Thursday, April 17, 2003
-Sony to drop ‘Shock and Awe’ game
Japanese electronics giant Sony has been forced into an embarrassing u-turn over plans to launch a computer game called “Shock and Awe”, admitting the idea had been “an exercise of regrettable bad judgment”.
Just a day after war broke out the company’s US entertainment arm applied to register the defining phrase of the coalition’s military campaign as a trademark in the US.
The plan attracted widespread criticism after it was revealed by MediaGuardian.co.uk last week.
But the company has backed down in the face of a PR disaster following criticism that it was trying to make commercial gain from a war that has killed more than 5,000 soldiers and civilians.
And Sony has pledged to take steps within the company to make sure such a mistake will not happen again.
“Sony Corporation and SCEI management concurs with the views of those who have expressed strong criticisms regarding this conduct by the subsidiary,” said a statement release by the company.
“It was an exercise of regrettable bad judgment in that it disregarded the context in which the term has been used.
“SCEA will withdraw this application. Steps will be taken to heighten awareness throughout the Sony Group so as not to repeat such issues,” the statement concluded.
Sony may have been persuaded drop the application after fierce criticism across the globe from the people who buy and play its games.
A contributor to the International Game Developers Association website wrote: “The concept that they’ve registered [the trademark] before the bodies have even been cleared from the battlefield, or before the war is even over, is out and out disgusting.”
Another said: “Sony have definitely sunk to a new low. Creating a ‘Shock and Awe’ computer game is stupid and lame… Shame on you, Sony.”
And one gamer on the Xbox City website wrote: “How disgusting and tasteless is this? They sure are trying to cash in on the death and destruction.”
The application to register the term was filed with the US patent and trademark office day on March 21 - just a day after war started.
The “shock and awe” phrase, coined by former US navy pilot Harlan Ullman and adopted by Washington to describe the fierce bombardment of Baghdad, was seized upon by critics as evidence of US arrogance.
Sony applied to use the phrase for computer and video games, as well as a broadband game played both locally and globally via the internet among PlayStation users.
But the UK arm of Sony PlayStation had already expressed unease at the use of the phrase for a game.
It said it may not have stocked any games that were produced under the name in the UK for fear of offending consumers.
A swarm of companies have registered applications for war-related trademarks with the US PTO.
As a result, the US market is set to be flooded with goods ranging from T-shirts, toys, board games, train sets, sunglasses, mugs and fireworks branded with slogans such as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “Battle of Baghdad”.
Another British company is also planning a computer game, books, cards and magazines based on the war, called “Conflict Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad”.
SCi Games, part of computer games publisher SCi Entertainment, registered the title as a trademark in the US on February 25, having scored a hit with its original PlayStation and Xbox game, Conflict: Desert Storm.
Other goods planned for sale in the US include an “Axis of Evil” board game, “Iraqi Freedom” crockery and clothes as well as “Shock and Awe” trainers and dolls.
After September 11 terrorist attacks, the US PTO was flooded with applications for trademarks for products bearing legends such as “The war on terrorism” and “Remember the twin towers”.
At the time, applications were also been filed for products inscribed with the phrases “Osama, can you see the bombs bursting in the air?”; “Osama, Yo’ Mama”; “9-11-01, lest we forget”; and “Operation Enduring Freedom”.
The rush to make a quick buck from the attacks attracted widespread criticism from people concerned that companies were profiting from the tragedy.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2003
-U.S. Kills 10, Injures 100 as They Fire on Protestors
At least 10 dead as US troops in firefight in northern Iraq (15/04/2003)
http://www.wash.afp.com/english/home/
MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) At least 10 people were killed and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when US troops fired on a crowd angered by a speech by the new US-backed governor, witnesses reported.
The charges were denied by a US military spokesman in the city Tuesday, who said troops had first come under fire from at least two gunmen and fired back, without aiming at the crowd.
But the incident overshadowed the start of US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out the country’s future leadership in the southern city of Nasiriyah, a Shiite Muslim bastion where 20,000 people marched through the city chanting “No to America, No to Saddam.”
The firefight in Mosul broke out as the newly-appointed governor of the city was making a speech from the building housing his offices which listeners deemed was too pro-US, witnesses said.
“There were protesters outside, 100 to 150, there was fire, we returned fire,” a US military spokesman said, adding the initial shots came from a roof opposite the building, about 75 metres (yards) away.
“We didn’t fire at the crowd, but at the top of the building,” the spokesman added. “There were at least two gunmen, I don’t know if they were killed.”
“The firing was not intensive but sporadic, and lasted up to two minutes,” the spokesman said.
But witnesses charged that US troops fired into the crowd after it became increasingly hostile towards the new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi.
“They (the soldiers) climbed on top of the building and first fired at a building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them,” said Ayad Hassun, 37.
“Dozens of people fell,” he said, his own shirt stained with blood.
“The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing,” another witness, Marwan Mohammed, 50, told AFP.
According to a third witness, Abdulrahman Ali, 49, the US soldiers opened fire when they saw the crowd running at the government building.
An AFP journalist saw a wrecked car in the square and ambulances ferrying wounded people to hospital, while a US aircraft flew over the northern city at low altitude.
A doctor at the city hospital, Ayad al-Ramadhani said: “There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead.”
The process of finding a new Iraqi leadership after the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein got underway in Nasiriyah, the first meeting of opposition groups since the launch of the war on March 20, with US officials expected to discuss the process of forming an interim administration.
But the man tipped to become Iraq’s next leader, Ahmad Chalabi, head of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress, was not due to attend.
Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim opposition group was also boycotting the talks, amid distrust over the US role and division over who should lead Iraq.
Chalabi, who has insisted he is not a candidate for a post in the interim administration to be run by retired US general Jay Garner, planned to send a representative.
Dozens of representatives from Iraq’s fractious mix of ethnic, tribal and opposition groups, including those formerly in exile, were said to be invited although no official list was given.
The New York Times quoted Garner as saying his mission to rebuild Iraq’s political structures would be messy and contentious.
His fears appeared justified as the talks in the Shiite bastion sparked a demonstration estimated by journalists to number around 20,000 people, led by religious figures.
