[casi-analysis] casi-news digest, Vol 1 #67 - 6 msgs

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Today's Topics:

   1. (no subject) (harb mukhtar)
   2. The return of people's war:  Guardian comment, 19/4/04 (Cathy Aitchison)
   3. MPs are Silent (R.A. Laurence)
   4. US Conservatives Divided over Iraq (k hanly)
   5. Journalists killed in Iraq (k hanly)
   6. Media begins to admit  failures over Iraq(in Australia!) (CharlieChimp1@aol.com)

--__--__--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 02:08:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: harb mukhtar <harbmukhtar@DELETETHISyahoo.com>
To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk
Subject: (no subject)


[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]

On Apr 19 2004, harb mukhtar sent to u
> War on Iraq is a Nuclear WarAnd the fallout is coming this way, says
> independent scientist Leuren Moret by Stephanie Hiller
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>
>
>
> In May, 2003, the United States dumped 2,200 tons of depleted uranium
on
> Iraq, according to reliable sources, and it's logical to assume that
more
> depleted uranium is being employed in the current attacks on Faluja
that
> began April 8 to put down Iraqi resistance to the American presence
> there.
>
> According to independent geoscientist Leuren Moret, the war on Iraq -
> like the war on Afghanistan - is a nuclear war. "Depleted uranium is
a
> nuclear weapon and it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U. S.
> government's definition of weapons of mass destruction," Moret says.
>
> The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that DU is harmful, despite the
> symptoms of half the returning veterans from the first Persian Gulf
Wars
> who are now disabled. But researchers have shown that the Pentagon
has
> been fully aware of the consequences of what is called "low level
> radiation" since 1942, when depleted uranium was first suggested for
> development as a military weapon under the Manhattan Project.
>
> On Sunday, April 6, the New York Daily News reported that nine
soldiers
> who returned from Iraq last summer had symptoms typical of DU
poisoning.
> The News arranged for them to be tested by Asaf Duracovic, a former
> colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
and
> one of the world's foremost experts on the medical effects of
radioactive
> weaponry. Depleted uranium was found in the urine of four of the men
-
> Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony
> Yonnone - the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium
exposure
> from the current Iraq conflict
>
> Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members of Uranium
> Medical Research Centre's (UMRC) field investigation team are
> contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one
from
> Canada and the other, Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in
October
> 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's
aerial
> bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC's
> partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both team members' urine
> samples. (Please see
http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp)
>
> If short-term visitors and soldiers have been so affected, what of
the
> people, living near bomb sites, breathing the air every day, drinking
the
> water? What of the children who play in these sites and collect
pieces of
> exploded materiel to sell so their families can eat?
>
> Using figures developed by Japanese physicist, Professor Yagasaki
from
> the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, and explained in his
presentation
> at the World Conference on Depleted Uranium Weapons held in Hamburg
last
> October, the radioactivity of 2,200 tons (or 440,000 pounds) of
depleted
> uranium together with some 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan, is the
> atomicity equivalent to 400,00 Nagasaki bombs.
>
> Depleted uranium is cheap and plentiful. When uranium is processed
for
> fission bombs or fuel rods for use in power plants, only U-235, about
> half a percent of the total, is used. Most of what's left over is
U-238,
> so-called "depleted" uranium. The US has over a million tons of the
