?
First, the neo-conservatives had always had the goal to install a “new world order” based on American military power. Richard Perle, one of the best-known representatives of this group, proposes in a recent book (co-authored with David Frum, architect of the phrase “axis of evil”) that the United States should act firmly and immediately against Iran, and cast a death-blow to Syria’s pro-terrorist regime. For the neo-conservatives, the response to terrorism must be the forced imposition of democratic values and free-market systems on enemy countries via the United States’s use of its incomparable military power (it is notable that Bush’s National Security Strategy talks more about the free market than about democracy).
Yet it was not until the impact of 9/11 that the neo-conservatives could attempt to implement their ideas.
Second, then, the brutal attacks of 11 September 2001 presented the American president and his administration with the pressing need to act, to respond, to avoid any accusation of lacking toughness – which, under these circumstances, could have been perceived as a lack of patriotism. Moreover, it was foreseeable to a certain extent that the United States would employ its military machinery, the only one where its superiority is beyond doubt.
But if it is true that armed forces are the classical recourse to conflicts between nation-states, they are not adequate tools for combating terrorism. Precisely because they are aware of this fact, the neo-conservatives recommend attacking “rogue states”, that is to say the countries of the “axis of evil” – a strategy that is not one of fighting terrorism but one aimed at establishing a new world order, founded on the utilisation of American military power.
The third reason for making war on Iraq is related to George W. Bush re-election strategy and his desire to avoid the defeat his father experienced, a preoccupation which has been present from the moment he took office. Karl Rove, the principal ideologue of the White House and Bush’s faithful adviser during his tenure as governor of Texas, wagers that “Bush at war” is the best means of achieving this goal.
After the deceptively easy victory in Afghanistan, “Bush at war” returned in the shape of the campaign against Iraq. In fact, as Bob Woodward recounts, Paul Wolfowitz had already proposed on 15 September 2001 to attack Iraq instead of Afghanistan because this seemed to him a more feasible objective. The former treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, and General Wesley Clark have confirmed that the idea of attacking Iraq was the goal of President Bush’s praetorian guard since the beginning of his tenure; Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial grip on power represented for them a permanent checkmate of the United States.
But this new military action could not remove the inherent unacceptable risks in its execution, epitomised by the possible deployment of chemical or biological weapons by Saddam Hussein against the invader. Thus, an enormous contradiction presented itself: while the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the British prime minister, Tony Blair, used the WMD argument in an attempt to win the support of the UN Security Council, George Bush’s advisers reached the decision to attack once they could be sure that their troops could not be repelled by chemical or bacteriological attacks.
What United States?
The effort to see things “inside out” which Juan Benet recommends must be extended beyond the question of WMD to wider problems raised by the Iraq war: the future of the United Nations and the division of Europe. A post-war poll by the Pew Research Center (chaired by Madeleine Albright) suggests that the Iraq imbroglio has weakened the UN in the eyes of world public opinion: in none of the twenty countries where the poll was conducted did anyone think that the organisation had played an important role in international conflicts.
This weakness is not an inevitable circumstance, but is also the product of a United States strategy focused on undermining the authority of the UN as a condition for the strike against Iraq. In the American mindset, war is the action to be undertaken when dialogue has come to nothing – when politics or (as in this case) political institutions are exhausted. For neo-conservatives, international institutions and treaties too often simply restrict the American freedom to act.
Richard Perle has written that the United States puts its security in danger if it bends to the authority of the UN. Thus, the weakening of multilateral agencies as a consequence of planned military action is only the obverse of the tenacious desire of the Bush administration to consciously diminish the power of these agencies, in pursuit of its unilateralist strategy.
The same “inside out” principle holds true for the evident division of Europe in the last year: this is not a result of the Iraq war, but rather the goal sought by the ultra-conservative architects of American foreign policy. They have thought for years that a unified Europe would become a counterweight too powerful for the policies they aspire to implement.
Their logic was reflected in the famous (or notorious) pro-Washington “letter of eight” from European leaders, published in January 2003 by the Wall Street Journal. This was in fact an American initiative which the Spanish government hastily adopted and championed to the end. It followed the disdainful comment of the US secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, about the division of the continent into an “old” and a “new” Europe – the latter corresponding to those who favoured the US’s new security doctrine.
This forcing of divisions is not simply the consequence of a unilateral attitude, but of a strategy designed to expand America’s room for political manoeuvre while blocking the emergence of unitary European positions.
To my mind, the appropriation of American foreign policy by the neo-conservatives has been an absolute disaster for the international community. In a world where unilateralism is still only a tendency rather than a dominant force, a unique opportunity has been lost to allow existing international institutions to lead the fight against terrorism. The likely result of such an approach would have been necessary reforms in the workings of these institutions, but also their reinforcement, increasingly indispensable in the age of globalisation.
But even this loss of a historic opportunity is exceeded by the damage inflicted by George Bush’s extremist gang after the 9/11 attacks. The unilateral decision to launch a war against Iraq has dealt a serious blow to the existing international order – in whose creation after 1945 the United States played a leading role – and enormously weakened the possibility of a global, efficient fight against terrorism.
Where now?
Here, in turning taken-for-granted explanations and common-sense understandings “inside out”, the real story of the United States and the Iraq war can be discerned. WMD were not the trigger for the war on Iraq, precisely because they never existed; the weakening of the United Nations was not the reason which prodded the Bush administration into action, but a goal of its global strategy; and the division of the European Union is not just the result of its (undeniable) internal contradictions but equally a necessary element in the defence of Washington’s national interests as the dominant neo-conservatives understand them.
The deceit that underlay this project has now been echoed in Europe – in the way that the Spanish government sought to manipulate the information it possessed about the authorship of the 11 March bombings in Madrid. The difference is that, unlike in the United States, the responsible political authorities in Spain paid an immediate and heavy political price.
What Spain demonstrated is that only the ordinary citizens, with their democratic voices and their ability to mobilise, can demand the necessary radical change of political direction which alone can guarantee security for all. Will the United States, and Britain, follow? We shall see.
This article was translated from French by Julian Kramer. A slightly different version was published by the CIDOB Foundation.
Well, well... looks Reducto's banned me from his blog - I can no longer reply or even view comments. What a pity, I'll be missing out on my daily fun. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make my comments to his inane blurbs by posting them as new articles instead.
Dear Reducto, regarding your recent enlightening explanations... wait, I'll quote you, as to make sure I don't distort your priceless gem - here we go:
"You are complete fucking moron, WhyNot. I'm talking about "intelligence", like CIA intelligence, like info about the enemy." ...."It was clear I was talking about military intelligence, even though idiot boy was trying to be funny. Secondly, I'd gladly go to Iraq if I was able to do so. Thirdly, those that have already volunteered for the army that are stationed in Europe are ready, willing, and able to go, and as such are bigger men than any of us (and especially WhyNot)."
Wow, man, many thanks for the explanation, I'd never have guessed!!! Gee, you really are becoming sadly more dumb (dumber? I confess ignorance here) by the day. By the way, glad to hear you repeat ad nauseam you don't call ppl names, LOL.
While on the subject of definitions of words, try look up a couple... like "satire" and "humor". As you probably don't have the required intelligence (in either sense) to find them, here is a quick rundown:
The idea is to make fun of ppl. One of the devices is to *twist* their statements. There are many ways, but one of the easiest is to pick on words that have several meanings (such as *intelligence*).
Err.... do you get it yet? No??? I guess it's probably because your intelligence is restricted to only one meaning - the not-very-intelligent one.
Poor Reducto, your life must be so boringly serious. Hey, why don't you go see some funny movies? Hilarious plays, comedies, even.... dare I say it... satires? You might get to enjoy them - eventually.
Anyway, thanks man, I look forward to your next gem - you're so often exposing yourself like a sitting duck, I just can't help myself. Like that time when you wrote "Bush should never have press conferences. Every time, it's a disaster. He can't express himself". Hmmmm... LOL, man, how could I possibly resist?
But I'm glad you are *unable* to go to Iraq in spite of your impatience to do so (must be very frustrating for you, eh? Damn it, can't even get your first Iraqi kill!) - yes, I'm glad (selfishly speaking here), for otherwise I'd miss out on one of my daily laughs.
I have heard all the twisted liberal media stories about how Halliburton is overcharging our government for feeding the troops in Iraq. So as a Republican soldier, I was as giddy as a young school girl playin' with her puddin' for the first time when I learned that Halliburton was opening its first Halliburgers restaurant here in Baghdad. Halliburton had converted one of Saddam's larger raperooms into Baghdad's first fast food franchise. Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld pulled a couple of army units away from senseless things like protecting a school and a hospital to provide maximum security around the perimeter of Halliburton's latest investment in the War on Terror.
My best friend throughout every war of the last 50 years was with me, Col. Pooner. We were on duty providing ground troops to protect Halliburton's interests. Col. Pooner and I had eaten 2 Halliburgers Value Meals that morning and the cheap beef was beginning to work on our war weary colons. We quickly ran around back of the restaurant to relieve ourselves.
I pulled down my Army trousers and squatted, preparing myself for my morning poop. I strained and I suddenly felt the sensation of my straining bring forth the object of my morning desire. "Morning Colonel Pooner," I said as my package of dark brown fecal matter, and/or turd, slowly, deftly landed upon the pale sandy ground. He too squatted himself right beside of me. He too was in the process of emptying his war weary bladder, as I heard the sound of splashing urine upon the sandy Iraqi soil. Something about the putrid odor of shit always made us discuss our core Republican values.
