1) More Blood, More Chaos
** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
November 21, 2004
2) In Defense of Unity: The following letter is in response
to a number of serious redbaiting attacks on ANSWER and
other Socialists involved in the antiwar movement from some
people on the UFPJ discussion list. One from
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, printed below, started the debate.
It couldn't have come at a worse time. A time when
overwhelming unity against this war is demanded of all of us.
Also printed below are the wise comments of Carlos Rovira that
I was inspired by.
Bonnie Weinstein, BAUAW
3) The Crushing of Fallujah
By JAMES PETRAS (from Counterpunch)
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/303902.shtml
4) In Falluja, Young Marines Saw the Savagery of an Urban War
By DEXTER FILKINS
FALLUJA, Iraq
November 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21battle.html?hp&
ex=1101099600&en=bc339766506f30ca&ei=5094&partner=homepage
5) Iraq Schedules National Elections for Jan. 30
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1101099600&en=a67b1fd95bdf31f7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
e>
6) Booming prison numbers prompt reexamination of harsh sentencing
MARK SCOLFORO
HARRISBURG, Pa.
Associated Press
Posted on Sat, Nov. 20, 2004
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/10233361.htm
7) Soaring Interest Compounds Credit Card Pain for Millions
THE PLASTIC TRAP
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
This article was reported by Patrick McGeehan, Lowell Bergman,
Robin Stein and Marlena Telvick and written by Mr. McGeehan.
November 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/business/21cards-web.html?hp&ex=1101099600
&en=70effacd11d42b21&ei=5094&partner=homepage
8) MSNBC 'Imus' Segment Refers to 'Raghead Cadaver'
Muslims urged to renew demand for apology, reprimand
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/19/04)
http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=203&page=AA
9) Holiday in Falluja
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 2:03 PM
hEkLe Falluja, Iraq www.ftssoldier.blogspot.com
10) Fate of Lawyer in Terror Case Hinges on Sheik's Words
By JULIA PRESTON
November 14, 2004
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/1706139.php
11) Government Looking at Military Draft Lists
By ALMA WALZER
The Monitor
McALLEN, November 15, 2004
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ts_more.php?id=62232_0_10_0_C
12) 47 Parties Boycott Elections in Iraq
Xinhua News Agency (China)
November 17, 2004
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-11/17/content_2230350.htm
13) Greenspan Sees No Rise Soon for the Dollar
By MARK LANDLER
FRANKFURT
November 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/business/20greenspan.html
14) US soldiers in Iraq suffer horrific brain and mental injuries
By Rick Kelly
20 November 2004
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/sold-n20.shtml
15) Troops Round Up Corpses, Weapons in Fallouja
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Their operation in the city has shifted to cleanup and
rebuilding, amid sporadic fighting.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer
November 19, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-fallouja19nov19,1,370254
6.story
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) More Blood, More Chaos
** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
November 21, 2004
In Ramadi today 6 civilians were killed in clashes between the
resistance and military.
The military sealed the city, closing all the roads while announcing
over loudspeakers for residents in the city to hand over "terrorists."
A man, woman and child died when the public bus they were riding in
approached a US checkpoint there when they were riddled with bullets
from anxious soldiers. A military spokesman said the bus was shot
because it didn't stop when they asked it to.
The city remains sealed by US forces as fierce clashes sporadically
erupt across the area while the military decides how to handle yet
another resistance controlled.
As the mass graves in Fallujah continue to be filled with countless
corpses, sporadic fighting flashes throughout areas of the destroyed
battleground.
"The Americans want every city in Iraq to be like Fallujah," said
Abdulla Rahnan, a 40 year-old man on the street where I was taking tea
not far from my hotel, "They want to kill us all-they are freeing us of
our lives!"
His friend, remaining nameless, added, "Everyone here hates them because
they are making mass graves faster than even Saddam!"
I never tell people I interview I am from America. I tell them I am
Canadian of Lebanese descent-which is close enough since I am from
Alaska. With this information, I am always greeted warmly, invited to
meals and to spend the night wherever I go. Arab culture continues to
impress me as the most beautiful, warm, civilized culture of any I've
experienced in all of my travels.
But as Abu Talat told me the other day when I asked him what he though
about going to Ramadi or Fallujah, "Sure Dahr, we can go-but not until
you get a steel neck!"
He laughs his deep laugh, and I fake a laugh with him while peering out
my car window.
After conducting other interviews during the day, Salam and I are in my
room working on a radio dispatch. As we begin recording, his cell phone
and my room phone ring simultaneously.
He gets news of another friend who has been shot by soldiers, while I am
told by Abu Talat that al-Adhamiya is under a 6pm curfew as the military
begins house to house searches. His frustrated voice tells me his wife
and boys are afraid as he speaks above helicopters thumping the air over
his home.