> stuff, and storage is becoming a serious problem.
>
> Though less radioactive than U-235, DU is still highly radioactive
> &endash; and chemically toxic as well. "There is no allowable level
of
> risk," says Moret. Nearly twice as dense as lead, DU is used in tanks
and
> airplanes, as well as bullets, handguns, cannons, all the way up to
large
> bombs weighing more than 5,000 pounds.
>
> It's not dangerous until it blows up.
>
> Depleted uranium is pyrophoric. Relatively innocuous as a metal alloy
> used in planes, tanks, missiles, bullets and rounds, when depleted
> uranium burns, it releases a radioactive gas. Larger particles may
settle
> to the ground, but winds blowing across the desert may carry the fine
> particles to locations in a 1000-mile radius from the explosion. As a
> result, areas as far west as Egypt and as far east as India are
likely to
> be contaminated. "The U.S. has staged a nuclear war in the Middle
East,
> from Iraq and Central Asia, to the northern half of India. Half of
Egypt,
> Israel, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, Turkey, Iran, the Russian
oil-rich
> states, the Caspian oil region, and northern are now, or will be, all
> contaminated."
>
> Depleted uranium - U-238 - has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It's
> effects will be with us forever. It is in the soil, in the
groundwater,
> in food, but the worst of all &endash; it is in the air. When
inhaled, it
> enters directly into the bloodstream. One uranium particle behaves in
the
> body like a tiny nuclear bomb, sending out alpha and beta particles
and
> gamma rays to adjacent cells. These are permanently damaging to the
cells
> and chromosomes and lead to a host of deadly diseases, including
cancer
> and leukemia. They also cause mutations of the genetic material that
will
> show up in subsequent generations as terrible birth deformities,
weakened
> health, and infertility.
>
> Moret says the fallout from these foreign wars is headed our way.
Spread
> by powerful desert winds, the fallout will be carried certainly as
far as
> Britain (where dust storms from the Middle East commonly leave
residual
> dust) and then across the Atlantic Ocean. It will also travel across
Asia
> and the Pacific Ocean and be slowly and silently deposited across the
> North American continent.
>
> American citizens have already been exposed to radiation from a
variety
> of sources including malfunctioning nuclear power plants, the
disasters
> at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, aboveground bomb tests conducted
from
> 1957 to 1963, and the enormous existing pile of depleted uranium,
about 1
> million tons, poorly stored in the United States. Radiation has
caused
> the geometric rise of cancers in the US - 1 in 3 Americans compared
to 1
> in 20 before the second World War. It is also responsible for the
rise in
> autism, learning disabilities, chronic immune deficiency disorders
> (chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr and so forth), higher rates
of
> infant mortality and the general weakening of the public's health.
>
> Leuren Moret was formerly employed at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation
> Laboratory in Berkeley, and the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons
lab.
> Since walking out on her job to become a whistleblower at Livermore,
she
> has devoted her time to the study of the effects of nuclear
radiation.
> She has worked with scientists like Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Marian
Fulk,
> Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Uranium Medical Research Center, Dr. Doug
Rokke
> of Traprock Peace Center and many others. Her testimony at the
> International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held December 13-14,
> 2003, in Tokyo was largely responsible for the unanimous verdict on
> depleted uranium, and that the President Bush and the United States
is
> guilty of war crimes against that country.
>
>
>
> Leuren Moret will be interviewed by Janie Rezner on her show, Women's
> Voices, this Monday, April 12, at 7 pm Pacific Daylight Savings time.
You
> can listen to the interview via the internet. Visit www.kzyx.org
>
>
>
> MORE INFORMATION
>
>
>
> http://www.mindfully.org
>
>
>



