AAARGH

Numéro 22 -- 22 avril 2003 >[email protected]< Nouvelles en français et en anglais Créée en 1991 par Serge Thion News in French and English Established 1991 by Serge Thion

Démocratie à l'américaine: le vendredi 18 avril, à la sortie des mosquées: manifestation anti-américaine dans le centre de Baghdad: des camions militaires américains avec des haut-parleurs intiment à la foule l'ordre de se disperser "immédiatement, sinon il y aura des conséquences".

The Guardian, Iraq Timeline

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,939468,00.html>

 

Escaped lions shot dead by US troops

Four starving lions which escaped from Baghdad zoo were shot dead by US troops after two of the animals charged at them.

The lions, which had not been fed for days, escaped from their outdoor pen through a crumbling wall at the weekend, said Sergeant Matthew Oliver, of the 3rd Infantry Division. "Two of them charged our guys," he added. "We had to take them down."

The Guardian, April 22, 2003

Ce lion qui voulait bouffer de l'Américain ne savait pas que cette nourriture est toxique.

1 - La Palestine martyrisée par les sauvages

2 - L'Iraq des marais

3 - Le pays des faux-juifs

4 - Le ROW

édito

I L'Iraq mis à sac

Le pillage, on sait ce que c'est. On a déjà vu ça. Mais l'ampleur qu'il a prise en Iraq et les cibles qu'il a visées méritent quelques réflexions. D'habitude, ce sont les armées d'occupation. Ne croyez pas que les "riches" Américains soient au-dessus de ça. Le soldat de base a toutes les chances d'être un pauvre, un peu étranger ou un peu métèque, ou un peu noir, venant de ce qu'on appelle pudiquement les "milieux défavorisés" ou "marginalisés". Déjà pendant l'occupation de l'Europe en 1945, les GI's ont pillé énormément. Les Allemands n'avaient rien à dire. Ne parlons même pas des forces d'occupation soviétiques. Elles démontaient tout. Au Viêt-Nam, c'était plutôt les officiers qui se servaient en rachetant à très bas prix les objets anciens que les voleurs, c'est-à-dire souvent les gardiens, dérobaient pour manger. On sait qu'en Palestine, la soldatesque israélienne, souvent éthiopienne, moldave, petchenègue ou sarcelloise, ne refuse jamais de se servir dans les maisons où elle entre à la dynamite: argent, ordinateurs, bijoux, tout est bon.

Là, en Iraq, les occupants ont été pris de vitesse. Ils n'avaient pas fini de "sécuriser" comme on dit dans leur grotesque jargon, que déjà des groupes s'attaquaient aux lieux qui pouvaient abriter de l'abondance. Dans certains cas, les soldats américains ont eux-mêmes provoqué les pillages et incité les habitants à piller. C'est une forme de guerre au régime déchu, sans doute. Mais on est perplexe dans le cas des grands bâtiments publics, ministères et administrations. Robert Fisk a compté jusqu'à trente-cinq ministères qui étaient la proie des flammes. Tout le monde sait que le Musée national a été nettoyé. On sait moins que la bibliothèque nationale, et les bibliothèques secondaires et celles de province ont aussi été la proie des flammes. Ça, c'est du nouveau. On n'a pas l'habitude de voir ça. Les Talibans n'ont pas fait ça. C'est du travail organisé. Il y a des équipes, un système, des gens qui paient les commandos d'incendiaires. Le petit peuple de Baghdad ne ferait certainement pas ça tout seul. On a du mal à croire que les Américains, incultes comme ils sont, aient attaché suffisamment de prix à des "livres" pour se donner la peine de recruter des commandos d'incendiaires. Les seuls que l'on imagine assez pervers pour se dire qu'il fallait araser toute culture en Iraq, tout savoir, toute archive, ce sont, à notre avis, les dignes représentants de l'Etat juif car c'est exactement ce qu'il fait en Palestine: il rase systématiquement les églises anciennes, les ruines romaines ou arabes, les maisons, les centres scolaires, les champs cultivés, les oliveraies, tout ce qui participe de l'identité et de la culture d'un peuple qu'ils cherchent à faire disparaître de la surface de la terre. Seuls les nazis ont eu un programme comparable, en voulant faire de l'Europe un territoire judenrein, sans juifs, comme les Israéliens veulent une Palestine Palästinernrein. Pendant trente ans, ils ont eu peur des Irakiens. Ils se vengent bassement. Après douze d'embargo pendant lesquels pas un livre n'a pu entrer légalement en Iraq, ils brûlent tous ceux qui restent. Les Mongols n'avaient pas fait pire. Détruire l'Iraq, le doux rêve des sionistes; ils attendent ça depuis plus d'un demi-siècle; ils ne vont pas se gêner.

Peut-être, aussi, avaient-ils su que la Bibliothèque nationale recélait une arme de destruction massive. En effet, en septembre 1999, au nom de la Vieille Taupe et des révisionnistes français, Pierre Guillaume et Serge Thion avaient personnellement déposé dans les mains de la direction de cette bibliothèque un exemplaire des quatre volumes des Ecrits révisionnistes du professeur Faurisson. Ils tiennent prêt un second exemplaire pour le jour où cette bibliothèque sera rouverte sous l'égide d'un régime indépendant, ce qui ne saurait tarder, vu l'allure que les choses prennent. Quand on pense que plus d'une centaine de bibliothèques nationales, y compris évidemment la BNF, recèlent dans leurs flancs un exemplaire de cette bombe à dépression idéologique, on se dit que les incendiaires ont du boulot devant eux.

II Le Ba'ath est toujours là

L'une des conséquences de la façon extraordinaire dont le haut du régime de l'Iraq s'est transformé en fantôme (voir plus bas) c'est que rien ou presque n'a été touché. Les mouvements d'opposition, y compris les communistes, ne fonctionnent pratiquement plus, depuis longtemps, éliminés par une répression impitoyable. Si les shi'ites ont un clergé, les autres n'ont aucune structure, et surtout pas les émigrés qui reviennent dans les tanks américains. Cela veut dire que le parti Ba'ath, au moins sa partie active, est toujours là, prête à embrayer. Si on a vu, dès les premiers jours de l'occupation, des manifestations, des pancartes, des slogans, y compris "ni Bush ni Saddam", il faut y voir la main de la seule organisation qui fonctionne à l'échelle du pays. En outre, malgré le rapprochement soudain, on peut dire que les islamistes shi'ites et les ba'athistes ont des vues et des intérêts qui divergent. Les Américains voudront-ils s'appuyer sur les shi'i'tes, si proches de l'Iran ? Non, il leur faudra alors manger leur chapeau et remettre en selle les ba'athistes, seuls capables de gouverner. On va rire un brin.

III Radio-putasserie.

Ce matin, le 21 avril, sur France-Inter, au journal de 8 heures, intervention d'un journaliste qui se trouverait en Iraq, et peut-être à Kerbela, Christophe Lurie. (Il est plus probablement dans sa chambre à l'hôtel Palestine.) Il dit que, «pour la première fois» les shi'ites irakiens vont pouvoir se rendre en pèlerinage à Kerbela», que sous le régime de Saddam Hussein, «les rassemblements étaient interdits» et que des hommes parvenaient dans la «ville sainte» en «cheminant à travers le désert». On croirait ce ramassis de mensonges concocté par les services de Bush-man. Il est évident que jamais aucun pouvoir civil, même celui de Saddam Hussein, n'aurait osé interdire ce pèlerinage, le plus important du monde shi'ite, qui attire des pèlerins bien au-delà des frontières de l'Irak. Des rédacteurs de la Gazette ont participé, en 2002, à ce pèlerinage, qui a rassemblé, en quelques jours entre un et deux millions de personnes. La route entre Baghdad et Kerbela était encombrée dans les deux sens par des centaines de milliers de familles, entassées dans les véhicules les plus divers. Le régime veillait à la sécurité, sans aucun doute, et des policiers en civil sont venus nous demander ce que nous faisions là. Ils nous ont ensuite laissés déambuler à notre guise. Dans une telle foule, remuée par des sentiments violents de douleur et de sacrifice, l'atmosphère est électrique, malgré l'eau que pulvérisent des employés municipaux au-dessus des pèlerins. Les "milices de Saddam", armées et cagoulées, étaient présentes aux portes des mosquées saintes. Le gouvernement redoutait certainement de possibles incidents. Depuis, on a vu les chars américains rouler dans les rues et se faire insulter. Ils ont fait tomber une statue de Saddam dans l'indifférence hostile de la foule. On ne conseillerait pas à des Américains de faire ce que nous avons fait l'an dernier, se plonger dans la masse des pèlerins et fraterniser avec les Irakiens. Ils risqueraient fort d'être découpés en petits morceaux. C'est ce que mériterait ce menteur de Lurie, un plat valet des Amères Loques. Il a répété cette incroyable invention tout au long de la journée. Combien de gifles qui se perdent !!!

(On retrouve ces âneries dans d'autres médias, ce qui indique qu'ils puisent tous dans le même "briefing" imbécile des galonnés américains.)

Le trafiquant d'armes nommé vice-roi par Adolf Rumsfeld, Jay Garner (Le Webster dit: garner : something that is collected: ACCUMULATION) vient d'arriver à Baghdad. C'est sûrement un humoriste. Il a déclaré en arrivant: "C'est un grand jour pour l'Iraq, et pour moi." Monsieur Prudhomme monte sur le trône. Il est suivi de 400 palotins chamarrés comme des Suisses. Ils vont nous rejouer "Ubuchodonosor".

IV Les mystères du Grand Arrangement

Les questions que nous nous posions dans l'éditorial du dernier numéro de la Gazette (18 avril, n· 21) se répandent comme une traînée de poudre. Il n'est pas dit qu'elles proviennent d'une lecture de la Gazette. Mais d'une simple prise en compte des faits: la résistance du pouvoir à Baghdad a disparu d'un coup, comme le groupe dirigeant du pays. Vanished in the thin air. Cette disparition a offert Baghdad sur un plateau aux routiers épuisés du général Franks, qui a reçu la surprise de sa vie.

Rappelons-nous, sans en faire la liste, tous les propos des chefs politiques et militaires sur les "difficultés" qu'ils allaient affronter, sur la longueur éventuelle du siège de Baghdad. Ils n'avaient pas l'air très rassurés. En même temps, le führer pentagonal Rumsfeld répétait le 4 avril, sans que personne lui demande, qu'il fallait exclure "toute idée de marché". "Il n'y a aucune chance qu'il y ait un deal, a-t-il déclaré au cours d'une conférence de presse au Pentagone. Peu importe qui le propose, il n'y en aura pas." (Le Monde, 5 avril 2003, p. 4. Tout l'article, daté de Washington, indique l'anxiété des milieux dirigeants américains devant la difficulté de la prise de Baghdad). Rumsfeld nous donnait au moins une indication précieuse: il existait une proposition d'arrangement, imaginée par d'autres. Il la rejetait publiquement. Mais dans les coulisses ?

Maintenant, pour apprécier les marges de ce qui est politiquement possible en Iraq, tout le monde a intérêt à comprendre cette disparition et ce mystère.

Un simple écroulement du régime, une débandade, comme on en a vu à Saigon en 1975, à Berlin-Est en 1989, etc. permet de rendre compte de ce qui se passe. On connaît les acteurs et les événements. D'autres, plus trafiqués, restent en partie inexpliqués, ou mystérieux, comme la chute de Ceaucescu en Roumanie, en décembre 1989. La chute du régime de Saddam est beaucoup plus opaque. On ne sait pas pourquoi la résistance a cessé d'un seul coup, sinon que la fin de cette résistance a été concomitante avec la disparition de l'échelon supérieur du parti-Etat. Et ce qui est encore plus louche, c'est que les Américains ont fait semblant de ne pas s'étonner.

On doit donc soupçonner l'existence d'un Grand Arrangement, dont les parties prenantes sont sûrement le groupe de Saddam Hussein et les Américains, peut-être aussi les Russes, dont l'évacuation de l'ambassade paraît suspecte, et d'autres. N'oublions pas qu'à côté des hommes des services spéciaux américains présents à Baghdad, ont pullulé les employés des services israéliens, qui ont pu recruter sans difficulté dans les familles des juifs irakiens partis vers 1950 de Baghdad en Israël, et dans la communauté juive encore présente à Baghdad, présente et visible sur place. Un certain sionisme rampant y était facile à observer dès avant la guerre.

Nous avons présenté (n· 21) l'hypothèse d'un chantage nucléaire israélien, une sorte de renvoi d'ascenseur pour sortir les protecteurs américains du bourbier dans lequel ils se trouvaient à la date du 7 ou 8 avril. Rien pour le moment n'est venu l'infirmer. Mais il en est d'autres que nous allons passer en revue.

1/ Le site de David Irving, relayé par plusieurs autres sites non-conventionnels, a publié la traduction d'un article arabe, publié dans un canard quasiment inconnu:

<http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/04/Mueller150403.html>

Il affirme qu'il y a eu des contacts entre les services secrets américains et les officiers supérieurs commandants les unités de la Garde républicaine irakienne. Grosso modo, l'offre américaine aurait été un exil doré de ces chefs militaires aux Etats-Unis, en échange de leur ordre de ne pas résister. Les moments ultimes de la négociation se seraient passés par l'intermédiaire des espions infiltrés dans les "boucliers humains". Le rendez-vous aurait été l'aéroport de Baghdad, d'où un avion aurait transporté ces officiers et leurs familles.

Rien ne vient confirmer cette hypothèse. Elle colle avec une partie des faits connus mais comporte aussi des erreurs: le bureau d'Al Jazira n'était pas dans l'hôtel Palestine. On a l'impression d'être devant une construction imaginaire, rédigée à l'indicatif. Cette version est présentée comme venant d'une source politique américaine, fiable à 75%.

2/ Un point de vue iranien. Parviz Esmaaili, dans le Tehran Times, du 10 avril, reprend la rumeur lancée par Al Jazira d'un marché au terme duquel les Russes auraient envoyé un avion prendre les dirigeants irakiens. L'article est spéculatif. Il note que la disparition de Ben Laden est une très bonne justification de la continuation de la présence militaire américaine en Afghanistan et qu'il ne semble pas être activement recherché. D'autre part Saddam pourrait détenir des secrets embarrassants pour les Amères Loques, ce qui expliquerait que la Fox se soit soudainement avisé qu'il n'existait pas de tribunal international compétent pour juger Saddam. L'article exclut que les Américains aient pu accepter un arrangement.

3/ Pour la Balochistan Post, (15 avril) Saddam était dans le convoi automobile de l'ambassade russe faisant route vers Damas, qui a été attaqué par l'armée américaine, alors que les autorités US auraient préalablement donné leur accord à ce transfert. D'après des rumeurs "non confirmées" cet accord aurait été passé par Condolisse Rice lors de son voyage éclair à Moscou.

<http://www.balochistanpost.com/item.asp?ID=3768>

Dans un article plus récent, daté du 18, le journal du pays qui, assez probablement, héberge Ben Laden et sa suite, (Le Baloutchistan est une région à peu près autonome où les organes d'Etat pakistanais ne mettent pas beaucoup les pieds, ou alors demandent la permission) rappelle les liens passés entre la CIA et Saddam, du temps où il était en exil au Caire, et rapporte qu'on croit généralement au Proche-Orient qu'il y a eu un arrangement entre le dictateur irakien et ses anciens employeurs. Nous reproduisons cet article plus bas, surtout pour ce qu'il dit de l'état d'esprit des gens de la région.

4/ Pour sa part, le fameux journaliste Robert Fisk (The Independent, 17 avril) ne cherche pas de réponse à la question que lui posent beaucoup d'habitants de Baghdad: pourquoi les Américains ont-ils laissé fuir Saddam ? Il se contente de noter que les Américains ne semblent pas s'intéresser du tout aux crimes du régime effondré, qu'ils ne sont pas venus visiter, comme lui, les sièges de la police secrète. Il met ceci en contraste avec les recherches menées par les mêmes Amères Loques pour trouver des documents en vue du procès de Nuremberg. Il trouve cette indolence inexplicable, ou explicable par le pétrole.

5/ L'ambassadeur russe Vladimir Titirenko, de son côté, de retour à Moscou, pense que Saddam a passé un marché avec les Amères Loquees et qu'il a péri dans le bombardement du restaurant. Cette hypothèse a été critiquée par d'autres sources et il semble que les Américains n'aient fait aucune recherche sur les lieux, d'après les gens du voisinage, bien qu'ils aient prétendu avoir l'ADN de Saddam.

6/ Les analystes du GRU n'ont pas d'explication. Ils considèrent que tout ça semble tiré d'un conte des Mille et une nuits:

The ongoing war in Iraq is, perhaps, the most unusual armed conflict in history of modern warfare: disappearing armies and governments, illogical offensive and defensive operations on both sides of the front, information warfare on an unprecedented scale -- this is not a war but a tale from Scheherazade's Thousand and One Nights. All is missing is a magic genie lamp. Well, the lamp may be there but the genie is gone.

(What did really happen in Iraq ? <[email protected]>, 16.04.2003. War in Iraq: Random Thoughts , Part I) Voir plus bas, un extrait.

7/ Voir plus bas: "Les mystères de Baghdad (suite)".

