Scholars for 9/11 Truth Under Attack
Member’s children threatened by name; teacher’s position under assault.
Duluth, MN July 4, 2006 — The author of an article about the attack on the World Trade Center has found himself under attack for having published it in a new on-line publication, Journal of 9/11 Studies. Entitled “The Third Elephant”, the article discusses evidence that a third airplane was captured on video at the time of the WTC attack. He has now received a thinly-veiled threat against his children, who are cited by name, suggesting it would be a good idea if his article were to simply “go away”.
Scholars for 9/11 Truth is a non-partisan society of experts and scholars committed to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths about the events of 9/11. The journal, which is archived at journalof911studies.com, is its latest attempt to create forums for discussion and debate about these important issues beyond its web site, which is archived at st911.org. The author, Reynolds Dixon, a writer and Professor of English, former lecturer and Fellow at Stanford University, has withdrawn from the society.
“Threats of this kind have no place in a democratic nation”, said James H. Fetzer, the founder of S9/11T. “These are the tactics of brown-shirts and totalitarians who fear the discussion of controversial questions that threaten the government’s control over the governed. This is a despicable act and we are not going to back down!” He added that the organization itself will assume responsibility for the study, which Reynolds has relinquished. “We cannot allow advances in understanding what happened on 9/11 to be suppressed by threats to our members. The stakes are simply too high.”
In Wisconsin, another member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Kevin Barrett, who has been active in efforts to inform the American people about discoveries that have been made by Scholars–including that the Twin Towers were destroyed, not by the impact of airplanes or the ensuing fires, but by sophisticated controlled demolition; that Vice President Dick Cheney gave a “stand down” order to not shoot down the plane approaching the Pentagon; and that the FBI has now confirmed that it has “no hard evidence” connecting Osama bin Laden to 9/11–confronts the loss of his job.
A Wisconsin legislator, Stephen Nass, Republican of Whitewater, has called for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to immediately fire him from his teaching position. The UW Office of the Provost has announced that it will conduct a 10-day review of Barrett’s plans for an introductory fall course in Islam and of his past performance as a teacher at UW-Madison. Provost Patrick Farrell has endorsed his freedom of speech, but “We have an obligation to insure that his course content is academically appropriate, of high quality, and that he is not imposing his views on his students.”
Prominent experts and scholars who are members of S9/11T include Steven Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University; Morgan Reynolds, former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor in the George W. Bush administration; Bob Bowman, who directed research on the “Star Wars” program in both Republican and Democratic administrations; Andreas von Buelow, the former director of Science and Technology for Germany; and David Ray Griffin, professor emeritus of theology at the Claremont Graduate School and author or editor of four books on the events of 9/11.
Concern about academic freedom at UW-Madison extends beyond the Scholars group. Ron Rattner, an attorney from San Francisco, CA, for example, has written to Provost Farrell with the observation that, “When teachers are intimidated against seeking and speaking truth on a campus renowned for its liberal and progressive traditions, we are in trouble”. He added, “Universities are for inquiries, not inquisitions. UW must operate in the traditions of La Follette, not McCarthy”. Robert La Follette was noted as a progressive leader, while Joe McCarthy portrayed his opponents as subversives.
Fetzer observed that the right wing is continuing to attack faculty who speak out on 9/11. “During an appearance on Hannity & Colmes (June 22, 2006), with Ollie North sitting in for Hannity, I made points about controlled demolition, the “stand down” order, and the FBI’s position,” he said, “but they were more interested in whether I was discussing these things with my students than whether they were true.” On a subsequent appearance on Laura Ingraham’s program (June 30, 2006), “She had her staff chanting about ‘nutty professors’ before I was even introduced. Then, after I made some telling points at the end of the program, they edited their archived copy and cut it off after a long harangue attacking me. That is intellectually dishonest.”
Many other members of S9/11T, including Morgan Reynolds and David Ray Griffin, have spoken out in defense of academic freedom and in opposition to censorship and curtailing research into 9/11. “These nasty threats against the children of one member and the freedom of speech of another”, Fetzer said, “make a sorry statement about this nation on the eve of the 4th of July.” Coincidentally, Fetzer will appear with Barrett at the Mid-West Social Forum on Sunday, July 9, 2006, from 9-10:30 AM, at the Student Union of UW-Milwaukee, to discuss 9/11.
U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution on Mideast
July 13, 2006
U.N. diplomatic team heads to ‘major crisis’
(CNN) — The United States on Thursday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Israel halt its attacks in Gaza.
