Dan Lyons

SURPRISING GUERILLA POWER: The Bush-team should have known that they could be triumphant in the original assault on Iraq, yet lose the 'peace'. Earlier, the Soviet marched triumphantly into Afghanistan, and ruled (MUCH more effectively than we have in Iraq!) for several years. But finally they were driven out; this humiliation helped destroy the Soviet regime./
What did it? One Russian officer now says, "snipers and land-mines"..and these resources are available to Iraqi guerillas. Foreign Muslim volunteer-guerillas flowed into Afghanistan (including the Saudi Osama bin Laden) to help oust the Russians--as they are now flowing into Iraq./
One difference: U.S. gave extensive aid to the Afghan guerillas, including ground-to-air missiles. As far as we know, no comparable outside aid is available to Iraqi guerillas; we'll see if that difference (which the Pentagon was undoubtedly relying on) is crucial. (87% of Russians were against us in the invasion; the Russians might want to sneak aid to the Iraq guerillas as we did to the anti-Russian Afghans! We can't respond by nuking Russia; they could, by 2d-strike submarine-missiles, destroy us.)
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The Russians have tried to crush Chechen resistance for over a century. But Russian soldiers (and Chechen collaborators) still die regularly--the Chechen guerillas took the war right to a Moscow theatre, and dozens of Muscovites had to be killed by the army to get at the rebels.
Just recently, 2 women martyr-murderers killed 16 Russians, and wounded 20 others./Reuters5jy/
Muslims from all over the world have snuck into Chechnya to help the guerillas; they are also sneaking into Iraq, and closing off the borders isn't really practicable./FINANCIAL TIMES/29je/
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The Palestinian guerillas manage to kill one Israeli for every 3 Palestinian deaths. Over the long run, that ratio will ruin Israel as a successful Western nation (tourism is already nearly defunct); one could expect the bright, sensible Israelis to emigrate, leaving two sets of wild people murdering each other. /
Polls now show that most Israelis see the Palestinian territories as a burden to get rid of. One Israeli columnist said, "Palestinian terrorism has shown results..it made Israelis sick of the occupation."
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Up to now, the Bushies have gotten away with total neglect in conquered Afghanistan, but the resistance is getting organized; there was just an organized attack on U.S. troops..U.S. won't say how many U.S. casualties resulted. /
A Taliban grenade attack on a mosque injured 19 people./London TELEGRAPH/1jy
Two bombs went off outside U.S. buildings./CNN9jy
(Musharref of Pakistan said 50,000 more troops are needed!)
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Even a few guerillas can cause tremendous disruption if the ordinary people hate the occupiers more than the guerillas, so they protect and hide them instead of turning them in. "Iraqis interviewed said they approved of attacks on Americans."/ The locals blame Americans for the recent mosque explosion--it doesn't matter whether their accusations are true or not--the accusations show the hostiity of the ordinary people. /INDEPENDENT1jy/
Ordinary Iraqis say that we could have brought in portable generators to power Baghdad, that we simply didn't care enough to guarantee power (e.g., for airconditioning and refrigeration in 117-degree heat)./
GIs without translators barge into houses, rifles at the ready, enraging householders. British soldiers brought unclean dogs into houses to sniff for explosives./
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The new U.S. Commander says our troops have to roar out and attack the guerillas, not just hunker down in their bases. Attack whom? Attack only works when we have RELIABLE intelligence. As things are now, any 'informant' trusted by us can unleash our fury against anyone he chooses (as happened with the car-convoy destroyed by missiles that was supposed to contain Saddam!) The new Commander does speak Arabic; but practically all of his forces are completely at the mercy of Iraqi translators./
We just completed a fearsome sweep near Baghdad, capturing 180 suspects (the right ones?!) but finding very few weapons, including no rifles shooting grenades, the guerillas' favorite weapon...this is odd, when ordinary Iraqis--let alone active guerillas--have lots of weapons./Reuters30je
The only test of our TOUGH-ATTACK policy will be NOT the announcements of various ferocious campaigns like SIDEWINDER, but whether the guerilla attacks lessen. Wanna bet?

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Some invaders, historically, have been successful against local guerillas. For instance, ruthless Americans finally prevailed in the Phillipines at the turn of the 20th century. But in many, many cases, persistent guerillas have driven out invaders(e.g., finally the French were driven out of Algeria, and Vietnam--the Americans were also driven out of Vietnam!)
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Republican Sen. Hegel said , " Time is not on our side; every day we're losing ground." There was a call for foreign troops to come in--apparently Rumsfeld has refused to let them! The question is how many foreign troops will volunteer to share the odium our troops face; even the mild British faced a massacre with 14 casualties./ Sen.Biden said, "Our troops are getting very tired." Reuters29je/ (They might also be getting short of patience, causing more hatred by their rough, wild conduct.)
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WHAT IS THE MORAL OF ALL THIS? Even a 'superpower' should think twice about invading and occupying even a helpless-seeming country if the occupation seems likely to anger the ordinary inhabitants enough so they will harbor and protect guerillas who will drain the morale of occupying troops./
British military theorists now say the only way to strike at primitive countries is to 'BUTCHER AND BOLT' (i.e., strike and then get out fast). It has taken 700 years to convince the British that their occupation of Ireland has been a fantastic blunder. (A recent movie 'claimed' that many British troops in Ulster are suffering from nervous alopecia--unhappy hair-loss at a very early age.)
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HOWEVER: a possible answer to guerilla-problems is foot-soldier ROBOTS, now being developed. Who cares if they get shot? With TV cameras (so humans safe and far away can see what they 'see'), they can enforce our rule. (They can also enforce dictatorial rule back in U.S. Our soldiers won't shoot Americans, perhaps--but U.S. robots won't hesitate.) Such robots could help a lot in OUR NEXT COLONIAL WAR--BUT NOT IN THIS ONE!

BRITS & YANKS WAKING UP?
For a long while, it seemed as if Tony Blair had a magic hold on British public opinion. But the scandal of basing the invasion on fake data has finally undermined him: over half of Britons polled think now that he is untrustworthy. Half want him to quit as Prime Minister. The whole Labor Party has shared in his disgrace; their popularity has fallen to the level of the ignominious Conservatives. /Reuters28je/
Can we hope that the Americans will also, sooner or later, wake up from their war-fever and see through George Bush as the man who led them by lies into an awful situation? In a way the actual war was too short for Bush's purposes; the glamorous part of the conflict ended right away. Americans are famous for short memories and attention spans. Now what Americans see on TV is our troops being yelled at by 'ungrateful' Iraqis, being murdered, and indeed dying at a rate of more than one a day./
MANY AMERICANS AWAKE ALSO:/
On 7 May, 86% thought the Iraq war was going well for us; now, 56% think so, 42% don't./
On 16 April, 73% thought going to war was worth-while; now 56% think so, 42% don't./ 65% still think Bush is honest and trustworthy--but that's down 8 points from April./ /
On 30 March, 84% thought we'd find WMDs--now, only 53% have such confidence./
In March,70% thought we'd nab Saddam, now only 48% think so./
Bush's overall rating was 71% in April, 61% now. /
(Other questions still produced more 'loyal-to-war' answers.)/USATODAY1jy

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT VS. GUERILLAS? The American invaders are reacting with toughness to disturbing guerilla attacks--now involving Shias,not just Sunnis. (GIs shot an 11-year-old boy, thinking he was a sniper.) But this toughness may be dangerous, considering these facts: Practically all Iraqis are armed, and would violently resist any attempt to disarm them; many have combat experience; the guerilla attacks often feature accurate sniper-fire. /GUARDIAN28je/
And the pipeline bombings show sophisticated pipeline knowledge./
Anglo-American invaders might be tempted to resort to collective punishments (Hitler's troops murdered whole villages in revenge for guerilla attacks.) But these guerillas have shown themselves ruthless enough to bring harm on their own people (e.g., by cutting off power to Baghdad). They'd probably like it if we enraged the ordinary people more by collective punishments. /
The guerilla attacks mean that our troops must concentrate on self-protection, giving even less attention to reconstructing the country--a vital project. A Shia leader in the town where the Brits were slaughtered is very friendly with them. But he says that if reconstruction does not speed up, he expects other incidents like that one. /
The Bush-team has entangled our GIs in one hell of a predicament.

A BALANCED VIEW? HELL,NO! In these pieces I'm assembling evidence of the dubious benefits and horrific risks--of the folly--of the dreams of Empire now being cultivated by our White House and Pentagon./
I'm also citing news from British papers which is often suppressed in U.S. media.
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Letter to ROCKYMOUNTAINNEWS/ WHO'S THE MONSTER? /
The daffy right-wing duck in your editorial cartoon(28je) is horrified that liberal journalists (he says) aren't reporting vividly the alleged cannibalism in the Congo./
But I'm reminded of the cannibal who said to the general: "You kill people you're not even going to eat? You monster!"

NORTH KOREA FUMES: Finally we're going to move our 37,000 troops which we stupidly stationed right in N.K. artillery range, liable to be slaughtered in a single day--and that removal seems sensible and harmless enough. But N.K. spokesmen see it as a preliminary to a U.S. preemptive strike against N.K., which attack would use missiles, not troops./Reuters/27je/
N.K. sees those vulnerable troops as hostages, as enabling a 2d-strike attack on U.S., the threat of which would deter Americans from the preemptive missile/bomber attack we seem to be planning./
If N.K. struck these troops first, before they could be moved, the U.S. would bomb them off the map (as we almost did 50 years ago--but they recovered). Let's just hope the Kim regime is sane enough not to figure they're doomed anyway, so they might as well take thousands of our troops with them when they go down. /
That's a risk the Bush-team seems quite willing to take. Why in the world is attacking N.K. so important to them? Because N.K. is developing a 2d-strike nuke capacity that would enable them to defy our imperial threats--and because, by example and by sales of nuke material, N.K. might set up other nations to get in a position also to defy our threats.