"Son-of-a-bitch, that Richard Clarke is a damn liar and a homosexual loving fag!" Colonel Pooner said with a voice that echoed his own battle with his oncoming poop train. I looked at him and nodded my head in the affirmative, noticing that his poop train had left it's station and was making it's sojourn to it's destination. I marveled at how Colonel Pooner kept his composure during his battle to bring forth his thick blackened package of fecal matter. I watched as Colonel Pooner's black pack, or black poop train, slowly and methodically snaked it's way to the sandy soil. It curled atop the urine that he had deposited, and it stunk.
After we had finished, we took a drive in our army-issued Halliburton company car to make sure that Baghdad was safe! The war torn streets were a testament to the raging battles of yesterday. There were signs of life beginning to reappear in the streets. Shops were reopening, businesses were being opened, and street whores were once again plying their trade. Yes, we the patriotic conservatives, have brought this city back to life. There was other shit too, like schools being opened, hospitals being opened, and other mundane shit that the liberal media never reports.
After driving around Baghdad and watching all the ragheads, these two ole' Republican warhorses worked up quite an appetite. Nothing satisfies a Republican man's hunger quite like a Halliburton Halliburger! So we pulled into the drive-thru where we had to wait behind 3 camels in our Halliburton company car. As I pulled up to the speaker, I placed our order: "I'll take a Dick Cheney burger with John Ashcroft fries and a big ole' Condi Rice shake," Colonel Pooner said as he ordered his meal. "I'll have the Mission Accomplished happy meal and a large Karl Rove coffee," I said. We even received "Hunt For WMD" game pieces, which were all apart of Halliburton's promotional campaign of their Halliburgers restaurant.
The total for our order came to a little over three thousand dollars! "What a bargain to get two meals during a time of war for $3000.00,!" Col. Pooner said. "Let's just put it on our Government Credit Card and make all the middle class democrats back home pay for it!" We both let out a hearty laugh!
"Yeah, let the liberal media try and say that Halliburton is overcharging now!" I said defiantly as I took a bite of my Halliburger, and felt that old familiar rumble in my bowels.
About the 911 commission... poor Condi got verbally raped
The Democrats will never tell you about the good things going on in Iraq and that makes me one angry media bitch! I watched in horror as my good friend Condi Rice was grilled by the 9-11 Commission Democrats the other day. I was seated behind her and I could see her tight ass squirming as those so-called "Commission members" questioned her. I could feel my own anger and conservative passion welling up inside me in the form of wetness as the Liberal members probed deeply into Condi at every opportunity. I clinched my teeth, tightened my crossed legs even more than normal causing my womanhood "down there" to become very tense, wet, and very, very tight. I could feel the tiny blonde guards that surround my own "spider hole" as they prickled my silk panties of white. I knew if I could feel this sensation that Condi could feel her own caldron boiling!
I sat there and listened and watched as poor Condi was being verbally raped by the Democrat members of this so-called 9-11 Commission. It was as if the Democrats on this panel had their their own rape room. Word after word of verbose, hate filled banter pummeled down on Condi. These words of insurrection from the commie terrorist loving Democrats spewed as though they had reached an orgasmic oral ejaculation, and those words splattered all over poor Condi, soaking her in the semen of Liberalism. Erupting like the giant "man tool" of that no good Bill Clinton!
My silk panties of white were no match for the tidal wave that soon was pouring out of my woman hood "down there." Soon, I was gushing "down there" like Old Faithful as the Democrats continued their relentless grinding on poor Condi. Slowly, my hot, wet, river of patriotism and morals and values was seeping through the barriers of my silk panties of white. I eased up out of my seat and ran to the door of that so-called hearing room of that so-called Commission. I knew I couldn't listen to anymore of the badgering of my friend, poor tight-ass Condi!
The stains of what those Democrats had done to my friend Condi were apparent to all that watched, and the stains of what they had done to me was also apparent on my silk panties of white. I quickly reached for the one thing that could ease this anger that resided in me. I pulled out my bad boy of buzz from the drawer beside my bed. Yes, that bad boy of buzz with the 12 horse power electric engine and molded in the image of Bill Clinton, long and bent. Soon that bad boy of buzz was honing in on its target, relieving the pressures that had built up inside my woman hood "down there." I passed out as the last phase of the vaginal "shock and awe" mission reverberated from that bad boy of buzz.
I awoke the next morning and I began to write this column. I first want all Americans to know that Condi didn't know that the terrorist were going to hit the towers in New York on 9-11, or the Pentagon on 9-11. Sure, she and President Bush were briefed about the terrorists, but nothing ever was in writing that on 9-11 the terrorists would strike! I want America to know that Condi and President Bush had many worries during that time. There was China, Russia, ENRON, and a MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM to worry with. President Bush also had the burden of trying to pass his TAX CUTS while on vacation down at his ranch in Crawford. So, there you have it. President Bush had a lot of things on his plate and in his own words, "I'm tired of swatting flies!"
President Bush is a UNITER and not a DIVIDER and if you need proof of that, just look at how President Bush has united the Sunnis and the Shiites! These long time enemies of each other in Iraq have been brought together by President Bush's War In Iraq! President Bush has brought these two mortal enemies together and along with the Saddamist Iraqis, they are working together to defeat our coalition! This is real progress! We should be proud of the progress being made in Iraq! This photo is a touching display of Sunnis and Shiites putting their differences aside to work together for peace, thanks to President Bush!
Because President Bush is a UNITER and not a DIVIDER, he doesn't have time for "swatting flies", or "connecting the dots," or "shaking the trees", for he has to "ride herd" on the whole world! And, if the world doesn't like his message of compassionate conservatism, they can go to hell!
by: "Boxcar" Pud Acuff, Country Music Star / Proud Neocon
I'm a proud Republican Country Singer who loves to sing about the red, white, and blue. I ain't the smartest person in this old world. I ain't even the smartest member of my family, but I reckon I ain't too bright neither. Shoot, I'm just an old country boy from Mule Ass, Tennessee that knows a thing or two when it comes to morals and family values. I reckon that is why I am a compassionate conservative Republican. President Bush believes in these same things.
Now, I ain't the sharpest tack ever to be jabbed into somebody's ass, but I reckon I'm sharp enough to know family values and morals. Shoot, them things were taught to me and my little brother, Hank Williams "Cornbread" Acuff, by our grandpa, Steamboat Acuff. Cornbread and I saw first hand what a good compassionate conservative can be through our grandpa Steamboat Acuff. I reckon President Bush must have had a grandpa like Grandpa Steamboat too.
Hell fire, I ain't very bright when it comes to numbers, facts and that other useless shit, I reckon me and President Bush are a lot alike in that way too, but I know that you can't help nobody until you help yourself. That's the way I have life figured, and I reckon that is why we can't really help Iraq until them Iraqis start helping themselves. Old grandpa Steamboat Acuff taught me and little brother Cornbread this lesson a long time ago. Shoot, there was many a time that Cornbread and me watched grandpa Steamboat sneak out of the house at night to go help a lady by the name of Mrs. Shanks who lived at the end of our street.
Grandpa Acuff would go down the road every night when Grandma was asleep, to help Mrs. Shanks in her garden. Her husband, old man Shanks, was gone off to war in Vietnam. "Old lady Shanks' garden needs weeding and I'm going to weed it fer her." Grandpa Steamboat would say. Sometimes, in the winter months, grandpa would say, "I'm goin' down to old lady Shanks to stoke her fire, don't tell Grandma." or he would say, "Goin' down to clean old lady Shanks chimney out." Shoot, like I said before, I ain't none too smart, but I always wondered about grandpa Steamboat Acuff a stokin' her fire, because the Shanks had natural gas in their home. But I wasn't one to question grandpa's conservative family values. He was the giving kind. Then one day old man Shanks come home from the war in Vietnam and caught grandpa Steamboat Acuff a trimmin' old lady Shanks' bush. He beat the hell out of grandpa Steamboat, and he didn't come home from the hospital for 2 weeks!
I reckon President Bush has been takin' a pounding for his good deeds of late too. Them liberal educated elite media people are poundin' him pretty good. They ask him all these damn silly question about the war and this and that. I reckon President Bush knows what he is doing or he wouldn't have blown the shit out of that desert land. Them liberal educated reporters ought to quit askin' questions and just support the president!
I think part of the problem with these over educated commie liberal reporters is that they've read way too many books. I'll never forget when grandpa caught little brother a tryin' to read a book. "What kind of book are you readin'?" Grandpa Steamboat asked my little brother, Cornbread. "Moby Dick," Cornbread replied. Shoot, I ain't never seen grandpa Steamboat get as mad as he did that day. Shit, he yanked Cornbread up from his bed and beat the shit out of him. "Ain't gonna be no queer books in this house!" Grandpa Steamboat Acuff said as beat Co
Condi's Secrets: sexy panties and bras assault on Iraq
by: Colonel Morton T. Morton, US Army (ret), RepublicanPress.com War Correspondant
I have been in the military for over 40 years and I can recall the joys of each and every battle that I, or my friend, Colonel Pooner, have ever fought. It is just that way with us old Republican war horses. We fight for values and conservative ideas, and then we fight for the right to fight. It is a hard job, but Colonel Pooner and I love the smell of gun powder, the sting of hot lead entering into our persons, the sights of smoke, the smells of blood, sweat, nerve gas, and fresh urine and poop. These aromas feed our Republican bodies like a hot supper on a cold night in a whore house far-far-away.