The proposal also demanded that Palestinian militants release the Israeli soldier abducted June 25 in a raid in Israel and stop launching rockets at Israel from Gaza. In addition, it called on Israel to release Palestinian government officials and lawmakers it took into custody after the soldier’s abduction.
Ten nations on the council voted in favor of the resolution, and four abstained.
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that “in light of the fluid events on the ground,” the United States believed the Qatar-sponsored resolution was untimely and out of date, and would have helped inflame passions in the Middle East.
As one of the five permanent members on the Security Council, the United States has veto power over resolutions.
Earlier Thursday, the United Nations called fighting between Hezbollah militants and Israel a “major crisis” and said it was sending a diplomatic team to the region.
A U.N. statement said the team will urge all parties to exercise restraint.
The three-member team first will visit Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials and consult with Arab League Foreign Ministers, who will be meeting there Saturday.
Vijay Nambiar, Alvaro de Soto and Terje Roed Larsen are also expected to travel to Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria, with other stops added as needed.
Israel has bombed runways at civilian and military airports in Lebanon, as well as a Hezbollah-run television station in response to Wednesday’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers. It also has imposed a full naval blockade on the country. Hezbollah fighters have been lobbing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel. (Full story)
Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat called the airport strikes a “general act of war.” He said they had nothing to do with Hezbollah but were, instead, an attack against Lebanon’s “economic interests,” especially its tourism industry.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday said the attack and abductions were an “act of war” and said the Lebanese government would be held responsible for the soldiers’ safe release.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he is concerned that a “regional war is mounting” with Israel’s military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, where forces were deployed after last month’s capture of an Israeli soldier.
“This is not our interest and will not bring peace and stability to the region,” Abbas said, referring to “this [Israeli] aggression.”
Bashar Ja’afari, Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday that Syria supports Hezbollah because it is engaging in “national resistance against foreign occupation.”
Ja’afari said the roots of the current conflict go far beyond the recent escalation of tensions.
“The Arab-Israeli conflict did not start with the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza or two other Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon. The Arab-Israeli conflict is 60 years old, and nobody was giving any care to solving this conflict,” he said. “Those who should be blamed are the Israeli policies, not the Arab policies.”
Asked whether Syria has direct contact with Hezbollah, Ja’afari said, “We have been having direct contacts with everybody, except, of course, the American administration and the Israeli side.”
President Bush, speaking during a trip to Germany, said that “Israel has a right to defend herself.” But he warned that Israel should take care not to weaken Lebanon’s government.
“The democracy of Lebanon is an important part of laying a foundation of peace in that region,” Bush said.
Bush also said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “needs to show some leadership toward peace.”
Ja’afari said Damascus “is deploying a huge effort within the Arab circles … as well as at the international level through direct contacts.”
“We are doing our utmost,” he said. “Saturday there will be a meeting of Arab foreign affairs ministers in Cairo to discuss the Israeli escalation. We will do our best. But, mainly speaking, those who have the upper hand with regard to the Security Council should deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict in its … wider spectrum.”
Bush said the United States was working to calm the situation.
“We’ve got diplomats in the region. Secretary of State [Condoleezza] Rice, who is here, is on the phone talking to her counterparts. I’ll be making calls,” Bush said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the abduction of the soldiers was unacceptable and blamed Hezbollah for starting the crisis.
The European Union reportedly condemned the fighting and criticized Israel for using what it called “disproportionate” force. It said the blockade of Lebanon was not justified.
“Actions which are contrary to international humanitarian law can only aggravate the vicious circle of violence and retribution,” the EU president said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, but the Islamic militia is a significant player in Lebanon’s fractious politics. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, told reporters Wednesday that abducting the soldiers was “our natural, only and logical right” to win freedom for Hezbollah prisoners held by Israel.
Nasrallah said the two soldiers had been taken to a place “far, far away” and that an Israeli military campaign would not win their release.
The new fighting on Israel’s northern border comes amid a two-week-old Israeli campaign in Gaza in search of Israeli army Cpl. Gilad Shalit, a soldier captured by Palestinian militants there.
The Occupation of Iraqi Hearts and Minds
by Nir Rosen
Three years into an occupation of Iraq replete with so-called milestones, turning points and individual events hailed as “sea changes” that would “break the back” of the insurgency, a different type of incident received an intense, if ephemeral, amount of attention. A local human rights worker and aspiring journalist in the western Iraqi town of Haditha filmed the aftermath of the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians. The video made its way to an Iraqi working for Time magazine, and the story was finally publicized months later. The Haditha massacre was compared to the Vietnam War’s My Lai massacre, and like the well-publicized and embarrassing Abu Ghraib scandal two years earlier, the attention it received made it seem as if it were a horrible aberration perpetrated by a few bad apples who might have overreacted to the stress they endured as occupiers.