---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25=A2


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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 12:23:40 +0100
Subject: The return of people's war:  Guardian comment, 19/4/04
From: Cathy Aitchison <cathy@DELETETHIStwiza.demon.co.uk>
To: <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>


http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1194671,00.html

Comment
--------------------------
The return of people's war

Iraq shows the west and its new liberal imperialists have forgotten the
lessons of history

Martin Jacques
Monday April 19, 2004
The Guardian

Two very different innovations have dominated warfare in the past 60 years.
The first was the invention of nuclear weapons, which brought to an end 150
years of a military system based on total war. Nuclear weapons have, at
least until now, been the preserve of an exclusive minority, headed by the
United States. Even today, only eight nations admit to possessing them. The
second innovation could not have been more different. It was, as Jonathan
Schell points out in his new book, The Unconquerable World, the development
of a new kind of people's war against foreign invaders. Whereas nuclear
weapons were an expression of the very latest technology, and therefore the
preserve of the rich world, people's war belonged to the opposite end of th=
e
scale. People's war could not afford the latest technology, or anything lik=
e
it. Instead, it depended on mobilising popular support.

Schell argues that the first example of people's war was the resistance
displayed by the Spanish to Napoleonic conquest during the peninsular war a=
t
the beginning of the 19th century. But its defining moment was probably the
guerrilla war fought by the Chinese communists against the Japanese
occupation of north China in the late 1930s. It was in this cauldron that
Mao, the first philosopher of successful people's war, expounded the
centrality of grassroots support and the primacy of politics - rather than
violence - in achieving it. However, it was not until after the second worl=
d
war, with the tidal wave of anti-colonial struggles, that people's war
really came into its own. As empires crumbled - the Japanese, British,
French, Dutch and later Portuguese - people's war became the weapon of
choice of many independence movements, from south-east Asia to north Africa=
.
In the face of overwhelming military power, it delivered self-rule to
hundreds of millions of people.

The classic exponents of people's war were the Vietnamese communists. The
Vietnamese struggle pitted the world's most powerful military machine
against a profoundly poor nation of 80 million, whose only weapon was
people's war. It was the epic conflict of the past 50 years. It is, perhaps=
,
not surprising that every imperial nation during the past 60 years has
profoundly underestimated the ability of a poor people to resist
overwhelming military force. With wealth not only goes military power but
also overweening hubris, a sense of arrogant superiority in the face of the
backward and the uncivilised, the alien and the Other. No doubt this largel=
y
explains why no imperial power ever gave up its possessions voluntarily.

What lies at the core of people's war is the desire of people to rule
themselves rather than be governed by foreign countries, often from
thousands of miles away, that are possessed of utterly alien values and
their own self-serving priorities. This is a principle that the west has
found extremely difficult to learn. And even when it appears to have finall=
y
learned the lesson - always the hard way, by defeat - it seems to suffer
another bout of amnesia: how could this country not be served better by
adopting our values and our institutions, even if the ministering of the
medicine does require application with more than a little force?


The Vietnamese proved, with extraordinary courage and intelligence, that
people's war could triumph against the most formidable and frightening odds=
.
The Americans may have possessed awesome weapons, but the Vietnamese
commanded the hearts and minds - and eventually even managed to convince th=
e
American public that the war could not be won. Their victory was to
transform the conduct of American foreign policy for a quarter-century -
until the arrival of the Bush regime, which declined to accept the verities
of the Vietnamese conflict and preferred to believe that defeat was a
consequence of a lack of US military resolve.

Epochal change inevitably brings into question old assumptions. The end of
the cold war clearly belongs to this category. The Americans regarded the
war against North Vietnam as a crucial plank in the fight against communism=
:
if South Vietnam should fall, the domino effect would surely follow.
Self-determination, though, was no creature of communism. True, the great
anti-colonial struggles historically coincided with the high tide of
communism and some of the most effective protagonists of people's war were
communist parties. Moreover, the Soviet bloc gave sustenance and support to
these struggles, while the west was almost invariably arraigned as their
enemy. But self-determination and people's war were, and remain, utterly
distinct phenomena, quite independent of communism.

This lesson seems to have been forgotten by the Americans and by many other=
s
in the west as well. Come Iraq, it was as if the power and virtue of
self-determination and people's war belonged to another, bygone era, withou=
t
application to the times in which we live. They had gone the same way as so
much else during that absurd decade of the 1990s, when everything of worth
was "new", and history was only relevant to the past. Perhaps also the
western mind was diverted by the fact that, following the heroic
achievements of the Vietnamese, many self-determination struggles took the
form of extremely bloody and unpleasant ethnic wars, with minority national
groups seeking independence from what they saw as their new oppressors.

A year ago, at the time of the invasion of Iraq, few anticipated, least of
all the Bush administration, that there would be any sustained resistance.
On the contrary, Bush and Blair expected the "coalition" troops to be
embraced as liberating forces: after all, with good old western imperial
hubris, were they not the bearers of our own infinitely superior values? Th=
e
new breed of liberal imperialists, refugees from the left, swallowed that
whole and forgot the lessons of half a century of history. Even when the
resistance began to get under way, it was almost invariably described - by
governments and media alike - as the remnants of the Saddam regime, togethe=
r
with foreign terrorists, and thereby summarily dismissed.

It is now clear to everyone - apart from Donald Rumsfeld and his cronies -
that, far from being a rump of Saddamist malcontents, the resistance enjoys
broad based support among the Sunnis and increasingly the Shias too. The ol=
d
truths are alive and well. People do not want to be ruled by an alien power
from thousands of miles away whose interests are self-serving. The
resistance in Iraq bears all the hallmarks of a people's war for
self-determination.