THE ESCALATING GUERILLA WAR: Two questions can be asked each day:
1) How many GIs were killed or wounded? (58 killed since the 'major combat' ended, including one on Saturday 28June--probably about 4 maimed or wounded for each GI killed.)
Some of these casualties were caused by 'friendly fire' or by accidents; but they wouldn't have happened if we hadn't invaded, so they are part of the cost of occupation./
Actually, even one a day killed will upset Americans enough to make the 'victory' lose its glamour, to make them see that the Iraqis are not really grateful to be liberated, on American terms./
Already the percentage of those polled has dropped considerably who say 'the number of U.S. casualties is acceptable' (what a question!--but it's important for the Bush-team in deciding how much aggression they can get away with.) Americans may be more shocked by one-a-day casualties than by hearing that 100 died in the actual blitz. /
One American was killed and several wounded by an attack in AFGHANISTAN. This kind of news might make Americans notice our complete failure--indeed our lack of any serious attempt--to pacify that nation after our blitz. (Pakistan's Musharref just told Blair & Bush that 50,000 troops would be required for this pacification--not likely!)
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2) How many risk-taking Iraqi killers are on the loose out there? Here we don't ask which attacks were successful, just how many different attacks were attempted. Assoc. Press(27je) said that reported attacks in Iraq occurred almost hourly on Thursday. So we can expect that the reports of GI casualties will continue. (indeed, one GI was killed and several wounded on Friday.)
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A prominent consulting firm warned any firms thinking of investment in Iraq that there are 'even' chances of an open Iraqi revolt against American rule (the alternative possibility they sketched was not very happy either.) Perhaps that's why the Pentagon sent over a team of 'outside experts' to see what's the matter./ FINANCIAL TIMES27je
The consulting firm said that the dreamed-of 'liberal-capitalist economy' will not emerge in Iraq any time soon./FT25je

IGNORANCE AND EMPIRE: In the last 3 weeks, 6 explosions have been set off on Iraqi oil pipelines. On Wednesday & Thursday, 3 U.S. military vehicles were ambushed. 2 GIs were apparently kidnapped./ Reuter26je/
(Of course the guerillas would continue attacking no matter how we behaved. But what counts is whether the ordinary Iraqis turn in--or protect--the guerillas. A few guerillas, protected by the people, can disrupt a society enormously. And the reaction of the ordinary people depends on their friendliness/hostility toward the occupiers, which DOES depend on our behavior.)/
Timothy Carney is a former ambassador who just had a big role in our 'reconstruction' effort. He says that Washington just hasn't understood the Iraq situation; he referred to 'a great gap in knowledge of what Iraq is like."/Reuters26je/
One recalls the earlier remark of an anonymous State Department official to NEWSDAY, about Bremer, our new King of Iraq: "What Bremer knows about Iraq you could put in a thimble."/
There are about 1000 U.S. civilians now working in Iraq--but they're almost all in Baghdad. The reconstruction efforts throughout the country are run by self-admitted ignorant military personnel. (For instance,the Brit soldiers might have perished because they didn't know the offense they were committing when they brought unclean dogs into houses to sniff for explosives.) The Pentagon brass said they could administer the country, and the rest of the bureaucracy let them try./WashingtonPost25je/
One might ask if our civilians are much less ignorant of the cultures--or indeed, of the language!--of Iraq. Some civilians in Baghdad say we need the equivalent of the British Colonial Service. Yeah!--but how do we get this? /
Even our elite youth are not interested, generally, in the outside world, in foreign languages. How are we going to recruit and train such a knowledgeable cadre in a short time? A British author (N.Fergiss) said he had favored the 'American Empire' until he moved here and realized that our government probably couldn't even persuade qualified U.S. youth to LIVE in the colonies./
And of course the Bush-team has shown no real interest in planning for reconstruction.
One suspects they cared only to get the oil flowing, which they saw as a purely technical problem. We hear regularly that Iraq will be exporting oil again 'shortly'. But the sabotage of oil-pipelines suggests that this oil-flow won't really be possible until Iraqi society is pacified. So far, all the oil shipped out was oil stored in Turkey before the war! /
The sensible thing--given our present (and in the short run incurable) ignorance-- is to get the hell out of the 'empire' business.

TAX-REFUNDS & DEFLATION: Journalists have said that the 2d round of Republican tax-cuts would 'put more money in American pockets', and thus increase effective demand and ward off deflation./
Bush said earlier that the 'average' taxpayer would get back $1000. But he didn't say how much the 'median' guy would get. (If Bill Gates visited a homeless shelter, the AVERAGE income of people there would skyrocket, but the MEDIAN income there wouldn't rise a penny.)
Now it turns out that half of the taxpayers (presumably half of those actually paying taxes, not the worthless working poor) will get less than $100 in refunds./ChristianSciMonitor/Assume that the non-taxpayers (who get NO refund) are 20% of earners;that means that 70% of earners will get less than $100 refund. And that's the 70% who would love to consume more, if they were able. Look for a big spending boon!
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The dollar dropped in value because Americans increased their spending less than their collective income increased. Maybe that's because the extra income went to the non-spending rich!/ FINANCIAL TIMES/27je
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Britain has similar problems: economic disaster has been held off by high consumer spending--which has turned weak. Retailers 'are not near to the precipice--they've gone right over it.'
The housing bubble might collapse (prices are dropping already in the hottest areas.)/FINANCIAL TIMES27je/
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A general caveat: as a philosopher, not an economist, I am not pretending to be able to predict macroeconomic trends. I'm concerned about a general, long-run problem: a) the aggregate effective demand in the world among those able to consume is finite (and will dwindle as more money moves away from ordinary people who want to consume more, and into the hands of the wealthy, who don't);
b) the productive capacity of computers and robots is quasi-infinite; so we are tending to a situation where a plethora of goods can be turned out with little human input ('labor' .
The question has been often raised, but is still relevant: With most humans unemployed or undemployed, near destitution, who the hell can afford to buy all that plethora of stuff?

PLAINT OF A TECH-YUPPY: "When the textile companies moved to Alabama to castrate the unions, I didn't speak up--nor when they moved out of the country altogether. When the steel-workers were laid off because of automation and foreign competition, I said nothing--nor when the auto-workers lost their jobs in the same way. And so it went, again and again.
"Now, Goddammit, programmers from India are taking MY job! And few ordinary workers are left to stand up for me. Could I get support or sympathy from the newly-super-wealthy?--bloody likely."
We need an acronym for these newly-downward-mobile unfortunates.

NEVER-DEAD : Pres.Bush says that we will nab bin Laden and Saddam--it's just a matter of time. But it's already too late. /
Our repeated bungling attempts to land bombs on these gentlemen, accompanied each time by breathless hints of success..these may have convinced the world's 1 billion Muslims that these guys can never be killed./
Now, even if we produced corpses with DNA evidence--we have made these men immortal./
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On the other hand, it might help Bush's image at home if he could claim he nabbed one or both of these guys. To get an apathetic electorate panting for blood, you need to demonize someone so the people think of eliminating that villain, not of bombing children.
To demonize these leaders AND THEN NOT TO BE ABLE TO NAB THEM is an embarrassing admission of weakness for a Superpower ! (And Saddam has escaped in 2 of our wars!)
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THE HIGH PRICE OF IGNORANCE: British officers now claim, implausibly, that this mob murdered the 6 Brit soldiers (and wounded 8 more) with no provocation. Iraqi locals said the Brits invaded their women's bedrooms, handled women's underwear--and most offensively, introduced unclean dogs (for sniffing explosives) into their homes. Also, the tradition of the local tribe is that if anyone points a gun at you, you have to shoot them./Reuters26je
All this just shows the folly of thinking that slob soldiers can productively occupy a foreign country, with quite alien standards of conduct./
The respected CATO think-tank just published an editorial in USATODAY26Je calling for us to pull out of Iraq immediately, even with all the chaos that would ensue. The longer we stay there, the more we'll be hated, the more GIs will die (from friendly fire & accidents as well as from hostile attacks). 74 Coalition troops have have died in the past 2 months [up to 7 July/TIME MAGAZINE] This is AFTER the President (costumed in a flight suit, his genitals enhanced) announced on the aircraft carrier that the main combat was ended./
However, the new U.S. military commander in Iraq says our troops must remain there 'for the foreseeable future.' /FINANCIAL TIMES25je/ One military commander told a visiting legislator that we'd be needed for 2 or 3 years./
Once again, it's folly to base wild interventionist lunges on ignorant isolationist thinking.

Letter to ROCKYMOUNTAIN NEWS / COMIC BUDGETS/
Some people complain that certain ideological comic-strips should be moved to the editorial page. But one of your news-items should be moved to the funny-pages./
On 25 September your story said that the House allocated $29.4 billion to the Homeland Security Dept., to the states and cities--to ward off terrrorists. The Democrats said that wasn't enough, and the Republicans retorted that the Dems always wanted to spend,spend,spend.
The Pentagon is the darling of the GOP. All that fortune going to Homeland Defense for the year equals the money we give the Pentagon every 27 days.

INCREDIBLE RUTHLESS STUPIDITY: In Vietnam, we dropped millions of cluster-bombs (which disperse little shrapnel-filled bomblets, exploding separately.) Many of these cb/bomblets didn't explode, lying around lethally/.
The VietCong gathered many up and used them as land-mines vs. GIs. Thousands of Laotians have been killed by them, over the years./
Other countries developed a secondary fuse, which would explode the little devils if the impact didn't. The Pentagon produced over 1 billion of them without 2dary fuses, and made no attempt to retrofit or discard them. /
We used them extensively in Gulf War I. They killed 22 GIs and maimed or injured 58.
120,000 unexploded c.b/s were found in 1/7 th of Kuwait after the war. They killed over 1000 Kuwaitis, the people we were 'rescuing'./
We dropped 1700 cb/s in Afghanistan, with 275,000 bomblets.
Up to 40% of cb/s don't explode on impact; they are attractive to children. With 2dary fuses, as used by Britain in Gulf War II, only 1% or 2% don't explode.
Now HumanRightsWatch says that hundreds or thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed or maimed by them. AND CHILDREN WILL GO ON BEING MAIMED !(also our occupying troops.) /
We dropped them right near populated centers. (One GI was killed when a little girl handed him a bomblet.) Gen.Myers said, "It's Saddam's fault for putting military targets near civilians. War is not tidy..." (..as though we couldn't use less lethal bombs to take out these targets!)
Asked why we didn't retrofit or discard the defective bombs, observers said that safety or 'collateral damage' [civilian casualties] didn't count as much as 'mission effectiveness'. (The Pentagon won't say how many GIs have been CB casualties in this war--so far. ) "The last thing they thought about was 2dary fuses." Also, 2dary fuses would be very expensive--though apparently Britain can afford them../NEWS DAY22je.
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This story adds black humor to Pentagon claims that their nifty new 'precision bombs' have minimized civilian casualties.

