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»Kompetente Iraker informieren über Widerstand«
Internationale Irak-Konferenz in Berlin wird für den 12. März
vorbereitet. Solidarität mit der irakischen Bevölkerung steht
im Vordergrund. Ein Gespräch mit Joachim Guilliard
Interview: Peter Wolter
- Joachim Guilliard ist einer der Organisatoren der »Internationalen
Irak-Konferenz über Besatzung, Widerstand und Solidarität«, die am
12. März in Berlin stattfindet.
F: Welches Ziel hat die in Berlin geplante Konferenz?
Die Antikriegsbewegung in Deutschland hat in ihrem Engagement gegen
den Krieg und die Besatzung im Irak stark nachgelassen. Dafür gibt
es zwei Gründe: Zum einen die beschönigende Darstellung der Medien
über die Besatzungsrealität, zum anderen der Umstand, daß viele
Aktivisten der Friedensbewegung die Gewalttätigkeit des Widerstands
schreckt. Schließlich fallen den Aktionen gegen die US-Armee oft
auch Zivilisten zum Opfer.
Die US-amerikanische Propaganda vermittelt außerdem den Eindruck,
der Widerstand speise sich vornehmlich aus Saddam-Anhängern und
zugereisten Gotteskriegern. Aber kann der gesamte Widerstand für
Terroranschläge verantwortlich gemacht werden? Welche Ziele verfolgen
die verschiedenen Kräfte des Widerstandes? Diese und andere
Fragen wollen wir diskutieren. Im Zentrum wird die Frage stehen,
wie wir am besten Solidarität mit der irakischen Bevölkerung üben
können.
F: Wer ist Träger dieser Konferenz?
Es ist zunächst ein breites Spektrum linker Gruppen, darunter auch
aus dem Irak, Syrien und der Türkei. Hinzu kommen diverse Organisationen
der Friedens- und der Antiglobalisierungsbewegung. Wir
werden in nächster Zeit viele Gespräche führen, um die gesellschaftliche
Spannweite zu vergrößern.
F: Ihre Konferenz hat schon vor den ersten konkreten Planungen
Wellen geschlagen. Die Nachrichtenagentur ddp sowie »Spiegel
online« berichteten, es handele sich um eine Ansammlung von
Saddam-Fans. Vorsorglich wurde Berlins Innensenator Ehrhart
Körting (SPD) gefragt, ob er diese Veranstaltung zu verbieten
gedenke. Wie viele Saddam-Freunde werden dabeisein?
Nicht einer. Diese Meldungen waren komplett erlogen. Es ist niemand
unter uns, der diesem Diktator auch nur eine Träne nachweint. Das
war der erste Versuch, unsere Konferenz zu diskreditieren, Sie
können sicher sein, daß weitere Versuche folgen werden. Schließlich
steht unsere Konferenz dem Bestreben der Bundesregierung diametral
entgegen, sich den USA weiter anzubiedern. Vergessen wir nicht, daß
am 23. Februar US-Präsident George W. Bush in Deutschland erwartet
wird. Wir sind gegen den Terrrorismus, deswegen heißen wir diesen
Herrn auch nicht willkommen.
F: Um welche Inhalte soll es bei der Konferenz gehen?
Sind Referenten aus dem Irak selbst vorgesehen?
Das wird ein Schwerpunkt der Veranstaltung sein. Wir wollen Iraker
einladen, die kompetent sind, über die verschiedenen Kräfte des
zivilen und militärischen Widerstandes zu informieren. Wir stehen
im Gespräch mit Sami Ramadani von den Irakischen Demokraten gegen
die Besatzung, er wohnt in London. Gedacht ist auch an Scheich
Jawad Al Khalisi vom Irakischen Nationalen Gründungskongreß einer
breiten Dachorganisation politischer Gruppen, die gegen die
Besatzung sind. Oder an Nada al Rubaiee als Vertreterin der Irakischen
Patriotischen Allianz. Oder an Dr. Nuri Al Mouradi von der
irakischen KP-Opposition (IKP-Kader).
F: Es wird sicher auch der Vorwurf kommen, die Konferenz
gebe sogenannten Islamisten ein Forum ...
Das ist Unsinn. Wir wollen natürlich über das gesamte Spektrum des
irakischen Widerstandes informieren. Das Wort »Islamismus« ist in
unserem Lande zu einem politischen Kampfbegriff gemacht worden. Das
ist ein eigenes Thema der Konferenz, es wird dazu eine Arbeitsgruppe
geben.
F: Ende Januar sollen im Irak »demokratische Wahlen«
stattfinden. Läuft Ihre Konferenz zum Thema Widerstand
nicht ins Leere, sobald eine legitime Regierung in
Bagdad im Amt ist?
Ein großer Teil der irakischen Bevölkerung ist der Ansicht, daß
unter der Besatzung keine demokratischen Wahlen möglich sind. Sie
bestreiten die Legitimität dieser Wahlen - eine Auffassung, der
wir uns anschließen. Auch viele Experten, die der US-Regierung
durchaus nahestehen, bezweifeln, ob man dieses Spektakel als Wahl
bezeichnen kann.
junge Welt vom 18.01.2005
http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/01-18/021.php
Die Zerstörung Babylons
Düstere Aussichten im Irak
17.01.2005
Dahr Jamail
Die Attacke auf Mosul hat begonnen, Besatzungsstreitkräfte führen
Angriffe in der drittgrößten Stadt des Iraks durch. Während es
dort Massenkündigungen von Polizisten und Wahlhelfern gibt, hat
erneut ein neuer Polizeichef die Kontrolle über die 1.000 Mann
starke Polizei - die noch vor zwei Monaten über 5.000 Mann stark
war - erhalten.
In Ramadi dauern schwere Kämpfe zwischen den Bringern von
"Demokratie" und jenen, die der Besatzung Widerstand leisten,
an. Es wird berichtet, daß eine US-Basis nahe der Stadt von
fünf großen Explosionen erschüttert wurde.
Samarra war nicht ohne ihren Anteil an der "Demokratie" als USSoldaten
das Feuer auf ein Auto mit Zivilisten eröffneten. Der
Sprecher des Militärs sagte, es seien Warnschüsse abgefeuert
worden, bevor auf das Auto geschossen worden sei, wobei zwei
Menschen verletzt worden seien. Die irakische Polizei, zusammen
mit mehreren Augenzeugen, allerdings berichtete, daß das Auto
von einem Panzer beschossen worden war und dabei vier Menschen
gestorben seien. Gerade gestern ist ein US-Soldat zusammen mit
vier irakischen Soldaten in Samarra getötet worden.
Natürlich dauern die Kämpfe im "stabilisierten" Fallujah an.
Erinnert sich noch jemand, daß der Grund dafür, daß Fallujah
bis auf die Grundmauern zerbombt wurde, Stabilität und Sicherheit
für die "Wahlen" zu bringen war? Erinnert sich noch jemand, wie
der Irak angegriffen wurde, weil das frühere Regime Massenvernichtungswaffen
hatte?
Näher an Zuhause wurde eine Patrouille der irakischen Armee südlich
der Hauptstadt angegriffen, wobei zwei von ihnen verletzt wurden.
So schrecklich das ist, so erging es ihnen doch besser als ihren 15
Kameraden, die kürzlich in der Nähe von Hit aus einem Bus entführt
wurden.
Da die Benzinkrise anhält und täglich schlimmer wird haben 300
Anhänger des shiitischen Geistlichen Muqtada al-Sadr heute vor
dem Ölministerium mit einem Sitzstreik begonnen - ihre Hauptbeschwerde
ist die Frage: "Warum hat das US-Militär Unmengen
Benzin für seine Fahrzeuge und Iraker nicht?"
Gute Frage.
Als ich mich heute Morgen für den Tag vorbereite, wird die "Green
Zone" mit Mörsern angegriffen, während ich mir Kaffee mache. Genau
wie gestern. Und den Tag davor. Und... nun, es wird wohl deutlich.
Natürlich sind das nur die Glanzlichter der Gewalt. Geschichten
über die neue "Freiheit", wie sie von den Irakern genossen wird,
gibt es im täglichen Leben zum Überfluß.
Abu Talats Frau arbeitet in einer Bank und sie hat ihm gesagt, daß
viele der Banken in Baghdad ihre Angestellten im Voraus für die
nächsten beiden Wochen bezahlen, weil sie Angst vor Raubüberfällen
während der "Wahlen" haben.
Wir fahren an der Rashid Bank im Baghdader Stadtteil Karrada vorbei,
als er die Geschichte erzählt. Soldaten der irakischen Armee haben
die Straße vor der Bank abgeriegelt, die meisten stehen herum mit
ihren schwarzen Gesichtsmasken, rauchen Zigaretten und halten lässig
ihre Kalaschnikows.
"Meine Frau hat mir erzählt, daß vier Milliarden irakische Dinars
(2,6 Millionen US-Dollar) aus einem Fahrzeug gestohlen wurden, daß
zwischen Kut und Baghdad unterwegs war", sagt er, "drei der Wächter
wurden getötet, als sie das Geld zur Zentralbank in Baghdad bringen
wollten."
Für den Fall, daß die "Wahlen" von einer Reihe von Banküberfällen
begleitet werden, gehen wir, um etwas Geld abzuheben, daß ich zu
einer örtlichen Bank transferiert hatte.
Die meiste Zeit des Tages finden unsere Mobiltelephone kein Netz.
Kürzlich hat die irakische "Regierung" angekündigt, daß zur Erhöhung
der Sicherheit während der Abstimmungen am 30. Januar Mobil- und
Satellitentelephone deaktiviert und die Benutzung von Autos wird am
Tag vor, der und nach den "Wahlen" "begrenzt" sein.
Ich sage "Wahlen", weil die Wahlkommission erklärt hat, daß sie
die Namen der Kandidaten vor den "Wahlen" nicht bekanntgeben wird.
