Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll (washingtonpost.com, 10/22/04 forthcoming edition, page 1):

'The picture it paints is that, after all the blood and treasure we've spent and despite the [U.S.-led] occupation's democracy efforts, we're in a position now that the moderates would not win if an election were held today,' said a U.S. official who requested anonymity...

The very informative blogger, Salam Pax, visits Washington and writes a report for the UK Guardian. Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | The Baghdad Blogger goes to Washington: day one (guardian.co.uk, 10/22/04 edition (forthcoming)):

"Ultimately, the conversation turns to Iraq. We all seem to agree that even if John Kerry gets elected as president it is too late for a drastic change in policy. I am surprised at how much everyone here seems to have bought what the Bush administration has been selling them - especially the line about a well-educated Iraqi middle class that will take over and transform Iraq into a democratic paradise.

To tell you the truth, I bought into that as well - and boy were we wrong. That educated middle class was everywhere around the world, but not in Iraq. What it decided to do was to shut its mouth or turn religious.

This is an interesting comment from someone who supported the U.S.' initial nation-building plans.

You may, at times, have wondered how the current leadership of the United States could keep digging itself deeper and deeper into trouble in Iraq. It seems like, no matter what horrific events occur there, the reponse is to deny reality, and then to do the same things again. And again. What gives?

This may offer some insight. The New York Times Magazine article: "Without a Doubt," by Ron Suskind (nytimes.com, 10/17/04) has some of the most frightening quotations I have yet seen about the difficult times we face. Namely:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

That would explain a few things, wouldn't it?

Iraqis are subsidizing their occupiers and the big corporations of their occupiers

At a time when the U.S. insists that the main barriers to reconstruction projects in Iraq are terrorists who know the reconstruction will bring peace and stability, the U.S. is undermining reconstruction by allowing American corporations to take Iraqi money as compensation for lost profits as a result of the prior Iraq war.

Guardian | Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us? by Naomi Klein (guardian.co.uk, 10/16/04) provides disturbing details.

Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right: in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website....

But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent just $29 million on reconstruction projects.

So the U.S. taxpayers have forked out $29 million for Iraqi reconstruction, much of which is actually going to Halliburton. Iraqi taxpayers have forked out $1.8 billion, $18 million of which has gone quite directly to Halliburton. Meanwhile, the Iraqis in many places have no power, safe drinking water, physical security, medicines...

Yet the corporations are making out like bandits. Which they are.

It is just amazing, how unjust this arrangement is.

Aside from election speculation, the hot news story right now is about reservists currently detained for disobeying orders. Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Doubts about US morale in Iraq as troops refuse 'suicide mission'. (guardian.co.uk, 10/16/04) Many of the Guardsmen, who raised concerns about operating a fuel convoy without the routine defensive support they were familiar with, contacted their families back home when they were detained. The story has hit the papers as a result of statements from their families.

Is the U.S. once again paying cash to anyone who will tell them what they want to hear? Morley's World Opinion Roundup item, "Insurgent Zarqawi's Dark Genius" (washingtonpost.com, 10/05/04) quotes foreign papers whose sources say the U.S. is paying people to tell them that so-called terrorist mastermind al Zarqawi is behind every problem that arises.

Didn't the U.S. go through this before? Over WMDs? And didn't that result in some wretched results?

Morley quotes Sami Ramadi's article, "The true face of Iraqi resistance" (guardian.co.uk, 09/30/04) which suggests the U.S. is happily using Zarqawi as a fall-guy regardless of the truth or untruth of the information they have purchased, because it is convenient to have a bad guy.

The occupation forces have admitted that the attacks on them by the resistance rose last month to 2,700. And how many of these 2,700 attacks a month were claimed by Zarqawi? Six. Six headline-grabbing, TV-dominating, stomach-churning moments.