In reality both Abu Ghraib and Haditha were merely more extreme versions of the day-to-day workings of the American occupation in Iraq, and what makes them unique is not so much how bad they were, or how embarrassing, but the fact that they made their way to the media and were publicized despite attempts to cover them up. Focusing on Abu Ghraib and Haditha distracts us from the daily, little Abu Ghraibs and small-scale Hadithas that have made up the occupation. The occupation has been one vast extended crime against the Iraqi people, and most of it has occurred unnoticed by the American people and the media.
Americans, led to believe that their soldiers and Marines would be welcomed as liberators by the Iraqi people, have no idea what the occupation is really like from the perspective of Iraqis who endure it. Although I am American, born and raised in New York City, I came closer to experiencing what it might feel like to be Iraqi than many of my colleagues. I often say that the secret to my success in Iraq as a journalist is my melanin advantage. I inherited my Iranian father’s Middle Eastern features, which allowed me to go unnoticed in Iraq, blend into crowds, march in demonstrations, sit in mosques, walk through Falluja’s worst neighborhoods.
I also benefited from being able to speak Arabic—in particular its Iraqi dialect, which I hastily learned in Baghdad upon my arrival and continued to develop throughout my time in Iraq.
My skin color and language skills allowed me to relate to the American occupier in a different way, for he looked at me as if I were just another haji, the “gook” of the war in Iraq. I first realized my advantage in April 2003, when I was sitting with a group of American soldiers and another soldier walked up and wondered what this haji (me) had done to get arrested by them. Later that summer I walked in the direction of an American tank and heard one soldier say about me, “That’s the biggest fuckin’ Iraqi (pronounced eye-raki) I ever saw.” A soldier by the gun said, “I don’t care how big he is, if he doesn’t stop movin’ I’m gonna shoot him.”
I was lucky enough to have an American passport in my pocket, which I promptly took out and waved, shouting: “Don’t shoot! I’m an American!” It was my first encounter with hostile American checkpoints but hardly my last, and I grew to fear the unpredictable American military, which could kill me for looking like an Iraqi male of fighting age. Countless Iraqis were not lucky enough to speak American English or carry a U.S. passport, and often entire families were killed in their cars when they approached American checkpoints.
In 2004 the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that by September 2004 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the American occupation and said that most of them had died violently, mostly in American airstrikes. Although this figure was challenged by many, especially partisans of the war, it seems perfectly plausible to me based on what I have seen in Iraq, having spent most of the postwar period there. What I never understood was why more journalists did not focus on this, choosing instead to look for the “good news” and go along with the official story.
My first direct encounter with American Marines was from the Iraqi side. In late April 2003, I was attending the Friday prayers in a Sunni bastion in Baghdad. Thousands of people were praying and the devout flooded out of the mosque and laid their prayer rugs on the street and the square in front of it. A Marine patrol rounded a corner and walked right into hundreds of people praying on the street and listening to the sermon, even approaching the separate section for women. Dozens of men rose and put their shoes on, forming a virtual wall to block the armed Marines, who seemed unaware of the danger. The Marines did not understand Arabic. “Irjau!” “Go back!” the demonstrators screamed, and some waved their fists, shouting “America is the enemy of God!” as they were restrained by a few cooler-headed men from within their ranks. I ran to advise the Marines that Friday prayers was not a good time to show up fully armed. The men sensed this and asked me to tell their lieutenant, who appeared oblivious to the public relations catastrophe he might be provoking. He told me: “That’s why we’ve got the guns.”
A nervous soldier asked me to go explain the situation to the bespectacled staff sergeant, who had been attempting to calm the situation by telling the demonstrators, who did not speak English, that the U.S. patrol meant no harm. He finally lost his temper when an Iraqi told him gently, “You must go.” “I have the weapons,” the sergeant said. “You back off.”
“Let’s get the fuck out!” one Marine shouted to another as the tension increased. I was certain that a shove, a tossed stone or a shot fired could have provoked a massacre and turned the city violently against the American occupation. Finally the Marines retreated cautiously around a corner as the worshipers were held back by their own comrades. It could have ended worse, and a week later it did when 17 demonstrators were killed by American soldiers in Falluja, and several more were killed in a subsequent demonstration, a massacre that contributed to the city’s support of the resistance.
