POLL: The repercussions of a US attack on Iraq

Strains of war test the allies

By David Charter, Tom Baldwin and Michael Evans

British dismay at US checkpoint killings


TENSIONS between Britain and the US over the conduct of the Iraq war were growing last night as British commanders voiced their dismay at American soldiers’ heavy-handed tactics.

The strains burst into the open after US troops fired on a civilian vehicle, killing the driver, hours after seven Iraqi women and children were shot dead at a checkpoint. An Apache helicopter was also said to have blown up a lorry, killing 15 members of a single family, yesterday.

Such killings highlighted a series of military and political differences that senior British government sources say are creating “hairline cracks in the relationship”.

The military relationship has been strained by “friendly fire” deaths, an incident in which a Royal Marine commander complained that US troops endangered his men, and the Americans’ general attitude to the Iraqi population.

Politically, the allies have been at odds over the treatment of prisoners of war, plans for postwar Iraq and the Middle East peace process. Britain has also been dismayed by Donald Rumsfeld’s threatening noises towards Iran and Syria.

Monday’s checkpoint shootings were seen as a disaster for the coalition’s efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds. Asked if they undermined attempts to court the local population, Colonel Chris Vernon, a British army spokesman, replied: “It does indeed, and if you were a civilian watching that you would interpret it in that way.”

The difference in approach was epitomised yesterday when the Royal Marines in four southern Iraqi towns swapped their helmets for berets as a sign of goodwill. American troops wear helmets at all times and checkpoint troops cover their faces with goggles and scarves.

US commanders are also said to have instructed their troops to adopt tougher tactics to weed out militiamen. “Everyone is now seen as a combatant until proven otherwise,” one Pentagon official is reported as saying before Monday’s checkpoint shooting.

British military sources spoke at length about the hard-won experience of UK troops from manning checkpoints and policing in Northern Ireland. “There is no doubt that with that experience, as well as in peace support operations in countries such as Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, the British have learnt the art of restraint,” one source said.

“The Americans have got a more blanket approach to things,” said another. “You will never see their Marines wandering around in berets. They still wear hard helmets in Bosnia. You have got to be very careful you do not win the battle and lose the war. We have to be sensitive and we do not want to build up any resentment in the country.”

A senior American officer involved in war planning acknowledged yesterday that the US had misjudged the mood of the Iraqi people. “There is the information/psychological front that we try to push but we are probably not as sophisticated about it as we want to be,” he said. “There is a big cultural difference between the United States and the Arab world that makes it hard.

“Are we getting the message across to the educated people? We are. But to the people that want to be moved by the emotion and believe that there are no good motives and think that the United States are here for oil and only for oil, we have got to get the message across better.”

Tensions between the two countries’ forces had already surfaced after the deaths of three British servicemen in two “friendly fire” incidents after which one survivor accused an American A10 pilot of showing no regard for human life. A Royal Marine commander also accused the Americans of abandoning his men during a joint operation in southern Iraq on the first night of the war.

Further differences have emerged over the treatment of prisoners of war — though government sources said last night that Washington had now promised that all would be given the protection of the Geneva Convention.

But the Middle East is potentially the most divisive issue. Tony Blair has staked huge amounts of political capital to secure President Bush’s reluctant backing for implementing a new “road map” for the peace process to rebuild relations with Arab countries.

A key prime ministerial adviser said yesterday that if Mr Bush failed to fulfil his promises, that would represent a “significant breach which would change things in the future”. He added: “There are always stresses and strains in the structure of this relationship. There is no rift, but we are beginning to see hairline cracks.”


Children killed in US assault

Horrifically injured bodies were heaped into pick-up trucks, and were swarmed by relatives of the dead, who accompanied them for burial.

Bed after bed of injured women and children were pictured along with large pools of blood on the floor of the hospital.

"All of these are due to the American bombing to the civilian homes. Hundreds of civilians have been injured, and many have been killed," said Nazim al-Adali, an Edinburgh-trained doctor at the hospital, who appealed to his "colleagues" in England to protest against the bombings.

"God take our revenge on America," a stunned man said repeatedly at the hospital. Hospital staff said the man's whole family was wiped out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927890,00.html

 

Has Tony Blair made Britain a pariah state?