War is hell, that is true, but war can separate the men from the boys. We Republicans know that war can ease the savage urges, and in return war can free people, or enslave them. War is hell, I suppose, but war can also bring new business, which in return brings a free market of goods, tax cuts, and whores. War is hell, but for old Republicans like me and Colonel Pooner, war offers us the chance to ride the open plains
The Liberal Media will not report the good things that are happening here in Iraq. All they want to show are images of things blowing up, and people being killed, and the Iraqi people running for their lives. This desert flower is blooming like a son-of-a-bitch! Just as a plant needs food to grow, so too does any country as it struggles to grow during a time of change. We know that plants are fed by fertilizer, and/or fecal matter, just as Iraq is fed by Republican morals and values. Today in this desert flower of Iraq we are feeding the roots of this country with Republican bullshit to build a stronger Iraq! A desert flower is beginning to bloom here in this Rag Head land!
There are more Iraqis going to Iraqi hospitals today than ever before in this country's history! You won't hear that bit of news from the Liberal Media! There are freedoms being opened up to the Iraqi people each day. Freedoms such as owning your own gun! Another freedom being opened up to the Iraqi people is the freedom of capitalism!
One store that fine Republican American businessmen have brought to Iraq is, "CONDI"S SECRETS". This store caters to the discreet Iraqi woman and her needs for fine panties and bras. It offers thong panties, high cut panties, and heavy duty-heavy nylon cord panties called the,'KAREN HUGHES COLLECTION', for the big-ass Iraqi lady that wants that extra feeling of security! Yes, CONDI"S SECRETS, named after Condi Rice, is one success that you never hear about in the Hollywood Liberal Media!
A tear comes to this old compassionate-conservativ e Republican warrior everytime I think of seeing an old ugly-ass Iraqi woman fumble through the panties at CONDI"S SECRETS. The different types of be panties all have a different message from Condi Rice stitched right on them. These were words, buzz words, if you will, that Condi was fond of saying. Phrases such as: "Shake the Trees", "Connect the Dots," or "9-11 Changed Everything", and " President Bush didn't know, but he was informed," and of course," Richard Clarke didn't say dick to Me!" Yes, all these phrases were embroidered on to each and every pair, and I watched as an old ugly-ass Iraqi woman looked through each one. She determined that her old Iraqi fat ass would not look good in any of the sexy panties offered, so she went to the KAREN HUGHES COLLECTION that specialized in the more mature woman. "10 minutes from Norimal," was embroidered on the ass of those heavy duty, heavy denier nylon panties. And, in the crotch was the phrase, "President BUSH is WAR PRESIDENT!" I watched as the ugly ass old Iraqi woman bought those panties and smiled at me. I thought as I watched her trying on those heavy duty, heavy denier, nylon panties from the KAREN HUGHES COLLECTION, "This desert flower is blooming!"
You won't hear the Liberal Media telling about Iraqi women buying panties and bras for the first time! The Liberal Media is more into making Iraq sound like an unstable country on the verge of a civil war. Well, it isn't so! Sure, there are some isolated incidents of insurrection, but those are by a few Iraqis that don't want freedom to take hold. Ok so there was some trouble in Baghad too. Sure, I admit there are a band, or large group, of thugs there in Baghdad. Well, ok, sure maybe 5,000, but no more than that number. Yeah, some might even say an uprising was occurring in Baghdadi and Fallujah, Basra, Kut, Tirkirt, and Ramida, and other places in Iraq, but the message that the Liberal Media will not tell you is,"This desert flower is blooming!
Who the World would like the next US president to be! Check this out!!!
Check it out and vote, whereever you live on this planet!
The results so far are interesting to say the least; here below is a copy paste of the table (all screwed up, so go check the site for a neat formatting - besides, the results change all the time). There is a clear indication that pretty much all people in the world think Bush should be cleaning toilets instead of presiding the White House. The number of countries where Bush gets a score of 0 is quite staggering (even dismissing those where so far only one person has voted). Even Israel is giving him the finger, incredible. Also very interesting is the fact Nader is a lot more popular outside the US than Kerry.
Lastly, it is very interesting and informative to see what different countries think - while there is a near unanimous "up yours, Bush" concensus, the proportions between the 3 candidates vary considerably (again, even after discarding the countries with only a handful of votes so far)
For those too lazy to go check the site, here is a copy/paste of the contents of the table: -- Votes so far by country:
(The % are approx as the first 50 votes or so were not broken down to the candidates)
This is just great. I saw that on TV last night. Here's an English version. Our useless right-wing government is now paying for sex with minors. What next? ------- Raffarin aide charged with procuring By Jo Johnson in Paris
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the French prime minister, on Friday became the un-intended victim of the government's crackdown on prostitution after his director of communications resigned following his arrest in the company of a Romanian teenager near the notorious Bois de Boulogne red-light district.
Often described as France's Alastair Campbell, the former spin-doctor to UK premier Tony Blair, Dominique Ambiel will appear in court on June 7 on charges of paying to procure sex with a minor and of insulting a police officer.
According to Le Monde newspaper, Mr Ambiel became abusive after vice squad officers claimed to have caught him in flagrante with a 17-year-old prostitute in his car at 2.30am on Tuesday.
Paying for sex with a minor is punishable by up to three years prison and a €45,000 ($53,500, £30,200) fine.
Mr Ambiel, a former maker of reality television shows who has become the prime minister's main intellectual sparring partner, aroused controversy last year by saying Mr Raffarin's communications team needed to set up a rapid-rebuttal unit.
"We must change," he said. "Compared to Alistair Campbell, we are choir boys."
In Mr Ambiel's version of events, however, he is more good Samaritan than fallen spinner. He claims he left Matignon, the prime minister's quarters in central Paris, at about 2am and drove home to Neuilly, a well-heeled suburb, before realising that he had left vital documents at work.
The 49-year-old married father of one then turned around, and, while on his way back to Matignon, stopped at traffic lights on the edge of the city. At that moment, a fight broke out between two prostitutes at a nearby bus shelter, causing one of the women to rush to his car for safety.
After Mr Ambiel accidentally unlocked the passenger door, the teenager jumped into the car and pleaded for help. In a communiqué, Mr Ambiel said he then drove for "less than two minutes and dropped her off about 300 metres away in order to put her out of danger".
Vice squad officers in an unmarked car swooped on Mr Ambiel.
The adviser admits to a "fairly lively exchange" with the police but all other allegations to be "lies, defamation and indeed manipulation". He had no need to pay €150 for sex, he told police, according to Le Monde newspaper.
Saying that he was more than familiar with the tough new laws against prostitution that were passed by parliament last year, Mr Ambiel announced that he worked at Matignon and took down the licence plate numbers of the vice squad car and the names of the arresting officers.
Under interrogation, the Romanian teenager reportedly cast doubt on Mr Ambiel's version of events, saying she had seen him two or three times the previous week and that he had used his credit card to pay a hotel.
A week after the terrorist bombings on Madrid openDemocracy.net hosted an intense, international discussion in London. Caspar Henderson wrote a report on it for us. At one point a commentator who is experienced in world affairs warned the meeting not to get too excited by the impact of the election outcome in Spain.
He pointed out that the new prime minister, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, had said that Spanish troops would stay in Iraq only if they came under United Nations command. This was not the same as pulling them out. Some kind of deal with the UN was bound to happen by June 2004 and then the Spanish troops would remain. In other words things had not really changed very much and the underlying realities of world power remained.
Well, this week, as soon as he was formally confirmed in office, Zapatero announced that his troops were coming home immediately. He didn’t want any damaging speculation about any agreement with the UN, he explained. The will of the Spanish people had been clearly expressed.
I was reminded of my own cynical assumption after the Turkish parliament voted in March 2003 to refuse to allow American forces to pass through their country to invade Iraq.
In strictly military terms, the Spanish deployment in Iraq was primarily symbolic. By contrast, the US war plan for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime was based on a very real, two-fold invasion plan – from Turkey in the north and Kuwait in the south. Any Turkish refusal was bound to have very serious consequences, and anyway the US request for passage was accompanied by a generous aid and financial offer. At the time, I assumed that the decision would be finessed and reversed, and American troops would indeed be deployed across the Anatolian border.
They were not. There was a Turkish popular will and national pride. The country’s MPs were not to be drawn into America’s attack on its neighbour, however great the bribe. Indeed it seems that the very presumption of Washington got up the noses of the Turks. As Murat Belge has explained, by drawing upon religious traditions, the ruling party has laid claim to a genuine conservatism which benefits the development of democracy because it is rooted in self-belief. This was not going to be dictated to by Americans in pursuit of their unilateral strategy.
Even so, the Turks might not have stuck to their policy without Germany. But German voters had backed Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s decision not to send troops to Iraq.
Taken together, Spain, Turkey and Germany represent a huge change – the start of a new reality – in world affairs.
The thinking of President Bush and prime ministers Tony Blair and José María Aznar and all their advisors was trapped in traditional terms. They believed, you can be sure, that the “anti-war” protests were like the movement for nuclear disarmament during the cold war, which however popular were doomed to irrelevance, without any significant purchase on power.
