by Phyllis Bennis
Institute For Policy Studies
April 11, 2004

Almost one year from President Bush’s announcement of the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, the U.S. drive towards empire faces new and serious challenges. One year to the day since U.S. military forces pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein, the front page of the Washington Post features a photograph of another U.S. soldier pulling down a poster of Shia’a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from a pillar in the same Baghdad square. Certainly the most important challenge is seen in the widening military confrontation now facing U.S. troops in cities across Iraq. But there is a further challenge internationally. The “second super-power” is on the rise, and it now has broadened to include not only social movements and global civil society protests but as well a new assortment of governments prepared to defy U.S. pressures, inter-governmental organizations and groups (some of them newly formed, such as the G-21). And new developments may point to a potential to reclaim the United Nations itself as part of the global resistance to U.S. war.

The bottom line is that it has become impossible for the Bush administration to claim that their policies are good for Iraqis or good for Americans. The key weaknesses facing the administration’s policies start with exposés – from lies regarding weapons of mass destruction to the failure of an Iraq-obsessed White House to take real terrorist threats seriously. The specific vulnerabilities reflect the specific false claims the administration has been using (some of them now being discarded) to actually brag about the “success” of their strategy.

“We have liberated Iraq from tyranny.” What Iraqis see outside their doors are foreign soldiers occupying their country. Violence is escalating on a scale unprecedented inside Iraq since the Iran-Iraq War and the Anfal campaign of the 1980s. Many Iraqis, particularly many women, are afraid to leave their homes becomes of the surging violence.

We received a letter from Rev. Jerry Zawada, OFM today. Jerry is in prison for crossing the line at the E.L.F. installation in northern Wisconsin, and for crossing the line at WHISC/SOA this past November

for more information regarding ELF: nukewatch.com
for more information regarding SOA Watch: soaw.org

---

April 10, 2004

Happy Easter, Dear Ones

New beginnings! new Hope! Not always easy to sense it happening with so much to worry about these days. “In my Easter bonnet…” sparkling new clothes.. colored eggs and bunny rabbits, a new rising from the gloom, nature taking on new life, chirping of birds, crocuses already in bloom . dusting off the old.. Hope for a dying world. Another new born baby. And how we long for the good old days when Easter brought the beautiful ethnic customs and everybody you loved was there to share your corny jokes and eat blessed kielbasa and horseradish. Gosh, am I getting old!

I am now back in prison with other friends-an opportunity to lament my sins and mistakes but not the acts of protest that my companions and I have become part of and for which we have earned time in jail. These acts were too sacred to regret. Their meaningfulness has taken root out of our witnessing of innocent people-including babies and children being subjected to violence, torture and death on account of weaponry and warfare. ..a shameful indictment, for sure, against our government policies and my own insatiable consumption of commodities that rightfully belong to God’s destitute poor… people at home and people of other nations… my suffering sisters and brothers… What a privilege to be able to spend this time reflecting upon this and asking for Light as to how to move on… how to join you and others in issuing hope to a worn-out violated world. New Life, New Direction… the Jesus message. Easter!

Andrea Schmidt
April 10, 2004

Iraq is a country at war.

Exactly a year after we were told that the war had ended and that freedom had been brought to the people of Iraq, the square in which Saddam’s statue was toppled was put under curfew again. The curfew didn’t prevent a mortar attack on the Alwiyah Club that stands beside the square hidden behind blast walls.

Yesterday, reports from Falluja indicated that the city was still being held under siege by US Occupation Forces, as it had been since Tuesday. In the morning, word came that a cease-fire had been negotiated between US soldiers and resistance fighters, but by afternoon, the cease-fire was off. US Occupation Forces had continued to bomb the city with mortars, Apache helicopters, fighter planes, RPG7s and cluster bombs.

By evening, medical aid workers were giving the cautious estimate that the death-toll of this week’s massacre in Falluja had reached 427 Iraqis; 1200 people were said to be injured. An acquaintance arrived with video footage of families fleeing the city in an attempt to reach Baghdad. They formed a caravan that stretched over 10 kilometers long and were being prevented from advancing by US troops.