Today in Iraq

Happy Birthday Free Iraq!: The 18th of March, 2006 will be the 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation by American forces and also the 3rd birthday of ‘free Iraq’. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, we will mourn the mangled corpse of the Iraqi nationhood that America continues to drag around the vast deserts of that country, with fangs bared and claws out, in an unjustified, illegal and bloody occupation. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, we will note the fact that America threatens to lay waste to the nations next door on daily basis and considers it immoral if those countries even think of arming themselves to prevent the same fate. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, we will derive a very simple lesson from America’s Iraq jaunt that if a country wants to avoid a U.S. led invasion, they had better arm themselves to the gills and with nuclear weapons too if possible. Quite plainly, it is a matter of life and death for such countries. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, we will remember that not only is America the only user of the nuclear weapon on human race in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she is also known to have contemplated using them in almost every major military conflict ever since e.g. against the people of Korea, Cuba and Vietnam. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, we will remind ourselves that as the fight for resources and markets sharpens among the various capitalist powers, the likelihood of nuclear conflicts breaking out grows exponentially and that, unless the global citizenry wakes up, all the treaties and assurances in the world will not stop this brazen display of capitalism in decay. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, we must note with irony that while the American administration is lowering the bar for going nuclear and makes ‘bomb size holes’ in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty by signing the Indo-US nuclear deal, it continues to preach nuclear abstinence to the rest of the world and threatens to visit pre-emptive attacks upon those thought to be in non-compliance of the same treaty. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, as we listen to President George W. Bush lecturing the world on the threat from Iran and on the virtues of nuclear non-proliferation, we will remind ourselves that his position on nuclear weapons smacks of rampant hypocrisy and is laced with double standards. He is the commander-in-chief of a military force that not only possesses and maintains nearly 10,000 nuclear weapons but also boasts an array of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological arsenals. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, as the American military juggernaut continues to slam into innocent humanity and prepares itself for yet another bout of binge killing in Iran; the American citizens continue to vacillate on what to do with the criminal cabal that kills in their name. Having yo-yoed between conviction and impeachment with a lot of bombast, they finally fizzle down for a rap on the knuckle by attempting, please note, to ‘censure’ the lead criminal for breaking the law, trashing the US Constitution and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, as America’s State Department decries the Human Rights abuses by various countries, let us remember that America herself has become the biggest patron of dark dungeons and the sessions of pain therein. Other than Abu Ghuraib and Guantánamo Bay, where detainees have included children as young as 11-years-old and where some detainees have now been held for over four years without charge or trial, America’s torture trail at the present weaves across the globe from Thailand and the Philippines through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan to Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Cyprus, Diego Garcia, some Gulf States and an unspecified number of South Pacific island nations. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, despite President George Bush’s sickeningly repetitious rhetoric of “freedom on the march” and “terrorists on the run”, let us be informed that the National Counterterrorism Center (NCC), a US government funded agency of the Department of Homeland Security, tells us that “between 2001 and 2005, worldwide terrorist incidents increased by an astounding 159 percent, going from 1,733 attacks in 2001 to 4,483 last year.” And that, “of the 13,403 global terror incidents that have taken place since 2001, one-third of those total took place in 2005 alone.” This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, let us also acquaint ourselves with the bungling incompetence of the current US administration’s economic policies that directly affect the common Americans. The numbers are out and they tell a sordid tale. “The U.S. trade deficit has soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion in 2005, up by 17.5 percent from the previous record of $617.6 billion set in 2004. The deficit with China hit an all-time high as did America's deficits with Japan, Europe, OPEC, Canada, Mexico and South and Central America. It marked the fourth straight year in a row that America's trade deficit has set a record.” This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, let us recall the orchestrated 9/11, the gargantuan lies that this administration told to the American public in its aftermath and the hundreds of thousands of innocent dead and maimed souls that those lies resulted in. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, as we brace ourselves from more nuclear hypocrisy from the mightiest of the nations, we will recall that this nation continues to use depleted uranium weapons on Iraqis taking a ghastly toll not just on the existing ones but also on successive future Iraqi generations who will suffer for eons to come. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, as American citizens tuck their well fed children into warm beds after affectionate hugs, we will recall that the rate of birth defects, leukemia and cancer among Iraqi children under the age of 15 in those districts where the use of DU had been the most concentrated is increasing horrendously and, if not checked soon enough, a generation of beautiful babies are going to turn into one of hideous cripples. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, with hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, thousands of dead Americans, a beat-up American image around the globe and a war tab exceeding half-a-trillion dollars, we must finally allow the reality of the repugnant rhetoric of global domination and the disgusting truth of its actual failure to finally sink in to our collective conscience. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, as the American nation dillies and dallies while their government kills people abroad with impunity and plans to start yet another anniversary series for yet another nation, one comes to a sad sad conclusion. And that is that the American nation seems to have willingly boarded itself up on a train, remote controlled by their criminal leaders, with the train careering fast towards the Cassandra Crossing. The Americans now watch their own selves in a hushed awe. This 3rd anniversary of Iraq’s occupation, let us try to understand for whom was the following said in the “Book of Isaiah” in The Bible? “YOUR HANDS ARE STAINED WITH BLOOD, YOUR FINGERS WITH GUILT, YOUR LIPS SPEAK FALSEHOOD AND YOUR TONGUE UTTERS DECEIT” Happy birthday free Iraq! We should have known we’d face this situation: In tiny East Timor, a ragtag band of resisters harried the Indonesian army for more than 25 years; that band (splendid people, by the way) now runs the world’s newest independent state. In Afghanistan, U.S.-assisted guerrillas drove out the Red army; their successors now make most of the country ungovernable. In Chechnya, the country has been destroyed but the rebellion hasn’t been subdued. And then there was Vietnam. During the Cold War, we ringed the world with bases—but always in alliance with existing governments that were legitimate, at least up to a point. One may disapprove of the regimes we supported, but this model for the projection of military power works. It is called “containment.” It works as long as the host regimes remain viable and as long as the military power it projects isn’t tested in actual combat. When these conditions failed—in Iran, in the Philippines, in Vietnam—so did the strategy. The successful use of military power—as Mao Zedong understood when he called America a “paper tiger”—entails a large element of bluff. Vietnam deflated the image that American power could never be challenged. To some extent, the Gulf War of 1991 restored that image, but the restoration was achieved by the limited aims and quick termination of that war. The Clinton successes in the Balkans came in part because all sides bought this lesson of the Gulf War. (With Serbia, the bluff came close to being called again; the Kosovo bombing campaign took 80 days and Russian diplomacy rescued us in the end.) But now Iraq has once again exposed what military power cannot achieve, short of nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea have taken notice. Meanwhile, our friends, the Europeans and the Japanese, must be asking themselves: Exactly what sort of security does the American alliance buy, and at what price? Bush and Cheney have done more than merely bungle a war and damage the Army. They have destroyed the foundation of the post-Cold War world security system, which was the accepted authority of American military power. That reputation is now gone. It cannot be restored simply by retreating from Iraq. This does not mean that every ongoing alliance will now collapse. But they are all more vulnerable than they were before, and once we leave central Iraq, they will be weaker still. As these paper tigers start to blow in the wind, so too will America’s economic security erode. From this point of view, the fuss over whether we were misled into war—Is the sky blue? Is the grass green?—stands in the way of a deeper debate that should start quite soon and ask this question: Now that Bush and Cheney have screwed up the only successful known model for world security under our leadership, what the devil do we do? - James K. Galbraith is an economics professor who served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress. The redlining of America: On April 3 [2003], before the taking of Baghdad, we [the Black Commentator] wrote of the predictable consequences of the Iraq invasion: The entire globe is recoiling from the United States, a planetary phenomenon that will characterize the historical period we have now entered - if humanity survives it. In declaring war against international order, the Pirates at the helm of the Hyper-Power have profoundly frightened every economic and social sector of every nation on the globe. In self-defense, the world will be forced to reorganize itself, to create new mechanisms of trade and security in place of the institutions that the Bush men are deliberately savaging. The Americans will be left out of these arrangements. The realization dawns on the assaulted consciousness of humanity that the would-be rulers and their society are worse than monstrously destructive - they are delusional, a danger to civilized endeavor, untrustworthy in any agreement, contemptuous of law and reason. A nation and people to be avoided, circumvented, conspired against for safety and survival's sake. These are the first days of the inevitable and soon to become dramatic decline of the United States. In what will be viewed as a supreme irony of history, the dream of a glorious and bloody leap to global omnipotence will collapse in incompetence and self-mutilation - not this year or the next, and not in time to save millions from death, disease, impoverishment and national humiliation. But it will happen, because the nations and peoples of the world will see no choice available to themselves but to make it happen. A wired world is taking note of every pathological tick in the twisted American face. Even now, a myriad of plans are evolving to sidestep the dangerous, delusional United States as mankind goes about its collective business. A kind of international redlining will increasingly make itself felt, but not seen. The Bush men believe they are willing into existence a New American Century, while in reality they are creating an America-phobic planet in which the U.S. has earned an invisible but powerfully consequential non-favored nation status. Having invented the concept of globalism, the United States will be consigned to pariah status - and shrink, until it learns to live by human norms and scales. Newsweek interactive map of Coalition military fatalities and estimated Iraqi civilian deaths in Iraq, 2003-2006.

Jumaa's suicide letter in full Prisoner of Deprivation / Jumah Abdel Latif Al Dossari Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Signature) Friday, 10/14/2005