“Yes to freedom… Yes to Islam… No to America, No to Saddam,” the crowd chanted as they marched through the centre of Nasiriyah.
The Pentagon meanwhile said it was not yet ready to declare victory after nearly four weeks of war, but US commanders expressed hope the main stage of hostilities was over with the fall of Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit on Monday.
The commander of a 16,000-strong Iraqi military unit surrendered control of an area of western Iraq extending to the Syrian border, after US central command said it was continuing to consolidate its position.
US officials switched their focus to neighbouring Syria, alleging Damascus has been developing weapons of mass destruction, prompting appeals for calm from the United Nations and Arab and European governments.
US officials have accused the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of state terrorism, developing weapons of mass destruction and of harbouring fugitive Iraqi officials.
“We will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer branded Syria a terrorist state, while Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed Syria had carried out a chemical weapons test “over the past 12, 15 months”.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon joined the offensive, describing Assad as “dangerous,” and urging Washington to put “very heavy ... political and economic pressure” on Syria.
The Syrian government hit back on Tuesday, condemning “the threatening language and the baseless accusations levelled by certain American officials against Syria with the aim of striking a blow at its firm position, influence its decisions and it commitment to international legitimacy.”
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations also denied the allegations, accusing Washington of double standards over its support for Israel, the strongest military power in the Middle East.
“We don’t have weapons of mass destruction,” Rostom al-Zoubi said in an interview with CNN. “It is Israel, which has a big arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.”
European Union foreign ministers have urged Washington to tone down its rhetoric, while the Arab League and Egypt have also condemned the accusations.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned such statements could destabilize the whole Middle East.
The formal surrender by the commander of 16,000 Iraqi army troops who controlled the vast area along the Syrian border marked another dramatic step toward the end of the war.
“I am ready to help. Thank you for liberating Iraq and making it stable,” Iraqi General Mohammed Jarawi told US Colonel Curtis Potts after signing the surrender.
A scaledown of the 300,000-strong US force deployed in the region was also already underway.
Two US aircraft carriers—the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Constellation—were due to head home from the Gulf as early as this week. More than 1,000 US soldiers were also due to start leaving Turkey Tuesday, local officials said.
But life in Baghdad remained far from normal six days after US troops entered. Most shops remained closed, and many parts of the city still lacked water or electricity.
And US forces tried for the first time Tuesday to prevent the media from covering a third day of anti-US protests outside the hotel housing a US operations base in central Baghdad.
-What Next? (from DENNIS FOX WRITES: [url=http://www.dennisfox.net)]http://www.dennisfox.net)[/url]
http://www.dennisfox.net/columns/2003/next.html
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The weekend before the war I walked up Massachusetts Avenue from Boston across the Charles River into Cambridge, past groups of protestors who packed major intersections in spirited opposition to the war we all knew was coming. Passing drivers honked and smiled and held thumbs up. Energy was high.
Four weeks later, at another Mass Ave protest, our numbers were way down. In Central Square, my friends looked like I felt: more obligated than energized. This time, amid the honks and smiles, there were more hostile drivers. “The war’s over!” one smirked. “We won!” Another rode a bicycle up and back singing God Bless America, waving an American flag in our faces. Triumph filled the air in one of the nation’s anti-establishment hotbeds. The next day, the Bush administration declared the war all but over.
I’m not sure what to do next, and I know I’m not alone.
A few days into the war I read that this latest anti-war movement, unlike that against the Vietnam War, isn’t a counterculture. New York Times reporter John Leland suggested that most protestors appreciate rather than reject American culture. He cited observers who see this as a strength—we finally drew in ordinary Americans, not just the usual suspects. We were leftists and liberals and even conservatives, pacifists and sectarians and veterans, middle America on the march. All we wanted was to stop this war and get back to our normal lives—no societal critique implied or required.
The movement’s early start and quick expansion into mainstream America does offer hope that we can do better next time, maybe even prevent this war’s spread to Syria and Iran. Still, many of us understand that war doesn’t appear out of nowhere, spawned by whim or paranoia. It stems from policy reflecting institutional goals. To counter war, we must not only show up when bombs drop but, in between the gap between one war and the next, we must counter the forces that make war inevitable.
Fortunately, although today’s counterculture is less obvious, it still exists. Some issues have receded, old battles won, or so we like to think. After past cultural rebellions, it’s now often easier to escape conformity and obedience. But sometimes choice is more apparent than real, and once again we fight battles we thought we won long ago. Less obvious to the corporate media, perhaps, values resonate today that motivated so many in earlier periods of ferment and reflection—community and solidarity, spontaneity and openness, avoidance of materialism and consumerism, the search for meaning in relationships and jobs and all of everyday life.
The Bush administration aims to reverse not just cultural changes we associate with the Sixties but political, economic, and legal advances institutionalized in the Thirties. Conservatives try to dilute New Deal victories ranging from Social Security to protections for workers to state limitations on corporate excess. Indeed, the administration’s embrace of the New American Century—the intention to remodel the world to American specifications—harkens back to an even earlier age, when individual nations could aim for global empire.
War’s origins create a practical dilemma: how do we apportion our limited time, energy, and attention? When do we attack the war itself, and when the morass of institutions, traditions, and assumptions that let political policymakers get their way—corporate power, superficial democracy, persistent racism and economic inequality, indoctrination in patriotism and capitalism, political and religious conservatism, a corporate-owned media, and much more?
Comprehensive radical critiques are out of favor these days, burdened by media lampooning, liberal attack, self-defeating turf and ideological battles, and the vestiges of sectarian dogma. But that doesn’t make them wrong. There really is something rotten in the superbully’s kingdom, easy to overlook once the shooting starts.
We have to prevent the next war, and we have to change everything else, too. Not just because our institutions and traditions lead us to kill others—a reason sufficient in itself—but also because, quite apart from their link to war, injustice and oppression and inequality stunt the lives of those they don’t kill, routinely, quietly, relentlessly. Without comprehensive change, transformative change, we’ll stumble from crisis to crisis, at best with mixed success while the empire expands into all spheres of life in all corners of the globe.