PAYING SOLDIERS: --Bremer's HQ belatedly announces they're going to pay off the 400,000 Iraq soldiers laid off suddenly with no severance pay. DUH! The question is whether the payoff will be soon enough and big enough to allay their rage and prevent them from going guerilla./
--3 Senators (1 Democrat, 2 Republican) agree that we'll be stuck in Iraq for 3-5 years. One Republican said Americans will approve./Reuters23je/ It's true there are no big protests over our quagmire in Yugoslavia, but one would bet that most Americans don't even know about that--as long as no Yanks are killed. If Yanks continue to die regularly in Iraq (even a few) , it will be a different story.

AFGHAN DISASTER: Bush-team flacks complain that critics are expecting too much too soon in Iraq reconstruction. But they've had much more time in Afghanistan, and yet...a committee of experts for the American Council for Foreign Relations has said that the Afghan situation is rapidly deteriorating. Karzai, our puppet, is still only the Mayor of Kabul, not the ruler of the country. Things are tending toward the situation where different warlords once again rule Afghanistan..a situation so awful that the people accepted the Taliban version of lawn'order as a preferable alternative./TRUTHOUT.ORG
Perhaps the Bush-team doesn't care what happens to Afghanistan (because Americans don't care) as long as few of our occupation soldiers get killed there.(Perhaps we're paying off the warlords to protect the Americans.) But if guerillas organize there and start to kill Americans, as is happening in Iraq....
Already U.S. and government posts in Afgh.come under almost-daily attack./INDEPENDENT22je/
London FINANCIAL TIMES reporter says that guerilla violence has spread throughout the South of Afgh, is now creeeping North,and a bomb killed peacekeepers in Kabul itself. An Afghan leader said, "Like Inspector Clouseau, we're proceeding through a hail of bombs.. through a minefield.."/23je
Musharroff of Pakistan warned Blair & Bush that to prevent Afgh. from sinking into complete warlord-anarchy, U.S. and/or Nato would have to send in 50 thousand troops. SURE! /
Aid-workers said that Afghans are beginning to talk nostalgically, saying that things were better under Taliban./London Independent/19je/
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REVENGE OF THE CONQUERED: An interesting sidelight: one reason Tony Blair gave for joining Americans in invading Afghanistan was to wipe out the opium trade there. But 2 years later, after British govt. has spent millions of dollars on the elimination campaign. NINE TIMES AS MANY OPIUM POPPIES are being grown in Afgh. as during the last year of the Taliban! Afgh. is the main source of heroin on the British streets; it's now the world's leading supplier of opium./London INDEPENDENT,22je./
In 2001, under the Taliban, Afgh. produced only 12% of world's heroin; now it produces 76%!/Reuters25je

GENERAL CONDEMNS OCCUPATION: Veteran and respected U.S. General W. Nash said the Pentagon failed to realize the depth of Iraqi hostility, not just from the invasion, but from years of sanctions and from U.S. support for Israel./
The guerillas (now an organized fighting force) might not be just Baathists; a rifle-grenade attack might be from a father whose daughter has been killed; but the different guerilla forces are beginning to converge and cooperate./
If we don't provide electricity and water, Iraqis figure it's because we just don't care./
Resemblances between Vietnam and Gulf War II ? Both involve 'quagmire' (All this from Gen. Nash.) /London OBSERVER/22je.
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Two authoritative observers note all the blunders of the Bremer regime, then say it's odd that so little preparation for this situation was made--such problems should have been foreseen, reasoning from previous similar post-conquest situations/ OBSERVER/22je
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WHAT'S IT LIKE IN AMERICAN BAGHDAD: Imagine the temperature rising up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. 40 people in a building. No power, so no air-conditioning. No lights at night, so gunmen can attack you in your house, let alone if you dare to go outside./
Meanwhile the American rulers live in air-conditioned comfort in Saddam's palaces./ from the Mideast expert Leonard Fisk in London INDEPENDENT/22je/
Small wonder that only 51% of Iraqis polled want us to stay on EVEN UNTIL IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS SET UP !

FOREIGN GUERILLAS IN IRAQ: U.S. authorities say that many guerillas are from outside Iraq (they list 6 countries).[nytimes22je] This news may be intended to suggest that the guerilla war is not staffed by Iraqis enraged by our occupation (though most of the guerillas are surely Iraqi). But it also reminds us that we have picked a fight with the whole Muslim world of 1 billion,
Indeed, not all potential enemies are in the Mideast--the most worrying group is the 288,000,000 inhabitants of Indonesia, who could hide and protect guerilla trainees in their jungles, no matter what their government wants.(Ship travel around the world is now incredibly cheap and easy.)/
Only 15% of Indonesians feel friendly to U.S (down in one year from 70%!) 58% trust bin Laden to do the right thing! They are disappointed that Saddam didn't put up a better fight (as is every other Muslim country--also South Korea, Brazil, and Russia !/Pew poll, 2003

COLD-BLOODED DECEPTION: Retired General W.L. Clark said [on NBC talk show, 15 je] that on 9/11, he was contacted by 'the White House' and asked to say that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attack. He said he would, if he were shown evidence.No evidence was offered./
This BOMBSHELL story has been ignored, as one would expect, by the mainline U.S. media, except for a brief paragraph 22je by Jay Smith, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. /Truthout.Org/
Last 4 Sept., on CBS Evening News, it was said that a Pentagon aide's notes showed that 5 hours after the 9/11 attack, Rumsfeld called for 'the best info fast....good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein),not just OBL (Osama bin Laden). R. called for us to 'go massive,sweeping it all up, things related or not."
This story also died./
Once again, people should not count on complete, accurate news on vital issues from the U.S. Press.
TRUTHOUT.ORG is great (and they need constant contributions!) Also, FINANCIAL TIMES (FT.com) /
Guardian.co.uk/ and www. Independent.co.uk

IRAN: IGNORE WOLF-CRYER: Pres. Bush says Iran is getting nukes. C'mon, Truthful George--tell us another ! /
But maybe the Bush-team don't care if anyone believes them; such statements may be just notice to the world that they plan to bomb again./
Perhaps 200,000 refugee Shia Iraqis are on the Iranian side of the border with Iraq. If Iran is bombed, with nothing to lose, these people could be unleashed as guerillas to complicate further our--already disastrous--occupation of Iraq./
Also, one border (with Afghanistan) is mountainous (I think); they could hide their pre-nuke materials in caves there, so our bombing their above-ground plants wouldn't slow them down much./
Also, observers say that even if we throw out the Ayatollahs, the next regime would be just as determined to develop nukes (as 2d-strike deterrents vs. U.S. attack.) /
One hopes the Pentagon wouldn't be dumb enough to INVADE Iran. A dozen anti-Ayatollah Iranians have burned themselves alive in Europe. The pro-Ayatollah forces may include people just as fierce. The Iranian population is twice that of Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Saddam invaded Iran, outnumbering its soldiers 5 to 1, and outweaponing Iran. He had full support of Pentagon (picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam)--but Iran repelled the invasion./
Also, the blustering against North Korea could very well erupt into a war there. Suppose we end up entangled in Afghanistan (remember?), Iraq, Iran, and Korea simultaneously. A U.S. legislator understated when he said our growling at Iran seemed to indicate 'imperial overstretch.' /
The U.S. is going to spend $25 million on a media campaign to 'destabilize' Iran./Guardian23je/ That should discredit the anti-ayatollah forces as pawns of THE GREAT SATAN./Advisers asked Bush not to endorse the student protesters publicly, for the same reason--but he went ahead to give them his counter-productive backing./
Every day the Bush gang seems nuttier.

POWERFUL? Imagine a boxer muscled like the Hulk, with dynamite in both fists--but he's too slow to ward off blows--and at the first light tap to his head, he's down and out. His glass chin renders him ridiculous, not splendid, as a boxer./
People say the U.S. is the sole world Superpower, because we can easily destroy several nations at a time. /
But we can't defend our homeland from the dozens of ways it's vulnerable to the individual terrorists who really threaten us. A country that can't defend itself is no Superpower at all!

FRENCH MORAL OBJECTIONS: A recent oped noted correctly that Saddam ran a murderous and corrupt regime. From this it concluded that France couldn't object to our invasion on moral grounds./FT.COLLINS COLORADOAN 20je/
Suppose the police were after a terrible, murderous villain, who does not, however, pose a threat to the world at large. Unfortunately, a) they are armed only with machine-guns, and (b) the villain is far away, with lots of innocent people in between. Suppose they try to shoot him, miss him, but kill, maim, and injure many of the innocents. Certainly they were immoral to try this caper./
We knew all along that the only real weapon we had for killing Saddam was 'precision' missiles. (The Pentagon in advance said that counting the invasion a success would not depend on nabbing Saddam--after all, we had already bombed hell out of Afghanistan without nabbing bin Laden ! )/ And we knew we'd kill many innocent Iraqis, many of them children. (It turned out, predictably, that we killed between 5000 and 10,000 civilians, and maimed or wounded another 20,000 to 40,000. Up to 10,000 unexploded 'cluster-bombs' continue even now to kill and maim, especially children. The Pentagon brags that it killed 'few' civilians, RELATIVE TO THE INCREDIBLE BOMBARDMENT. Critics should not be impressed.) Of course this invasion (based on a tissue of lies) was immoral from the beginning.
True, we destroyed an evil regime, though we didn't nab Saddam. But the resulting American occupation has been disastrously incompetent, provoking a full guerilla war. About one GI every day is being killed; the general population is not turning in these guerillas. There's every indication that many,many Iraqis now hate us as they hated Saddam. The only recent poll of Iraqis shows their contempt for our reconstruction efforts; bizarrely, only 51% want us to remain even until an Iraqi government is set up; 17% want us out now./
The oped notes sarcastically that French objections may have been partly motivated by self-interest.
The writer doesn't note the moral objections from the Pope, who had no commercial interest in the affair. The Pope is an expert in the theory of 'just war'; he is also very well-informed about world affairs, with intelligence agents in every nation. In the bluntest Papal condemnation of a friendly government in centuries (after Bush tried to lobby him with various prominent American Catholic flacks) John Paul II said the invasion was 'unjust, illegal, and disastrous.' That will likely be history's verdict. /
About boycotting French goods to punish their arrogant criticisms: a recent BBC poll shows that the world has turned against us: (see essay just below). Eventually, but inevitably, this dislike for America will result in a shunning of U.S. exports--when we already sell far less abroad (a record $136 billion less /denvpost22je) than we buy.

