Hezbollah An Emerging Political Force; "Open War" in the Middle East

*Inter Press Service*
http://DahrJamailIraq.com
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail

*LATAKIA, Syria, Jul 18 (IPS) - Hezbollah, a group often misunderstood
by Westerners, is a militant but also a political group.*

The Arabic name means 'Party of God'. Led by the charismatic Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Islamist Shia group was set up in 1982 to
resist Israeli occupation of Lebanon during the brutal civil war. The
group declared a political existence in 1985..

Hezbollah achieved their goal when Israeli troops withdrew from southern
Lebanon on May 25, 2000. The Israeli withdrawal followed sustained
Hezbollah attacks on its troops.

The political platform of Hezbollah calls for the destruction of Israel,
but the group has successfully transformed itself from a radical
extremist group into an effective political force which holds 18 percent
of the seats in the Lebanese Parliament.

The United States, Britain, Israel and other Western countries consider
Hezbollah a terrorist organisation that they say has received weapons
and also financial and political support from Iran and Syria. Both these
countries deny supplying arms to Hezbollah.

But both countries openly support the group politically. Iranian leaders
have produced angry rhetoric in support of Hezbollah. In Syria massive
demonstrations were held in Damascus, Latakia and several other cites.
Demonstrations in support of Hezbollah were also held in cities across
many Arab countries.

Throughout most of the Arab and Muslim world, Hezbollah is highly
regarded as a legitimate resistance movement. The group follows a
distinctly Shia Islamist ideology developed by the leader of the Islamic
Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In Lebanon the group had first hoped to transform the whole country into
a fundamentalist Shia state. But it has now abandoned that objective for
a more inclusive platform.

About 60 percent of the 3.8 million population of Lebanon is Muslim,
most of them Shia. This is where Hezbollah draws its support. The rest
of the population is almost all Christian. A 15-year civil war between
Muslim and Christian groups ended in 1991.

The Shia movement in Iraq led by Muqtada al-Sadr is following in the
footsteps of Hezbollah. It has won broad support in Iraq from millions
of impoverished Shias there for similar reasons.

Hezbollah won the support of Shia Muslims by providing social services,
healthcare and welfare when the Lebanese government failed. Hezbollah
runs hospitals, news services and educational facilities for its
followers in Lebanon. It is behind a large number of economic and
infrastructure projects in the country.

The recent Israeli strikes in Lebanon destroyed the Hezbollah al-Manar
Television station. But the group continues to broadcast messages from
Nasrallah by other means.

Hezbollah has refused to integrate its forces into the Lebanese army
despite political pressure. It considers itself a legitimate resistance
movement in Lebanon that is also important to the entire Middle East region.

Hezbollah has long accused Israel of holding many of its members in
jail, some for more than 20 years, and continues to demand their
release. Hezbollah says it will continue to fight unless its prisoners
are also released.

Hezbollah became the most powerful military force in Lebanon after Syria
withdrew its troops last year. It now has a seat in the Lebanese cabinet.

During the civil war, which brought Lebanon to its knees, Hezbollah
became infamous for its suicide bombings and kidnapping of Western
hostages, primarily journalists.

The biggest Hezbollah suicide attack was the bombing of the barracks of
U.S. marines in Beirut in 1983. The attack killed 241 marines and led
then president Ronald Reagan to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.

The group is also widely believed to have carried out an attack on the
U.S. embassy, killing 63 people, and on the headquarters of the French
multinational forces, killing 58 French troops.

Hezbollah's political rise came substantially after the assassination of
former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Harriri in February 2005. In May of
that year Hezbollah won its biggest election victory.

Hezbollah was invited to join the government in July last year in hope
that the move would bring national unity to Lebanon as the country
struggled for stability and peace.

The current fighting between Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Israel has
left more than 200 Lebanese dead, along with several Israelis. Both
Hezbollah and the government of Israel have declared open war with one
another. International intervention has been lacklustre to say the
least, and the crisis looks set to deepen.

As through its chequered history, Hezbollah is again winning praise and
support from the Arab and Muslim world, while it is accused of terrorism
by the West. Hezbollah is about the most prominent division points at
present between the two worlds.

By Dahr Jamail
http://DahrJamailIraq.com
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.

Tuesday 18 July 2006

"In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why
the violence occurred in the first place." That one sentence (a
surprisingly rare example of a complete sentence spoken by Cheney
spokesman George W. Bush), taken on its own, would fully explain why the
Middle East is now on the brink of regional war. But of course, Bush
always finds a way to engage in Orwellian newspeak. At a news conference
with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, he managed to rewrite
history in the very next sentence by blaming Hezbollah for instigating
the violence by launching rocket attacks into Israel and capturing
Israeli soldiers. But then, George most likely has no idea where Gaza
is, let alone what has been occurring there for decades.

As puppet Bush goes on saying things like "Every nation has a right to
defend itself," referring to his favorite ally, Israel, his use of the
word "every" would of course exclude Lebanon, since their army is using
anti-aircraft guns against Israeli warplanes. And let us not forget the
Iraqi resistance - as it may never cross his feeble mind that they are
defending Iraq from the American invaders.

Most Arab leaders are refusing to back Hezbollah, although US-influenced
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II issued
the usual statements demanding "an immediate halt on attacking civilians
and vital infrastructure," saying that such attacks breach the
international humanitarian conventions. As if Israel will listen. As if
the US listens to any calls from countries demanding similar actions by
the occupation forces and Western contracting companies who are busily
raping and pillaging Iraq. As if any country in war ever abides by the
Geneva Conventions nowadays. And without a functional UN to actually
take a stand for human rights or real justice, why should they?

The typical response among the people here in the Middle East is to
scoff at their leadership - who continue to cower and bow to US interests.

Friday at the Lebanese/Syrian border, I spoke with a 50-year-old Kuwaiti
man, Emad, as he fled Beirut with his family. "It's very bad there, as
the Israelis are attacking civilians, bombing police and petrol stations
and even the fuel storage depots," he told me, "In fact, they have even
bombed the airport once again. I saw F-16's bombing and there is smoke
everywhere. This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."

When I asked him what he thought it would take to end the fighting, he
promptly replied, "It looks like the Arab governments are not moving
their asses, so I am leaving."

Yet as consistently as the Arab governments fail to get busy "moving
their asses" toward something resembling a solution to this crisis, just
as consistently are the people repressed by those same governments
raising their voices.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Arab protestors hit the streets,
condemning the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and their actions in the Gaza
Strip. 5,000 angry protesters gathered at a mosque in Cairo carrying
banners that read, "Hey Arab leaders, you should be united." In Amman,
over 2,000 demonstrators gathered at a mosque after Friday prayers,
shouting "Zionists get out, get out!" and "Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan
are one people!"

Thousands marched in Gaza, waving Palestinian and Lebanese flags.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, thousands of angry Iraqis marched, praising
Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, while denouncing Israel and
the US for the attacks. Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr hinted that he may
be prepared to put his Mehdi Army militia into action against the
Americans due to the Israeli actions in Lebanon and Gaza.

In an earlier piece titled "An Alliance of Violence
," I detailed
how violence perpetrated on the people of Palestine by the Israeli
military has immediate ramifications in Iraq. The same is now brewing
yet again.

In Kuwait, protesters rallied in front of the parliament building,
shouting "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!" Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti
lawmaker named Musallam al-Barrak lashed out at his and other Arab
governments when he stated, "Arab countries can do nothing but condemn."

There is a frightening undercurrent of rage among the people in the
Middle East toward their governments: The Arab world is on fire over the
injustice meted out against the Palestinian people, as well as to the
Lebanese. The Israeli people are deeply angered at their government for
failing to provide security (of course our corporate media would never
report on the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis oppose their
government's actions in Gaza and beyond) - instead, preferring peaceful
resolutions rather than brutal, unjust, failed occupation and ongoing
acts of aggression.

Predictably, the impotent UN Security Council goes about its
machinations of futility, holding emergency meetings while hoping for
resolutions - which rarely, if ever, change anything on the ground to
stop the needless massacre of civilians on both sides of the conflict.
Ah, the UN - where the US is responsible for eight out of the last nine
vetoes, seven of which had to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So why pin any hope on the UN, when the US has already vetoed a
resolution demanding that Israel stop its military offensive in the Gaza
Strip?

Meanwhile, the bloodletting continues as the situation escalates and
spins further into chaos while threatening to spread deeper into the region.

Israel, the only nuclear power in the region, hopes to completely
annihilate Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. They have now insured total,
unending war by demanding Hezbollah to completely disarm, leave southern
Lebanon and hand over the Israeli soldiers, demands which Hezbollah will
surely brush aside.