Transformation may seem impossible, but what are our alternatives? Repeated wars, perhaps culminating in the use of planet-destroying weapons of mass destruction? Or the other extreme, gradual perfection of cleaner, more sanitized technological coercion until mere threat hardens inequality and injustice into permanence?
Will war’s opponents still come to Massachusetts Avenue or find other ways to generate change if American power no longer generates uncomfortable images of death? Those in power think not. Our challenge is to prove them wrong.
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-Canadians: Call to Action: If Bush Visits Ottawa, Shut Down the City!
by Bushwhack2003 > April 7 2003
On May 5th, 2003, Emperor George W. Bush will visit Ottawa, Canada. As the homes of Iraqi people are bombed to rubble by U.S. and British forces, Emperor Bush will sit down to a posh state dinner in his honour at the Museum of Civilization. And as thousands of immigrants and refugees throughout North America are detained and deported, Bush will address a joint session of the Canadian Parliament on issues of border security, code for increased attacks against individuals and communities of colour in North America.
The immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq, forced on the world by Bush, Blair and the corporate ruling class, continues to brutalize and destroy the people and cultures of the Middle East. Politicians and pundits cynically attempt to justify yet another profit-driven and murderous aggression with terms like ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’. From Iraq to Colombia, from Afghanistan to Argentina, from the Philippines to Somalia, Western powers continue to exercise their self-proclaimed right to dominate and determine the destiny of the global South through economic and military might.
The war also continues at home. All levels of colonial government, in particular the far-right governments in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, unabashedly pursue economic policies at the service of big business, contributing to poverty, environmental destruction, social service cutbacks and more. Their arsenal ranges from privatization schemes to well-armed tactical police units. The agenda of capitalist globalization - embodied by institutions and treaties like the IMF, World Bank, WTO, NAFTA, FTAA and G8 is the relentless engineering of wealth from the global South to the offshore bank accounts of the political and economic elites of the North. In this system of global apartheid, Canada’s ruling class profits no less than that of the United States.
In particular, the war at home includes the scapegoating and attacks on immigrant and refugee communities, as well as so-called “anti-terrorist” laws that are nothing but a judicial assault on civil rights and political organizing, with clear racist implications.
And so, in unequivocal opposition to the invasion of Iraq and to US intervention in countries around the world, in solidarity with individuals and communities under attack both at home and abroad, and in ongoing support of local and regional grassroots social justice efforts, activists from Ontario and Quebec are calling for a day of action to oppose theEmperor Bush’s visit to Ottawa on May 5th, 2003.
We invite all organizations, affinity groups and individuals in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and the Northeastern United States to join the mobilizing, organizing and awareness-raising efforts to prepare for Bush’s visit.
Resistance to the Emperor’s visit will involve demonstrations of all kinds, popular education, civil disobedience and direct action. It will target the many manifestations of political and economic power of the national capital, with the goal of impeding Emperor Bush’s entrance to, and free passage through this territory.
We believe in manifold forms of resistance in mutual solidarity and respect, while aiming to ensure the safety and defense of all participants.
If the Emperor visits Ottawa, shut down the city!
For more information or to get involved:
[url=http://www.bushwhack2003.org]http://www.bushwhack2003.org[/url] (not quite online yet, check back very soon)
(613) 786 1066
-Naomi Klein- Iraq:Privatisation in Disguise
Privatization in Disguise
by Naomi Klein, The Nation, April 28, 2003 Issue
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030428&s=klein
On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it
out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an
interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six
months, “probably...longer than that.”
And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a
government, the key economic decisions about their country’s future
will have been made by their occupiers. “There has got to be an
effective administration from day one,” Wolfowitz said. “People need
water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the
electricity has to work. And that’s a coalition responsibility.”
The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually
called “reconstruction.” But American plans for Iraq’s future economy
go well beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank
slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design
their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for
business.
Some highlights: The $4.8 million management contract for the port
in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services of
America, and the airports are on the auction block. The US Agency for
International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on
everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks.
Most of these contracts are for about a year, but some have options
that extend up to four. How long before they meld into long-term
contracts for privatized water services, transit systems, roads,
schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatization
in disguise?
California Republican Congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a
bill that would require the Defense Department to build a CDMA
cell-phone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit “US patent
holders.” As Farhad Manjoo noted in Salon, CDMA is the system used in
the United States, not Europe, and was developed by Qualcomm, one of
Issa’s most generous donors.
And then there’s oil. The Bush Administration knows it can’t talk
openly about selling off Iraq’s oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell.
It leaves that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry
official. “We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the
country,” Chalabi says. “The only way is to partially privatize the
industry.”
He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles who have been advising the
State Department on how to implement that privatization in such a way
that it isn’t seen to be coming from the United States. Helpfully, the
group held a conference on April 4-5 in London, where it called on
Iraq to open itself up to oil multinationals after the war. The
Administration has shown its gratitude by promising there will be
plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the interim government.
Some argue that it’s too simplistic to say this war is about oil.
They’re right. It’s about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and
drugs. And if this process isn’t halted, “free Iraq” will be the most
sold country on earth.
It’s no surprise that so many multinationals are lunging for
Iraq’s untapped market. It’s not just that the reconstruction will be
worth as much as $100 billion; it’s also that “free trade” by less
violent means hasn’t been going that well lately. More and more
developing countries are rejecting privatization, while the Free Trade
Area of the Americas, Bush’s top trade priority, is wildly unpopular
across Latin America. World Trade Organization talks on intellectual
property, agriculture and services have all bogged down amid
accusations that America and Europe have yet to make good on past
promises.
So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How
about upgrading Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through
backroom bullying, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new
markets on the battlefields of pre-emptive wars? After all,
negotiations with sovereign nations can be hard. Far easier to just
tear up the country, occupy it, then rebuild it the way you want. Bush
hasn’t abandoned free trade, as some have claimed, he just has a new
doctrine: “Bomb before you buy.”
It goes further than one unlucky country. Investors are openly
predicting that once privatization of Iraq takes root, Iran, Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait will be forced to compete by privatizing their oil.
“In Iran, it would just catch like wildfire,” S. Rob Sobhani, an
energy consultant, told the Wall Street Journal. Soon, America may
have bombed its way into a whole new free-trade zone.