8/ Une explication alternative: Nous sommes en présence d'une formidable opération de mutation militaire. Saddam, évidemment conscient du fait que son petit pays fatigué par 12 ans d'embargo ne peut pas résister frontalement à une invasion, renonce à l'appareil d'Etat, aux grandes structures administratives et retourne à la clandestinité (d'où il vient) et à la guérilla urbaine. Le Vietcong au Sud Viêt-Nam. Il garde intacts ses réseaux, de parti, de tribu, de combattants, etc. Les hommes et les armes sont là, sous l'occupation américaine. Dès qu'elle commencera à s'installer, à ronronner, avec un appareil militaire plus réduit, alors commenceront les coups de mains, les attaques nocturnes, la guerre de l'ombre, la guerre des partisans pour la reconquête du pouvoir. Dans son dernier discours, dont on ne garantira pas ici l'authenticité, il a dit: "Je serai avec vous dans les tranchées". Les prochaines semaines devraient clarifier et rendre visible cette option, si elle a été prise.

ABSENCE DE CONCLUSION.

La confusion est à son plus haut point. On a vu l'arrangement se produire, mais on ne sait pas qui, comment et pourquoi. Continuons à creuser.

21 avril 2003.

American Naivete

 

Editorial By The Arab News

First, the Bush administration went into Afghanistan with the aim of overthrowing the Taleban regime and capturing "dead or alive" Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden. But where is Osama Bin Laden now? US president George W. Bush has not mentioned his name in public since last October, and it seems that he placed his bets correctly in supposing that the American people have short-term memories when it comes to such important matters.

The picture of Bin Laden as the epitome of evil standing against everything the Americans hold dear, indeed permanently threatening their very security, was soon replaced by the new demon, Saddam Hussein. And it was the same kind of "dead or alive" mentality of the Wild West that came into play when Bush told Saddam he had 48 hours to leave town. Saddam was in every headline, was the subject of Bush's every speech.

But where is Saddam Hussein now? Nobody -- not the Bush administration, not the Western media, not the American people themselves -- appear to give much of a damn. Less than a week after the fall of Baghdad, Saddam is already largely forgotten. Bush has stopped mentioning him, as he stopped mentioning Osama.

When one looks at the history of the relationship between various US administrations and Saddam Hussein, it is hardly surprising that the Bush administration could be so certain that Saddam's sudden disappearance would not cause much of a ruckus. After all, that history is a record of US support for his brutal regime, which has also been forgotten. Saddam has a great deal to thank the CIA for, including bringing the Baath Party to power, helping his personal ascent through its ranks, providing him and it with financial aid during the war with Iran, and constantly protecting him against internal coups.

Until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam got everything he wanted from the US. When then Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly visited Baghdad, he told Saddam: "You are a force for moderation in the region, and the US wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq." And when human rights groups presented evidence that Saddam had used mustard gas against Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians, the US State Department refused to condemn him. Given this sordid history -- which finds its parallel in the initial unconditional support from the US for Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban -- the latest stories going around about the mysterious disappearance of Saddam Hussein from Baghdad just before US Marines entered the city almost unopposed are perhaps not so much wild conspiracy theories as logical deductions given the US's Wild West mentality.

Many have long thought that Osama was allowed to get away because his capture would have put a premature end to the so-called "war on terror". Perhaps, if a deal was done with Saddam through his old pals in the CIA, as is widely believed in the Middle East, part of the reason was that Saddam could not then reveal the documents and other evidence which could bring home to the American people in any subsequent trial the blatant hypocrisy of successive US governments' foreign policy in the Middle East.

News has a notoriously short shelf-life in the US, where the media often appear -- to the rest of the world at least -- to work on the understanding that the average American viewer has a concentration span only marginally longer than that of a goldfish.

Considering that the progressive talents of the American people ushered in the IT age, it is extraordinary that they process information so lethargically and naively, falling victim to every misinformation campaign their government concocts.

Friday, April 18, 2003

1 - La Palestine martyrisée par les sauvages

ILS N'ONT QUE ÇA EN TÊTE

Un transfert sophistiqué

 

par Tanya Reinhart

 

A la veille de la guerre contre l'Irak, des craintes se sont fait jour, dans différents milieux, que sous couvert de cette guerre, Israël ne procède à un transfert de Palestiniens dans la zone de la «ligne de partage» située au nord de la Cisjordanie (Kalkilya, Tulkarem). La semaine dernière, l'armée en a donné un avant-goût. Le 2 avril, à trois heures du matin, une force importante a effectué une incursion dans le camp de réfugiés de Tulkarem, bloquant toutes les routes et les chemins d'accès avec des rouleaux de fil de fer barbelé et annonçant par haut-parleurs que toutes les personnes de sexe masculin, entre quinze et quarante ans, devaient se rassembler sur un terrain désigné, au centre du camp. A neuf heures du matin, l'armée a commencé à transporter les hommes (et les jeunes) ainsi rassemblés vers un (autre) camp de réfugiés, non loin de là. Cette fois, il s'agissait seulement d'une sorte de répétition, de mise en scène, et les habitants du camp furent autorisés à rentrer chez eux, quand bien même fût-ce après plusieurs jours. L'armée mit un soin tout particulier à ce que l'évacuation soit effectuée au moyen de camions -- c'était là un flash-back exact vers le traumatisme de 1948. Un des habitants du camp a déclaré: «Lorsque je suis monté dans ce camion, tous les souvenirs et les récits d'enfance que m'avaient faits mon père et mon grand-père de la nakba me revinrent à la mémoire.»

Bien des gens voient dans cette mise en scène une «répétition générale» de futurs transferts possibles. Aucun doute ne subsiste: le gouvernement (israélien) actuel est mentalement prêt à procéder à un transfert, mais il n'est pas sûr, en revanche, que les «circonstances internationales» soient mûres pour mettre ce transfert en pratique de la manière dont il a été mis en scène. La guerre en Irak crée aux Etats-Unis trop de risques d'enlisement pour qu'ils acceptent d'être confrontés à un autre point chaud. Mais le transfert, ce ne sont pas seulement des camions. Dans l'histoire israélienne du «rachat de la terre», il y a aussi un autre modèle, plus dissimulé et sophistiqué, de transfert. Dans le cadre du projet de «judaïsation de la Galilée», qui commença à être mis en oeuvre dans les années 1950, les Palestiniens qui étaient restés en Israël se virent dépossédés de la moitié de leurs terres, isolés dans de petites enclaves entourées de colonies israéliennes et ils perdirent peu à peu les liens qui les maintenaient ensemble, en tant que nation. C'est un transfert interne de ce type qui est en train de se produire, aujourd'hui, dans les territoires occupés, et il a connu une escalade marquée depuis le déclenchement de la guerre contre l'Irak.

Le 24 mars, les bulldozers ont pénétré sur les terres du village de Mas'ha, dont la colonie d'Elkana est proche, et ils ont entrepris d'y tracer la nouveau passage du mur de séparation, qui déconnectera le village de toutes ses terres agricoles, ainsi que de plusieurs centaines d'hectares appartenant à Bidia et à d'autres villages voisins. Elkana est éloignée d'environ sept kilomètres de la Ligne verte, mais le tracé de la muraille avait été modifié au mois de juin de l'année dernière, si bien qu'elle contournera la colonie d'Elkana aussi, afin de la maintenir du côté israélien. Néanmoins, même dans le cadre de ce nouveau tracé de la muraille, il n'était absolument pas nécessaire de confisquer ces terres à ces villages.

Ce n'est pas seulement la boulimie pour les terres qui a envoyé les bulldozers sur les terres de Bidia et de Mas'ha. Ces terres sont situées sur la partie occidentale du bassin (phréatique) versant de la Montagne -- il s'agit du plus important réservoir d'eau provenant de la Cisjordanie, dont les eaux s'écoulent, sous terre, également vers le centre d'Israël. Sur six cents millions de mètres cubes d'eau fournis par la Montagne annuellement, Israël en exploite cinq cents millions, extraits en plusieurs points de captage [1]. Le contrôle des ressources hydriques a toujours été une motivation fondamentale pour la poursuite, par Israël, de son occupation. Les gouvernements travaillistes successifs, dans les années 1970, avaient situé les premières implantations officiellement reconnues par eux dans des zones définies comme «stratégiques» pour les forages de puits. Elkana est une de ces colonies fondées dans le cadre d'un plan auquel on avait donné le nom (trompeur) de «Préservation des sources du Yarkon» [2]. Depuis l'occupation des territoires, en 1967, Israël interdit aux Palestiniens de creuser de nouveaux puits mais, sur les terres des villages de Mas'ha et de Bidia, ainsi que sur celles qui avaient déjà été séparées de Kalkilya et de Tulkarem, les puits antérieurs à 1967 abondent et donnent toujours de l'eau. La poursuite de leur exploitation est susceptible de réduire -- faiblement, mais qu'importe ? -- la quantité d'eau qu'Israël peut tirer des siens.

Les habitants de Mas'ha et de Bidia, en lutte pour conserver leurs terres et leur gagne-pain, ont dressé des tentes en protestation, le long du passage des bulldozers. Faisant preuve d'un optimisme à toute épreuve, ils les ont baptisées: «Tentes de la paix». Des Palestiniens, des Israéliens et des militants étrangers restent en permanence dans ces tentes, jour et nuit, afin d'observer ce qui se passe et de se dresser devant les bulldozers en cas de besoin. J'y étais, samedi dernier. Tout autour, dans toutes les directions, un moutonnement de collines couvertes d'oliveraies -- un vaste paysage verdoyant et champêtre, un de ces paysages qu'on ne peut admirer que là où les gens vivent sur leurs terres depuis des générations et des générations, conscients de leur beauté unique et de leur caractère précieux. Et dire que toutes ces terres sont en train d'être accaparées par des «rédempteurs des terres», qui ne manqueront pas d'en combler les puits et de les vendre à des spéculateurs immobiliers.

[1] : ce sont les données pour 1993 (donc, antérieures à Oslo), citées in Haim Gvirzman: «Two in the same basin», Ha'aretz, 16.05.1993.

D'après le Groupe des Hydrologues Palestiniens, actuellement, sur la quantité d'eau qui se reconstitue annuellement dans la partie ouest du bassin versant des Montagnes centrales -- 362 millions de m3 -- les Palestiniens n'en exploitent au total que 22 millions. <http://www.pengon.org>

[2] : Gvirzman, ibid.

Yediot Aharonot (quotidien israélien), 10 mars 2003, traduit de l'hébreu en anglais par Irit Katriel et traduit de l'anglais par Marcel Charbonnier.

La menace de "transfert" devient une réalité provisoire pour des milliers de personnes du camp de réfugiés de Tulkarem

 

Mercredi 2 avril à minuit environ, 40 véhicules militaires Israéliens sont entrés dans le camp de réfugiés de Tulkarem, imposé un couvre-feu et demandé à tous les hommes entre 15 et 40 ans de sortir immédiatement de leur maison et de se présenter aux forces d'occupation. Samer Omar, un garçon de 17 ans du camp explique ce qui s'est passé ensuite.

"Quand les soldats sont arrivés ils nous ont menacé de nous arrêter, de nous battre ou de nous tirer dessus si nous ne sortions pas immédiatement. Donc comme on nous l'a ordonné des milliers d'habitants masculins sont allés sur les terrains de l'école des NU. Dix huit mille personnes habitent le camp de Tulkarem, vous pouvez donc imaginer que nous avons été nombreux à quitter notre maison. Il était environ 6 heures du matin. Une fois qu'on s'est trouvé là, les soldats nous ont partagés en groupes, poussant les types entre 15 et 20 ans dans un coin, séparés du reste. Quelques uns parmi les plus jeunes étaient trop jeunes pour avoir des papiers mais les soldats s'en fichaient. Ils nous ont fait alors aller dans une salle de l'école. Quand nous étions ensemble dans la salle, le commandant a commencé par nous demander si nous voulions travailler pour les Israéliens, disant qu'il nous donnerait de l'argent si nous acceptions. Quand le commandant est parti, un des soldats nous a fait déchirer des photos de martyrs et cracher dessus, sans autre raison que la menace de son arme. Il prit alors un Coran, l'a jeté par terre et demandé à un des types de marcher dessus, mais il a refusé et le soldat a alors tenté de l'obliger en lui pointant l'arme sur la tête. Mais le commandant est revenu et le soldat s'est arrêté. Après ça nous avons eu les yeux bandés, les mains attachées et nous avons été mis dans un gros camion militaire puis conduits au camp de Nur Shams à 8 kilomètres. Je pense qu'il était alors 10 heures du matin. Les soldats nous ont enlevé les bandeaux, délié les mains, et laissé partir nous disant que nous pouvions aller où nous voulions du moment que nous ne retournions pas dans nos maisons dans le camp de Tulkarem. Pour ce qui me concernait, c'était la partie la plus épouvantable de l'épreuve. Je savais que je pouvais rester quelque part dans Nur Shams car j'y avais des amis et chacun aurait essayé de nous aider. Mais ce que je craignais le plus était que je ne puisse jamais plus retourner dans ma maison, ni voir ma famille ou mon frère qui a dix ans. Tout le monde pense que les Israéliens veulent profiter de la guerre en Irak pour évacuer les Palestiniens du territoire et je pensais que c'était une de leurs premières tentatives. D'abord en 1948, puis en 1967 et maintenant en 2003. Je suis resté une nuit chez mes amis, jusqu'au vendredi, quand on nous a dit que le couvre-feu avait été levé et que nous pouvions retourner chez nous. Je ne peux pas vous dire combien je me suis senti soulagé quand je suis arrivé chez moi malgré le fait qu'une grande partie du camp avait été attaquée y compris ma maison. Je pensais que je ne reverrais jamais l'endroit, alors c'était magnifique". Le gouverneur de la ville de Tulkarem, Izz Ad-Din Ash-Sharief commentait ainsi ces derniers événements: "Le gouvernement Israélien et l'armée ont mené cette opération dans le but de jauger les réactions publiques et internationales au transfert des Palestiniens. C'est vraiment aussi simple. Cette fois ils ont transféré des gens pendant 3 jours, puis ils les ont autorisé à renter chez eux. La prochaine fois il pourrait s'agir de plus de monde, transférés plus loin et pour plus longtemps, et peut être que la fois d'après ils les transféreront et ne les laisseront pas retourner. Ils ont fait cela aussi pour augmenter l'accoutumance des gens. La première fois que les troupes israéliennes sont entrées dans Gaza ça a été un tollé international et la pression a été mise pour quitter immédiatement". Moins d'un an après, la Cisjordanie entière a été envahie et réoccupée sans un murmure de protestation. Les gens sont devenus plus accoutumés, plus "immunisés" contre ces événements, et c'est précisément ce qu'ils espèrent atteindre aussi maintenant. Ils veulent immuniser le monde contre la menace d'un transfert palestinien puis déplacer qui ils voudront.

Information du PNGO (groupements d'associations palestiniennes) 5 avril 2003. Traduit de l'anglais par Michel Revel.

<www.palestinemonitor.org/updates/transfer_becomes_temporary_reality.htm>

LE YAOURT QUI PUE OU LE YAOURT QUI TUE ?

Danone s'associe avec Mey Eden

 

Mey Eden (distributeur des eaux minérales du Golan) [une terre volée aux Syriens ] a annoncé jeudi que sa filiale européenne avait signé un accord avec le groupe français agroalimentaire Danone pour créer une co-entreprise (joint venture) de distribution de ses bonbonnes d'eau minérale aux particuliers et aux entreprises en Europe.

En parallèle, le groupe français achèterait 20% des parts de Mey Eden à un prix supérieur de 185% de celui du marché et ce, en tenant compte de la valeur de la compagnie israélienne évaluée à 400 millions de dollars.

Les actions de Mey Eden avaient augmenté de 27% hier mercredi et étaient vendues au prix de 62,30 shekels. Au départ, Danone détiendra 53,2% des parts de la nouvelle société et 50% du droit de vote. Cette compagnie distribuera ses bonbonnes et les appareils de distribution d'eau dans 18 pays.

L'accord prévoit que Danone pourra augmenter sa participation de 5,5% et même en prendre le contrôle à 100% dès 2008. D'après les deux groupes, la société couvrira le plus vaste secteur géographique qui soit dans sa branche d'activité; elle occupera la première position dans 11 pays, dont, entre autres, la France, l'Espagne, les pays scandinaves et la Suisse, et sera implantée fortement en Allemagne, en Grande-Bretagne, en Italie et en Pologne.

Elle devrait fournir 350.000 appareils de distribution d'eau et pour cela, partager 20% du marché européen. Le Groupe Danone, un des leaders mondiaux de l'industrie alimentaire, fabrique déjà des produits laitiers frais en Israël, en association avec la société locale Strauss.

Arutz 7, 13 avril 2003.

GRANDE QUESTION

Israel Shamir attire notre attention sur ce texte:

The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions

 

By Jeffrey Blankfort

 

It was 1991 and Noam Chomsky had just finished a lecture in Berkeley on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was taking questions from the audience. An Arab-American asked him to explain his position regarding the influence of America's Israel lobby.

Chomsky replied that its reputation was generally exaggerated and like other lobbies, it only appears to be powerful when its position lines up with that of the "elites" who determine policy in Washington. Earlier in the evening, he had asserted that Israel received support from the United States as a reward for the services it provides as the US's "cop-on-the -beat" in the Middle East.

Chomsky's response drew a warm round of applause from members of the audience who were no doubt pleased to have American Jews absolved from any blame for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, then in the fourth year of their first intifada.

What is noteworthy is that Chomsky's explanation for the financial and political support that the U.S. has provided Israel over the years is shared by what is generically known as the Israel lobby, and almost no one else.

Well, not quite "almost no one." Among the exceptions are the overwhelming majority of both houses of Congress and the mainstream media, and what is equally noteworthy, virtually the entire American Left, both ideological and idealistic, including the organizations ostensibly in the forefront of the fight for Palestinian rights.

Voir l'article complet dans un document pdf disponible sur le site.

Left Curve, No. 27 <www.leftcurve.org>

Une revue apparemment "negriste" qui paraît irrégulièrement à San Francisco. Beaucoup de poèsie pas chère. Le n· 27 sera en ligne très bientôt , disent-ils .