Angesichts von vier der 18 Provinzen des Iraks, die nicht an den
Wahlen teilnehmen können, einem geschätzten Anteil von 90 Prozent
der sunnitischen Bevölkerung, der nicht wählt, einem beträchtlichen
Teil der shiitischen Bevölkerung, der die "Wahlen" boykottiert und
einem sehr großen Prozentsatz der Iraker, der aufgrund der entsetzlichen
Sicherheitslage nicht bereit ist zu wählen scheint es
etwas übertrieben, sie als Wahlen zu bezeichnen.
Apaches donnern tief über uns hinweg als wir die Bank verlassen und
uns auf den Weg nach al-Dora machen, um einige Freunde zu besuchen.
Wir schlängeln uns durch einige Betonbarrieren auf der Auffahrt zur
Autobahn.
An unserem Ziel trinken wir mit einigen Freunden Kaffee. Ich frage
eine von ihnen, eine College-Studentin, wie es ihr geht.
"Die Probleme sind endlos", sagt sie. "Kein Strom, keine Arbeit,
und es gibt nie genug Geld."
Ihre Schwester erzählt uns, daß es jeden Tag Kämpfe in Dora gegeben
hat und daß der Strom üblicherweise abgeschaltet wird, wenn das
passiert.
Wir unterhalten uns noch etwas, bevor wir uns auf den Weg machen,
da es dunkel wird. Ich erinnere mich, daß ein Freund aus Baquba mir
heute, als mein Mobiltelephon tatsächlich Empfang hatte, erzählt
hat, daß es dort täglich zu Kämpfen und vielen Hausdurchsuchungen
kommt. Er ist sogar für fünf Stunden vom Militär gefangengenommen
worden. "Ich weiß nicht, warum sie mich gefangengenommen haben",
sagte er mir. "Das ist die Freiheit - es steht ihnen frei, jeden
ohne Grund gefangenzunehmen."
Wir fahren langsam aus Dora heraus und kommen dabei an einer
schwarzen Fahne (Todesmeldung) nach der anderen vorbei. Auf
einigen von ihnen steht die Todesursache zusammen mit dem
Namen des Menschen.
"Der Mann wurde durch eine Explosion getötet", liest mir Abu Talat
vor. "Und der durch Schüsse."
Die schwarzen Fahnen sind in Baghdad überall. Gebäude, Zäune und
Wände werden von ihnen an jeder Ecke verdunkelt. Sie sind während
der ganzen Besatzung zu sehen gewesen, aber jetzt sind sie, wie
die Bettler, überall.
Der Guardian hat kürzlich berichtet, daß "Soldaten der US-geführten
Streitkräfte weitreichende Schäden und Verschmutzungen an den Überbleibseln
der antiken Stadt Babylon verursacht haben."
Die antike Stadt, südlich Baghdads, wird von polnischen und USSoldaten
als Militärlager benutzt, trotz Bedenken von Archäologen.
Eine von Archäologie-Experten durchgeführte Studie fand Risse und
Löcher, wo Leute versucht haben, verzierte Mauersteine aus den
berühmten Drachen des Ishtar-Tores herauszubrechen, "2.600 Jahre
altes Pflaster von Militärfahrzeugen zermalmt, archäologische
Fragmente über die Fundstelle verstreut und Gräben, die in antike
Lagerstätten getrieben wurden."
Die Geschichte des Guardian geht weiter:
"Schandtat ist kein ausreichendes Wort, das ist einfach furchtbar",
sagte Lord Redesdale, ein Archäologe und Leiter der parteiübergreifenden
parlamentarischen Archäologiegruppe. "Dies sind Orte von
Weltrang. Die amerikanischen Streitkräfte beschädigen nicht nur die
Archäologie des Iraks, sie beschädigen vielmehr das kulturelle Erbe
der ganzen Welt."
Tim Schadla Hall, Lektor für allgemeine Archäologie am Institut für
Archäologie der Universität London, sagte: "In diesem Fall sehen wir
einen Konflikt, bei dem die USA darin versagt haben, die Forderungen
der Haager Konventionen umzusetzen... wichtige archäologische
Stätten zu schützen - noch eine Konvention, die sie anscheinend gern
ignorieren."
Babylon wird also zerstört. Zusammen mit dem irakischen Volk.
http://www.freace.de/artikel/200501/170105b.html
Destroying Babylon
January 16, 2005
The onslaught of Mosul has begun, as occupation forces are launching
attacks into Iraq's third largest city. While there are mass
resignations of police and elections polling staff there, yet
another new police chief has been awarded control of the 1,000 strong
police force-which was over 5,000 men just two months ago.
In Ramadi fierce clashes continue between the bringers of "democracy"
and those resisting the occupation. It is reported that five huge
explosions hammered a US base near the city.
Samarra wasn't without its share of "democracy" as US soldiers opened
fire on a car of civilians. The military spokesman said warning shots
were fired before the car was shot, wounding two people. Iraqi police,
along with several witnesses however, reported the car was shot by a
tank and four people died. Just yesterday a US soldier was killed in
Samarra, along with four Iraqi soldiers.
Of course clashes persist in "stabilized" Fallujah. Remember how
the reason Fallujah bombed to the ground was to bring stability and
security for the "elections?" Remember how Iraq was invaded because
the past regime had weapons of mass destruction?
Closer to home, an Iraqi Army patrol was attacked just south of the
capital, injuring two of them. Horrible as that is, they fared better
than 15 of their comrades who were kidnapped from a bus recently near
Hit.
As the gas crisis persists and worsens by the day, 300 followers of
Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began a sit-in today at the Oil Ministrytheir
chief complaint is the question, "Why does the US military have
plenty of gasoline for their vehicles and Iraqis do not?"
Good question.
As I'm preparing for my day this morning the "green zone" is mortared
as I make some coffee. Just like yesterday. And the day before that.
And...well, you get the idea.
Of course these are only the highlights of the violence. Stories of
the new "freedom" being enjoyed by Iraqis abound in daily life as
well.
Abu Talat's wife works in a bank and she told him many of the banks
in Baghdad are paying their employees in advance for the next two
weeks for fear of bank robberies during the "elections."
We are driving by the Rashid Bank in the Karrada district if Baghdad
as he tells the story.
Iraqi Army soldiers have sealed the road that runs in front of the
bank, most of them standing around with their black face masks on
smoking cigarettes, casually holding their Kalashnikovs.
"My wife told me that four billion Iraqi Dinars ($2.6 million) were
looted from a vehicle recently that was traveling between Kut and
Baghdad," he says, "Three of the guards were killed while transporting
the money to the Central Bank in Baghdad."
In case a bank looting spree accompanies the "elections" we go to
collect some funds I had wired to a local bank.
Most of the day has found our cell phones without signal. Recently
the Iraqi "government" announced that in order to provide security
for the polls on January 30, cell and satellite phones will be cut,
and the use of cars will be "limited" the day before, of and after
the "elections."
I say "elections" because the Higher Commission for Elections
announced that it won't be releasing the names of the candidates
prior to the "elections." With four of Iraq's 18 governorates
unable to participate in them, an estimated 90% of the Sunni
population not voting, a sizeable amount of the Shia boycotting
and a very large percentage of Iraqis unwilling to vote because
of the horrendous security situation, calling them elections seems
a bit of a stretch.
Apaches rumble low overhead as we leave the bank and head over
to al-Dora to visit some friends. We weave through some concrete
barriers in the on-ramp to the highway.
Once at our destination, we share coffee with some friends. I ask
one of them, a college student, how things are going.
"The problems are endless," she tells me, "No electricity, no jobs,
and there is never enough money."
Her sister tells us there has been fighting in Dora everyday, and
the electricity is usually cut when it occurs.
We talk some more before taking off, as it's getting dark. I recall
that a friend of mine from Baquba told me earlier today, when my
mobile was actually receiving a signal, that there had been fighting
there everyday, and many home raids. He had even been detained for
five hours by the military. "I do not know why they detained me,"
he told me, "This is the freedom-they are free to detain anyone here
without a reason."
We slowly make our way out of Dora, passing one black banner (death
announcements) after another. Some of them tell the cause of death
along with the person's name.
"That man was killed by an explosion," Abu Talat reads to me, "And
that one by gunfire."
The black banners are everywhere in Baghdad. Buildings, fences
and walls are darkened by them at every turn. They've always been
visible throughout the occupation, but now, like the beggars, they
are everywhere.
The Guardian recently reported that "troops from the US-led force
in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to
the remains of the ancient city of Babylon."
The ancient city, south of Baghdad, has been used by US and Polish
forces as a military camp during the occupation, despite objections
from archaeologists.
A study conducted by archeological experts found cracks and gaps
where people had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming
the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate,
"2,600 year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles,
archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches
driven into ancient deposits."
The story in The Guardian continues:
"Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful," said Lord
Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary
archaeological group. "These are world sites. Not only is what the
American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's
actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world."
Tim Schadla Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of
Archaeology at University College London, said: "In this case we
see an international conflict in which the US has failed to take
into account the requirements of the Hague convention ... to protect
major archaeological sites - just another convention it seems happy
to ignore."
So Babylon is being destroyed. Along with the Iraqi people.
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 17, 2005 06:56 AM
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000171.php#more
Babylon wrecked by war
US-led forces leave a trail of destruction and
contamination in architectural site of world
importance
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad, and Maev Kennedy
Saturday January 15, 2005
The Guardian
Troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage
and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of
Babylon, according to a damning report released today by the British
Museum.
John Curtis, keeper of the museum's Ancient Near East department and
an authority on Iraq's many archaeological sites, found "substantial
damage" on an investigative visit to Babylon last month.
The ancient city has been used by US and Polish forces as a military
depot for the past two years, despite objections from archaeologists.
"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great
Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," says the report,
which has been seen by the Guardian.
Among the damage found by Mr Curtis, who was invited to Babylon by
Iraqi antiquities experts, were cracks and gaps where somebody had
tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons
of the Ishtar Gate.