Just as Iraq's 25 million people were reduced, in the public's mind, to the threat from weapons of mass destruction, ready to be unleashed within 45 minutes, the resistance is now being reduced to a single hoodlum.

It is surely more easy to motivate U.S. troops into believing that they are fighting for good and against evil with a convenient bad guy. But if the war they are fighting exists only internally, they will spend all of their time confused and misdirected when they are fighting a different war against rebels with no ties to their imagined villain externally.

Bush keeps saying that everything in Iraq is grand, and that "Peace is on the march." He didn't say what direction it's marching in. Inside besieged Falluja(bbc.co.uk, 10/16/04):

The mood in the city is grim.

It is start of Ramadan, but there is nowhere to celebrate and no food to celebrate with.

Read more on how people are fleeing town.

The raiding of mosques right before a holy period surely isn't good for the morale of Iraqi civilians, either. U.S. hits Sunni hot spots -- 7 mosques raided, Muslim leaders irate over air strike destruction, arrests (sfgate.com, 10/13/04). Interestingly, the US is warning of an increase in violence -- by Iraqis. We should draw no correlation to the new military campaigns by the U.S., apparently.

Interesting comment from this article:

In a separate statement read Friday in Sunni mosques in Baghdad and elsewhere, Fallujah clerics threatened a civil disobedience campaign across the country if the Americans try to overrun the city.

The clerics said if civil disobedience were not enough to stop a U.S. assault, they would proclaim a jihad, or holy war, against all U.S. and multinational forces "as well as those collaborating with them."

They insisted that the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi was not in Fallujah, claiming his alleged presence "is a lie just like the weapons of mass destruction lie."

"Al-Zarqawi has become the pretext for flattening civilians houses and killing innocent civilians," the statement said.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the article now claims that Fallujah was controlled by "radical clerics" (note the plural) now that local religious leaders are planning protests. Funny, until recently, there was only ONE radical cleric. Perhaps they don't want to give up using the title, now that their favorite cleric so labeled is running for mainstream office?

Still not winning hearts and minds: After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts From Scratch (washingtonpost.com, 09/19/04):

"'The citizens are frustrated; everyone is frustrated,' he said. 'My house, for example, has been searched three times, and the last time they were very aggressive. They broke down my door. I was asleep in my house with my children, and suddenly [a soldier] was standing in front of me. I said, 'I am a doctor.' He said, '[Expletive] you.' '"

Things aren't going smoothly on the home front, either: Influx of Wounded Strains VA (news.yahoo.com/washingtonpost, 10/03/04)

An interesting compilation of international attitudes about U.S. policy under the Bush Administration: U.S. Policies Stir More Fear Than Confidence (news.yahoo.com/latimes, 10/03/04). There are some very unfortunate sentiments expressed resulting from the way in which the U.S. has chosen to use force.

The recent news about Iraq is a litany of horrors: Children massacred by Iraq bombs (bbc.co.uk, 09/30/04), reports that 34 kids were killed by a car bomb while pursuing sweets from U.S. soldiers, and that the U.S. killed a woman and child while engaging in house-bombings. In 'Scores die' in Samarra assault (bbc.co.uk, 10/01/04) the U.S. claims a precise estimate of 109 "insurgent" kills, while local hospitals report a high number of injuries, including to civilians.

On a different note, one correspondent notes that the use of force will not succeed in bringing order to Iraq on its own, and says that other efforts are afoot. Analysis: Battle for Iraq's future, by Jonathan Marcus (bbc.co.uk, 10/01/04) suggests that military campaigns which level cities and kill civilians won't create peaceful settings for elections, but that Allawi claims to be in negotiations with representatives from insurgent groups. If all the major Iraqi groups are represented in negotiations of the country's new constitution, peace may be achievable. Negotiations are a refreshing change from the force-only approach many of the parties in Iraq had taken.