Instead of assessing power and its imbalances through the eye of Washington, as they did and as is traditionally done by western politicians and commentators, look at it from the other way around – or from “inside out”, following Narcís Serra in the current edition of openDemocracy.net.
What we are witnessing can perhaps be called the globalisation of democracy. The definition of freedom and democracy, the governing, official ideas of our time, are no longer being dictated in the old centres of authority.
The more that the administration in Washington insists that it alone is delivering freedom and democracy, the less it defines the meaning of these terms.
This is clear also in India, as Todd Gitlin’s column this week reminds us. India was never a military ally of America although it is so in the fight against al-Qaida. But what in the past was perhaps a narrow elite opposition to Washington based in New Delhi is now a palpable judgment shared through all classes and parties. The impulse that led to 90% opposition to the Iraq war in Christian Spain has a similar, resounding chorus in Hindu and Muslim India, the world’s most populous democracy.
And now it can be found in Iraq.
At the beginning of last week Jo Wilding’s report of her courageous journey to Fallujah arrived in our office. There was concern that it might seem wrongly prejudiced against America, that it was not a report from a professional journalist. But she wasn’t pretending to be a reporter, she was telling it as it seemed to her as a humanitarian worker. I decided on posting it immediately to take full advantage of the web as a publishing medium.
Because in her journey from Baghdad to Falluja she witnessed what seems to be the turning point in the American occupation of Iraq, the point when, as I suggested two weeks ago, a second “liberation” begins. Whose side are the Americans on? Their own – following the interests of the oil corporations, and in pursuit of strategic control of the Middle East – or are they on the side of the Iraqi people, as the bringers of democracy have to be?
Take a small but important detail. Were the soldiers on the rooftops circling Falluja really “snipers” as Jo calls them, or were they US marines “doing their job”? The point is that to the Iraqi civilians and Jo’s colleagues they felt like snipers – they felt like military ready to shoot them at will. Or to put it another way they did not feel like liberators bringing democracy to the people.
It is not the same throughout Iraq. In the Kurdish north of Iraq the American presence brought essential support that has made self-determination seemingly possible. In Sunni Falluja things may be irreversible. In Shi’a Najaf and Baghdad the fate of the intervention is at stake. As much as possible we seek to bring Iraqi voices to openDemocracy.net to explain to the world how they see it and to argue out what should happen next.
It is very unlikely to be what the wise and experienced expect.
[courtesy of OpenDemocracy]
Arab Street Calls for Strong Action Against Israel, U.S.
By Firas Al-Atraqchi YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
(YellowTimes.org) – The so-called Arab street is tonight broiling with anger, hatred and resentment over the targeted assassination of newly-elected Hamas leader Abdel Azis Rantissi. There are conflicting reports that Rantissi was killed by a missile fired from an Apache helicopter. Palestinian eyewitnesses claimed it may have been a car bomb. Hamas promised to draw Israeli blood.
Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheik Ahmad Yassin was killed three weeks ago and Israel braced for retaliatory strikes. Although there were sporadic attacks mounted by Palestinian fighters, there was nothing of the gravity of this morning's suicide attack which killed one Israeli soldier and wounded three soldiers.
In July of last year, Israel tried and failed to assassinate Rantissi. There have been three failed assassination attempts in the past two years.
Opposition parties are calling on Arab populations to overthrow their governments and rally to support the resistance in Iraq and in Palestine. Many Middle East analysts have questioned the timing of Rantissi's assassination as U.S. policies in Iraq were coming under severe criticism. Human rights organizations have accused the U.S. Military of committing atrocities in Iraq and resorting to the uneven-handed approach perfected by the Israeli Defense Forces over the past 15 years. Some British Military commanders have complained that the U.S. Military is creating a blunder in Iraq.
According to The Telegraph's Sean Rayment, a British officer, "who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for 'sub-humans.' 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 British officer accused the U.S. Military of targeting "terrorists" even if they are located in densely-populated civilian areas: "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 Telegraph reported.
"We are resorting to collective punishment," Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria told Chris Matthews on Hardball recently. He denied the official U.S. position that fighters in the "Sunni Triangle" are dead-enders. He also claimed uneven-handedness in Iraq was feeding the "insurgency."
The siege of Falluja (where some 873 civilians were killed and 2,203 wounded), the siege of Najaf, the holiest city for the Shia Muslims of the world, the U.S. promise to either capture or kill Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the Bush administration's unprecedented negation of the Palestinian Right of Return, the building of the Israeli separation wall, the Bush administration's branding of the Palestinian National Authority as a non-partner, the killing of Sheikh Yassin, and tonight's killing of Rantissi are causing an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism in the Arab Middle East. Moderates who were usually outspoken in their support of the U.S. and Middle East political reform have now either changed their tune or withdrawn into obsoletion.
At press time, thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in front of Al Azhar University. Such impromptu demonstrations have been extremely rare in Egypt and are usually preceded by government approval and a heavy security presence that outnumbers the demonstrators by six to one.
"Allah Akbar, Jihad is the answer. Look we are coming, martyrs in the millions," thousands of Egyptians chanted. Egypt is considered a traditional U.S. ally. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was earlier in Crawford, Texas. He later endorsed the Israeli plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, "but with conditions." The conditions were not disclosed to the press.
The Middle East is going through an untenable period of imbalance. Iraq, which was considered a strategic balance to Israel and Iran, is on the verge of collapse, according to Middle East analysts. During the standoff with al-Sadr, the young Shia cleric said he was the right hand of Hamas and Hezbollah. When Sheikh Yassin was killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis - Shia and Sunni - took to the streets and protested the Anglo-American-Zionist aggression against Islam.
When Falluja was pounded by F-16s and AC-130 gunships, Palestinians took to the streets to protest what they called "the murder of Iraq." Two conflicts that were once seen as mutually exclusive have now become mutually inclusive. Increasingly, Arab opposition newspapers, union leaders, and parliamentarians have linked the two conflicts and pointed to a greater war against Arabs and Islam. So angered and hateful of the U.S. and Israel are the Arabs that they have put aside thousand-year theological differences and vowed to fight as one. There has been widespread Arab Sunni support of the Shia uprising in southern Iraq.
Ironically, Rantissi was quoted as saying he was ready to be martyred if Israel succeeded in assassinating him. Al-Sadr told a Shia congregation in Najaf that he was ready to be martyred. The connection and timing of both conflicts is not lost on the Arab street.
At press time, tens of thousands of people had taken to the streets of the pristine port of Alexandria in Egypt. Many have been quoted as saying they were ready and willing to become suicide bombers.
Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher has called the assassination of Rantissi as inexcusable and an incredible blunder. "We are now moving to the edge of an abyss," he told reporters.
Mass demonstrations across the Arab World are expected on Sunday.
[Firas Al-Atraqchi, B.Sc (Physics), M.A. (Journalism and Communications), is a Canadian journalist with eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry.]
Firas Al-Atraqchi encourages your comments: fatraqchi@YellowTimes.org
YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated
Bush and Blair have allowed Israel to dictate their Middle East policy and carry out a Palestinian politicide
Afif Safieh Monday April 19, 2004 The Guardian
The study of American-Israeli relations has preoccupied two generations of scholars. Two competing schools of thought addressed the "who wags whom" debate. The first school spoke of "an American Israel", with the United States dictating to the local ally its regional policy in accordance with the American global vision. Noam Chomsky wrote two decades ago that Washington was the contemporary Rome and Israel its regional belligerent, Sparta. The second school projects the image of "an Israeli America", a complex relationship where the global superpower adopts the regional policy of its client state and integrates it in its global strategy. This is seen as a result of a powerful pro-Israel lobby that succeeded in turning "Capitol Hill into another Israeli-occupied territory".
I have always believed that both schools of thought were correct but at different moments in history, depending on the strength of the American president, how comfortable he is in the country and in Congress, and how comfortable the US is in the world.
After the horror of 9/11, when the predictable retaliation was being discussed, the pro-Israel lobby emerged as the "maximalist school", which wanted to expand the theatre of operations beyond Afghanistan to engulf Iraq, Syria and Libya. That lobby has grown accustomed to using one muscle too many and one pressure too far. The collusion between the US and Israeli agendas has put America on a collision course with the Arab World, which now perceives the US as Israel's belligerent Sparta and the aim of American foreign policy to be docility, not democracy.
Tony Blair has always had a more sophisticated approach than George Bush. Blair knew that military challenges and security threats needed political responses. That to win the battle of hearts and minds, the west had to be seen as engaged in resolving the Palestinian problem. The test and the extent of his influence in Washington depended on who Bush needed more: Blair internationally or Ariel Sharon domestically.
Last week was a sad moment for international diplomacy. The world's two most powerful leaders, Bush and Blair, caved in to the most unscrupulous politician in the Middle East, who was found to be "unfit for public office" by an Israeli inquiry committee after the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in 1982.
Sharon is not hiding his game. In a recent interview with the leading Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, he said Israelis should see his plan of unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip not as a reward but as a punishment of the Palestinians. He announced that the Palestinians could operate neither a port nor an airport in Gaza, and that Israel intended to keep control of territorial water and airspace. Nor would they have control of the borders. He added that this would delay the discussion of a Palestinian state for many years. He forgot to mention was that Gaza, with its 1.3 million inhabitants, is only about 1% of historic Palestine.