Iraq is far messier than Vietnam. The latter enjoyed a very long history an=
d
ethnic (if not religious) cohesion. It was also lucky to have an inspired
leadership, whose moral virtue was far greater than their would-be American
conquerors. Iraq is a much more recent and cynical colonial creation, has
been ruled by a brutal dictator and is deeply divided along ethnic and
religious lines. While Vietnam survived and prospered, even fighting off an
opportunistic Chinese invasion in 1979, Iraq could, in contrast, descend
into a bloody civil war and split asunder. For the time being, though, what
increasingly unites Iraqis, with the exception of the Kurds, is their
opposition to the American invasion - and rightly so. Will the west never
learn?

=B7 Martin Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics
Asian Research Centre

martinjacques1@aol.com





--__--__--

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:38:12 +0100 (BST)
From: "R.A. Laurence" <ral45@DELETETHIShermes.cam.ac.uk>
To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk
Subject: MPs are Silent


see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1193948,00.html

**************************************
Who will speak out?

US troops have carried out a massacre in Falluja, but MPs are silent

Ronan Bennett
Saturday April 17, 2004
The Guardian

What does it take to get a New Labour politician to speak out on Iraq? I'm
not talking about the likes of Blair, Hoon and Straw - key players so
deeply implicated in the cruel tragedy of conquest and occupation that
they have no option but to stay the course, even as it spirals into
slaughter and chaos. But there are ministers and backbenchers with a
history of commitment to human rights. What does it take to shock them out
of their baffling silence?
Not the 600 or 700 Iraqis killed over the last fortnight in Falluja, it
seems. Perhaps they believe, like the prime minister, that those attacking
coalition troops are Saddam loyalists, al-Qaida fighters or religious
fanatics, and deserve everything they get. Perhaps they have been
reassured by General John Abizaid, head of the US Army's central command,
who spoke of the coalition's "judicious use of force". Maybe they accept
the reassurance of the commander of the US marines besieging the city that
his men are "trained to be precise in their firepower", and that "95% of
those killed were legitimate targets".

Let's accept for the moment that the commander is right and accept that
the AC-130 gunships and F16 fighter-bombers unleashed against the people
of Falluja are precise, that the 500lb bombs falling on the city come
under the definition of judicious. Let's look at just a handful of the 5%
of civilian casualties the Americans concede they have inflicted.

These include the mother of six-year-old Haider Abdel-Wahab, shot and
killed while hanging out laundry; his father, shot in the head; Haider
himself, and his brothers, crushed but dug out alive after a US missile
struck their house. They include children who died of head wounds. They
include an old woman with a bullet wound - still clutching a white flag
when aid workers found her. They include an elderly man lying face down at
the gate to his house - while inside terrified girls screamed "Baba!
Baba!" They include ambulance crews fired on by US troops - and
four-year-old Ali Nasser Fadil, wounded during an air strike. The New York
Times reporter who found the infant in a Baghdad hospital described him
lying in bed, "his eyes wide and fixed on a spot in the ceiling". His left
leg had been crudely amputated. The same reporter found 10-year-old Waed
Joda by the bedside of his gravely wounded father. "American snipers shot
at us as we were trying to flee Falluja," said Waed.

Every one of these incidents has been documented by journalists, aid
workers or medical staff. And there are plenty more. Even allowing for
casualties caused by the Iraqi resistance, the dread catalogue of
American-inflicted suffering and death is long and undeniable. At this
point it's worth reminding ourselves that 5% of 600 is 30. But the
evidence of the bodies alone gives the lie to the American account: at
least 350 of the dead in Falluja have been women and children.

The Americans say they are engaged in a mission to bring to justice the
perpetrators of the four security contractors - or mercenaries - killed
and mutilated in the city on March 31. Locals see it differently. They
describe their occupation, initially by troops of the US 82nd Airborne, as
oppressive from the start. Almost as soon as they arrived, in April 2003,
US soldiers killed 18 protesters during a demonstration. After six months
of occupation, the 82nd Airborne had killed at least 40 civilians and
police in the city.