Two Italian aid workers, who had been kidnapped in Iraq and were feared dead, were released and have created a controversy by insisting that resistance to puppet governments, such as Allawi's interim government in Iraq, is legitimate. Italy split over hostages' views (bbc.co.uk, 10/02/04) The two Simonas, Pari and Torretta, urged Italy to withdraw troops from Iraq, and condemned the kidnapping of civilians.

Their abductors gave them embroidered kaftans (British spelling) as gifts. The women feared they would be killed until they were freed, so I imagine the kaftans were quite unexpected. (understatement)

Their entire story has not been told, but should be interesting: one of the women was fluent in Arabic and had been doing aid work in Iraq for a long time, and so was likely able to communicate with their captors in a way that many other kidnap victims had not. The women were unaware of the unfortunate fates that hostages held by others in Iraq had recently suffered.

U.S. Foreign Policy Explained

This is the best and most concise explanation for why the U.S., promoter of Democracy in all of its glory, is allied with monarchies, theocracies, and dictators in addition to various democratic entities:

What the United States has never supported, however, or even tolerated, is a regime that is unwilling to enter into 'normal' trade or financial relations with American business. A country, to put it simply, in which no profits can be made by Americans. The presence or absence of profit opportunities, not the presence or absence of freedom, is what has traditionally determined American policy toward other regimes.

This excellent summary is a quote from a lengthy and very good review of four political books and is entitled Homeland Insecurity, by George Scialabba (thenation.com), and is printed in the October 11, 2004 issue (now available on newsstands).

Hey! That really is a U.S.-style democracy! How Much U.S. Help? The Bush Administration takes heat for a CIA plan to influence Iraq's elections, (time.com, forthcoming 10/04/04 issue) reveals that the Bush Administration planned to covertly fund pro-U.S. candidates in Iraq's upcoming "democratic" elections.

But U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran into trouble with another plan involving those elections — a secret "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington. A source says the idea was to help such candidates — whose opponents might be receiving covert backing from other countries, like Iran — but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections.

(bold emphasis mine) THIS should give folks in the Middle East a happy signal about the U.S.' great intentions for a free Iraq.

I found this Prof. Juan Cole's blog at this Informed Comment entry, along with his commentary about how he finds the Time characterization of Pelosi inappropriate. Cole also has comments he has received from Iraqis about the "redevelopment" of certain areas of Najaf, which are being leveled without local input. I've heard elsewhere that through some coincidence, Mr. Sadr's offices, among others, will be demolished...

A necessary ingredient for democracy, at home or abroad: justice

I periodically point out to my peers, upon hearing of some terrible tragedy like a suicide bombing or a violent militaristic assault, that you never see millionaires wiring bombs to themselves. You never see doctors wearing jewelry driving their custom luxury cars into military barricades. You never see brain surgeons in tailored suits rioting.

While wealthy people may direct acts of violence by others, the people who act to harm themselves or others generally are not having their material or other needs met. It is people with no economic or personal stake in the future who feel they having nothing to lose by engaging in crimes of political or personal violence. It is people who have few social or economic options who join militaries around the world, whether for 'good' governments or 'bad' governments. People without hope, who are not invested personally in the future of their society, wind up in dangerous, hopeless situations which threaten everyone.

Being a student of compassionate action, it appears that an obvious solution to the problem of violence by the hopeless is to give them the means to have a future. But many world leaders instead believe that military power and repression can prevent hopeless people from acting violently.

I would be more inclined to believe this if I saw evidence of it working.

A discussion of two approaches to hopelessness came up in a good interview with a great writer and thinker: AlterNet: Finding Justice with Arundhati Roy. Roy says, in part:

Obviously there are two paths that humanity can choose to take. One is to increase inequality and then bank on weapons to maintain that, which is the project of the New American Century, and the project of any person who bids to be president of this country....

[The second path:] The way we can turn the world around is if we are at least moving on a path toward justice. Maybe it can never be achieved in any pristine form. Right now, the powerful, and I don't just mean the powerful in America, but the coalition of the powerful elites across the world are making it very clear that they are not even interested in justice.