I believe that any journalist who spent even a brief period embedded with American soldiers must have witnessed crimes being committed against innocent Iraqis, so I have always been baffled by how few were reported and how skeptically the Western media treated Arabic reports of such crimes. These crimes were not committed because Americans are bad or malicious; they were intrinsic to the occupation, and even if the Girl Scouts had occupied Iraq they would have resorted to these methods. In the end, it is those who dispatched decent young American men and women to commit crimes who should be held accountable.
I still feel guilt over my complicity in crimes the one time I was embedded, in the fall of 2003. (I spent two weeks with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed in Husaybah, an Iraqi town near the Syrian border that is a suspected entry point for foreign insurgent fighters.) Normally, I like to think, if I witnessed an act of bullying of the weak or the elderly, or the terrorizing of children, I would interfere and try to stop it. After all, a passion for justice is what propelled me into this career. It started when I arrived in the main base in the desert. Local Iraqi laborers were sitting in the sun waiting to be acknowledged by the American soldiers. Every so often a representative would come to the soldiers to explain in Arabic that they were waiting for their American overseer. The soldier would shout back in English. Finally I translated between them. One soldier, upset with an Iraqi man for looking at him, asked him: “Do I owe you money? So why the fuck are you looking at me?”
After a week, the Army unit I was living with went on a raid targeting alleged Al Qaeda cells. Included were safe houses, financiers and fighters as well as alleged resistance leaders such as senior military officers from elite units of the former Iraqi army. All together there were 62 names on the wanted list. A minimum of 29 locations would be raided, taking out the “nervous system” of the area resistance “and the guys who actually do the shooting.”
The raids began at night. The men descended upon villages by the border with Syria in the western desert. After half an hour of bumpy navigating in the dark the convoy approached the first house and the vehicles switched their lights on, illuminating the target area as a tank broke the stone wall. “Fuck yeah!” cheered one sergeant, “Hi honey I’m home!” The teams charged over the rubble from the wall, breaking through the door with a sledgehammer and dragging several men out. The barefoot prisoners, dazed from their slumber, were forcefully marched over rocks and hard ground. One short middle-aged man, clearly injured and limping with painful difficulty, was violently pushed forward in the grip of a Brobdingnagian soldier who said, “You’ll fucking learn how to walk.” Each male was asked his name. None matched the names on the list. A prisoner was asked where the targeted military officer lived. “Down the road,” he pointed. “Show us!” he was ordered, and he was shoved ahead, stumbling over the rocky street, terrified that he would be seen as an informer in the neighborhood, terrified that he too would be taken away. He stopped at the house but the soldiers ran ahead. “No, no, it’s here,” yelled a sergeant, and they ran back, breaking through the gate and bursting into the house. It was a large villa, with grape vines covering the driveway. Women and children from within were ordered to sit in the garden. The men were pushed to the ground on the driveway and asked their names. One was indeed the first high-value target. His son begged the soldiers, “Take me for 10 years but leave my father!” Both were taken. The children screamed ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ as the men were led out and the women were given leaflets in Arabic explaining that the men had been arrested.
Home after home met the same fate. Some homes had only women; these houses too were ransacked, closets broken, mattresses overturned, clothes thrown out of drawers. Men were dragged on the ground by their legs to be handcuffed outside. One bony ancient sheik walked out with docility and was pushed forcefully to the ground, where he was wrestled by soldiers who had trouble cuffing his arms. A commando grabbed him from them, and tightly squeezed the old man’s arms together, lifting him in the air and throwing him down on the ground, nearly breaking his fragile arms.
As her husband was taken away, one woman angrily asked Allah to curse the soldiers, calling them “Dogs! Jews!” over and over. When his soldiers left a home, one officer emerged to slap them on the back like a coach congratulating his players during halftime in a winning game. In a big compound of several houses the soldiers took all the men, even the ones not on the list. A sergeant explained that the others would be held for questioning to see whether they had any useful information. The men cried out that they had children still inside. In several houses soldiers tenderly carried out babies who had been left sleeping in their cribs and handed them to the women. When the work at a house was complete, or at the Home Run stage (stages were divided into 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Home Run and Grand Slam, meaning ready to move on), the soldiers relaxed and joked, breaking their own tension and ignoring the trembling and shocked women and children crouched together on the lawns behind them.
Prisoners with duct tape on their eyes and their hands cuffed behind them with plastic “zip ties” sat in the back of the truck for hours, without water. They moved their heads toward sounds, disoriented and frightened, trying to understand what was happening around them. Any time a prisoner moved or twitched, a soldier bellowed at him angrily and cursed. Thrown among the tightly crowded men in one truck was a boy no more than 15 years old, his eyes wide in terror as the duct tape was placed on them. By daylight the whole town could see a large truck full of prisoners. Two men walking to work with their breakfast in a basket were stopped at gunpoint, ordered to the ground, cuffed and told to “Shut the fuck up” as their basket’s contents were tossed out and they were questioned about the location of a suspect.