So far, the press debate over the reconstruction of Iraq has
focused on fair play: It is “exceptionally maladroit,” in the words of
the European Union’s Commissioner for External Relations, Chris
Patten, for the United States to keep all the juicy contracts for
itself. It has to learn to share: ExxonMobil should invite France’s
TotalFinaElf to the most lucrative oilfields; Bechtel should give
Britain’s Thames Water a shot at the sewer contracts.
But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling and Tony Blair
may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it’s beside the point.
Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq’s
post-Saddam, pre-democracy liquidation sale? What does it matter if
the privatizing is done unilaterally by Washington or multilaterally
by the United States, Europe, Russia and China?
Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who
might--who knows?--want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will
be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but without any
real democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations,
reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised
as charity; privatization without representation.
A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by
war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country
has been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their
newfound “freedom"--for which so many of their loved ones
perished--comes pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that
were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling.
They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed
to the wonderful world of democracy.
Sony to cash in on Iraq with ‘shock and awe’ game (BOYCOTT SONY)
2003-04-15Julia Day (Guardian)
Thursday April 10, 2003
Japanese electronics giant Sony has taken an extraordinary step to cash in on the war in Iraq by patenting the term “Shock and Awe” for a computer game.
It is among a swarm of companies scrambling to commercially exploit the war in Iraq, which has killed more than 5,000 soldiers and civilians in the space of three weeks.
MediaGuardian.co.uk has learned that Sony wants to launch a computer game called “Shock and Awe”, having filed an application to register the defining phrase of the coalition’s military campaign as a trademark in the US.
It applied to register the term as a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office on March 21 - just one day after war started. It wants to use it for computer and video games, as well as a broadband game played both locally and globally via the internet among PlayStation users.
The phrase, coined by former US navy pilot Harlan Ullman, was adopted by Washington to describe the fierce bombardment of Baghdad on the second night of the war - the military tactic designed to bully the Iraqi resistance into submission.
However, the crassness of the phrase was seized upon by critics of evidence of US arrogance in a war that the UN, and notably France and Russia, refused to support.
A spokesman for Sony PlayStation in the UK admitted the company might not stock the game in Britain and Europe owing to political sensitivities.
“Sometimes registering trademarks does not necessarily mean the product will be launched. But if it was deemed unsuitable then we might not ship it here,” he said.
“If indeed it is related to the Iraqi war rather than just using that phrase then, yes, it might well be something we would be very sensitive to,” the spokesman added.
However, the Sony game is only the tip of the iceberg as the US market is set to be flooded with goods ranging from T-shirts, toys, board games, train sets sunglasses, mugs and fireworks branded with slogans such as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “Battle of Baghdad”.
But a British company is also planning a computer game, books, cards and magazines based on the war, called “Conflict Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad”.
SCi Games, part of computer games publisher SCi Entertainment, registered the title as a trademark in the US on February 25, having scored a hit with its original PlayStation and Xbox game, Conflict: Desert Storm.
Other goods planned for sale in the US include an “Axis of Evil” board game, “Iraqi Freedom” crockery and clothes as well as “Shock and Awe” trainers and dolls.
After September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, the US PTO was flooded with applications for trademarks for products bearing legends such as “the war on terrorism” and “remember the twin towers”.
At the time applications were also been filed for products inscribed with the phrases “Osama, can you see the bombs bursting in the air?”; “Osama, Yo’ Mama”; “9-11-01, lest we forget”; and “Operation Enduring Freedom”.
The rush to make a quick buck from the attacks attracted widespread criticism from people concerned that companies were profiting from the tragedy.
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SEND LETTERS OF PROTEST LIKE THIS ONE TO SONY:
SONY has decided to create a game that insults the memory of those who died due to the war crimes of Geogre Bush and Tony Blair. It is bad enough that your Prime Minister has sent money for the death of thouands of civilians, but now you are going to make a game out of it. SONY will be boycotted as a result of this horrible decision. You are urged to rethink this disgusting move.
We will not rest until you have abandoned this nonsense.
----->https://www.sony.co.jp/net/SonyInfo/Support/Feedback/Form/other.html
-The Rape of Mesopotamia-Museums versus Oil Wells At the “End of History”
by Paul Street
“A country’s identity, its value and civilization resides in its history,”
says Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammed, an Iraqi archaeologist. “If a country’s civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to President Bush,” Muhammed asks New York Times reporter John Burns.
“Please remind him that he promised to liberate the Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation” ("Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure,” New York Times, 13 April, 2003, A1).
An Interesting Comparison with the Nazis
The White House is deeply offended (officially at least) by those who note the chilling parallel between Nazi foreign policy and the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine of “preemptive” (really preventive) war currently being enacted in Iraq. Remembering that all versions of racist imperialism are not the same, then, let us note one key difference between the way the Bush gang is proceeding and how Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich would have conquered Baghdad.
The Nazis, we can be sure, would have made special provision to safeguard, and then of course appropriate, the monumental treasures of Mesopotamia and ancient Sumerian civilization. No, not out of any special concern or respect for other peoples’ history: beyond the normal looting instincts of invaders, the Nazis were eager to identify themselves with selected aspects of past civilizations and empires and therefore made a special point of cataloguing and preserving the treasures of occupied territories.
As Lynn Nichols notes in her award-winning book The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York, 1994), Hitler’s SS “had an art branch, the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), which sponsored archaeological research world wide in the hope of finding confirmation of early and glorious Germanic cultures.” By the late 1930s, “Ancestral Heritage” was “financing exotic projects abroad,” including elaborate, scientifically respectable digs in South America, “determined to prove that the Germanism of the occupied territories reached to earliest prehistory.” In the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s Polish Blitzkrieg, also sold (like “Operation Iraqi Freedom") as a “preemptive campaign,” Nazi Special Forces prepared special lists of art works to be found and preserved in a newly Germanized western Poland. “A certain amount of damage and looting are inevitable in the heat of war,” notes Nichols, but in this invasion the Germans acted on their “singularly detailed knowledge of the location of works of art,” safeguarding artifacts for careful confiscation and preservation.