He saw a 2,600-year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles,
archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches
driven into ancient deposits.
Vast amounts of sand and earth, visibly mixed with archaeological
fragments, were gouged from the site to fill thousands of sandbags
and metal mesh baskets. When this practice was stopped, large
quantities of sand and earth were brought in from elsewhere,
contaminating the site for future generations of archaeologists.
Mr Curtis called for an international investigation by archaeologists
chosen by the Iraqis to record all the damage done by the occupation
forces.
Last night the US military defended its operations at the site,
but said all earth-moving projects had been stopped and it was
considering moving troops away to protect the ruins.
Babylon, a city renowned for its beauty and its splendour 1,000
years before Europe built anything comparable, was chosen as the
site for a US military base in April 2003, just after the invasion
of Iraq.
Military commanders set up their camp in the heart of one of the
world's most important archaeological sites and surrounded the
enclosed part of the ancient city. At least 2,000 troops were
installed, daily passing iconic relics like the enormous basalt
Lion of Babylon sculpture.
In September 2003 the base was passed to a Polish-led force, which
held it until today's formal handover of the site to the Iraqi
culture ministry.
In his report, Mr Curtis accepted that initially the US military
presence helped protect the site from looters. But he described
as "regrettable" the decision to set up a base in such an important
spot.
He found that large areas of the site had been covered in gravel
brought in from outside, compacted and sometimes chemically treated
to provide helipads, car parks and accommodation and storage areas.
"The status of future information about these areas will therefore
be seriously compromised," he said.
Archaeologists were horrified by the confirmation of reports which
have been filtering out of Iraq for months.
"Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful," said Lord
Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary
archaeological group. "These are world sites. Not only is what the
American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's
actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world."
Tim Schadla Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of
Archaeology at University College London, said: "In this case we
see an international conflict in which the US has failed to take
into account the requirements of the Hague convention ... to protect
major archaeological sites - just another convention it seems happy
to ignore."
Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, a US military spokes man in
Baghdad, said engineering works at the camp were discussed with
the head of the Babylon museum. "An archaeologist examined every
construction initiative for its impact on historical ruins."
He said plans were being considered to move some of the units in
order "to better preserve the Babylon ruins."
"The significance of Babylon is not lost on the coalition," he
added. "The site dates back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon,
but there are very few visible original remains to the untrained
eye."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391042,00.html
The Ideology of American Empire
Lila Rajiva, www.dissidentvoice.org
January 17, 2005
Christian Zionism
And like the repressed, history also returns. The repressed of
the neo-liberal maximizer of utility returns. Self-directed, selfinterested
man looks into a warped mirror and finds homo religiosus.
The sublime of religion that appalls us, also fascinates. What
shows itself in the scenes of prison abuse does not appear as only
defensive, the planned, rational response of threatened modernity
but as something more burdened with emotion, something that simmers
under the glassy surface of "no-touch," something sharp, frenzied,
even exhibitionistic. It calls attention to itself. Underneath the
neo-liberal rhetoric of a defensive war of modernity against the rise
of a new barbarism, we must ask if we find instead a war of religion,
an aggressive war against an ancient enemy, a new Crusade. There are
those who think so.
In an October 23, 2003 AP report, General Boykin, assistant to
Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone, described the battle
against Islamic terrorists as a clash between Christianity and "a
guy named Satan" and suggested that Christians needed to support
the divine plan that had put Bush in office, "Why is this man in
the White House?" he asked rhetorically. "The majority of Americans
did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him
there." Earlier, in January 2003, Boykin also told a congregation
how the Somali warlord Osman Atto had boasted on CNN that "Allah"
would protect him and Boykin had capped the story with the remark,
"Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew
that my God was a real God and his was an idol." In June 2002, he
showed a congregation pictures of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia,
that had been taken from an Army helicopter in 1993 just after the
battle with Somali war lords which killed 18 American soldiers,
a debacle depicted in the film, "Black Hawk Down." He said he had
enlarged the photos when he had got back home to the US and noticed
what looked like a dark blemish over the city. "This is your enemy,"
he declared to the congregation, "It is the principalities of
darkness.... It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed
to me as the enemy." It was Boykin who briefed Cambone his boss on
General Miller's visit to Abu Ghraib that led to the change in policy
in interrogations. It was Boykin who encouraged the directive to
change policy there along the lines that had proved so effective at
Guantanamo.
Boykin represents the enormous power of evangelicals in the Bush
administration. Except for a notorious call for a crusade immediately
after Sept 11, Bush has been careful in speeches to differentiate
between the war on Iraq and one on Islam. Muslim ambassadors have for
the first time participated in a formal Ramadan dinner at the White
House and a Muslim chaplain has officiated at the opening prayers of
Congress, but others close to him have been more intemperate. Franklin
Graham, whose father Billy converted Bush, has called Islam evil and
Graham's decision to join other Christian evangelists in Iraq both
to aid and convert Iraqis must bolster the Muslim perception of the
invasion as an alliance of "Jews and Crusaders." Bush claims to be
unable to restrain him because of concern for civil liberties, but his
reluctance may have more to do with the contribution that evangelicals
like Graham, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson have made to his
election. And in private too, Bush has revealed his own conviction
that his presidency is a mission given to him by God.
Was the abasement at Abu Ghraib crafted to sear the religious
conscience?
Was the Iraq invasion part of a master plan of crusading Christianity
and Judaism? Religious language seems to drench the administration.
"Rods from God" is the name for the bundles of tungsten rods fired
from orbiting platforms that hurtle down to earth at 3,700 meters per
second and destroy even underground targets anywhere on the planet
at a few minutes' notice. David Frum, until last year a speechwriter
for Bush, claims in a recent book that he heard a staff member
say to Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, "Missed you at
Bible study." Christian fundamentalists who have the President's
ear include the Apostolic Congress, affiliated with the United
Pentecostal Church, which in addition to its missionary work in
Israel (illegal under Israeli law), is active in the increasingly
Christian work of pro-Israel activities in the United States. In an
interview with the Village Voice, its leader, Pastor Upton, claimed
that he had coordinated the directing of 50,000 postcards to the
White House to oppose the Middle East "Road Map," the plan which
aims to create a Palestinian state. NSC Near East and North African
Affairs director, Elliott Abrams, sits down regularly with the
Apostolic Congress to assuage their fear that Israel might give up
any of its Biblical claims to land.
Bush also has strong connections to apocalyptic millennialists
like Tim LaHaye, one of the authors of the Left Behind novels,
who believes that a world-wide conflagration centered in the
Middle East will be the prelude to the return of Christ. Before his
thousand-year rule over the world, however, millennialists believe
that select believers will be taken up directly to heaven in Rapture.
Other fundamentalists like the dominionists are more concerned with
the present day than the apocalypse and seek to remake the United
States as country under Biblical law, focusing on the expansion
of Christianity as a power. What all these groups have in common,
however, is support for the Iraq war, a belief that Islam is false,
and faith in Zionism. Christian Zionists advocate the unconditional
support for Israel, the return of all Jews to Israel, the legitimacy
of the West Bank settlements, a greater (Eretz) Israel that spreads
from and includes Jerusalem with the Temple of Solomon rebuilt on
the present site of the sacred Al-Aqsa mosque. The power of this
pro-Israeli lobby ensures that Israel receives 3-8 billion dollars
annually from the US in aid and military assistance and that House
members on both sides are neutered on the subject of Israel. In March
2004, Senator Inhofe stated in a speech on the Senate floor that
he supports Israel because God said so. It was the same Inhofe who
claimed during the Senate Hearing on Abu Ghraib in the summer of
2004 that he was more outraged by the outrage over Abu Ghraib than
over the treatment of the prisoners. "They're murderers, they're
terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American
blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment
of those individuals." Should we draw a connection between Inhofe's
Zionist beliefs and his view of Iraqi prisoners?
Christian Zionists constitute a vocal 3 million of America's 98
million evangelicals and with the 30 million other Christians who
have Zionist beliefs of some kind have long been the mainstay of
U.S. support for Israel, operating through such political groups
as the powerful Council for National Policy, which was founded by
LaHaye, a former head of the Moral Majority, and has included John
Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Ralph Reed, the editor of The National Review,
Robertson, Falwell, Grover Norquist, and Oliver North among
its members. Ashcroft has been reported as saying: "Islam is a
religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for
him Christianity is a faith where God sent his son to die for
you." Jerry Falwell has told the CBS news program "60 Minutes"
that Muhammad is a "terrorist." The only non-Jew ever to receive
the Jabotinsky medal for services to Israel, from the militant
Zionist's ardent disciple, Menachem Begin, Falwell was even
permitted by President Reagan to attend NSC briefings while bestselling
Armageddon author, Hal Lindsey, was allowed to speak on
nuclear war with Russia to top Pentagon strategists.
Lindsey's 1970's best-seller, The Late Great Planet Earth is
responsible for bringing to world wide fame the dispensationalist
view that since the return of the Jews to Israel, history has been
unfolding according to Revelations. In recent years, these and
other evangelicals have targeted as their priority a swath of the
world dubbed "the 10/40 window" (North Africa, the Middle East,
and Asia between 10 degrees and 40 degrees north latitude) for
conversion.
Fundamentalists routinely mischaracterize Islam as idolatry,
paganism, or a cult. One former leader of the Southern Baptist
Convention has even called the prophet Muhammad a "demon-
possessed pedophile."
Was the abasement at Abu Ghraib intended to exorcize the possessed?
