Stories from July 2003

"Just as all spontaneous, renegade forms of expression are hijacked by corporate culture, jamming is now being appropriated by corporations in its efforts to sell product." [more]

"The disclosure by the Foreign Office makes it plain the CIA's objections went far beyond the well-aired dispute over whether Iraq was seeking uranium from the west African state of Niger." [more]

"In its latest report, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee also argues that nearly two years on from the 11 September atrocity it cannot conclude the threat from al-Qaeda has diminished." [more]

"The lawsuit comes after months of increasingly sharp political debate in Washington and around the country over the act. In May, Democrats beat back a move to extend the law past 2005, and last week, the House voted to scale back a 'sneak and peak' provision in the law." [more]

"So far, the United States has discovered no undisputed physical evidence that Hussein had stocks of chemical or biological weapons or was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program." [more]

"The president and his advisers obviously still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question." [more]

"Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance." [more]

"Public opinion polls published during the first week of July indicate that 60% of the American public believes that the United Nations should take leadership in post-war Iraq." [more]

"Hawks in the Pentagon and the energy department are pushing for the development of tactical nuclear weapons with yields of less than 5 kilotons and hardened 'bunker buster' nuclear bombs, designed to penetrate deeply buried targets, where enemy leaders or weaponsmay be hidden." [more]

"The return of a multilateral tilt signifies a correction after the Iraq war, according to some analysts. These observers also say it reveals how the US has lost ground in some central goals, and is now playing catch-up. One of those buffeted priorities is the international war on terrorism." [more]

"The Bush administration has come to realize that it is impossible to keep Pakistan as a friend and simultaneously keep the Northern Alliance–backed government in power in Kabul ... either one has Pakistan as a friend with an Islamabad-backed Pashtun group in power in Kabul, or one gets Pakistan as an enemy. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind how the Bush administration would act when confronted with such a choice." [more]

"The judge was clearly irritated about how Al-Marri was abruptly transferred to South Carolina and that neither he nor the defense lawyers know for certain whether his alleged offenses occurred in Peoria or elsewhere, because the government has not said exactly why Al-Marri is an enemy combatant." [more]

"American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will." [more]

"The Justice Department already seems to be adjusting its sights. One person familiar with the department's agenda said the original Patriot II proposal is now 'dead.' " [more]

"The top Republican senator on the 9-11 inquiry, Richard Shelby, said Sunday that 95 percent of the classified pages could be released without jeopardizing national security. Bush ignored a reporter's question on Shelby's assessment." [more]

"Sadly, the vision for a transitional government and democratic elections put forward by Wolfowitz seems to have been forgotten in the everyday pressures of postwar Iraq." [more]

"With little public notice outside immigrant communities, the government is moving to deport the largest number of visitors from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries in U.S. history." [more]

The lawyers "said the war in Iraq breached international treaties such as the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and the ICC's own Statute." [more]

"Like other examples of doublespeak, the concept of 'shock and awe' enables its users to symbolically reconcile two contradictory ideas. On the one hand, its theorists use the term to plan massive uses of deadly force. On the other hand, its focus on the psychological effect of that force makes it possible to use the term while distancing audiences from direct contemplation of the human suffering that force creates." [more]

Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda? [more]

"Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. Continuing casualties ... are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive." [more]

" 'The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not once,' a witness said. 'They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals.' " [more]

"Hunching down to sprint across road junctions, ducking the ever-whistling bullets, has become a way of life for people who have no choice but to move in an often futile hunt for food and clean water." [more]

The general, "whose troops usually blame the attacks on die-hard Saddam loyalists, said the sophistication of the raids had increased over the last 30 days." [more]

"John Brady Kiesling may have a promising future as a trivia question. But for one brief, undiplomatic moment, his resignation from the Foreign Service crystallized the opposition to the Iraq war." [more]

Funds "would go toward highway and school construction, other infrastructure initiatives, police training, beefed-up development of the Afghan national army, education projects and programs to help women enter the workforce." [more]