Why Bush considered Sharon's intentions "courageous" and "a golden opportunity" can be explained by the electoral considerations of an embattled president. But I remain puzzled by Blair's enthusiasm for Sharon's machinations and his conviction that they are in harmony with the road map. He has more experience in power than Bush, is better advised, and electoral considerations in Britain run in the opposite direction. Opinion polls show a 2-1 ratio in favour of Palestinian aspirations as compared with the Israeli position. Debates in parliament, across the political divide, should encourage him to be more assertive. All indicationsshow that, on Palestine/Israel, Blair does not reflect the depth of feeling in Britain.
Sharon has been dealing with the US and Britain as though they were his own banana republics. To his intransigence they constantly respond with abdication of responsibility and self inflicted impotence. The way ahead under the road map would have been to secure a reciprocal cessation of violence that all Palestinian factions accept; pressure Sharon to couple a complete withdrawal from Gaza with a pull-out of the urban centres in the West Bank to allow the creation of a Palestinian state "with temporary frontiers"; and to make Palestinian elections possible - presidential, parliamentary and municipal - and pave the way for final-status negotiations.
None of that has been undertaken. Bush and Blair are allowing Israel to dictate what is possible. Sharon will pursue his policy of politicide, vandalising Palestinian society and the economy, and crushing any national representation and government. Despite Hamas's self-restraint since the assassination of Sheikh Yassin and its dialogue with other factions to minimise civilian deaths on both sides, he has pressed ahead with decapitating the Palestinian leadership by killing Abdul-Aziz Rantissi.
For years it has been my belief that the ideal US president for Middle East peace would be one who had the ethics of a Carter, the popularity of a Reagan and the strategic audacity of a Nixon. Alas, we have a president who has the ethics of a Nixon, the popularity of a Carter and the intellectual agility of a Reagan.
Hey, what's going here? Where's the Politics section gone?
PS: I thought it was funny at first. But I only laughed for the first 10 seconds. After that, this amazing parody actually became so frightfully close to the truth it wasn't funny any longer. See what you think. Take a good listen, and really think to yourself about the contents. Isn't it really exactly what he means and would say out loud if he could get away with it?
Bush's campaign hits tBlog ... complete with piccies!
Cleverly (!) disguised under the original name of Newbie, Bush has launched a new phase in his campaign:
tBlog
It seems to have started with DianneMaire's blog where it took him 3 tries to eventually get his autoportrait posted. But now, his new acquired skills are well under control, and are "staying on course" and there ain't no stoppin the campaign: CheckItOut, WinstonSmith, DrForBush, and a couple of the other bloggers I regularly check, and of course myself. All in the space of 2 hours. That's what I call decisive Texan efficiency!
Will Iraqis unite in revolt against US forces? Beneath the boiling surface of Iraqi anger lies a more complex and fractious reality which points to a different outcome.
The basic cause of the current troubles in Iraq is the discontent and disillusion of the bulk of the population. One year after the occupation and the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime the great majority of Iraqis are worse off. Poverty, insecurity, shaky infrastructure, and, above all, unemployment have increased massively. Here is a population which always looked to the government for provision of jobs and basic subsistence. However bad and oppressive the government; it always responded to these needs.
The first blunder, among many, of the occupation authorities was to dissolve the army – around 450,000 men – without pay or pension, but with their weapons. It is estimated that two million Iraqis were dependent on this army and its pay. This step multiplied unemployment and destitution, and contributed to the ammunition of the insurgency. Here we are, one year later, and these frustrations are feeding into ever more acute anti-occupation sentiments, even among those who were initially favourable to it, and among the many who want, but can’t, get a quiet life.
The recent American onslaught on Falluja and the massacre of civilians there has led to a tremendous surge of anger and outrage among all sections of the Iraqi people. It has awakened a strong sense of Iraqi nationalism. But there are diverse and contradictory elements at work beneath the surface. The two recent insurgencies – one in the “Sunni Triangle” and one by Shi’ite followers of Muqtada al-Sadr – are different in crucial respects.
The Sunni insurgency is nihilist. It has no apparent political programme, nor does it announce its protagonists. It aims at causing as much damage and disruption as possible and to prevent steps towards the establishment of order and normality. Its two wings, the Saddamist and the Islamist, have different agendas. Saddamists want to pressure the Americans into leaving, allowing them a chance of re-establishing their old hegemony. Islamists want the Americans to stay so that they can hit them.
Muqtada al-Sadr and the intricacies of Shi’ia politics
The Shi’ia insurgency – lead by Muqtada al-Sadr – is political in that it is aimed at manoeuvring for power, with a distinct programme and set of demands. In the Shi’ite political landscape Muqtada al-Sadr is an upstart. He is young and without religious authority or charisma, except that inherited from his father – and even that inheritance is in dispute. The older Sadr’s designated successor is Kadhim al-Haeri, resident in the Iranian city of Qum and a Khomeinist in ideology, but outside the mainstream political clerical establishment of Iran. Haeri and young Sadr have an uneasy co-existence.
Muqtada al-Sadr’s offices and agents in Iraq continue to invoke the authority of his dead father, collecting dues and exercise authority in his name. In Shi’a doctrine this is not legitimate: a mujtahid’s authority dies with him, and believers must follow a living cleric. Muqtada al-Sadr attempts to over-ride this ambiguous status and confront his established rival by adopting a militant stance.
Muqtada al-Sadr takes up a political and militant stance against Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the main authority for Iraqi Shi’a, who avoids direct involvement in politics. Al-Sadr implicitly denounces Sistani on the grounds that the Ayatollah is Persian and an Iraqi leader must be Iraqi/Arab. In effect Muqtada al-Sadr holds a Khomeinist position in politics, advocating an Islamic state ruled by clerics, but is at the same time anti-Iranian: Shi’ite Iraq for the Iraqis.
The al-Hakim family, leaders of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which plays a leading role in Iraqi politics and holds seats on the US approved Governing Council, are equally “tainted” with Iranian connections, but it is not clear that they follow Iranian official directions. Indeed all Shi’a groups have Iranian connections, but not necessarily Iranian government influence, nor are they subordinate in their relation with Iranian counterparts.
One of Muqtada al-Sadr’s main objectives has been to establish control over the revenue-generating shrines of the holy cities. His followers fought many battles with rival factions, but with little success.
Reports indicate that the Sadrist support among the Shi’a resides in the poor slums of Baghdad, especially among the young in Sadr City. This location has always been the centre for radical agitation. It was built, with strong leftist support, in the late 1950s and early 1960s as Madinat al-Thawra or Revolution City by General Abd-al-Karim Qasim, who overthrew the Iraqi monarchy in 1958. It became a stronghold of the Iraqi Communist Party, and was one of the main centres of resistance to the Ba’thist putsch of 1963, occasioning a massacre. Saddam made the area his own as Saddam City, and in 2003 it was re-named Sadr City, after the martyr father Muhammd Sadiq al-Sadr (killed by Saddam in 1999.
But informed observers think that, in a free election in that quarter, Sadr’s support will prove to be limited. This is also true in parts of Basra and other southern cities where Sadrists have a high profile thanks to their militant behaviour and from intimidation of local people (bullying women into the hijab, forcibly closing down liquor venues and entertainments).
Political manoeuvres
While himself renouncing political ambitions, Ayatollah Ali Sistani has taken a leadership position aimed at ensuring that the Shi’a will not be sidelined again. His denunciation of the interim constitution’s clauses giving the Kurds and Sunni veto powers, is transparently aimed at establishing Shi’a majority rule. This line was broadly followed by other Shi’a parties and factions.
Muqtada al-Sadr will have calculated that the processes of the transfer of power to an Iraqi government, then elections, will only marginalize him further. The other Shi’a parties are much better placed for voting constituencies, and better funded. Furthermore, there are indications that in a secret ballot many Shi’a will want to avoid religious rule and vote for secular candidates. This was indicated in recent elections for a local council in the Nassiriya region, in which religious candidates obtained a minority of the seats.
These considerations constitute incentives for escalating Muqtada’s one positive dimension: militant action against the occupation and the political process it engenders. The Americans obligingly presented him with a pretext for this step in closing down his weekly newspaper Al-Hawza, arresting prominent followers, and issuing (through an Iraqi judge) an arrest warrant for Muqtada himself, on a murder charge. In effect, they declared war on the Sadrists and gave them further incentives for escalating militancy. This coincided with the Falluja uprising, giving Sadr further impetus and credibility.
The Sunni insurgency
Iraq’s Sunnis are diverse. By no means all are involved in or support the insurgency in the “Sunni Triangle”. But this area is the home of previously poor and excluded populations, tribal and peasant, quite distinct from the urban Sunni bourgeoisie of Baghdad and Mosul (predominantly Sunni), the leading families of the Sunni tribes and the old land-owning Sunni elites with Ottoman connections who dominated Iraqi politics under the monarchy.
The inhabitants of the Triangle came into politics through the army, the refuge of poor youth in the first half of the twentieth century. The leaders of the Ba’thist and nationalist coup d’etats came from these groups, and eventually established their control over the party and the state through Saddam and his tribal politics. Many of the armed and trained personnel of the Saddamist state and the military belong to this area.
Their insurgency is fuelled by outrage over the loss of enormous privilege and control. Sunni sentiments (not necessarily religiosity) and antagonism to the Americans and the Shi’a have made this area hospitable to the Islamist, or Jihadist elements, even though they are not always ideologically compatible. Fury is compounded by a tribal code of the blood feud which obliges many to seek revenge for kin killed in American actions and humiliations inflicted by the occupying forces.