The man who was responsible for directing the re-opening of Abu
Ghraib prison under the U.S., Lane McCotter, selected for the job
by John Ashcroft, resigned under pressure as director of the Utah
Department of Corrections in 1997 after a schizophrenic inmate died
while shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours. Yet Cotter
was also selected to train guards at Abu Ghraib. Perhaps some of
the prison bosses in Iraq, like some of the guards, were inclined
by religion and temperament to see their charges as in need of
punishment or therapy. Perhaps that explains the stunning silence of
many fundamentalist Christian leaders on Abu Ghraib. World magazine
was quick to defend Rumsfeld, labeling the torture the "perverse
acts of a few." Chuck Colson and Gary Bauer called for the
vindication of America's military through the swift punishment
of the "bad apples" involved. An article on the American Family
Association web site briefly condemned the atrocities, then spent
the rest of its space on the unwillingness of the "liberal media"
to display pictures from the Fallujah burnings.
It is not too much to see in this reaction the frame of reference
for administration policies or to suggest that some evangelicals'
beliefs about Muslims might coincide with politicians who for
other reasons might find detention and torture the best response
to a recalcitrant population. For those to whom terrorism is either
religious extremism or violent heresy, the rooting out of that
heresy may take such medieval forms as the scourging of the body
in which the heretical spirit lodges. In this way, apocalyptic
Christianity joins with the corporate-state in the disciplining of
flesh and the prisoner posed in the "Vietnam" like a hooded Christ
ultimately recalls us uncannily to both the Inquisition of Catholic
Spain and the witch-hunts of the Puritan forebears of America.
Israel First
But are Bush's policies driven largely by the rise of the
fundamentalist right? Don Wagner, an expert in fundamentalism
believes that the current hard-line pro-Israel movement in
the U.S. draws its strength from these evangelicals and is
"predominantly gentile." But he may be placing the cart before
the horse. It is true that Christian Zionists are numerically
powerful, but a look at history quickly lets us know that their
rise in importance in American politics coincided with the desire
of Jewish Zionists to broaden their constituency and goes back
to the late 60's and 1970s to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab
defeat, and then during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 an oil crisis
caused by an embargo by OPEC, the oil cartel, of the western nations
that supported Israel in that war. As oil prices sent shock waves
into the Western economies and apprised them of the power of Arab
nationalist sympathy for Palestine, other new intellectual currents
in Western thought were also strengthening support for that power --
feminism, third world nationalism, anti-colonialism, environmentalism,
and a peace movement aimed at de-nuclearizing the world, under the
impact of which Western Europe, including the U.K. and Japan, began
to rethink its reflexive support for Israel. The Soviet Union, which
already in the early 1960s had begun to support the Palestinian cause
militarily, supported the Arabs in 1967 even as Soviet Jews openly
demonstrated for Israel. The Soviet government as a socialist body
officially committed to anti-imperialism and anti-nationalism was
forced to clamp down on them as well as other dissidents providing
the context for agitation among diasporic Jews in the US against
Soviet emigration policy. Despite being couched in terms of human
rights, this American pressure had not much to do with the oppression
of other dissident ethnic groups for a refusenik was by definition
a Soviet Jew who had been refused the right to emigrate. Legislation
such as the Jackson-Vanik amendment linked trade with Russia to
freedom of emigration for Soviet Jews. In 1975 the UN General
Assembly passed Resolution 3379, condemning Zionism as "racist" by
72-35 and it became transparent that Israel's time as a race-based
settler state was marked.
Only at this point did neo-conservatives make their transition from
the left to the right, claiming they had seen the light on communism
and the need for US military muscle to keep the world safe from
appeasers. They had come to realize that American military and
financial aid as well as a favorable population ratio in the settler
state was the best bulwark against any future transformation of
Israel from a Jewish state into merely a state for Jews. The Arab
womb was the real weapon of mass destruction they feared.
It was at this time that US support for Israel, until then equivocal,
moved to the center of American foreign policy. The rise of this
Israel-centered foreign policy was therefore neither logically
necessary nor spontaneous but the result of a sustained campaign
born from fear that the U.S. too might ultimately follow its own
interests and cultivate good relations with the Arab world at the
expense of Israel. With Arab countries beginning to exhibit political
clout, Israel began systematically organizing the influential and
wealthy diaspora in the west, labeling any perception of similarity
between Nazi and Zionist policies as "communist" and fostering a
general intellectual reaction against the emergence of the postcolonial
world.
It is this secular history that provides the context for the emergence
of the anti-Arabism whose visible face we see in the extraordinarily
demeaning images of Abu Ghraib. Using their preeminence in Hollywood,
the media, government-related lobbies, law firms, and academia, the
diaspora began a campaign to dehumanize and demonize the Arab, and
wanting for allies, began to make common cause with the defense
industrial complex, and more dangerously, with the Christian right.
Dangerous, because aside from their support of Israel, Christian
Zionist theology entails the eventual conversion or destruction of
the Jews and under Geneva Conventions, the forced destruction of
a people's way of life and beliefs is also genocide. In 1980, the
wooing of the right received the official sanction of the Israeli
government and an "International Christian Embassy" in Jerusalem was
established whose function was and remains to coordinate worldwide
Christian support for Israel and its policies and which raises funds
to help finance Russian Jewish immigration to Israel and settlement in
the West Bank. Enter Christian Zionism to the center stage of American
politics.
Jewish Zionism
But reading history in these terms lays one open to the charge
of anti-Semitism, for many would argue that Zionism is merely the
Israeli version of the same territorial claim that all other nations
make without any criticism. Why should one see in Zionism anything
anti-Arab, unless the intent is to de-legitimize the Jewish homeland?
After all, many non-Jewish commentators take as hard-line a position
on the Palestinians as Jewish Zionists -- among them Cal Thomas,
Michael Novak, Bill Bennett, and George Will. Thomas, who has even
called for the expulsion of the Palestinians from Israeli territory,
is of course a Christian Zionist, but Novak and Bennett are both
Catholics and Will is an Episcopalian. Some would say that their
voices are an indication that Zionism in America is merely the
expression of support for the natural security concerns of an ally.
That argument is not tenable on several counts. First, the record
indicates that on certain issues the American media apparently takes
its cue from the Israeli lobby and does not operate with genuine
independence but in a prearranged concert.
Edward Hermann, author of several influential works on the American
media, describes instances of Israeli scripting of media language on
important issues. In 1979, when Israel was under world pressure to
end the "redemption of the land" program, the Jonathan Institute in
Israel brought US officials and journalists like Bush, Will, Senators
Jackson and Danforth, the historian Paul Johnson and others together
to set the tone: the PLO was to be labeled a terrorist group tied to
Moscow and Israel was to be portrayed as the victim. In Washington
in 1984, the same script was reiterated to Secretary of State George
Shultz, Jean Kirkpatrick, Senator Moynihan, Daniel Schorr and Ted
Koppel of NBC. Hermann argues that the Israeli lobby in America, no
longer satisfied with the pro-Israeli slant of the NYT, WP and CNN,
now seeks to actually blackout inconvenient facts or viewpoints with
the charge of anti-Semitism. Elected officials who dare to criticize
Israel, from Republican Senators Percy and Findley to black
representatives Hilliard and McKinney, have been thwarted in their
bids for office. On campus, the campaign for divestment of stock in
Israel has been dubbed "anti-Semitic in effect, if not intent" by
Harvard President Lawrence Summers.
Publicists simply toe a line enforced by the Israeli lobby and to
regard them as having an equal power outside their conformism on
Israel is unsupported by the facts. The influence or beliefs of the
Christian right can be denounced - and is so routinely - without
heads rolling but any imputation of a pro-Israeli bias is liable to
call down an avalanche of letter-writing orchestrated by the AntiDefamation
League, the B'nai Brith and a host of Jewish groups whose
influence on Capitol Hill is the elephant in the room that everyone
acknowledges and no one talks about. Jewish Zionists have made
an alliance of convenience with the Christian right, but there is
little doubt who the senior partner is. In any case, Jewish groups
themselves boast of their influence, and as Michael Kinsley puts it,
"you shouldn't brag about how influential you are if you want to get
hysterically indignant when someone suggests that government policy
is affected by your influence."
The second reason the anti-Semitic charge founders is evident
from the language of the debate on Palestine which shows something
quite different from simply nationalist concerns. Which nationally
influential ultra-right Christian group in America, for instance,
could get away with couching its appeals in the nakedly racial
language used by some influential Zionists in Israel?
Jewish ultra-nationalists like Gush Emunim are not simply nationalists
but assume instead that that Jewish people "are not and cannot be a
normal people," because "their eternal uniqueness" is "the result
of the covenant God made with them at Mount Sinai" which transcends
the "human notions of national rights." This refutes entirely the
classical Zionist claim that only by emigrating to Palestine and
forming a Jewish state there can the Jews become like any other
nation. According to Rabbi Aviner of Gush Emunim, "while God requires
other normal nations to abide by abstract codes of `justice and
righteousness', such laws do not apply to Jews." When the Israeli
Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) refused to donate or receive blood
transfusion from non-Jews, because their blood is "impure," they
were supported by many distinguished Israeli rabbis, including
former Chief Rabbi, Mordechay Eliyahu. With religious parties
representing 25% of the electorate, ultra-nationalists and
fundamentalists heavily influence the Israeli government, especially
Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud. Gush Emunim members, who constitute
a significant percentage of IDF's elite units, reportedly exhibit
greater brutality toward Palestinians, a brutality justified by
the twin senses of historical persecution and incipient crisis that
attends Jewish exceptionalism. To such exceptionalists, criticism
of Israel is inextricably linked with a desire to destroy Jewish
people. Criticism invokes the holocaust. Neo-conservative publicist
David Horowitz, for example, refuses to accept any Israeli
accountability in Palestine, "The Middle East struggle is not
about right versus right...it is about the desire (of the Arabs) to
destroy the Jewish state." Moreover, it is not only ultra-nationalists
but many other Jews, both conservative, as Berg was, and reform, who
are deeply committed to the Zionist dream of reestablishing the Jewish
dream of Eretz Yisrael. For all of them "Aliya [the return to Israel]
is the highest expression of Zionist fulfillment, because it allows
for the most direct involvement in shifting Jewish values from the
realm of theory into the practice of statehood."