In March, the 82nd Airborne were replaced by a Marine Expeditionary Force
and, shortly afterwards, an American soldier was killed. On March 27,
marines undertook a "sweep" through the city, described as "revenge" by
Mohammed Albalwa, president of the city council. At least six Iraqi
civilians, including an 11-year-old boy, were killed. It was in this
heightened atmosphere that the mercenaries met their grisly deaths. No one
can pretend that the assault on Falluja is anything other than retribution
for the mercenaries - even members of the hand-picked Iraqi governing
council accept it as such.

On all of this - a shameful and deafening silence. Politicians are not
usually so tongue-tied. Remember Peter Hain, leader of the House, after
bands of landless black poor invaded white-owned farms in Zimbabwe? The
number of white farmers killed was a fraction of the toll of civilians who
die every week in Iraq at the hands of coalition forces. Hain was swift to
denounce Zimbabwe's government as "uncivilised". He spoke of his "horror"
at the killings. Tyranny, he said, was "running riot in Zimbabwe" and
"disfiguring the whole of the southern African sub-continent". So far,
Hain has been silent about the horror wreaked by US firepower in Falluja
and the disfigurement of Iraq by what has by any reckoning been a
massacre.

And what about Chris Mullin, a former Tribune editor and now junior
minister at the Foreign Office? Best remembered for his campaign to free
the Birmingham Six, Mullin is frequently described as a friend of the
underdog, with a commitment to human rights. Sadly, these qualities have
not been much in evidence recently. Last summer Mullin defended to me the
kangaroo courts held in Belmarsh prison, at which anonymous witnesses
testify against men imprisoned by the home secretary without charge
("Better than sending them back to their countries of origin where they
would be killed," he said). And though he was outraged by the denial of
justice to the Birmingham Six, Guant=E1namo does not disturb him ("Septembe=
r
11 changed everything"). The underdogs of Falluja have yet to move Mullin.

Then there's Hilary Benn, international development secretary, who has
spoken of Britain's responsibility to get Iraqi schools and hospitals up
and running, to ensure a future for Iraqi children. But it isn't easy to
square the rhetoric of international development with that of military
occupation: the promise of a good education doesn't mean much to parents
dodging US snipers to dig a hole in a sports field in order to bury their
child.

The list of the shameful silent could go on: Angela Eagle, a longstanding
leftwinger? Silent. Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, former stalwarts
of the old National Council for Civil Liberties? Silent. Oona King, who in
her maiden speech cited the 1880 Match Girls' strike, has spoken
passionately about the 35,000 children who die every day from preventable
diseases and denounced the "slaughter and oppression" of the Palestinians
in Jenin. Silent. Joan Ruddock, former chair of CND. Silent. Ann Clwyd,
defender of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs, who wrote: "Some will continue
to argue that internal repression is not a matter of legitimate concern
for other countries. I disagree. There are basic human rights that must be
defended." Are we to take it, then, that external repression is
acceptable? That the human rights of the inhabitants of Falluja are not
worth defending? What has happened to these people? Many of them don't
even have ministerial jobs to protect. I have yet to hear any of them
acknowledge that what is going on in Falluja is wrong. That killing
children is wrong, blasting their houses is wrong, blowing up mosques is
wrong, burying a family under a ton of rubble is wrong.

Today the siege of Falluja continues. US troops are massing outside the
holy city of Najaf. In the south, the situation has been further inflamed
by the British Army shooting 15 people dead in Amara on April 6 (silence
there, too). In Baghdad's Sadr City, camouflaged Humvees tour the streets
with loudspeakers warning people not to leave their homes. No one
seriously believes things are improving in Iraq under occupation. How long
before our MPs speak out?

=B7 Ronan Bennett is a novelist and screenwriter. His novel Havoc in its
Third Year is published by Bloomsbury in September






--__--__--

Message: 4
From: "k hanly" <khanly@DELETETHISmb.sympatico.ca>
To: "newsclippings" <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>
Subject: US Conservatives Divided over Iraq
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 09:52:30 -0500

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/politics/19CONS.html?ei=5062&en=3ead1edf3c2212dd&ex=1082952000&pagewanted=print&position=

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

April 19, 2004
Lack of Resolution in Iraq Finds Conservatives Divided
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

 growing faction of conservatives is voicing doubts about a prolonged United
States military involvement in Iraq, putting hawkish neoconservatives on the
defensive and posing questions for President Bush about the degree of
support he can expect from his political base.