Will Sunni and Shi’ia insurgents unite?
The death and destruction visited on Falluja recently by American forces – seemingly an act of overwhelming revenge on the population of the whole town – fuelled the outrage of the whole of Iraq, even the sectarian Shi’ia who would normally not have sympathy for their Sunni antagonists.
In the circumstances Shi’ia rivals and opponents of Sadr are reduced to impotence. They cannot be seen to side with the Americans against him. The most Sistani could do was to call for calm on all sides, and to seek negotiated political solutions. Sadr can only be sidelined again if the political process of transfer of rule, and then elections, can be put back on track. The odds against that in the present chaos seem overwhelming.
In public pronouncements, most religious leaders emphasise Islamic, and Iraqi, unity. Muqtada al-Sadr makes a special point of emphasising unity and the common struggle against the occupation. In practice, the rivalry and antagonism are transparent. Any cooperation between the two wings of the insurgency is likely to be temporary and tactical.
Both sides call for Islamic rule, but whose? Islamic law and government are indeterminate notions, and are in practice avenues of the exercise of power and coercion by religious authority. Under the circumstances, you can’t have two religious authorities (and there are many more than just two potential rivals). The quest for religious rule, then, is bound to lead to a struggle over whose rule.
This is not to say that Iraqis are bound to sectarianism: the twentieth century history of Iraq includes many episodes in which individuals and groups drawn from different religious and communal backgrounds engaged in common enterprises, political, social, literary and artistic, notably in the nationalist and communist movements. But these elements did not participate as Shi’ia or Sunni, Christian or Jewish, but as aspiring citizens and members of a common society united by interests and ideologies. Is it too much to hope for a return of that spirit?
Who said Bush had no heart, huh? This is but a cruel lie. He's in fact a very compassionate man, as is testified in this moving interview recorded shortly after the 11 Sept tragedy:
George Bush has had a "devastating impact" on global sustainable development and set the world back more than ten years, says Jonathon Porritt, the prime minister's senior adviser on the subject, today. Writing in Guardian Society Mr Porritt, who is the chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, says it is hard to exaggerate the damage done to the planet by Mr Bush's drive for a "new world order".
On a whole series of issues including climate change, international aid, family planning, nuclear proliferation, trade and corporate responsibility, "staying true to a discredited model of extreme economic liberalism has set the world back a decade or more", says Mr Porritt.
He says it is not surprising that the rest of the world has done so badly because Mr Bush has given them the perfect "out" from their responsibilities.
"Developing countries are increasingly disenchanted with what they see as a narrow, unfair and protectionist agenda," he says, "Japan is mired in its own economic and political failure, Russia plays the field for whatever it can get out of it, and even the EU has started to lose the plot, with a least five countries seeking to renege on their climate commitments. ..."
Against this backdrop the British government looks like a world leader but even here the title of his report on progress is Shows Promise: But Must Try Harder.
The five-year review says that a lack of political will and a failure to understand that quality of life is not just about economic growth has led to slow progress towards the government's sustainable development goals. But Mr Porritt singles out Tony Blair's leadership on climate change and Gordon Brown's efforts on global debt as bright spots.
He says that in some of the 15 areas he judges the government on, for example waste management and traffic, the performance has been "dreadful". Four areas "show promise" and two - air quality and river water - manage a "good". He accepts that the government intends to do more but it is not a brilliant picture.
"Far more effort needs to be made to differentiate between smart growth (that generates wealth and social benefits without damaging the environment) and today's wholly unsustainable growth that inevitably ends up damaging people's real quality of life."
On this criterion he gives Britain's economic growth a "poor" rating and says eco-taxation policy has become bogged down.
The government gets a "disappointing" rating in four areas: employment, because of longer working hours and gender wage gaps; health, because life expectancy in poor communities is not rising; housing, because energy efficiency is low; and greenhouse gas emissions because of increased traffic and air travel. The four areas "showing promise" are poverty reduction, education, wildlife and land use.
WASHINGTON -- Citing an imminent threat to his base of support on the religious right, President Bush today called for a constitutional amendment banning millions of people from participating in what he called "the most fundamental institution of civilization."
(Related stories
Canine weddings may be banned
Saddam, Osama secretly married)
"Dicking around with the sanctity of the Constitution is the only way to nip this thing in the butt," said Bush.
When reporters began to ask him how a vow of love and commitment between a same-sex couple threatens such relationships between a man and a woman, the president, as expected, turned his back and walked out of the room.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan later explained the president is acting on solid intelligence that gay men possess biologically incorrect weapons and are not afraid to use them.
Earlier, in an exclusive interview with the Humor Gazette, Bush confided his belief that gay marriage threatens our way of life because the thought of two men together "gives me the willies." When pressed, however, Bush admitted that daydreaming about two women gets him "a little hot," unless Rosie O'Donnell is involved.
Saying he is deeply troubled by the blatantly homosexual civil disobedience taking place in San Francisco, the president said a crackdown is needed before gay weddings spread to "real cities" like Las Vegas and Texas.
Bush vowed he would never relent in defending America from any threat to same-sex marriage. The sacred promise between man and woman enjoys a staggering 50 percent success ratio, he noted, an impressive number compared to, say, government, where about 17 percent of all promises are fulfilled.
President Bush, who proudly counts the "sanctity of marriage" among his favorite soundbites, blamed the crisis on "limp-wristed activist judges" and concluded his remarks by saying, "These people must be stopped from pledging their unconditional love for each other before it's too late."
Constitutional scholars say such an amendment would not necessarily ban gay people from using the same water fountains as heterosexuals. However, the American Civil Liberties union has expressed concern that conservatives may seize this opportunity to outlaw canine marriages (see related story), controversial dog-cat weddings and any union between a man and a farm animal or inflatable doll.
President tells nation, 'I'm sure something will pop into my head'
Make no mistake. Gathering threat. Must not waver. Stay the course.
His Tuesday night press conference was going along just fine. The president had successfully ducked one question about whether he'd made any "errors in judgment" and dodged another about "personal responsibility for September 11th."
He in-your-faced the nation by playing the dunce, twice, when asked clearly and directly why he and the vice president insist on appearing before the 9/11 Commission together instead of individually.
George W. Bush had wisely chosen to field questions from the East Room of the White House instead of from the deck of an aircraft carrier in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. And when Uncle Dick picked out the evening's attire, the famous military flightsuit was tucked deep in the White House play closet.
President Bush did not waver from his message while he stayed the course. There was no talk of outsourcing the fighting to India if the violence does not abate.
He even answered a question on the minds of many. "Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?"
BUSH (actual words): "We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over."
See, Brahimi is on it. He's gonna let us know. No truth to the rumor Cheney plans to sell the strife-torn nation to Halliburton for an undisclosed sum and some quid pro quo to be named later.
Once the entity is identified and order restored it will be safe to implement the president's time-tested economic development strategy -- distribute generous tax breaks to the rich and open the region to exploitation by corporate friends with addresses in the Bahamas.
Some of the questions were kind of tough but stuff kept coming out of his mouth. "Now is the time and Iraq is the place." And the smirk stayed tucked away, at least until it leaked out when he said the oil revenue stream there is "pretty darn significant."
But trouble loomed ahead, a grave and gathering question. Mr. President: "After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be … and what lessons have learned from it?"
BUSH (actual words): "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet. …"
"I hope -- I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
And don't get him started on those weapons of mass destruction. "They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm," some of Col. Gadhafi's leftovers found in Libya.
Stay the course. Hypothetical linguistic analysis reveals that President Bush favors the word "course" because it subconsciously reminds him of country club living and shooting golf with his dad and that he favors the term "stay the course" because it's stuck in his head from hearing Dana Carvey poke fun at his pop.
"Stay the course" means never having to say you're sorry, never having to answer any question you don't want to.
Stay the course, and you'll probably find those weapons after all. You may even get that parade for the American liberators you promised yourself way back when.
Make no mistake. Gathering threat. Dangerous man. Stay the course?
I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the "news conference" given by George W. Bush. He's still talking about finding "weapons of mass destruction" -- this time on Saddam's "turkey farm." Turkey indeed. Clearly the White House believes there are enough idiots in the 17 swing states who will buy this. I think they are in for a rude awakening.
I've been holed up for weeks in the editing room finishing my film ("Fahrenheit 911"). That's why you haven't heard from me lately. But after last night's Lyndon Johnson impersonation from the East Room -- essentially promising to send even more troops into the Iraq sinkhole -- I had to write you all a note.
First, can we stop the Orwellian language and start using the proper names for things? Those are not “contractors” in Iraq. They are not there to fix a roof or to pour concrete in a driveway. They are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. They are there for the money, and the money is very good if you live long enough to spend it.
Halliburton is not a "company" doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested -- or worse.
A brave and harrowing report from inside the besieged city of Falluja where ordinary people are trapped in the cross-fire.
11 April, Falluja
Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that is not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people with few possessions heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for the people still inside Falluja.
The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The reason I am on the bus is that a journalist I know turned up at my door at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja. He had been bringing out children with their limbs blown off. The US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or they would be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were stopped at the US military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.
He said aid vehicles and the media were being turned away. He said there was some medical aid that needed to go in and there was a better chance of it getting there with foreigners, westerners, to get through the American checkpoints. The rest of the way was secured with the armed groups who control the roads we would travel on. We would take in the medical supplies, see what else we could do to help and then use the bus to bring out people who needed to leave.