Zionism is an ideology of blood and soil and the ideology of even
secular Zionism involves "Jewishness" even though there is no racially
pure separate group of Jews. The most powerful and numerous group --
the Ashkenazi -- are ethnically Eastern Europeans from Khazar who
converted in the middle ages. It is the Sephardic Jews and Arab and
Christian Palestinians -- second-class citizens in Israel -- who
actually share the blood of the original Jews of the Bible. For this
reason even while many religious Jews reject Zionism, secular Zionism
itself needs religion for its raison d'etre for there is no real
tie of blood to which they can otherwise appeal. Among secularists,
political Zionists like Theodore Herzl may have once thought of
Argentina and Uganda as possible choices for the Jewish people,
but after 1905, only Palestine, the Biblical land, was considered.
Similarly, cultural Zionism does not conceive of simply a state for
the Jews but a Jewish state, one where Hebrew learning, culture, and
Judaic studies are central. Even Labor Zionism manages to marry the
socialism of the kibbutz movement to Jewish consciousness.
You would not know these things from the American media, however,
which characterizes Israel as a western liberal democracy in which
all citizens are equal before the law and treats Zionism as any
other nationalism, tacitly condoning the existence of a "Jewish"
race-based state, while nevertheless repudiating the notion of a
white or Christian state in America.
Charles Krauthammer writes in the Jewish World Review: Kofi Annan's
personal representative in Iraq now singles out the policies of the
world's one Jewish state, and the only democratic state in the Middle
East, as "the great poison in the region."
While the Los Angeles Times even editorializes that "Israel must
remain a Jewish state." (Oct 11, 2004)
Consider the policies of this bulwark of secularism, human rights,
and democracy:
Employment, housing, and access to services follows a discriminatory
pattern with Ashkenazi Jews from Europe getting the best, Sephardic
-- Middle Eastern -- Jews the next, followed by Moslem, Druze and
Christians, many of them the original inhabitants, and at the bottom
"Israeli Arabs," that is, Palestinians within the 1948 borders. By
the Law of Return, Israel must accommodate any Jews from anywhere
who might at any time migrate to Israel but cannot accommodate the
indigenous Palestinian population that fled Israeli terror in 1948 if
they wished to return. Israeli identity cards can list the official
ethnicity of a person -- Jewish, Arab, Druze ... -- but not the
nationality - Israeli. Since 1967 to date, Israel has arbitrarily
detained over 630,000 Palestinians. In 1989 alone, Israel detained
50,000 Palestinians, representing 16% of the entire male population
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip between the ages of 14 and 55. By
contrast, that same year, out of a total African population of 24
million in South Africa, no more than 5,000 or 0.2% were detained
for security offenses under apartheid. Palestinians have the highest
rate of incarceration in the world - approximately 20 percent of
Palestinians in the occupied territories have, at one time, been
arbitrarily detained by Israel.
Without knowing this history, we cannot follow the trail of blood
that leads from Iraq to Palestine, from the torture at Abu Ghraib
to the practices of the IDF. And not seeing that trail, we think
of Abu Ghraib as error, or incompetence, or folly when it was none
of these. It was not a matter of "security" or "law and order,"
but a part of a war on the population, a war in which torture had
a specific role, the same role it has in Gaza, to intimidate the
population into submission.
Yet having said this, it is also true that Zionism as a racistpolitical
ideology of itself is not unique and does not operate
alone in a vacuum and that therefore as an analytic tool it becomes
somewhat elusive. Simply put, Zionism explains why some of the
prominent players acts as they do, but it does not fully explain
why, for one thing, what they do finds a receptive audience and
is effective. The real question is why the language of religious
chauvinism that masks itself in a discourse of superior civilization
has such purchase with the American public.
The Language of American Exceptionalism
We understand this only when we look at America's own exceptionalism.
Zionism finds a responsive chord because America itself is convinced
of its unique national destiny, a belief that powerfully influences
its foreign policy. "Manifest destiny," as it is termed, ultimately
also has religious roots that can be traced to the Calvinist doctrine
of the elect, those 144,000 souls who are predestined for salvation
not because of their inner righteousness but because the worldly
success that accompanies their deeds is seen as a mark of providential
favor. Today this exceptionalism is no more purely religious but a
secular ideology as well; it is the American civic religion.
In this secular religion, to believe oneself "favored" rather than
"blessed" is to believe that one's essence rather than one's acts
set one apart. One's status as the chosen, whether American or
Jewish, is thus derived from the success, not the rightness, of
one's acts; from the power that makes one's representations alone
real and others' unreal. It is this power to which the will of our
enemies is irrelevant that is behind both the shock and awe bombing
of Iraq and its virtual counterpart, the pornographic torture of
prisoners. Thus a senior Bush aide states in a much-quoted exchange,
"That's not the way the world really works anymore... We're an empire
now, and when we act, we create our own reality... We're history's
actors -- and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Abu Ghraib is the end result of this solipsism of the state that is
shared by both Zionist as well as non-Zionist American actors.
Both secular and religious exceptionalists also share a unique
relationship to the law that suggests that law and legal institutions
are themselves implicated in the policies of Abu Ghraib and clarifies
why it may not be possible to look to them alone for salvation.
Both groups share the heritage of covenant theology which reads holy
scripture as the record of legal contracts between God and man, a
heritage which both privileges the law while simultaneously also
promoting a sense of not being subject to it. The written contract
binds us, but the interpretation of that contract remains with the
state whose favored status has been granted by the law. Take for
instance a January 9, 2002 memo from the Justice Department. It
refuses to find international law applicable to President Bush in
his detention of Al Qaeda or Taliban members but it finds the same
law applicable to terrorist suspects and insists that they can be
prosecuted under it. Perhaps this is only common hypocrisy, but
one can also see it as inextricably bound up with the notion of
an American state beyond law because it embodies the very contract
between God and man that undergirds all law. We can see in it a
parallel to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, resonant in American
religious history, which recognizes the Bible as the Word of God
not primarily because of logical or historical arguments but by the
enlightenment of the Holy Spirit's "internal testimony," a mystery
which is ultimately impenetrable to rationality. In the American
corporate-state the thin veil of reasoning that the law normally
draws over state action has been rent and power radiates alone.
Unchecked by any countervailing force it is by virtue of that fact
touched with the divine.
From covenant theology also derives the literalism of the brand
of nineteenth century evangelism -- dispensationalist -- that
Falwell and Roberts practice which permeates even secular culture.
Dispensationalists read the final book of the Bible, Revelations,
as a literal account of a post-war progression to a world-consuming
conflagration, Armageddon. In doing so, they discount the importance
of reason, learning, or social consensus in their interpretations
in favor of what they see as a literal reading of the Biblical text.
Parallel to this is their reading of the unfolding of human history
as also a literal record where that text transparently reveals
itself. Dispensationalists, who like to make an ought of is, are
thus Hegelians. Like Fukuyama, they too see the winding-down of
history, although in their version it ends in apocalypse.
Fundamentalists lend another trait to secular culture, a distaste
for any mediation between God and man, whether through priesthoods
of men or through the elaborate rationality of philosophy. This
distaste would lead one to infer that they also have an aversion
for the regulations of contracts and laws. But paradoxically in
a popular culture filled with anti-intellectualism, the written
Constitution like the written scripture holds a privileged position.
The paradox might only be apparent. Just as fundamentalism disdains
mediation, an anti-intellectual culture might find an oral tradition
based on a continuing interpretative dialogue between past and
present actually less attractive than the fixed guidelines of a
written contract, whether made between one nation and another or
between nations and God. In other words, the mechanism of the
constitution, like the text of scripture or the language of law,
could actually become a convenient tool to avoid working out the
ongoing difficulties of the political world and to elude rather
than meet its demands. Politics ultimately demands mastery over
reality whereas the law requires only external conformism to certain
specified criteria. So, the mechanism of the law not only tends to
relieve us of the burden of competence, it ultimately fails to check
aggression. Instead, aggression expresses itself not outside law,
but through it. Scriptural and legal limits come to mark the boundary
beyond which feelings of empathy or compassion need not run. Those
not chosen become, in Kipling's words, the lesser breeds without
the law. The literalism of the Armageddonists, their faith that the
Biblical text they read translates directly into events unfolding in
history, is bound up completely with this sense they have of enacting
history as subjects and being set apart through history and through
law from those others whose histories and beings are objects to be
written or acted upon.
It is this sanctified contempt for the other that is at the heart
of Abu Ghraib and militates against any reading of it as a war crime
of errant individuals. The half-a-dozen reservists are no more than
scapegoats in a program of racial and religious abasement that was
conceived as completely legitimate. The photographs horrify precisely
because they express this sense of legitimacy very much as the postcards
of the 1920s depicting laughing crowds watching Negroes being
lynched convey their perfect acceptability at the time.
Such sanctified terror is rooted not only in Zionism then, but
equally in the sectarian beliefs of fundamentalist Christians
that feed many elements of this Americanist ideology. From Biblical
righteousness, the sense of the state as virtue incarnate; from
Christian dominionism, the impetus to expand; from apocalyptic
ruminations, the obsession with terror. And through all of these
runs an unexamined sense of supreme moral satisfaction, a Puritan
certainty about the nature and precise physical location of evil in
the other that is translated not simply in the messianic language
of Americanism but even in the shibboleths of liberalism. Evil is
outside, out there in the world, radically disordered, deserving of
eradication. To fully understand Abu Ghraib, therefore, we need to
shatter the linguistic policing behind which torture masquerades as
"national security," "necessity," and "protecting our freedoms"; we
need to free ourselves from the control of this singular language of
Babel, the empire of universal law and reason. We need to comprehend
the extent to which the totalizing discourse of reason itself masks
those local meanings and sufferings in which humanity resides.