Let us not forget that both Israel and the US announced in January that
the Palestinian people would be punished for voting the wrong way by
electing Hamas to power. That unjust act, which began the chain of
events leading to our current crisis, may well be marked as the match
that lit this hellish bonfire. Because it certainly seems, judging from
their actions in Gaza and now in southern Lebanon, that the aim of the
Israeli government is to wipe out the Palestinian people, in addition to
Hamas and Hezbollah.

So we naturally have open war in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. Israel
declared it by their act of bombing and invading Lebanon, then bombing
Nasrallah's Beirut offices. Nasrallah, unhurt by the attack, promptly
appeared on television announcing "open war" against Israel.

On Hezbollah's TV channel in Beirut, he said, "You wanted an open war
and we are ready for an open war." He announced, "Look at the warship
that has attacked Beirut [referring to an Israeli warship off the coast
that was lobbing shells into Lebanon] while it burns and sinks before
your very eyes."

The ship was heavily damaged and four of its 80 soldiers on board went
missing after being attacked by an explosive drone launched by
Hezbollah, the first time such a weapon has been seen from their arsenal.

"Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that
has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians - look at
it burning," Nasrallah mocked, in his address that aired late Friday night.

In footage aired by the same channel, dozens of Lebanese danced in the
streets of Beirut to celebrate the announcement of the attack on the
Israeli ship. This, of course, contradicts Israel's goal in pressuring
Lebanon: Israel hoped that by punishing the Lebanese they would force
the country to pressure Hezbollah. Despite the propaganda of the dancing
Lebanese aired by Hezbollah TV, reaction thus far is mixed in besieged
Lebanon.

Deepening the crisis, Nasrallah threatened to attack deeper inside
Israel, "beyond Haifa."

And Saturday the bloodshed continued as the Israeli Air Force bombed
bridges, fuel storage tanks, petrol stations in southern and eastern
Lebanon. At least four people were killed in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and
more bridges south of Beirut were destroyed.

The same day, at least 15 Lebanese villagers, including women and
children, were killed by an Israeli air strike on their vehicles as they
fled their village of Marwahin in southern Lebanon after being ordered
to evacuate by the Israelis.

Leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft over Beirut warned the Lebanese not
to back Nasrallah. Yet, giving further evidence to the Lebanese army's
outwardly opposing the Israelis, after the leaflets were dropped they
were promptly collected and taken away by Lebanese security forces.

Underscoring this, Saadeddine Rafik Hariri, majority leader in the
Lebanese Parliament and the son of the assassinated former prime
minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, told reporters in Kuwait on Saturday:
"The Lebanese people must remain united. We must not allow Israel to
divide us. The enemy is Israel."

Here in Damascas we're on pins and needles. The mood is one of both high
anxiety and seething anger at the Israelis' war against both Lebanon and
Hezbollah. Like anywhere else, nobody here supports collective
punishment or attacks against sovereign countries.

As Israeli jets pound the mountains in Lebanon near the Syrian border,
striking radio and satellite antennas, the concern that Syria will be
drawn into the conflict grows daily.

The day before, Reuters reported that the ruling Ba'ath party in
Damascas announced that they and the "Syrian people"... "are ready to
extend full support to the Lebanese people and their heroic resistance
to remain steadfast and confront the barbaric Israeli aggression and its
crimes."

The war is even widening in Lebanon, as Israeli warplanes, also on
Saturday, bombed an area in Tripoli, their most northern strike thus
far. After Israel placed an embargo on Lebanon and shut down their main
seaport in Beirut, 95% of the trade was rerouted through the port at
Tripoli. Today, three bombs were dropped by Israeli war planes on that
port. Other Lebanese ports now shut down include Jounieh, Amshit and
Hamat, as the Lebanese economy has ground to a nearly complete standstill.

At least 79 civilians have been killed and over 250 wounded since Israel
began its attack against Lebanon on Wednesday.

Civilians dying aren't only in Lebanon. Over a dozen rockets were fired
by Hezbollah into several towns in northern Israel, in addition to over
90 fired into a total of 15 towns in Israel thus far, killing at least
four and wounding scores.

Thus, both Hezbollah and the Israeli government have their "open war."
As usual, while the politicians and the UN wring their hands and twiddle
their thumbs, those bearing the brunt are the civilians on both sides,
whether they live in Israel, Lebanon or Palestine.

"This is going to be a big war."; Lebanese Tremors Rock Syria

(c)2006 Dahr Jamail
http://DahrJamailIraq.com
Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media
http://jeffpflueger.com

 "This is going to be a big war."


You can always spot them a mile away-he was white, middle-aged,
overweight, hair cut close to hide the pattern baldness, red face,
wearing a Harley Davidson motorcycle t-shirt and shorts. All of the
aforementioned is acceptable in the Middle East, of course, minus the
shorts. Aside from a few places like Beirut, wearing shorts in the
Middle East isn't exactly being respectful of the native culture.

But when you are a mercenary, I suppose that's damned low on your
priority list.

Then there was the other one-I noticed him in Chicago before we board
our Royal Jordanian flight to Amman. A 30-something white man, eyes wide
open, looking over his shoulder constantly, chewing gum so hard his jaw
muscles protruded. Blue-flames tattooed on his right arm above the
wrist-running up under his sleeve I don't know how far up his arm. His
tan combat boots and tan backpack kind of gave him away too, despite his
wearing civilian clothing.

During my flight I sat near a kind Palestinian man from the West Bank.
The older gentleman works in Dallas, and is retiring from his
electronics store which he is happy to tell me is being passed along to
his kids. His wife remains in the West Bank, so that's why he's moving
back home. I asked him what it's like to go home.

"I spend the night in Amman then the next day it takes sometimes the
full day to cross the bridge and get through the checkpoints. We have
the Jordanian border, the Israeli checkpoint, and another to get into
the West Bank," he says, "Each time they take all our things out, search
them and us, then if we're lucky we're waved through."

I ask him how he deals with it, personally, without losing his mind.
"Oh, all I can do is laugh, because if I lose my temper, if anyone loses
their temper, the soldiers [occupation soldiers] just go away for 3-4
hours until they feel like returning. So we all just stay calm and
behave gently and with dignity. They have all the power. We have none.
So what else can we do?"

Behaving like a typical Arab, he invites me to his home anytime I'm in
the area.

Landing in the heat of Amman, I left the plane and walk past a Jordanian
man holding a small piece of paper up which read, "Blackwater." Of
course it's for one (or both) of the men I described above…and soon I
see him greeting the man who prefers to wear shorts in the Middle East.

Not too much has changed in the airport in Amman, aside from the new
Starbucks. Of course, the Cinnabon had already been here for at least a
couple of years.

Meanwhile, plenty has changed in the region since I was here one year
ago. Wednesday, after having two of their soldiers captured by Hezbollah
fighters, the government of Israel has sent ground troops, backed by
aircraft and artillery, into Southern Lebanon. It's the first ground
operation by the Israelis in Lebanon since they withdrew from occupying
Lebanon in 2000. Just what the Middle East needs-another country to be
occupied; the move is akin to dumping jet fuel on a raging fire.

The prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, referring to how his country
would respond to having two of their soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah,
told a joint news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi, "The Lebanese government is responsible. Lebanon will
pay the price."

Adhering to his favorite policy of collective punishment, Olmert, added,
"…those responsible for the attack will pay a high and painful price."
So attack a country because a rebel group in south Lebanon captured two
soldiers. And so the madness continues, as an Israeli air strike on a
house in Gaza on what they claimed was targeting a "Hamas top militant
leader" killed nine Palestinians, including seven children from one family.

Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara stated recently that Israel's
occupation of Arab land lays at the root of the new crisis that found
Israeli troops entering Lebanon. Let's have some more jet fuel. Looks
like I've picked an interesting time to visit Syria.

Meanwhile, Baghdad burns as over 100 people have been killed in
sectarian violence since Sunday.

A short flight has me landing in Damascas, then racing through the
streets as warm air flows through the open taxi windows. The pale green
lights mark the tops of minarets around the city, the rest of the lights
twinkling in the background as we found our way to my hotel.

After checking in, I dropped my bag and began to walk out for some food,
only to find Abu Talat at the front desk. A long bear hug and the
typical cheek kissing of Arab men, and we meet again after over one year
since we last were together. I'd given him the name of my hotel, but was
suspect as to whether he would have a successful trip out of Baghdad,
with the extremes of violence over the last three days there. He tends
to not go far from home when that occurs, but alas, he decided to go
after obtaining a promise from his son not to leave his home under any
circumstances.