The Prime Minister's attachment to the United States, and his own moral case for war, has damaged Britain's reputation across the world. How can the diplomatic damage be repaired?

Mark Leonard
Sunday March 30, 2003

The images of protestors burning British flags across the world last week signalled the start of a new diplomatic era of isolation and hostility unknown since the days when Maggie bestrode the planet wielding her handbag.

The tragedy for Prime Minister Tony Blair is that by following his convictions he has destroyed each of the foreign policy pillars that defined his worldview. He had a foreign policy that was based on the international rule of law, European engagement, and engaging the Americans in a progressive project for international community. Today he must face the facts: by exercising his incredible willpower to do the right thing, he has ended up in exactly the wrong place.

People I speak to from Sweden to South Africa warn that Blair is now widely seen as an American poodle who puts power politics above international law. A Saudi journalist describes the exasperation: "The British are trying to be more royalist than the king. It's worse than Guam, and that's a US territory." A South African who knows Mbeki well, warns: "I've detected a major realignment, among those in power in South Africa, away from Tony and towards Jacques. We feel that Chirac is 'someone we can do business with'. Let's go for the cynical bastard who wants to rape us rather than the missionary who wants to save us". Even in sympathetic European countries the outlook is bleak: a confidant of the Swedish Prime Minister fears that they will have trouble working with Britain "now that you have put your relationship with the Americans above international law".

In short, the political capital and respect that was so hard won - and so vital to the success of Blair's global strategy - in the years after 1997 has all but dissipated. So how can the diplomatic damage be repaired?

First, the European dilemma: how do we avoid being seen as "roast beef-eating war monkeys" on the margins of importance? While we were trying to re-order the world, Jacques Chirac was busy vying for leadership of Europe. Chirac may have upset "New Europe" with his offensive language, but we must not delude ourselves into thinking that it is the French who are isolated. No other centre-left party in the European Union shares the position of the Blair Government. Even the right-wing governments of Berlusconi and Aznar that supported US diplomacy have not committed any troops. The French and Belgians are already planning an inner core to co-operate on defence and other areas - leaving us on the outer fringes. The danger is of Blair becoming a leader with both hands tied behind his back - unable to act in the economic realm because of his "euro problem", excluded from the political realm by his "American problem".

Second, the transatlantic relationship. Far from being a bridge between America and the rest of the world Britain is seen by many as a shadowy continuation of a "rogue superpower" - subject to all the resentment which the toxic cocktail of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Richard Perle have stirred up. Blair's principled attempts to multilateralise America are too subtle to be picked up by foreign publics and medias - who see him as simply falling into the template of knee-jerk support for the United States established by Thatcher's support for the Libyan bombings. This perception is not simply damaging to British interests - it is also unhelpful to America. As one seasoned British diplomat remarked to me: "The Americans have been trying to trade on our credibility in the world. But we don't have any to give - we need it all for ourselves".

Finally, the transition from selfish Little England to ethical internationalist has been set back. In Blair's first term he sought to undo the worst memories of unprincipled foreign policy with an appeal to a vision of an international community. "Beef wars" with Europe gave way to negotiated settlements; memories of Thatcherite support for Apartheid were banished by inviting Mandela to address the UK parliament; the ghost of inaction over Bosnia and Rwanda was laid to rest with swift humanitarian interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Britain placed itself at the forefront of moves to promote an International Criminal Court, rules for intervention in internal conflicts and multilateral regimes on everything from arms control to climate change. And yet, today, we are more likely to be seen as the country that ignored the UN charter and embarked on a new type of war, a pre-emptive strike in defiance of international law and global public opinion.

Even many of those who disagree with a war on Iraq cannot suppress their grudging admiration for Blair's vision, idealism and energy. He is the Labour leader who has come the closest to articulating a vision of the international community which draws on and encapsulates the values of the centre-left. Blair is also a rare creature of his time. Instead of relying on narrow calls for national interest, he has always managed to frame his principles in a universal language which could touch people across the world.

Yet Blair now faces his biggest challenge so far: rebuilding an international policy that it is in tatters - not because he has consciously abandoned it, but because it has become a casualty of events. Blair realises that the first step is to reassert his attachment to principle and his independence from the United States by driving through a just peace in Iraq, as in Palestine, even if that may mean bloodying American noses along the way.

http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,925519,00.html

 

No. And the only pariah here is msfe/wild/+aliases.