BUSH TURNS WORLD AGAINST US: 60% of the people in 10 nations have an unfavorable view of Bush. 67% wouldn't want their country to imitate our economic policies. Only 25% think U.S. military might makes the world safer. 55% don't think America a force for good. 65% call us arrogant ( a majority in each country, INCLUDING U.S!) /56% overall (87% in Russia) condemn Iraq invasion. / U.S. is judged a greater threat than Syria, Iran, or North Korea. /48% of South Koreans worry more about U.S. as a threat than about North Korea!/
In Indonesia, trust in bin Laden to 'do the right thing' stands at 60%! Almost every Muslim country was disappointed that Saddam didn't put up a better fight; also South Korea, Brazil and Russia!
Majorities abroad do admire our science and technology, and our opportunities for advancement./ BBC poll & Pew poll.
----------------
The ROCKYMTNNEWS just sneered at these world opinions. Americans have always bridled at any foreign criticism. But to reject automatically any outside criticism is the mark of self-destructive fools.
Also, world dislike for Americans will likely result in even less foreign demand for our exports.
==================
THE MOST IMPRESSIVE HUMAN I'VE MET (the amazing & embarrassing story of Sister Philomena) can be found at 4/30/ [to read item on 4/30; Go down under ARCHIVES at left, down to week 4/27 - 5/3.]
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INDEX 5/24->6/10: /
5/24: PERMANENT EXCESS CAPACITY
SUBVERT IRAN? THEY NEVER LEARN!
MOORE / LYONS EXCHANGE
5/31 FRIEDMAN: STRIKE AT SAUDI ARABIA?
CHENEY'S SNARL
BUSH INFURIATES SUMMIT
SAFIRE'S HOAX
6/1 RISK
WHAT IS 2D-STRIKE DETERRENT?
LIBERATORS BRING DEATH
6/3 FRIEDMAN: PUFF ->GODZILLA?
FRIEDMAN: WE INVADED IRAQ BECAUSE WE COULD.
6/4 AMERICANS TRUST THE MILITARY; WHY?
RESERVE OR ROBOTS?
MY DIALOGUE WITH GENERAL WALT
6/6 NYT HEADLINE LIE
6/10 ANOTHER NYT HEADLINE LIE(NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM & QUAEDA)
CITIES GRATEFUL FOR ANTI-TERROR SUBSIDY?
ATTACK ANY NATION! /
[earlier index, 10 June]

RICH ARTICLES: 2 articles too rich to summarize were printed in NYT 12je. Paul Krugman's DERELICTION OF DUTY deals with the Bush-team's seeming disinterest in countering terrorism, at home or in Afghanistan or Iraq. [Go to TRUTHOUT.ORG]/
Nicholas Kristov's "CHEERS TO JEERS" describes the awful current situation in Iraq, where many people are worse off than before the war, under Saddam..and blaming America.
46 GIs have been killed since Bush strutted on the aircraft carrier..there is no sign that the one-a-day rate of deaths will decrease. And we're never told of the number of soldiers maimed or severely wounded./
TRUTHOUT.ORG

UNDERSTANDING REAL POWER:/
It is commonly said that the U.S. is now the world's sole SUPERPOWER--this is said, by our friends and by our (now numerous) enemies, especially since we conquered Saddam's Iraq so quickly and with so few U.S. casualties. But philosophers since Plato have emphasized the difficulty, and the importance, of understanding correctly the idea of 'Power'. The importance comes from the connections between power and the crucial emotions of pride and humiliation. We will discuss this complex issue in several sections./
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PART ONE: SPLENDID OR PATHETIC: Most humans, especially males, care much more to be splendid, not pathetic, than they do about being innocent, not guilty. (Many men will commit murder or suicide, if this is necessary to avoid humiliation--caring less about any guilt thereby incurred.)/
[Talk about 'spendid/pathetic' is possible, but strangely not customary, when talking about women! So this whole discussion, with some embarrassment, will be about men. The intellectual work of adjusting this ancient tradition to women is yet remaining.]/
Concern about guilt and innocence is relatively recent in biological history, is not rooted deeply in our 'animal' emotions. (Nonhuman animals don't seem to distinguish as we do between suffering they deserve--from their guilty conduct--and suffering they don't deserve.) /
But all pack or herd animals care vitally about their place in the 'butting order' or the 'pecking order'. And the human ideas of splendid/pathetic are closely tied to primitive emotions of pride/humiliation at high or low rank in these status-systems. /
GUILT vs HUMILIATION:/
One who feels GUILTY thinks he deserves to suffer (If he believes in a just God, or an efficient criminal-law system, he EXPECTS to suffer for what he has done.) He sees others as resenting him, angry at him, perhaps hating him. (But he knows they may admire the strength, boldness, and cleverness involved in his wrongdoing.) He may plead that through inner weakness he couldn't help doing wrong; this tends to excuse his guilt. He may repent and atone--this might make others forgive him./
The HUMILIATED man may feel completely innocent, a victim more than a villain. But he has failed at his attempts to achieve. He is weak, fearful; he wants to hide himself from contemptuous eyes. Pleading personal weakness would INCREASE his humiliation, not 'excuse' it. He can't be FORGIVEN for his lowliness; he can overcome it, if at all, only by remaking himself into a strong, competent achiever./
AN EXAMPLE OF THE DIFFERENCE: A French youth, feeling guilty, confessed to his priest that he had sex the night before. Since each orgasm counts as a separate mortal sin, the priest demanded: "How many times?" / "Please, Father, I came here to be HUMBLED!"
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Who counts as a 'splendid man' in our society, one who is correctly proud? He is strong and powerful in many ways: physically of course, but also psychologically and socially. He is bold, daring, ingenious, resourceful, clever, original, persevering, a good team-worker,etc./
On the contrary, the pathetic man is weak, cowardly, dull, clumsy, conformist, easily-discouraged, a loner,etc.--as is for instance 'The Born Loser'--it is appropriate for him to feel humiliated./
What idea underlies the different splendid characteristics? The splendid man is PROFICIENT, ABLE to carry out successfully whatever he wants to accomplish. The pathetic man is INCOMPETENT, UNABLE to do so. (To be thus ABLE is to have prideful POWER; to be thus INCOMPETENT is to count as humiliatingly WEAK.)/
But what of the man whose life-ambition is to get in the Guiness Book of Records by cutting the longest continous peel in history from an apple? Suppose he succeeds, and struts with self-approval. Or a person might brag that he has won a national contest in proficient grocery-bagging. These men are actually 'making themselves ridiculous' by their unwarranted vanity. To be truly splendid, you must not only be proficient in some line of activity--the projects to which you devote yourself must be important. DOING TRIVIAL THINGS OBSCENELY WELL IS RAT-RACE./
We admire the MAN OF ACTION (by this, contemporary adolescent Americans often mean the 'Bruce Willis' type, proficient in some kind of combat! But this shows the crudeness of this subculture--more sophisticated societies would admire the great athlete, the great statesman or business leader, the great artist or composer.) /
From all this, we can deduce that ACTION is no one thing: there are different kinds of action: some kinds are admirably important, while many are trivial. (Indeed, some proficient actions actually warrant humilation: e.g., flattering and bowing with graceful skill before a tyrant.)/
In the next section we will discuss the criteria for truly EXCELLENT, admirable actions.

POWELL NOW SAYS 'NO ATTACK'! (at conference hosted by China). China asks for no provocative talk from either side./Reuters18je/ Richard Perle just said that a bombing of N.K. 'could not be ruled out.' N.K. is bound to notice that an armada of B-52s has been moved to Guam (when they could easily bomb N.K. from Missouri--the movement is obviously intended as an open threat to N.K.) Anyway, who pays attention to anything castrated POWELL says? (A day after he was quoted as saying that North Korea was the most important nuclear-proliferation problem, Bush talked as if Iran bore that honor.)

