Iraqis Feed US Soldiers

Apr 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Sergeant Kenneth Wilson said Arabic-speaking US troops made contact with two busloads of Iraqis fleeing south along Route Seven towards Rafit, one of the first friendly meetings with local people for the marines around here. "They had slaughtered lambs and chickens and boiled eggs and potatoes for their journey out of the frontlines," Wilson said. At one camp, the buses stopped and women passed out food to the troops...Khairi Ilrekibi, 35, a passenger on one of the buses, which broke down near the marine position, said he could speak for the 20 others on board. In broken English he told a correspondent travelling with the marines: "We like Americans," adding that no one liked Saddam Hussein because "he was not kind." He said Iraqi civilians living near him were opposed to Saddam Hussein and that most were hiding in their homes and were extremely tired. Lance Corporal David Polikowsky... said he had been moved by comments from local civilians. He said they told him: "We welcome you. What is your name? We will pray for you." [Agence France Presse, 3/31/03]

The Arab News Uncovers the Truth

Apr 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Arab News asked several of the refugees waiting to enter Basra what they thought of regime change. Accompanying Arab News were several international TV crews. What the refugees said on and off camera were very different things. On camera, the general feeling among the crowd was sorrow at losing Saddam. Off camera, the citizens of Umm Qasr and Basra appeared genuinely exhilarated at the prospect of a brighter future, after Saddam had been removed. [Arab News, 3/28/03]

When we finally made it to Safwan, Iraq, what we saw was utter chaos. Iraqi men, women and children were playing it up for the TV cameras, chanting: "With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you Saddam." I took a young Iraqi man, 19, away from the cameras and asked him why they were all chanting that particular slogan, especially when humanitarian aid trucks marked with the insignia of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society, were distributing some much-needed food....He said: "There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else." Different versions of that very quote, but with a common theme, I would come to hear several times over the next three days I spent in Iraq. The people of Iraq are terrified of Saddam Hussein. [Arab News, 3/30/03]

I asked several what they thought of the US/UK plan to remove Saddam. They told me: "Now that they have started to remove him, they cannot stop. If they do, then we are all as good as dead. He still has informants in Umm Qasr and he knows who is against him and who isn't." When asked about what they think of this war, most Iraqis said that they were against the loss of innocent life and the destruction of their cities, but they seemed adamant about the removal of Saddam. They were happy about the "liberation" of Umm Qasr but were disappointed in the US/UK for not keeping their promises to provide humanitarian aid. [Arab News, 3/31/03]

An Arab News editorial, however, seems to come from an alternate universe: Iraqis are being subjected the "wrath of invading forces" by a "power that has come to occupy and conquer" and aims for the "wholesale destruction" of Iraqi society, "criminal enterprise--unjustified, unprovoked, illegitimate, catastrophic." Iraqis "do not believe for one moment a word of the marauders' promises." Do the Arab News editorialists read their own newspaper? ["Best of the Web Today," 3/31/03]

Peter Arnett: Saddam’s Useful Idiot

Mar 31, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Journalist Peter Arnett, covering the war from Baghdad, told state-run Iraqi TV in an interview aired Sunday that the American-led coalition's first war plan had failed because of Iraq's resistance and said strategists are "trying to write another war plan." Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, garnered much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. He is reporting from the Iraqi capital now for NBC and its cable stations.

From a  CNN transcript of Peter Arnett speaking Iraqi state television:

In answer to your question, it is clear that within the United States there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments....

I've been mainly in Baghdad in the past few weeks. But, clearly this is a city that is disciplined, the population is responsive to the government's requirements of discipline and my Iraqi friends tell me there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing....

The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance now they are trying to write another war plan. [CNN, 3/31/03]

My outrage was tempered by this later story from Fox News:

NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett on Monday, saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance. Arnett called the interview a "misjudgment" and apologized.

To express such a stupid opinion is unprofessional. To express it in an interview with the propaganda tool for our enemy is treasonous.|

Update: Oh, and he got hired by the UK Mirror already. Fox Reports that the UK Mirror is "vehemently opposed to the war." Punch a wall, slam the desk, throw a glass. Just don't kick the dog. I like dogs.

From Cox and Forkum:

Airhead Conservative Award: Steve Forbes

Mar 31, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

The comforting notion that the UN is somehow the legitimizer, the ultimate arbiter of international affairs, despite its sorry record, has been blasted away....

