Behind the Phosphorus Clouds are War Crimes Within War Crimes

The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC last week: “If … the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because … any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons.”

The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence: “It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets.”

Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled “Possible use of phosphorus chemical”. “During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising,” it alleges, “Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil … and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships … These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly … hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas.” The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is an illegal chemical weapon.

George Monbiot | Guardian/UK (read more. . .)

November 23rd, 2005 || PermaLink

Getting Out of Iraq

If the Pentagon had been able to subdue the Iraqi population, few in Congress or on editorial pages would be denouncing the war. As in so many other respects, this is a way that the domestic U.S. political dynamics of the war on Iraq are similar to what unfolded during the Vietnam War. With the underpinnings of war prerogatives unchallenged, a predictable response is that the war must be fought more effectively.

That’s what the great journalist I. F. Stone was driving at when he wrote, a few years into the Vietnam War, in mid-February 1968: “It is time to stand back and look at where we are going. And to take a good look at ourselves. A first observation is that we can easily overestimate our national conscience. A major part of the protest against the war springs simply from the fact that we are losing it. If it were not for the heavy cost, politicians like the Kennedys [Robert and Edward] and organizations like ADA [the liberal Americans for Democratic Action] would still be as complacent about the war as they were a few years ago.”

In the United States, while the lies behind the Iraq war become evermore obvious and victory seems increasingly unreachable, much of the opposition to the war has focused on the death and suffering among U.S. soldiers. That emphasis has a sharp political edge at home, but it can also cut another way — defining the war as primarily deplorable because of what it is doing to Americans. One danger is that a process of withdrawing some U.S. troops could be accompanied by even more use of U.S. air power that terrorizes and kills with escalating bombardment (as happened in Vietnam for several years after President Nixon announced his “Guam Doctrine” of Vietnamization in mid-1969). An effective antiwar movement must challenge the jingo-narcissism that defines the war as a problem mainly to the extent that it harms Americans.

Countless pundits and politicians continue to decry the Bush administration’s failure to come up with an effective strategy in Iraq. But the war has not gone wrong. It was always wrong. And the basic problem with the current U.S. war effort is that it exists.

Norman Solomon | CommonDreams (read more. . .)

November 22nd, 2005 || PermaLink

THE STRAW MEN OF IRAQ: Ten Pro-War Fallacies

1. VIRTUALLY EVERYONE WHO SAW THE INTELLIGENCE BELIEVED SADDAM HAD WMD, THEREFORE BUSH IS BEING UNFAIRLY SINGLED OUT FOR CRITICISM

The typical framing is: “Democrats got the same intelligence and reached the same conclusion, so blaming Bush for misleading America is purely political.” The argument is also presented in ‘gotcha’ form by people like Sean Hannity, who use a lengthy blind quote about the threat posed by Saddam that turns out to be from Bill Clinton, John Kerry or some other Democrat. The conclusion is that if Bush was lying, they must have been lying too.

There is a false assumption underlying this argument, namely that Dems received the same intel as Bush (they didn’t), but setting that aside, here are two reasons why this is a straw man:

a) The issue is not whether people believed Saddam had WMD (many did), or whether there was any evidence that he had WMD (there was), it’s the fact that Bush and his administration made an absolute, unconditional case with the evidence at hand, brooking no dissent and dismissing doubters inside and outside the government as cowardly or treasonous. That’s what “manipulating the intelligence” and “misleading the public” refers to, the knowing exaggeration of the case for war (whether by cherry-picking intel or using defunct intel or by speaking about ambiguous intel in alarming absolutes). As I wrote in this post: “There we were, more than a decade after the first gulf war, two years after 9/11, and Saddam hadn’t attacked us, he hadn’t threatened to attack us. And then suddenly, he was the biggest threat to America. A threat that required a massive invasion. A bigger threat than Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, Bin Laden. A HUGE, IMMEDIATE threat. It simply defied belief.”

b) In addition to the fear-mongering described above, the contention that Bush ‘misled’ the public is not simply about Saddam’s WMD, but about the way the administration stormed ahead with their plans and invaded Iraq in the way they did, at the time they did, with the Pollyannaish visions they fed the world, all the while demonizing dissent and smearing their critics.

In both (a) and (b), the crux of the issue is proportionality. Whether or not Bill Clinton or France or the U.N. believed Saddam was a threat, the administration’s apocalyptic words and drastic actions (preemptively invading a sovereign nation) were decidedly out of proportion to the level and immediacy of the threat. THAT is the issue.

Peter Daou | Salon (read more. . .)

November 22nd, 2005 || PermaLink

Effect of Bush’s Iraq Lies Could Linger for Years

With a White House that refuses to even concede that anything has gone wrong — that can only find energy for attacking and smearing its critics — how will we ever fashion a reasonable strategy for extricating ourselves from Iraq? And how will we confront the increased threats that the failed Iraqi enterprise has generated?

After all, the war in Iraq has not only been a bust at “draining the swamp” of anti-Western fanatics, it has bred more terror in Iraq that is now pushing across its borders into countries such as Jordan, which the United States has considered an ally. The suicide bombers who attacked three hotels in Amman, including a wedding, killing more than 50 people and injuring many others, came from Iraq. Moreover, the eventual takeover of Iraq by the Shiite majority — which has already begun — only strengthens Iran, a Shiite stronghold and budding nuclear power with anti-Western inclinations. (The newly elected president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made his entrance to the public stage by declaring that Israel has no right to exist.)