The London GUARDIAN said Thursday (19je) that there were 4 attacks on U.S. soldiers in the previous 24 hours. U.S. authorities always claim these attacks are by the 'remnants' of Saddam's forces;
but Iraqis say they are by independent little groups motivated by rage at U.S. mismanagement of the Occupation./Reuters19je/L.Fisk of London INDEPENDENT (quoted in DEMOCRACY NOW!) notes that it wasn't very swift of the Bremer regime to suddenly fire hundreds of thousands of Saddam's soldiers, offering them no way to support themselves; they are trained to kill, and they know each other to organize as guerillas.
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CRITIQUE OF 'LESSONS OF THE WAR' [in COMMENTARY/je'03] by Victor D. Hanson:
Hanson's points in BOLD; Lyons' comments in regular font.)
(Some friends portray Hansen as one of the 'top-guns' in the pro-invasion camp.)
------------------
At start of the article, p. 17, Hanson gloats over pessimist predictions by non-fans of Rumsfeld about the probable outcome of the war. Then he gives real reasons for antecedent pessimism, which makes the doubters sound pretty reasonable. /
He gives no examples of ridiculous antecedent optimism, (e.g., Sen.McCain's predictions that
we would be welcomed so warmly by Iraqis that the whole Muslim world would warm up to us.) H. says sensibly that some Iraqis welcomed us, some didn't. Anyone could have predicted
that; the question is what proportion of each type existed (a) when we first arrived, and (b)
since then. Also, will our Iraqi friends defend our troops from our Iraqi guerilla foes? (It doesn't take many guerillas to disrupt, if the general population doesn't turn them in.) The Pentagon now admits we're involved in a full guerilla war. /
UNGRATEFUL IRAQIS: A recent (nonscientific) poll of Iraqis show only 1% satisfied with our reconstruction efforts; strangely, only 51% want us to stay until a permanent government is elected ! 17% want us to leave at once./USATODAY20je
[On p.18] H. refers to our 'precision strikes on the regime's grandees' (not mentioning that we failed to blast out Saddam or his sons or many of the '52-card' leaders--as our
precision-bombing also failed to blow up Osama! (We have nabbed only half of this 'top 55', and one friendly Iraqi says there are 500 out there, causing trouble.)/
H. also says "a ..subjugated people might need a little time to display its enthusiasm openly." There is little sign that the Iraqis' enthusiasm for us has increased since the invasion! (see UNGRATEFUL IRAQIS above.) /
On p.19 H. says our soldiers came across on the TV as idealists eager to liberate the unfree
and return home content that they had defeated killers and saved innocents." Of course
they were indoctrinated ahead of time to believe this sort of thing--so were the Soviets invading
Aghanistan and the Nazis invading Russia. Once our GIs were faced with smelly little aliens who
don't even speak English(!), yelling insults and threats in blazing heat, with innocent-appearing
people attacking them with explosives, their friendliness for the natives diminished
considerably--they committed plenty of acts interpreted by Iraqis as atrocities, as arrogant and
insensitive.(For instance HUMANRIGHTSWATCH claims there is evidence of gross overreaction to provocation by an unarmed crowd in al-Falluja,where, in 2 incidents, our troops--who of course had no translators available--killed 20 Iraqis and wounded 86./In Baghdad, after a crowd threw stones, GIs killed two protesters. (Finally, there is an attempt to train them in non-lethal crowd-control. One GI said perceptively, "We should have had ready a separate Occupation Force--our first instinct is to kill.") Afterward, several U.S. soldiers were killed in Falluja.) /
/ H. refers to (Saddam's) 'new-found allies in Europe' )--he just assumes that everyone who criticized the invasion was an ally of Saddam (He doesn't mention that famous pro-Saddamite, the Pope.) Stupid! /
A really telling point is this, criticizing Baathist tactics: "Here was a military clique that
went to war over the possession of chem.& biol. weapons that were so hidden away they
could not be readily used to the very purpose for which they had been acquired." H. thereby admits the obvious truth that any WMDs Iraq had were NOT intended for (nor capable of) threatening the world, but rather to punish (and hopefully deter) invaders. Thus he admits that the whole WMD rationale of the invasion was absurd from the start./
(It's still a mystery why they used none of these defensive gasses/germs on the invaders--UNLESS they are holding them in reserve till it's clearly too hot for the invaders to don their space-suits--in which case it may turn out that the 'ease' of invasion was a great trap to make the invaders pay dearly for their
inevitable triumph.) /
On p. 20, H. refers to 'the insular nature of the Baathist military leaders, many of whom
spoke little or no English and had rarely been allowed to travel beyond the Middle East.." Wow.
You'd think he'd reflect on the fact that OUR generals spoke no Arabic at all, and had
rarely travelled in the Middle East (what does it matter if the insularity was compulsory or
voluntary?!) About Bremer, our New Iraq King, a State Dept. source told Newsday, "What he
knows about Iraq you could put in a thimble."/
While our insularity was no handicap during our bombing and our blitzkrieg, it turns out not very helpful during our prolonged occupation. The right-wing London DAILY TELEGRAPH echoes other newsagencies in saying that a British functionary in Iraq throughout the occupation calls the Bremer regime the most chaotic system he has ever worked for, without strategic direction. We're now importing a British diplomat to help run Iraq; his great asset? He speaks Arabic. The successor to Gen.Franks will also speak Arabic. That's a start. /
P.21: "Until recently it [has] been widely believed in the Arab world that the superior
technology of the West could be nullified by [threats of]...pajama-clad bombers." Why
would this not be believed NOW, say by Hamas? Or by surving Baathists? The Palestinians are
killing one Israeli for every three Palestinians..this ratio might very well be decisive in favor of the
Palestinians over the years. Moreover, the 19 Muslims who took out our Trade Towers and
bombed our Pentagon were in no way 'pajama-clad'--they lived in the U.S. for months without
being detected, and took FLYING LESSONS here..even though they were not very interested in
learning how to land! / H. talks about the pro-Palestinian media prejudice--but he never
mentions the very different pictures you get now from [pro-war] U.S. Media vs., say, the media
of Britain,our ALLY./
P.22: H. sees hope in the fact that BEFORE THE INVASION, a few Muslim intellectuals
had begun to say openly that Muslim problems were self-induced...he doesn't reflect that
that perhaps our invasion has united even 'enlightened' Muslim opinion against the West. /
He notes the rapacity of the Saudi Royals, forgetting that Osama hates them as much as the
Israelis do, that the latest big terror-attacks were clearly aimed at discrediting the Saudi Royals./
H. refers to European arm-sales to Iraq, neglecting to mention OUR arms-sales--including germ-sales!--to Iraq a few years ago--(it turns out those 2 buses, that were wrongly supposed to be germ-war labs, were sold to Iraq by a British company.) /
H.hopes Americans will have a 'new appreciation of what the Israelis have been dealing
with' [I do think that Irish-Americans have, since 9/11, lost some sympathy for IRA terrorists].
Implausibly, H. thinks the geopolitical calculus has improved..for Israel. I'd guess that world
sympathy for Israel, even American sympathy, has dwindled since the invasion. (Even tame-dog
Bush dared to criticize the Sharonists recently, however mildly!) And Sharon just admitted that Israel is
OCCUPYING the Palestinian territories, and that this can't go on for a long time. That
concession doesn't sound as if Sharon thinks the calculus has tilted in his directon. The
increased terror-attacks on Israelis recently hardly seem to show that the terrorists have been
deterred, or are running out of volunteer martyr-murderers./
H. hopes that Syria might be intimidated into lessening help for Palestinian
terrorists---he hopes that Syria will be surrounded by 'democracies' (absurd code-word for
countries dominated by U.S.)./ But on the very next page [23] he admits regretfully that America will probably take no military actions vs. Syria...knowing this, one would expect that Syrian 'reforms' will be very superficial indeed!/ He notes the American habit of losing interest rapidly in our imperial conflicts--why not? when the average American gains no advantage at all from these conquests, when the childish average American is as uninterested in the outside world as he is ignorant. /
H. notes sadly that Americans will be "..inclined to turn away in disgust from the scenes of
Iraqis angrily demonstating against their liberators AND from the messy and protracted
business of reconstruction." Yeah. The Pope described the invasion as 'immoral, illegal, and
disastrous.' The 'disastrous' part probably lies ahead./
All this renders COMIC Hanson's ever-hopeful statement on p.22: "our efforts in Iraq may
end by so changing realities in the Middle East as to bring about the emergence of more
than one new consensual government in the region." There are no new consensual
governments likely, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. We'll likely make the same deal we've
always made with Mideast tyrants: "You control your crazies from attacking us, and we'll back
you." But these tyrants can perhaps no longer control their crazies, and we have no other strategies at
hand. (Pew polls show that world support for 'the cooperative war on Terror' has dwindled
since the invasion.)

HOPE IN KOREA? N.Korea has amazing tunnelling capabilities. During the last stalemate of K.war (1952-3) we had complete control of air and sea. N.Korea had 400 miles between helpmate China and the war-front at 38th parallel. Yet they were able to get huge amounts of artillery ammo down to the front!/
Suppose the alleged N.K. nuclear plant is a front. Suppose the real production facility is far underground somewhere. Or: suppose N.K. has reprocessed uranium rods into plutonium, as it claims it has, and has stored this plutonium in vast caves and tunnels. (Making nukes is apparently easy once you have enough plutonium.) Then Kim regime could tolerate U.S. bombing of its 'nuke plant' (which would boost ego of Rumsfeld & buddies) and not need suicidal first strike against Seoul and GIs./
The real threat to Kim regime would be a sea-embargo--which would be easily possible by U.S. alone or by U.S. plus Japan, South Korea. AlreadyJapan is stepping up inspections, to ensure that N.K. is not exporting drugs to Japan. Apparently drugs and weapon-stuff are main N.K. exports, desperately needed to prevent economic collapse. That might provoke N.K. first-strike, suicidal as it would be. They just warned that such a blockade would lead to a 'physical' war, endangering Japan./Reuters17je/ Of course they might be bluffing; but sensible people don't engage in prolonged games of 'chicken'!
Without the cooperation of China and Russia, such a sea-embargo wouldn't work. China or Russia could let N.K. import and export over its border. China might notify U.S. & Japan that it won't allow N.K. economy to collapse--because then N.K. refugees would REALLY come flooding into China.

AWFUL DANGER STILL BEING RISKED:/
It's quite clear that Saddam didn't have enough gas/germs to threaten the world, so the invasion was needless, unjustified. However, one would have expected him to have enough to punish invaders. /
Suppose he did; suppose it still is hidden in some caves in Iraq. There are plenty of enraged Baathists on the loose. They could unleash this stuff on 200,000 GIs stuck in Iraq as occupiers; in the blazing heat, these Yanks could not don their protective space-suits. /
Bush may be risking awful deaths for these brave troops, just to prolong a needless, unjustified war./
(I am not PREDICTING such a disaster, just pointing out the awful, yet silly, risks the Bush-team has been taking in this invasion.) /
-----------------
Even without such a catastrophe, things don't look too bright in Iraq. FINANCIAL TIMES(15je) says that the possible start of a guerilla war is deflating the morale of U.S. troops, destroying their hopes of going home soon. About one GI per day has died since Pres. Bush's triumphant appearance (with his genitals enhanced) on the aircraft carrier./
A U.S. general said that the attacks on Americans don't seem to be from a nationally-organized group, but from local, independent forces. THAT'S BAD NEWS! A centralized enemy could perhaps be decapitated; decentralized, armed groups are much more dangerous foes.
A U.S. Headquarters compound was just attacked by guerilla mortars/ Reuters,15je
A British observer just said the Bremer administration in Iraq is the most undermanned, underfunded, chaotic system he has ever encountered--with little strategic direction./London INDEPENDENT17je
============/
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK: U.S. inventory (goods already produced) =$1.40 for every dollar of sales.(NYT13Je) That sounds as if there will be no need to produce more goods in the near future; that would mean there would be no less unemployment, perhaps more./
London's FINANCIAL TIMES(14JE) recounts drop in U.S. consumer confidence (92 to 87) because people are worried about jobs. A drop in exports & imports(despite our devaluation of the $) reflecting stagnant global demand. Treasury bond-yield down to lowest in 45 years. Deflation in wholesale prices (.03% this month following 1.9% drop last month.)/
Still, the typical U.S. dumbbells like Bush!

WE'D PERISH AS WINNERS: "U.S. will maintain its nuclear preeminence", said a U.S. Official (Reuters12Je) What a demented goal! N-power is a 'threshold' factor: once you have enough to destroy your enemies, then having more than others is irrelevant./
On the other hand, suppose we perish as a nation (we might go down in several simultaneous pandemics caused by war-germs--or, more likely, we will perish as a democracy and rise again, zombie-like, as a dictatorship). Then, according to a popular U.S. definition, we will count as WINNERS; because we died with the most toys.