"Think of how in 1965 two-thirds of Americans supported the war in Vietnam, and a few years later two-thirds opposed the war. What happened in between? A gradual realization of having been lied to, an osmosis of the truth, of information seeping more and more through the cracks of the propaganda system. That is beginning to happen now. Today, all over the country, there is a growing awareness of the shortage of teachers, of nurses, of medical care, of affordable housing, of cuts in human services in every state of the union." [more]

"The Roman Catholic nuns cut a fence and walked onto a Minuteman III silo site last October, pounding the silo with hammers and painting a cross on it with their blood. Officials said they caused at least $1,000 in damage." [more]

" 'A 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make these counterfeit cards in a garage and sell them,' Rubin said. 'Then even an ordinary voter, without knowing anything about computer code, could cast more than one vote for a candidate at a polling place that uses this electronic voting system.' " [more]

"The Solomon Islands government is nearly broke and issued an appeal to its neighbors this month to help rein in armed militants and criminals who are killing at will, taking hostages and extorting money." [more]

"Secretary of State Colin Powell said Bush was examining the options and was still considering sending combat troops. But the Pentagon was believed to be reluctant to commit soldiers." [more]

"Among the things Wolfowitz says the U.S. guessed incorrectly was the assumption that some Iraqi Army units would switch sides; that the Iraqi Police would help maintain security; that regime remnants would not resort to guerrilla tactics ... [and he] says it also had no idea how badly Iraq's infrastructure had been neglected over the past three decades." [more]

"With more than 60 percent of the Army's active-duty combat force deployed in Iraq, Army planners were forced to abandon six-month tours for most overseas deployments in favor of year-long assignments to sustain a force of that size. The last time the Army used year-long deployments was Vietnam, except for one peacekeeping rotation in the Balkans in 1995." [more]

"Naomi Klein expressed concern about the focus on anti-imperialist discourse, because 'it's no longer about the US building empire in a traditional sense, but rather a multinational imperialism. Europe is laughing at empire discourse because it lets them off the hook. They enjoy the idea that they're a counter-power — Chirac playing the hero of the oppressed — when what Europe is doing on the international stage is 90 percent the same as the US. What we need is an analysis of empire that understands that the forces are genuinely transnational. They can't be tied to the nation-state, and the class of global managers within the developing world are part of the same class as their northern counterparts.' " [more]

"But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam. Much more importantly, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator." [more]

"Amnesty staff heard complaints that included prolonged sleep deprivation and detainees being forced to stay in painful positions or wear hoods over their heads for long periods. Detainees also said U.S. troops had shot some captives." [more]

"For organizations that opposed the war, these are busy days. Not since hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched in antiwar rallies in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion has the rationale for the preemptive war come under such fire." [more]

"Goller said she met with the Secret Service agent, Peter J. Damos, in the newspaper's security office and told him he could not speak to Ramirez. After some discussion, Damos left." [more]

"The information ... significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The CIA warned the White House early on that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence." [more]

"But the message of all this information — most of it unreported by the media — is that the Americans are no longer safe anywhere in Iraq: not at Baghdad airport, which they captured with so much fanfare in early April, not at their military bases nor in the streets of central Baghdad, nor in their helicopters nor on the country roads." [more]

"The move would block the Justice Department from using any funds to take advantage of the section of the act that allows it to secretly search the homes of suspects and only inform them later that a warrant had been issued to do so." [more]

"[Andrew] Gilligan never actually uttered the phrase he has become famous for — in fact, the first mention came from John Humphrys." [more]

"A report prepared by the UN special representative in Iraq calls for a clear timetable for the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. It also says that UN involvement will be essential in any process intended to give legitimacy to a new government." [more]

" 'I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction,' Wolfowitz told a group of reporters traveling with him. 'I'm concerned about getting Iraq on its feet. I didn't come [to Iraq] on a search for weapons of mass destruction.' " [more]

"Most of the administration's critics predicted that Washington would win the war but botch the peace, and so far they have turned out to be disturbingly prescient. Everything about the American plan, including the size and composition of occupying military forces, was misconceived." [more]

"An angry crowd laid 18 bodies, one of them headless, in front of the U.S. embassy and hurled abuse at the mission for not intervening to stop the fighting in a country founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century." [more]