Over in Sadr City, the military are now sealing off neighborhoods doing
home searches as well-this after having agreed to a deal with Sadr's
Mehdi Army the fighters turned in many of their weapons and agreed to a
truce. Last night a small boy was shot there because he was out after
curfew.
Lieutenant-General Lance Smith, deputy US commander of the region of the
Middle East that includes Iraq, announced that his command might be
asking for 3-5,000 more troops for Iraq.
This goal will most likely be attained by delaying the already scheduled
departure of soldiers already here, and was announced at about the same
time that the commander for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in
Fallujah, Lieutenant-General John Sattler said that he believed the
assault on Fallujah had "broken the back of the insurgency."
Refugees from Fallujah have yet to be allowed to return to their city.
One of my friends here works on the election commission for Iraq-he
stopped by tonight laughing at the new date which has been set for the
election of January 30th. "They have this new date for their rigged
elections," he rolls his eyes, "And nobody in Iraq believes their
propaganda. Elections? Here? I don't know anyone who will vote. Perhaps
the entire country can vote absentee for reason of car bomb!"
He and I were interviewed on a radio program this evening-while I was
listening to commercials waiting to come back on, I laugh to myself as
one of the advertisements is for folks to trade in their old Hummer for
a new one with low financing!
This against the backdrop of the show, where my friend and I had shared
stories with the host and callers of death in the streets, Iraqi outrage
over the failed occupation and other love stories from Iraq.
Meanwhile, more oil facilities are sabotaged in the north, the "Green
Zone" takes more mortars, and the usual gunfire is audible over the
generators running out my window.
You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or
unsubscribe to the email list.
Or, you can unsubscribe by sending an email to
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http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) In Defense of Unity: The following letter is in response
to a number of serious redbaiting attacks on ANSWER and
other Socialists involved in the antiwar movement from some
people on the UFPJ discussion list. One from
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, printed below, started the debate.
It couldn't have come at a worse time. A time when
overwhelming unity against this war is demanded of all of us.
Also printed below are the wise comments of Carlos Rovira that
I was inspired by.
Bonnie Weinstein, BAUAW
Dear fellow antiwar activists,
What takes precedence over all right now is the bloody devastation
this government is bringing to the people of Iraq. What is first and
foremost for the American antiwar movement is the obligation we have
to make our movement huge--to bring together all those who oppose this
war inside the belly of this most ferocious beast.
Opposition to this war is the common thread we all agree upon. History
demands that we, who are already organized into this movement, come
together and act in unison and LEAD A CALL FOR UNITY. The future of
the planet demands this of us.
There is no room for red-baiting or any propaganda that will divide
instead of unite. That is the ongoing job of the warmongers--to
divide and conquer. Now is the time to put aside our differences.
The world will want to protest the inauguration of this warmonger
and the "2nd anniversary" of the declaration of war against Iraq.
We have had a series of National demonstrations--the Democratic
National Convention, the Republican convention, the Million Worker
March. What we don't have is a united grassroots movement based in
cities and towns across the country--even though there is obviously
tremendous sentiment against this war festering and waiting to be
unleashed.
There are antiwar groups all over. But each of us is "doing our
own thing." There is nothing wrong with "doing your own thing"
routinely. What is criminal is if we refuse to act in unison when
it is necessary. Now is the time!
How much more bloodshed will it take to convince folks that this
is necessary.
Every petty delay in the call for nationally unified actions gives
this bi-partisan government the mandate to continue to escalate their
terror on the world.
Every delay in unity by the current leaders of the movement gives
this bi-partisan government the impression that they can carry their
war over to Iran, Korea, Cuba, Venezuela--to escalate this war and
take it to wherever opposition to the U.S. oil-grab is growing.
The entire world is waiting and watching for what the American people
are going to do about their government. The world is demanding that
we act.
On inauguration day all the cities and towns across this country
will see thousands of angry protesters in the streets in massive
opposition to this war no matter who calls the demonstration.
Coordinated, unified, national demonstrations throughout the country
could give the antiwar movement the chance to reach out to all those
opposed to the war and bring them into grassroots working groups
with ties to a unified, national movement to bring the troops home
now--no matter which group they belong to. This is the idea behind
a United Front. This is the power of a United Front.
In San Francisco, we proved that the majority of the people want
to bring the troops home now. Our referendum won with 63.9% percent
of the vote--a wide margin.
The antiwar movement in our city, for sure, has a mandate to
organize and act in unity.