GLUT AND DEFLATION: A report leaked from the European Central Bank predicted low inflation, falling further..cited weaker global demand...cited Eurozone's 'output gap' (a measure of excess capacity)..said deflation was a realistic possibility for 2005./FINANCIAL TIMES/12Je/ {Strangely, low inflation is now a BAD sign, reflecting increased danger from deflation, a much worse evil.)
Former British P.M. Major said that China was 'exporting deflation' by underselling goods from other countries./DenverPost12jE./
We can't expect foreign countries to import our excess production; they have excess capacity also./
What are the moral and social implications here? Letters-to-editor constantly say that we shouldn't begrudge the wealthy their fortunes, because they 'make jobs by investing'.
However: a) they needn't invest in America; many 'American' corporations now 'emigrate' to Caribbean countries so they don't have to pay U.S. Taxes--and still get juicy government contracts! Money has no nationality./
(b) When there is a world glut of overproduction, caused by productive overcapacity, then investing more capital in more machines,etc., increasing 'productivity' (amount of output per unit of human input), actually destroys jobs./
UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS: In figuring the severity of unemployment, we must consider not just the percentage of workers still looking for jobs (6.1%, highest in 9 years, and rising)--but also the number unemployed: nearly 4 million are now receiving temporary unemployment benefits (highest number in 20 years) , with half a million new applications. We must also consider how long people have been unemployed. It turns out that nearly 2 million U.S. workers have been jobless for more than 27 weeks! (Actually these 2 million should be added to the 4 million, because very likely their unemployment allowances have expired.[NYT10JE/ also 13Je] That's real trouble! [See below: PERMANENT OVERPRODUCTION: 5/24]
There is no reason to expect the staggering, increasing wealth of the super-rich to 'trickle down' to the ordinary person. Yet the ordinary American still likes Bush, a perfect example of a pol who works solely, without embarrassment, for the benefit of the wealthy. Go figure./
----------------
Fans of Democracy say that the ordinary person a) understands his interests best and what promotes them, and (b) cares most for his own interests--so when his votes control the government, it is said, the interests of the ordinary person will be promoted./
But the ordinary American (a) obviously does NOT understand what measures will promote his financial interests best, and (b) doesn't really care much about his long-range interests, e.g., the interests of his children and grandchildren.(e.g., He is not upset by gigantic, fast-growing government deficits (doubling this year) and trade deficits.)/
Two main arguments for the superiority of Democracy are shaky./
A 3d argument (advanced by J.S. Mill) was that ignorant people, when faced with the opportunity to vote, will educate themselves to make themselves fit for this new responsibility. But a few decades ago, when the minimum voting age here was moved from 21 to 18, there was certainly no sign that the 18-year-olds faced up to this new challenge--they went right on sinking into ignorance. So much for the 3d argument./
Or maybe there's nothing wrong with Democracy theoretically; perhaps Americans, like Iraqis, just aren't ready yet for self-government.

ANOTHER MOVE TOWARD KOREAN WAR: Richard Perle, customary frontman for the Pentagon (he says outrageous things as trial balloons, things they are really planning)--says that bombing the N.Korean nuke plants 'can't be ruled out'. (USATODAY12Je)/
This, along with other bellicose acts and statements from the Pentagon, seem to form a pattern of trying to provoke the Kim regime (despairing of their survival once they lose their 2d-strike weapons) into striking first--to justify levelling North Korea as we did 50 years ago. (There's a long tradition of U.S.government manipulating foes into striking first, so apathetic Americans can be roused to murderous fury.This didn't work with Saddam; support for that invasion is broad but not deep.)/
This N.K. first strike would kill a large proportion of 37,000 GIS near Seoul, would destroy Seoul, would start an invasion of South Korea (1 million N.K. soldiers vs.½ million S.K. soldiers). Some observers predict casualties of one million people./
What could we possibly gain from such a war? North Korea has no oil. But the Kim regime is resisting our new empire in the most direct way: by developing a 2d-strike capacity and threatening to sell 2d-strike weapons to other nations wanting to resist our empire. [See below: WHAT IS 2D-STRIKE DETERRENT?] The fact that the Bushies will risk such a horrible price, to block this deterrent--this shows how serious they are about imposing Pentagon rule on the world.
-------------------
Some have thought that I claim that Kim of Pyongyang is crazy. I'm don't claim that; I know little about his regime. But what seems clear to me is that the BUSH-TEAM thinks he is crazy;they hope to provoke him into striking first. Let's hope he's too sane for that, and that IF U.S. attacks, it will clearly be an unprovoked attack, as it was in Iraq.
South Korea has threatened to postpone gift of 400,000 tons of grain to N.K. unless N.K. quits 'escalating' nuclear tension/TorontoStar14je/ We'll see if Kim regime puts more importance on feeding its people or working on its 2d-strike deterrent.

Letter to NYT/CLOSER TO KOREA TRUTH:
You're edging closer (9 June) to telling the whole story about the 37,000 troops stationed near Seoul. You acknowledge that they serve now as a tripwire; not there to fight, but just to die. (If North Korea invaded, they'd be the first killed, bringing the U.S. rushing in to fight--so South Korea needn't fear being abandoned. That may be good for South Korea, but it's a pretty ruthless way to treat American soldiers! )/
You also acknowledge that they now function as hostages for North Korea. We've signalled clearly that WE'RE eager to attack THEM; they can say, "You can level our land, as you did 50 years ago--but from our grave we can wound you by slaughtering these troops in a day."/
Now, finally, we plan to pull back these GIs. But when we start this process, the Kim regime might reasonably decide that we're about to bomb them flat again, so in desperation they might strike first at these troops. So we've introduced a couple of 'weasel' considerations: in the first place, the North Koreans can still hit them with missiles anywhere in South Korea, though not so lethally; in the second place, this withdrawal might take years./
If I were President Kim in Pyongyang, I'd say skeptically, "Who's to say these troops won't be airlifted out of Korea altogether? Who says the pullout couldn't be tomorrow?" If they're planning a desperation first-strike, these weasel-words won't help at all./
The ruthless Pentagon stupidity involved in this situation--leaving these troops exposed as North Korea built up its enormous artillery armada a few miles to the North--is remarkable.
===============
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES:/ IRAQ BODY COUNT group now estimates that 5000-10000 Iraqi civilians have been killed so far./GUARDIAN13Je/ Going by LATIMES guess, there are 4 maimed or injured for every person killed, so the total would come to 20 to 40 thousand civilians maimed or injured so far.
-----------------------------------------
Letter to ROCKYMOUNTAINNEWS:/KILLED, MAIMED OR WOUNDED
The Associated Press (11Je) estimates that the number of Iraqi civilians killed so far is 'significantly higher' than 3240. The U.S. said its sophisticated weapons 'minimized the toll; mere thousands instead of hundreds of thousands. (One kind of our sophisticated weapons, the cluster-bombs--up to 10,000 lieing around unexploded--are still killing and maiming Iraqis.)
What's interesting is that no attempt was made to estimate the number injured . Americans ignore the wounded in many fields; for instance, we're told that the number killed on the highways is somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000--but little is said of several million injured each year, some maimed for life. We're told that the GIs killed in the Viet war was under 70,000, but we hear little about the hundreds of thousands who were maimed or injured. Very few GIs were killed in Gulf War I--but we hear little about the 1 in 4 veterans of that war who, ten years later, have been certified as disabled for life./
Earlier, the LosAngelesTimes (18 May) estimated plausibly that 4 Iraqis were wounded for every one killed. That would mean over 12,000 wounded, going by the AP's figure for fatalities./
It might help if such estimates included as a separate category those who are maimed--who have lost an arm, a leg, or a face. Such maiming could mean a fate worse than death./
The Pentagon refuses to estimate the number of civilian casualties. But the rest of the world cares about the human costs of our latest crusade--so they will go by the guesses made by the private agencies./
Now the Pentagon is trying earnestly to start a war with North Korea; some estimates are that such a war will result in 1 million casualties, including 37,000 Gis stationed within artillery range of North Korea./
Ah, but these aren't real people: they're just characters in a TV action-movie, or in a gory computer-game. These adventures hit home only when people in our homeland die--as many soon may.
=======================
[ For amazing, embarrassing story of Sister Philomena, go to 4/30/ That is, under ARCHIVES at left,
go down and click on week 4/27-5/3, then move down to 4/30. ]
INDEX X (from 5/15 to 5/20)
5/15 Destroying vs. Defending
5/17 Safe Now? C'mon!
5/18 Cartoon Propaganda
Wow! Report on Humungus Deficit Shelved
KOREAN NIGHTMARE
5/19 Iraq Reconstruction Shortfall
Of course Iraq Ruin is NOT from our bombs!
Ferocious Nuns
5/20 U.S. Scientists help terrorists design super-anthrax.
Al Quaeda stronger than ever.
Memorial Day
Two Ways to Defend from Terror. (Bush Hypocrisy)
Cities & States can't afford to ward off Terror.
Budget Priorities: Gold for Pentagon, Duct Tape for Home Defense.
Iraq Disaster? (Republican Senator)
Well-Balanced Views here? Hell, NO!
MY DIALOGUE WITH GENERAL WALT
5/24 Wealthy shoot selves in foot.
Slobs' love for Bush is unrequited.
[earlier index at 5/18]

EXPLICIT WARNING: Rumsfeld plans a network of far-flung military bases to rapidly 'project U.S. military power against' (i.e., to attack) terrorists, HOSTILE STATES, AND OTHER POTENTIAL ADVERSARIES. The newer bases will implement the doctrine of preemptive strikes vs...hostile states believed to have chemical, biologicals or nuclear weapons.
The strategy reflects R's belief that the U.S.can't predict who its adversaries will be./WashingtonPost9Je
Remember, it's R. and his buddies who decide who has these awful weapons, who our adversaries will be. For instance (13Je) R. just announced that Iran is making nuclear weapons. Could he expect anyone to believe him, after all the lies? No, he doesn't care..he's announcing that Iran may soon be bombed by the Pentagon./
The cash value of this news is this: the Pentagon is making itself able to quickly and easily attack ANY NATION IN THE WORLD they choose./
The obviously prudent response of other nations would be to form an anti-U.S. alliance, and to develop 2d-strike deterrents to discourage us from attacking them. (This counter-strategy should be fairly easy, given the terrific vulnerability of our homeland to so many forms of terrorist attacks.)
[for a general understanding, go down to 6/1/2003: WHAT ARE 2D-STRIKE DETERRENTS?]
=================
CITIES GRATEFUL? The subhead of Homeland Security Dept. bragged that they're giving $4.4 billion to the 'states and cities'. (Actually, they're giving it to State govts. which are run by Republicans; then, the mayors complain, it will be ladled out grudgingly to the cities.) This sounds like a lot, until you realize that this is how much the Pentagon gets every FOUR DAYS.
==================
Letter to NYT/ ANOTHER INSULT TO YOUR READERS/
You must really assume your readers read only the headlines! Your front-page story headline (9Je) says "CAPTIVES DENY QAEDA WORKED WITH BAGHDAD" And the actual story says that two Quaeda leaders captured by U.S.denied any alliance between Qaeda and Saddam, because bin Laden rejected working with Saddam. This is big news, considering that the alleged alliance with Qaeda was one main leg of the Bush case for war./
But the fascinating part of the story is that these Qaeda captive- leaders told their story BEFORE THE WAR STARTED. Understandably, the Bushies didn't release the story. Your headline should have read "CAPTIVES DENIED, BEFORE THE WAR, THAT QAEDA WORKED WITH SADDAM !"
A U.S. Govt. spokesman said, "You can't believe everything these captives say." No, but considering that they were at the mercy of U.S. captors, that they would be tempted to say anything their captors wanted, it's very impressive that they still told their unpopular story./
One nice thing about our rulers is that they are all blabbermouths; sooner or later, almost every embarrassing fact comes out.