"There are those within the Bush inner circle known to be resisting the [UN] option, arguing it would be a humiliation to head back to the international body, which the government shunned in its zeal to remove Saddam Hussein from power, particularly if it was needed to bring war opponents France and Germany into the equation." [more]

"On July 1, the White House unexpectedly announced that it would be immediately cutting off all military aid to certain countries unless their leaders signed bilateral agreements guaranteeing the total immunity of all Americans (military and civilian) before the International Criminal Court." [more]

"At the Green Party's national meeting, state delegates endorse resolutions calling for impeachment and an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq." [more]

The report "shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States." [more]

"Two American soldiers were killed yesterday in northern Iraq and thousands of Shi'ites protested angrily, as hostility toward the US presence in Iraq jumped religious and regional boundaries, expanding far beyond Saddam Hussein's loyalist base." [more]

"Some officials believe the draft plan amounts to a strategy to topple Kim's regime by destabilizing its military forces. The reason: It is being pushed by many of the same administration hard-liners who advocated regime change in Iraq." [more]

"If the greatest injustice in the world is U.S. imperialism, the world's greatest injustices must be found where U.S. imperialism is strongest. And, here, Africa poses a problem. Africa, after all, has less contact with the United States than any other part of the world ... the United States has avoided acting like an empire in post-cold-war Africa, and, thus, the hard left has found little cause for moral concern." [more]

"'I was much more comfortable with end-strength during the cold war than I am today,' said the Republican, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma. He said reducing the size of the military after the collapse of communism left America's ground force 'in near crisis' as it was stretched to deal with expanding global commitments in the battle against terrorism." [more]

"The media loves the trivial and can't grasp the significant. If the United States fabricated evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as critics are claiming, the question is not whether it did so. The question is: Why did it do so? In other words, why was invading Iraq important enough to lie about — if indeed it was a lie, which is far from clear." [more]

"It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset." [more]

"The best chance at killing or capture may have been deep in the past. Below the white peaks of the Spin Ghar near the Pakistani line, Osama bin Laden was spotted. The American high command believed this was it but didn't want to put its soldiers in severe danger; didn't want British special forces to claim the war's greatest prize; and couldn't compel Pakistan to close off the frontier." [more]

"Everybody on the left should go listen to Republicans and try to figure out what makes them tick. I would tell people, 'Good God, most people are not like you!' I'm reminded of people in 1972 in Manhattan who said, 'Jesus, but I didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon.' Wake up! Parochialism is never a platform for understanding, and this is another kind of parochialism." [more]

"As the Americans retreat into siege mode, they are cutting themselves entirely off from a populace that was not hostile when they arrived as glorious invaders. The US arguably lost this war in the first days after the 'fall' of Baghdad on April 9. Those days of widespread looting in April are deeply ingrained in Iraqi minds. There would be a lot more respect for a victor able to preserve the riches of a conquered country. And now the talk in the Iraqi street is still of those days in June when there was no electricty but oil exports had resumed." [more]

"Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel." [more]

"In Zebak province, in the country's northeast, regional commanders are forcing women into marriage, threatening their families' lives if they decline. And although the central government insists that women are no longer being arrested for "moral" crimes, police continue to jail women for adultery and eloping, often without trial or even so much as a witness against them." [more]

"Dr Kelly, 59, had been caught up in a row between the BBC and the government about the use of intelligence reports in the run-up to the war with Iraq." [more]

"A CIA veteran says a growing faction of the U.S. intelligence community is furious over the way the administration corrupted the system — and that the nation's security is at grave risk." [more]

"The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a daily debacle, say experts, because the Washington ideologues who planned the war were living in a fantasy." [more]

" 'I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that.' " [more]

"By all appearances, insurgents have consciously turned against foreign aid workers despite work done during the days of the mujahideen resistance and Taliban rule. Attacks on their local helpers as well suggest that more than xenophobia is at work. Rather, the attacks seem part of a concerted effort to undermine the reconstruction work itself." [more]

" 'They are putting some money into it,' says Johnson about the systems, which he estimates could cost about $2,000 each." [more]