In a perverse and powerful way, history - both their own and that of conquered nations - mattered to the masters of European fascism. It would have unthinkable for them to let the historical artifacts and cultural riches of Iraq slip away into the hands of anonymous looters.
“History is Bunk”
Things are different with the new bosses of Baghdad, employed by a onetime C student history major who couldn’t tell the difference between a Mesopotamian fossil and a Mexican burrito. They represent an insufferably narcissistic nation (still primarily obsessed with what a military campaign that killed millions of Vietnamese did to its own national psyche) whose “leaders” have long painted our their country as the specially chosen, “exceptional,” and practically timeless answer to the grating past. America, we have all been asked to believe, is the permanently modern City on a Hill (John Winthrop). It “stands taller and sees farther” (Madeline Albright) than the rest of the hopelessly “old” world. A more recent twist on America’s ever-evasive, a-historical sense of itself and the world sees the “single sustainable model” of societal evolution represented by the US - supposedly “liberal” mass consumer capitalism and “representative democracy”
- as the “End of History.” It is the glorious terminal point of serious political contestation over the nature and meaning of collective human existence. “History,” according to the iconic American mass-production automobile capitalist and virulent anti-Semite Henry Ford, “is bunk.”
For these and other reasons, it is not surprising that world history’s most powerful military force couldn’t spare so much as a single tank or two soldiers to guard the National Museum of Iraq during the “war” for Baghdad.
Such a relatively tiny presence might have prevented the disappearance of more than fifty thousand artifacts from what the Chicago Tribune calls “the storehouse of civilization’s cradle.” And it’s not like the White House and Pentagon didn’t know what was in that storehouse: leading experts gave them elaborate lists of key artifact sites, placing special emphasis on the National Museum.
“Mesopotamia,” says Gil Stein, director of the University of Chicago’s prestigious Oriental Institute, “is the world’s first civilization. It’s the first place to develop cities, the first place where writing was invented.
And the artifacts from the excavations from there are the patrimony for our entire civilization and entirely irreplaceable” (Chicago Tribune,13 April, 2003, p.1).
“Whatever,” say Bush and Rumsfeld. Their imperial arsenal includes helicopters ("Apache," “Blackhawk” and “Comanche") named after tribes from North America’s own obliterated ancient civilizations and its genocidal past. Who really gives a damn, they ask, when you get down to it, about a bunch of “artey-facts” and fossils and such? That stuff only matters, they think, to historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and other assorted “liberal” “eggheads” who wouldn’t even know how to shoot a sword-wielding Arab like Harrison Ford did in “Indiana Jones.” For heaven’s sake, as Rumsfeld loves to say, its just too darn bad if a bunch of “old timey stuff”
(to quote Homer Simpson) gets lost on the road to paving over Mesopotamia.
After all, we’ve got a modern American and Ford-like job to do: benevolently granting those poor Iraqis the mass-consumer items, pseudo-representative semi-democracy (plutocracy), and soul-deadening mass culture ("Baywatch Baghdad” is surely in its planning stages) we know they crave.
A Disturbing Charge
According to one story appearing in publications around the world, US armed forces actually encouraged the ransacking. According to Khaled Bayomi, a Middle Eastern political researcher who witnessed the looting of the National Museum, American troops inspired the plunder for a very interesting reason. “The lack of jubilant scenes” of grateful Iraqis greeting American conquerors, claims Bayomi, meant that US forces “needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways demonstrated hatred for Saddam’s regime.” It’s hard to believe that such encouragement (if that’s what took place) did not occur without high-level approval (See “US Encouraged Ransacking” at www.
informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.ht).
The Oil Wells are Safe
Today, the American Empire’s nice cop Colin Powell felt compelled during a press conference to acknowledge the tragedy of the National Museum. He pledged American assistance in the effort to recover the lost items (no small job). Global outrage over the rape of Mesopotamia has reached the front page of his nation’s leading newspapers, making it into Powell’s own daily internal briefings.
But whatever the truth (or falsity) of the charge that Americans cynically encouraged the looting of the museum and the sincerity (or cynicism) of Powell’s statement, it should be noted that the oil wells of Iraq have been consistently, well and massively guarded by British and American forces. But of course: it’s important, after all, that the people of the world retain their greatest imaginable freedom of all at the End of History - the right to drive around cheaply in ecocidal automobiles to and from glorious citadels of mass consumption. Henry Ford would certainly approve.
Paul Street (
-For Self-determination In Iraq, The U.S. Must Leave
by Robert Jensen
The U.S. attack on Iraqi has brought the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, which is cause for celebration. For the first time in at least 35 years, the conditions could exist for Iraqis to chart their own destiny.
Now the United States has a crucial part to play in making Iraqi self-determination a reality: It must get out.
President Bush has told the Iraqi people: “We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave.”
Bush has the sequence wrong; a truly representative government in Iraq is possible only if U.S. military forces leave first. The reason is simple: Liberating the Iraqi people was part of the Bush PR campaign to justify a war, but it was not the motive force behind U.S. policy. Neither were stated concerns about weapons of mass destruction or alleged terrorist ties.
Bush’s fundamental goal in Middle East policy is no different from other administrations since World War II: To strengthen U.S. control over the flow of the region’s oil resources and the resulting profits. In a world that runs on oil, the nation that controls the flow of oil has considerable strategic power, not only over the terms of its own consumption but over other nations. U.S. policymakers want leverage over the economies of our biggest competitors—Western Europe, Japan and China—which are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
From this logic has flowed U.S. support for reactionary regimes (Saudi Arabia), dictatorships (Iran under the Shah, Iraq in the 1980s) and regional military surrogates (Israel)—always aimed at maintaining control. A “democratic” government in Iraq will be allowed if, and only if, such a government lines up with U.S. interests. The United States will allow the trappings of a democratic process as long as the process produces the right result.
This approach to democracy has been a consistent feature of U.S. foreign policy. While many acknowledge that in the past the United States has supported dictators and derailed real democracy abroad, the conventional wisdom is that things have changed since the end of the Cold War. Two recent examples suggest that though tactics may change, the goal remains the same.