2 - L'Iraq des marais

LES MYSTÈRES DE BAGHDAD (suite)

Saddam Sealed Betrayal Deal: Iraqi Diplomat

 

By Hadi Yahmid

 

Paris -- The U.S. occupation of Baghdad is the result of eight-hour tough negotiations held by the members of the Iraqi regime, who decided to give up Baghdad to the U.S. in return for providing safe haven for the Iraqi president and his top aides, an Iraqi diplomat in Paris told <IslamOnline.net>, but refused to be named.

"The Americans ensured the safety of Saddam Hussein and helped him leave Baghdad," the diplomat said.

On the whereabouts of the Iraqi president, the diplomat said: "It is still unknownSaddam left Iraq for an unknown destination."

Asked about the reasons that drove the Iraqi regime to give up Baghdad, he said that the "scenario of giving up the city to the enemy was drawn up even before the U.S.-led war," noting that Saddam's mistrusted his elite Republican Guard.

"He was also fully aware of the fact that the Americans would take Baghdad sooner or later," he asserted.

"Some Iraqi military units in Basra received orders that it was not worth fighting off the U.K. troops," he said.

On the gritty resistance that was put up by some Iraqi fighters, the diplomat said those fighters defied orders and took up their arms to fight off the U.S.-led troops.

"As for the Arab volunteers, they were in the dark and found themselves all of a sudden alone in the battlefield after Iraq's regular troops had taken to their heels," he added.

The disappearance of the Iraqi army in Baghdad, no doubt, has become the troubling question now and the talk of many people, who believe that the Iraqi army vanished into thin air.

On April 9, Mohammed Abdul Salam, a military expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPS), told <IslamOnline.net> that "the cakewalk entrance of the U.S. troops into the heart of Baghdad" can be explained in accordance with three likely scenarios.

One of them, he said, has to do with a deal hammered out between the leaders of the Republican Guard to lay down their arms without resistance. [...]

Thursday, April 17 2003 @ 05:54 AM GMT

-[IslamOnline (islamonline.net).] Published at the Palestine Chronicle.

<http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=2003041705543458>

LE MENSONGE SUR LES PERTES DE LA COALITION

Shock and Awe: Eye Witness Sees 700 Coalition Bodies Bagged And Frozen

 

Dear Sir,

I work as a nurse in major hospital in Kuwait and in the last 5 days, things have gone wild here. A very big area of the hospital have been isolated and packed with mobile freezers. First I thought that this was to prepare us as a battle hospital then the freezers started coming in by huge trailers after 2 am in the morning.

These trailers come to this isolated area under the guise of food and medical supplies.

The shocking news is that I am a witness to what I am about to say because the clean room for my endoscope operating theatre is a little room with small windows that lays exactly on the top of this isolated area. The news I am about to tell you is true and MAY GOD BE MY WITTNESS.

I counted at least 700 American or British bodies been carried away in these freezers after tagging them and putting them in purple bags that we use here in the hospital for hazardous waste. Two of these mobile freezers have been removed from the area by big helicopter after they were filled.

Last night the hospital manager asked that our division (that can see everything from our room) be transferred to another nearby clinic and currently all our endoscope procedures are on hold until we receive further instructions.

I can not tell you my name.

10.04.2003 [05:18] Source: Jihad Unspun

JUS received this letter today that is rather unsettling. We can not verify the report you are about to read however there have been several similar news reportss coming out of the UK and Pakistan about similar events that lead us to believe this eye witness account may have some credibility. The letter has been corrected for spelling and grammar.

<http://www.jihadunspun.net/intheatre_internal.php?article=50>

AMÈRE VICTOIRE

[...] We lost the war.

We defeated the Iraqi military, to be sure, and we fired Saddam Hussein. We have lost the real war, the important war, the war against those who attacked us on September 11. We lost the war because we betrayed the international community, whose help we desperately need in this wider war, by lying to them about Iraq's weapons and by disregarding their legitimate concerns. We have lost the war because our actions have given aid and succor to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, whose agents were and are nowhere to be found in Iraq despite the avowed words of the Bush administration. We have lost the war because the Iraqi people themselves already understand that the 'liberation' they were promised is as false as the evidence we used to invade their country. We lost the war because our moral standing to make it in the first place was utterly bereft of substance. We lost the war because the rest of the world sees the American government for what it is - a mob of hyperactive right-wing extremists with an army to play with and a dream of global dominance glowing like coals in their eyes.

There is no victory here. We lost the war before the first shot was fired.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," now available at <http://www.silenceissedition.com/> from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA. Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.

t r u t h o u t | Pe rspective, Monday 14 April 2003

<http://truthout.org/docs_03/041503A.shtml>

PILLARDS et Cie

«As everyone in the crowd expressed their collective dismay over the anarchy, one university teacher said he had witnessed some US soldiers encouraging the looters to plunder a university.

"I saw for myself how the US troops goaded Iraqis to loot and burn the University of Technology," claimed the professor Shakir Aziz.» 13 avril

<http://www.stopnato.org.uk>

How And Why US Encouraged Looting In Iraq

 

By Patrick Martin

 

The widespread looting in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities, following the collapse of the Ba'athist regime of President Saddam Hussein, was not merely an incidental byproduct of the US military conquest of Iraq. It was deliberately encouraged and fostered by the Bush administration and the Pentagon for definite political and economic reasons.

Thousands took part in the looting in Baghdad which began April 9, the day the Hussein government ceased to function in the capital city. Not only were government ministries targeted, and the homes of the Ba'athist elite, but public institutions vital to Iraqi society, including hospitals, schools and food distribution centers. Equipment and parts were stripped from power plants, thus delaying the restoration of electricity to the city of 5 million people.

Perhaps the most devastating loss for the Iraqi people is the ransacking of the National Museum, the greatest trove of archeological and historical artifacts in the Middle East. The 28 galleries of the huge museum were picked clean by looters who made off with more than 50,000 irreplaceable artifacts, relics of past civilizations dating back 5,000 years. The museum's entire card catalog was destroyed, making it impossible even to identify what has been lost.

The US military stood by and permitted the ransacking of the museum, an incalculable blow to Iraqi and world culture, just as they allowed and even encouraged the looting of hospitals, universities, libraries and government social service buildings. The occupation forces protected only the Ministry of Oil, with its detailed inventory of Iraqi oil reserves, as well as the Ministry of Interior, the headquarters of the ousted regime's secret police.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a statement in Geneva declaring that the relief agency was "profoundly alarmed by the chaos currently prevailing in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq." The medical system in Baghdad "has virtually collapsed," the ICRC warned, and it reminded the US and Britain that they were obliged under international law to guarantee the basic security of the Iraqi population.

General Tommy Franks, the overall commander of all US and British forces in Iraq, issued an order to unit commanders that specifically prohibited the use of force to prevent looting. This instruction was only modified after several days because of mounting protests by Iraqi citizens over the destruction of their social infrastructure.

The New York Times reported one such protest by an Iraqi man who was standing guard at Al Kindi hospital in Baghdad. Haider Daoud "said he was angry at his encounters with American soldiers in the neighborhood, mentioning one marine who he said he had begged to guard the hospital two days ago. 'He told me the same words: He can't protect the hospital,' Mr. Daoud said. 'A big army like the USA army can't protect the hospital?'"

The role of the US military went beyond simply standing by, and extended to actually encouraging and facilitating looting. According to a report in the Washington Post, after the US military reopened two bridges across the Tigris River to civilian traffic, "the immediate result was that looters raced across and extended their plundering to the Planning Ministry and other buildings that had been spared."

Sweden's largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published an interview April 11 with a Swedish researcher of Middle Eastern ancestry who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield. Khaled Bayoumi told the newspaper, "I happened to be right there just as the American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering." [See below]

He described how US soldiers shot security guards at a local government building on Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris, and then "blasted apart the doors to the building." Next, according to Bayoumi, "from the tanks came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to them."

At first, he said, residents were hesitant to come out of their homes because anyone who had tried to cross the street in the morning had been shot. "Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the building," Bayoumi continued. "The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the plundering continued there.

"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The next morning the plundering spread to the Modern Museum, which lies a quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds there, one that plundered and one that watched with disgust."

Kirkuk and Mosul

Similar scenes were reported in Kirkuk and Mosul, the two large northern cities with ethnically mixed populations. There the looting of public buildings has direct political overtones, since the destruction of property deeds and other government records will make it easier to conduct ethnic cleansing of Arab or Turkmen populations by the Kurdish forces that now dominate the region, in alliance with US Special Forces.

In Kirkuk, the site of Iraq's richest oilfield, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has already installed its officials in the homes of former Ba'ath Party leaders. US soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade seized control of an Iraqi air base but permitted looters to leave the base with their stolen goods, even opening the gates to allow them to pass.

There was no effort to halt arson at the city's cotton plant, or at office buildings, but US troops quickly occupied facilities of the North Oil Company, the state-owned firm that manages the huge northern oilfields. Colonel William Mayville, commander of the brigade, dispatched troops to three key oil facilities, while US Special Forces stood watch over four gas-oil separation plants. Mayville told the American media that he wanted to send the message, "Hey, don't screw with the oil."

In Mosul, northern Iraq's largest city, hospitals, universities, laboratories, hotels, clinics and factories were all sacked and stripped of their goods. The 700 US troops sent to Mosul remained outside the city for more than a day while the theft and vandalism continued, leading to widespread complaints from city residents-reported even in the American press-that the US was permitting the pillaging.

Save the oil-and nothing else

Robert Fisk, writing in the British newspaper The Independent April 14, noted a pattern in the response of American forces to looting in Baghdad, which, he said, "shows clearly what the US intends to protect." He continued: "After days of arson and pillage, here's a short but revealing scorecard. US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the museum in the northern city of Mosul, or from looting three hospitals.

"The Americans have, though, put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries that remain untouched-and untouchable-because tanks and armoured personnel carriers and Humvees have been placed inside and outside both institutions. And which ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the Ministry of Interior, of course-with its vast wealth of intelligence information on Iraq-and the Ministry of Oil. The archives and files of Iraq's most valuable asset -- its oilfields and, even more important, its massive reserves -- are safe and sound, sealed off from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared, as Washington almost certainly intends, with American oil companies."

Such concerns were already apparent in the actions of the US military at the very beginning of the war. The same General Franks who instructed US troops to take no action against looting in Baghdad or other cities gave the order March 20 for the First Marine Expeditional Force to invade Iraq a day early, because of reports, later proven largely false, that Iraqi troops were setting fire to the country's southern oilfields at Rumaila.

The Centcom chief discarded previous operational plans and potentially put many soldiers' lives at risk by acting before the air bombardment had begun in order to safeguard the real objective of the US war, Iraq's huge oil reserves.

The politics of plunder

The most striking aspect of the outbreak of looting was the nonchalant attitude of US government officials in Washington. At a Pentagon press conference Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denounced the media for exaggerating the extent of chaos, and argued that the looting was a natural and perhaps even healthy expression of pent-up hostility to the old regime. "It's untidy," Rumsfeld said. "And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."

There is no doubt the Bush administration would take a less charitable view of the "freedom" to loot if mobs were breaking into corporate offices in downtown Houston, Washington or New York City.

As in every action of the Bush administration, personal greed and profit-gouging are an important aspect. The ransacking of Iraqi government facilities, added to the devastation caused by American bombing, is part of the process of demolishing the large state-run sector of Iraq's economy, to the benefit of American companies. Already contracts have been awarded to private American firms to provide new school books, replace looted medical equipment, even train a new Iraqi police force.

In the Orwellian language of New York Times columnist William Safire, the US aim is to "introduce free enterprise and the rule of law" -- by means of a criminal invasion, followed by widespread looting. This will set the stage for a much bigger theft: the privatization of Iraq's vast oil resources and their exploitation, directly or indirectly, by US and British oil companies.

There is more at stake, however, than rank hypocrisy or an appetite for Iraq's oil wealth. The looting in Iraq directly serves the political interests of American imperialism in cementing its domination of the conquered country.

The Bush administration is seeking to encourage the emergence of a new ruling elite in Iraq, formed from the most rapacious, reactionary and selfish elements, which will serve as a semi-criminal comprador force entirely subservient to the United States. The acquisition of property through the theft of Iraqi state assets serves to bind these elements to the US occupation forces by their own economic self-interest. As one Army officer told the Times, as he watched the looting approvingly, "This is the new income redistribution program."

There is recent precedent for such an operation. The first Bush administration proceeded in the same fashion when it encouraged the formation of a new capitalist elite in Russia out of layers of the Soviet-era mafia and former Stalinist bureaucrats who acquired state assets by wholesale theft. What US imperialism promoted in the 1990s in eastern Europe and the former USSR under the label "shock therapy", it is now applying in the aftermath of its "shock and awe" devastation of Iraq.

 

4-16-3 World Socialist Web Site

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/iraq-a15.shtml>

US Forces Encourage Looting

By Ole Rothenborg

 

Malmoe. Khaled Bayomi looks a bit surprised when he looks at the American officer on TV regret that they don't have any resources to stop the looting in Baghdad.

-- I happened to be there just as the US forces told people to commence looting.

Khaled Bayomi departed from Malmoe to Baghdad, as a human shield, and arrived on the same day the fighting begun. About this he can tell us plenty and for a long time, but the most interesting part of his story is his witness-account about the great surge of looting now taking place.

-- I had visited a few friends that live in a worn-down area just beyond the Haifa Avenue, on the west bank of the Tigris River. It was April 8 and the fighting was so heavy I couldn't make it over to the other side of the river. On the afternoon it became perfectly quit, and four American tanks pulled up in position on the outskirts of the slum area. From these tanks we heard anxious calls in Arabic, which told the population to come closer.

-- During the morning everybody that tried to cross the streets had been fired upon. But during this strange silence people eventually became curious. After three-quarters of an hour the first Baghdad citizens dared to come forward. At that moment the US solders shot two Sudanese guards, who were posted in front of a local administrative building, on the other side of the Haifa Avenue.

-- I was just 300 meters away when the guards where murdered. Then they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic translators in the tanks told people to run for grabs inside the building. Rumors spread rapidly and the house was cleaned out. Moments later tanks broke down the doors to the Justice Department, residing in the neighboring building, and looting was carried on to there.

-- I was standing in a big crowd of civilians that saw all this together with me. They did not take any part in the looting, but were to afraid to take any action against it. Many of them had tears of shame in their eyes. The next morning looting spread to the Museum of Modern Art, which lies another 500 meters to the north. There was also two crowds in place, one that was looting and another one that disgracefully saw it happen.

Do you mean to say that it was the US troops that initiated the

looting?

-- Absolutely. The lack of scenes of joy had the US forces in need of images on Iraqi's who in different ways demonstrated their disgust with Saddam's regime.

But people in Baghdad tore down a big statue of Saddam?

-- They did? It was a US tank that did this, close to the hotel where all the journalists live. Until noon on the 9th of April, I didn't see a single torn picture of Saddam anywhere. If people had wanted to turn over statues they could have gone for some of the many smaller ones, without the help of an American tank. Had this been a political uproar then people would have turned over statues first and looted afterwards.

Back home in Sweden Khaled Bayomi is PhD student at the University of Lund, where he since ten years teaches and researches about conflicts in the Middle East. He is very well informed about the conflicts, as well as he is on the propaganda war.

Isn't it good that Saddam is gone?

-- He is not gone. He has dissolved his army in tiny, tiny groups. This is why there never was any big battle. Saddam dissolved Iraq as a state already in 1992 and have shad a parallel tribal structure going, which since then has been altogether decisive for the country. When USA begun the war Saddam completely abandoned the state, and now depends on this tribal structure. This is why he left the big cities without any battle.

-- Now USA are forced to do everything themselves, because there is no political force from within that would challenge the structure in place. The two challengers who came in from the outside were immediately lynched.

Khaled Bayomi refers to what happened to general Nazar al-Khazraji, who escaped from Denmark, and Shia-muslim leader Abdul Majid al- Khoei, who both where chopped to pieces by a raging crowd in Najaf, because they where perceived to be American marionettes. According to Danish newspaper BT, al-Khazraji was picked up by the CIA in Denmark and then brought to Iraq.

-- Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq, that has not said how long they will stay, not brought forward any time-plan for civilian rule and no date for general elections. Now awaits only a big chaos.

http://162.42.211.226/article2914.htm

Translated article from Sweden's largest circulation daily,

Dagens Nyheter, Saturday April 11, 2003

En VO: "USA uppmanade till rofferi"

<http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1435&a=129852&previousRenderType=1>

PILLAGE SÉLECTIF

Books, Priceless Documents Burn In Sacking Of Baghdad

By Robert Fisk

 

So, yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives - a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq - were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze.

I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.

And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed?

When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning -- flames 100 feet high were bursting from the windows -- I raced to the offices of the occupying power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some biblical [sic] library is on fire". I gave the map location, the precise name - in Arabic and English. I said the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the scene - and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.

There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad. In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the Caliphate, but even the dark years of the country's modern history, handwritten accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and military diaries,and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the early 1900s.

But the older files and archives were on the upper floors of the library where petrol must have been used to set fire so expertly to the building. The heat was such that the marble flooring had buckled upwards and the concrete stairs that I climbedhad been cracked.

The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print or writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up. Again, standing in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the same question: why?

