Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

Marines losing the battle for hearts and minds:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I find it troubling that the US military is using food and water as a tool and is now punishing the Iraqi people who largely do not want to be occupied by the US military. We are coming not as liberators but as invaders to a land where our ‘help’ is not wanted. The so-called Allies (Britain and the US) have cut water and food supplies to the populous city of Basra in an attempt to starve any opposition and to weaken the resolve of the city’s inhabitants.

British and American officials call these problems a “nuisance factor” or “pockets of resistance” that do not affect the overall plan to march to Baghdad and destroy Hussein’s government. Blair, answering questions in parliament about Basra, said, “It’s surrounded, and cannot be used as a base anymore” by government militias and security forces. Blair also promised that water, which was cut, would be restored to the city soon.

But one effect of the siege in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, is the inability to use its international airport to bring in badly need humanitarian aid for Iraqis in the south. Similarly, Umm Qasr would be an important entry point for supplies shipped in by water.

“We need water, we need electricity, we need food,” said Hussein Jabar, a 20-year-old from a local farming family here, who described how his family has to buy water from a tanker truck at 350 Iraqi dinars per liter and store it in barrels. He said electricity to the area has been cut since Wednesday.

In my opinion, I think it’s highly likely that the Bush administration has purposefully stalled humanitarian aid as a tool to suppress Iraqi opposition. By declaring Iraq ‘unsafe’ for US government humanitarian agencies they have effectively closed off ways for refugees and displaced Iraqis to get food. The Red Cross has been able to enter Iraq and provide assistance, however they do not have the resources of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, which acts under the direction of the Bush administration.

Sources:

• A War With No Front Lines
• Aid Efforts For Iraqis Stalled At Border: Bush Promises Assistance Soon

This gives me hope for future wars and the use of state power. Access to the truth can dispel ignorance and propaganda.

`Real-time’ TV coverage a real headache for Bush: U.S. spin doctors can’t control media message Morale-destroying images weren’t part of the plan:

On the weekend, these weren’t supposed to be the television images of Operation Iraqi Freedom: frightened U.S. prisoners-of-war being held in Iraq; a grainy still of slain American soldiers lying on a floor; reporters explaining friendly fire incidents like the downing of a British warplane; and the stark image of a 101st Airborne soldier on the ground, taken prisoner by his own troops after grenades were tossed into officers’ tents in Kuwait with deadly results.

The new team — Office of Global Communications — continues to work with Hughes, as well as key people in the White House, Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council. They work around-the-clock, stuffing each 24-hour news cycle, at home and abroad, with a message of the day, designed to fill every information void and ensure the people stay on that message.

“The idea is to present their view of what is happening, and make it the only view,” says William Lutz, a Rutgers University English professor and expert on “doublespeak.”

“They cloak it with authority … It is the Pope speaking …

“People think, `Hey, the government has more information than I do, their view must be more informed than mine.'”

Hughes, a longtime Bush confidante, has been brought back to Washington to advise Bush. But her $15,000 monthly fee is actually paid by the Republican National Committee.

“This is a grey area,” Charles Lewis, executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity, told the Washington Post.

But, in many cases the government may not be as informed. Decisions are often made by people with a disregard for history.

Okay, in the first place it’s damn cheesy that the Pentagon has euphemisticaly called this war ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. In fact, it’s incredibly tacky. The bigger problem is: the Iraqis do not want to be ‘liberated’ by the Americans. If this be a ‘liberation’ at all it’s a forced liberation and certainly, if anything, a liberation of Iraqi oil resources. I was reviewing this slideshow at the NY Times website and it showed a large assemblage of Iraqis looking for a downed American pilot along the Euphrates river. The funny thing is the caption said: “Iraqi soldiers search for an American or British pilot that eyewitnesses claimed to have seen dropping into the Tigris River by parachute.” EVERYONE was looking for the pilot. In fact, in that photo I didn’t see one soldier. The Iraqis do not want us there. This could be the next Vietnam.

UPI: A ‘Tough Fight’ Indeed:

Yet the war on Iraq was not sold to the American people as a tough fight. It was sold to them as a combination of a walk in the park, an essential operation to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and, most of all, as a crusade to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of President Saddam Hussein.

The curious thing is, almost none of them appear to be want to be saved.

For the past year and a half, the civilian war hawks running the Department of Defense have repeatedly and, according to Pentagon sources, even contemptuously overridden the concerns of regular senior Army and Marine officers about the difficulty of conquering Iraq by relying upon the flood of intelligence provided to them by Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. For Chalabi and the INC had assured them that Iraq was straining at the seams and ready to bust apart acclaiming U.S. forces as liberators as soon as they walked in.