The UN won't cease to exist. It will still run refugee and health care programs. It will hold conferences around the world to pontificate on various global ills, real or imagined. It may play useful roles in building up civil institutions in war-torn areas, although it has exhibited little competence in that endeavor in Bosnia. The UN could even play the role of peacekeeper in parts of the globe that have no real strategic importance, such as it could have done--and murderously did not--in ethnically divided Rwanda in the mid-1990s. [Forbes, 3/14/03]

Now There’s the Kind of Protest I Like To See

Mar 31, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

• Other than ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism & Communism War Has Never Solved Anything
• Saddam Only Kills His Own People It's None of Our Business!
• Communism Has Only Killed 100 Million People Let's Give It Another Chance
• End Racism & Sexism Now! Kill All White Males
• Socialist Action Network working to perfect the ultimate police state
• [Pictures of Arafat and Saddam] "America, how can we concentrate on pushing the Jews into the sea while you wage your RACIST war against our people?"
• My son suicide bombed a bus full of Israelis and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt (and $25,000 from Saddam)
• Say NO to War! unless a Democrat is president...
• Stop the vicious spread of Wealth Creation! Vote GREEN Let's all be poor and miserable equally!

Related Item: Pave France.

Bernstein presents highlights from The Capitalist Manifesto

Mar 30, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Dishonorable Mention

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Academic “Freedom” at Columbia U.

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

At an anti-war "teach-in" this week, a Columbia University professor called for the defeat of American forces in Iraq and said he would like to see "a million Mogadishus" -- a reference to the Somali city where American soldiers were ambushed, with 18 killed, in 1993. "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus." The crowd was largely silent at the remark. They loudly applauded De Genova later when he said, "If we really believe that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine." ... [Teach-in organizer Eric] Foner said that because of the university's tradition of freedom of speech, it was unlikely De Genova would suffer professionally in any way because of what he said. "A person's politics have no impact on their employment status here, whether they are promoted, whether they are fired or whether they get tenure," Foner said. [Newsday, 3/27/03]

Al-Qaeda Fighting Beside Iraqis

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

British military interrogators claim captured Iraqi soldiers have told them that al-Qaeda terrorists are fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein's forces against allied troops near Basra. At least a dozen members of Osama bin Laden's network are in the town of Az Zubayr where they are coordinating grenade and gun attacks on coalition positions, according to the Iraqi prisoners of war....The connection would give credibility to the argument that Tony Blair used to justify war against Saddam - a "nightmare scenario" in which he might eventually pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. [Sydney Morning Herald, 3/28/03]

The Price of Disloyalty to Saddam

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

"They dress in civilian clothes and operate from private homes confiscated from innocent people and try to blend in with the civilian population. They conduct sadistic executions on sidewalks and public squares, cutting the tongues out of those accused of disloyalty and beheading people with swords. They put on American and British uniforms to try to fool irregular Iraqi soldiers who surrender to them and then execute them as an example for others who might contemplate defection or capitulation....We will take them at their word and if their wish is to die for Saddam Hussein they will be accommodated. As the regime deploys squads to slaughter its own citizens, coalition forces are trying to save Iraqi lives. We do this because, unlike Saddam Hussein's regime, our nations and our people value human life." [Daily Telegraph, 3/28/03]

Question: Now how can any human being living a in a free country equate U.S. forces with Saddam's Regime? Answer: They--the moral relativists--are not human in the moral sense of the term. One can disagree with the war, but to equate the two is absolutely miserable. [Thanks to the heads up on this news item from Paul Blair who comments "I Bet Al-Jazeera Won't Substantiate This."]

Kofi Annan’s “Fight” for “Humanitarian” Relief for Iraq

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

[H]ere's an excerpt from an e-mail I got today from a reliable source: "There is now $12.5 billion repeat billion in funds held in escrow by the UN in the ‘oil for food' program--the escape clause in the sanctions that let the Iraqis market about three million barrels a day ‘to feed the children, etc. since 1996. The French and the Russians are refusing to let the Security Council turn it over to the U.N. agencies to send in humanitarian relief because that would ‘legitimize the US-British war.' And (expletives deleted) Kofi Annan only makes sanctimonious statements without indicating what the real problem is." [New York Sun, 3/28/03]

Lance Armstrong–Gotta Love Him

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Conservatives for Tyranny

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos....The Web sites of the antiwar conservatives approvingly cite and link to the writings of John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky, Ted Rall, Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn, and other anti-Americans of the far left....Justin Raimondo, an Internet journalist who delivered Mr. Buchanan's nominating speech at the Reform party convention in 2000, alleged in December 2001 that Israel was implicated in the terror attacks of September 11: "That the Israelis had some significant foreknowledge and involvement in the events preceding 9/11 seems beyond dispute." ...The writers I quote call themselves "paleoconservatives," implying that they are somehow the inheritors of an older, purer conservatism than that upheld by their impostor rivals. But even Robert Taft and Charles Lindbergh ceased accommodating Axis aggression after Pearl Harbor....The accusations culminated in a March 2003 article by Mr. Buchanan in The American Conservative that fixed responsibility for the entire Iraq war on a "cabal" of neoconservative office-holders and writers: "We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own." [New York Sun, 3/27/03]