Also typical of Arab men, we walk down the sidewalk holding hands, en
route to a café, talking a mile a minute. He tells me how horrible it is
in Baghdad. He lists his family members and relatives, one by one, who
have left already for good. "Those who can afford to fly are purchasing
one way tickets Dahr," he says, "For they have no intention of coming
back. Aside from my own children and wife, I am the only one of my
relatives left in Iraq."

The fighting is everywhere, he tells me. Now that the U.S.
military/Rumsfeld (who was just in Baghdad) and Khalilzad have declared
war on the Shia Mehdi Army, accusing them of terrorism, all bets are
off. Of course, the timing of this with Israelis attacks against
Hezbollah couldn't be more perfect. Coincidence?

"The fighting is everywhere, and there is no way the Americans can
control it now," Abu Talat adds, "The Shia are fighting each other for
control of Basra, while also fighting the Sunni."

"It is civil war now in Iraq, no doubt," he continues, "But no matter
who you ask, no one will admit it. Because people are too afraid to
admit this. People prefer to deny it."

Even back at our hotel, there are at least two other Iraqis, who have
come here for surgery, since all of the senior doctors have long since
left Baghdad to save their own lives.

The next day, Thursday, we awoke with our eyes glued to al-Jazeera on
the television. Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut's Rafiq al-Hariri
airport. At least two air strikes were reported while Lebanese
anti-aircraft guns fired feebly at the jets, according to witnesses.
Israeli jets also bombed bridges linking south Lebanon to the rest of
the country, and 22 civilians were killed last night by Israeli attacks
in southern Lebanon.

In response to the bombings, Hezbollah claims to have fired 60 rockets
into northern Israel.

The Israeli justification for bombing the airport in Beirut and pushing
into southern Lebanon is that two of their soldiers were captured. In
classic newspeak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the
incident, "It is an act of war by the state of Lebanon," conveniently
omitting the bombings in the occupied territories, including civilians
on a beach, by Israeli forces over the last weeks.

"This is going to be a big war," Abu Talat tells me while we watch
plumes of smoke billowing from locations within Lebanon, "This is even
more important for us to cover than Iraq, and you know how much I love
Iraq."


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:40:59 +0300
From: iraq_dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com
Subject: Iraq Dispatches: Lebanese Tremors Rock Syria



     Lebanese Tremors Rock Syria

*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail

*DAMASCUS, Jul 13 (IPS) - Syrians are outraged over Israeli air strikes
in Lebanon that have killed 53 civilians and closed down Beirut's
international airport.*

Early Thursday morning Israeli air strikes targeted the new Rafiq
al-Hariri international airport. Israeli naval vessels entered Lebanon's
territorial waters and blocked access to ports while its forces launched
an offensive in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah fighters.

Hezbollah is a militant group that has long engaged in armed conflict
with Israel. It is believed to be strongest in the south of Lebanon, in
the areas bordering Israel.

The Israeli offensive was launched in response to the killing of eight
Israeli soldiers in clashes with Hezbollah fighters Wednesday near the
border 15km from the Mediterranean. Two Israeli soldiers were taken
hostage. An Israeli soldier had earlier been captured in Gaza.

In an escalation of the conflict, an Israeli woman was killed after
Hezbollah fighters fired rockets across the border into the Israeli town
Nahariya. An Israeli air base was hit by rockets, along with other towns
in the area. Several Israeli civilians have been wounded.

The Israeli military entered Lebanon for the first time since
withdrawing six years ago.

"I doubt you will find one Syrian who will not denounce what Israel is
doing in Gaza, the West Bank and now in Lebanon," independent publicity
consultant Ibrahim Yakhour told IPS. "Syrians believe that what the
Palestinians suffer is what the Syrians suffer."

Yakhour, a 60-year-old retired journalist said political parties in
Syria have been calling for a peaceful political process in the Middle
East for the past 30 years. "But when people are humiliated, attacked
and killed, radical reactions commence which are deleterious to the
political process."

People in Damascus also fear that a regional war may spread to Syria.
"The entire region is now involved," said Emad Huria, a 45-year-old
literary critic. "All Arabs should raise their voices against the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon."

Maher Skandyran, a 37-year-old worker at a watch store in downtown
Damascus said Israeli double standards are making people furious.

"I feel angry. Ninety-five percent of the Palestinian prisoners held by
Israel are innocent civilians, including women and children. Nobody says
a word about this. But when three Israeli armed soldiers are detained,
this is such a big crime, and everyone is outraged. Is this justice?"

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Israeli soldiers had
been seized to push Israel to release prisoners.

Israel reacted with unexpected aggression. An Israeli military spokesman
told reporters, "Since this morning Israeli naval vessels have enforced
a full naval closure on Lebanon, because Lebanon's ports are used to
transfer both terrorists and weapons to the terror organisations
operating in Lebanon."

Another official said that the attacks had been launched to pressure the
Lebanese government to deal with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's al-Manar television station in Beirut was bombed. Israel
also bombed several bridges that link southern Lebanon with the rest of
the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the action was in response to
"an act of war by the state of Lebanon." His cabinet promised a response
with "appropriate severity."

But the root of the Lebanese problem could lie in the occupation of
Palestinian areas.

"Everything which is happening illustrates the main problem, which is
the Israelis invading and occupying Palestine and taking the land,"
55-year-old local merchant Faez Ashoor told IPS. "When that situation
ends, we will have peace.."

Some of the Syrian anger is directed inevitably at the United States.

"I feel upset because our neighbours like Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine
are being attacked," said Hamad al-Khatib, 26-year-old owner of a mobile
phone store in central Damascus. "Israel doesn't care about
international law. We thought America was peaceful, but we see them
support Israel, which is killing women and children. What are we to
think of America now?"

Syrians are also now worried about themselves, he said. "This Israeli
attack makes all of us feel insecure now. We are all very anxious."

"This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."

"This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."
http://DahrJamailIraq.com

Once again the U.S. government has refused to condemn the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon as the bombs fall on Beirut, killing scores of
civilians.

In a moment of levity while driving to the border, Abu Talat turned to
me and said, "You know what I miss?" I replied, "What do you miss sir?"
He smiled and said, "Iraqi chai!" He then turns to our driver and asked
him if he'd ever had Iraqi chai, then went on to brag about how tasty it
is. "It is the greatest of chais," he said proudly when looking back to
me once again.

When we arrived at the Lebanese border this morning we found thousands
of people

streaming across in cars with their luggage lashed on top, and many on
foot pulling wheeled suitcases.

Little Bush, the ever obedient spokesman for Bush, announced that he
thinks Syria should be punished for their role in supporting Hezbollah,
so the mood in Damascas is one of anxious waiting to see what comes
next. The how and when of the punishment is what is on our minds.

So the latest Israeli onslaught of Lebanon is in full swing, and with
the Israelis need for the water of southern Lebanon, perhaps this
occupation of Lebanon may last longer than the last one of 22 years. If
indeed Syria gave the green light for Hezbollah to cross the UN line in
southern Lebanon and launch their attack on Israeli soldiers where they
detained two soldiers and killed another eight, they have effectively
handed the Israeli war planners an excuse for all out war against
Lebanon. In addition, the Hezbollah attack, if indeed supported by
Syria, would give the U.S. the ability to give a green light to Israel
to attack Syria. We wait, watch, and hope that the bombs don't begin to
fall on Damascas.

A reported 15,000 people crossed the Lebanese border into Syria on
Thursday, seeking refuge from widespread bombings in Beirut, carried out
by Israeli F-16 warplanes. Today, the situation continued, with reports
of bombed petrol stations, police stations, and a hospital.

Interviewing people at the border who had fled the bombs in Beirut, I
felt like I was back in Iraq by what people were telling me.

"I was in an area south of Beirut which was bombed heavily by the
Israelis," 55 year-old electrician Ali Suleiman

told me, "There were so many refugees in shelters nearby us, which was
also nearby an old hospital which the Israelis bombed last night. It was
terrifying at night when they attacked our area, and the Israelis
thought the hospital was an ammunition dump for Hezbollah, so they
bombed the hospital. Both Syrian and Lebanese people are leaving now.
There is no more food, not even bread. There was no more electricity or
water in our area. If this situation continues, it will be a giant
catastrophe."

The same tactics I've seen used by the U.S. in Fallujah, Al-Qa'im and
other cities in Iraq.