The soldier guarding them spoke of the importance of intimidating Iraqis and instilling fear in them. “If they got something to tell us I’d rather they be scared,” he explained. An Iraqi policeman drove by in a white SUV clearly marked “Police.” He too was stopped at gunpoint and ordered not to move or talk until the last raid was complete. From the list of 34 names, the troop I was with brought in about 16 positively identified men, along with 54 men who were neighbors, relatives or just happened to be around. By 08:30 the Americans were done and started driving back to base. As the main element departed, the psychological operations vehicle blasted AC/DC rock music through neighborhood streets. “It’s good for morale after such a long mission,” a captain said. Crowds of children clustered on porches smiling, waving and giving the passing soldiers little thumbs up. A sergeant waved back. Neighbors awakened by the noise huddled outside and watched the convoy. One little girl stood before her father and guarded him from the soldiers with her arms outstretched and legs wide.
In Baghdad, coalition officials announced that 112 suspects had been arrested in a major raid near the Syrian border, including a high-ranking official in the former Republican Guard. “The general officer that they captured, Abed Hamed Mowhoush al-Mahalowi, was reported to have links with Saddam Hussein and was a financier of anti-coalition activities, according to intelligence sources,” a military spokeswoman said. “Troops from the 1st and 4th squadrons of the Third Armored Cavalry cordoned off sections of the town and searched 29 houses to find ‘subversive elements,’ including 12 of the 13 suspects they had targeted for capture,” she said.
That night the prisoners were visible on a large dirt field in a square of concertina wire. Beneath immense spotlights and near loud generators, they slept on the ground, guarded by soldiers. One sergeant was surprised by the high number of prisoners taken by the troop I was with. “Did they just arrest every man they found?” he asked, wondering if “we just made another 300 people hate us.” The following day 57 prisoners were transported to a larger base for further interrogation. Some were not the suspects, just relatives of the suspects or men suspected of being the suspects.
The next night the troop departed the base at 0200, hoping to find those alleged Al Qaeda suspects who had not been home during the previous operation. Soldiers descended upon homes in a large compound, their boots trampling over mattresses in rooms the inhabitants did not enter with shoes on. Most of the wanted men were nowhere to be found, their women and children prevaricating about their locations. Some of their relatives were arrested instead. “That woman is annoying!” one young soldier complained about a mother’s desperate ululations as her son was taken from his house. “How do you think your mother would sound if they were taking you away?” a sergeant asked him.
Three days after the operation, a dozen prisoners could be seen marching in a circle outside their detention cells, surrounded by barbed wire. They were shouting “USA, USA!” over and over. “They were talkin’ when we told ’em not to, so we made ’em talk somethin’ we liked to hear,” one of the soldiers guarding them said with a grin. Another gestured up with his hands, letting them know they had to raise their voices. A first sergeant quipped that the ones who were not guilty “will be guilty next time,” after such treatment. Even if the men were guilty, no proof would be provided to the community. There would be no process of transparent justice. The only thing evident to the Iraqi public would be the American guilt.
In November 2003 a major from the judge advocate general’s office working on establishing an Iraqi judicial process told me that there were at least 7,000 Iraqis detained by American forces. Many languished in prisons indefinitely, lost in a system that imposed the English language on Arabic speakers with Arabic names not easily transcribed. Some were termed “security detainees” and held for six months pending a review to determine whether they were still a “security risk.” Most were innocent. Many were arrested simply because a neighbor did not like them. A lieutenant colonel familiar with the process told me that there is no judicial process for the thousands of detainees. If the military were to try them, there would be a court-martial, which would imply that the U.S. was occupying Iraq, and lawyers working for the administration are still debating whether it is an occupation or liberation. Two years later, 50,000 Iraqis had been imprisoned by the Americans and only 2% had ever been found guilty of anything.
The S2 (intelligence) section in the Army unit I was with had not proved itself very reliable in the past—a fact that frustrated soldiers to no end. “You get all psyched up to do a hard mission,” said one sergeant, “and it turns out to be three little girls. The little kids get to me, especially when they cry.”
The reason for the lack of confidence in S2 was made clear by the case of a man called Ayoub. I accompanied the troop when it raided Ayoub’s home based on intelligence S2 provided: intercepted phone calls, in which Ayoub spoke of proceeding to the next level and obtaining land mines and other weapons.