I’ll spare you the whole decision making process, the questions we all asked ourselves and each other, and you can spare me the accusations of madness, but what it came down to was this: if I don’t do it, who will?
Either way, we arrived in one piece.
We pile the stuff in the corridor and the boxes are torn open straightaway; the blankets most welcomed. It is not a hospital at all but a clinic, a private doctor’s surgery treating people free since air strikes destroyed the town’s main hospital. Another has been improvised in a car garage. There is no anaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge and the doctors warm them up under the hot tap in an unhygienic toilet.
Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their chests and faces. Ummi, mother, one cries. I hold her until Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of about ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper, they said, hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja.
The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. The electricity to the town has been cut off for days and when the generator runs out of petrol they just have to manage till it comes back on. Dave quickly donates his torch. The children are not going to live.
“Come,” says Maki and ushers me alone into a room where an old woman has just had an abdominal bullet wound stitched up. Another in her leg is being dressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, a white flag still clutched in her hand and the same story: “I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when I was hit by a US sniper.” Some of the town is held by US marines, other parts by the local fighters. These people’s homes are in the US controlled area and they are adamant that the shooters were US marines.
Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services. The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is in US territory and cut off from the clinic by snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets because no one can go to collect them without being shot.
Some said we were mad to come to Iraq; quite a few said we were completely insane to come to Falluja, and now there are people telling me that getting in the back of the pick-up to go past the snipers and get sick and injured people is the craziest thing they have ever seen. I know, though, that if we don’t, no one will.
He is holding a white flag with a red crescent on; I don’t know his name. The men we pass wave us on when the driver explains where we are going. The silence is ferocious in the no man’s land between the pick-up at the edge of the Mujahedin territory, which has just gone from our sight around the last corner and the marines’ line beyond the next wall; no birds, no music, no indication that anyone is still living – until a gate opens opposite and a woman comes out and points.
We edge along to the hole in the wall where we can see the car, spent mortar shells around it. The feet are visible, crossed, in the gutter. I think he is dead already. The snipers are visible too, two of them on the corner of the building. As yet I think they can’t see us so we need to let them know we are there.
“Hello,” I bellow at the top of my voice. “Can you hear me?” They must. They are about 30 metres from us, maybe less, and it’s so still you could hear the flies buzzing at fifty paces. I repeat myself a few times, still without reply, so decide to explain myself a bit more.
“We are a medical team. We want to remove this wounded man. Is it OK for us to come out and get him? Can you give us a signal that it’s OK?”
I’m sure they can hear me but they are still not responding. Maybe they didn’t understand it all, so I say the same again. Dave yells too in his US accent. I yell again. Finally I think I hear a shout back. Not sure, I call again.
“Hello.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we come out and get him?”
“Yeah.”
Slowly, our hands up, we go out. The black cloud that rises to greet us carries with it a hot, sour smell. Solidified, his legs are heavy. I leave them to Rana and Dave, our guide lifting under his hips. The Kalashnikov is attached by sticky blood to his hair and hand and we don’t want it with us so I put my foot on it as I pick up his shoulders and his blood falls out through the hole in his back. We heave him into the pick-up as best we can and try to outrun the flies.
I suppose he was wearing flip flops because he is barefoot now, no more than 20 years old, in imitation Nike pants and a blue and black striped football shirt with a big 28 on the back. As the orderlies from the clinic pull the young fighter off the pick-up, yellow fluid pours from his mouth and they flip him over, face up, the way into the clinic clearing in front of them, straight up the ramp into the makeshift morgue.
We wash the blood off our hands and get in the ambulance. There are people trapped in the other hospital who need to go to Baghdad. Siren screaming, lights flashing, we huddle on the floor of the ambulance, passports and ID cards held out the windows. We pack it with people, one with his chest taped together and a drip, one on a stretcher, legs jerking violently so I have to hold them down as we wheel him out, lifting him over steps.
The hospital is better able to treat them than the clinic but has not got enough of anything to sort them out properly and the only way to get them to Baghdad is on our bus, which means they have to go to the clinic. We are crammed on the floor of the ambulance in case it’s shot at. Nisareen, a female doctor about my age, can’t stop a few tears once we are out.
The doctor rushes out to meet me: “Can you go to fetch a lady? She is pregnant and she is delivering the baby soon.”
Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing him and me by the window, the visible foreigner, the passport. Something scatters across my hand, simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through the ambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying through the window.
We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings. Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it’s hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance. I start singing. What else do you do when someone’s shooting at you? A tyre bursts with an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.
I am outraged. We are trying to get to a woman who is giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you are shooting at us. How dare you?
How dare you?
Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance into reverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridge in the centre of the road, the shots still coming as we flee around the corner. I carry on singing. The wheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.
The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shake my head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to see if we are OK. “Is there any other way to get to her,” I want to know. “La, maaku tareeq.” There is no other way.
They say we did the right thing. They say they have fixed the ambulance four times already and they will fix it again but the radiator is gone and the wheels are buckled and the woman is still at home in the dark giving birth alone. I let her down.
We can’t go out again. For one thing there is no ambulance and besides it’s dark now and that means our foreign faces can’t protect the people who go out with us or the people we pick up.
Maki is the acting director of the place. He says he hated Saddam but now he hates the Americans more.
We take off the blue gowns as the sky starts exploding somewhere beyond the building opposite. Minutes later a car roars up to the clinic. I can hear him screaming before I can see that there is no skin left on his body. He is burnt from head to foot. For sure there is nothing they can do. He will die of dehydration within a few days.
Another man is pulled from the car onto a stretcher. Cluster bombs, they say, although it is not clear whether they mean one or both of them. We set off walking to Mr Yasser’s house, waiting at each corner for someone to check the street before we cross. A ball of fire falls from a plane, splits into smaller balls of bright white lights. I think they are cluster bombs, because cluster bombs are in the front of my mind, but they vanish, just magnesium flares, incredibly bright and short-lived, giving a flash picture of the town from above.
Yasser asks us all to introduce ourselves. I tell him I’m training to be a lawyer. One of the other men asks whether I know about international law. They want to know about the law on war crimes, what a war crime is. I tell them I know some of the Geneva Conventions, that I’ll bring some information next time I come and we can get someone to explain it in Arabic.
We bring up the matter of Nayoko. This group of fighters has nothing to do with the ones who are holding the Japanese hostages, but while they are thanking us for what we did this evening, we talk about the things Nayoko did for the street kids, how much they loved her. They can’t promise anything but that they will try and find out where she is and try to persuade the group to let her and the others go.
I don’t suppose it will make any difference. They are busy fighting a war in Falluja. They are unconnected with the other group. But it can’t hurt to try.
The planes are above us all night. As I doze I forget I’m not on a long distance flight. The constant bass note of an unmanned reconnaissance drone overlaid with the frantic thrash of jets and the dull beat of helicopters and interrupted by explosions.
In the morning I make balloon dogs, giraffes and elephants for the little ones, Abdullah, Aboudi, who is clearly distressed by the noise of the aircraft and the explosions. I blow bubbles which he follows with his eyes. Finally, finally, I score a smile. The twins, thirteen years old, laugh too. One of them is an ambulance driver; both said to be handy with a Kalashnikov.
The doctors look haggard in the morning. None has slept more than a couple of hours a night for a week. One has had only eight hours of sleep in the last seven days, missing the funerals of his brother and aunt because he was needed at the hospital.
“The dead we cannot help,” Jassim said. “I must worry about the injured.”
We go again, Dave, Rana and me, this time in a pick-up. There are some sick people close to the marines’ line who need evacuating. No one dares come out of their houses because the marines are on top of the buildings shooting at anything that moves. Saad fetches us a white flag and tells us not to worry, he has checked and secured the road, no Mujahedin will fire at us, that peace is upon us; this eleven year old child, his face covered with a keffiyeh, but for his bright brown eyes, his AK47 almost as tall as he is.
We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the building, cover this side and Rana mutters, “Allah-o-akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.”
We jump down and tell them we need to get some sick people from the houses and they want Rana to go and bring out the family from the house whose roof they are on. Thirteen women and children are still inside, in one room, without food and water for the last 24hours.
“We’re going to be going through soon clearing the houses,” the senior one says.
“What does that mean, clearing the houses?”
“Going into every one searching for weapons.” He is checking his watch, can’t tell me what will start when, of course, but there is going to be air strikes in support. “If you’re going to do this you have to do it soon.”
First we go down the street we were sent to. There is a man, face down, in a white dishdash, a small round red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies have got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I am by his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the stretcher Dave’s hand goes through his chest, through the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly through his back and blew his heart out.
There is no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gate and they shot him. None of them have dared come out since. No one had dared come to get his body, horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditions of treating the body immediately. They couldn’t have known we were coming so it’s inconceivable that anyone came out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.
He was unarmed, 55 years old, shot in the back.
We cover his face, carry him to the pick-up. There is nothing to cover his body with. The sick woman is helped out of the house, the little girls around her hugging cloth bags to their bodies, whispering, “Baba, baba.” Daddy. Shaking, they let us go first, hands up, around the corner, then we usher them to the cab of the pick-up, shielding their heads so they can’t see him, the cuddly fat man stiff in the back.
