Antiwar.com Blog

In addition to Ed Kihane’s Plea for the Abducted Iraqi and Italian Bridges to Baghdad aid workers, Voices in the Wilderness has posted a Bridges to Baghdad collection which includes a link to freeourfriends.blogspot which has a petition to sign and a statement of Support from Fallujah.

Meanwhile, hundreds of candlelight vigils are to be held across the country tonight (Thursday) to mourn the
1,000 U.S. SOLDIERS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS KILLED United for Peace and Justice indicates. Another sponsor, Win Without War, also mourns the unnecessary loss of 1,000 American lives and many thousands of Iraqi lives. The list of vigil sites is being maintained by MoveOn, click ahead to see if near you there’s a chance to honor the more than 1000 U.S. soldiers who have now been killed in Iraq.

The attention paid to President Bush’s recent interview on the Today Show focused on his comments that the war on terror could not be won. In that same interview he made another revealing comment:

President Bush: I guess because I made some hard decisions. And we’ve made a decision on Saddam Hussein to remove him from power. Going into Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban created some unpopularity inside…

Lauer: But you…

President Bush: … of Pakistan.

Lauer: …had great support in Afghanistan.

President Bush: Now, let me finish for a second. Not in Pakistan. You mentioned Pakistan. It was an unpopular move in Pakistan as you might recall. And yet it was the right thing to do. When I’m making my calculations and I say to the Taliban, ‘Cough up Al Qaeda or face serious consequences,’ I’m not doing a focus group in Pakistan, Matt. I made decisions on what I think is best for this country, and yet the decision to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan was unpopular in Pakistan at the time. And in other places it wasn’t so popular either, I might add — same in Iraq, there’s no question.

This is exactly the problem with interventionists. They disguise their interventions as actions that are “good for our country,” thus allowing them — as Bush says — to ignore the opinions of the foreigners affected by the policy. Examples include the sanctions on Iraq, meddling in Iran in the 1970s and unwavering support for many dictators throughout the world.

Simply ignoring the lack of popular support for US policies outside the US leads to continued hostility with other nations and, with time, more terrorism. Of course, when the US acts defensively, such concerns are less important. However, if the administration was unable to convince both a large portion of the US population and a wide majority of the world population that the war on Iraq was defensive and necessary, perhaps they should have reconsidered their justifications and motives. In the case of Iraq, it was clear that even the biggest lies and fear-mongering were not enough to sway world opinion.

Lawrence of Cyberia writes:

In case you’re not sure what you’re looking at in the first photograph, the white ribbon around the residential center of Qalqilya is Israel’s Wall. The brown areas to the north and south of the town, and outside the wall, are where Qalqilya’s water resources and farmland lie, now abandoned, their crops rotting. There is a gate that opens onto the farmland at the northern side of the Wall, but it has never been opened since the Wall was built. The gate on the south side may or may not be opened (at the whim of the soldiers on duty) three times a day for fifteen minutes each time, to allow children to travel to and from school and for farmers to access their fields. Though for most farmers, it really doesn’t matter if the gate remains locked: they are not allowed to pass through without a permit, and 60% of Qalqilya’s farmers have been arbitrarily refused the permits they need to pass through to their fields on the days when the gate is actually opened.

The end result here will be that as the farmers can’t reach the fields, Israel will declare them “abandoned”. Under Israeli law, Israel then has the right to seize the “abandoned” land for itself.

Read the rest.

The Forward of August 27 has an interesting pairing of op-ed pieces. In the first, the Jewish weekly expresses its dismay re the Bush administration’s approval of a new Israel settlement construction project. The approval comes at a time when Israel’s attorney general is suggesting it should “recognize the applicability in the territories of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the 1949 treaty on which the world court relied to declare the fence and the settlements illegal.”

For 37 years, “Israel has rejected the treaty as inapplicable to the territories, and Washington, while disagreeing, has looked the other way. Successive administrations have tut-tutted about ‘obstacles to peace,’ but every president has guaranteed Israel the running room to do what it felt it must.” Now, “while Israelis search desperately for a way to disentangle themselves from their neighbors, Washington is offering to assist in deepening the quagmire.”

If The Forward really thinks a sick joke has gone on long enough, the second piece, John Kerry’s pledge of “unwavering support,” should make it very uneasy.

Ha’aretz columnists Gideon Levy and Meron Benvenisti also think that the Attorney General Mazuz’s recommendation re recognizing the applicabilty of the Geneva Convention is significant. While it apparently doesn’t agree, the New York Times does lament Bush’s “support for a major expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” And in this context it offers acceptance speech advice, “If Mr. Bush is going to speak seriously about terrorism tonight, he also needs to talk about Israel.” But again, what about “Mr. Kerry?”

Michael Moore doesn’t mention Israel in his USA Today acceptance speech advice offering, “it’s show time” so let’s gush over the Bush daughters for five paragraphs. Linda Stasi has a strong protest piece in the New York Post, but I don’t think she realizes just how much of a burden Moore has become. It’s not surprising that Bush has surged to a double digit lead.

As the death total in Iraq inches towards 1000, the Department of Defense press corps has started to work on weekends. DoD press releases have almost always been sent out on weekdays, presumably when the government is at “work.” This weekend however, the DoD released the names of four US Marines killed in Iraq on Friday. Such timing suggests that they hope to get these names under the mainstream press radar. With but one mention of three of these deaths, they have succeeded.

The four Marines killed were:

Lance Cpl. Nicholas Wilt, 23, of Tampa, Fla, died Sept 3 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Wilt was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

1st Lieutenant Ronald Winchester, 25, of Rockville Center, N.Y., died Sept 3 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Winchester was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

and:

Lance Cpl. Nicholas Perez, 19, of Austin, Texas.

Capt. Alan Rowe, 35, of Hagerman, Idaho.

Both Marines died Sept 3 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Perez was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif. Rowe was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Tikrit – A senior commander in the Iraqi national guard on Sunday insisted his officers had not captured Saddam Hussein’s deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri.

“Our forces did not take part in any operation and did not capture Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri and we do not have any information concerning the subject,” said Major General Ahmed Khalaf Salman, who is commander for the central region where the capture reportedly took place.

“No division took part,” he added.

Another national guard commander in Tikrit earlier told AFP that Ibrahim had been captured in a clinic near his and Saddam’s hometown after fierce that left scores of casualties.

For his part, Doctor Nashwan Mohammed Sabar at the Tikrit General hospital said the ailing Ibrahim had not been brought there.

At the clinic in Ad Dawr, where Iraqi national guard and interior ministry officials said Duri was caught, nurses Hassan Mohammed al-Duri and Shema Kazem Alwan said: “We have never seen Izzat Ibrahim.”

Asked about the flurry of denials, interior ministry spokesperson Adnan Abdelrahman, who had previously confirmed the arrest and provided abundant details about its circumstances, said: “Call the defence ministry because these are the people who told us this story.”

However, Iraqi defence ministry officials were not answering their phones.

For its part, the US military said it did not have custody of Ibrahim, adding its troops were not involved in any such operation and no Iraqi official had informed any American of his arrest.

Apparently some Iraqi made the whole thing up.