I was told a similar story by a 22 year-old Lebanese student, Nebham
Razaq Hamed, who was in southern Beirut. "The bombing at night was
continuous and has continued today, they are using warplanes and
sometimes artillery. Everybody is in a panic because of the haphazard
bombing which is killing so many civilians now. The Israelis are
terrorizing the people intentionally by not discriminating between
fighters and civilians."

As the level of fighting deepens, one can only hope that other forms of
terrorism don't beset the people of Lebanon, particularly the women. In
Ruth Rosen's "The Hidden War on Women in Iraq," an incredible piece
posted on TomDispatch
 recently, the
disastrous situation for women caught up in the chaos of war is outlined
well. This must read paints the tragic picture of what we can only hope
will not descend on the women of Beirut as the Israeli siege of that
city grinds on.

A man from Saudi Arabia on a bus

with his family said, "Are the Israelis not occupying enough Arab land
already?"

It is only 127 kilometers from Beirut to Damascas, so the attacks were
very fresh on the minds of the people I spoke with-many of them

with shaky hands.

Others told me that the Bekaa Valley of central Lebanon, located on a
high plateau situated between the Mt. Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain
ranges, is being bombed, including the ancient city of Baalbek. The
city, which began at the end of the third millennium BC, was originally
Phoenician, is located near two rivers and shortly after a Roman colony
was founded there by Julius Caesar in 47 BC, construction on the massive
temple complex began in earnest. Whether the temples are being bombed is
doubtful, but the nearby city of Baalbek, where Hezbollah controls the
area, has been bombed according to two people I interviewed.

"It's very bad there, as the Israelis are attacking civilians, bombing
police and petrol stations, and even the fuel storage depots," said a 50
year-old Kuwait man who was fleeing Beirut, "In fact, they have even
bombed the airport once again. I saw F-16's bombing and there is smoke
everywhere. This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."

When asked what he thought it would take to end the fighting, he
promptly replied, "It looks like the Arab governments are not moving
their asses, so I am leaving."

Fleeing Lebanese Speak of Indiscriminate Bombing

Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
*
ADDABBAOUSIYEH (northern Lebanese border), Jul 16 (IPS) - People fleeing
the bombing of Lebanon say the Israelis are targeting civilian
neighbourhoods and vital infrastructure, and not just Hezbollah centres.*

The bombing has killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians so far.

Several border points between Syria and Lebanon are being deluged with
refugees. Lebanon has a long border with Syria towards its south, east
and north. The refugees include both Lebanese and tourists.

"Everything is being bombed," a teacher from the United States who was
on vacation in Beirut told IPS. "It's terror. We've literally been
terrorised."

Twenty-five-year-old social studies teacher Abdul Rahman was living with
his family in downtown Beirut near the United Nations building before
they all decided to flee.

"We have not slept for three days because we were living in terror and
never knew when the Israelis would bomb us since they were hitting
everything," he told IPS.

"If they want to hit Hezbollah, let them hit Hezbollah, but not the
civilians. But civilians are all that they are hitting."

His mother feared for her 96-year-old father who they had to leave
behind. "We cannot move him because he is too frail," she said. "And now
all we can do is worry, since the Israelis are taking it out on the
innocent people."

On Sunday, the Israeli army also re-entered the Palestinian-ruled Gaza
Strip. According to reports from Gaza, three members of Hamas were
killed after Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered Beit Hanun town early
morning.

Gunfire and shelling by the Israelis is also reported to have killed a
75-year-old woman and wounded 10 others, along with a baby.

Israel launched several air strikes in Gaza as well. An Israeli army
spokeswoman claimed they destroyed a Hamas operations room in the
Jabaliya refugee camp.

Israel's stated goal in Gaza is to free a soldier captured by Hamas. So
far Israeli actions there have left one Israeli soldier dead, along with
82 Palestinians.

Hamas is demanding the release of prisoners from Israeli jails in
exchange for the Israeli soldier.

Israel is now embroiled in fighting on two fronts. The impact of the
fighting with Lebanon is being felt widely in Syria.

Abud Aziz, a 31-year-old Lebanese pastry chef from Beirut crossed the
border into Syria carrying his suitcase and looking for food and water.
There had been no water or electricity in Beirut since Saturday, he said.

"Yesterday I saw two hospitals bombed," he told IPS. "Nobody who remains
in Beirut can be safe. No way."

A 25-year-old construction worker named Hamed also said he saw warplanes
bomb a hospital in Beirut.

"I saw them bomb a hospital yesterday," he told IPS. "I left just hours
ago. They are bombing everything -- houses, casinos, fuel stations and
so many bridges."

Meanwhile, on Sunday Hezbollah fired more than 20 rockets into the city
of Haifa, Israel's third largest city, killing eight and wounding at
least a dozen.

The Hezbollah clearly have the means to strike back at Israel. They are
a well-armed and well-organised political and military group of Shia
Muslims in Lebanon. Sustained military attacks by the Hezbollah forced
Israel to vacate southern Lebanon in May 2000.

But the Hezbollah are not supported by all Lebanese. About 60 percent of
the 3.8 million population of Lebanon is Muslim, most of them Shia. This
is where Hezbollah draws its support.

The rest of the population is almost all Christian. A 15-year civil war
between Muslim and Christian groups ended in 1991. The Hezbollah are
believed to draw more support from outside the country than from many
within.

In the wake of Hezbollah strikes into Israel, Israeli authorities have
declared a 48-hour period of martial law over the northern part of the
country. Hezbollah groups have fired more than 400 rockets into Israel,
killing at least 16 civilians in the last five days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Lebanon of "far-reaching"
consequences after the rocket attacks. The Israeli army said that it had
warned all civilians to leave southern Lebanon.

Many of those who have left report panic conditions in Lebanon. "The
Israelis bombed a bridge to the airport near us and killed many people,"
26-year-old Hasna told IPS. "When other people went on the bridge to
help the wounded, the planes bombed it again."

Ambulances are usually not available because of the danger, she said.
"We were the last people to leave our area. The road there was nearly
empty."

Alham Aras, a Danish woman who was vacationing in Tripoli in Lebanon,
drove up to the border with her six children Sunday. She said she had
left on instructions from her embassy.

"The warplanes bombed the Palestinian camps in Tripoli," she said, "They
are attacking up and down the coast, and the port in Tripoli was also
attacked."

Her 14-year-old daughter Barihan al-Jassim said, "Somebody should stop
this madness. How is it possible for a country to be bombed like this
and nobody stops them from doing it?"

Pentagon Resists Ban on "Degrading Treatment"

Pentagon Resists Ban on "Degrading Treatment"

NEW YORK - As new reports detail further abuse by the U.S. military of its prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, a behind-the-scenes battle is being fought between the U.S. departments of state and defence about whether a key section of the Geneva Conventions should be included in new rules governing Army interrogation techniques. (I still carry my card, it doesn't expire until 2009... probably so I can inform people what it was intended for and how the US government has violated that treaty too- WHO is EVIL?)

The Pentagon is pushing to omit from new detainee policies a central principle of the Geneva Conventions that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment". Critics say such a step that would mark a further shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

...it is time for the administration to ask itself whether the humiliation, brutalization, and torture of Muslim detainees around the world is making us safer from terrorism, or is in fact fanning the flames of resentment and making it easier for the jihadists to find recruits for their evil cause. I believe the latter of the 2 would be more accurate-kmw

Reed Brody, special council, Human Rights Watch

The State Department is opposing the decision to exclude Geneva Conventions protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider.

Meanwhile, in the face of growing criticism over U.S. treatment of detainees, Pentagon officials have decided to make public all of the military's interrogation techniques. Military leaders had previously argued that making all of the interrogation tactics public would allow enemy combatants to train and prepare for specific techniques.

The Pentagon's decision came as two previously secret Army investigative reports on prisoner abuse were released to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) under a freedom of information request.

The more than 1,000 pages turned over to the ACLU include one report by Army Brig. Gen. Richard Formica on special operations forces in Iraq and another by Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby on Afghanistan detainees.

The Formica report reviewed only three allegations of abuse by special operations forces, but found that Iraqi detainees were held for up to seven days at a time with their eyes taped shut in tiny box-like cells so small that they had to sit with their knees to their chests while loud music blared, and detainees were fed only bread and water for up to a week.

One of the detainees said he was kept inside his tiny cell for two days, another for five days, and the third for seven days. The one kept for seven days alleged that "before he was placed in the box his clothes were cut off. He said that while held in the box, his captors duct-taped his mouth and nose, making it hard for him to breathe." He charged that water was thrown on him, that he was beaten, kicked and electrocuted.