Letter to NYTIMES / LYING HEADLINE/
Your headline (6Je) 'GI's GRADUALLY ARE TO LEAVE KOREA DMZ TO CUT WAR RISK' is a flat lie, as is clear from a paragraph further down in the story: "..South Korea strongly resisted the repositioning of troops, [concerned] that it would leave the United States free to make a pre-emptive attack..without fear of retaliation against American troops, [an attack which] could lead to a devastating war.." /
The Associated Press referred to persistent So.K. worries that this pullback might provoke an attack on them by N.Korea. And Reuters cited a Korean analyst: "N.Korea will feel more threatened; it's now easier for U.S. to attack the North." [with U.S. troops out of N.K. artillery-range.]/
North Korea said, "U.S. imperialists have already worked out a scenario for a preemptive attack."/
What an insult to your readers, assuming they will read just the headline!/
---------------------/
BUSHIES PLAY WITH N.KOREA FIRE: an interview with Selig Harrison (authority on N.Korea) /(paraphrased for brevity):/
Of course America should pull back the 37,000 troops near the DMZ--there's almost no chance N.K. would invade S.K./ But in fact they're being pulled back for greater flexibility WHEN AND IF Pentagon decides [to attack] N.K., and this is how N.K. Leaders see it./ If So.Koreans decide the pullback is to facilitate U.S. atttack [by removing 40,000 hostages], reaction will be very negative./
To get N.K. to reverse its nuclearization program, we'd have to pledge not to use nukes in Korea, and drop our policy of planning 'regime change'./Under present U.S. pressures, they're sure to respond militarily or by selling nuke material to our enemies./China is equally disgusted with N.K. and with U.S./
We can't expect N.K. to give up its nuke options if we go on with our 'nuclear umbrella' and our 'right' to preemptive attacks./N.K. Learned from Iraq war that it needs a nuke deterrent (to ward off U.S. attack)./We're alienating China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan./N.K. Regime will not likely collapse from economic troubles./nyt7je/
In other words, we won't change our plans, and they'll hurry up making and hiding nuke material.
Until..../
---------------
[For the complex, bewildering details of this Korean nightmare, go down to "WHY TRUST THE MILITARY?."]

[To read the Moore/Lyons exchange, move down to 5/24/2003:]
------------- /
MY DIALOGUE WITH THE GENERAL:/
BACKGROUND: in the late 60s and early 70s (Viet war days) an unheard-of organization sprung up of peacenik veterans who called themselves VIET VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR (VVAW).
At CSU, every official campus club had to have a faculty sponsor (so that in case the students acted up, the prof could be punished). The lads in the CSU chapter were looking for a peacenik veteran as sponsor, so they recruited me./
Lew Walt was the top Ft.Collins military hero: quite a remarkable person--he started out in WWII as an enlisted marine, went through sergeant and then was made an officer and rose to the rank of general. He ended up commandant of all the marines in Vietnam./
Then he was, rumor said, forced into retirement because he took seriously the chatter about our prevailing by winning over the hearts and minds of the natives--whereas the real slogan was "Grab 'em by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow!" (We did the latter, but they didn't follow--they threw us out on our ass.) Anyway, Walt was back in Ft.C. after his retirement./
People thought that the Svengalian peacenik faculty were leading the students astray; but in fact, the activist students led and the profs followed meekly./
THE STORY: One Saturday just after the war ended, I got this phone-call from a VVAW member: "Tomorrow, Lou Walt is going to talk at a Communion Breakfast; we have to picket that son-of-a-bitch!" I had tangled with the right-wing pastor of St.Joe's earlier, so the project appealed to me. I made a large poster that said, "WHATEVER YOU DO TO VIETNAMESE CHILDREN, THAT YOU DO UNTO ME!" (with a cross in each corner.)/
We got to the Knights of Columbus hall a few minutes before Mass ended: one marine vet with only one leg, and another marine vet (a very jumpy little guy filled with shrapnel) both of them in uniform, plus myself in civvies. Around the corner came a boy-scout parade, with a band and many flags. Then, accompanied by various burly real-estate salesmen and car-salesmen, came the Pastor accompanied by Gen. Walt. Satisfyingly, the Monsignor nearly dropped his teeth when he saw me waiting for them with my sign and my two acolytes./
The leaders huddled about ten feet away from us, muttering what they'd like to do to us.
But the general calmed them with one imperious wave, and came walking over, with a genial smile.
He wore an electric-blue civilian suit, and he was a sight: about 5'2" and about that wide across the shoulders--no fat. I could have sworn the shoulders had corners./
We all shook hands, and Walt asked the one-leg guy, "Where did that happen?" The lad responded that he never got to Vietnam; he lost the leg in California, in a motorcycle accident.
Walt smiled broadly, "You know, all along we lost more men to auto accidents than through combat!"/
Then to the jumpy little guy: "And where were you stationed?"/ "At Yong-dong-phu."/ "Wait a minute!" ( a suspicious scowl appeared on the noble brow) "The Marines were never at Yong-dong-phu!"/ The kid thrust his face toward Walt: "The MARINES were at Yong-dong-phu-- but YOU never showed up at Yong-dong-phu!" /
Seeing a guy in enlisted-marine uniform daring to talk back, Walt lost the civilian-suit veneer and the sophisticated-general veneer, and reverted to pure Sergeant. A vein pulsed in his thick neck as he went face-to-face with the kid. They started to yell at each other, each citing his wounds. I recognized that any minute the kid was going to leap at the general,so I said, "Gentlemen! Surely our differences can't be settled by counting wounds!"/
At once Walt came back to reality and calmed down. Ignoring the young Marine, he turned to me: "And where were YOU stationed?"/ "In the Korean war, at Inchon."/"HUH! That doesn't count!" And he turned his back on us and returned to his cohort./
------------------/
Now I had a great comeback I could have delivered; I would have achieved rhetorical fame, posthumously.. because I had no doubt that, after its delivery, Walt would have leaped up and chewed out my throat. And I am a devout coward./
The line I could have delivered was this: "HUH yourself! At least we TIED OUR war!"

Letter to NYTIMES /BRAZEN ABOUT PROVOKING KOREAN WAR:/
The Pentagon now admits that withdrawing the 40,000 Yanks from near the DMZ, from within artillery range of N.Korea, is intended to facilitate a preemptive strike by U.S./
"While we can't completely compensate for the fact that N.Korea has so much stuff right up forward on the DMZ, we could begin taking it out from the first hour of the war." This would coincide with a blitzkrieg
raid aimed at nabbing the N.Korean leaders./ NYT 3Je/
"We can't completely compensate for [the fact that N.Korean artillery can fire 400,000shells per hour at our people].[nyt28Feb].in other words, many, many Americans will be killed RIGHT AWAY.
"However, we could begin taking it out from the first hour of the war." That means that a big advantage will go to the side that strikes first. To announce this is to invite N.Korea to strike first, killing thousands of Americans in the first few hours./
The crazy Rumsfeld crowd wants to provoke the Kim regime to strike first, so they'll have an excuse to nuke North Korea. Never mind the slaughter of Americans, the destruction of the great city of Seoul, and
the one million casualties that might follow. wow./
===================================
Letter to USATODAY /RESERVES OR ROBOTS?/
It's getting harder to recruit youths into the military reserves.(10 Je) Surprise, surprise! Even now, recruiting ads emphasize the money-advantage of enlisting, never mentioning the hardships of war. But young people now know that reservists might get called up for actual war. Upper-class youths (the kind needed to operate our nifty complex weapons) are enthusiastic about backing war and watching war, but not actually serving in a war.
Oh, well--the Pentagon is automating completely; shortly it will need very few human soldiers--perhaps enough computer-operators can be recruited by offering complete safety and handsome pay. One colonel bragged, "We'll be able to wage war overseas without ever leaving the U.S.A.!" (nytmag,20April)
One drawback is that a completely automated Pentagon can take over our country as a dictatorship. American soldiers would never fire at American resisters; American robots won't hesitate./
SO WHAT? How much would be lost if the pseudo-democracy we have now were converted into open dictatorship?/
Fans of democracy say that only the common man can know his own interests and be counted on to promote his own interests. But 50-55% of our people cannot be counted on to understand their true interests or really to care much about their own long-run interests. They vote against abortion, or against feminists, or gays, or minorities; they vote for candidates who seem like the guy next to them at the bar, or the 'strong man' who gives them the vicarious glory of military victory--leaders who work openly and exclusively for the wealthy. Or they answer polls with these opinions, but don't bother to vote at all. A benevolent dictator might promote their real interests better than they would themselves, in a democracy./
On the other hand, if the 'bottom' half of our population ends up threatened with unemployment and destitution, they might finally begin to vote their 'pocketbook'. Then our actual rulers would be tempted to convert their covert dictatorship into an open dictatorship.
And these dictators would not be intelligent and benevolent; they'd be crazy for world empire and ruthless in suppressing all dissent at home./
Our legislators could block funding now for completing the automation of the military.
If they don't, they may find that our Congress is reduced to purely ornamental status, like that of Saddamite Iraq.
==========/
Letter to USATODAY/ WHY TRUST 'THE MILITARY'?
Finally (6 June) you have informed the American people of the nightmare situation of our GIs stationed near the border between South Korea and North Korea. They are within range of N.Korea's formidable artillery./
U.S. troops have been kept there for 50 years as a 'trip-wire'. That is, 37,000 troops are not expected to fight off one million North Korean troops; they are there simply to die. In case South Korea might doubt our willingness to rescue them again, the deaths of these GIs (in an invasion by the Kim regime) would guarantee our rushing into the fight. We stationed troops also in Europe, to reassure those nations that we would join the fight if the Soviet invaded. One French general was alleged to have said, "I don't care if they send high-school girls--just so some Americans are here to be killed."/
A U.S. general said that withdrawing these troops wouldn't harm defenses against N.Korea; of course not, because they contributed nothing to that defense (except in their trip-wire role) in the last 50 years!/
To the ruthlessness of this policy was added the stupidity of keeping the troops up at the border while we knew the Kim regime was building up this incredible artillery force just a few miles away./
To this brew was added the further stupidity of signalling North Korea in many ways that at any time we might launch a first strike at them. You'd think the U.S. Government would tread very carefully through this minefield, aptly called 'the most dangerous place on earth'. Instead, Bush announced publicly that he 'loathed' President Kim personally; we labeled them as part of the Axis of Evil, and demonstrated in Iraq that this label could mean a first-strike attack. We moved a B-52 armada to Guam as a vivid threat, when they could attack just as well from Missouri. And recently, the Pentagon leaked a memo suggesting that we should cooperate with China to topple the Kim regime. Moreover, when President Kim went into seclusion for 5 weeks, we bragged that with our 'precision' bombs we could murder the top echelon
in North Korea personally./ Richard Perle, a Pentagon frontman, just reminded us all that we might bomb N.K's n-plants (12Je) Almost at once, South Koreans rioted, knowing they'd perish in such a war./
In other words, the Bush-team is eager to provoke a war./
Our bellicose attitude converted our troops into hostages; North Korea could say, "Yes, you could level our land as you did 50 years ago; but think again: if you do attack, then 'from our grave', we can wound you by slaughtering your 'trip-wire' troops." /
When we start withdrawing these troops, North Korea might reasonably take that as a signal that we are about to launch at them our Guam-based armada of B-52s. Figuring they're doomed anyway, they might decide to strike first, taking Seoul and our troops down with them. /
We read that Americans trust 'the military' more than any other U.S. institution. Reflecting on this history of the Pentagon's stupid ruthlessness toward our own troops, one wonders why.