So, as an all-too-painful reflection on what this means, let me quote from the shreds of paper that I found on the road outside, blowing in the wind, written by long-dead men who wrote to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul or to the Court of Sharif of Mecca with expressions of loyalty and who signed themselves "your slave". There was a request to protect a camel convoy of tea, rice and sugar, signed by Husni Attiya al-Hijazi (recommending Abdul Ghani-Naim and Ahmed Kindi as honest merchants), a request for perfume and advice from Jaber al-Ayashi of the royal court of Sharif Hussein to Baghdad to warn of robbers in the desert. "This is just to give you our advice for which you will be highly rewarded," Ayashi says. "If you don't take our advice, then we have warned you." A touch of Saddam there, I thought. The date was 1912.

Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and artillery for Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record the opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to be Saudi Arabia - while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in modern-day Jordan, the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali bin Kassem, who attacked his interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab them but was restrained and later bought off". There is a 19th-century letter of recommendation for a merchant, Yahyia Messoudi, "a man of the highest morals, of good conduct and who works with the [Ottoman] government." This, in other words, was the tapestry of Arab history - all that is left of it, which fell into The Independent's hands as the mass of documents crackled in the immense heat of the ruins.

King Faisal of the Hejaz, the ruler of Mecca, whose staff are the authors of many of the letters I saved, was later deposed by the Saudis. His son Faisel became king of Iraq - Winston Churchill gave him Baghdad after the French threw him out of Damascus - and his brother Abdullah became the first king of Jordan, the father of King Hussein and the grandfather of the present-day Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II.

For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab world, the most literate population in the Middle East. Genghis Khan's grandson burnt the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris river ran black with the ink of books. Yesterday, the black ashes of thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq. Why?

 

The Independent, 14 avril 2003.

<http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=397350>

Ce qui reste du musée, c'est son site:

<http://www.albaghdadiyatours.com/IRAQI_MUSEUM.htm>

Americans defend two untouchable ministries from the hordes of looters

Robert Fisk in Baghdad

 

Iraq's scavengers have thieved and destroyed what they have been allowed to loot and burn by the Americans and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows clearly what the US intends to protect. After days of arson and pillage, here's a short but revealing scorecard. US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the museum in the northern city of Mosul, or from looting three hospitals.

The Americans have, though, put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries that remain untouched and untouchable because tanks and armoured personnel carriers and Humvees have been placed inside and outside both institutions. And which ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the Ministry of Interior, of course with its vast wealth of intelligence information on Iraq and the Ministry of Oil. The archives and files of Iraq's most valuable asset its oilfields and, even more important, its massive reserves are safe and sound, sealed off from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared, as Washington almost certainly intends, with American oil companies.

It casts an interesting reflection on America's supposed war aims. Anxious to "liberate" Iraq, it allows its people to destroy the infrastructure of government as well as the private property of Saddam's henchmen. Americans insist that the oil ministry is a vital part of Iraq's inheritance, that the oilfields are to be held in trust "for the Iraqi people". But is the Ministry of Trade relit yesterday by an enterprising arsonist not vital to the future of Iraq? Are the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Irrigation still burning fiercely not of critical importance to the next government? The Americans could spare 2,000 soldiers to protect the Kirkuk oilfields but couldn't even invest 200 to protect the Mosul museum from attack. US engineers were confidently predicting that the Kirkuk oilfield will be capable of pumping again "within weeks".

There was much talk of a "new posture" from the Americans yesterday. Armoured and infantry patrols suddenly appeared on the middle-class streets of the capital, ordering young men hauling fridges, furniture and television sets to deposit their loot on the pavement if they could not prove ownership. It was pitiful. After billions of dollars of government buildings, computers and archives have been destroyed, the Americans are stopping teens driving mule-drawn carts loaded with second-hand chairs.

The Independent, 14 April 2003.

<http://162.42.211.226/article2918.htm>

LA MORT LENTE ET POSTMODERNE

Death By Slow Burn

How America Nukes Its Own Troops

What 'Support Our Troops' Really Means

By Amy Worthington

 

On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: "Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!" That's exactly what George Bush has done. America's mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.

Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a "liberation" gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.

Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute. [1] Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped. [2] The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU. [3] These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them. [4] The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield. [5]

DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.

Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond the war in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II veterans for years as they slowly and painfully succumb to radiation poisoning. U.S and British troops deployed to the area are the walking dead. Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout zone are destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic illness and disability. Kidney dysfunction, lung damage, bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint pain, unsteady gait, memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer and premature death await those exposed to DU.

Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: "As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense against further exposure to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress, caffeine, insect repellent and radiation leftover from the last war. This is a war even the victors will lose." [6]

When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill. [7]

The Royal Society of England published data showing that battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can suffer kidney failure within days. [8] Any soldier now in Iraq who has not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds. [9] Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated debris.

Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of depleted uranium were used against Iraq in 1991. [10] A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome. [11] The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses. [12] To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat in that war. [13]

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert. He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I. He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine. [14] Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings.

In other studies, some sick vets were found to be expressing uranium in even their semen. Their sexual partners often complained of a burning sensation during intercourse, followed by their own debilitating illnesses. [15]

Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured vicious nuclear chastisement for years. [16] U.S. air attacks against Iraq since 1993 have undoubtedly employed nuclear munitions. Pictures of grotesquely deformed Iraqi infants born since 1991 are overwhelming. [17] Like those born to Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq will also be afflicted with hideous deformities, neurological damage and/or blood and respiratory disorders. [18]

As an Army health physicist, Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away." [19]

DU remains "hot" for 4.5 billion years. Radiation expert Dr. Helen Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden winds of DU-contaminated war zones "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time." [20] The murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops during the first few days of the current invasion are sure to have significant health consequences.

Rokke and his clean-up team were issued only flimsy dust masks for their dangerous work. Of the 100 people on Rokke's decontamination team, 30 have already "dropped dead." Rokke himself is ill with radiation damage to lungs and kidneys. He has brain lesions, skin pustules, chronic fatigue, continual wheezing and painful fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that anyone exposed to DU should have adequate respiratory protection and special coveralls to protect their clothing because, he says, you can't get uranium particles off your clothing.

The U.S. military insists that DU on the battlefield is not a problem. Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material Command recently told the BBC that complaints about DU "had no medical basis." [21] The military's own documents belie this. A 1993 Pentagon document warned that "when soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk." [22] A U.S. Army training manual requires anyone who comes within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment to wear respiratory and skin protection. [23] The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admitted: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences." [24] The Institute also stated that, if the troops were to realize what they had been exposed to, "the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive." [25] For pragmatic reasons, DOD chooses to lie and deny.

Dr. Rokke confirms that the Pentagon lies about DU dangers and is criminally negligent for neglecting medical attention needed by DU-contaminated vets. He predicts that the numbers of American troops to be sickened by DU from Gulf War II will be staggering. [26] As they gradually sicken and suffer a slow burn to their graves, the Pentagon will, as it did after Gulf War I, deny that their misery and death is a result of their tour in Iraq.

Dr. Rokke's candor has cost him his career. Likewise, Dr. Durakovic's radiation studies on Gulf War I vets were not popular with U.S. officials. Dr. Durakovic was reportedly told his life was in danger if he continued his research. He left the U.S. to continue his research abroad. [27]

Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely unaware of how deadly their battlefield environment is. Gulf War I troops were kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled DU fragments and some wore these lethal nuggets around their necks. A DU projectile emits more radiation in five hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian radiation exposure standards. "We didn't know any better," Kris Kornkven told Nation magazine. "We didn't find out until long after we were home that there even was such a thing as DU." [28]

George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war. Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical nuclear weapons including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and shells suited to commando warfare in Afghanistan. [29] In late September, 2001, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans. [30]

Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village Voice: "Built ram tough with a heavy metal casing for smashing through the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes with the force of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one, a boosted plutonium firecracker called the primary and a heavy hydrogen secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb fireball." [31]

Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now contaminated by these nuclear weapons. [32] Experts with the Uranium Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population. Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Dead birds still perched in trees are found partially melted with blood oozing from their mouths. [33]

Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's regime is setting a new record for opium production. Both UN and U.S. reports confirm that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer. [34] Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the Bush-Cheney narcotics industry. [35] ABC News asserts that keeping the "peace" in Afghanistan will require decades of allied occupation. [36] For years to come, "peacekeepers" will be eating, drinking and breathing the "hot" carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that nation for organized crime.

As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill Clinton laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for then vice-president George Bush Sr. [37] As a partner in the Bush family's notorious crime machine, President Clinton committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in the Balkans, a prime heroin production and trans-shipment area. DOD's campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for the Bush mafia was yet another nuclear project.

For years, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles, bullets and shells across the Balkans, nuking the peoples of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. As DU munitions were slammed into chemical plants, the environment became hideously toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary. By 1999, UN investigators reported that an estimated 12 tons of DU had caused irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian environment, with agriculture, livestock and air water, and public health all profoundly damaged. [38]

Scientists confirm that citizens of the Balkans are excreting uranium in their urine. [39] In 2001, a Yugoslavian pathologist reported that hundreds of Bosnians have died of cancer from NATO's DU bombardment. [40] Many NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans now suffer ill health. Their leukemias, cancers and other maladies are dubbed the "Balkans Syndrome." Richard Coghill predicts that DU weapons used in Balkans campaign will result in at least 10,000 cases of fatal cancer. [41]

U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for criminal militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous military sites in USA that will require $billions to rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD has been both slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations. [42] The Pentagon is now pressing Congress to exempt it from all environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free from liability. [43]

The Navy uses prime fishing grounds off the coast of Washington state to test fire DU ammunition. In January, Washington State Rep. Jim McDermott chastised the Navy: "On one hand you have required soldiers to have DU safety training and to wear protective gear when handling DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated waters. These policies indicate there is cause for concern....On the other hand the Department of Defense has repeatedly denied that DU poses any danger whatsoever. There has been no remorse about leaving tons of DU equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of your own country." [44]

DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. After the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, one third of the island's population developed serious illness. Many people show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have filed a class action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming DU contamination has caused widespread cancers. [45]

The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is a quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target practice zone for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents report bizarre illnesses, including 17 children who have contracted leukemia within five years. A survey of groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area wells are contaminated with radioactive materials. [46]

The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at three nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where workers handling uranium contaminated with plutonium have suffered for decades with cancers and debilitating maladies similar to Gulf War Syndrome. [47]

Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush asserts that the U.S. has the right to attack any nation it deems a potential threat. He told West Point in 2002, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long." [48] Thus, it is certain that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear wars are lined up like idling jets on a runway. Both Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush family's Carlyle Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so endless war is just good business. [49]

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create special nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's underground nuclear facilities. [50] Next August, U.S. war makers will meet to consolidate plans for a new generation of "mini," "micro" and "tiny" nuclear bombs and bunker busters. These will be added to the U.S. arsenal perhaps for use against non-nuclear third-world nations such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon. [51]

The solution? Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to rule this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains like Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for endless corporate war profits. Saddam was placed in power by the CIA. [52] For years U.S. government agencies, under auspices of George Bush Sr., supplied him with chemical and biological weapons. [53] Our national nuclear laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear program. [54] Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late 90s when its subsidiaries signed $73 million in new contracts to further supply Saddam. [55] The wicked villain of Iraq was nurtured for decades as a cash-cow by U.S. military-industrial piranhas.

If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending them into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs. Time is running out. If the DU-maniacs at the Pentagon and their coven of nuclear arms peddlers are not harnessed, America will have no able-bodied fighting forces left. All people of the earth will become grossly ill, hideously deformed and short- lived. We must succeed in the critical imperative to face reality and act decisively. Should we fail, there will be no place to hide from Bush-Cheney's merciless nuclear orgies yet to come or from the inevitable nuclear retaliation these orgies will surely breed.

 

Endnotes

1."DOD Launches Depleted Uranium Training," Linda Kozaryn, American Forces Press Service, 8-13-99.

2."Nukes of the Gulf War,"John Shirley, [email protected]. See this article in archives at <www.gulfwarvets.com>.

3. BBC News, "US To Use Depleted Uranium," March 18, 2003; U.S. General Accounting Office, Operation Desert Storm: "Early Performance Assessment of Bradley and Abrams," 1-2-92.

4."Nukes of the Gulf War," op. cit.

5. Ibid.

6. "Invading Hiroshima," William Thomas, 2-4-2003, <www.willthomas.net>

7. "US Shells Leave Lethal Legacy," Toronto Star, July 31, 1999; also "Radiation Tests for Peacekeepers in the Balkans Exposed to Depleted Uranium," <www.telegraph.co.uk>, 12-31-02.

8. "Depleted Uranium May Stop Kidneys In Days," Rob Edwards, <New Scientist.com>, 3-12-02; also "Uranium Weapons Too Hot to Handle," Rob Edwards, <New Scientist.co.uk>, 6-9-99.

9. "Navy Seeks Cash for More Tomahawks," David Rennie in Washington, Telegraph Group Limited, 1-4-03, <news.telegraph.co.uk>.

10. "Going Nuclear in Iraq--DU Cancers Mount Daily," Ramzi Kysia, <CounterPunch.org>, 12-31-01.

11."Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01, <www.guardianlimited.co.uk>.

12. "Gulf War Illnesses Affect 300,000 Vets," Ellen Tomson, Pioneer Press, <www.pioneerplanet.com>. See also American Gulf War Veterans Association at <www.gulfwarvets.com>.

13. "2 of Every 5 Gulf War Vets Are On Disability: 209,000 Make VA Claims," World Net Daily, 1-28-03, WorldNetDaily.com.

14. "Research on Sick Gulf Vets Revisited," New York Times, 1-29-01; "Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, The Sunday Times (UK) 9-3-02.

15. "Catastrophe: Ill Gulf Vets Contaminated Partners With DU," The Halifax Herald Limited, Clare Mellor, 2-09-01. This article is available in archives at <www.rense.com>.

16. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02; "US Depleted Uranium Yields Chamber of Horrors in Southern Iraq, Andy Kershaw, The Independent (London) 12-4-01.

17. "The Environmental and Human Health Impacts of the Gulf War Region with Special References to Iraq," Ross Mirkarimi, The Arms Control Research Centre, May 1992. See also Gulf War Syndrome Birth Defects in Iraq at <www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html>.

18. "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm, Has Our Country Abandoned Them?," Life Magazine, November 1995; "Birth Defects Killing Gulf War Babies," Los Angeles Times, 11-14-94; "Depleted Uranium, The Lingering Poison," Alex Kirby, BBC News Online, 6-7-99.

19. "Depleted Uranium, A Killer Disaster," Travis Dunn, Disaster News.net, 12-29-02.

20. San Francisco Chronicle, 10-10-02.

21. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.

22. "Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01.

23. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11-12-02.

24. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.

25. US Army Environmental Policy Institute: Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the U.S. Army, Technical Report, June 1995.

26. "Pentagon Depleted Uranium No Health Risk," Dr. Doug Rokke, 3-15-03; also "The Terrible, Tragic Toll of Depleted Uranium," Address by Dr. Rokke before congressional leaders in Washington, D.C.,12-30-02; also "Gulf War Casualties," Dr. Doug Rokke, <www.traprockpeace.org>. 9-30-02.

27."Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Sunday Times (UK), Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, 9-3-00.

28. "The Pentagon's Radioactive Bullet: An Investigative Report," Bill Mesler, The Nation, 5-28-99, see <www.thenation.com/ issue/961021/1021mesl.htm>.

29. "Tactical Nukes Deployed In Afghanistan," World Net Daily, 10-7-01. 30. Ibid.

31. "The B-61 Bomb,The Burrowing Nuke" George Smith, <VillageVoice.com> 12-29-02.; also "Bunker-busting US Tactical Nuclear Bombs, Nowhere to Hide," Kennedy Grey, <Wired.com>, 10-9-01.

32."Perpetual Death From America," Mohammed Daud Miraki, Afghan-American Interviews, 2-24-03; also "Dying of Thirst," Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 11-17-2001.

33. Ibid.

34. "Afghanistan Displaces Myanmar as Top Heroin Producer," Agence France-Presse, 3-01-03. This article is at <www.copvcia.com>.;also "Opium Trade Flourishing In the 'New Afghanistan,'" Reuters, 3-3-03.

35. "The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire," Michael C. Ruppert, Nexus Magazine, February-March 2000; The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill & Co., revised edition due May 2003; Drugging of America, Rodney Stich, Diablo Western Press, 1999; "Blood for Oil, Drugs for Arms," Bob Djurdjevic, Truth In Media, April 2000, <www.truthinmedia.org>. 36. ABC News, February 27, 2003.

37. Compromised, Clinton Bush and the CIA, Terry Reed and John Cummings, S.P.I. Books, 1994; The Clinton Chronicles and The Mena Cover-up, Citizens for Honest Government, 1996; "The Crimes of Mena, Grey Money," Ozark Gazette, 1995 (see <www.copvcia.com>.)

38. "Damage to Yugoslav Environment is Immense, Says a UN Report," Bob Djurdjevic, 7-4-99, <truthinmedia.org>. This report was submitted to the UN Security Council on June 9, 1999; also, "New Depleted Uranium Study Shows Clear Damage," BBC News,8-28-99; also "NATO Issued Warning About Toxic Ammo," Associated Press, 01-08-01.

39. <CounterPunch.org>, 12-28-01.

40. "Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing--Doctor," Reuters, 1-13-01.

41."Depleted Uranium Threatens Balkan Cancer Epidemic," BBC News, 7-30-99.

42. "Many Defense Sites Still Hazardous," Associated Press, 9-24-02; also Old US Weapons Called Hidden Danger, Los Angeles Times, 11-25-02.

43. "Pentagon Seeks Freedom to Pollute Land, Air and Sea," Andrew Gumbel in L.A., 3-13-03, Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

44. "Radioactive DU Ammo Is Tested in Fish Areas," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1-11-03; Letter from Rep. McDermott to Department of the Navy: see "Navy Fired DU Rounds Into Waters Off Coast of Washington," 1-20-03, <www.rense.com>.