Formica concluded that overall conditions "did not comport with the spirit of the principles set forth in the Geneva Conventions", but dismissed allegations that prisoners were physically abused or humiliated. The general recommended no disciplinary action against any U.S. special operations personnel.

Formica faulted "inadequate policy guidance" rather than "personal failure" for the mistreatment, and cited the dangerous environment in which special operations forces carried out their counterinsurgency missions. He said that, from his observations, none of the detainees seemed to be the worse for wear because of the treatment. a**hole. why don't we let you sit like that for a few months

The Jacoby report, carried out in May 2004, examined the treatment of detainees at facilities in Afghanistan. He found "no systematic or widespread mistreatment of detainees", but concluded that the opportunities for mistreatment and the ever-changing battlefield there demanded changes in procedures.

He said that there was "a consistent lack of knowledge" regarding the capture, processing, detention and interrogation of detainees and that policies varied at facilities across the country. Jacoby also concluded that the lack of clear standards created opportunities for abuse and impeded efforts to gain timely intelligence and that interrogation standards were "inconsistent and unevenly applied".

The U.S. military facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan has come in for particular criticism for its detention practices, including keeping "ghost" prisoners whose presence is unrecorded, and denying access to prisoners by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Special Rapporteur.

Neither report recommended punishment of any military personnel.

Human rights groups were critical of the reports. Reed Brody, special counsel to Human Rights Watch, told IPS, "At long last, it is time for the administration to ask itself whether the humiliation, brutalisation, and torture of Muslim detainees around the world is making us safer from terrorism, or is in fact fanning the flames of resentment and making it easier for the jihadists to find recruits for their evil cause."

And Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, said, "Both the Formica and the Jacoby report demonstrate that the government is really not taking the investigation of detainee abuse seriously."

She called the reports "a whitewash" and questioned why they only focused on a limited number of incidents, adding that there have been numerous documents showing that special operations forces abused detainees, yet Formica only reviewed a few cases.

The reports were released as the military grappled with new allegations of war crimes in Iraq. Two Pennsylvania National Guardsmen were charged with killing an unarmed Iraqi man in Anbar province. Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were charged in the shooting death of an Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania. And three soldiers and a noncommissioned officer were charged in the deaths of three unarmed Iraqis in military custody in Salahuddin province.

These charges follow allegations that in Haditha, a town in Anbar province, members of a Marine unit killed up to two dozen unarmed Iraqis, including small children, in and outside their homes after a roadside bomb killed one of the troops.

The Bush administration has been criticized internationally, including by U.S. allies, for abusive treatment of terror war detainees.

The military's treatment of detainees has been under increased scrutiny since the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal in Iraq was revealed two years ago. Photographs made public at that time showed U.S. troops beating, intimidating and sexually abusing prisoners.

Human rights groups have also called for the Bush administration to close the detention centre at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where three detainees recently committed suicide. Over the past weekend, 16 Saudi Arabian detainees were released to the government of their home country, continuing the Bush administration's policy of gradually repatriating prisoners, either to freedom or for further custody by their home governments.

President Bush recently acknowledged that he would like to close the controversial prison at Guantanamo. He said the military is working to ensure that detainees released to their home countries are not subjected to torture in detention. It is believed there are now just under 500 prisoners being held at the facility in Cuba. Only 10 have been formally charged with any crime and none has been tried.

Late last year, the U.S. Congress passed an anti-torture amendment championed by Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was held and tortured in a North Vietnamese prison for years. McCain, along South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham -- a former military judge -- pressed Congress to establish the Army Field Manual as the standard for treatment of all detainees.

The Bush administration initially opposed the amendment, but the measure passed and became law. However, in signing the law, Bush appended a statement saying, in effect, that he had the authority to override it under a variety of circumstances involving military necessity and national security. Otherwise rendering the law null and void.

In 2002, Bush issued an executive order that suspended parts of the Geneva Conventions for captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush's order superseded military policy at the time. Since then, U.S. obligations under the Conventions have been the subject of an intense debate that became even more intense following reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Friendly Fire Ambush

Friendly Fire Ambush

by Marjorie Cohn

Sergeant Patrick R. McCaffrey, Sr. and First Lieutenant Andre D. Tyson died on this day two years ago in Balad, Iraq. Back then, military officials reported that enemy insurgents ambushed them. The Army subsequently conducted an investigation and learned the men were targeted and killed by Iraqi troops they were training. Although the Army completed its investigation on September 30, 2005, it failed to clarify the initial notification to the families for nine months. It took a May 22 letter from Senator Barbara Boxer's office to force the Army to finally come clean. A month before he died, Patrick told his father that Iraqi forces they were training had attacked his unit. When he filed a complaint with his chain of command, Patrick "was told to keep his mouth shut," his mother said. After Patrick died, his parents conducted their own investigations. The Army denied requests to see autopsy reports. The McCaffreys persisted. They talked to soldiers in their son’s unit and managed to learn what really happened. Bob McCaffrey was informed by members of his son's company that insurgents were offering Iraqi soldiers about $100 for each American they could kill. "Iraqi troops are turning on their American counterparts," Bob said. "That puts a knock in the spin that the White House is trying to put on this story — how the Iraqis are being well trained and are getting ready to take over." Nadia McCaffrey learned that after her son was shot, a US truck arrived. It picked up Lt. Tyson, who was dead, but did not take her son who was still alive. The truck returned later and took him to the base, where he bled to death. Yesterday, Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman and three other officers visited Patrick's mother to deliver the official report. "It was overwhelming," Nadia told me. I had to live through the whole thing again." The officers "tried to patronize me as a good Mom," she added. "I said I won't stand for that. I want the truth!" When Nadia talked to Army officers yesterday she asked them, "How could you possibly let this happen"? They sat silent. An Army official cited the "complexity" of the case as an excuse for the delay in telling the families how their sons really died, according to the Los Angeles Times. "They never tell the family the truth," said Ophelia Tyson, grandmother of Andre Tyson. "You know how politics is." "I really want this story to come out; I want people to know what happened to my son," Nadia said. "There is no doubt to me that this is still happening to soldiers today, but our chain of command is awfully reckless; they don't seem to give a damn about what's happening to soldiers." How Unfortunately TRUE The father of two children, Patrick joined the National Guard the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He was the first combat death in the 58 year history of California's 579 Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma, Ca. Patrick was listed as "Casualty number 848." That was 1652 deaths ago. "He was killed by the Iraqis that he was training," Nadia said. "People in this country need to know that." "It's god-awful," said Bob, himself an Army veteran. "It underlies the lie of this whole situation in Iraq. It's all to me a pack of lies." Boxer noted, "You have to ask yourself, 'What are we doing there with a blank check and a blind eye, when our soldiers are risking their lives for the Iraqi people and the Iraqis are turning around and killing our soldiers?' We need an exit strategy." Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild.

Residents Struggle to Survive, In and Out of Ramadi

*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Ali Fadhil
http://DahrJamailIraq.com

*RAMADI, Jun 19 (IPS) - As the threat of a giant U.S. military operation in Ramadi lingers and sporadic clashes plague the city daily, residents struggle to cope, both inside and outside the sealed city.*

A week spent in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad,reveals that residents are suffering from lack of water, electricity,cooking gas and medical supplies for the hospitals. The streets are eerily empty, and it appears that many people have now left the city, although possibly as many as 150,000 still remain in their homes, either because they are too afraid to leave or they have nowhere to go.

"We will survive anyway," Um Qassim, a middle-aged housewife with six children, told IPS. "It is Allah who gives life and he is the only one able to take it away."

Despite the horrible conditions here, with armed resistance groups
controlling vast swathes of the city, and other areas subject to
frequent shooting from U.S. snipers on the rooftops of houses, she said that people should be grateful to their god whatever happens to them, adding, "Those Americans will leave."

The operation is part of a renewed crackdown on what the Pentagon says is a stronghold of the Sunni Arab resistance. As the threat of an all-out U.S. attack on the city looms, Imad Al-Muhammadi with the Iraqi Red Crescent in Ramadi told IPS, "Ramadi is a lot more difficult than the Fallujah crisis because people cannot flee to Baghdad and many other cities due to the threat of sectarian death squads, so it is very difficult to provide them with safe shelter at a reasonable distance from the military operations."

Muhammadi said that many of the families who had left are facing
"horrible living conditions in tents, abandoned schools and are staying under any roof that protects them from the burning summer sun."

"There is no positive sign on the American side that shows a different solution from those of Fallujah and other cities which have been 'deleted' in order to be 'liberated'," he added. "Civilians, as usual, are the ones living the hardships of occupation and definitely the ones dying in vain."

