Selves and Others

in Baghdad

With less than two weeks until the much-vaunted transfer of power from the Americans to an Iraqi government, a few hints of independence have emerged from the men Washington approved.

Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, the civil engineer and tribal leader who is to be the new president, contradicted George Bush’s suggestion that the notorious prison of Abu Ghraib be torn down. It is not that the sheikh has any affection for the place, but he probably foresaw another fat new contract looming for some foreign building company. Anyway, the damage done to the American image in Iraq cannot be undone by removing the scene of the crime. (...) [ page 20 | Comment]

in Baghdad

A suicide bomber rammed a white four-wheel-drive vehicle packed with artillery shells into a crowd of men outside an army recruitment centre in Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 35 people and wounding 138 others.

It was the most lethal such attack since February, when another recruitment office was the target. Yesterday’s bomb in Baghdad was swiftly followed by another car bomb explosion in Yethrib, north of Baghdad, which killed six members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps, a paramilitary group. (...)

If Saddam can go on trial for planting landmines and selling chemical weapons, so can those who sold them to him.

ARBIL, Jun 18 (IPS) - A year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the mountains and plains of Northern Iraq are still covered in landmines planted by the former Iraqi dictator’s regime during the 1980s. That is when he fought a decade-long war with Iran and many battles with Kurdish guerrillas.

The Red Cross has made thousands of synthetic limbs for Iraqi civilians who have lost their arms or legs. Hundreds have been killed.

”We were in the village when we heard the mines go off in the middle of the night,” recalls Mohammed Abuznawee, a shepherd who lives near a minefield outside Kirkuk. The Iraqi army mined the area around his village in 1985. (...)

Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech on June 14th to The James Madison Institute, a conservative Florida-based “think tank.” (That term that usually describes a handful of ideologues positing as “thinkers,” and acquiring, through corporate donations, the kind of respectability that allows the corporate media to cite it as somehow knowledgeable about the topics about which it thinks. These tanks are also useful in that they can invite prestigious speakers to speak in a supportive, protective atmosphere, knowing that their remarks will be widely covered in the press.) In it, Cheney repeated his claim that Saddam Hussein has had longstanding ties to al-Qaeda. “He was a patron of terrorism,” Cheney told the assembled thinkers. “He had long established ties with al-Qaida.” This insistence on Iraq-al Qaeda ties seems to be the centerpiece of the standard speech the vice president gives, but journalists now dutifully note that intelligence officials have rejected that connection, and so whenever he restates it, his own credibility likely suffers.

Cheney’s favorability ratings are way down. (...)

Surely it is now time for all The Bush-bashers and war critics - on both left and right - to swallow their pride, put aside their partisanship, and admit the stone-cold truth: the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a rousing success.

For despite many setbacks and dark days, it cannot be denied that George W. Bush has accomplished exactly what he set out to do in launching his war of aggression: the installation - through "a heavy dose of fear and violence," as one American commander so eloquently put it - of a client state in Iraq, led by a strongman who will facilitate the Bush Regime’s long-term (and long-declared) strategic goal of establishing a permanent military "footprint" in the key oil state, while also guaranteeing the short-term goal of opening the country to exploitation by Bush cronies and favored foreign interests. All of this has now been done, and even given an official seal of approval from Bush’s former adversaries on the UN Security Council - a rousing triumph indeed. (...)

One of the ideas to come out of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s recent warnings about terrorism is that al Qaeda, by plotting a high-profile attack on American soil, hopes to affect the outcome of the US presidential election. For conservatives, the implications of this notion are clear. Republican pundits suggest that any move to oppose President Bush and his war in Iraq constitutes an effort to appease the terrorists.

It is a perverse notion, and one that demands a response from American progressives. Those of us who oppose the disastrous foreign policy of the current administration must make a strong statement both to terrorists who think they would be better off without President Bush and to conservatives trying to manipulate this situation for political gain. (...)

Since you are reading Commondreams.org, you are probably a news junkie. You probably feel a civic duty to know as much as you can about what’s going on all the time, everywhere in the world.

But every responsible citizen deserves a summer vacation. This year, I’m taking mine early. So I don’t know much about what’s been going on in the world lately. I did hear that Ronald Reagan died, and they made an awfully big fuss about it. But I don’t know the latest on the plans for a new government in Iraq, or Ariel Sharon’s Gaza policy, or the Kerry campaign’s strategic maneuvers, or anything like that. (...)

Column of the Americas Distributed through the Universal Press Syndicate

Suffering is associated with mothers, says Fernando Suarez del Solar. But fathers also suffer, he says. His son, Jesus Alberto, was killed in Iraq in 2003. Since then, he has been speaking out against what he considers an illegal and immoral war. Such are his thoughts now, when people celebrate Father’s Day amid a rising opposition to the war. (...)

On Saturday, June 12th, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, in a pugnacious and defiant statement on the eve of this week’s major IAEA meeting to discuss his country’s nuclear ambitions, finally came out and said that Iran "has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club." This, he vowed, is "an irreversible path."

Iranian officials have repeatedly insisted that Tehran’s nuclear program is intended to generate electricity, not warheads. But many suspect — not to put too fine a point on it — that they are lying. Why? Because the temptation for Iran to develop a potent nuclear arsenal of its own — driven by the contradictions of George Bush’s foreign and nuclear policies — may in the end prove too seductive to resist. (...)

Democracy has been much in the news of late. At the G-8 Summit in Georgia, one of the main items on the agenda was the democratization of the Middle East, and the recent commemoration of the D-Day anniversary and the passing of President Reagan both generated discussion concerning the defense and spread of democracy.

But amidst all the hoopla, the anniversary of a decisive event in the modern history of democracy has somehow escaped notice. Fifty years ago, in June of 1954, the government of the United States overthrew the legitimate and democratically elected government of Guatemala. It was the Central Intelligence Agency’s first major covert action in Latin America, and by leading to the rise to a series of military regimes across the region, it changed the course of history. (...)

Political myth-making goes into overdrive every four years. With presidential campaigns fixated mostly on media, an array of nonstop spin takes its toll while illogic often takes hold: When heroes are absent, they’re invented. When convenient claims are untrue, they’re defended.

Many supporters come to function as enablers — staying silent or mimicking their candidate’s contorted explanations to try to finesse the gaping contradiction. Fast talk substitutes for straight talk. A kind of "covering fire" across media battlefields makes it easier for the candidate to just keep on dissembling. (...)