Letter to NYTIMES/
TOM HAS HIS HEAD IN A BUBBLE./
Thos.Friedman tells us (nyt4Je) what was the 'real' reason why we invaded Iraq. After 9/11,
we had to hit someone in the Arab/Muslim world, and Afghanistan wasn't enough. Why Iraq?
Because we could--not because it was a terrible threat to the world, but because it was
helpless. (I said all along that the significance of inspections was this: if we decided that
Saddam DID have awful weapons, then we'd prudently back off; if we thought he DIDN'T have
them, that Iraq was helpless, then we'd pounce.)/
We did it, says Friedman, to break a 'bubble'..what's with this vague metaphor? The bubble
was--wait for it--an attitude! We're spending tens of billions of dollars, we killed, maimed or
wounded over 10,000 Iraqis, and sacrificed 190 Yanks--and are now subjecting our 200,000
troops there to more months of boring and dangerous occupation duty, amid an alien, hating
population screaming threats and insults in blazing heat (with one more GI still being picked off
every day)---all this to counter an ATTITUDE! This atttitude, expressed publicly in Muslim
papers and mosques, was that martyr-murders were 'OK',that Americans had gone soft, and that
their activists were ready to die./
Well, the whole world knows now that chicken-hawks Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are
ruthless, that at least 1 in 1000 Americans are brave soldiers. Journalists and imams may now
be too intimidated to say publicly that martyr-murders are OK--for what that public silence is
worth./
However, martyr-murders have increased in number since the invasion; more murderer-volunteers have
still proved ready to die. Perhaps they don't need public applause. The new Pew polls show that
hatred for America has grown stupendously among Muslims, and approval of America has
shrunk significantly among non-Muslim peoples. (Only 36% of the Russians now like us; and
with all their H-bombs, we can't smash them.)/
Especially worrying is that only 13% of Indonesians like America: the jungle-islands of
Indonesia will likely be the next headquarters and training center for Al Qaeda-type groups.
Should we bomb Jakarta? The terrorists will be protected by the 288,000,000 enraged Muslims
there, not the government; the terrorists may rejoice if the government is crippled and anarchy
reigns./
I submit that the first real reason for invasion was oil (as Wolfowitz just said in Singapore,
"the real difference between Iraq and Korea is that Iraq is sitting on a sea of oil.") Secondly,
Saddam had enraged Israelis by arrogantly offering a reward to the family of each
martyr-murderer in Israel--and Zionists have tremendous control over our foreign policy. Bush
and Sharon are in bed together, with Sharon on top./
The third real reason was, as Friedman said: "we needed to hit someone." Americans reacted
to 9/11 not so much with fear but with the rage of the Master Race humiliated by a bunch of
ragheads. Bombing the rubble in Afghanistan wasn't enough to sate our rage--especially when
Omar and bin Laden got away! So we had to have TV shots of our super-missiles plowing into
Baghdad. Unfortunately, Saddam also seems to have got away--for the second time! And each
day now the TV reports another GI being killed in Iraq--not really a glorious victory./
I'd say the 'bubble' of Muslim atttitudes dangerous to America was mightily INFLATED and
hardened by the invasion. Friedman seems to be losing his good sense. /
========================
Letter to Thos.Friedman/NYTIMES
You describe the USA as'Puff the magic dragon' turning after 9/11 into Godzilla, in the view of the outside world. But every informed person, American or not, sees that the U.S. Ruling class has been as nasty as Godzilla for decades. (Brent Scowcroft's objection vs. The disastrous Sept.02 'security policy' was not the content--our willingness to launch a 1st strike vs. any nation that even tried to catch up with us weapons!-- he objected to alerting the world by publishing our unofficial policy as an official document.) We hear that Clinton had decided to oust Saddam, and there's reason to believe that Gore-Lieberman would also have invaded Iraq./
So we had a ruling class dreaming of world empire, (and strangely submissive to Israeli demands--even according to 47% of Israelis!) and a populace ignorant of and uninterested in the outside world, but easily manipulated to endorse various aggressive wars. /
So long as world journalists and leaders thought our ruling class was at least prudent enough to dominate the world, not conquer it, things went along. (Reagan was alarming in his ignorance, but his administration, run by Jim Baker, was thought generally cautious enough not to threaten the whole world--just the Caribbean and Argentina.) /
Then along came ignorant Bush Junior and his lunatic handlers, Cheney and Rumsfeld. They represent accurately the ignorant, aggressive American majority, and now they are in charge of our foreign policy. (When their war-machine is totally automated, they can take over here as dictators; American troops would never fire on Americans; American robots won't hesitate.) / /
Also came along bin Laden, and the nutty Islamist movement (terrifying in itself) , and Americans finally realized that someone in the world dared to defy them--they responded to 9/11 with rage more than fear. Then the face of Godzilla--with bold, interventionist lunges based on ignorant isolationist thinking--showed itself behind the facade of Puff and the facade of the intelligent British-type empire. /
The only way the world can respond is precisely through an anti-American alliance. True, they need our role as import-machine; but we're less able than ever to fill that role. And we need the outside world, as much as they need us,to absorb our productive excesses. One would predict trade-bloc protectionism, and strangely enough the withering of the globalist ideology. /
The Muslims are already talking boycott of U.S. Goods. And you can bet that in Russia and Europe and China and Japan, the 'glamor' of U.S. trade-names is fading fast. Europe is getting ready to punish us for our protection of Steel and for our covert subsidies to our export corporations. We want a Western-Hemisphere trade-bloc (which we would control) but now Argentina and Brazil are working for a Latino trade-bloc that would exclude us./
Sooner or later, we hope, the wealthy Americans, who have backed the ignorant Republicans, will see where our unilateral arrogance is leading the economy, and will dump Bush, who has served as a unique lightning-rod for fearful hostility toward America. (Too bad the wealthy Germans didn't realize in time the disaster Hitler would drag them into.) /
About our military megapower: For 50 years we have been able to destroy any half-dozen nations we chose, with our H-bombs. None of our new gadgets has augmented that power significantly. All along, we haven't dared to destroy China, France, Britain, Israel--any people with 'partial 2d-strike power': "True, you can destroy us effortlessly. But from our grave we can severely wound you (--or in the case of Russia, ..'destroy you.')" And our arrogant assertion of empire will encourage Saudi Arabia, Germany and Japan to buy completed nukes from Russia or China so they'll have partial 2d-strike power. Other nations will develop cheap supergerms for the same purpose. Our Homeland is vulnerable to terrorists in so many ways that many nations can develop '2d-strike' weapons against us. /
As I say, the only hope is (a) that our money-elite are bright enough to demand a renunciation of the 'empire' dream and (b) that the Bush-team is not too entrenched as a populist regime for the wealthy to control them. /
The American people are ignorant and semi-literate; the outside world for them is a TV-show. (For nearly 50 years I've taught hundreds of youths in the 60th-90th percentile. And I spent years in a factory and the army, learning more about the typical American than I ever wanted to know.) Graham Greene in THE QUIET AMERICAN predicted accurately the black-humor of such a nation trying to 'lead' the world. /
Our elite is also ignorant, relative to what they would need to know in that leadership role; we can't persuade even bright youths here to study foreign languages, let alone learn about alien cultures. About Bremer, our new King of Iraq, a State Dept. source told Newsday, "What he knows about Iraq you could put in a thimble." We need to pull back into isolationism and concentrate on defending our Homeland, minimizing damage from terrorist attacks. /
================/
LIBERATORS BRING DEATH:/
--Cluster-bombs scatter little bomblets, some of which can blow up children as they run from the ones already exploded; bombs that attract children. A military agency in Iraq just revealed that (a) up to 10,000 of these remain in Iraq AS YET UNEXPLODED, endangering the population--and (b) that these awful critters were used by our forces near population centers, as they were in Kosovo and Afghanistan--in those places, people are still being killed by them./ London OBSERVER 1 Je. /
--A Canadian team found in a few Afghan civilians a level of uranium poisoning in urine that averaged 30 times the amount considered safe for Americans. (More civilians will now be tested./BBC22MAY /This poisoning also causes birth-defects in children of those poisoned..Birth defects rose in children of U.S. veterans of Gulf War I. /Assoc.Press 4 Je. /
Moral: If you call in Americans to save you from a tyrant, know that they bring with them WHOLESALE, INDISCRIMINATE DEATH./