The continuing violence and mounting casualties in Iraq have given new
strength to the traditional conservative doubts about using American
military power to remake other countries and about the potential for
Western-style democracy without a Western cultural foundation. In in the
eyes of many conservatives, the Iraqi resistance has discredited the more
hawkish neoconservatives - a group closely identified with Paul D.
Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and William Kristol, the editor
of The Weekly Standard.

Considered descendants of a group of mostly Jewish intellectuals who
switched from the political left to the right at the height of the cold war,
the neoconservatives are defined largely by their conviction that American
military power can be a force for good in the world. They championed the
invasion of Iraq as a way to turn that country into a bastion of democracy
in the Middle East.

"In late May of last year, we neoconservatives were hailed as great
visionaries," said Kenneth R. Weinstein, chief operating officer of the
Hudson Institute, a center of neoconservative thinking. "Now we are
embattled, both within the conservative movement and in the battle over
postwar planning.

"Those of us who favored a more muscular approach to American foreign policy
and a more Wilsonian view of our efforts in Iraq find ourselves pitted
against more traditional conservatives, who have more isolationist instincts
to begin with, and they are more willing to say, `Bring the boys home,' "
Mr. Weinstein said.

Richard A. Viguerie, a conservative stalwart and the dean of conservative
direct mail, said the Iraq war had created an unusual schism. "I can't think
of any other issue that has divided conservatives as much as this issue in
my political lifetime," Mr. Viguerie said.

Recent events, he said, "call into question how conservatives see the White
House. It doesn't look like the White House is as astute as we thought they
were."

Although Mr. Bush appears to be sticking to the neoconservative view, the
growing skepticism among some conservatives about the Iraqi occupation is
upending some of the familiar dynamics of left and right. To be sure, both
sides have urged swift and decisive retaliation against the Iraqi insurgents
in the short term, but some on the right are beginning to support a
withdrawal as soon as is practical, while some Democrats, including Senator
John Kerry of Massachusetts, the likely presidential nominee, have called
for sending more troops to Iraq.

In an editorial in this week's issue of The Weekly Standard, Mr. Kristol
applauded Mr. Kerry's stance.

Referring to the conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, an outspoken
opponent of the war and occupation, Mr. Kristol said in an interview on
Friday: "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan or any of the
lesser Buchananites on the right. If you read the last few issues of The
Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks
than with traditional conservatives."

In contrast, this week's issue of National Review, the magazine founded by
William F. Buckley and a standard-bearer for mainstream conservatives,
adopted a newly skeptical tone toward the neoconservatives and toward the
occupation. In an editorial titled "An End to Illusion," the Bush
administration was described as having "a dismaying capacity to believe its
own public relations."

The editorial criticized the administration as having "an underestimation of
 the difficulty of implanting democracy in alien soil, and an overestimation
in particular of the sophistication of what is still fundamentally a tribal
society and one devastated by decades of tyranny."

The editorial described that error as "Wilsonian," another term for the
neoconservatives' faith that United States military power can improve the
world and a label associated with the liberal internationalism of President
Woodrow Wilson.

"The Wilsonian tendency has grown stronger in conservative foreign policy
thought in recent years," the editorial continued, adding, "As we have seen
in Iraq, the world isn't as malleable as some Wilsonians would have it."

The editorial was careful to emphasize that the war served legitimate United
States interests and that violence against Americans in Iraq deserved harsh
retribution. But it concluded: "It is the Iraqis who have to save Iraq. It
is their country, not ours."

Some conservatives who focus on limited government and lower taxes said they
were also worried about the political costs of an extended occupation of
Iraq.

"We don't want to put troops into a situation that is increasingly a
public-relations problem for the president," said Stephen Moore, president
of the Club for Growth, a group of conservative political donors. "No one
wants body bags coming home in September and October."

So far President Bush appears to be sticking to Wilsonian goals. "We're
changing the world," he said last week in a White House news conference,
defending the occupation and pledging to maintain a military involvement
after the planned June 30 handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi governing
body. "My job as the president is to lead this nation into making the world
a better place."