45."Cancer Rates Soar From US Military Use of DU On `Enchanted Island,'" <www.telegraph.co.uk>, 2-5-01; also "Navy Shells With Depleted Uranium Fired in Puerto Rico," Fox News Online, 5-28-99.

46. "The Fallon, NV Cancer Cluster And a US Navy Bombing," Jeffrey St. Clair, <CounterPunch.org>, 8-10-02.

47. "DU Shells Are Made of A Potentially Lethal Cocktail of Nuclear Waste," Jonathon Carr-Brown, <www.sunday-times.co.uk>, 1-22-01.

48. "Preventative War Sets Perilous Precedent," Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers, 3-20-03.

49. PIGS at the Trough, Arriana Huffington, Random House, 2003 (New York Times best seller.); also "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy, From Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership With Killers of Americans;" Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness,10-10-01; also "Bush Sr.'s Carlyle Group Gets Fat on War and Conflict," Jamie Doward, The Observer (UK), 3-25-03; also "Halliburton Wins Contract for Iraq Oil Firefighting, Reuters, 3-7-03; also "Cashing In-Fortunes in Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War, Andrew Gumbel, The Independent (London) 9-15-02; also "War Could Be Big Business for Halliburton," Reuters, 3-23-03.

50. "Pentagon Seeks a Nuclear Digger," Washington Post, March 10, 2003.

51. "Remember: Bush Planed Iraq War Before Taking Office," Neil Mackay, The Sunday Herald (UK) 3-27-03; also "US Mini-Nukes Alarm Scientists," The Guardian (UK) 4-18-01; also "US Nuclear First-Strike Plan--It Keeps Getting Scarier, Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, 2-24-03.

52. Wall Street Journal, 8-16-90: The CIA supported the Baath Party and installed Hussein as Iraqi dictator in 1968.

53. "United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of Persian Gulf War Veterans," Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 1992, 1994; "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup," Washington Post, 12-30-02.

54. "US Government, 24 US Corps Illegally Helped Iraq Build Its WMD," Hugh Williamson in Berlin, Financial Times, 12-19-02; "Full List of US Weapons Suppliers To Iraq," Anu de Monterice, <[email protected]>, 12-19-02.

55. Huffington, op. cit.

 

Amy Worthington is a reporter for The Idaho Observer <[email protected]>

The Idaho Observer, 4-16-3 <http://www.rense.com>

A comparer avec: Arab News Opinion 14 April 2003

Baghdad Battered by US Gas Bombs

Hassan Tahsin

 

The United States and Britain alleged that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. Thus disarmament became the initial justification for a military attack on Iraq. After more than 15 days of war, Brigadier Vincent Brooks, a military field commander, stated at a press conference in Qatar: "Until today, the American forces have not found any banned weapon of mass destruction in Iraq ..."

If Washington and London are honest in the justifications they have presented for launching war, then it is neither possible nor acceptable that Baghdad and a number of other Iraqi cities should be shelled with chemical bombs.

Yes, that is the truth; Baghdad has been battered with chemical bombs and bombs carrying highly combustible depleted uranium. The website <www.bbcarabic.com> presents a detailed account of the type of weapons and ammunition used in the current war.

Aside from these munitions, advanced cluster bombs carrying ethylene gas have also been used. They are called MOABs, or massive ordnance airburst bombs, and they are essentially chemical bombs.

These ethylene bombs work by taking advantage of the effect of exploding fuel in the air. When a mix of fuel and air ignites, it creates a fireball and a wave of explosions that spread quickly over a much greater area than traditional explosives. The after-effects of the explosion are very similar to those of small nuclear bombs but without the radiation.

The American cluster bombs carry ethylene gas, of the kind used in the Second Gulf War, in three barrels, each of which weighs 100 pounds. Each barrel contains 75 pounds of ethylene oxide, whose industrial usage is the production of other chemical compounds such glycol ethylene and other highly poisonous compounds.

As for the way in which these bombs work, a fuse ignites the barrel at a height of 30 feet which breaks and opens the barrel, and the fuel is expelled dispersing in the air to create a cloud with a 60-feet radius and 8-feet depth.

The airburst spreads to areas that are difficult to attack with more traditional bombs. The cloud is poisonous in itself, and exposure to ethylene oxide leads to lung decay, headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and shortness of breath and even cancer and birth defects. The gas is highly combustible and reactive.

After this, the main charge ignites the mix leading to an explosion that spreads at speeds of 3 km a second -- faster than the speed of sound, and the mix of fuel and air burns at 2,700 degrees Celsius. It is possible to increase the effect by using additional warheads. Traditional explosives such as TNT pack greater explosive power, but the MOAB explodes over a longer period of time and is more destructive, especially in enclosed spaces.

The degree of pressure created by the airburst is twice that of traditional bombs, where the air pressure would only rise to just above 1kg per sq. cm. With the MOAB, the air pressure goes up to 30kg per sq. cm.

The danger doesn't end there. The explosive mix of fuel and air traveling at speeds exceeding the speed of sound leave behind a vacuum that sucks all air and other materials, creating a mushroom cloud. These explosions cause cerebral concussion or blindness, blockage of air passageways and collapse of lungs, tearing of eardrums, massive internal bleeding and displacement and tearing of internal organs, and injuries from flying objects. These are aside from the injuries mentioned above which result from inhalation of this poisonous ethylene oxide cloud.

It is for these reasons that human rights organizations consider these MOABs to be weapons of mass destruction. They don,t differentiate between civilian and military targets and their use in populated areas contravenes international agreements relating to war. MOABs are deemed to be internationally outlawed.

So does the use of this internationally banned weapon conform to the shining principles declared by the Anglo-American leadership in order to justify the brutal invasion of Iraq?

Will anyone answer?

 

Arab News Opinion 14 April 2003

<http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25194>

LES TUEURS SONT LÂCHÉS

Israeli Commandoes In Iraq To Assassinate 500 Scientists

 

Jerusalem, April 18 (IOl & News Agencies) -- Some 150 Israeli commandoes are currently inside Iraq on a mission to assassinate 500 Iraqi scientists, a retired French general told the French TV Channel 5 on Friday, April 18. He asserted that Israel was seeking to liquidate 500 Iraqi armament scientists who were involved in the country's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, reported the Israeli Maariv newspaper which carried the news.

The French general, who was not identified, said the scientists hunted by Israel are the same ones who were listed by U.N. weapons inspectors for interviews during their mandate in Iraq which was terminated two days before the unleashing of the U.S.-led war on March 20. The Israeli commandoes might be operating within the ranks of the American Marines now occupying Iraq, said the French general, without elaborating on how they managed to sneak into the war-ravaged country.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, spokesman of the U.S. Central Command war headquarters in As-Sayliya, Qatar, had repeatedly said the U.S.-led war was seeking, beside toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to eliminate the country's capabilities in developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

Appealing to the world community to protect them from the U.S. aggression aimed at obliterating Iraq's minds, a number of Iraqi scientists and university professors had sent an SOS e-mail complaining American occupation forces were threatening their lives.

In their e-mail, a copy of which was sent to IslamOnlin.net Friday, April 11, they asserted that occupation troops demanded them, particularly physicists, chemists and mathematicians, to hand over all documents and researches in their possession.

American forces had, in this respect, gate-crashed the house of Iraqi scientist Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, dubbed "Mrs Anthrax" by the Americans.

Mrs. Ammash's picture and name were listed by the U.S. Central Command as one of 55 "most-wanted" Iraqis.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3006.htm>

Les médias israéliens envahissent l'Irak !

 

lundi 14 avril 2003 20h 40, heure de Jérusalem -- Metula News Agency

Surprise au journal de 20 heures de la deuxième chaîne de télévision (privée) en Israël. Le journal se déroule en duplex avec le reporter Ron Ben Ishaï, depuis l'hôtel Palestine à Bagdad. Ben Ishaï a rejoint la capitale irakienne par le Nord, au volant de son propre véhicule, dans lequel un caméraman israélien l'accompagne.

En chemin, le journaliste de le 2ème chaîne, qui n'est en aucune façon intégré aux forces américaines, a pénétré dans la ville de Tikrit, qui n'est pas encore entièrement sous les contrôle des forces alliées. A Tikrit, il s'est abondamment entretenu avec les habitants, puis il a poussé en direction du village natal de Saddam Hussein, Odja. Odja, situé au sud de Tikrit, n'est pas encore investie par les Marines, qui se contentent, pour le moment, de l'encercler.

Autre correspondant de la même chaîne, Itaï Engel, s'est mêlé, avec son caméraman, aux foules d'Irakiens chiites en colère. Engel a déjà envoyé des images dramatiques, montrant des milices auto constituées, en train d'arrêter des pillards. Sur ce reportage, on voit les miliciens en train de lier les mains dans le dos des émeutiers et de les aligner contre un mur afin de les passer par les armes. Et les pillards, d'embrasser les pieds des miliciens pour implorer leur grâce.

Selon Engel, la présence de sa caméra a empêché l'exécution capitale de s'accomplir. Le journaliste, de préciser que les exécutions de pillards, sans autre forme de jugement, se multiplient cependant dans les villes de Babylonie. Autre reportage du même reporter, celui où l'on voit une immense manifestation de Chiites, brandissant des portraits de l'ayatollah Khomeiny et criant des slogans hostiles à la présence des Américains, des infidèles, sur leur sol. En marge de la manifestation, des pancartes en anglais, déclarant que les militaires US se préoccupent plus du pétrole irakien, que de la protection des habitants et de leurs propriétés.

Nul doute que la Chutzpa des équipes de reporters israéliens en Irak a déjà fourni des images hors normes de la situation prévalant dans la rue irakienne. A en croire leurs images, les alliés vont au devant de problèmes majeurs avec la majorité chiite, à moins que ce ne soit avec la présence très indépendante des journalistes de l'Etat hébreu. A la Ména, nous attendons beaucoup des reportages à venir en provenance de ces équipes et notamment des contacts multiples qu'ils lient avec la population et les leaders locaux. En tous cas, l'apparition de ces journalistes, en direct sur nos écrans, devant l'hôtel Palestine, revêt pour les téléspectateurs israéliens un aspect surnaturel, tant ils avaient pris l'habitude de considérer le territoire irakien comme un endroit absolument inaccessible, sommet d'hostilité à leur égard.

CRIMES DE GUERRE IMPUNISSABLES

Coalition in the dock

There is a strong war crimes case against US and British leaders, but big powers have immunity

 

Richard Overy

 

War crimes are always perpetrated by the loser in war. Though both sides may commit crimes, the victors have always been able to turn might into right, ignoring their own violations and penalising their enemy. At Nuremberg in 1945, the western states knew that their bombing of German cities could pose awkward questions and they quietly dropped their charges against the Luftwaffe; the democracies sat side-by-side with the Soviet Union, which many people argued at the time could itself be regarded as guilty on several of the same counts for which German leaders were indicted.

Should Saddam Hussein be caught alive, he will be made to account for years of crimes against humanity, if he is not murdered first by trigger-happy US forces. Western consciences will have no problems about arraigning Saddam and his henchmen. They will be expected to pay the way Hitler and his gang were expected to pay in 1945, though it is worth remembering that until a trial was finally agreed on in May 1945, Churchill preferred the idea that Nazi leaders should be shot on the spot once they were captured. Saddam might join Milosevic at the Hague, as a warning to tyrants worldwide that a grim justice awaits them.

But this time the situation is different. The legal position is anything but clear-cut. A good deal of informed opinion worldwide regards the Anglo-American invasion and conquest of Iraq as an illegal act of aggression, in the course of which it is coalition forces that have perpetrated numerous war crimes while pulverising Iraqi resistance. The Nuremberg precedent might be invoked to argue that committing crimes in order to overcome tyranny is legally permissible, but there is an awkward contrast with the treatment of German war crime in 1945: now it is the US and Britain that many believe have waged a war of aggression.

It is not difficult to imagine how the case for the prosecution against the coalition might be constructed. An indictment would have three main elements. In the first place, Britain and the US have waged an illegal war, without the sanction of a UN resolution (in itself of dubious legality when it comes to a war launched in violation of the UN charter and fought on this scale). Any argument that Saddam's failure to disarm fast enough justified the invasion of his state, the destruction of Iraq's major cities and the killing of thousands of Iraqis fails on the legal concept of proportionality. In British law, a householder may not cut an intruder to shreds with an axe on suspicion of burglary; if he does so, he becomes the object of prosecution. The suspected -- but as yet unproven -- violations of disarmament resolutions should not justify in international law the massive destruction and dislocation of the entire Iraqi state.

Ironically, the one instrument the Allies could find in 1945 to explain that Hitler's wars were illegal was the Kellogg-Briand pact, signed in Paris in 1928 at the behest of the then American secretary of state. The pact had outlawed war as an instrument of policy for all the signatory powers, including Britain and the US, but its precise status in international law was open to dispute. At Nuremberg, the American chief prosecutor, Justice Jackson, insisted on using it as the foundation for the whole case against Hitler. It could still be the foundation of the case against British and American belligerence.

The second and third elements of any prosecution derive not only from the initial presumption that the coalition has waged an illegal war. As at Nuremberg, the subsequent killing of civilians and mistreatment of prisoners in a war of aggression also constitute war crimes in their own right. No legal niceties are needed to see that the American and British killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians could be approached in this way. The mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war dwarfs the brief appearance of US servicemen on Iraqi television. Pictures of stripped and bound prisoners have already been released. The camps constructed early in the campaign were closed to the Red Cross in defiance of the Geneva convention. If prisoners are subsequently taken to the US and subjected to the same treatment as the Afghan soldiers held at Guantanamo Bay, this too would be a violation of international law.

The sad truth is that prosecution has always been a function of power. No one seriously believes that Bush and Blair will be indicted. International law works only against weaker states. Big powers have an unmerited, but unassailable, immunity. Even if anyone were brave or rash enough to try to indict coalition leaders, the US has refused to ratify the statute establishing the international criminal court, which came into force on July 2 2002.

The court has been set up to deal with gross violations of international law and human rights. Technically it can prosecute state nationals from states that have not subscribed to the statute. But the view has been widely held that the US refused to join because it wanted to be able to dish out its own justice. The American declaration that it intends to take prisoners back to the US for trial opens up the prospect that there will be one law for the criminal court, if Britain were ever to be indicted, and one for America. The absence of a commonly agreed jurisdiction could invalidate the whole enterprise and confirm the fact already evident that political power, not justice, will determine the future.

The operation of double standards has been evident throughout the campaign. What the coalition does with impunity is hailed as a war crime when it is committed by Iraqis. The image of crude American gun law, evident in the efforts to kill Saddam, has been justified by American international lawyers. In the unlikely eventuality that either Bush or Blair are blown up or shot, there would be outrage. Yet, on any reckoning, it should be entirely legal, if it is legal to murder Saddam. The coalition cannot have it both ways.

There is no prospect that Bush and Blair will be sharing a cell with Saddam at the Hague. The death and destruction meted out in their name will have to lodge instead in their consciences. For the rest of the world, the prospect is an unattractive one. The appearance of lawlessness, promoted by those very states which should be among the first to demonstrate their commitment to international standards, will provoke further lawlessness, first in Iraq, then perhaps throughout the Middle East.

In international affairs, lawless behaviour is unaccountable, which is why at Nuremberg efforts were made to find some measure by which such things could be brought to account. There is now no means through which the international community can restrain American power, nor its pale British shadow. The last three weeks of coalition violence have destroyed 60 years of patient international collaboration to build a sound framework for the conduct of affairs between states. Justice Jackson must be turning in his grave.

Richard Overy is the author of Interrogations: Inside the Mind of the Nazi Elite and Russia's War, both published by Penguin

The Guardian (UK) Tuesday April 15, 2003

<[email protected]>. Repris par The RAIN Newsletter, 17 avril, Durban, <[email protected]>

SADDAM, LEUR COPAIN

Comment Israël a failli s'acoquiner avec l'Irak

par le journaliste israélien Dan Shilon

 

L'Irak est aujourd'hui l'un des plus grands ennemis d'Israël. Malgré l'absence de frontière commune, l'Irak a tiré des missiles sur le Goush Dan [agglomération de Tel-Aviv] en 1991, finance le terrorisme palestinien actuel et représente encore et toujours une menace biologique et chimique qui ne cesse de préoccuper les militaires israéliens.

Pourtant, il apparaît aujourd'hui qu'il n'en fut pas toujours ainsi et que le maître de Bagdad a une face cachée. Saddam Hussein fut jadis prêt à normaliser ses rapports avec Israël et s'engagea à ne pas attaquer Israël en cas de frappes américaines, en échange de l'établissement de rapports commerciaux israélo-irakiens, essentiellement pétroliers, et de l'engagement du lobby juif à sensibiliser Washington à l'idée d'une normalisation de ses liens avec Bagdad. Avant et après la guerre du Golfe, des émissaires irakiens et israéliens de haut rang se sont rencontrés et ont failli concrétiser l'initiative du président égyptien, Hosni Moubarak, d'organiser une rencontre trilatérale entre Saddam Hussein, Hosni Moubarak et Moshe Shahal, alors membre éminent du gouvernement [travailliste] d'Yitzhak Rabin. Cette initiative ne vit finalement jamais le jour, à cause de la méfiance et du scepticisme des autorités israéliennes, mais surtout à cause de l'opposition farouche de l'administration américaine.