When we do so, what appears behind the mask is a confusion of
meanings that evades easy categorization. A study of hundreds of
communications by Bush, Ashcroft, Powell, and Rumsfeld between
September 11, 2001 and spring 2000 found four characteristics
common to them -- a set of Manichean distinctions between good and
evil and security and danger; a description of the war on terror
as a "mission"; conflation of the will of God and the export of
freedom and liberty by America; and claims that dissent is a national
and global threat. Quasi-religious language is deployed here on
behalf of exceptionalism but the exceptionalism is only superficially
crafted to appeal to religious sentiment. Underlying the religious
veneer, the language is intensely inflected with attachment to the
soil and fear of its violation and echoes the Zionist ideology of
soil. We find repeated terms and phrases, such as "homeland" with
its distinctly Germanic flavor and "we fight them there so we don't
have fight them here." Not ethical or spiritual religion, but a
state-religion, a religion of territory and power speaks in these
words.
I have termed this ideology Promethean for its refusal to submit
to objective criteria of the good or the just while claiming to
represent them. Not so much abrogating law as assuming the function
of law-giver, the new messianism uses the language of law for
its content - human rights, justice, liberty -- but its framework
is intensely revolutionary. In public, then, Zionism in America,
Christian or Jewish, does not speak its name but prefers to use
the language of secularism and democracy inspirationally to press
its claims. This is understandable. Overtly religious rhetoric has
a poor chance of success in a country where even Christianity has
many faces and where immigration is encouraged. The self-image of
America today is of a melting pot and direct appeals to racial or
religious chauvinism would shatter this image of multiculturalism.
In any case, those who believe in the unquestioned "goodness" of
American force have included not only Zionist neo-conservatives
(and Max Boot has admitted that Israel is the non-negotiable heart
of neo-conservatism) but before them Cold War hawks who once saw
in the spread of communism a similar radical threat to the West.
What the decoding of language demonstrates is that despite its
religious overtones, the rhetoric of American empire is fundamentally
neither conservative nor religious in a traditional sense but
expressive of an ideology of power in which religion has been
consciously deployed. Subtle words and phrases appeal to the
religious, evoke their support, play on their sympathies, and yoke
the two strains of exceptionalism. Under the defense of civilization,
a war of religion is invoked; but the rhetoric of religion itself
conceals the more familiar language of territory and resources, the
struggle of political interests.
What interests and for whose benefit? The Americanist language would
suggest American national interest; the pervasive influence of Zionism
would suggest Israeli. Of course, publicly if not privately, Zionists
like to argue that there is no difference between the two. Ideology
which grows more powerful as the total state accelerates smoothes over
these discrepancies in words, these failures of meaning. It throws
out vague threats to the "national interest" and postures aggressively
behind the official narrative of a global war on terror by the
universal empire. This is the propaganda discourse of Babel but
what does Babel conceal? When the propaganda narrative of terror is
pierced; what lies behind?
Lila Rajiva is a freelance writer based in Baltimore, Maryland. She
has taught music at the Peabody Preparatory, and English and Politics
at the University of Maryland and Towson University. Her new book,
The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the US Media, from which this
essay has been adapted, will be published in March-April 2005 by
Monthly Review Press. Copyright (c) 2005 by Lila Rajiva
- Lila Rajiva will talk about her new book, as well as the war
in Iraq, the political aspects of the Asian tsunami and other
questions on Monday, January 17, from 5:30-6pm Pacific Time on
CFUV Radio (Gorilla Radio) in Victoria, British Columbia, at
102FM, 104.3 cable and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.
Article nr. 8943 sent on 18-jan-2005 05:06 ECT
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The original address of this article is :
www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Rajiva0117.htm
Rights lawyer for Saddam
The Age
January 17, 2005 - One of America's most renowned human rights
lawyers has stunned friends and supporters by taking on Saddam
Hussein as a client and describing the former dictator as
"reserved, quiet, thoughtful and dignified".
Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney-general, said Saddam had been
unfairly demonised by his captors. He spoke of his client, who faces
trial in an Iraqi court for war crimes, after returning to the US
from Jordan. He provoked a furore by declaring that Saddam had been
subjected to "savage" treatment by his US captors and compared it
with the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
"Demonisation is the most dangerous form of prejudice," he said.
"Once you call anything evil, it's easy to justify anything you
might do to harm that evil. Evil has no rights, it has no human
dignity, it has to be destroyed. That's how you get your Fallujahs,
your Abu Ghraibs, your shock-and-awes." He said the court to try
Saddam was "a creation of the US military occupation" and did not
meet the standards of international law.
Telegraph
FLASHBACK: Demonize to Colonize
by Ramsey Clark
"In the determination of any criminal charge ... everyone shall be
entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent
and impartial tribunal established by law."
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - Article 14(1)
The complete demonization of Saddam Hussein threatens to determine
every decision and action affecting not only his future but that
of Iraq as well. With U.S. mass media and U.S. government propaganda
stripping Saddam Hussein of every redeeming human quality, any act
against him or Iraq is ipso facto justified.
This successful demonization made the U.S. unilateral war of
aggression against Iraq politically possible. It now makes a
fair trial for Saddam Hussein impossible.
The debate about intelligence failures is itself a cover-up of the
obvious. Saddam Hussein was demonized to justify regime change in
Iraq. It rendered him an evil madman threatening the civilized world.
He possessed weapons of mass destruction. He supported 9/11. He aided
al-Qaeda. WMDs could be launched within minutes of his order. That
Saddam Hussein would use them was clear. He used them "against his
own people." Ignored were the facts that under devastating attacks by
the U.S. in 1991 and 2003, Iraq did not use any illegal weapons. In
1991, Iraq was the victim of 88,500 tons of explosives (almost seven
Hiroshimas) delivered by the Pentagon in 42 days that destroyed its
infrastructure: water systems, power, transportation, communications,
manufacturing, commercial properties, housing, mosques, churches,
synagogues. Food production, processing, storage, distribution,
fertilizer and insecticide production, were targeted for destruction.
Nearly 150,000 defenseless people were killed outright in Iraq. The
U.S. claimed its casualties to be 156 - 1/3 from friendly fire, the
remainder accidents.
Sanctions against Iraq from August 6, 1990, into 2003 took over
1,500,000 lives, the majority children under age five. By October
1986, 567,000 children under five were dead from sanctions according
to a U.N. FAO report that month. One-fourth of the infants born
alive in Iraq in 2002 weighed less than four pounds, a dangerously
low and crippling birth weight - symbolic of the condition of the
entire country.
During the high-tech terrorism of "Shock and Awe" in March and April
2003, Iraq never used any WMDs or other illegal weapon as some 25,000
of its defenseless people were killed.
At least 35 nations have WMDs in their military stockpiles, the U.S.
more than all others combined. The U.S. is planning a new generation
of nuclear weapons, tactical weapons that would have been used against
Iraq if the U.S. had possessed them in 2003. The U.S. used 4,000 tons,
or more, of depleted uranium, super bombs in attempts to assassinate
Saddam Hussein and cluster bombs to savage anyone within a large area,
usually urban, where they were dropped.
Saddam Hussein was demonized because he refused to surrender the
sovereignty and independence of Iraq and its people to demands and
plans for U.S. domination and exploitation under its New World Order.
At the very time the Bush administration claims Saddam Hussein
committed his most serious atrocities, "gassing his own people,"
Kurds at Halabja, in March 1988, near the end of the Iran-Iraq war,
U.S. support for the government of Saddam Hussein was at its height.
Donald Rumsfeld was a principal player. Stephen C. Pelletiere, the
CIA's senior political analyst of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war,
professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000 and head of a
1991 U.S. Army investigation into how Iraq would fight a war against
the U.S., has repeatedly and publicly absolved Iraq from targeting
Kurds at Halabja. See, e.g., New York Times, Jan. 31, 2003, p. A29.
A Defense Intelligence Agency investigation and report made
immediately after the Halabja incident absolved Iraq. The U.S.
continued its support of Iraq with full knowledge of the facts.
The "rogue states" condemned by President Bush are "rogue" because
they do not submit to U.S. authority. They include, among others,
Cuba, Aristide's Haiti, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Lebanon, Syria,
until recently Liberia and Libya, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela more
recently. Some members of the European Union, most notably France
and Germany, timorously, have offered some opposition to the U.S.,
on the question of Iraq. While they are not called rogues, they have
paid a price for this impudence. For those who believe both peace
and economic justice require "sovereign equality" among nations,
a principle on which the U.N. Charter is based, the "rogue states"
deserve our gratitude for resisting, often at a terrible cost, U.S.
demands for submission. Nearly all the more than 80 U.S. military
interventions in the Western Hemisphere in the past century are
evidence that the U.S. intervenes in countries that defy its will
and resist its exploitation.
"Our SOBs" - the Somozas of the world - who govern for the benefit
of the U.S. and their own selfish interests, have caused many more
wars, far greater violations of human rights and most deadly, deeper
impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people than all the rogue
states which most often are struggling for liberation or selfpreservation.
If the U.S. can successfully use the demonization of Saddam Hussein
to justify his illegal detention and cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment and consolidate its control over Iraq through the
corruption of law and government, the consequences will be more
violence against the U.S., more aggression by the U.S. and more
misery for the world.
The brazen humiliation of Saddam Hussein after his capture, the
former Iraqi President disoriented, disheveled, mouth probed wide
open, a helpless prisoner, was shown repeatedly on TV internationally
and viewed by more than one billion people. American Indians
understood immediately and were angered again: That is the way they
treated our captured Chiefs: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo
and many others. Filipinos still wince as they remembered the
treatment accorded their President Aquinaldo, captured by U.S.
treachery in his hideout in northern Luzon a century ago. The Bush
administration appears to prefer a fate for Saddam Hussein more like
that of the slave rebellion leader Nat Turner nearly two centuries
ago - his head on a post.
Later photos showed Saddam Hussein, humiliated before a rich U.S.