In Afghanistan, U.S. support for “democracy” included strong-arm tactics at the loya jirga to eliminate a role for former king Zahir Shah and force his withdrawal as a candidate. After the fall of the Taliban, there was considerable support for his return to the country to play a unifying role, but Bush officials preferred their handpicked candidate, Hamid Karzai.
In Venezuela, U.S. officials were quick to proclaim support for last year’s abortive coup attempt that temporarily displaced the elected president, Hugo Chavez. Even more embarrassing was the revelation that U.S. officials had met with Venezuelan military officers and opposition activists, including the nominal leader of the coup. Because Chavez defied the United States, the democratic process by which he had been elected was irrelevant.
What will democracy mean in Iraq? When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked Sunday whether the United States would accept in Iraqi elections a victory by candidates opposed to U.S. policy, he waffled. The lack of a history of political freedom in Iraq meant that sometimes “people end up not understanding what really are the facts,” he said. How long does it take to reverse that? “It takes some time.”
Will Iraqis be allowed to choose their own government only when their understanding of the facts matches Rumsfeld’s? Will U.S. occupation continue until Rumsfeld is satisfied with the pace and direction of Iraqi learning?
An ongoing U.S. occupation will not be embraced by most Iraqis, with the exception of figures such as Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress exile group—a “reliable” leader (defined as willingness to accept U.S. orders) preferred by many in this administration.
Gen. Tommy Franks has said U.S. forces will stay in Iraq “until there is a free government.” Like his commander in chief, Franks misses the point: Real freedom stand a fighting chance only if the U.S. military withdraws and a U.N. peacekeeping force takes over the work of stabilizing the country. American military power can remove a dictator but—given U.S. actions in Iraq and the Middle East—it cannot create meaningful democracy.
Robert Jensen is an associate professor of journalism and author of “Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.” He can be reached at
More articles by Robert Jensen on Iraq
-No Coke, No Pepsi: Pakistanis Boycott Western Products
Published on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 by OneWorld.net
by Ghafar Ali Khan
PESHAWAR - Protesting against the U.S-led attack on Iraq, wide sections of society in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have banned American multinationals Coke and Pepsi, amongst others, spawning a slew of new, local soft drinks.
Soon after the attack, Pakistan’s ulemas (religious leaders) launched a campaign against foreign products, particularly beverages, appealing to the faithful in their Friday sermons, to stop using products made by American, British and Jewish-run companies.
Their speeches inflamed the passions of the Pakistani public outraged by the bombing of Iraq, striking a chord even among liberals in Pakistani society.
During the U.S. attack on Afghanistan last year, the leaders had issued similar appeals to the public, but failed to get an encouraging response.
But this time they hit pay dirt. Large numbers of Muslims especially those in the NWFP believed America would launch similar attacks on other Muslim countries.
The ulemas came armed with a list of products and names of fast-food chains that should not be patronized by Pakistanis because they claimed the revenue thus generated would ultimately be used against Muslims in Iraq and Palestine.
So Pakistanis scratched Pepsi, Coke, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Caltex, Mobil and others from their shopping lists.
The idea of boycotting U.S. products was floated in the Pakistani Senate (upper house of Parliament) last month.
Initially, it was a purely political ploy for the ruling right-wing Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and its supporters.
But the concept proved contagious, with traders, lawyers, teachers and other organizations, in no way aligned with the religious right represented by the MMA, deciding to follow suit.
Last week, even the high court bar association of Peshawar, NWFP’s capital, banned the sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the court cafeteria.
The association issued directives to the cafeteria contractor to refrain from selling Pepsi Cola, Coca-Cola and other beverages produced by the two American multinationals.
Alleging that the profits earned by these companies were used to target Muslims, the bar association’s general body meeting decided to boycott products made by U.S. and British companies.
The NWFP chapter of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association urged teachers to avoid the use of American and “Jewish” products.
President of the Peshawar University Teachers Association (PUTA) Arbab Khan Afridi, said, “Pepsi was my favorite cold drink but this year I did not have it even once.”
Afridi said PUTA had banned the use of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in their meetings and functions to register their protest against the “atrocities against Muslims” around the world.
“We have made a formal request to the stores and cafeteria owners on the campus to stop the sale of these beverages and now we have planned to issue a formal notification in this respect,” he said.
On April 8, traders throughout Pakistan observed a complete strike to condemn the U.S. aggression against Iraq.
“We have appealed to businessmen and consumers to boycott foreign products, particularly soft drinks, and the people’s response was very positive,” said a leader of the trading community in Peshawar, Sharafat Ali Mubarak.
While the boycott might be bad news for multinationals, their local competitors never had it so good. Riding on the anti-American wave were local companies eager to fill the void.
Several small local beverage companies scrambled to get a toehold in the multi-billion dollar market in Pakistan, particularly the NWFP.
Among the home-grown heroes was the soft drink Salsabeel. After the Iraq war started, the company distributed publicity leaflets to people streaming out of mosques after Friday prayers.
Salsabeel claimed it was a substitute for Coca-Cola and Pepsi and appealed to Muslims to buy the local drink and economically destroy the U.S. and its allies - Britain and the Jews.
The people, particularly students in the University of Peshawar, welcomed the appeal and Salsabeel did brisk business there.
The manager of a university cafeteria, Sultan Zeb, said most of the students asked for Salsabeel instead of Pepsi or Coke.
“As the summer advanced, one would imagine that Pepsi sales would increase but, in fact, it dropped up to 40 percent after the students started the boycott,” he said.
Department of economics student Ismail Khan said students had decided to boycott multinational beverages because the country was losing foreign exchange.
“We can easily avoid buying many foreign products and we will use their alternatives to render these multinationals economically weak,” he added.
Soda was another local soft drink which had begun raking in profits. Pitched as an alternative to the American colas, it was a hit not only in Peshawar but in other parts of NWFP as well.
Apart from the anti-American sentiment, a key factor working in favor of the local soft drinks was their low price - half of Pepsi and Coke.
The manager of the Salsabeel beverage company, Muhammad Tariq, said the drink was launched after the leaders requested the company to provide people with a local option.
“We started production on a limited scale because we do not have large-scale machinery like the multinationals but the people’s response was encouraging,” he claimed.