On the day of the raid, tanks, Bradleys and Humvees squeezed between the neighborhood walls. A CIA operator angrily eyed the rooftops and windows of nearby houses, a silencer on his assault weapon. Soldiers broke through Ayoub’s door early in the morning and when he did not immediately respond to their orders he was shot with nonlethal ordinance, little pellets exploding like gunshot from the weapons grenade launcher. The floor of the house was covered in his blood. He was dragged into a room and interrogated forcefully as his family was pushed back against a garden fence. Ayoub’s frail mother, covered in a shawl, with traditional tribal tattoos marking her face, pleaded with an immense soldier to spare her son’s life, protesting his innocence. She took the soldier’s hand and kissed it repeatedly while on her knees. He pushed her to the grass along with Ayoub’s four girls and two boys, all small, and his wife. They squatted barefoot, screaming, their eyes wide in terror, clutching each other as soldiers emerged with bags full of documents, photo albums and two CDs with Saddam and his cronies on the cover. These CDs, called “The Crimes of Saddam,” are common on every Iraqi street, and as their title suggests, they were not made by Saddam supporters; however, the soldiers saw only the picture of Saddam and assumed they were proof of guilt.
Ayoub was brought out and pushed onto the truck. He gestured to his shrieking relatives to remain where they were. He was an avuncular man, small and round—balding and unshaven with a hooked nose and slightly pockmarked face. He could not have looked more innocent. He sat frozen, staring numbly ahead as the soldiers ignored him, occasionally glancing down at their prisoner with sneering disdain. The medic looked at Ayoub’s injured hand and chuckled to his friends, “It ain’t my hand.” The truck blasted country music on the way back to the base. Ayoub was thrown in the detainment center. After the operation there were smiles of relief among the soldiers, slaps on the back and thumbs up.
Several hours later, a call was intercepted from the Ayoub whom the Americans were seeking. “Oh shit,” said the S2 captain, “[we’ve got] the wrong Ayoub.” The innocent father of six who was in custody actually was a worker in a phosphate plant the Americans were running. But he was not let go. If he was released, there would be a risk that the other Ayoub would learn he was being sought. The night after his arrest a relieved Ayoub could be seen escorted by soldiers to call his family and report he was fine but would not be home for a few days. “It was not the wrong guy,” the troop’s captain said defensively, shifting blame elsewhere. “We raided the house we were supposed and arrested the man we were told to.”
When the soldiers who had captured Ayoub learned of the mistake, they were not surprised. “Oops,” said one. Another one wondered, “What do you tell a guy like that, sorry?” “It’s depressing,” a third said. “We trashed the wrong guy’s house and the guy that’s been shooting at us is out there with his house not trashed.” The soldier who shot the nonlethal ordinance at Ayoub said, “I’m just glad he didn’t do something that made me shoot him [with a bullet].” Then the soldiers resumed their banter.
A few days later, the Army did a further analysis of the phone calls that had originally sent them in search of a man named Ayoub. In the calls, Ayoub had indeed spoken of proceeding to the next level and obtaining land mines and other weapons. This had rightfully alarmed the Army’s intelligence officers. But at some point an analyst realized that Ayoub was not a terrorist intent on obtaining weapons; he turned out to be a kid playing video games and talking about them with his friend on the phone.
The Procrustean application of spurious information gathered by intelligence officers who cannot speak Arabic and are not familiar with Iraqi, Arab or Muslim culture is creating enemies instead of eliminating them. The S2 captain could barely hide his disdain for Iraqis. “Oh he just hates anything Iraqi,” another captain said of him, adding that the intelligence officers do not venture off the base or interact with Iraqis or develop any relations with the people they are expected to understand. A lieutenant colonel from the Army’s civil affairs command explained that these officers do not read about the soldiers engaging with Iraqis, sharing cigarettes, tea, meals and conversations. They read only the reports of “incidents” and they view Iraqis solely as security threat. The intelligence officers in Iraq do not know Iraq.
In every market in Iraq hundreds of wooden crates can be found piled one atop the other. Sold for storage, upon further examination these crates reveal themselves to be former ammunition crates. For the past 25 years Iraq has been importing weapons to feed its army’s appetite for war against Iran, the Kurds, Kuwait and America. When empty, the crates were sold for domestic use. The soldiers with the Army unit I was with assumed the crates they found in nearly every home implicated the owners in terrorist activities, rather than the much simpler truth. During the operation described here I saw one of the soldiers find such a crate overturned above a small hole in a man’s backyard. “He was trying to bury it when he saw us coming,” one soldier deduced confidently. He did not lift the crate to discover that it was protecting irrigation pipes and hoses in a pit.