Suggestions such as Arthur Wascow's (see his email reprinted below)
to demonstrate the day before inauguration day in order not to
demonstrate with ANSWER is, in my opinion, profoundly shameful‹
criminal, in fact, since it's redbaiting--something that should
have ended with McCarthy. All such divisive speech should be viewed
as actions benefiting the warmongers and should be reviled by the
movement.
The truth is self-evident. Tens of thousands have demonstrated in
this country and throughout the world in demonstrations called by
ANSWER, UFPJ, Not In Our Name and by many other small groups and
large groups. In other words, demonstrators have been acting in
unity in spite of the differences and fights for hegemony within
the leadership of the movement.
The people who are opposed to this war throughout the world have
voted with their feet for unity many times over.
When will the "leadership" catch up to the people of the world who
say, "BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!"?
Yours for peace and solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War
......................................
On 11/21/04 6:13 AM, "Carlos Rovira"
Dear Hany and everyone
The issue here IS NOT ANSWER or the
ANSWER demonstration condemning the Bush
inauguration. Entities like UFPJ have
a right to decide with whom they unite
or not unite at given times. ANSWER,
like UFPJ, has its problems, but ANSWER is
not the enemy, unless that is what is
being said here (?).
My question is - what do you all propose
instead? Enough with the anti-ANSWER
language because it is redolent of
anti-communism, a pillar of the Bush
doctrine, which I will most definitely
NOT remain quiet about.
Respectfully,
Carlos Rovira - "Carlito"
........................................
From Rabbi Arthur Waskow:
Present counter-inaugural plans for Washington on Jan. 20
are liable to turn into a zoo that hurts, rather than
strengthens, the anti-war movement, particularly if they
are (as now seems likely) dominated by ANSWER and if they
bring down extreme security controls.
What about combining a mass march in Washington the day before
Jan 19 -- on the model of the mass march in NYC the day
before the Republican Natl Convention that does not have
an endless boring rally (at the time because we could not
get a rally permit; in retrospect, I think, a blessing) --
FOLLOWED BY doing a REAL "counter-inaugural" on January 20
that is, an Inauguration of a continuing Opposition movement
--a riff on the "Social Forum" form as was created during the
National Conventions four years ago, an eclectic mix of progressive
intellectual & political & cultural leaders in and out of the
Democratic Party with a major gathering of people OUTSIDE WASHINGTON Â
maybe in the Maryland suburbs? or Baltimore?
Could such a People's Inaugural bring together a People's Cabinet
with people like Ariana Huffington, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich,
Jesse Jackson Sr & Jr., Ralph Nader, Maxine Waters, Howard Zinn,
Julian Bond plus ideally some of the music stars that campaigned
against Bush? Could it include interactive Internet and
alternative-radio/ TV coverage around the country so people
off the East Coast could take part?
The Jan 19 event could create media buzz as the pre-convention
march in NYC did, without trapping us in ANSWER-like politics
and in street vandal acting-out (both likely on Jan 20), and
then a much richer political/intellectual/cultural event on
Jan 20 could actually advance our political vision and cohesion.
Shalom, Arthur
Rabbi Arthur Waskow directs The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice I
n Jewish, multireligious, and American life. To subscribe to The
Shalom Report (weekly on-line newsletter) and for a wealth of
information on social action and its spiritual roots, click to --
http://www.shalomctr.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) The Crushing of Fallujah
By JAMES PETRAS (from Counterpunch)
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/303902.shtml
I am reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a journalist's account
of Nazi political propaganda during the 1930's, as I watch the US
'news' reports of the violent assault on Fallujah. The US mass
media 'reports', the style, content and especially the language
echo their Nazi predecessor of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree.
Coincidence? Of course! In both instances we have imperialist
armies conquering countries, leveling cities and slaughtering
civilians--and the mass media, private in form, state appendages
in practice, disseminate the most outrageous lies, in defense and
praise of the conquering 'storm troopers'--call them SS or Marines.
Both in Nazi Germany and contemporary US, we are told by the mass
media that the invading armies are "freeing the country" of "foreign
fighters", "armed terrorists", who are preventing "the people" from
going about their everyday lives. Yet we know that of the 1,000
prisoners there are only 4 foreigners (3 Iranians and 1 Arab);
Iraqi hospitals report less than 10% of foreign fighters. In other
words over 90% of the fighters are Iraqis--most of who were born,
educated, and raised families in the cities in which they are
fighting.