If that weren’t bad enough, the botched invasion — and the corrosive distrust of the political structure that it has generated among Americans — may eventually breed a brand-new Vietnam syndrome, this one the “Iraq syndrome.” That will make it difficult for a future American president to respond militarily even to a legitimate threat.

And both the Iraq syndrome and its earlier version will have a common heritage, inspired when an American president took the country to war on the wings of lies.

Cynthia Tucker | Atlanta Journal-Constitution (read more. . .)

November 21st, 2005 || PermaLink

Imagine (Torture & The Geneva Conventions)

Imagine, if you will, that you are an Iraqi. You have a captured American pilot. You know that American jets will be bombing your city later this afternoon. If you could only find out what their targets are you could move the women and children – maybe even the old and the sick – out of harm’s way. You might be able to save hundreds, perhaps thousands if you only knew where the bombs would strike. Your children are in the city. Your grandparents. Your cousins. The girl you loved when you were twelve years old, who married someone else and is now the mother of two lovely twins.

You could save them, if only you could get that American pilot to talk.

Five hundred pound bombs are weapons of mass destruction. They quake the earth. They darken the sky.

They’ve already killed so many of your people. There would be pain in your questioning, but it would stop short of that “accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” You would have taken “taken such steps as surveying professional literature, consulting with experts …” lots in Iraq, and, apparently, in the US too, “ … or reviewing past experience,” living up to the standards that were signed off on by Jay S. Bybee, then US assistant attorney general, afterward appointed to the federal appeals court. What’s some mere discomfort, to one pampered Westerner who murders with impunity from 5,000 feet in the air. You’re doing simply what needs to be done.

Larry Beinhart | HuffingtonPost (read more. . .)

November 20th, 2005 || PermaLink

Vegetarians Between Meals: This War Cannot Be Stopped By a Loyal Opposition

Herein lies the real political crisis in this country: the Democrats are not an opposition party, nor are they an antiwar party-never were. At best, they are a loyal opposition. The Democrats ran a pro-war campaign in 2004 with Kerry struggling to convince people that Dems do occupation and war better. The current head of the DNC, Howard Dean, never met a war he didn’t adore until he realized he could exploit the energy and sincere hopes of millions of peace-loving Americans. Dean wasn’t ever antiwar. In fact, during the 2004 campaign he attacked Kerry for opposing the Gulf War while laying out his own pro-war record.

“In 1991, I supported Gulf War. I supported the first President Bush,” declared Dean. “Senator Kerry who criticizes my foreign policy, he voted against that war. I supported the Afghanistan war, because I felt it was about our national defense– 3,000 of our people were killed. I supported President Clinton going into Bosnia and Kosovo.”

How can Howard Dean look people in the eye today and pretend to speak with any credibility as an antiwar voice?

When the hawkish Democrat Rep. John Murtha bravely stepped forward to call for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this week, he was quickly blasted by the White House and simultaneously disowned by powerful Democrats like John Kerry. Occupation lovers together again. The bloody scandal of the Iraq occupation has opened a rare and clear window into the truth about this country: there is one party represented in Washington–one that supports preemptive war and regime change. The reality is that the Democrats could stop this war if the will was there. They could shut down the Senate every day, not just for a few hours one afternoon. They could disrupt business as usual and act as though the truth were true: this war should never have happened and it must end now. The country would be behind them if they did it. But they won’t. They will hem and haw and call for more troops and throw out epic lies about the US becoming a stabilizing force in Iraq and blame the Republicans for their own complicity and enthusiasm in the 15 years of bipartisan crimes against Iraq.

All of this begs for a multiparty system in this country and the emergence of a true opposition. The epic scale of the disaster in Iraq calls for epic lessons to be learned at home. Like the Bush White House, the Democrats have lost their credibility. They are undeserving of the blank check of “Anybody But Bush” and should never be allowed to cash it again. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who heads up the House Democrat’s election campaign, criticized Murtha’s call for immediate withdrawal, saying, “At the right time, we will have a position.” It is statements like that that should result in Emanuel and his colleagues losing theirs.

Jeremy Scahill | CommonDreams (read more. . .)

November 19th, 2005 || PermaLink

Blowing in the Wind

In the background of today’s entries, Bob Dylan’s “blowing in the wind” is playing.

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?

In response to the call for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by a retired marine colonel, decorated Vietnam War veteran and Democratic Congressman, John Murtha, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan implied that Murtha was advocating a “surrender to the terrorists.” McClellan is not a veteran of any war, and nor are his bosses, George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney (the latter actively sought 5 deferrals from serving in Vietnam).

Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?

Peace activist and mother of a GI killed in action in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan, was fined $75 for demonstrating without a permit outside the White House.

Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?

The US military is puzzled about the outcry over the use of white phosphorus at Fallujah. After all, a 500-pound bomb is also destructive. My guess? You can’t go to war against Saddam on the grounds that he has stockpiles of chemical weapons, and then turn around and use incendiary bombs of a sort that much of the world regards as a form of chemical weapon. It is the hypocrisy factor. Not to mention that the international community is trying to get such weapons banned.

Juan Cole | Informed Comment (read more. . .)

November 18th, 2005 || PermaLink