Iraqi puppet leader and avowed enemy, who was sitting free and
comfortable above Saddam Hussein in his cell, a large picture of
President George W. Bush hung on the wall. This conduct advertises
to the whole world that the U.S. has no respect for the Geneva
Conventions, or mere simple decency.
It must be observed that all the rogue states, the victims of
the many U.S. interventions and the U.S. captives mutilated, or
humiliated as Saddam Hussein has been, are members of the great
majority of the world's population that has beautiful darker
skin. They are the poor of the planet, being made poorer,
dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and
its rich allies designed for domination, exploitation and triage.
The devastating destruction of life and life-supporting infrastructure
by the massive aerial assaults of 1991 and 2003, the regular bee-sting
bombing of Iraq in between, the vicious armed raids against Iraqis,
averaging 25 per day now and constant since May 1, 2003, when Bush
claimed the war was over and, above all, the genocidal sanctions
strangling the whole society for more than twelve years with virtually
no protest in the U.S. mass media, government and political leadership
required race-based saturation and demonization to be accepted.
Attention must be paid.
Can we remember President Bush's outrage when Iraqi TV in March 2003
showed several captured U.S. soldiers being escorted by Iraqis in
poor light and at a distance that made identification impossible? We
might wonder how U.S. soldiers captured in the future, or other U.S.
hostages, will be treated.
The most chilling conduct of the U.S. is the total isolation,
complete silence about his location and treatment, and denial of
all visitation for Saddam Hussein. The spectre created by Guantanamo
says anything goes. But the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights provides that:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No
one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and
in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.
Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest,
of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of
any charges against him.
Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought
promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to
exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a
reasonable time or to release. Article 9(1-3).
It further requires: All persons deprived of their liberty shall be
treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of
the human person.
Tariq Aziz, Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister, a major figure
in international diplomacy for twenty years, has been held
in secret without reports on his health, or treatment for eight
months now. Unnamed prisoners at Guantanamo have been held for two
years with only glimpses of unconscious prisoners being carried on
stretchers, and semi-conscious prisoners stumbling with leg chains
supported by U.S. soldiers as they leave interrogation.
The U.S. cannot use its criminal war of aggression, or its belated
designation of Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war to escape the
international standards of the Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
The very detention of Saddam Hussein is illegal. The U.S. invasion
of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called "the supreme
international crime" in the Nuremberg Judgment. Prisoners held by
the U.S. as a result of this war of aggression must be released,
or turned over to the United Nations, or the International Criminal
Court, and not a jurisdiction of its choice.
The U.N. and the ICC are legal, independent, impartial, competent
and have jurisdiction to act, all conditions required by international
law. The U.N., or the ICC, can make a preliminary determination as to
whether there is sufficient evidence of criminal conduct to support
criminal charges, the necessity and nature of further detention and
whether a legal, independent, impartial and competent court exists
with jurisdiction to try the charges.
There is no court in Iraq and no existing domestic law. The U.S. war
of aggression and occupation have destroyed both. The present U.S.
puppet council in Iraq has no legitimacy and is comprised of sworn
enemies of Saddam Hussein, the first qualification for the job. It
cannot be foreseen when a new sovereign government capable of creating
a legal, independent, impartial and competent court might be formed,
but any new criminal code it might enact would be ex post facto for
any act committed prior to its enactment.
The Security Council does not have power under the U.N. Charter to
create a criminal court and its creation of courts for Yugoslavia,
Rwanda, Sierra Leone and participation in a court for Cambodia, all
under coercion from the U.S. in pursuit of its enemies, cannot create
power to do that which its Charter denies it.
Nor are the Security Council's hands clean concerning Iraq. It
authorized sanctions, albeit under U.S. coercion, against Iraq
that were genocidal, inflicting infinitely greater injury on
the people of Iraq than the worst demonization of Saddam Hussein
proclaims he did.
The International Criminal Court is legal and presumptively
independent, impartial and competent. Its jurisdiction reaches
major international crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes
against humanity, but only for acts alleged to have been committed
after June 30, 2002.
Most important of all, any court that might consider charges against
Saddam Hussein must also weigh charges against the United States,
its officials and others acting in concert with them. If equal
justice under law is to have any meaning, and equality is the mother
of justice, power cannot confer impunity for commission of wars
of aggression, the supreme international crime, or the plethora of
other offenses the U.S. has committed against the people of Iraq.
For there to be peace, the days of victors' justice must end.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=5224
Article nr. 8914 sent on 17-jan-2005 00:33 ECT
The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=8914
The original address of this article is :
www.theage.com.au/news/Iraq/Rights-lawyer-for-Saddam/
2005/01/16/1105810769237.html?oneclick=true
Saddam didn't gas Kurds: lawyers
Jamal Halaby
January 17, 2005 - Saddam Hussein's legal team said it had witnesses
willing to testify the fallen dictator's regime was not responsible
for gassing thousands of Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja
in 1988.
The claim, made by Saddam's chief lawyer Ziad al-Khasawneh, relates
to one of the main charges against Iraq's deposed president, who
is in US military custody along with 11 former lieutenants awaiting
trial before a special Iraqi tribunal.
Saddam was arraigned in July on several counts, including gassing
Kurds, killing rival politicians, invading Kuwait in 1990 and
suppressing Kurdish and Shi'ite uprisings in 1991.
His defence team has not previously claimed to have witnesses to
testify on his behalf.
It has, however, said it has documents supporting its case that Iraq's
army never possessed the chemicals used to kill about 5,000 people in
the Kurdish city of Halabja on March 16, 1988.
Witnesses "are ready and willing to appear before the Iraqi court to
testify that the regime of President Saddam Hussein had nothing to
do with the chemical attack on the Kurdish population," al-Khasawneh
claimed without identifying those willing to testify.
"Those witnesses cannot be challenged in terms of the weight of their
testimonies, their persons, positions and connection to the event."
Al-Khasawneh said the legal team had heard from unspecified "media"
outlets that the Iraqi tribunal had dropped the Halabja charge
against Saddam and his top lieutenants.
But Salah Rashid, human rights minister in Iraq's northern Kurdistan,
dismissed the claim.
"Concerning statements made by lawyer of the former regime officials,
they are only trying to make more money," he said.
"We gave them (court) some of our documents concerning Halabja and
we have evidence and witnesses and the court should listen to them."
Saddam's trial has not started, but questioning of his 11 key
lieutenants - including Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical
Ali - is underway. Al-Majid is accused of ordering the Halabja
chemical attack.
The tribunal has accused Saddam and his aides of responsibility in
the 1987-88 Al-Anfal campaign against Kurds that included Saddam's
depopulation scheme that killed or expelled hundreds of thousands
of Kurds from northern Iraq.
"There is a collective concern that the aggression on Iraq will be
repeated on any country, where its leaders would be kidnapped and
its laws would be changed," said in a letter signed by al-Khasawneh.
Copyright + 2005 AAP
Article nr. 8910 sent on 16-jan-2005 23:21 ECT
The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=8910
The original address of this article is :
seven.com.au/news/worldnews/153545
"We Are Not Responsible for 9/11"
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
By GARY LEUPP
On January 13 Reuters and the cable news networks are making a news
story of a very interesting short video from Iraq, addressed to
"people of the world." I'd encountered this on line, via an antiwar.
com link to Information Clearinghouse, as early as December 19, and
found it noteworthy enough to draft at that time what appears below.
One wonders why the mainstream press has taken three weeks to find
it newsworthy.
http://antiwar.com/
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article7468.htm
The video is elegantly produced in English by the "Media Platoon"
of a group called the "Islamic Jihad Army." The written message
accompanying the opening martial music indicates that the Islamic
Jihad Army was formed by the merger of the Iraqi Islamic Army
and the Islamic Jihad Brigades, and that the Army "reports to the
Mujahadeen Joint Command," along with nine other named organizations,
plus "other small supporting cells."
Since it's not likely to remain available long, one should, if
interested, check out the website immediately. (That, again, is:
http colon slash slash informationclearinghouse dot info slash
article 7468 dot htm.) The transcript of the message is included
on the site, so if you want to, you can print it out and share it
with your friends. Not that I'm suggesting you do so, of course.
There's a law against providing "material assistance" to terrorism,
which, I suppose, should I specifically urge you to circulate this
material (authored by those that the government deems terrorists)
I would by definition do. Nor will I use such adjectives as
"reasonable" or "moving" to describe the presentation, but just
summarize it dispassionately.
The video describes the resistance movement as one conducted by
"simple people who chose principles over fear," resulting not only
from the invasion but from the UN "sanctions, which we consider
the true weapons of mass destruction."
It explains the invasion in geopolitical terms, not simplistically
as a war between Islam and the West, or stupidly as a war between
Good vs. Evil. "We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy
Britain or the U.S." declares the narrator, "nor are we responsible
for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that these criminals
present to cover their true plans for the control of the energy
resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong
unified Europe. It is ironic that the Iraqis are to bear the full
force of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of
this sleeping world."
The video implicitly links the Iraqi resistance with the
international movement against imperialist globalization, thanking
"all those, including those in Britain and the U.S., who took to
the streets in protest of this war and against Globalism." It thanks
France and Germany for their "wise and balanced" position on the war.
It indicates sympathy for the American people, saying they "suffer
in general" from "never-ending and regenerated fear."
It calls upon the people of the world to "form a worldwide front
against war and sanctions." Here it gets a bit mystical, urging
that the front be "governed by the wise and knowing" who will "bring
reform and order" and create "new institutions" to "replace the now
corrupt." But the message is also practical and specific: "Stop using
the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies. Reduce or
halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an end to
Zionism before it ends the world."
As it displays gruesome footage of dead foreign soldiers, it
declares, "We only wish we had more cameras to show the world
their true defeat." It boasts that the enemy is "on the run"
and pinned down, but indicates empathy with the invaders' plight.
If you "lay down your weapons," it declares, "we will protect
you, and we will get you out of Iraq, as we have done with a few
others before you."