The Old Europe: European Hatred of America is Greater Than Their Fear of Saddam

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Columnist Robert Samuelson points out a fascinating polling discrepancy. The Pew Global Attitudes Project polled people in various countries earlier this month on the war against Saddam. Huge majorities opposed it: 87% in France, 85% in Germany, 83% in Russia, 79% in Spain, and 76% in Italy. But at the same time, Pew asked if "the people of Iraq will be better or worse off in the long run" if Saddam is deposed. Again huge margins: 73% said yes in France, 71% in Germany, and 61% in Italy. In other words, Europeans are perfectly happy to consign an entire people to misery and oppression rather than support a war to liberate them. And they claim to be supporting the people of Iraq. The awful historical record will be that most Europeans knowingly put their fear of American power before their hatred of Saddam. Damning. [Andrew Sullivan, New York Sun, 3/28/03]

Syria Aids Saddam

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Syria is granting free passage across its border with Iraq to volunteers who wish to join the fight against the U.S. and British forces. Thus far, dozens of volunteers, primarily Palestinians from the refugee camps in Lebanon, have crossed over into Iraq through Syrian-controlled border posts. The passage of volunteers with Damascus's consent has given rise to the theory that the U.S.-fired missile that struck a Syrian bus traveling in Iraq was an intentional attack on a busload of such volunteers....

[T]he Syrian military analyst, Hitham al-Kilani, said in an interview on Al Jazeera, on 24 March, that "the Syrian border was opened to Syrian, Arab and Muslim volunteers wishing to reach Iraq and participate in the fighting against the American invasion." ... The Syrian mufti, Ahmed Kaftaru--a government official--recently called on Muslims worldwide to employ all means, including suicide operations, to defeat the American-British-Zionist aggression....

Syria's active support for Saddam Hussein has been particularly evident in recent months, with Damascus even purchasing military equipment on behalf of the Iraqi army. ... The purchases were made from a number of East European countries, and the equipment included engines for Russian-made tanks and aircraft. Also purchased were tank carriers, probably from Germany.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has made extensive preparations to flee Iraq, and he and several of his most senior aides--including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz - have already smuggled family members out to Syria, the British Daily Telegraph reported on Friday... [Syria allows dozens of volunteers to cross into Iraq to fight coalition, Ha'aretz, 3/28/03]

...Donald Rumsfeld issued a warning to Syria, saying it would be held accountable for shipments of military equipment--including night-vision goggles--that have been moved across the border into Iraq. [CNN, 3/28/03]

Thousands Flee Basra as Iraqi Troops Fire on Civilians

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Thousands of people left yesterday. Despite now being in allied territory no one showed any relief or was prepared to say anything about politics. "You wouldn't expect me to answer that, would you," said one man with a smile when I asked if he was pleased that Basra's Ba'athists were on the way out. [Daily Telegraph, 3/28/03]

What's Al-Jazeera going to say about this?

Iraqi paramilitary forces in Basra fired mortars and machine guns Friday on about 1,000 Iraqi civilians [!!!] trying to leave the besieged city, forcing them to retreat, British military officials and witnesses said.Britain's 7th Armored Brigade apparently tried to fire back, but stopped out of fear that civilians would be wounded, said Lt. Cmdr. Emma Thomas....British pool reports described Iraqi forces with mortars mounted in pickup trucks firing on the fleeing civilians, sending some running back into Basra. Panicked women and children scattered on a bridge over a canal and down its embankments to avoid machine-gun fire, the reports said. One Iraqi woman badly wounded by shrapnel was carried into a British vehicle that whisked her off for treatment. [Associated Press, 3/28/03]

Draco Visits New York

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

"Let the individual decide if he wants to kill himself or not," said Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio, a Democrat from Queens. "And let the individual decide if he wants to go into a smoking environment. … You cannot tell the people of this state how to run their lives. You can try, but you'll never do it." But Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, in an impassioned speech in favor of the bill, argued that tobacco users have no right to "poison" the people around them. "We pass laws here every week infringing on people's rights to make their own decisions," said Mr. Bruno, a Republican from Rensselaer County."Every time you stop at a stop sign somebody is infringing on your right to go right through that intersection. Why? Because it's for the public good, that's why." [New York Sun, 3/27/03]

Government: The Arbiter of Ideology

Mar 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

On the same day that the Anti-Defamation League reported that the number of anti-Semitic incidents at universities has increased by 24%, the number three Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and some of his colleagues met with Jewish activists to explore solutions to the trend. By the end of the meeting yesterday, Mr. Santorum was talking about introducing legislation that could cut federal funding to colleges where anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are prevalent--or more generally, where "ideological diversity" is lacking. [New York Sun, 3/27/03]