Tariq boasted that, “Our sales increased by 50 percent this year as compared to the previous year.”
Mubarak said sales of foreign soft drink companies had nosedived. He said multinationals were planning to slash prices, announcing discount schemes to lure businessmen.
But Pepsi officials denied the boycott had eroded their market share. A supervisor at Pepsi Cola, Asad Khan, said though some traders and individuals had voiced protests, Pepsi sales remained unaffected.
Khan claimed Salsabeel and Soda would not be able to meet growing demand. Consequently, consumers would return to cold drinks manufactured by the multinationals.
“The local beverages are being manufactured manually or by small-scale machinery so their quality is poor, and they cannot compete with us,” he asserted.
Copyright 2003 OneWorld
-Large Protests Greet US-Backed Talks on Post-Saddam Iraq
Agence France Presse
Around 20,000 demonstrators converged on the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah to protest US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out a post-Saddam Hussein administration.
The Pentagon said it was not yet prepared to declare victory after 26 days of war, but US commanders expressed hope Tuesday the main stage of hostilities was over with the fall of Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit.
US officials switched their focus to neighbouring Syria, alleging that Damascus has been developing weapons of mass destruction, prompting calls for calm from the United Nations, Arab and European governments.
The meeting in Nasiriyah was the first since the launch of the war on March 20 and was billed as a major step forward in the search for a new Iraqi leadership.
But the man tipped to become Iraq’s next leader, Ahmad Chalabi, head of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress, was not due to attend.
Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim opposition group was also boycotting the talks, amid distrust over the US role and division over who should lead Iraq.
Chalabi, who has insisted he is not a candidate for a post in the interim administration to be run by retired US general Jay Garner, planned to send a representative.
Dozens of representatives from Iraq’s fractious mix of ethnic, tribal and opposition groups, including those formerly in exile, were said to be invited although no official list was given.
The New York Times quoted Garner as saying his mission to rebuild Iraq’s political structures would be messy and contentious.
His fears appeared justified as the talks in the Shiite bastion sparked a demonstration estimated by journalists to number around 20,000 people, led by religious figures.
“Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam,” the crowd chanted in the centre of the city.
The meeting came against a backdrop of renewed differences across the Atlantic, this time over neighbouring Syria.
US officials have accused the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of state terrorism, developing weapons of mass destruction and harbouring fugitive Iraqi officials.
“We will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer branded Syria a terrorist state, while Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed Syria had carried out a chemical weapons test “over the past 12, 15 months”.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon joined the offensive, describing Assad as “dangerous,” and urging Washington to put “very heavy ... political and economic pressure” on Syria.
But Washington’s main European ally, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, sought to reassure his parliament, pledging that there were “no plans whatever to invade Syria”.
And at a meeting in Luxembourg, European Union foreign ministers called on Washington to tone down its rhetoric.
“What we need now is to cool off the situation, not to increase the tension, we have enough tensions in the region ... not to create more,” said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
The Arab League and the Egyptian government strongly condemned the US accusations.
An advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned the Americans against the temptation to “target one Arab country after another”.
And UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that statements directed at Syria could destabilize the whole Middle East.
“The secretary general is concerned that recent statements directed at Syria should not contribute to a wider destabilisation in a region already heavily affected by the war in Iraq,” Annan’s spokesman said in a statement.
Annan was due to discuss developments in Iraq with European Union leaders in Athens later this week.
Syria’s official media charged that the US accusations were a smokescreen to keep Iraq under occupation.
The tense diplomatic exchanges set a rocky course for the dollar against the yen and euro, as investors nervously eyed developments.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters not to expect a US declaration of victory after its capture of Tikrit.
But US and British officers said they hoped the city’s fall meant the effective end of the war, although there was still no sign of Saddam himself.
“I would anticipate that the major combat engagements are over because the major Iraqi units on the ground cease to show coherence,” said Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations of the Joint Staff in Washington.
And a drawdown of the 300,000 US force deployed in the region was already underway.
Two US aircraft carriers—the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Constellation—are due to head home from the Gulf as early as this week.
US troops have worked alongside Iraqi police in joint patrols to try to restore order.
But life in Baghdad remained far from normal six days after US troops entered. Most shops remained closed, and many parts of the city still lacked water or electricity.
And US forces tried Tuesday to prevent the media from covering a third day of anti-US protests by Iraqis outside the hotel housing a US operations base in central Baghdad.
Some 200-300 Iraqis gathered outside the Palestine Hotel to express their rage at what they said was the US failure to restore order after the fall of Saddam’s regime.
For the first time, visibly-angered US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest.
Copyright 2003 AFP
-US Blamed for Failure to Stop Sacking of Museum, Protecting Only Oil
by Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles and David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
The United States was fiercely criticized around the world yesterday for its failure to protect Baghdad’s Iraq National Museum where, under the noses of US troops, looters stole or destroyed priceless artifacts up to 7,000 years old.
Not a single pot or display case remained intact, according to witnesses, after a 48-hour rampage at the museum – perhaps the world’s greatest repository of Mesopotamian culture. US forces intervened only once, for half an hour, before leaving and allowing the looters to continue.
Archaeologists, poets, cultural historians and international legal experts, including many in America itself, accused Washington of violating the 1954 Hague Convention on the protection of artistic treasures in wartime.
British experts were distraught at the loss. “This is a terrible tragedy. Iraq is the cradle of civilization and this was a museum which contained a large portion of the world’s cultural heritage. The British Museum stands ready to help our Iraqi colleagues in whatever way we can,” Dr John Curtis said. He is keeper of the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum, which holds an important collection of Mesopotamian treasures.
Dr Jeremy Black a specialist on ancient Iraq at Oxford University, said: “What has befallen Baghdad and Mosul museums was foreseen by archaeologists worldwide. Meetings were even held with the American military before the war to warn of the extreme likelihood of looting should an invasion occur.
“Sadly, however, the occupying forces failed to implement in practical terms the measures to protect Iraq’s and the world’s cultural heritage. US and British forces must now act immediately to safeguard what remains in the museums and at key archaeological sites.”
A Chicago law professor, Patty Gerstenblith of the DePaul School, said the rampage was “completely inexcusable and avoidable”.
