by Robert Fisk
Published on Thursday, November 20, 2003 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Freedom of the press is beginning to smell a little rotten in the new Iraq. A couple of weeks ago, the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel received a phone call from one of U.S. Proconsul Paul Bremer’s flunkies at the presidential palace compound. The station had to answer a series of questions in 24 hours, its reporters were told.

“They insisted that if we didn’t go to them, they’d come for us,” one of Al-Jazeera’s reporters told The Independent. And come they did - to drive the station’s employees to the palace, where they were handed a sheet of paper asking if they had been given advance notice of “terrorist attacks” or had paid “terrorists” for information.

Al-Jazeera - along with its rival channel, Al-Arabiya - had already been denounced by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, currently led by the convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi, and punished for allegedly provocative programs by being banned from the council’s press conferences for two weeks.

Then the same council - obviously on Bremer’s instructions - listed a series of “do’s” and “don’ts” for all the media, ranging from a prohibition on inciting violence all the way to a ban on reporting on the rebirth of the Baath Party or speeches by Saddam. As columnist Hassan Fattah remarked about the council’s punishment of the two Arab channels, “the council and the interim council will be silent for two weeks, throughout much of the Arab world, including Iraq itself. The resistance and the terrorists, meanwhile, will still be able to say what they want. What a perfect opportunity to pour their footage onto the airwaves and capture the hearts and minds of Iraqis desperate for stability and some leadership.”

by Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies
18 November 2003

Facing the most serious escalation in U.S. casualties in Iraq, with the New York Times proclaiming “Iraq Policy in Crisis,” and with the spectre of Viet Nam-style quagmire hovering over the 2004 elections, the Bush administration has issued two major policy pronouncements. One was the November 6 speech on democracy in the Middle East, the other a high-profile timetable for ostensibly turning some authority over to Iraqis.

Both statements are critical. The first lays out the administration’s official new rationale for the Iraq war � designed to public divert attention from the lies regarding weapons of mass destruction. The second is primarily the Bush campaign effort to convince Americans the U.S. will not be bogged down in Iraq by July 2004, just five months before the elections. The effect of the shift will be to abandon even the current claim of “democratization” in Iraq in favor embracing the Iraqization of the U.S. war.

Bush’s speech on November 6 called for a “forward strategy of freedom,” placing his claimed commitment to democratization in the Middle East on par with Reagan’s Cold War call for democratization in Eastern Europe. He acknowledged that earlier U.S. policies of accommodating repressive regimes in the region “did nothing to make us safe,” but offered no indication of an actual new approach.

Bush’s speech on democracy in the Middle East is thoroughly hypocritical. While acknowledging “sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East,” Bush’s “forward strategy of freedom” proposed nothing to actually change the lack of freedom. While repeating the usual threats towards Syria, Iran, and Palestine, Bush praised the king of Morocco and the Gulf petro-states for their small, and in many cases largely cosmetic steps towards democracy. He lauded close U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt for initial and potential democratic openings, but assured them that “working democracies always need time to develop,” thus alleviating any fear of serious pressure on Riyadh or Cairo.

The Corporate Invasion of Iraq-Profile of U.S. Corporations Awarded Contracts in U.S./British-Occupied Iraq (Adobe PDF) prepared by the U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW).
This report profiles eighteen of the most prominent U.S. corporations to which the Bush administration has given large, highly profitable contracts to operate in Iraq. It is well worth reading.

Hold On to Your Humanity
by Stan Goff
bringthemhomenow.org

Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,

I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you-some more extreme than others-are changes I know very well. So I’m going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.

When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States from Iraq, a shattered country that had endured almost a decade of trench war followed by an invasion and twelve years of sanctions, my first question was how in the hell can anyone believe that this suffering country presents a threat to the United States? But then I remembered how many people had believed Vietnam threatened the United States. Including me.

10 November 2003

Journey into Baghdad and wonder why more than 11 ounces of Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot" needs to be smuggled into the hands of drama students. See into the paintings of Amal who lives in the oldest house in Baghdad. Listen to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak as a "brother to the suffering poor of Iraq… and for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted, and for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Iraq." Meet Sundus and her gift, and never forget her. Show that part of Baghdad we rarely see: the part with people in it. Learn of music that speaks to the sadness of life, an expression of infinite sadness, and why Celine Dion is seemingly so popular in Baghdad. Understand that joy still springs within the tremors of war and occupation, and there is dancing, dancing that will not cease. Visit Baghdad in No Particular Order.