Les premiers contacts irako-israéliens débutèrent à la fin des années 80, alors que la guerre Iran-Irak faisait encore rage. Yitzhak Shamir était alors à la tête du premier gouvernement d'union nationale [Likoud et Parti travailliste], gouvernement dont le ministre de l'Energie était Moshe Shahal, un juif irakien qui allait jouer grâce à Saddam Hussein un rôle clé dans la tentative de normalisation irako-israélienne. A l'été 1987, Gil Gleiser, personnage influent et haut placé dans les administrations américaines de Ronald Reagan et de George Bush père, transmit à Moshe Shahal une demande de rencontre de la part de l'ambassadeur d'Irak à Washington, Nizzar Hamdoun.

A l'époque, l'Irak bénéficiait d'une image favorable aux Etats-Unis, face à un Iran considéré comme l'ennemi du monde libre et le responsable de la guerre Iran-Irak, tandis que les diplomates irakiens comptaient sur l'influence du lobby juif à Washington. Lors d'une rencontre, Gleiser et Hamdoun avaient abordé le conflit israélo-arabe. Hamdoun avait surpris Gleiser par sa position conciliatrice envers Israël: "L'Irak n'a pas de visées contre Israël. Nous n'avons ni frontières communes ni revendications territoriales." Sollicité par Gleiser, Hamdoun revint quelques semaines plus tard avec une proposition de Saddam Hussein de nouer des contacts directs et officiels avec des représentants israéliens, au premier rang desquels un Moshe Shahal considéré favorablement par le maître de Bagdad.

Informé par Gleiser, Shahal accepta immédiatement l'idée, mais sous réserve d'un feu vert du Premier ministre israélien. A la grande surprise de Moshe Shahal, Yitzhak Shamir se montra enchanté par cette initiative et autorisa son ministre de l'Energie à rencontrer l'ambassadeur Hamdoun aux Etats-Unis. Quelques jours avant la rencontre, Hamdoun demanda à Gleiser qu'Israël approuve publiquement la position irakienne selon laquelle le conflit irako-iranien devait trouver une issue négociée et pacifique. En contrepartie, l'Irak déclarerait publiquement n'avoir ni contentieux frontalier avec Israël, ni revendication territoriale, et soutenir toute solution au conflit israélo-palestinien qui serait négociée et acceptée par les Palestiniens eux-mêmes.

Informé de cette demande, le Premier ministre Shamir chargea son ministre de la Défense d'alors, le travailliste Yitzhak Rabin, de prononcer une déclaration publique en ce sens. La déclaration de Rabin fit l'effet d'une bombe en Israël et à l'étranger. A l'époque, peu de gens savaient toutefois que cette déclaration était la première étape d'un lent processus de normalisation complète des rapports entre l'Irak et Israël. Lors d'une conférence organisée par l'institut Van Leer et à laquelle participait Moshe Shahal, ce dernier enfonça le clou planté par Rabin en annonçant à une assistance médusée qu'Israël était prêt à rouvrir l'oléoduc Kirkouk-Haïfa, hors service depuis la création de l'Etat hébreu, en 1948.

En août 1987, Tarek Aziz, alors ministre des Affaires étrangères irakien et en visite officielle à Paris, confirma à ses hôtes français que l'Irak n'avait aucun litige territorial avec Israël et que tout accord accepté par les dirigeants palestiniens bénéficierait du soutien irakien. Quelques jours plus tard eut lieu la première rencontre entre le ministre israélien Moshe Shahal et l'ambassadeur irakien Nizzar Hamdoun, une rencontre que les témoins qualifient aujourd'hui de cordiale et durant laquelle furent renouvelées les déclarations publiques de Rabin, d'Aziz et de Shahal. Hamdoun surprit Shahal en lui proposant la conclusion d'un traité de paix israélo-irakien et l'établissement de relations commerciales. Moshe Shahal en fit immédiatement rapport à Yitzhak Shamir et fut autorisé à poursuivre les contacts.

A ce moment, la guerre Iran-Irak connaissait un tournant. Après plusieurs mois de supériorité aérienne d'un Iran qui avait frappé la capitale irakienne à plusieurs reprises, l'Irak parvint à reprendre le dessus sur le champ de bataille, entre autres en récupérant la presqu'île de Fao grâce à l'utilisation d'armes chimiques. Auparavant, la révélation du scandale de l'Irangate avait failli aggraver la dégradation de l'état des relations entre Israël, les pays arabes amis et les Etats-Unis. Lors d'une mission de conciliation israélo-égyptienne dont Moshe Shahal avait été chargée par le ministre des Affaires étrangères, le président Moubarak fit une offre étonnante à son hôte israélien. "Voici quelques semaines, Tarek Aziz était au Caire. Je l'ai supplié de convaincre Saddam Hussein de changer d'attitude envers Israël. Je lui ai annoncé que j'étais prêt à venir à la conférence islamique organisée à Bagdad, en compagnie du ministre Moshe Shahal, né et élevé en Irak. Monsieur Shahal, seriez-vous d'accord de participer avec moi à cette rencontre historique ?"

L'offre de Moubarak se heurta au scepticisme de Shahal, lequel n'y accorda pas d'importance particulière et n'en informa ni Shamir ni Pérès. Un an et demi plus tard, Oussama Elbaz, conseiller de Moubarak, expliqua à Shahal que l'offre du président égyptien était sérieuse et que les signaux en provenance d'Irak confirmaient que Saddam Hussein serait enthousiasmé par une rencontre trilatérale organisée à Bagdad. Quelques années plus tard, alors que Shahal était reçu par le secrétaire d'Etat américain Warren Christopher, ce dernier lui déclara: "Les Américains savaient que vous aviez reçu une invitation de l'Irak. Nous savions que vous rêviez de revoir votre maison à Bagdad. Mais nous avons tout fait pour vous priver de ce plaisir..." Aujourd'hui, Shahal reconnaît s'être trompé en accueillant par des haussements d'épaules l'initiative de Moubarak. "La rencontre de Bagdad aurait pu changer le cours de l'histoire du Moyen-Orient."

En 1988, Israël était en campagne électorale et les contacts irako-israéliens furent gelés jusqu'à ce que Yitzhak Shamir prenne la tête d'un nouveau gouvernement d'union nationale. Entre-temps, Nizzar Hamdoun grimpa dans la hiérarchie irakienne et revint à Bagdad pour occuper le poste de vice-ministre des Affaires étrangères. Les contacts reprirent sous la direction de Judith Melroy, juive américaine professeur de sciences politiques et spécialiste du Moyen-orient qui avait déjà participé aux premières rencontres. Melroy confirma aux Israéliens la volonté de l'Irak d'établir une normalisation totale de ses relations avec Israël. Elle promit même à Moshe Shahal de lui rapporter des photos de sa maison familiale, laquelle abrite aujourd'hui l'ambassade de France à Bagdad. Enthousiaste, elle partit alors pour Le Caire, d'où elle s'envola pour la capitale irakienne. Elle en revint pourtant d'humeur très sombre. Elle refuse toujours de livrer des détails, mais critique durement Saddam Hussein pour sa méconnaissance de l'Occident. Ce fut la première inflexion dans les contacts entre l'Irak et Israël.

En janvier 1991, des SCUD tombaient sur le Goush Dan et la guerre du Golfe était à son apogée. L'Egypte, un chaînon essentiel dans la coalition occidentale anti-irakienne, s'était sentie flouée par l'hypocrisie irakienne et accusait l'Irak d'avoir trahi les intérêts palestiniens. Moubarak se fit un plaisir de révéler à ses collègues arabes l'existence de contacts secrets entre l'Irak et Israël avant la guerre du Golfe et la disposition de Saddam Hussein à signer un accord de paix avant même qu'une solution n'ait été trouvée au problème palestinien. La guerre du Golfe se termina par un sentiment d'échec chez les Occidentaux. Saddam Hussein avait restauré son pouvoir et narguait la communauté internationale, tandis que l'embargo qui pèse sur son régime n'a en rien changé son attitude. En 1992, après l'élection d'Yitzhak Rabin à la tête d'un nouveau gouvernement, Saddam Hussein prit par surprise Israël et les Etats-Unis en lançant une nouvelle initiative de paix. Désireux d'ouvrir une nouvelle page dans les relations avec l'Occident, l'Irak tentait à nouveau de prendre langue avec Israël dans l'espoir de briser le boycott économique qui lui était imposé depuis la guerre du Golfe.

Des émissaires irakiens firent savoir à Israël que leur gouvernement envisageait de lui vendre du pétrole bon marché et s'engagèrent au nom de Saddam Hussein à ne pas s'en prendre à Israël en cas de nouvelle intervention américaine contre l'Irak. Ces émissaires comptaient également sur des personnalités israéliennes pour influer sur l'opinion américaine et persuader le nouveau président des Etats-Unis, Bill Clinton, d'absoudre l'Irak et de renouer des relations commerciales. Informé de ces initiatives, le Premier ministre Rabin autorisa la reprise de contacts entre représentants irakiens et israéliens, estimant que cela ouvrait une large fenêtre d'occasions favorables pour Israël et tout le Moyen-Orient. Mais, comme à son habitude, Rabin n'en considéra pas moins l'initiative irakienne avec circonspection et demanda un accord préalable des Etats-Unis à toute nouvelle avancée.

Saddam Hussein chargea son demi-frère Barzan al-Takriti de superviser les contacts avec Israël. Responsable des renseignements irakiens, Al Takriti avait longtemps représenté l'Irak dans les différentes institutions des Nations unies à Genève et était par ailleurs chargé de veiller aux intérêts financiers de Saddam Hussein. Les relations entre les deux beaux-frères ont toujours eu des hauts et des bas, mais, dans l'affaire des contacts secrets avec Israël, Al Takriti fut l'homme de confiance de Saddam Hussein. Leurs relations allaient s'assombrir après que Saddam Hussein eût ordonné l'assassinat du frère de Barzan al-Takriti, général de l'armée irakienne. Depuis lors, il vit dans une véritable forteresse à Genève et n'ose plus mettre les pieds en Irak, de peur de connaître le même sort que son frère.

L'interlocuteur israélien privilégié de Barzan al-Takriti était alors et à nouveau Moshe Shahal. Saddam Hussein le considérait non seulement comme quelqu'un de fiable et fin connaisseur de la mentalité irakienne, mais surtout comme l'un des membres les plus influents au sein du gouvernement Rabin en tant que titulaire de trois portefeuilles ministériels: l'Energie, la Police et les Communications. En septembre 1992, le milliardaire saoudien Adnan Khashoggi téléphona à Shahal pour le convier à un rendez-vous avec Barzan al-Takriti. L'idée était de discuter de la fourniture de pétrole irakien à Israël, et ce à un prix inférieur aux cours en vigueur sur le marché international. Shahal promit de défendre cette proposition devant son gouvernement. Il était convaincu que cette offre dépassait de loin le simple arrangement pétrolier et demanda l'accord de Rabin. Surpris par cette nouvelle initiative irakienne, Rabin décida d'en informer le président Clinton lors de sa première visite officielle à Washington en tant que Premier ministre d'Israël. Rabin et Shahal estimaient que, en informant Clinton avant tout nouveau développement, le président américain changerait d'avis et prendrait toute la mesure de l'établissement de relations diplomatiques entre l'Irak et Israël. Mais Yitzhak Rabin revint bredouille de Washington. Bill Clinton s'opposait farouchement à toute forme de relations irako-israéliennes.

En juin 1993, une rencontre fructueuse entre Barzan al-Takriti, le Saoudien Khashoggi et l'homme d'affaires israélien [un marchand d'armes ] Yaakov Nimrodi se heurta à nouveau au veto de Bill Clinton. En 1994, de nouvelles tentatives de rapprochement eurent lieu à Chypre, dans les coulisses d'une conférence sur le pétrole, entre le directeur du ministère de l'Energie israélien, Amos Ron, et son homologue irakien. Mais elles se heurtèrent elles aussi à l'opposition des Etats-Unis à toute forme de relation entre Israël et le régime irakien. En janvier 1995, un juif londonien d'origine irakienne organisa une rencontre entre Moshe Shahal et un émissaire irakien qui s'avéra tout connaître de son interlocuteur israélien, y compris son arbre généalogique... A la suite de cet entretien, l'émissaire irakien invita à nouveau Shahal à rencontrer Barzan al-Takriti à Genève ou à Paris. Ce dernier était d'autant plus confiant dans l'avenir que, en signant les accords d'Oslo, Israël semblait s'engager sur la voie d'un accord de paix complète avec les Palestiniens. Al Takriti réitéra les propos conciliants que Tarek Aziz avait tenus avant la guerre du Golfe et répéta que, même en cas d'attaque américaine, l'Irak ne s'en prendrait pas à Israël, tandis qu'il proposait toujours de vendre à bas prix du pétrole à Israël.

Shahal espérait que, cette fois, Rabin irait de l'avant et ne gâcherait pas une telle occasion, en dépit de l'opposition américaine. Mais Rabin refusait toujours de s'engager sans l'aval de Washington. "Notre relation avec les Etats-Unis est bien plus importante que l'ouverture d'un canal de discussion avec l'Irak." Quelques jours plus tard, l'ambassadeur des Etats-Unis à Tel-Aviv remettait à Rabin la réaction officielle du président Clinton, une réaction si violente que le Premier ministre décida d'accepter le diktat américain.

En juin 1998, Moshe Shahal, désormais dans l'opposition, abandonna son siège de député travailliste et réintégra son cabinet d'avocat. Tawfik al-Masri, un Palestinien issu d'une importante famille de Naplouse, transmit à Shahal une invitation à rencontrer à Amman un représentant irakien afin de discuter à nouveau de livraisons pétrolières en échange d'une aide israélienne. Shahal expliqua à l'intermédiaire palestinien qu'il n'exerçait plus de fonctions ministérielles et qu'il ne pouvait donc s'engager au nom du gouvernement israélien. Shahal et son interlocuteur convinrent toutefois de se rencontrer à titre privé sur le pont Allenby, sur la frontière israélo-jordanienne. Mais l'intervention du ministère de la Défense israélien força Shahal à annuler la rencontre.

"A posteriori", explique aujourd'hui Moshe Shahal, "les Etats-Unis ont commis une grave erreur en fermant la porte à tout rapprochement avec l'Irak. Si les Américains avaient répondu à l'initiative irakienne, ils auraient été en mesure de dicter des conditions draconiennes à l'Irak et Saddam Hussein n'aurait eu d'autre choix que de les respecter. La fin de non-recevoir avancée par Clinton fut une faute historique et une preuve d'imbécillité, rien d'autre. Les Etats-Unis n'ont jamais rien compris au monde arabe et c'est encore le cas aujourd'hui. Pour moi, il ne fait aucun doute que Saddam Hussein n'avait aucune difficulté à s'adapter à une nouvelle donne diplomatique et à passer d'une politique anti-israélienne et soi-disant propalestinienne à une politique de rapprochement avec Israël et les Etats-Unis, si cela lui permettait de se sauver, lui et son régime. Si les Etats-Unis le mettent aujourd'hui dos au mur, le régime irakien consacrera autant d'énergie et de détermination à frapper impitoyablement Israël qu'il n'en avait jadis consacré pour conclure un traité de paix avec nous. Hélas, nous nous sommes privés d'une occasion en or de sonder les véritables intentions de Saddam Hussein. Les Etats-Unis, Israël et les pays occidentaux portent une lourde responsabilité dans cet immense gâchis."

Dan Shilon

Traduit de l'hébreu, paru dans Ma'ariv, Courrier International, 27/02/2003, numéro 643.

<http://www.courrierinternational.com/numeros/643/064302101.asp?TYPE=archives>

C'est la version israélienne, sans aucune garantie. Marcel Péju l'a entérinée dans Jeune Afrique, mais malgré l'estime dans laquelle nous tenons Marcel Péju, il manque des preuves à ce récit, un peu trop complaisant pour les pirates sionistes.

DERRIÈRE LES ÉCRANS DE FUMÉE

Deception On Iraq from the White House and US Media

 

Sam Hamod

 

By now it must be evident that there has been a lot of nonsense in the reporting from Iraq, especially by the "imbedded reporters" because they have basically shown us a "bloodless war." Anyone who has been in battle, and I have been in two wars, knows that there is blood everywhere and that the noise is overwhelming and endless. Somehow, we saw wounded soldiers only, with bandages, no blood, and no footage of civilians without limbs who lay their bleeding with no medical help! We kept hearing how we'd "get a front seat for the truth about the war." Instead, we got a sham of reality, a sanitized version of war from these network people.

Fortunately, we had BBC, Al Jazeera, Al Minar TV and Robert Fisk of the Independent and others who brought the truth home to us; if we'd had to rely upon CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS and FAUX (FOX), we would have seen this as a war with almost no civilian casualties, few real Iraqi soldiers slaughtered and burned to death in their pre-1991 vintage tanks and we would have never gotten the truth that, up to today, there is no real water supply into Basra and Um Kassar, nor in Baghdad.

Americans were also lied to about the deaths and injuries to our own innocent troops. If you noticed, most of the dead were either Black or Latino, all the officers except for the window-dressing, Gen. Vincent Brooks, were white. From black soldiers who have written to their parents, it also appears that most of the seriously wounded were Blacks and Latinos, though there were also some whites, but usually poor southerners or West Virginians or poor Texans who were killed or maimed. None of this came out from the major US networks, but it did come out from some others sources. As to Brooks, as one African American veteran put it, "Have you noticed that it was always white officers at first, but when things started going bad and we saw many of those captured or wounded were Blacks or Latinos, they put Uncle Tom Vincent Brooks on the tube everyday -- just the way they put Uncle Tom Colin Powell on TV at the UN -- as if there were a lot of Black officers of high rank and as if there were other Blacks in Bush's cabinet. Hell, we know better."