As UPI has repeatedly reported and noted, so highly did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz think of this intelligence that they repeatedly injected it into the proceedings of Principals’ and Deputies’ Committees meetings that coordinated the highest policymaking of the United States government without filtering it past the CIA, the State Department or any other organ of government first.

Yet now the drive into Iraq is well underway, what are U.S. policymakers — and their brave, embattled troops in the field finding?

First, the Shiite Muslim majority of Iraqis have not risen up in the south to rally around their American liberators. They have not risen up at all. And they are not raising a finger to oppose Saddam or help the United States.

Instead, as we noted on Saturday, Mohammed Baqir Hakim, head of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shiite opposition movement in Iraq issued a statement quite specifically telling the Shiites not to aid the United States in any way. And his admonition, broadcast on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network, is being heeded.

Getting Ahead of the Pentagon:

Separately, the Pentagon sent news organizations a memo requesting that they “not air or publish recognizable images or audio recordings that identify POWs. Additionally, we request you not use their names, first or last, or their unit, until next-of-kin notification is complete.” The memo made the same request for the deceased soldiers, citing “respect for the families” and “the principles of the Geneva Conventions.”

The issue sparked a disagreement when ABC anchor Charles Gibson told viewers it was “simply disrespectful” to show the dead bodies. “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel said from Iraq that he had earlier shown pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers in a way that they could not be identified.

Because the media are “ginning up patriotic feelings” before a war, Koppel said, “I feel we do have an obligation to remind people in the most graphic way that war is a dreadful thing. . . . Young Americans are dying. Young Iraqis are dying. To turn our faces away from that is a mistake. . . . To sanitize it too much is a dreadful mistake.”

The US military is discovering that their billions of dollars in high-tech weaponry is vulnerable to ingenuity, guerrilla tactics, and the intelligent application of very low-tech and antiquated technology. Not only that, but many of the precious and hugely expensive weapons systems bought from corrupt defense contractors are fraught with their own problems and have caused many embarrassing situations in the short five days of Bush’s Iraq takeover.

Consider the US missiles hitting Turkey and Iran, or the British plane destroyed by Patriot missiles. Then there’s the ingenious tactics the Iraqis and Iraqi partisans have used. Using cheap rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire to bring down two Apaches helicopters worth more than most Americans (not to mention Iraqis!) will make in a life time (you can see jubilant Iraqis assembled on the helicopter here). The other 30 or so odd Apaches were forced to retreat. The Iraqis have also successfully used portable mortar fire to cause confusion to the US military, captured supply line units, and have downed other planes. There is some evidence that the Iraqis have acquired those Aviaconversia GPS jammers, night-vision goggles, and RPG’s from Russian arms dealers about which the US has whined and complained that this violates the UN sanctions. Since when has the US cared about international law? It doesn’t seem as if the US is ready for any kind of fair fight. They expected the Iraqi people to roll over. On the news yesterday, I heard that over half of all US flights have been to support ground troops by suppressing fire and enemy units. It’s impressive what the Iraqis have done with no air support of their own.

Additionally, the so-called psyops campaign by the US has largely failed. The 5-10 million propaganda leaflets dropped by the military have been an utter failure. While some deserters and a few thousand troops have surrendered to the US invasion force it has not been in the numbers the Pentagon had hoped for. In fact, the Iraqi people appear to be fairly united against this invasion. I would hope we Americans would act the same way should Russian or Chinese troops attempt to invade our cities and rural towns. If anything, this only shows what a bad idea this war is. I hope the Bush administration comes to its senses, but I doubt it. Which reminds me, chemical weapons, the public justification for this war, have yet to be found or used.

Related:

1. Resistance raises fears for the endgame
2. U.S. Losses Expose Risks, Raise Doubts About Strategy
3. US protests at Russian arms sales to Baghdad: High-tech weaponry vulnerable. The Bush administration reserved its highest-level efforts for halting the delivery of the jamming devices, which officials said sell for thousands of dollars apiece and can interfere with global positioning equipment important to aircraft navigation and ground forces.
4. CNN: Russia hits back in shipments row: The Washington Post identified two of the companies as Aviaconversiya, which allegedly supplied jamming equipment, and KBP Tula, an optics company.

   But the Russian official countered the allegations, saying: “On numerous occasions Moscow gave a detailed account of all of this to the American government starting with October of last year.

   “If you ask me why this news appeared lately, my only response would be that it’s just to distract public attention from an illegitimate military operation by the United States government against Iraq and to distract attention from the fact that this war turned out not to be a picnic.”