On the same topic of justice and also very much worth reading: Matters of Justice, an interview with Cornel West, in which West says:

I think that?s a real challenge to the Bush administration in particular and to Americans in general, in their response to terrorism. Terrorism is ugly, wrong and vicious, but you don?t want to get in the same gutter as the terrorist to simply reinforce the same cycle of killing innocent people, demonizing others, losing sight of the humanity of others. You want justice, justice, justice.

I think Roy and West are very much on the right track.

It may be difficult for Americans to see, because the repressive perspective has spread to the populace: many Americans live in gated communities, fearful of the disenfranchised; many Americans support the imprisonment of huge percentages of the population, including impoverished, addicted, and hopeless people, rather than treatment or life assistance; many Americans live in fear of have-nots, building "safe rooms," purchasing guns, subscribing to guard services and alarm systems, driving tank-like vehicles to protect their possessions from those who have no legitimate means to acquire them... Yet none of these actions make American society safer, or the neighbors they fear more hopeful of their futures.

I am not suggesting that money alone is the deciding factor, but I am saying that material need/comfort is at least one factor. Social investment in neighborhoods and intact, healthy communities is another.

Radicalism consistently appears to be a resort of those who believe they have few options. Surely there is a reason the terrorists of Beslan were made up of widows and people who lost their children to Russian military violence. Surely there is a reason that Israel's poverty-producing policies and repeated destruction of neighborhoods that people were socially invested in has produced radically violent responses. Surely there is a reason that the impoverished of America's slums act in disregard to the rules of a society that shunts them aside.

If we want to live in a more peaceful, safe world, we need to consider all approaches. Creating a more just, secure, safe world is a great option.

Reports 'predicted Iraq violence' (bbc.com, 09/29/04). Not that this is a surprise, but:

US intelligence reports written before the Iraq war warned President George Bush that an invasion could lead to an insurgency, the New York Times reports.

The reports also predicted the war would increase sympathy in the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, officials who saw the reports say.

Of course, Bush Senior decided years ago that occupying Iraq was a bad idea. (themoderntribune.com; see also same at snopes.) Which means that "Gulf War I" could have been worse! I knew there was an upside here somewhere...

Ouch!. (sfgate.com). This is an image of a young child who was injured by U.S. airstrikes in Sadr City.

There are some strange things in mainstream news reports about the coverage of airstrikes against civilian areas. I've read that the insurgents in Najaf where intentionally having people live in their own houses, for example, so that they would be victims of U.S. bombings. As if living in one's own house is some sort of radical insurgent act. I think Rumsfeld brought up the same accusation in the documentary film Control Room. My partner has heard announcements by commentators on radio that civilian injuries as the result of bombing neighborhoods are 'impossible' and 'lies.'

How wacky - the idea that people live in neighborhoods, in houses even!!!

*

Of course, we don't usually get front page stories like this (bbc.com image of Independent cover dated 08/01/04) about specific civilians killed by the U.S. military, and the loss to their families for which cash offers cannot compensate.

Frighteningly, I don't think that war hysteria allows people to view Iraqi civilians as individuals with families, even though they are supposed to be the beneficiaries of U.S. military activities there. And the U.S. media isn't about to change that.

A flashback to a dark time in an earlier war: Vietnam, Inc. by Phillip Jones Griffiths. The photo has an unpleasantly familiar aspect.

CAPTURED SUSPECTS. Anyone who was male and between 15 and 50 was automatically assumed to be Vietcong and treated as such. After the traumatic experience of being arrested tnd then 'interrogated,' any person released would quickly want to join the Vietcong.

Link to post in the sidebar when I have a chance: AlterNet: War on Iraq: News Log.

Torture by beatings AND loud western music US troops face new torture claims (guardian.co.uk, 09/14/04). Ick.