The people seem to pour out of the houses now in the hope we can escort them safely out of the line of fire; kids, women, men, anxiously asking us where they can all go, or only the women and children. We go to ask. The young marine tells us that men of fighting age can’t leave. “What’s fighting age,” I want to know. He contemplates. “Anything under 45. No lower limit.”
It appals me that all those men would be trapped in a city which is about to be destroyed. Not all of them are fighters, not all are armed. It is going to happen out of the view of the world, out of sight of the media, because most of the media in Falluja is embedded with the marines or turned away at the outskirts. Before we can pass the message on, two explosions scatter the crowd in the side street back into their houses.
Rana is with the marines evacuating the family from the house they are occupying. The pick-up isn’t back yet. The families are hiding behind their walls. We wait, because there is nothing else we can do. We wait in no man’s land. The marines, at least, are watching us through binoculars; maybe the local fighters are too.
I have a disappearing handkerchief in my pocket so while I’m sitting like a lemon, nowhere to go, gunfire and explosions aplenty all around, I make the handkerchief disappear, reappear, disappear. It is always best, I think, to seem completely unthreatening and completely unconcerned, so no one worries about you enough to shoot. We can’t wait too long though. Rana has been gone for ages. We have to go and get her to hurry. There is a young man in the group. She has talked them into letting him leave too.
A man wants to use his police car to carry some of the people, a couple of elderly ones who can’t walk far, the smallest children. It’s missing a door. Who knows if he was really a police or the car was appropriated and just ended up there? It doesn’t matter if it gets more people out faster. They creep from their houses, huddle by the wall, follow us out, their hands up too, and walk up the street clutching babies, bags, each other.
The pick-up gets back and we shovel as many onto it as we can as an ambulance arrives from somewhere. A young man waves from the doorway of what is left of a house, his upper body bare, a blood soaked bandage around his arm, probably a fighter but it makes no difference once someone is wounded and unarmed.
Getting the dead is not essential. Like the doctor said, the dead don’t need help, but if it’s easy enough then we will. Since we are already OK with the soldiers and the ambulance is here, we run down to fetch them in. It is important in Islam to bury the body straightaway.
The ambulance follows us down. The soldiers start shouting in English at us for it to stop, pointing guns. It is moving fast. We are all yelling, signalling for it to stop, but it seems to take forever for the driver to hear and see us. It stops. It stops, before they open fire. We haul them onto the stretchers and run, shove them in the back. Rana squeezes in the front with the wounded man and Dave and I crouch in the back beside the bodies. He says he had allergies as a kid and has not much sense of smell. I wish, retrospectively, for childhood allergies, and stick my head out the window.
The bus is going to leave, taking the injured people back to Baghdad, the man with the burns, one of the women who was shot in the jaw and shoulder by a sniper, several others. Rana says she is staying to help.
Dave and I don’t hesitate: we are staying too. “If I don’t do it, who will?” has become an accidental motto and I am acutely aware after the last foray how many people, how many women and children, are still in their houses either because they have nowhere to go, because they are scared to go out of the door or because they have chosen to stay.
To begin with it is agreed, then Azzam says we have to go. He has contacts only with some armed groups. There are different issues to square with each one. We need to get these people back to Baghdad as quickly as we can. If we are kidnapped or killed it will cause even more problems, so it’s better that we just get on the bus and leave and come back with him as soon as possible.
It hurts to climb onto the bus when the doctor has just asked us to go and evacuate some more people. I hate the fact that a qualified medic can’t travel in the ambulance but I can, just because I look like the sniper’s sister or one of his mates, but that’s the way it is today and the way it was yesterday and I feel like a traitor for leaving, but I can’t see where I have a choice. It is a war now and as alien as it is to me to do what I am told, for once I have to.
Jassim is scared. He harangues Mohammed constantly, tries to pull him out of the driver’s seat wile we are moving. The woman with the gunshot wound is on the back seat, the man with the burns in front of her, being fanned with cardboard from the empty boxes, his intravenous drips swinging from the rail along the ceiling of the bus. It is hot. It must be unbearable for him.
Saad comes onto the bus to wish us well for the journey. He shakes Dave’s hand and then mine. I hold his in both of mine and tell him “Dir balak,” take care, as if I could say anything more stupid to a pre-teen Mujahedin with an AK47 in his other hand, and our eyes meet and stay fixed, his full of fire and fear.
Can’t I take him away? Can’t I take him somewhere he can be a child? Can’t I make him a balloon giraffe and give him some drawing pens and tell him not to forget to brush his teeth? Can’t I find the person who put the rifle in the hands of that little boy? Can’t I tell someone about what that does to a child? Do I have to leave him here where there are heavily armed men all around him and lots of them are not on his side, however many sides there are in all of this? And of course I do. I do have to leave him, like child soldiers everywhere.
The way back is tense, the bus almost getting stuck in a dip in the sand, people escaping in anything, even piled on the trailer of a tractor, lines of cars and pick-ups and buses ferrying people to the dubious sanctuary of Baghdad, lines of men in vehicles queuing to get back into the city having brought their families to safety, either to fight or to help evacuate more people.
The driver, Jassim, the father, ignores Azzam and takes a different road so that suddenly we are not following the lead car and we are on a road that is controlled by a different armed group than the ones which know us.
A crowd of men waves guns to stop the bus. Somehow they apparently believe that there are American soldiers on the bus, as if they wouldn’t be in tanks or helicopters, and there are men getting out of their cars with shouts of “Sahafa Amreeki,” American journalists. The passengers shout out of the windows, “Ana min Falluja,” I am from Falluja. Gunmen run onto the bus and see that it is true, there are sick and injured and old people, Iraqis, and then relax, wave us on.
We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we look more western. The American soldiers are so happy to see westerners they don’t mind too much about the Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the women unsearched because there are no women soldiers to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are going to be OK.
“Al-melaach wiyana,” I tell him. The angels are with us. He laughs.
And then we are in Baghdad, delivering them to the hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man off groaning and whimpering. She puts her arms around me and asks me to be her friend. I make her feel less isolated, she says, less alone.
And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, “I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right.” Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family home is right? Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right?
Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalise people so much that they have nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anaesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city is under siege and aid isn’t getting in properly.
I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you are in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man’s chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like, and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house.
Belfort, town in the north-east of France, near Belgium. Muslim Turkish family who immigrated here 2 years ago. The names are not disclosed at this stage.
The 20 year old woman has been tortured for 2 years because:
- She didn't submit enough to her husband's supreme role - she refused to wear the veil
The husband, her 2 brothers and her mother have been arrested and charged with "collective acts of torture and acts of barbary".
This only came to light on 3rd April 2004 when a neighbor was alerted by horrific screams coming from the apartment and came across the young woman with her hair half shaved and half burnt.
The family did not deny the charges. They said they wanted her to be punished for having gone out a few hours earlier without wearing a Muslim veil.
The victim is now in hospital. Her son is in a temporary home family. --- An Arab social worker working in the district commented: "Unfortunately, it's the sort of things I'm battling with every day".
There is not one village in France, however tiny, where some symbolic monument has not been erected in the memory of the millions of French soldiers who were butchered in the first and second world wars.
You also often see something dedicated to the "unknown soldier", obviously a commemoration to the military guys and gals whose disappearance were never accounted for, but also to the civilians who died in doing their bit to rebel and fight in the war and against the occupation.
Recently as well as everynow and then, there have been issues raised about it. In particular the responsabilities of the Fr government about the death of Fr citizens, soldiers or otherwise. And also the responsability of the Fr government about enrolling "friendly" nations own military to get killed on behalf of French nationalistic aims - the Algerian Harkis spring to mind here, among others.
I have no idea what the typical US small town is like in this respect. But I only hope that one day, similar polemics will be raised, and that American citizens will fight for a commemorative plaque in the middle of their local town with this elogy:
"Here lies xxx, one of countless US soldiers murdered by G.W. Bush"
Blogs that suck:NoGuru's blog
(fascist, racist and proud of it. Hatred and dumb rhetoric are his fav. pastimes). "Just my opinion, but I'll stick to it, just like a fly to shit" Reducto's blog
(written with the vision and logic of a deep-fried zucchini. Highly recommended for a good laugh)
BushLover's blog
(take a Noguru fruitcake, add more fascist sauce, sprinkle with threatening & bullying spices, and you've got a perfect BushLover dessert). Rsheinfield's blog
(pro-israel fanatic - anything the Israel gov says or does is gospel, including mass murder)
RedTigress's blog
(same as above + delightfully racist and fascist. An embarrassment to the Tiger species)
SithSense's blog
(same as above, + he just LOVES dead bodies and massacres)
Jim Doney's blog
(kinda like Reducto's blog. Just change "zucchini" to "potato")
ajhankin's blog
(same as above)
Defensor's blog
(another fascist bore)
LynnKramer's blog
(curious case of religious zealotry having reached advanced paranoiac delusional condition. Also a delightful source of racist blogs (her fav targets are the French, closely followed by Germans - but any European target will do just fine)
jrogg's blog
(not quite as dumb as Reducto, but ok for a bit of fun every now & then. There's hope for him)
Stepdad's blog
(yet another [sigh!] fascist nutcase)
Deshanews's blog
(same as above)
Camel dropping's blog
(A shameful insult to the otherwise very cute and cudly species of camels and dromedaries.
But, as CamelFace himself proudly announces, his thinking mode is achieved by farting through his own brain)