Some of the main conservative opponents of the invasion, including Mr.
Buchanan and the libertarian Cato Institute - were quiet after the war began
but have now renewed their criticism.

In his syndicated column last week, Mr. Buchanan, who argued against the
invasion on the grounds that the United States should use military force
only to defend its vital interests, posed a series of questions: "Do we go
in deeper, or do we cut our losses and look for the nearest exit? How much
blood and treasure are we willing to invest in democracy in Baghdad, and for
how long? Is a democratic Iraq vital to our security? What assurances are
there that we can win this war?"

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said conservatives
were becoming more receptive to Mr. Buchanan's arguments against the
neoconservatives. "Now that they see Iraq edging into a nation-building kind
of thing, conservatives are more skeptical," Mr. Keene said. "It isn't that
someone went out and rhetorically beat the neoconservatives in an argument.
It's just that they went out and tested their scheme against reality on the
ground."

In a recent interview, Representative John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee, one
of the few Republicans who voted against the invasion, said he believed the
administration should seek an exit soon. "I think we should announce to the
world that no country has come close to doing as much for Iraq as we have,
but there are a significant number of people who don't appreciate what we
have done," Mr. Duncan said. "I think we should get on out, we should
celebrate victory and we should leave."

Conservatives who question the occupation can point to a long history of
opposition from the right to United States military action overseas.
Conservatives opposed Wilson's entry into World War I, and many opposed
United States involvement in World War II until after the attack on Pearl
Harbor.

But the cold war rallied conservatives around the military interventions
abroad, and the protests of the Vietnam War era solidified the reputations
of conservatives as hawks and liberals as doves. Still, even if some
conservatives appeared to be returning to the movement's more isolationist
roots, Mr. Kristol said he was undeterred.

"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight th
e conservatives, that is fine with me, too," he said.

Recalling a famous saying of his father, the neoconservative pioneer Irving
Kristol, that a neoconservative was "a liberal who has been mugged by
reality," the younger Mr. Kristol joked that now they might end up as
neoliberals - defined as "neoconservatives who had been mugged by reality in
Iraq."



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--__--__--

Message: 5
From: "k hanly" <khanly@DELETETHISmb.sympatico.ca>
To: "newsclippings" <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>
Subject: Journalists killed in Iraq
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 22:11:23 -0500

www.albawaba.com
April 19, 2004
Two employees of Iraqi television station shot dead by US troops as Bush
names new ambassador to Baghdad

American soldiers killed two employees of U.S.-funded television station
Al-Iraqiya on Monday and injured a third in the central city of Samara, the
station reported.

Correspondent Asaad Kadhim and driver Hussein Saleh were killed. Cameraman
Bassem Kamel was injured "after American forces opened fire on them while
they were performing their duty," the station announced.

Thamir Ibrahim, an Al-Iraqiya editor, told The Associated Press he had no
details on how the incident occurred. But "it was on the road leading to th=
e
city of Samara. Before they reached it, they were fired upon."

They were taken to a Samara hospital, he said.

Last month, American soldiers killed correspondent Ali al-Khatib and
cameraman Ali Abdel-Aziz of the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news station.

In Washington, President Bush named John Negroponte, the United States' top
diplomat at the United Nations, as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq (and asserte=
d
that Iraq "will be free and democratic and peaceful."

Bush announced the nomination in an Oval Office ceremony.

Negroponte would become ambassador in Baghdad when the United States hands
over political power to an interim Iraqi government by a June 30 deadline.
(Albawaba.com)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-
----
www.albawaba.com
=A9 Copyright Al-Bawaba.Com 2004




--__--__--

Message: 6
From: CharlieChimp1@DELETETHISaol.com
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 00:43:01 EDT
Subject: Media begins to admit  failures over Iraq(in Australia!)
To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk, al-awda-canada@yahoogroups.com,
        al-awda-news@yahoogroups.com, al-awda-london@yahoogroups.com,
        pmwatch@yahoogroups.com, pacusa@yahoogroups.com,
        efreepalestine@yahoogroups.com, Long_live_Palestine@yahoogroups.com,
        arabmediawatch@yahoogroups.com


[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/18/1082226632717.html




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