Saddam bestowed his largesse upon the security services that served as his praetorian guard and executioners. Elite fighters received Jawa motorcycles. Immediately after the war, Jawa motorcycles were available in every market in Iraq that sold scooters and motorcycles. Some had been stolen from government buildings in the frenzy of looting that followed the war and was directed primarily against institutions of the former government. Soldiers of the Army unit I accompanied were always alert for Jawa motorcycles, and indeed it was true that many Iraqi paramilitaries had used them against the Americans. On a night the troop had received RPG fire, its members drove back to base through the town. When they spotted a man on a Jawa motorcycle they fired warning shots. When he did not stop they shot him to death. “He was up to no good,” the captain explained.
On Nov. 26, 2003, after two weeks of brutal daily interrogations by military intelligence officers, Special Forces soldiers and CIA personnel, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, the former chief of Iraqi air defenses whose arrest I had witnessed, died in a U.S. detention facility. Twenty-four to 48 hours before that, he had been interrogated and beaten by CIA personnel. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division began looking into Mowhoush’s death that same day. The next day an Army news release stated that he had died of natural causes. “Mowhoush said he didn’t feel well and subsequently lost consciousness,” according to the statement, “ … the soldier questioning him found no pulse and called for medical authorities. A surgeon responded within five minutes to continue advanced cardiac life support techniques, but they were ineffective.” On Dec. 2, 2003, an Army medical examiner’s autopsy said the general’s death was “a homicide by asphyxia,” but it was not until May 12, 2004, that the death certificate was issued, with homicide as the cause. The Pentagon autopsy report in May said he had died of “asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression” and that there was “evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and legs.” Mowhoush was one of several Iraqis whose death certificates were not issued until May of 2004, long after their deaths.
American soldiers had no mission and viewed Iraqis as “the enemy” through a prism of “us and them.” An officer returning from a fact-finding mission complained of “a lot of damn good individuals who received no guidance, training or plan and who are operating in a vacuum.” Inside the G2, or intelligence, section of the Army’s civil affairs headquarters in Baghdad, on a bulletin board I saw an anecdote meant to be didactic. It told of American soldiers suppressing Muslim Filipino insurgents a century before. They dipped bullets in pig’s blood and shot some Muslim rebels, to send a warning to the others. A Latino civil affairs officer, fed up with Iraqis, explained that the only solution was to shut down Baghdad entirely. Military civil affairs officers are supposed to provide civil administration in the absence of local power structures, minimize friction between the military and civilians, restore normalcy and empower local institutions. One brigade commander explained to a civil affairs major that “I am not here to win hearts and minds, I am here to kill the enemy.” He failed to provide his civil affairs team with security, so it could not operate.
One morning in Albu Hishma, a village north of Baghdad cordoned off with barbed wire, the local U.S. commander decided to bulldoze any house that had pro-Saddam graffiti on it, and gave half a dozen families a few minutes to remove whatever they cared about the most before their homes were flattened. In Baquba, two 13-year-old girls were killed by a Bradley armored personnel carrier. They were digging through trash and the American rule was that anybody digging on road sides would be shot.
The 4th Infantry Division was especially notorious in Iraq. Its soldiers in Samara handcuffed two suspects and threw them off a bridge into a river. One of them died. In Basra, seven Iraqi prisoners were beaten to death by British soldiers. A high-ranking Iraqi police official in Basra identified one of the victims as his son. It is common practice for soldiers to arrest the wives and children of suspects as “material witnesses” when the suspects are not captured in raids. In some cases the soldiers leave notes for the suspects, letting them know their families will be released should they turn themselves in. Soldiers claim this is a very effective tactic. Soldiers on military vehicles routinely shoot at Iraqi cars that approach too fast or come too close, and at Iraqis wandering in fields. “They were up to no good,” they explain. Every commander is a law unto himself. He is advised by a judge advocate general who interprets the rules as he wants. A war crime to one is legitimate practice to another. After the Center for Army Lessons Learned sent a team of personnel to Israel to study that country’s counterinsurgency tactics, the Army implemented the lessons it learned, and initiated house demolitions in Samara and Tikrit, blowing up homes of suspected insurgents.
It is hard to be patient when mosques are raided, when protesters are shot, when innocent families are gunned down at checkpoints or by frightened soldiers in vehicles. It is hard to be patient in hours of izdiham, or traffic jams, that are blamed on Americans closing off main roads throughout Baghdad. The Americans close roads after “incidents” or when they are looking for planted bombs. Their vehicles block the roads and they answer no questions, refusing to let any Iraqi approach. Cars are forced to drive “wrong side,” as Iraqis call it, with near fatal results. Iraqis have become experts in walking over the concertina wire that divides so much of their cities: First one foot presses the razor wire down, then the other steps over. They are experts in driving slowly through lakes and rivers of sewage. They are experts in sifting through mountains of garbage for anything that can be reused.