In Iraq itself, art experts and ordinary demonstrators made clear they were far angrier at President George Bush than they were at the looters, noting that the only building US forces seemed genuinely interested in protecting was the Ministry of Oil.
One Iraqi archaeologist, Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammad, told The New York Times: “If a country’s civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation.”
Dr Eleanor Robson, a member of the council of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, said: “The looting of the Iraq Museum is on a par with blowing up Stonehenge or ransacking the Bodleian Library. For world culture, it is a global catastrophe.” Among the many treasures that have vanished, perhaps for ever, are a solid gold harp from the Sumerian era, the sculptured head of a woman from the Sumerian city of Uruk, a Ram in the Thicket statue from Ur, stone carvings, gold jewelry, tapestry fragments, ivory figurines of goddesses, friezes of soldiers, ceramic jars and urns.
The museum held the tablets with Hammurabi’s Code, one of the world’s earliest legal documents, early texts describing the epic of Gilgamesh and mathematical treatises that reveal a knowledge of Pythagorean geometry 1,500 years before Pythagoras.
Some of the treasures might have been removed from the museum before the war for safekeeping, but there is no indication of where they could be. Saddam Hussein may have taken some artifacts for display in his private residences.
Curators said the looters came in two categories – the angry and the poor, most of them Shias, who were bent largely on destruction and grabbing whatever they could to earn some money; and more discriminating, middle-class people who knew exactly what they were looking for. Some of the more famous pieces may be too easily recognizable to be sold on the international market, leading some experts to fear they will be destroyed.
Although the museum is only one of hundreds of buildings to fall prey to looters, its status as one of the most important repositories of ancient civilization is likely to inflame particular resentment towards the Americans, in the Arab world and beyond.
Several commentators are already starting to see more sinister motives in the US troops’ neglect. Professor Giovanni Bergamini, curator of the Egyptian museum in Turin, said: “I don’t know ... Perhaps it was only fathomless ignorance.” He added: “But that’s quite bad enough in itself.”
Parts of a beheaded sculpture lies among rubble after a mob of looters ransacked and looted Iraq’s largest archeological museum in Baghdad(AFP/Patrick Baz)
THE LIKELY FATE OF THE STOLEN ANTIQUITIES
The antiquities being looted in Iraq fall into two different categories.
In terms of serious money – up to several million pounds per item – the more internationally famous statues, bas-reliefs, early manuscripts and groups of ivories are the more difficult, though lucrative, items to smuggle. Worldwide there are probably only a few hundred potential buyers for the more well-known material.
Such items might include the celebrated Sumerian stone statue of Dudu, the Prime Minister to the royal court of Lagash, dating back to 2600BC, or the 2300BC image of the god Abu and his consort. These would have to be sold in great secrecy. The larger objects are in danger of being deliberately damaged and then made unrecognizable to make it more difficult for police and others to trace them.
In terms of pure volume of illicit traffic, the smaller, often unpublished items such as coins, cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets, pottery, figurines, flint tools and bronze weapons are likely to dominate sectors of the antiquities market. They will probably end up at the art markets of Paris, via Jordan, Israel, and Switzerland, New York, London and Tokyo.
Their value, in total, could quite conceivably run to billions of pounds – with the profits lining the pockets of the more unscrupulous of the European and North American-based dealers. Somewhere between Switzerland and antique shops in Britain and elsewhere, all knowledge of an object’s Iraqi provenance will be lost.
The museum’s computer system, with the inventory of its contents, is understood to have been smashed – but whether the hard disks have been damaged is not yet known.
-’Impeach Bush’ (Lawrence Eagleburger, US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr)
Syria faced renewed warnings from America not to provide safe haven for senior figures in Saddam Hussein’s regime.
If George Bush [Jr] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes.In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can’t get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.
Lawrence Eagleburger, US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr
Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, increased the diplomatic pressure on Damascus while Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, extended his rhetoric against the Syrians, insisting that “there’s no question” that some senior Iraqi leaders had fled to Syria. “We certainly are hopeful Syria will not become a haven for war criminals or terrorists,” Mr Rumsfeld said.
President George Bush added to the pressure, saying: “Syria just needs to co-operate with the United States and our coalition partners, not harbor any Baathists, any military officials, any people who need to be held to account.”
Speaking to reporters later, he appeared to threaten Syria with possible military action, by pointedly saying that Damascus held chemical weapons, and that the Iraq war showed that “we’re serious about stopping weapons of mass destruction”.
Asked by a reporter whether Syria could face military action if it did not turn over Iraqi leaders, Mr Bush said: “They just need to co-operate.”
On Saturday a gunman who shot dead an American Marine guarding a hospital in Baghdad was found to have a Syrian identification card by US military officials. Marines shot and killed him.
Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, who is visiting Lebanon, said the international community should focus on rebuilding Iraq and reviving Middle East peace efforts. Asked about American accusations against Damascus, he said: “The time is not correct. The time is to work together.”
His comments coincided with visits by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Mike O’Brien, a Foreign Office minister, to Iraq’s neighbors to discuss the future of the region.
Hawks in the Bush team have raised the prospect of action against Syria. Mr Rumsfeld warned that Syria would be “held to account” if it provided military equipment to Iraq.
General Powell, considered a moderate within the administration, joined the chorus of disapproval despite concern over deteriorating relations between Syria and the West. He said: “We think it would be very unwise ... if suddenly Syria becomes a haven for all these people who should be brought to justice who are trying to get out of Baghdad ... nor do I know why Syria would become a place of haven for people who should be subject to the justice of the Iraqi people.”
General Powell told the BBC’s Breakfast with Frost: “Syria has been a concern for a long period of time. We have designated Syria for years as a state that sponsors terrorism.
“We are concerned that materials have flowed through Syria to the Iraqi regime over the years. We are making this point clearly and in a very direct manner to the Syrians.”
Mr O’Brien, who visited Tehran, the Iranian capital, yesterday, will raise the Allies’ concerns with the Syrian authorities today. Mr Straw was visiting Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to discuss the reconstruction of Iraq.
Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr, told the BBC: “If George Bush [Jr] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes.In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can’t get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.”
© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