 

I doubt Msfe or any of his friends will be burning flags after paying for them out of their own pocket.

The obvious explanation for the flag burning is that some (union or some other leftist organisation is paying for them.

I just cannot imagine an ordinary person paying say $ 100 to
$ 200 for a flag only to then see his or her money go up into smoke in a minute or so.

Even Msfe's friends couldn't be so stupid or motivated if you like.

freealways

 

Brethren of all political persuasions... I enjoy reading your mass debating (try saying "mass debating fast", ROFL)...

Love,
Candle

 

Excerpts from an interview on German TV (April 3):

QUESTION: There is now the big question about the U.N.’s role in the future of Iraq. We have heard the word about the ‘emerging consensus.’ That sounds very nice. But Germany and others clearly want to have the U.N. in the driver’s seat, in control, in the leading the role. This is not what you intend, or is it?

SECRETARY POWELL: We don’t know what the role exactly will be of the U.N. yet, and it is premature to start describing it as being a central role, or in the driver’s seat, not in the driver’s seat, because it suggests you are excluding someone else when you say it that way. The U.N. must be a partner in this effort. The U.N. will have a major role to play. And we will be working with our colleagues in the coalition, and our colleagues within NATO, within the European Union and especially with the Secretary General, who will have something to say about this, with respect with the exact role to be played by the U.N. The role of the U.N. will ultimately be determined by the Security Council resolutions that are passed, authorizing the role. So there will be discussions and no doubt there will be debate in New York as to what authorities are required and what the role of the U.N. should be. So this is the beginning of a dialogue -- not the beginning of a fight, the beginning of a dialogue -- to determine what the appropriate role is.

But as I said, and I’ve said this several times, the coalition that went in, that was willing to put at risk its young men and women, and lost lives, paid a great amount of money to conduct this campaign and also paid a political price for this campaign as well. We are committed to making sure that that sacrifice and that investment is not lost. We believe we have to play a very significant, perhaps a leading role, in order to make sure what replaces this corrupt, rotten regime is a democratic system that is responsive to the needs of its people and will reflect all of the people of Iraq, and will use the treasure of Iraq, its oil, to invest in the people and not invest in weapons of mass destruction.

QUESTION: I hear what you are saying. What many people in Europe will hear, through your words, is this is how the new partition of labor will be: America is looking for its Allies, is going its course with or without Allies, any number that’s available, and be it zero. And then the U.N.’s role is to go in as a good Samaritan and clean up the mess. That’s all they can do. America is already looking at its next destination.

SECRETARY POWELL: That’s absurd. It’s an absurd, simplistic, shorthand response to what people think we’re doing. In fact, we went to the U.N. in the first place with respect to this problem. It was a problem that belonged to the U.N. for twelve years -- this terrible regime that tortures its people, that developed weapons of mass destruction, that used them against its own people and then invaded its neighbors on two occasions. And we finally said to the United Nations, “If you would be relevant, if the international community would be relevant, we must deal with this.”

This is not a regime that will simply roll over and play dead. It will fight back. It will try to avoid consequences. So we got a very strong resolution passed. Unanimously. Fifteen to zero. And when it became clear to a number of members of the Security Council that it was time to apply those serious consequences, we took it back to the U.N. And the U.N. said, “Well, can’t agree on this.”

But 1441 made it clear – it was more than sufficient authority. Now there were some members of the Council who said, “We’ll veto anything.” And there were others of us who felt we must move forward. We must remove this danger to the world. Especially this regime that developed weapons of mass destruction and might actually allow some of these weapons to fall in the hands of terrorists. We will not apologize for this. We believe that we did what is right and we recognize that there is a great deal of opinion, especially in Europe, that thinks this was not the right approach. But I hope we will change this opinion, when everybody sees that after this conflict we’re not leaving it to be swept up by the United Nations. We are going to work with the United Nations and work with the international community. And guess who will be the major contributor, who will pay the most money to help the Iraqi people to get back on their feet? It will be the United States, as always.

....The people of Kuwait were happy with their rulers. Iraq said we don’t care, we’re invading. We restored Kuwait to its rulers - its rightful rulers – and let them find their transition into a democratic form of government, as their people choose.