It is hard to relax when the soldier in the Humvee or armored personnel carrier in front of you aims his machine gun at you; when aggressive white men race by, running you off the road as they scowl behind their wraparound sunglasses; when soldiers shoot at any car that comes too close. Iraqis in their own country are reminded at all times who has control over their lives, who can take them with impunity.
An old Iraqi woman approached the gate to Baghdad international airport. Draped in a black ebaya, she was carrying a picture of her missing son. She did not speak English, and the soldier in body armor she asked for help did not speak Arabic. He shouted at her to “get the fuck away.” She did not understand and continued beseeching him. The soldier was joined by another. Together they locked and loaded their machine guns, chambering a round, aiming the guns at the old woman and shouting at her that if she did not leave “we will kill you.”
The explosive-sniffing dog in front of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels is hated by the Iraqi security guards as well as the American soldiers who stand there because it, like the rest of us who live in the area, is subject to olfactory whims as it imagines every day that it smells a bomb, forcing them to close off the street for several hours. Two of my friends were arrested for not having a bomb last week when the dog decided their bag smelled funny. They were jailed for four days.
Imagine. The American occupation of Iraq has lasted over three years. The above stories are based on my two weeks with one unit in a small part of the country. Imagine how many Iraqi homes have been destroyed. How many families have been traumatized. How many men have disappeared into American military vehicles in the night. How many crimes have been committed against the Iraqi people every single day in the course of the normal operations of the occupation, when soldiers were merely doing their duty, when they were not angry or vengeful as in Haditha. Imagine what we have done to the Iraqi people, tortured by Saddam for years, then released from three decades of his bloody rule only to find their hope stolen from them and a new terror unleashed.
It’s WWIII, and U.S. is out of ideas
Last week’s headlines prove the point: North Korea fires missiles, Iran talks of nukes again, Iraq carnage continues, Israel invades Gaza, England observes one-year anniversary of subway bombing. And, oh, yes, the feds stop a plot to blow up tunnels under the Hudson River.
World War III has begun.
It’s not perfectly clear when it started. Perhaps it was after the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. Perhaps it was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993.
What is clear is that this war has a long fuse and, while we are not in the full-scale combat phase that marked World Wars I and II, we seem to be heading there. The expanding hostilities mean it’s time to give this conflict a name, one that focuses the mind and clarifies the big picture.
The war on terror, or the war of terror, has tentacles that reach much of the globe. It is a world war.
While it is often a war of loose or no affiliation, and sometimes just amateur copycats, the similar goals of destruction add up to a threat against modern society. Even the hapless wanna-bes busted in Miami ordered guns and military equipment from a man they thought was from Al Qaeda. Islamic fascists are the driving force, but anti-American hatred is a global membership card for any and all who have a grievance and a gun.
The feeling that the wheels are coming off the world has only one recent comparison, the time when America’s head-butt with communism sprouted hot spots from Cuba to Vietnam. Yet ultimately the policy of mutual assured destruction worked because American and Soviet leaders didn’t want their countries hit by nuclear bombs.
Such rational thinking is quaint next to the ravings of North Korean nut Kim Jong Il and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They both seem to be dying to die – and set the world on fire.
And don’t forget Osama Bin Laden’s declaration that it is the duty of every Muslim to acquire a “Muslim bomb.” Is there any doubt he would use it if he had it?
I sound pessimistic because I am. Even worse than the problems is the fact that our political system is failing us. Democratic Party leaders want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine, while President Bush is out of ideas. Witness Bush now counseling patience and diplomacy on North Korea. This from a man who scorned both for five years.
But what choice does he have now that the pillars of his post-9/11 foreign policy are crumbling? As Harvard Prof. Joseph Nye argues in Foreign Affairs magazine, Bush’s strategy of “reducing Washington’s reliance on permanent alliances and international institutions, expanding the traditional right of preemption into a new doctrine of preventive war and advocating coercive democratization as a solution to Middle Eastern terrorism” amounted to a bid for a “legacy of transformation.”
The first two ideas have been repealed. The third brought Hamas into power and has so far failed to take root in Iraq or anywhere else.
I believed Iraq was the key, that if we prevailed there, momentum would shift in our favor. Now I’m not sure. We still must prevail there, but Iraq could mean nothing if Iran or Bin Laden get the bomb or North Korea uses one.
Meanwhile, I’m definitely not using any tunnels.
