Letter Never Sent

U.S. Forces Prepare Martial Law for Iraq:

“The U.S. cannot take over the mantle of law enforcement for the Iraqi people,” said Lt. Col. Richard Vanderlinden, commander of the 709th Military Police Battalion. “The expectation is that the Iraqi law enforcement structure will remain intact.” …

“Any riots and we are going to put them down. We’re going to send in the infantry. Restoring civil authority and peace is the highest priority. We are not going to let people run riot and rampant,” said Capt. Jim Wherry of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the army’s legal arm.

Offenders, Wherry said, could then be tried under the U.S. Code of Military Justice, detained for post-war trials by civil authorities or face punishment meted out by the Americans under Iraqi laws. The entire Iraqi judicial code has been translated into English and made available to the U.S. military. …

How the coalition will establish the boundary between U.S. military and Iraqi laws remains a “work in progress,” Wherry said.

“We’re still making it up as we go along and hope for the best,” Wherry, of Rock Island, Ill., said. “We are trying to have as little to do with this country as possible while, in effect, taking it over.”

Still, Saddam’s vast security apparatus is expected to be purged of loyalists and those suspected of torture and other human rights violations. Some supporters of the regime, however, will have to be kept in place.

“After World War II, we got rid of all the Nazis in six months and then found out we could not run the country without the Nazis,” Wherry said.

A nightmare scenario would be a postwar, revenge-based bloodbath, with the police and judiciary melting away and the United States having to become cop, judge and jailer.

You are seeing that the United States believes more in power than liberty, subjugation than freedom. The tactic of replacing only the topmost layers of authority is not new. The Mongols were very successful in doing so, removing the emperors and local rulers and replacing them with their Mongol chiefs.

US general with Iraq role linked to hardline Israelis:

The retired general named as civilian governor of occupied Iraq has visited Israel on a trip paid for by a right-wing group that strongly backs an American military presence in the Middle East.

Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the co-ordinator for civilian administration in Iraq, put his name in October 2000 to a statement blaming Palestinians for the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence and saying that a strong Israel was an important security asset to the United States.

The statement was sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which pays for retired US military officers to visit Israel for security briefings by Israeli officials and politicians. Richard Perle, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, is a member of the institute’s board of advisers, as was Vice-President Dick Cheney before he took office in 2001.

Lt-Gen Garner went on Jinsa’s annual trip to Israel in 1998. Two years later, he and 42 other senior retired officers said: “We are appalled by the Palestinian political and military leadership that teaches children the mechanics of war while filling their heads with hate. The security of the state of Israel is a matter of great importance to US policy in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, as well as around the world. A strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on.”

Not much ‘war’ news coming out. The Pentagon has clamped down on casualty reporting, and today’s news is mainly a repeat of yesterday.

Our dependency on GPS requires no further comment. That is fact. The six ways of crippling GPS are:

6.) Jamming GPS across battlefields with a hundred mile radius is simple. The Russians market a jammer for $5000 that does this, and fits in a coat pocket. Deploying twenty could bring down a continent. The probability of malicious use is quite high, although should always be detectable.

Related:

1. Intro to GPS Apps GPS Policy Studies
2. HOW GOOD IS GPS?: The Civilian – Military Relationship and the Impact on GPS Performance

As I concluded yesterday, Bush is attempting to starve the Iraqi people into submission by halting UN food aid at the border which Iraqi oil has already paid for. If this isn’t terrorism I don’t know what is. This should prove that the Oil for Food program is simply a way to transfer Iraq’s oil wealth out of the country and that the US government uses the control of food and water as a weapon against the Iraqi people. Meanwhile, the slavish Corpro-American media is ‘staying on target’ and keeping the pro-invasion Pentagon propaganda floodgates open. You are all witnesses to a crimescene unfolding.

From the BBC: Coalition accused over aid to Iraq:

At a news conference in Baghdad, the Iraqi Trade Minister, Muhammad Mahdi Saleh, said Iraq had already paid billions of dollars for these supplies, which were bought under the UN’s oil-for-food programme.

The UN suspended the programme upon which millions of Iraqis depend for food as a US-led war against Baghdad became imminent last week.

Mr Mahdi Saleh said London and Washington had pushed for the programme to be blocked and accused Mr Annan of bowing to their will. …

On Tuesday, the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, announced it had awarded a Seattle-based company the contract to operate the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.

USAID said the company – Stevedoring Services of America – would be in charge of managing the delivery of humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials to Iraq.

This is the second of eight civilian contracts that USAID expects to award for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The process has been criticised by some because of apparent secrecy and because no non-US companies were invited to tender.

Iraqi exiles head home to fight ‘invaders':

Thousands of Iraqi exiles have been returning home over the past week from Jordan, with many insisting they want to defend their country against US and British “invaders.”

Jordanian records show that 5,284 Iraqis have crossed the desert border overland into Iraq since March 16, Col Ahmad al-Hazaymeh, director of Jordan’s al Karama border post, said yesterday. …

“They all said they wanted to take part in the fight against the Americans,” Mr al-Ali said. …

Applause broke out when an Arab television station showed what it claimed was footage of a US attack helicopter downed by Iraqi forces in southern Iraq. “Our blood and soul we sacrifice for you, Saddam,” the crowd chanted as they danced under a life-size portrait of the Iraqi president.

Jassim Mohammed Laftah, 30, who has been in Jordan two years, quit his job as a mechanic to go back. “I’m going back to join fellow Iraqis in their jihad and defence of our country against the American invaders,” he shouted.