Finally, today, CNN took the cake, along with the other major American TV networks by shortchanging the number of demonstrators against the US in the streets of Baghdad. CNN reported only hundreds and downplayed it; the BBC, Al Jazeera, Al Minar, French, German and Chinese stations reported many, many thousands in the streets demanding, loudly, "'Americans go home," "Fuck you, America," "Get out of our faces." and other epithets and slogans. The anger was clear and growing. But, our media keeps downplaying the anger and anti-American feeling in the major cities; it is also growing more bitter in Mosul where American troops have pulled out of the center of the city so as not to have to deal with the angry crowds of Iraqi Shi'a, Sunni, Kurds, Turkomen and Chaldeans.

What we have then is deception of the American people on a grand order, first from the Bush team with its constant barrage of lies about Saddam being tied to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden (both of whom were enemies and wanted one another dead), the still as yet unfound poison, chemical and other "weapons of mass destruction," the number of civilians dead and wounded by our "smart missiles" (some of which landed hundreds of miles off target in the desert of Saudi Arabia!) and countless other times in the wrong neighborhoods (or were these neighborhoods the real target so as to terrorize the people), the looting of the hospitals and museums while our troops were spending time tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein and planting American flags on buildings, mosques and in city squares, and the final hypocrisy, the alleged "liberation" of a people who didn't ask us to come in and destroy their country while we "liberated" their oil and left their lives in ruins without water, medicine, jobs or food. But by now the media's complicity is clearer than ever by their sanitizing of events, massaging of numbers of protesters, never letting the blood of war show and their hypocrisy by their attitude that an American killed or wounded is a major event, but that the other humans, the Iraqis, don't really matter because they aren't as human as we are. Ah, this also smells of racism, of a sort that the media was part of in the US for over a century, where Blacks were less than whites -- now Iraqis are less human than Americans -- at least that's the message our media is trying to pass off on us. Ah, the deception goes on and one. No this is not news were getting, often it is fiction to fit the myths the American government and the media wish to perpetrate on the American people so that they will stay docile, supportive of war and continue believing that by killing people you make your own people safer -- what utter nonsense.

Today's Alternative News: 04/18/03

Professor Sam Hamod is an expert in world affairs, especially the Middle East and the Islamic World; he served as an advisor to the US State Department; as a professor at Princeton, Michigan, Iowa and Howard ; as Editor of Third World News (Wash, DC) and as Director of The Islamic Center of Washington, DC.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3008.htm>

OU EST PASSÉE L'ARMÉE IRAKIENNE ? ET CELLE DE CAMBYSE ? LE TRIANGLE DES BERMUDES ?

par <[email protected] >

The ongoing war in Iraq is, perhaps, the most unusual armed conflict in history of modern warfare: disappearing armies and governments, illogical offensive and defensive operations on both sides of the front, information warfare on an unprecedented scale - this is not a war but a tale from Scheherazade's Thousand and One Nights. All is missing is a magic genie lamp. Well, the lamp may be there but the genie is gone. The following is not an attempt to analyze the current events in Iraq, but rather a quick look at some general impressions most of us share about this war.

Early stages of the war in Iraq boosted the positions of antiwar activists who predicted another Vietnam. The proponents of the war begun searching for the guilty party, pointing fingers toward Rumsfeld, Mayers and Franks. The latest US advances in Iraq reinforced the supporters of this war and the aggressive US foreign policy in general, while sending the antiwar activists into a downward spiral of pessimism and depression. Now the "hawks" are claiming victory without knowing or understanding anything that happened in Iraq. At the same time the antiwar masses focus on the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, accusing the US military of failing to protect the civilians.

Disappearing into the night

Independent of whether you support or oppose this war, you have to admit that the developments in Iraq during the past week took you by surprise. Granted, the US military capability is difficult to compare to that of Iraq - a country that was in a state of perpetual war for the past twenty-three years and under international embargo for well over a decade. Nevertheless, for about two weeks the Iraqi army was putting up stiff resistance - a fact acknowledged by the coalition military command. This was the first surprise.. For nearly two weeks the superior coalition forces struggled to capture Umm Quasar - a tiny town with the population of 1,200 located on the border with Kuwait just a few miles from coalition positions.

During these two weeks the Iraqi troops held on to the Fao peninsula and in the face of overwhelming odds were deflecting all attacks by the British forces supported by massive numbers of coalition aircraft. The Iraqi defenses held around Basra, An Nassiriyah, An Najaf and a number of other cities. During a single day of fighting near An Nassiriyah the coalition forces lost 33 troops - a fact officially confirmed by the coalition command. The coalition was clearly running out of steam required for the push toward Baghdad, its overstretched supply lines were under constant attacks and reinforcements were weeks away from entering combat. The northern front never materialized due to Turkey's unexpectedly strong opposition.

Saddam Hussein was killed at least five times during this conflict. Donald Rumsfeld's definitive position on the subject was that "Saddam is either dead or alive." The very first bomb dropped on Baghdad in this war killed Hussein. And then he was killed every other day until he appeared in the middle of Baghdad surrounded by bodyguards and cheering public - a gutsy move for a man being hunted by the world's most sophisticated war machine. With this single move Saddam destroyed two weeks of coalition propaganda efforts. But this public appearance turned out to be a farewell gesture.

Hussein always avoided making public appearances. He even avoided live TV broadcasts. His appearance in downtown Baghdad - and, yes, there is a consensus that it was actually him and not his double - under bombs, surrounded only by a small group of bodyguards was a remarkable event. Many anticipated more fierce Iraqi resistance as the result of this public appearance by Hussein. What happened was exactly the opposite.

One after another Iraqi defensive positions have folded. Clearly they were not defeated and the coalition never actually claimed to have defeated them.. Iraqi defenses simply disappeared leaving behind unexploded bridges, few minefields, and mostly undamaged oil wells. Most bridges and oil wells were wired with explosives but never detonated. A few oil wells were set ablaze but only to provide a smoke screen against the coalition aviation. Some bridges sustained minimal damage from the Iraqi artillery but this was the extent of it.

The withdrawal of the Iraqi forces was very organized: Fao peninsula, Basra, An Najaf, An Nassiriyah and so on from south to north. The Iraqi army was gradually disappearing leaving little damaged or abandoned equipment behind.. Out of thousands of armored vehicles we have seen just a handful old BMP-1s and T-54/55s. There have been photos of about 3-4 T-72s - none of them the easily identifiable upgraded type with the reactive armor used by the Republican Guard divisions.

"Embedded" journalists and freelancers in Iraq produced no footage of any large-scale engagements in Iraq. We could see British artillery firing into the night, soldiers crashing into private residences, US Marines turning empty Toyota pickup trucks into Swiss cheese and on a few rare occasions a missile destroying a standalone tank or a building. Immediately before the war most intelligence services and analytical think tanks estimated Iraq's army at between 350,000 and 402,000 regular troops in addition to about 150,000 irregular armed formations.

The coalition claimed destroyed Iraqi divisions, captured hundreds of tanks and thousands of Iraqi troops. At the very beginning of the war the coalition command claimed that the entire Iraqi 51st Infantry Division has surrendered. Clearly staged videos showing only about a hundred Iraqi POWs - many not in uniform - accompanied this claim. Later the coalition admitted to being 'overly optimistic' in claiming the surrender of the 51st division.. Recently the coalition claimed that the entire Iraqi army corps has surrendered. But there were no photos and no videos to celebrate such a monumental event.

In 2001 and 2002 Iraq conducted military parades in Baghdad using over a thousand armored combat vehicles, including BMP-type armored fighting vehicles and upgraded T-72s. This at least confirms that a large number of these vehicles were in serviceable condition. The total number of operational armored combat vehicles, including main battle tanks of several types, APCs, IFVs, reconnaissance vehicles was over 5,000. Operational. This means that we have to find all this armor somewhere in Iraq. Or maybe not in Iraq? In any case, we are yet to see any appreciable number of tanks and APCs destroyed or captured by the coalition.

There were no reports of Iraq using one of its most potent weapons - the mobile multiple-launch rocket systems of which Iraq had about 200. According to Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during just the first quarter of 2002 the Iraqi air defenses launched several hundred surface-to-air missiles at the coalition aircraft patrolling the 'no-fly' zones. In this war, however, after two weeks of minimal activity the Iraqi air defenses have disappeared.. The few examples of SAMs and AAAs found by the coalition forces in Baghdad, Basra and other cities are just a drop in a bucket of Iraq's pre-war arsenal. Some news reports suggest that a massive surrender deal was worked out between the coalition and the Iraqi Republican Guard. So far, however, we have not seen any evidence of such a deal. An agreement on this scale requires mutual trust on the same scale. This is likely to remain an unfulfilled requirement. Many Iraqi army officers remain convinced that the 1991 `Road to Baghdad massacre' was the result of the US violating a ceasefire agreement reached between Iraq and the US as the result of Soviet mediation. In 1991 the Soviet Union attempted to negotiate a peace deal between the US and Iraq and in doing so the Soviets poorly coordinated their actions with the US.

The Soviet position was vague and some can argue that it was misleading as well. There is no question that Saddam Hussein had a clear picture of these negotiations, but many of his troops did not. It is a popular belief in Iraq that the US launched a cowardly attack on the withdrawing Iraqi army after a ceasefire agreement has been reached. This belief would make any large-scale agreements between the coalition and the Iraqi army very difficult. In any case, the recent reports by Al Jazeera and the Jordanian media regarding a possible deal between the US and the commander of the Iraqi Republican Guard Gen. Maher Sufyan are complete nonsense.

Rumors of Hussein's death persist in the Arabic media. Al Jazeera reported that Saddam Hussein, his two sons - Uday and Qusay - and most of Hussein's government were killed during the US bombing of a restaurant in Baghdad on April 7. If anything, this is a clear confirmation that Saddam Hussein is alive. Just a reminder: on April 7 the US dropped a guided bomb onto a residential building in Baghdad. The US military and government officials claimed that there was a bunker under the building and that Saddam Hussein was believed to be in there. A day later British intelligence sources told the press that Saddam is likely to be alive. About the same time it was uncovered that the destroyed building had no bunker (this was immediately obvious from the photos of the building's remains). The "bunker" turned out to a small restaurant on the basement floor. Saddam has enough secret underground facilities in Iraq to avoid making a choice between secrecy of the location and its protection against US penetrating bombs. Most of these underground facilities were made to withstand a hit of tactical nuclear weapon. For example, during the 1999 aggression against Yugoslavia the US was not able to penetrate a single underground hangar used by the Yugoslav Air Force. A variety of weapons were used against these facilities, including penetration weapons and super-heavy volume-detonation bombs.

The likelihood of Saddam, his sons and his entire government meeting at a public place in downtown Baghdad under US bombs for bite of baklava with some tea is not very high. Saddam is many things but careless is not one of them.

War in Iraq: Random Thoughts , Part I , 15.04.2003 .

Next: The failings of hi-tech. To be continued...

LA GUERRE PIRATIQUE

On a piratical war that brought terrorism

and death to Iraq

by John Pilger

 

A BBC television producer, moments before he was wounded by an American fighter aircraft that killed 18 people with "friendly fire", spoke to his mother on a satellite phone. Holding the phone over his head so that she could hear the sound of the American planes overhead, he said: "Listen, that's the sound of freedom."

Did I read this scene in Catch-22? Surely, the BBC man was being ferociously ironic. I doubt it, just as I doubt that whoever designed the Observer's page three last Sunday had Joseph Heller in mind when he wrote the weasel headline: "The moment young Omar discovered the price of war". These cowardly words accompanied a photograph of an American marine reaching out to comfort 15-year-old Omar, having just participated in the mass murder of his father, mother, two sisters and brother during the unprovoked invasion of their homeland, in breach of the most basic law of civilised peoples.

No true epitaph for them in Britain's famous liberal newspaper; no honest headline, such as: "This American marine murdered this boy's family". No photograph of Omar's father, mother, sisters and brother dismembered and blood-soaked by automatic fire. Versions of the Observer's propaganda picture have been appearing in the Anglo-American press since the invasion began: tender cameos of American troops reaching out, kneeling, ministering to their "liberated" victims.

And where were the pictures from the village of Furat, where 80 men, women and children were rocketed to death? Apart from the Mirror, where were the pictures, and footage, of small children holding up their hands in terror while Bush's thugs forced their families to kneel in the street? Imagine that in a British high street. It is a glimpse of fascism, and we have a right to see it.

"To initiate a war of aggression," said the judges in the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, "is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." In stating this guiding principle of international law, the judges specifically rejected German arguments of the "necessity" for pre-emptive attacks against other countries.

Nothing Bush and Blair, their cluster-bombing boys and their media court do now will change the truth of their great crime in Iraq. It is a matter of record, understood by the majority of humanity, if not by those who claim to speak for "us". As Denis Halliday said of the Anglo-American embargo against Iraq, it will "slaughter them in the history books". It was Halliday who, as assistant secretary general of the United Nations, set up the "oil for food" programme in Iraq in 1996 and quickly realised that the UN had become an instrument of "a genocidal attack on a whole society". He resigned in protest, as did his successor, Hans von Sponeck, who described "the wanton and shaming punishment of a nation".

I have mentioned these two men often in these pages, partly because their names and their witness have been airbrushed from most of the media. I well remember Jeremy Paxman bellowing at Halliday on Newsnight shortly after his resignation: "So are you an apologist for Saddam Hussein?" That helped set the tone for the travesty of journalism that now daily, almost gleefully, treats criminal war as sport. In a leaked e-mail Roger Mosey, the head of BBC Television News, described the BBC's war coverage as "extraordinary -- it almost feels like World Cup football when you go from Um Qasr to another theatre of war somewhere else and you're switching between battles".

He is talking about murder. That is what the Americans do, and no one will say so, even when they are murdering journalists. They bring to this one-sided attack on a weak and mostly defenceless people the same racist, homicidal intent I witnessed in Vietnam, where they had a whole programme of murder called Operation Phoenix. This runs through all their foreign wars, as it does through their own divided society. Take your pick of the current onslaught. Last weekend, a column of their tanks swept heroically into Baghdad and out again. They murdered people along the way. They blew off the limbs of women and the scalps of children. Hear their voices on the unedited and unbroadcast videotape: "We shot the shit out of it." Their victims overwhelm the morgues and hospitals -- hospitals already denuded of drugs and painkillers by America's deliberate withholding of $5.4bn in humanitarian goods, approved by the Security Council and paid for by Iraq. The screams of children undergoing amputation with minimal anaesthetic qualify as the BBC man's "sound of freedom".

Heller would appreciate the sideshows. Take the British helicopter pilot who came to blows with an American who had almost shot him down. "Don't you know the Iraqis don't have a fucking air force?" he shouted. Did this pilot reflect on the truth he had uttered, on the whole craven enterprise against a stricken third world country and his own part in this crime? I doubt it. The British have been the most skilled at delusion and lying. By any standard, the Iraqi resistance to the high-tech Anglo-American machine was heroic. With ancient tanks and mortars, small arms and desperate ambushes, they panicked the Americans and reduced the British military class to one of its specialities -- mendacious condescension.

The Iraqis who fight are "terrorists", "hoodlums", "pockets of Ba'ath Party loyalists", "kamikaze" and "feds" (Feda'yeen). They are not real people: cultured and cultivated people. They are Arabs. This vocabulary of dishonour has been faithfully parroted by those enjoying it all from the broadcasting box. "What do you make of Basra?" asked the Today programme's presenter of a former general embedded in the studio. "It's hugely encouraging, isn't it?" he replied. Their mutual excitement, like their plummy voices, are their bond.

On the same day, in a Guardian letter, Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, pointed us to evidence of this "hugely encouraging" truth -- fleeting pictures on Sky News of British soldiers smashing their way into a family home in Basra, pointing their guns at a woman and manhandling, hooding and manacling young men, one of whom was shown quivering with terror. "Is Britain 'liberating' Basra by taking political prisoners and, if so, based on what sort of intelligence, given Britain's long unfamiliarity with this territory and its inhabitants ... The least this ugly display will do is remind Arabs and Muslims everywhere of our Anglo-Saxon double standards -- we can show your prisoners in ... degrading positions, but don't you dare show ours."

Roger Mosey says the suffering of Um Qasr is "like World Cup football". There are 40,000 people in Um Qasr; desperate refugees are streaming in and the hospitals are overflowing. All this misery is due entirely to the "coalition" invasion and the British siege, which forced the United Nations to withdraw its humanitarian aid staff. Cafod, the Catholic relief agency, which has sent a team to Um Qasr, says the standard humanitarian quota for water in emergency situations is 20 litres per person per day. Cafod reports hospitals entirely without water and people drinking from contaminated wells. According to the World Health Organisation, 1.5 million people across southern Iraq are without water, and epidemics are inevitable. And what are "our boys" doing to alleviate this, apart from staging childish, theatrical occupations of presidential palaces, having fired shoulder-held missiles into a civilian city and dropped cluster bombs?

A British colonel laments to his "embedded" flock that "it is difficult to deliver aid in an area that is still an active battle zone". The logic of his own words mocks him. If Iraq was not a battle zone, if the British and the Americans were not defying international law, there would be no difficulty in delivering aid.

There is something especially disgusting about the lurid propaganda coming from these PR-trained British officers, who have not a clue about Iraq and its people. They describe the liberation they are bringing from "the world's worst tyranny", as if anything, including death by cluster bomb or dysentery, is better than "life under Saddam". The inconvenient truth is that, according to UNICEF, the Ba'athists built the most modern health service in the Middle East. No one disputes the grim, totalitarian nature of the regime; but Saddam Hussein was careful to use the oil wealth to create a modern secular society and a large and prosperous middle class. Iraq was the only Arab country with a 90 per cent clean water supply and with free education. All this was smashed by the Anglo-American embargo. When the embargo was imposed in 1990, the Iraqi civil service organised a food distribution system that the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation described as "a model of efficiency ... undoubtedly saving Iraq from famine". That, too, was smashed when the invasion was launched.

Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin.

With honourable exceptions (Robert Fisk; al-Jazeera), little of this has been reported. Instead, the media have performed their preordained role as imperial America's "soft power": rarely identifying "our" crime, or misrepresenting it as a struggle between good intentions and evil incarnate. This abject professional and moral failure now beckons the unseen dangers of such an epic, false victory, inviting its repetition in Iran, Korea, Syria, Cuba, China.

George Bush has said: "It will be no defence to say: 'I was just following orders.'" He is correct. The Nuremberg judges left in no doubt the right of ordinary soldiers to follow their conscience in an illegal war of aggression. Two British soldiers have had the courage to seek status as conscientious objectors. They face court martial and imprisonment; yet virtually no questions have been asked about them in the media. George Galloway has been pilloried for asking the same question as Bush, and he and Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons, are being threatened with withdrawal of the Labour whip.

Dalyell, 41 years a member of the Commons, has said the Prime Minister is a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague. This is not gratuitous; on the prima facie evidence, Blair is a war criminal, and all those who have been, in one form or another, accessories should be reported to the International Criminal Court. Not only did they promote a charade of pretexts few now take seriously, they brought terrorism and death to Iraq. A growing body of legal opinion around the world agrees that the new court has a duty, as Eric Herring of Bristol University wrote, to investigate "not only the regime, but also the UN bombing and sanctions which violated the human rights of Iraqis on a vast scale". Add the present piratical war, whose spectre is the uniting of Arab nationalism with militant Islam. The whirlwind sown by Blair and Bush is just beginning. Such is the magnitude of their crime.

10 Apr 2003

<http://pilger.carlton.com/print/132898>

L'IRAQ EST À VENDRE, C'EST LE MOMENT

[...]

But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling, and Tony Blair may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's pre-democracy, post-Saddam liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatising is done unilaterally by the US, or multilaterally by the US, Europe, Russia and China?

Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might -- who knows? -- want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but in the absence of any kind of democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatisation without representation.

A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverised by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their new-found "freedom" -- for which so many of their loved ones perished -- comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.

Naomi Klein, "Bomb Before You Buy", The Guardian, Monday 14 April 2003.

<http://truthout.org/docs_03/041603C.shtml>

L'excellente Naomi explique que les bombes servent à libéraliser et privatiser l'économie irakienne, c'est-à-dire, en termes simples, à voler le peuple irakien, ce que vont découvrir pour leur plus grande douleur les Irakiens quand ils se réveilleront de ce cauchemar.

LES CROISÉS SANS FARD

Un point de vue islamiste britannique sur les événements en Iraq. ils appelent les envahisseurs des "Croisés". Ils constatent que la foule, en sortant des mosquées, vendredi 18, réclamait "al khilafa", la restauration du caliphat, aboli par Atatürk en 1924.. M. Boubouche n'est pas sorti du pétrin:

"It appears that the old regime of Iraq has simply had a change of leadership. The tyrant Saddam has been replaced by the tyrant Bush. The top henchmen are now appointed by Bush, and the American troops work alongside the old Baa'th police officials to kill and torture the people of Iraq. The people now suffer more than ever through lack of food, electricity and clean water. Rather than doing anything to help them, the Crusaders have sent in their specialists to tend to the oil fields health and well being. Indeed nothing has changed. How naïve some were to think the Crusaders were coming for anything other than solidifying the stranglehold over their interests, and ensuring that the Muslims remain silent in the face of occupation."

<http://www.1924.org/iraq_update/>

3 - LE PAYS DES FAUX-JUIFS

La nouvelle méthode Poraz envers les non-juifs

Le ministre de l'Intérieur Avraham Poraz a décidé d'une nouvelle méthode en ce qui concerne l'acquisition de la nationalité israélienne par certains groupes non-juifs, désirant habiter en Israël.

En effet, dans le cadre de ces aides, tout travailleur clandestin blessé dans une attaque terroriste pourra être reconnu en tant que travailleur étranger et recevoir son permis de séjour.

D'autre part, tout non-juif qui aurait épousé un juif dans le cadre d'un mariage civil à l'étranger, pourra lui aussi obtenir plus facilement la nationalité israélienne.

Enfin, toute femme non-juive qui porterait l'enfant d'un Israélien épousé civilement se verrait accorder le statut de résident temporaire, pour lui permettre de recevoir tous les soins dont elle a besoin.

Arutz 7, 13 avril 2003.

C'est trop de générosité.

4 - LE ROW

LE POGNON ET LA GUERRE, LA GUERRE ET LE POGNON

Le Pentagone et «la grande dame»

 

En attendant que l´Irak leur fasse battre tous les records de profit, les hommes de Dick Cheney ne risquent pas d'oublier «la perle des contrats», la mère de toutes les «affaires à faire» : la base militaire de Bondsteel, au Kosovo, dont Brown & Root s'occupe depuis 1999.

Incrustée, dans la foulée des bombardements, sur 500 hectares près de la frontière macédonienne, Bondsteel est la plus grande base américaine à l'étranger depuis la guerre du Vietnam. Habitée par sept mille hommes, la «grande dame», comme ils l´appellent avec tendresse, compte 25 km de routes et plus de 300 bâtiments, dont une chapelle pour le recueillement du guerrier, entourés de 14 km d´enceinte, 84 km de barbelés et 11 miradors.

Y stationnent en permanence une cinquantaine d´hélicoptères Blackhawk et Apache [ceux que l'armée américaine n'a pas osé envoyé au Kossovo, justement. Coûtent trop cher. ]

Dans cette banlieue kaki du Middle West, Brown & Root fait la pluie et le beau temps. Selon son propre directeur, David Capouya, la compagnie y prend en charge «tout ce qui ne nécessite pas de porter un fusil», y compris, tâche ardue, le nettoyage des sous-vêtements des troufions. L'affaire avait été mûrement préparée: «Des plans pour des travaux d´ingénierie au Kosovo ont été dressés des mois avant que la première bombe ne soit larguée», se souvient le colonel Robert L. McClure. Selon les estimations les plus fiables, la présence américaine au Kosovo aurait rapporté près d´un milliard de dollars à la compagnie de Dick Cheney. «Pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, le Sénat avait mis en place un comité contre les profiteurs de guerre. Personnellement je pense que nous devrions le recréer et examiner le cas de Brown & Root», commente Bill Hartung, du World Policy Institute.

Tel n´est pas l´avis du secrétaire à la Défense, Donald Rumsfeld, qui, le 5 juin 2001, déclarait lors d´une visite à Bondsteel: «Combien devrions-nous dépenser pour les forces armées ? Mon opinion est qu´il ne s´agit pas de dépenses mais d´investissements. Vous ne tirez pas sur notre puissance économique, vous la préservez. Vous ne pesez pas sur notre économie, vous êtes le socle de sa croissance.»

<http://cequilfautdetruire.org/zero/pentagone.html>

LES SIONARDS DE SALON

Palestiniens contre l'antisémitisme

 

C'est un étrange paradoxe, rassurant en même temps. Quand ont commencé les agressions antisémites en France, la condamnation la plus nette venue d'une personnalité arabe de France fut celle de Leila Shahid, déléguée générale de la Palestine à Paris. «Le combat anticolonial du peuple palestinien n'a rien à voir avec l'antisémitisme», répète-t-elle régulièrement, qualifiant d'«inadmissibles» les actions antisémites. Contrairement à certains militants propalestiniens, prêts à excuser bien des exactions au nom de leur combat principal, Leila Shahid est une vraie politique, qui sait que la cause palestinienne n'a rien à gagner à se commettre avec l'antijudaïsme. [Elle sait parfaitement de quel côté les tartines sont beurrées. ]

Une conviction partagée par nombre d'intellectuels palestiniens, parmi les plus prestigieux. Ceux-ci récusent le soutien des antisémites avérés, voire des négationnistes, qui ont tissé des liens avec les islamistes. En mars 2001, une réunion négationniste, qui devait se tenir au Liban, était dénoncée avec vigueur par un groupe d'universitaires et d'écrivains arabes. Citons: l'orientaliste américano-palestinien Edward Saïd, le grand poète palestinien Mahmoud Darwish et le responsable de la «Revue d'études palestiniennes», l'historien Elias Sanbar.

En octobre dernier, le Parti des Musulmans de France, mené par l'agitateur islamiste Mohammed Latrèche, qui dénonce le «génocide palestinien» organisé par Israël, fraternisait avec le négationniste Serge Thion, au nom de la cause palestinienne. Dans l'intérêt des Palestiniens? C'est une autre histoire C. A.

Le Nouvel Observateur - Semaine du jeudi 6 février 2003 - n·1996 - Dossier.

On ne va quand même pas jusqu'à laisser entendre que le Nouvel Obsrvateur va nous dire où se trouve l'intérêt des Palestiniens ?

<http://www.nouvelobs.com/dossiers/p1996/a90434.html>

SADDAM ET GOMORRHE

L'étrange alliance des pro-Saddam

 

par Hadrien Gosset-Bernheim

 

Portraits de Saddam Hussein brandis bien haut, slogans à la gloire du dictateur, passage à tabac d'un opposant irakien ou de passants juifs : les incidents ont marqué les défilés parisiens contre la guerre en Irak. En prévision des manifestations de samedi prochain à Paris et en province, les responsables du collectif Agir contre la guerre se sont donc engagés à faire le ménage dans leurs rangs. Une tâche difficile pour cette coalition dont quelques-uns des éléments les plus engagés cachent, derrière un soutien affiché au régime bassiste en place à Bagdad, d'autres intentions.

« Il y a deux facteurs à prendre en compte. D'une part les éléments isolés, issus de la communauté maghrébine et poussés par un atavisme pro-arabe. D'autre part ceux qui leur fournissent le discours légitimant les débordements. Ces derniers sont des mouvements, certes groupusculaires mais structurés et très actifs », explique-t-on à la Direction centrale des Renseignements généraux (DCRG) où l'on suit le phénomène de près. Issus de l'extrême gauche et de la droite la plus radicale, ces pro-Saddam ont mis de côté leurs divergences pour se retrouver autour de deux thèmes : un antiaméricanisme exacerbé et un antisionisme virulent.

Au centre de cet éventail, les Amitiés franco-irakiennes, un lobby dont le secrétaire général, Gilles Munier, revendiquait hier encore auprès du JDD son « soutien entier au parti Baas ». Actif un temps auprès de a Nouvelle Europe, mouvement paneuropéen et néonazi fondé par le collaborateur belge Jean Thiriart, l'homme, qui se dit aujourd'hui gaulliste, se démène depuis longtemps en faveur de l'Irak. Lors de la première guerre du Golfe, il se proposait ainsi d'« échanger » les otages occidentaux détenus par Saddam Hussein contre des volontaires, préfigurant ainsi le mouvement des boucliers humains. Depuis, son ardeur ne s'est pas atténuée: pétitions, organisations de voyages de «volontaires pour la paix», conférences, mise en place du collectif Irak. «Je comprendrais très bien que des Irakiens aillent porter le feu sur le territoire américain», dit encore Gilles Munier.

Un discours très proche de celui d'Alain de Benoist, fondateur du Grece -- un cercle de réflexion à droite de la droite -- qui, dès le 20 mars, au moment même où l'offensive de la coalition était lancée, proclamait dans un communiqué que «tout acte de représailles à l'encontre des intérêts américains [] est désormais légitime et nécessaire.» Une conférence les réunissait d'ailleurs en janvier dernier, à laquelle étaient également invités Slobodan Despot, qui s'était illustré au sein de la mouvance «rouge-brun», mobilisée contre les frappes de l'Otan en Serbie, ainsi que Jacques Marlaud, proche des milieux révisionnistes lyonnais. Mais pas de confusion des genres, selon Gilles Munier: «Dans ce genre de cas, nous n'évoquons que le problème irakien.»

Une «neutralité» de bon aloi qui permet de faire se côtoyer, au cours des réunions du Collectif Irak, outre Patrice Farbiaz et Ahmed Bouzid, deux responsables des Verts, différentes associations dont le sulfureux Parti des Musulmans de France (PMF), présidé par Mohammed Latrèche. Ce dernier qui partait hier pour l'Irak, rend d'ailleurs au passage un «vibrant hommage aux dirigeants irakiens qui résistent aux criminels US». Figure du mouvement des boucliers humains, il y emmenait d'ailleurs le mois dernier un responsable de Nation, groupuscule belge proche de l'ex-Unité radicale.

Mohammed Latrèche, un islamiste opposant de longue date à une guerre menée «pour le compte de l'entité sioniste» (Israël), organise lui aussi des réunions et des manifestations auxquelles participe régulièrement Serge Thion, disciple de Faurisson chassé du CNRS pour révisionnisme. On y retrouve également Ginette Skandrani, ancienne de la direction nationale du parti des Verts et militante propalestinienne radicale. L'été dernier, elle coéditait ainsi avec plusieurs membres du Collectif Irak Le manifeste judéo-nazi d'Ariel Sharon, un brûlot antisémite.

Drôle d'alliance des extrêmes, qui ne cesse de se croiser au sein du Collectif Irak et de leurs sites internet respectifs, s'échangeant leurs contributions, relayant leurs pétitions communes. Question d'efficacité, se justifie Gilles Munier: «Je fédère les opposants à la guerre, ce qu'ils pensent par ailleurs ne me regarde pas.»

Le Journal du dimanche, 6 avril 2003, p. 7.

Ajoutons une petite louche qu'on trouve sur le forum <israelfr.com>:

 

crahan (Crahan)

Envoyé samedi 15 février 2003 - 15h01:

BOnjour,

j'interviens ici sans emotion en gardant la tete froide (position defendue par notre cher Michel Tubiana).

Je suis allé lire l'article de proche-orient.info.

Latrèche ne semble pas partager les pulsions conquérantes des personnes vues comme des hitleriens.

Serge Thion a toujours ete contre les conquetes. C'est lui qui est l'ancien militant de la cause vietnamienne evoqué dans l'article. Il a par ailleurs denonce l'apartheid, ecrit une thèse dessus, et ete le premier à traduire Mandela.

Il n'y a rien de raciste chez lui. Faites-donc des recherches sur ses textes via google.com.

Signé: un internaute qui se demande si la majorité des gens lisent, c'est à dire avec ecoute et sens critique.

<http://www.israelfr.co.il/discus/messages/19/10204.html?1045336839>

Y'A PAS QUE CHEZ NOUS

Les néo-cons viennent du trotzkysme

 

Most neoconservative defence intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy". They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.

Extracted from: T he weird men behind G eorge W. B ush's war

By: Michael Lind, distribué par MER (Washington) le 13 avril 2003.

NN

Acheter en ligne le "jeu de cartes" des 55 figures prétendument recherchées par les Amères Loques en Iraq:

<http://www.greatusaflags.com/product_info.php?products_id=94&aff_id=8&aff_sub_id=13>

Il est consultable en ligne à:

<http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/pipc10042003.html>

Mais quand nous avons voulu le consulter, la réponse a été:

The requested URL "/news/Apr2003/pipc10042003.html", is invalid.

Excellent site sur ce que certains, pas dégoûtés, appellent encore «l'information»:

<http://www.oulala.net/Portail/>

Le cimetière politique américain. Fouillez dans les ossements de l'Oncle Sam. Par exemple, Garner. Vous connaissez Garner ? Vice-président des Etats-Unis ? John Nance Garner (1868-1967) dit "Cactus Jack" ? Z'êtes nul. Faites vos révisions:

<http://politicalgraveyard.com>

Analyse du rôle joué par <iraqwar.ru> que nous n'avons pas hésité à relayer.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2951.htm>

On peut se demander si la raison pour laquelle le site s'est brusquement arrêté le 8 avril n'est pas la suivante: les mainteneurs du site recevaient des informations du GRU, (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye) le service de renseignement militaire soviétique, puis russe. Or c'est le moment où disparaît Saddam. Les Russes sont dans la combine, mais ils ont peur que <iraqwar.ru> ne divulgue des renseignements sur ce qui est advenu à Saddam. Comme on dit en anglais, they pull the plug, ils retirent la prise. Pas con, hein ?

Rappelons que nous avons rassemblé toutes les chroniques de <iraqwar.ru> en un document PDF disponible ici.

Un site contre la guerre, articles, liens, tout ce qu'il faut:

<http://home.clara.net/infotrad/antiwar/stopwar.html>

Juste retour des choses:

<http://fr.news.yahoo.com/030415/202/35bjg.html>

Il existe, au Kossovo, une Agence européenne pour la Reconstruction. (Peut-être il ne fallait pas commencer par tout casser...) Ell a construit 12.000 logements pour les Albanais. Et 38 pour les Manouches (ou Rom) qui ont perdu 14.000 logements, pour la plupart détruits par les Albanais après la fin des hostilités.

Paul Polanski, The Blackbirds of Kossovo

<http://www.leftcurve.org/LC26WebPages/Blackbirds.html>

Une nouvelle et intéressante forme de protestation contre la guerre: former des mots comme "peace" avec des personnes dénudées allongées sur une prairie. Voir:

<http://www.barewitness.org/>

Une recherche sur les bombes à fragmentation (cluster bombs):

<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=Cluster%2Bbombs&btnG=Search%2BNews>

Le site des "inspecteurs en désarmement du comté de Gloucester" qui a l'affreux privilège de possèder la base de Fairford, d'où partent des B-52 qui bombardent le Moyen-Orient. Les pacifistes mènent là une action remarquable:

<http://www.cynatech.demon.co.uk/>

Une longue série de sites anti-guerre britanniques:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/subsection/0,12809,884056,00.html>

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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