Sunday, November 28
Mortar rounds falling into the Green Zone woke some team members at 6:45am. The view from the rooftop indicated that the mortars did little damage.

Team members Tom Fox, Cliff Kindy, and Maxine Nash met with the head of public relations of Iraq’s Communist Party (CP). Founded in 1934, and often suppressed, it is the oldest political party in Iraq. The CP opposes the U.S. invasion and occupation because they feel that Saddam’s regime could have been overcome with nonviolent opposition. They recognize the concerns but oppose the violence of the insurgency because the killing of innocent civilians cannot be justified.

(See “Party Politics” by Cliff Kindy, released on Dec 2, 2004, for more information).

Monday, November 29
An Iraqi human rights organization asked the team for contacts to whom they can refer medical cases of children injured by the U.S. occupation. The team agreed to facilitate such contacts.

By Kathy Kelly
published in the All Times Union

The first President Bush, at a 1992 energy conference in Rio de Janeiro, declared that the American way of life is nonnegotiable. Twelve years later, led by his son into unending war and unending impoverishment, an unwillingness to change a dangerously wasteful lifestyle has locked the people of the United States into a terrible conundrum.

Enormous talent, creativity and money are poured into military spending, ostensibly to defend us. And yet the luxurious way of life available to the majority of people in the United States is considered morally indefensible by people in lands held hostage by U.S. policies designed to control their resources. Meanwhile, Western culture continues an ongoing war against Mother Earth as we contaminate the water, land and air, ravage the soil and burn fossil fuels.

By David Smith-Ferri

While conditions for most Iraqis continue to deteriorate, as the country slips even more deeply into an environmental and health crisis, George Bush and his supporters danced to country music on the evening of election day, celebrating the War President’s reelection. This image has haunted me over the last few weeks, as people in Fallujah have had to endure a military assault, without electricity and without access to clean water, food, and medical care. Upon reflection, that celebration, if not exactly dancing on Iraqi graves, is close enough to create the same revolting effect. Anyone, it seems to me, who stands so squarely beside this president and his administration does so in the face of a continuing legacy of US brutality in Iraq.

Dahr Jamail
December 6, 2004

Driving across Baghdad yesterday a GMC full of armed men races past our car, missing it by inches. Along with guns pointed out their windows at us (and all the other cars), a couple of the men hold their hands out, waving them down towards the ground in order to instruct the traffic they are pushing their way through to stay back.

CIA and/or mercenaries always travel like this here.

As the SUV passes a gunman sits behind a metal barrier, with his machine gun aimed at us. He’s flashing a light at us, to underscore the fact we should stay back.

As a second SUV full of armed men wearing helmets passes us my friend Ahmed turns to me and says, “We are nowhere here. Iraq is nowhere now. Look at this life we are living.”