"The point is not that an apology is in order, though it plainly is. The point is that ... the vice president dismissed [contradictory] information out of hand and disparaged its source. He did not, however, refute it. Refutations plunge you into the realm of facts, where this administration is exquisitely uncomfortable." [more]

"Tension on the Korean Peninsula is high over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons, and such shooting incidents in the DMZ are rare. In recent years, however, negotiations and reconciliation efforts have moved forward despite such outbreaks of violence." [more]

A UNICEF official said that "the casualties were the result of handling arms, ammunition and cluster bombs dumped at several hundred sites around Iraq. Hundreds of surface-to-air missiles abandoned by the now-disbanded Iraqi army, many of them damaged and unstable, also pose a serious threat." [more]

"In the crucial weeks after Saddam disappeared, American officials stood back and let a flood of guns wash over Iraq." [more]

"[A] soldier's death raised the number of combat fatalities in the Iraq war to 146, one shy of the combat death toll of US soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War." [more]

"Under fire for the CIA's handling of intelligence on Iraq, the agency's chief passes the buck back to the White House." [more]

"His job is to keep a hawk eye on dovish Colin Powell. And he's helped turn Bush foreign policy into an ideological hammer." [more]

"Soldiers who were among those who took Baghdad [were] first told they would head home May 1. Instead, they were shipped to Fallujah. Word came that they would be gone July 1. Didn't happen. Then July 18 was the date to circle. Then Aug. 1." [more]

"Troops on the archipelago seized power Wednesday in a dramatic escalation of bubbling political turmoil on the mountainous archipelago, fanned by arguments over what may be rich oil reserves lying near its shores." [more]

"The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear." [more]

"No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the federal government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program." [more]

"A Watauga County prosecutor is using a law intended to combat terrorism to fight the spread of methamphetamine laboratories in northwest North Carolina." [more]

"The department acknowledged that its decision could force a federal judge to dismiss the indictment against Mr. Moussaoui. Officials have said for months that if the indictment were dismissed, his prosecution would almost certainly be moved to a military tribunal." [more]

"After USAID gave SSA the Iraq contract, its security office discovered that the firm did not have the necessary security clearance. Instead of revoking the contract and awarding it to a company with the correct clearance credentials, USAID waived the requirement." [more]

"Nine U.N. agencies are now operating in Iraq, doing many of the jobs the U.S. military was apparently not prepared to tackle." [more]

"There is one group of nations with large numbers of well-trained troops, experienced in peacekeeping and in working with the United States Army. It's called NATO. The problem for the Bush administration is that calling on NATO means bringing France and Germany back into the fold. My suggestion: get over it." [more]

"Instead of shouting 'US Out,' those who opposed Washington's unilateral war must get serious about creating an international vision of their own." [more]

"Voices of dissent from military personnel and families are surfacing every day. One of the most poignant so far comes from a young Marine — he was killed in late June, fighting a war he didn't believe in." [more]

"...we just have to be patient. It's been 10 weeks now. We've got a wonderful team of people working on the problems. They are intelligent, they are serious, they are purposeful, and they are going to keep looking..." [more]

"Iraqi scientists I met insist that the combination of U.S. bombing, U.N. inspections, disarmament efforts, unilateral destruction by Iraqi officials, and stiff U.N. sanctions had indeed eliminated Saddam's illicit weapons by the mid-'90s." [more]

"Officials say the LRA has abducted hundreds of children in northern Uganda in recent years, forcing them to fight as child soldiers if they are boys, or to become sex slaves for rebel commanders if they are girls." [more]

"The theory that WMD were destroyed just before the invasion is, however, unlikely. The Iraqis did not seem capable of the organised destruction, which would have been no small task. Places where such destruction would have taken place show no sign of recent use." [more]

"So the president again has misled the American public and indeed the world. When, a month ago, he was in Poland and said, the fact that we had these two labs is proof that we have weapons of mass destruction. It's proof of nothing more than the president has mislead, has fabricated, we don't have a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq to justify this war. What we have is a quagmire with Americans dying on almost a daily basis and no end in site." [more]