“When the Americans invaded my country, I felt it my duty is to sacrifice my life for our leader … and for my country,” said Mr Laftah, a native of Missan in southern Iraq. …

“Although I don’t like Saddam, there’s no way I would accept that the Americans attack my country and scare our children with their bombing,” Layla Burhan, a rich Iraqi who is not planning on going back, said at her home in Amman.

At the embassy, Mr Laftah said he fled Iraq two years ago to seek a better life. He refused to say whether he opposed Saddam’s regime or was affiliated with Iraqi dissident groups. “Saddam is our beloved leader,” he said.

Loa’i Ghaleb al-Abadi, a 27-year-old businessman, has been in Jordan for three years but said: “I could not stay here and watch my father and brother fighting the American invaders alone.”

He was planning to drive back on Monday to help defend his home town of Nasiriya in southern Iraq, a major crossing point for US troops on the Euphrates.

Marines losing the battle for hearts and minds:

A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth place of Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when the inhabitants of north-west Europe were still walking round in animal skins.

Sgt Sprague, from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, passed it on his way north, but he never knew it was there.

“I’ve been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain’t seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant,” he said. “These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald’s at one end and a Hardee’s at the other.”

A few hundred yards downstream, a group of Iraqis, some of them hiding out in the country from the fighting in Nassiriya, invited journalists to strong sweet tea in a farmhouse of whitewashed mud. They spread carpets and cushions on the floor and generously allowed the guests not to take their muddy boots off. Light shone through a triangular window.

Yea, I can see a post-Bush Iraq. Hardees and McDonald’s as far as the eye can see.

The US has been complaining about the Iraqi war tactics. Okay, I’m sorry, but this is an invasion of THEIR country! Not only that, but this is an illegal war. Period. End of story. If someone was invading my country I would do whatever it took to defend my community and my family. I would wear civilian clothes, I would ambush invading troops. I would do whatever it took to protect my neighbors and countrymen. I hope we bring our troops back as soon as possible. This is a sick joke.

Many visitors to this site have made it known either directly or by the content of their web searches that they wish to view the photos of the American POW’s. I have viewed them. I don’t flinch from depictions of violence. It only strengthens my pacifism and my opposition to tyranny, whether in Iraq or in the United States. These are the results of state power and the competition among states. These photos are graphic and if you do not wish to view them you do not have to. The decision, as it should be, is entirely up to you.

• Drudgereport.com has these video stills of the American POWs. However, they decline to post video feeds.
• This webpage has images of the two pilots of the Apache helicopters brought down.
• Very graphic images of Iraqi casualties
• Graphic: Iraq provides first proof of US captured and dead

The worst, most chilling part of this is…none of these people had to die. These engineers who were captured. None of them wanted this. I went out to karaoke with some friends and met some cool guys from Ft. Hood, mechanics actually. They did not want to go to Iraq. One of them had orders to leave for Iraq and he most certainly did not want to go and fight there. This whole thing is a real shame.

It’s about damn time that Al Jazeera has launched an english website. I’m tired of reading everything through the arabic translator. With Al Jazeera as with the American establishment media read EVERYTHING with a HUGE grain of salt and with the biases of the particular news agency in mind. Here are some good little bits from them:

1. Coalition of the willing has become a joke: The �coalition of the willing� has become the butt of jokes rather than serious criticism. Most of the 43 countries which make up the coalition are so obscure in world affairs that their very involvement has had critics of the US-led war rubbing their hands at their good fortune. For it proves their contention that Washington is isolated in its war against Iraq. Make no mistake. This is the US’s war.
2. David and Goliath: The United States and Britain have the largest defence budgets between them. Investment in each soldier each year works out at more than US$25,000 per year in training alone. Between them, there are 250,000 troops armed to the teeth and supplied by first world countries with first world communications.

   Iraq is now a third world country, coming out of the twelve years of sanctions that have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Half of Iraq’s conscript army consists of low-grade reservists who are given a gun and little training, then called soldiers. Although, the Iraqi government is clearly taking its presentation of the war more seriously than in the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi public relations machine is still no match for the US in sophistication

3. Oil as a weapon of power: �If the United States maintains strong influence over what happens in the Middle East it certainly has control over the world�s�oil flow,� he said. �The US has at least a certain lever in it relations vis-�-vis these other countries. This well may translate into political capital.�

   Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Resource Wars, echoed Renner�s warnings. �Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel,� he said. �Control over the Arabian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan and China,� he explained.

   China�s meagre domestic oil reserves forces it to depend on imports mainly from the Arabian Gulf. A potential obstacle to its rise as a global power is whether it can ensure a sufficient supply of energy to maintain economic stability, wrote Frank Umbach, a senior researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations in a recent paper.

   By 2015 three-quarters of the Gulf�s oil will go to Asia, mainly China, according to a study by the Central Intelligence Agency�s National Intelligence Council. A US-friendly Iraq would eliminate other competitors for Gulf oil and block potential global powers.

   Oil as a political weapon could also have a negative impact on Russia, said Renner. If Iraqi oil floods world markets Russia�s oil exports, already expensive to produce, would not be as competitive globally. This economic clout could translate into political leverage.

4. Saddam dead until proven alive: The United States, in an attempt to lure Iraqi President Saddam Hussein out into the open, has resorted to psychological warfare. Since its failed bombing attempt on March 20 aimed at the Iraqi president, it has floated �news� doubting his existence.

   And the media has gone to town expounding this theory, interviewing specialists to comment and raising doubts over Saddam Hussein�s occasional appearance on television talking to his commanders and war council.

I hope Al Jazeera continues to provide information in english. For their own regional interests, it would behoove the Arab states to have a voice in the media representing their viewpoint in english. Obviously, western media cannot be depended upon to move beyond their bias and relationship to the US government to present alternative views.