We went to Kosovo, another very controversial war, in order to save Muslims, in order to protect Muslims. And we went to Afghanistan in order to deal with the terrorist threat that had caused such destruction in the Untied States on 9/11.

And what have we done? Have we decided to make Afghanistan an American colony? No. We spent a huge amount of money and we are putting our young men and women on the line, every day, to put in place a form of government that was decided upon by the Afghan people. And we are helping them to rebuild and reconstruct their society. That pattern is the American pattern. We’re very proud of it. It’s been repeated many times over, and it will be repeated again in Iraq.

Check it all out at:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/19363.htm

 

I'm not a conservative or Republican, but I must admit I admire Powell. He's one of the bright lights.

g

 

Headlines on Debka file :

>>French, German, Russian leaders get together with UN Secretary in St. Petersburg Saturday to plan concerted bid for role and contracts in Iraq’s post-war reconstruction<<

My oh my, the boys are taking an interest in Iraq after all.


freealways

 

'A picture of killing inflicted on a sprawling city - and it grew more unbearable by the minute'

Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
Wednesday April 9, 2003

Death's embrace gave the bodies intimacies they never knew in life. Strangers, bloodied and blackened, wrapped their arms around others, hugging them close.

A man's hand rose disembodied from the bottom of the heap of corpses to rest on the belly of a man near the top. A blue stone in his ring glinted as an Iraqi orderly opened the door of the morgue, admitting daylight and the sound of a man's sobs to the cold silence within.

Here were just some of the results of America's progress through Saddam Hussein's dominions yesterday, an advance that obliterated the symbols of his regime at the same time as it claimed to be liberating its people.

These were mere fragments in a larger picture of killing, flight, and destruction inflicted on a sprawling city of 5 million. And it grew more unbearable by the minute.

In two adjoining stalls of the casualty ward of Kindi hospital, the main trauma centre of eastern Baghdad, a girl, long black plait held off her forehead by a red Alice band, was laid out beside her little brother. Their mother lay across the aisle, beige dress soaked in blood from hem to armpits. Another brother slumped on the floor, insensible to the fact that he was sitting in his mother's blood.

A neighbour who had followed the family to hospital said the girl had been called Noor Sabah and was 12 years old, though she looked smaller next to the doctors who surged into the examining cubicle. Her brother, Abdel Khader, who began the day neatly dressed in dark trousers and a check shirt, was four or five. When their two small corpses were loaded on to the same trolley to take them to the morgue, even the nurses were reduced to tears.

The elderly female orderlies who had been constantly lugging blood-encrusted trolleys back and forth to the ambulances and battered cars that pulled up at the gates wailed until they were hoarse, and thumped their pain out on the walls.

The doctors turned to watch the small bodies pass, the best they could offer by way of a ceremony, and abandoned the mother, Wael Sabah, on her trolley. "She's fatal," said one. The doctors could do no more than watch her die.

The Sabah family, in their home in the eastern Baladiyat district, had been as far as they could possibly be from the focus of American operations yesterday and still be in Baghdad. A neighbour leaning heavily against a grubby, tiled wall said their home had been hit by a rocket fired from a low-flying American aircraft. Nobody was certain of the details, and they would not change anything anyway for the head of the family, who wept in a doctor's arms outside. Only one thing was clear: nowhere was safe.

On the western banks of the Tigris river American forces began reasserting their mastery over Baghdad before dawn yesterday, with several concussive explosions announcing their presence in President Saddam's preserves.

At dawn truckloads of Iraqi fighters - a few regular soldiers among the militiamen - had dared a counterattack on the compound of President Saddam's palace, which had been seized by American forces on Monday and occupied overnight.

The Americans clearly had been expecting them, or had their own plans to expand their base in central Baghdad from the palace and the Rashid Hotel, which commands sweeping views of the area. This time, with tanks and covered by low-flying aircraft, the US forces were determined to tear deeper into the heart of the city.

As thick black smoke swirled out of at least six separate pyres, and amid a barrage of mortar and artillery fire, the US forces moved northwards along the river embankment and a parallel road. They moved past the grounds of the palace to offices of the Republican Guard, the force under the command of President Saddam's second son and heir, Qusay, which had been pounded on an almost nightly basis for two weeks.