According to Maurizio Mascia, programme manager for the Italian
Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), a non-governmental group based in Amman,Jordan that provides relief to refugees in Iraq, minor clashes were reported on Monday, mainly in Al-Qadisiya, Al-Mala'ab, Al-Andalus, Al-Aramel, Al-Aziziya, Al-Qattana, Al-Soufiya, the city centre (close to Abd Al-Jaleel mosque) and 30th of July.

Additionally, U.S. and Iraqi forces are reported to be attacking the eastern side of the city in an effort to push into Ramadi.

ICS reports that the number of checkpoints and the frequency of
Multi-National Forces (MNF) patrols have increased since the beginning of the crisis, making it likely that both the MNF/Iraqi forces and insurgents are preparing themselves for a heightened battle.

"The population is still leaving the city and the number of families in displacement traced in Anbar by ICS monitors is close to 3,200 now," Mascia told IPS by telephone. "The new IDPs [internally displaced persons] are mainly approaching Rutba and Al-Baghdadi, while Heet remains the main destination of Ramadi IDPs." He said about 1,000 IDP families are present now in Fallujah and surrounding areas.

However, he added that "Most of the families are avoiding approaching Fallujah due to the complicated procedure enforced by MNF to enter the city." Mascia said that the number of families recorded by ICS is almost certainly low, since his group only logs families who get direct relief aid from their workers.

"The Americans, instead of attacking the city all at once like they've done in their previous operations in cities like Fallujah and Al-Qa'im, are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time in Ramadi," Mascia told IPS from his office in Amman.

"Access to Ramadi is extremely difficult," he continued. "The
checkpoints are set up at the two bridges and make it extremely
difficult to access the city by vehicle. The only available option to avoid the checkpoints is the desert way heading to Al-Ta'meem district."

"The main dangers for the population are the MNF at the checkpoints and the snipers: both usually shoot at any movement that they consider dangerous -- causing many victims among civilians."

According to Mascia, services at the main hospital, as well as health clinics, is down to a "low standard due to the security situation and lack of medical supplies".

And similar to the tactics used during the U.S. assault on Fallujah in November 2004, the U.S. military continues to use loudspeakers to ask people to either hand over "insurgents" who are present in their neighbourhoods, or to evacuate their homes and flee the city. ICS reports that some of the messages have specifically made reference to what happened in Fallujah.

Correspondents with the London-based Institute for War and Peace
Reporting (IWPR) in Baghdad recently reported on the use of snipers by the U.S. military in Ramadi: "People in Ramadi... estimate that about 70 percent of the city's population have fled in the last week, many of them holding white flags for fear of being shot at by Marine snipers."

The IPS correspondent in Ramadi also witnessed snipers shooting at
civilians in the city.

"The ongoing violence between U.S. Marines and the insurgents, air
strikes, and outages in the water, electricity and phone networks have already made life untenable," adds the IWPR report. "Ramadi residents say U.S. troops regularly take over houses to fight the insurgents, and combatants on both sides have been seen using rooftops as sniper positions."

The Association of Muslim Scholars, based in Baghdad, has encouraged the residents of Heet, which is near Ramadi, to host those fleeing the city. Some more vulnerable families are also staying in mosques that are offering shelter to refugees.

An IWPR reporter in Baghdad wrote that a 17-year-old student who fled Ramadi with his parents, Ghayath Salim al-Dulaimi, said his relatives had been prevented from leaving by U.S. air strikes two days earlier.

"Our neighbourhood has emptied completely -- there's no one left," he told IWPR. "People are leaving in droves and there aren't any services at all. You can't get to hospital because movement is restricted."

Responding to a question about the situation in Ramadi at a Jun. 15 news briefing, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham from the Pentagon said, "I think those who are looking for perhaps a large-scale offensive may be somewhat off the mark. And I think what we will see increasingly is the Iraqis finding ways to increasingly establish the presence of Iraqi security forces, and we'll help them do that in any way that we can."

(c)2006 Dahr Jamail

Iraq's Pentagon Papers

Iraq's Pentagon Papers

This unjustified war is waiting for its whistle-blower, says the leaker of Vietnam's secret history.

by Daniel Ellsberg

A joint resolution referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) calls for the withdrawal of all American military forces from Iraq by Dec. 31. Boxer's "redeployment" bill cites in its preamble a January poll finding that 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease if the U.S. leaves Iraq within six months, 67% believe that their day-to-day security will increase if the U.S. withdraws and 73% believe that factions in parliament will cooperate more if the U.S. withdraws. If that's true, then what are we doing there? If Iraqis don't believe that we're making things better or safer, what does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq (foreseen by 80% of Iraqis polled)? What does it mean for continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians? It was questions very much like these that were nagging at my conscience many years ago at the height of the Vietnam War, and that led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, 35 years ago this week. That process had begun nearly two years earlier, in the fall of 1969, when my friend and former colleague at the Rand Corp., Tony Russo, and I first started copying the 7,000 pages of top-secret documents from my office safe at Rand to give to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That period had several similarities to this one. For one thing, Republican Sen. Charles Goodell of New York had just introduced a resolution calling for the unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces from Indochina by the end of 1970. Unlike the current Boxer resolution, his had budgetary "teeth," calling for all congressional funding of U.S. combat operations to cease by his deadline. Two other similarities between then and now: First, though it was known to only a handful of Americans, President Nixon was making secret plans that September to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia — including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration's threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with officials reiterating regularly that the nuclear "option" is "on the table." Second, also in September, charges had been brought quietly against Lt. William Calley for the murder 18 months earlier of "109 Oriental human beings" in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai 4. This went almost unnoticed until mid-November of that year, when Seymour Hersh's investigative story burst on the public, followed shortly by the first sight for Americans of color photographs of the massacre. The pictures were not that different from those in the cover stories of Time and Newsweek from Haditha: women, children, old men and babies, all shot at short range. What was it that prompted me in the fall of 1969 to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents — an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? (My later charges, indeed, totaled a potential 115 years in prison.) The precipitating event was not Calley's murder trial but a different one. On Sept. 30, I read in the Los Angeles Times that charges brought by Creighton Abrams, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Vietnam, against several Special Forces officers accused of murdering a suspected double agent in their custody had been dismissed by the secretary of the Army. The article, by Washington reporters Ted Sell and Robert Donovan, made clear that the reasons alleged by Secretary Stanley Resor for this dismissal were false (and that the order to dismiss the charges had most likely come directly from the White House). As I read on, it became increasingly clear that the whole chain of command, civilian and military, was participating in a coverup. As I finished the article, it hit me: This is the system I have been part of, giving my unquestioning loyalty to for 15 years, as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam. It's a system that lies reflexively, at every level from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had, sitting in my safe at Rand, 7,000 pages of documentary evidence to prove it. The papers in my safe, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, constituted a complete set of a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled, "U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68." I had exclusive access to the papers for research purposes and had been reading them all summer; they made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in — just as are the 85% of the troops in Iraq today who still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with Al Qaeda. The papers documented in stunning detail a pattern of lies and deceptions by four presidents and their administrations over 23 years to conceal their war plans — along with internal estimates of the high costs and risks of these plans (and their low probabilities of success), never meant to reach the public and provoke debate. They showed very clearly how we had become engaged in a reckless war of choice in someone else's country — a country that had not attacked us — for our own domestic and external purposes. It seemed to me that to be doing that against the intense wishes of most of the inhabitants of that country was not just bad policy but morally wrong. Moreover, it became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. Vietnam was not a just war, and never had been. And if the war itself was unjust, then all the victims of our firepower were being killed without justification. That's murder. As I read the story in The Times that morning about the coverup of the Special Forces murder and compared it with what I'd been reading in the secret history, I came to see it as a microcosm of what had been happening since the war began. And I thought to myself: I don't want to be part of this lying machine anymore. I am not going to conceal the truth any longer. I called Russo, who had been fired from Rand a year earlier, in part for inconvenient field reporting about torture of prisoners by our Vietnamese allies. I asked him if he had access to a copying machine. He did. We began on Oct. 1. Night after night, I brought out batches of papers from my safe, and we copied them. I gave them first to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hoping that they would make the documents public. But they did not. Eventually, I gave them to the New York Times, which began publishing them Sunday, June 13, 1971. Two days later, the New York Times was ordered by a federal judge, at the request of the White House, to stop publishing — the first injunctive prior restraint of the press in U.S. history. I then gave copies to the Washington Post and, when it also was enjoined, to 17 other newspapers, while I was being sought by the FBI. On June 28, I turned myself in and was arrested and charged with violations of the Espionage Act and theft. Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates — so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public — about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth — earlier than I did — before more lives are lost or a new war is launched. Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it. It is past time for Americans to summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. We must force Congress and this president, or their successors if necessary, to act upon the moral proposition that the U.S. must stop killing men, women and children in Iraq, and must not begin to do so in Iran. Neither the lives we have lost, nor the lives we have taken, give the U.S. any right to determine by fire and airpower who shall govern or who shall die in countries we have wrongly attacked. Daniel Ellsberg was put on trial in 1973 for leaking the Pentagon Papers, but the case was dismissed after four months because of government misconduct.

Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Serving in Iraq, Joshua Key Explains What Made Him Desert for a Fugitive’s Life

Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Serving in Iraq, Joshua Key Explains What Made Him Desert for a Fugitive’s Life

by Neil Mackay

IT was March 2003, just days after the US invasion of Iraq. Joshua Key was driving along the banks of the Euphrates near the town of Ramadi in his tank when he came upon a scene that has since engraved itself into his memory: US troops kicking the decapitated heads of Iraqis around in the sand in an impromptu game of football. “We turned a sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over here and US troops in between them. I was thinking, ‘oh, my God, what in the hell happened here? What’s caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?’ We get out and somebody was screaming, ‘we f***ing lost it here!’. I’m thinking, ‘oh yes, somebody definitely lost it here’. “I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, ‘I can’t be no part of this, this is crazy’. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did this happen? “That’s what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, ‘oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that’. You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody’s going to ask, ‘are you sure?’ They’re going to high-five you and tell you that you did a good job.” This and other claims of violence exacted against innocent Iraqis by American GIs are among the allegations that Key has laid before the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. Key, a 27-year-old, working-class welder from Oklahoma, is the first US army deserter with combat experience to seek refugee status in Canada. He is also among a squad of US deserters who have levelled a series of horrific allegations against the US military machine, reported in a new book Mission Rejected by the award-winning US journalist Peter Laufer, which charts the escalating levels of desertion since the war began. Key’s experience left him suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – the modern-day term for what was once called shell-shock. He dreams about severed heads in the desert, and rarely sleeps. “I’m not your perfect killing machine,” he says. “That’s where I broke the rules. I broke the rules by having a conscience.” He recounts travelling in an armoured personnel carrier in Ramadi when an Iraqi man in a truck tried to overtake the convoy. “My squad leader fired a few shots and blew his truck up,” he says. “You don’t have to have reason to do anything. You can do whatever you want really.” When Key asked why the man had been killed for nothing, he was told: “You didn’t see anything.” Key doesn’t buy the line from the US government that those resisting the occupation are terrorists. Homes are destroyed, sons killed, husbands taken prisoner, he says, so the Iraqis “have a reason to be pissed off”. “I would never wish this upon myself or my family, so why would I do it to them? I was trained to be a total killer. I was trained in booby-traps, explosives and landmines. I was made to be an American terrorist. I was trained in everything a terrorist is trained to do.” At vehicle checkpoints, Key says, Iraqi lives were treated with casual disregard. There were no stop signs on the roads in Arabic to tell Iraqis to halt in order for their cars to be searched. Iraqis, not understanding what the US army wanted them to do, would sometimes drive through the check-point. Key recalls one car being shot at, in which a father died and his young son was seriously wounded. There were no weapons in the car; the Iraqis had misunderstood. “They don’t know what the hell we are saying,” Key explains. “You can’t kill everybody.” House raids were one of the most disturbing duties Key had to carry out. Not only was he not trained in such operations, but the brutality with which the US military treated Iraqis shamed and horrified him as well. Women and children would be screaming, and only rarely was an interpreter on hand to explain what they were saying. “You completely destroy the home. If there’s cabinets or something that’s locked, you kick them in. The soldiers take what they want at will. You completely ransack it. After you do it, usually a whole other team comes in and does the whole same thing again.” Entire neighbourhoods were cordoned off sometimes, with up to 100 houses being subjected to US raids. Key carried out more than 100 raids and only found a single weapon, an AK-47. His unit never once located a member of al-Qaeda or the Ba’ath Party. Key admits that before the war he knew little about Iraq and thought the US should take out Saddam Hussein before Iraq turned its sights on the US. “They made it sound like one day he’s going to be stepping on our door steps back home. I figured just do it now rather than my kids having to deal with it later on in life.” Now, however, after serving on the front line, he is convinced that his government lied to him. It wasn’t just atrocities, violence and government lies that sickened Key. The army’s disregard for its own soldiers also disturbed him. He got a call home once a fortnight if he was lucky. In the desert, where soldiers are meant to get six bottles of water and three “meals ready to eat” (MREs) a day, his squad was getting two bottles of water and one MRE. “How in the hell can the most powerful military in the world be in the middle of a damn desert and they don’t even have food to feed us?”he asks. On his way back to the US for two weeks’ leave after his first eight-month tour of duty, Key decided to desert. “At that point I knew this is morally wrong. I can’t keep doing this. I’m not going to kill innocent people just because I have to follow my damn orders.” For the last three months of his tour, Key’s weapon wasn’t working. He never said a word , as he couldn’t stomach the thought of another Iraqi needlessly dying. Key, his wife Brandi and his three children went on the run. They lived as fugitives for more than a year in the US, staying in seedy motels along the east coast for no more than a few nights at a time in case their identities were uncovered and then moving on, always living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day. Terrified of going to jail, he looked north to Canada as a possible refuge, and crossed the border in the autumn of 2005 to claim political asylum. He was welcomed and supported by the anti-war network in Canada, some of whom were Americans who took Canadian citizenship in the 1960s and 1970s after fleeing the Vietnam draft. “I hated leaving my country,” says Key. “I love my people. I love the American land. But I do not like the American government. They made me do things that a man should never have to do, for the purpose of their financial gain.” Joshua Key’s full story can be read in Mission Rejected by Peter Laufer, published by Chelsea Green.

How US Hid the Suicide Secrets of Guantanamo

How US Hid the Suicide Secrets of Guantanamo

After three inmates killed themselves, the Pentagon declared the suicides an act of 'asymmetric warfare', banned the media and went on a PR offensive. But as despair grows within the camp, so too does outrage mount at its brutal and secretive regime