Perhaps in response to U.S. charges that "foreign fighters" play
a significant role in the insurgency, the message says, "We do not
require arms or fighters, for we have plenty."
Finally, the smooth, confident voice of the narrator urges the
invading foe: "Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones.
This is not your war. Nor are you fighting for a true cause in
Iraq. And to George W. Bush, we say, 'You have asked us to 'Bring
it on,' and so have we, like never expected. Have you another
challenge?'"
Despite the name of his group, the spokesman does not promote
Islamism as a political doctrine. He makes no reference at all
to God or religion, except when he urges U.S. troops, who "can
choose to fight tyranny with us" to "seek refuge in our mosques,
churches and homes." And never, not even once does he say, "We
hate your freedoms."
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and
Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-
1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle
of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
January 17, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp01172005.html
Iraqi Resistance Report
for events of Monday, 17 January 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member editorial
board The Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org
Monday, 17 January 2005.
Al-Fallujah.
Resistance rocket attacks in and around al-Fallujah on Monday.
Iraqi Resistance forces fired eight Grad rockets at concentrations
of US troops north of al-Fallujah at about 8:30am Monday. Then at
12 noon, the Resistance fired two more Grad rockets at the Americans,
followed by five Grad rockets fired at 3pm. After nightfall, the
Iraqi Resistance fired two Grad rockets at the US troops once more.
Meanwhile a powerful blast shook northern as-Saqlawiyah at midday
Monday. The nature of the explosion is unknown, but a huge Chinook
helicopter with protective cover from two Apache helicopters were
seen heading towards the scene of the blast, strongly indicating
that the US forces suffered casualties.
Resistance sharpshooter kills two US troops, Americans raze house
in retaliation.
An Iraqi Resistance sharpshooter shot and killed two Iraqi puppet
troops serving the US occupation in al-Fallujah on Monday. Witnesses
told Mafkarat al-Islam that the US troops were killed in the 7 April
neighborhood in central al-Fallujah at 12 noon Monday.
American troops then encircled houses in the area, searching the area
for an hour after the attack. US forces found two spent cartridges
on the roof of one of the neighboring houses. The Americans then
totally destroyed that house and announced in the city that any house
from which shots come would meet the same fate and be razed to the
ground.
Americans find corpses of dead US soldiers in al-Fallujah Monday
morning.
US occupation forces in al-Fallujah on Monday morning discovered the
bodies of six US troops killed the night before. Eyewitnesses in the
city and members of the puppet police told Mafkarat al-Islam that the
Americans found the bodies at 7am Monday in a tank that was sitting
in a fortified position between two demolished houses in the New
Street area of central al-Fallujah. The Americans had been stabbed
by knives or bayonets and their weapons had been taken.
The witnesses speculated that the Americans must have been surprised
by Resistance fighters who came from the Resistance-held neighborhoods
of ash-Shuhada' or al-Jubayl and crept up on them during the night.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent himself watched as troops from
two US Humvees extracted the bodies from the tank and took them
away.
Other sources reported that on Sunday the Americans had found the
body of an American killed in the al-Wahdah neighborhood. The corpse
had already been badly chewed apart by dogs. It was unclear how that
American had died.
Ar-Ramadi.
Resistance car bomb kills US troops near ar-Ramadi Monday
afternoon.
An Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded by the al-Jazirah wooden
bridge in the village of al-Jazirah near ar-Ramadi at 3:25pm Monday
afternoon. The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam reported local
witnesses as saying that the booby-trapped Volvo car was parked
by the side of the road at the bottom of the bridge. A US column
approached on its way to do its usual round of patrols but spotted
the car. Seven American troops left the column and approached the
car, fearful that it might be booby trapped.
When the US soldiers got close, the car exploded. The local police
told Mafkarat al-Islam that the Americans had not been able to find
all the remains of their dead soldiers because many were blown to
pieces by the force of the blast and charred bits of bodies and small
pieces of limbs were scattered all over the place. Local witnesses
confirmed that fact. The correspondent said he was unable to remain
long on the scene because of the pervasive smell of the dead bodies
that resembled that of roasted meat.
US helicopters carried away the remains and the US column hastily
returned to its base out of fear of being caught out after dark,
something they regard as a nightmarish prospect, the correspondent
noted.
Al-Qa'im.
Double Resistance assault on US facility in al-Qa'im Monday.
Iraqi Resistance forces on Monday mounted two attacks on the old
Customs building in al-Qa'im on the Syrian border - now used as
a US military concentration point.
Witnesses told Mafkarat al-Islam that an Iraqi Resistance martyrdom
fighter in an explosives-laden Opel accelerated to "crazy" high speed
and blasted into an American column that was entering the customs
building compound at about 4:45pm, Baghdad time. The attack took the
Americans completely by surprise and they were unable even to get
off one shot, as they usually do at any approaching car. As a result,
the Resistance attacker was able to detonate his car in the midst
of the American column setting off an explosion heard throughout the
whole city. The blast was so powerful that all the glass in windows
in nearby houses and even some fairly far away was smashed.
US forces gathered, as usual, to extract the dead and wounded from
the area. Ten minutes later, therefore, Resistance fighters fired
a Grad rocket into the same area targeting the large congregation
of US forces, Mafkarat al-Islam reported in a dispatch posted at
5:25pm Mecca time Monday.
After the Grad attack, Resistance fighters continued to attack the
US forces in the area for several minutes.
Hit.
Resistance shoots down unmanned US spy plane.
Iraqi Resistance forces shot down an unmanned US reconnaissance
plane in the al-Bu 'Assaf area, 2km west of Hit at 6:30pm Monday.
The Resistance shot it down with a 37mm anti-aircraft machine
gun.
In a dispatch posted at 8:50pm Mecca time, Mafkarat al-Islam
reported that a US helicopter and fighter plane were at that
moment searching for the wreckage of the spy plane, but that
the Resistance had seized the craft as soon as it crashed.
Local people flocked in to celebrate the victory and later
set it on fire.
Tikrit - Salah ad-Din Province.
Martyrdom bomber kills US troops, puppet police in Bayji.
An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom fighter drove an Opel car packed with
explosives into the barbed wire and barriers at the entrance to the
puppet police station in Bayji and detonated himself and the vehicle
at about 8am Monday morning, according to an officer in the local
puppet police who survived the blast and spoke with Mafkarat alIslam.
The puppet police station was used by American occupation
troops as one of their local headquarters as well, and as a result
of the blast five American soldiers along with 11 puppet policemen
were killed. In addition, three other US troops were seriously
wounded and 15 Iraqi puppet policemen injured in the blast.
Al-'Amarah.
Two British troops killed in Resistance bomb attack Monday morning.
An Iraqi Resistance roadside bomb hidden under a rubbish pile
exploded in the Qal'at Salih area of the city of al-'Amarah south
of Baghdad at 8am Monday morning local time. The blast damaged a
British military vehicle, killing two British troops and seriously
wounding two more.
Resistance assassinates two sectarian collaborator tribal chiefs in
al-'Amarah.
Mafkarat al-Islam's correspondent in al-'Amarah reports that
many townspeople in the city have obediently gone along with an
agreement concluded between traditional tribal chiefs and the
British occupation forces to cooperate in actions against what
they term "Wahhabi terrorists." As a result, the British, with
the help of local dupes launched massive searches for any
"strangers" in the city, rampaging through hotels and mosques
for four hours. The British-led mobs arrested 12 citizens, all
of them Sunnis, some residents in the city, others people who
had come there looking for work.
The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam reports that in response to
this, immediately after the search of the city at about 1pm, Iraqi
Resistance fighters shot to death two Shi'i tribal chiefs who were
collaborating with the British aggressors. The Resistance left a
piece of paper on the car of one of the dead collaborators on which
was written a passage from the Qur'an: "we have not wronged them,
rather it was they who wronged themselves."
For several days the predominantly Shi'i city of al-'Amarah has
been the scene of an effort to sow religious sectarian discord
among Sunni, Shi'i, and other citizens, thereby strengthening the
hand of the occupation.
Recently, masked persons attacked and beat up two Sunni citizens
in the al-Ansar Mosque in the city. On the same day two people
were killed as they left a Shi'i Husayniyah place of worship
in al-'Amarah. Two other people were injured in another Shi'i
Husayniyah. On the same day shots were fired at a gathering of
the Sabi'ah (Sabaeans - followers of an ancient pre-Christian
religion) in one of the city's neighborhoods.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reports that it is believed
that there is a group trying to sow discord and conflict between
the city's Shi'i majority and the other religious communities so
that the occupation and forces allied with it can secure their aims
at the expense of the unity of the Iraqi people.
Al-Basrah.
Resistance bombs two centers for the sham US-backed "election"
farce, inflicting no casualties.
Iraqi Resistance bombs exploded minutes apart at two election centers
in the city of al-Basrah on Monday afternoon. The first bomb went
off in the Rawdat al-Yasmin [Jasmine Garden] area of al-Mishraq in
al-Basrah, the second went off five minutes later at an election
station in al-Fayha' School in downtown al-Basrah.
Witnesses said that the blasts inflicted severe damage to the two
election stations, destroying the outer fences and breaking all the
glass in windows in those buildings and in the ones around the area.
The bombs inflicted no human casualties, however, because they
occurred at a time when traffic in the areas was diminished, due
in part to the increase in Resistance bombings in the city in the
last two weeks. Puppet police stations have been attacked or car
bombed on almost every night, Mafkarat al-Islam noted.
- Sources
-
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54623
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54620
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54616
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54612
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54611
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54610
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=54609
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDnews=54587
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDnews=54573
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDnews=54572
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDnews=54570
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=
2&u=/ap/20050117/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
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>> Kasnazaniya / Casnazaniyyah: http://video.giv-seiten.info <<
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>> Further Informations about Iraq and Palestine: <<
>> <<
>> GIV-Pages Online : http://www.giv-seiten.info <<
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