"The Pentagon has seen the fatal flaw of hitching itself to volatile groups like the Islamists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and, more recently, the Iraqi exile groups who had no popular base at home. It seems dangerously myopic that the U.S. is even considering resurrecting the Rajavis and their army of Stepford wives." [more]

"The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan." [more]

"Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties — all seized the moment to capitalise on the war." [more]

"U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein may be organizing guerrilla operations against occupation forces and financing them with money set aside before the war, according to senior commanders and field officers here." [more]

"Much of the Internet is a cricket chorus of disaffected voices, and Raisethefist.com, which Austin still operates, is no different from any other of the woollier one-man sites on the left and right. Perhaps, in another time, the feds would have merely regarded Sherman Austin as a minor irritant, marginally worth watching. But then 9/11 hit, and the rest, as they say, is hysteria." [more]

"Senior officials in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government say they no longer believe weapons of mass destruction will be uncovered in Iraq, British news organizations reported today." [more]

"Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 'in a dramatic new light' after September 11." [more]

"The measure said administering and rebuilding Iraq likely will cost tens of billions of dollars over several years, and projected Iraqi oil revenues will not meet those costs." [more]

"There are nearly 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, some of them under fire from anti-U.S. forces. 'We need to not develop an expectation that all of these difficulties will go away in one month or two months or three months,' Franks testified." [more]

"There is a naivete among some advocates of nonviolent means. They think that if you've had one nonviolent struggle, you are not going to have any more serious problems. I have heard people say that all the nonviolent struggles for independence in India and all of Gandhi's work was a waste. They still have the caste system, they still have poverty, they have an Indian Army, and so forth. As though one series of struggles for independence from a colonial power could have possibly solved all these problems! That's nonsense. They set much higher standards for evaluating effectiveness and success of nonviolent struggle than for violent struggle." [more]

"Mr Blair refused to apologise for inadvertently 'misrepresenting' the dossier issued in February as 'intelligence' when large parts of it were culled from an article in a Middle East journal based on a PhD thesis." [more]

" 'Sure, Bush is coming to visit our AIDS clinic — and he will be here for a whole four hours,' said Walfula Oguttu, editor-in-chief of Uganda's independent newspaper. 'But we all know it all has to do with fighting terrorism. His AIDS money is trying to buy Africa.' " [more]

"The administration that had 100 percent certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction has zero percent certainty as to where they are now. The White House and the president's defenders have reverted to their fall-back humanitarian position — that the removal of Hussein was justification enough for the war." [more]

"US troops patrolling the capital and other areas have been attacked several times a day. Iraqi police and civilians perceived to be working with the occupying forces have also been targeted." [more]

" 'Then there are the deaths by malnutrition and dehydration as a consequence of the war which we haven't even started talking about,' Sloboda added." [more]

"Military officials are worried that a barrage of non-fatal attacks — estimated by officials at more than a dozen a day in Baghdad — will sap troop morale and cause people to reevaluate official pronouncements that armed resistance to the U.S. occupation is small and militarily insignificant." [more]

"If the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses ... At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted." [more]

"The silence of Saddam's inner circle on the topic so far tends to confirm the story told by General Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who fled to Jordan in 1995 ... General Kamel said Saddam had ordered the destruction of weapons of mass destruction in 1991, but had also issued instructions that plans, designs and equipment to start the programme again, when possible, should be secretly retained." [more]

"The [British] government was 'fundamentally opposed' to the use of the death penalty and would raise the strongest possible objections if there was any chance of this being applied in these cases." [more]

"The two men face a trial where US military officers will serve as judge, jury and prosecution. The men can nominate their defence lawyer, but the lawyers have to get special US clearance." [more]

"[Bush's] statement was apparently primarily based on American intelligence ... but many analysts did not believe those reports at the time, and were shocked to hear the president make such a flat, declarative statement." [more]

"Intelligence reports suggesting Saddam Hussein's regime was attempting to obtain uranium from the African nation of Niger were based on false information, including forged documents. What's even more embarrassing is that the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department had themselves earlier concluded the reports were almost certainly not true." [more]

"Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said that given the level of intelligence co-operation between Australia and the US, it was 'downright unbelievable' that no one from the Australian Government was in any way aware that the earlier reports from the US were flawed." [more]