by David Rose

In Guantanamo Bay's Alpha Block, the night was like any other: sweltering and seemingly endless. Although the temperature was down to the high 70s outside, the block's steel roof and walls were radiating heat, and in the two facing rows of 24 cells it felt little cooler than it had at midday. 'The nights are worse than the days,' the British former prisoner Shafiq Rasul recalled yesterday. 'You hear the rats running and scratching. The bugs go mad and there's no air. Especially where that block is: there's no breeze whatsoever.' According to Guantanamo's rules, a six-person team of military police should have been patrolling constantly, and as usual the bright neon lights stayed on. A guard should have passed each detainee's cell every 30 seconds. 'From the landing, you can see right into every cell,' said Rasul. 'They don't have doors, just gates made from wide-spaced mesh. There's no privacy. If you hang up a towel because you want to go to the toilet, they make you take it down.' The high degree of surveillance has foiled dozens of previous attempts by prisoners to take their own lives. 'It happened in front of me several times. The soldiers would see what was happening and they were in the cell in seconds,' Rasul said. But somehow, in circumstances that the Pentagon has succeeded in keeping totally obscure, late on Friday, 9 June, three detainees, all weak and emaciated after months on hunger strike and being force-fed, managed to tease bedsheets through their cells' mesh walls, tie them into nooses and hang themselves. With the cells little taller than the height of a man, they stood no chance of breaking their necks: the only way they could die was slowly, by hypoxia. 'That would take at least four or five minutes, probably longer,' said Dr David Nicholl, consultant neurologist at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who has been co-ordinating international opposition to Guantanamo by physicians. 'It's very difficult to see how, if the landing was being properly patrolled, they could have managed to accomplish it.' Accomplish it, however, they did. And virtually simultaneously. A little before midnight the bodies of Manei Shaman Turki al-Habadi, 30, and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, 21, both from Saudi Arabia, and of a Yemeni, Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 29, were found on Alpha Block. How long they had been like that, the Pentagon will not disclose. Their mouths were stuffed with cloth, apparently to muffle any cries. As often before in its four-and-a-half-year propaganda war over Guantanamo, the US military and its masters in Washington decided that the best means of defence to what looked - at best - like a case of criminal negligence was to go on the offensive. The dead men, said Guantanamo's commander, Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris, when the news broke last Saturday, had 'no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.' Colleen Graffy, a senior State Department official who recently visited London to make the case for Guantanamo with the UK media, called the suicides a 'good PR move' and 'a tactic to further the jihadi cause'. The US government tried to distance itself from Graffy's remarks. But early on Sunday The Observer talked to the camp's top Washington spin doctor, Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, an official in Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office and the Pentagon's chief press officer. According to Gordon, whatever the outcome of the investigation now being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, there was no need to regret the deaths. All three men, Gordon said, had been dedicated terrorists: 'These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg.' He went on to make specific allegations against each: Ahmed had been a 'mid-to-high-level al-Qaeda operative' with key links to Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda leader captured in 2002; Habadi had been a 'militant recruiter' who worked with a second tier group called Jama'at Tabligh, and knew of operations in Qatar and Pakistan. As for Zahrani, he was a 'frontline Taliban fighter' who had played a prominent part in the November 2001 prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, in which a CIA man died. All this may be true. On the other hand, they had not been charged with anything. Questionable as it often is and consisting of statements made after torture or coercion, the Pentagon has disseminated some evidence against more than 300 Guantanamo detainees, in federal court filings and at internal camp boards that reviewed their detention. Against the three suicides, it has presented nothing. Meanwhile, the information available suggests that the explanation of the deaths rejected by Harris - that the men tried to kill themselves through despair and succeeded through the incompetence of his staff - remains more plausible. Rasul said: 'I was shocked by what happened, though not surprised, because I saw it almost happen so often. It was always scary: I would see people deteriorating mentally in front of my eyes until they tried to take their own lives, and you always thought: "That could be me". There were even times when I thought about it myself, but I wanted to be strong for my family. When I did, believe me, it wasn't because I was trying to hurt the United States, but on days when I'd just been told I'd never see England again, and that I was a terrorist, and when I denied it they wouldn't listen.' The suicides triggered new calls to close Guantanamo, from the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, the European Union and others. But the Pentagon will go to considerable lengths to block any independent scrutiny of what happened. News of the suicides broke while I was flying to Washington from London, in order to travel to Guantanamo on a military flight next day and cover a military commission tribunal. A message on my mobile phone - from a fellow reporter, not the Pentagon - said that both had been cancelled. Thus I made the first of many calls to Jeffrey Gordon. At first, he could not have been more helpful. To enter Guantanamo, he said, one needed an 'area clearance', and because mine had been issued for the tribunal it was no longer valid. However, the press office at Guantanamo or Southern Command in Miami might be able to issue a new one, Gordon said. Clearance was not, he pointed out, the only problem. Now that the military plane had been cancelled, the only way to reach Guantanamo was on scheduled 18-seat flights from Florida and Kingston, Jamaica. They tended to be fully booked well in advance. I teamed up with another British journalist, David Jones of the Daily Mail, to organise clearance and investigate flights. By the end of Sunday, we thought we were on our way. Jones found a private charter firm willing to fly us to the camp from Kingston. Guantanamo's head of public affairs, Commander Robert Durand, explained in an email he was seeking authorisation from Harris. 'He's a pretty open sort of guy,' Durand said, 'and I can't see any reason for not granting you clearance since you were coming already.' At 7.30pm one of Durand's staff phoned to say there were new clearances. He faxed them a few minutes later. Next day Jones and I got up at 4am to fly to Miami, where we checked with Guantanamo one last time that everything was in order and got on a plane to Kingston. There, at check-in for our private flight, the manager was apologetic. 'Guys, I'm so sorry. Jeffrey Gordon called me from the Pentagon five minutes ago. Your clearances have been revoked.' Over the next 48 hours, I had several heated conversations and email exchanges with Gordon. At first he was apologetic: the new clearances had been 'a mistake' and he would try to get us a refund on the plane costs. Later he became more aggressive: forgetting that he had advised me to approach Durand at Guantanamo, he claimed that we tried to 'get round' the Pentagon by obtaining clearance from a clerk. His last email stated that our conduct had been 'ethically questionable, at best'. It was left to Durand to shed a little light. For the time being, he said, his ability to issue clearances had been removed and assumed by Rumsfeld's office alone. Meanwhile, three US reporters at the base were ordered to leave. According to a Pentagon spokesman quoted by the US media, the reason was that two barred British reporters - us - had threatened to sue if the Americans were allowed to stay. This was, of course, untrue. Closing Guantanamo to the media meant there were no reporters there as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service team went about its work; none when pathologists conducted post mortem examinations; and none last Friday when, after a Muslim ceremony conducted by a military chaplain, the first body - Ahmed's - was prepared to be flown home. It was also impossible to gauge the impact of the deaths on the 460 inmates. Yet our bizarre experience raises a fundamental question: when it comes to Guantanamo, can the world believe a single word that Gordon and his numerous cohorts say? There is, to say the least, an alternative explanation for the three Guantanamo deaths. Since early 2003, when the Red Cross issued the first of many reports stating that inmates were experiencing high levels of depression, there has been mounting evidence that detention there has wrought havoc on some prisoners' mental health. It is not so surprising: most prisoners get just two 30-minute periods out of their cells - the size of a double bed - each week, except when being interrogated. Some have endured this since 2002, and have no idea when, if ever, they may leave. By the time of my own visit in October 2003, a fifth of them were on Prozac and there had been so many suicide attempts - 40 by August 2003 - that the Pentagon had reclassified hangings as 'manipulative self-injurious behaviours'. Cannily, perhaps, it has refused to give exact statistics on how many SIBs have occurred, claiming that since the reclassification there have been (until last week) only two genuine attempted suicides. Tarek Dergoul, another freed British former detainee, knew two of the dead men well. 'I was next to or opposite Manei [Habadi] for weeks, maybe months,' he said, 'and like me his morale was high. He was always up for a protest: a hunger strike or a non-co-operation strike. He used to recite poetry, not just Arabic, but English - he knew chunks of Macbeth and he taught me how to read the Koran correctly. When you go through that sort of experience with someone, you really get to know them. I just can't believe he would take his own life. He would have had to be really desperate.' Likewise, Dergoul said, Zahrani was 'a person everyone loved. It's offensive to me to say he could have killed himself.' Apart from anything else, all three men would have been deeply aware of Islam's prohibition of suicide. However, the men may well have been so desperate that they ignored the prohibition - even if, as seems likely, they co-ordinated their deaths in the hope of increasing their political impact. Many lawyers who have visited clients at Guantanamo have spoken eloquently of their despair: this year a prisoner tried to kill himself in front of his US attorney, somehow managing to open his veins, covering himself in blood, as the lawyer watched in horror, unable - because of the screen that separated them - to intervene. Dergoul also suggested how the three may have been able to kill themselves undetected. Sometimes, he said, instead of patrolling the guards 'used to sit in their room at the end. It's a long walk from end to end of the block and some nights they didn't feel like it: they'd sit in their room, smoking and playing cards. You'd need toilet paper or something and you'd yell "MP, MP!" But they wouldn't come - it could be as long as an hour.' One might, just about, imagine such a scene in a British prison. One can also envisage what might happen if three men committed suicide on the same landing at the same time: public inquiries, sackings, outrage. All three had been on hunger strike, with few breaks, since the middle of last summer. This meant that, four times a day, they were strapped down in restraining chairs so that they could not move their limbs and force-fed through nasal tubes, inserted and removed each time - a process the Pentagon's own court documents state causes bleeding and nausea. It is not hard to see why that may have made them depressed. According to newly declassified testimony by another prisoner shortly before the suicides, a guard recently told him: 'They have lost hope in life. They have no hope in their eyes. They are ghosts and they want to die. No food will keep them alive right now.' This prisoner, the former British resident Shaker Aamer, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that the three dead men and other hunger strikers were so ill whenever their feeds contained protein that it went 'right through them' causing severe diarrhoea. Last week Rumsfeld got what he wanted: the removal of media scrutiny from Guantanamo's deepest crisis. Potentially embarrassing, perhaps very damaging, headlines have been averted, and tomorrow, with the most sensitive tasks in the wake of the deaths complete, Guantanamo's public affairs office will resume its chaperoned tours. But the bigger costs of shutting out the daylight are making themselves felt. On BBC1's Question Time last week, Falconer called the camp 'intolerable and wrong', adding that it acted as a recruiting agent for those who would attack all our values. Proving his point next day, some former Guantanamo detainees suggested the three dead men had been murdered, a claim echoed by their families and the government of Yemen next day. The Pentagon response to the suicides was characterised by panic, smears and blatant obstruction. One might be forgiven for thinking that its vehement denials lacked a little weight.