Please take a minute to check out our new blogrollees: Unfair Witness, Cursor, Warblogging, Ken MacLeod, Arthur Silber, Brendan O’Neill, Liberal Arts Mafia, Rational Enquirer, Roderick Long, Wendy McElroy, Tom Dispatch, the Alternet War on Iraq blog, RiShawn Biddle, Kurt Nimmo, Mises blog, and Alina Stefanescu.
Kathy Kelly’s Prison Address
Kathy Kelly, a leader of Voices in the Wilderness, is now serving time in prison in Illinois for her activities to oppose the war in Iraq.
She would appreciate hearing from supporters and friends, including giving her the latest antiwar news. She has no Internet access, so printouts of Antiwar.com stories and front pages would no doubt be appreciated.
Kathy Kelly #04971-045
FPC Pekin
PO Box 5000
Pekin, IL 61555-5000
You may also write to her co-defendant, Rev. Jerry Zawada:
Jerome Zawada, OFM #04995-045
FPC Oxford, P.O. Box 1085
Oxford, WI, 53952
Radio Address From Mars
Apparently George “I Don’t Read Newspapers” Bush is still isolated from world events in his Wahington Neocon bubble. Here’s an AP report on his Saturday radio address. Illustrations mine.
Bush vows to defeat ‘small faction’ of Iraqi insurgents
Saturday,April 10,2004,11:05 AM
Crawford, Texas-AP — President Bush says the U-S military and its allies won’t let insurgents win the battle in Iraq.
In today’s weekly radio address, the president said a small faction is trying to seize power as the date nears for Iraqi sovereignty.
Bush says the insurgents want the U-S to falter and delay the turnover of sovereignty — scheduled for June 30th.
But Bush is vowing to take the fight to the enemy.
He says a coalition of forces will fight on many fronts until the enemies are defeated.
Much of the heavy fighting in recent weeks has centered around the city of Fallujah — making it the symbol of resistance for some Iraqis.
Bush says U-S Marines are taking control of the city, block by block.
Running Out of Ammo
$100 billion for new pipelines, private security firms, Haliburton contracts, but not nearly enough for ammunition:
- Cpl. Richard Stayskal, a 22-year-old Marine from San Jose, Calif., arrived in Landstuhl Tuesday after being wounded by automatic weapon fire in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
Countering the insurgency, Stayskal said, has been difficult for Marines on the ground. In his case, his unit was chronically short of ammunition, and his support unit got pinned down at the same time across town. The two units couldn’t help each other.
“They weren’t giving us nearly enough ammunition for the situations out there. Everyone was running out. Everyone was grabbing each other’s ammunition.”
Hostages & Threats
Jo Wilding, with the circus troupe in Iraq, on the hostage situation and threats against foreigners.
- I expect everyone knows by now about the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians and the threat to burn them alive unless the Japanese government withdraws its troops from Iraq. Anxious, everyone huddled round the satellite TV in one of the apartments. The tape from the kidnappers showed them crouched, blindfolded, knives to their throats.
“It’s them!”
Nayoko [Nahoko Takato] used to bring food for the street kids and wash their clothes for them, the boys who later stayed in the shelter in Bab a Sherji and now live in the Kurdish House. She wasn’t with an NGO at all, just an individual who raised some money to come over and help the kids and did it, learnt some Arabic, quietly got on with it. As a result no one, no embassy, no organisation, knows anything about her. The Japanese embassy thought all three of them had just arrived.
And it makes no difference, of course it makes no difference, that I know them; it makes no difference to the terror on her face, the young woman who used to help the street kids on Abu Nawas, the man who was investigating depleted uranium contamination. It makes no difference that their faces are familiar, that I used to see them at the internet on Karrada Dakhil and wander down the street with them. But it feels horrible. … read more
Bush Neocons-Clueless On Iraq
As a week of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq drew to a close, the Bush administration pledged Friday to take the fight to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqi resisters.
“We’re worried, but I am not panicked about it,” said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of the upsurge in resistance to U.S. occupation.
“They’ve chosen to fight,” Armitage told the semiofficial Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. “We’ll fight. And they will see that we understand strength as well.”
The cleric’s militia has been in battle with U.S. and other coalition forces this week. Armitage dismissed the al-Sadr offensive as inevitable.
“Sooner or later this was going to happen,” he said. “Sooner or later we were going to have to disarm the militias. There is no question.”
In the fight, Armitage said, Iraqi civilians are being killed “and our soldiers are as devastated as anybody.”
“We do not want to use force indiscriminately,” he said. “We bleed when this happens.”
So, the answer to the uprising in Iraq is….TAKE THEIR GUNS AWAY! How brilliant, how…practical.
The idea of actually addressing the Iraqi’s grievances doesn’t cross their minds. Of course, addressing their grievances would likely involve leaving Iraq and these power-tripping wannabee emperors don’t have that on their agendas at all. No, their still in flight-suit cowboy mode. They’re going to take the fight to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqi resisters. Like they did with Fallujah. We all know what a rip-roaring success that’s been.
As Steve Gilliard wrote today:
The sad fact about Iraq is that no one gets the scale of the tragedy. Not only are the theocrats going to win, but the scale of killing is vast. Over 40 Americans and 300 Iraqis have been killed in fighting.
There is this arrogant idea that all the US has to do is kill enough people and the resistance will end. Dan Barlett, the White House spokesman making the rounds of the morning shows, said “we’re fighting evil”.
When I heard that, my mouth fell open. Hasn’t anyone in the White House noticed most Iraqis are on the fence, and many more have decided to oppose the occupation. They are not supporting us. They are not taking our side, except when we pay them. There isn’t one pro-american group native to Iraq. No one cares about Chalabi’s henchmen.
I heard a Lt. Col say “we’re winning every firefight.” So? Why are you in firefights? Why are people killing your Marines? Doesn’t that speak of a massive policy failure. Now, I know he has to win a battle, but the idea that we’re fighting in Iraq is insane. We were supposed to liberate these people, not have them turn on us.
[…]This fight, which I think was pushed by Chalabi and his neocon buddies, to get the Sunnis under heel and Sadr out of the way, is a complete disaster. US troops, from now, until the day we leave Iraq, will face gunfire in Sadr City. Our supply lines will face random attacks. The Sunni tribal towns will never permit Coalition troops in their borders without a fight. Every Iraqi we kill is one who has to be avenged.
The US started a fight with people who don’t quit. CENTCOM says “we control Iraq”, well no, you don’t and can’t. So what if you took back Kut, the Al Mahdi boys just went home. They will be back. Maybe at night, when a convoy comes by. Maybe on the rail lines. They may back down from gun battles in the street, but we’ve just started the Shia insurgency. Shias have always opposed Americans, some joined the insurgency from day one. Now, the masses are deciding it’s time to kick the Americans out.
Now, when the masses decide you’re out, you’re toast – got it, neoboobs? Yeah, I know…they don’t and will never get it. The question is simply how many people are going to die before they’re forced out – whining, spinning, lying and killing as they go.
Oh, and by the way, has anyone heard anything out of that big-mouth blowhard swindler, Ahmed “Hero in Error” Chalabi lately? What could possibly shut him up, beside the need to lay low until the blood from his last caper dries?