Nothing was safe in their path. At 7am a correspondent from al-Jazeera television was killed by two rockets fired on the local bureau of the Arab satellite network, cutting him down live on camera.

Certainly, the Iraqi militiamen and the remnants of the Republican Guard and the regular army would have encountered no mercy. Only a day before they had waved and made V-signs to passersby from their small positions on the main road off the bridge. They were underarmed, and were pitifully exposed in their small sandbag posts, but they had seemed resolved to fight.

By 9am yesterday they must have fled or been killed as wave after wave of A-10 aircraft swooped overhead, pulverising the entire western bank of the Tigris with heavy machine gun fire. At one point a few dozen Iraqi fighters dived for the river and swam upstream, others scurried into the reeds along the bank. And still it did not stop.

By 9.30am two Abrams tanks loomed into view on Jumhuriya (Republic) bridge, one of the principal spans of central Baghdad, turrets spitting fire and devastation on the Iraqi positions, and on at least one car foolish enough to venture on to the bridge from the eastern shore.

By mid-morning the centre of the Iraqi capital was effectively split in two: the western bank of the Tigris, with its modern neighbourhoods and broad, tank-friendly roads, was under American control.

On the eastern side of the river, shabbier now, but still the repository of Arab history as the site of medieval Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers and militiamen sealed off three bridges that cross the heart of the city with concrete blocks and lorries.

Accepting US supremacy west of the Tigris, they tried to hang on to the eastern shore.

But it seemed futile. By mid-day the tanks on the Jumhuriya bridge were firing on both sides of the river.

They targeted a telephone exchange on the eastern side and fired on a multi-storey hotel at least a mile away, the Palestine, home to the contingent of foreign journalists.

A Reuters television cameraman was killed as he filmed them from his balcony on the 15th floor. Three other staff from the news agency were injured, one seriously, and a cameraman for a Spanish channel was killed.

As it had from the outset of this war, America had absolute control over the skies. Fighter planes prowled low overhead, attacking the eastern, southern and northern suburbs. In one surreal moment two rockets travelled the length of Sadoon Street, a main artery on the east side of the river, flying at about 20 metres.

The amount of firepower deployed, and its duration - with only intermittent pauses from dawn to dusk yesterday - was almost beyond belief. So too were the results as the Iraqi regime began to enter its death throes.

Even on the eastern banks of the river, the city came to a halt, with little evidence of the presence of the millions of Iraqis who normally live there, beyond the accumulating piles of rubbish in the largely deserted streets. Teashops and cigarette kiosks, the last preserves of commerce in a shocked and battered city, were shut.

The militiamen who had swarmed the area only a few days ago, toting their assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades over their shoulders, melted away. The army trucks which had sheltered beneath palm trees and highway overpasses vanished, as did the heavy gun emplacements.

The only sign of motion came from the dreary trickle of civilians heading for safety. They had withstood the bombardments for more than a fortnight, and had been without electricity and phones for nearly a week, and they could take no more. They packed up whatever they could carry and made their way out of the city on foot.

Over at Kindi hospital, doctors had already passed their own point of exhaustion. By mid-afternoon all 12 operating theatres were in action, and still the wounded and dead kept coming in.

The doctors tried to maintain their clinical detachment, reeling off the kinds of injuries they were seeing - burnt faces, disembowelled torsos, fractured limbs and skulls, bodies coated with an all-over glaze of blood. They spoke about the technical difficulties of operating with fitful generators, and with their limited stocks of surgical and other supplies. They attempted to put a figure on the daily death toll - four or five, they said.

But there had been perhaps 15 bodies packed together in just one of the refrigerated containers at the back of the hospital, and a constant ebb and flow of orderlies wheeling the dead to the morgue and families collecting them for the speedy burial dictated by Muslim custom. As with the flow of casualties, too fast and too many to accurately count, it became too much for the doctors. They were overwhelmed.

"This is severely traumatic," said Osama Salah, the director of medical services.

"It is very difficult to a see a child lying in front of you and I have seen three children.

"I keep seeing the faces of my own children in these children. It could be my kid. It could be my cousin, and still the Americans continue, and they don't stop."

 

Baron, forget trading, charge these guys by the line for all non-original thought. You'll make a fortune.