Like the Nazi media, the major US radio and TV networks only report
what they call "military casualties"--failing to report the civilians
killed since the war started and the thousands of women and children
killed and wounded since the assault of Fallujah began. Like in Nazi
Germany, the US mass media feature unconfirmed reports by the US
military of the bloody murders, beheadings and kidnapping "by the
foreign terrorists". The unconditional support of Nazi/US mass
media of the killing fields is best captured in their reports of
the massive bombing of densely populated city districts. For the
US network NBC, the dropping of 500-pound bombs in the city of
Fallujah is described as targeting an "insurgent tunnel network
in the city". And the houses, markets, stores--the mothers and
children above those tunnels--vaporized into "pink mist". Their
existence never acknowledged by the leading reporters and
broadcasters.
Almost the entire population of non-Kurdish Iraq is opposed to the
US military and its puppet regime--yet the media refer to the
patriots defending their country from the imperial invaders as‹
'insurgents' minimizing the significance of a nation-wide
patriotic liberation movement. One of the most surreal euphemisms
is the constant reference to the 'coalition forces'--meaning the
US colonial conquerors and the mercenaries and satraps that they
direct and control.
The terror bombing of homes, hospitals and religious buildings by
hundreds of airplanes and helicopter gunships are described by
the media as 'securing the city for free elections'.
'Freeing the city of insurgents' includes the systematic murder
of friends, neighbors and relatives of every Iraqi living in the
city of Fallujah.
'Surrounding the insurgents' means cutting off water, electricity,
medical aid for 200,000 civilians in the city and putting tens of
thousands who fled under threat of a typhoid epidemic. 'Pacifying
the city' involves turning it to absolute desolate poisoned rubble.
Why do Washington and the mass media resort to gross, systematic
lying and euphemisms? Basically to reinforce mass support at home
for mass murder in Iraq. The mass media fabricates a web of lies
to secure a gloss of legitimacy for totalitarian methods in order
that the US armed forces continue to destroy cities with impunity.
The technique perfected by Goebbels in Germany and practiced in the
US is to repeat lies and euphemism until they become accepted
'truths', and embedded in everyday language. The mass media by
effectively routinizing a common language implicates the listeners.
The tactical concerns of the Generals, the commanders directing the
slaughter (pacification), and the soldiers murdering civilians are
explained (and consumed by the millions listening and watching) by
the unchallenged authorities to the compliant journalists and famous
news anchors. The unity of purpose between the agents of mass murder
and everyday US public is established via 'news reports': The
soldiers 'paint the names' of their wives and sweethearts on the
tanks and armored vehicles which destroy Iraqi families and turn
Fallujah into ruins. Returning soldiers from Iraq are 'interviewed'
who want to return to 'be with their platoon' and 'wipe out the
terrorists'. Not all of US combat forces experienced the joys of
shooting civilians. Medical studies report that one out of five
returning soldiers are suffering from severe psychological trauma,
no doubt from witnessing or participation in the mass killing of
civilians. The family of one returned soldier, who recently
committed suicide, reported that he constantly referred to his
killing an unarmed child in the streets of Iraq--calling himself
a 'murderer'. Aside from these notable exceptions, the mass
propaganda media practice several techniques, which assuage
the 'conscience' of US soldiers and civilians. One technique
is 'role reversal' to attribute the crimes of the invading
force to the victims: It is not the soldiers who cause destruction
of cities and murder, but the Iraqi families who 'protect the
terrorists' and "bring upon themselves the savage bombardment".
The second technique is to only report US casualties from
'terrorist bombs'--to omit any mention of thousands of Iraqi
civilian killed by US bombs and artillery. Both Nazi and US
propaganda glorify the 'heroism', 'success' of their elite forces
(the SS and the Marines)--in killing 'terrorists' or 'insurgents'
--every dead civilian is counted as a 'suspected terrorist
sympathizer'.
The US and German military have declared every civilian building
a 'storehouse' or 'hiding place' for 'terrorists'--hence the
absolutely total disregard of all the Geneva laws of warfare.
The US and Nazi practice of 'total war' in which whole communities,
neighborhoods and entire cities are collectively guilty of shielding
'wanted terrorists'--is of course the standard operating military
procedure of the Israeli government.
The US publicizes the cruel and unusual punishment of Iraqi 'suspects'
(any male between 14-60 years) taken prisoner: photos appear in Time
and Newsweek of barefoot, blindfolded and bound young men led from
their homes and pushed into trucks to be taken to 'exploitation
centers' for interrogation. For many in the US public these pictures
are part of the success story--they are told these are the 'terrorists'
who would blow up American homes. For the majority who voted for Bush,
the mass propaganda media has taught them to believe that the
extermination of scores of thousands of Iraqi citizens is in their
best interests: they can sleep sound, as long as 'our boys' kill
them 'over there'.
Above all the mass propaganda media has done everything possible
to deny Iraqi national consciousness. Everyday in every way the
reference is to religious loyalties, ethnic identities, past
political labels, 'tribal' and family clans. The purpose is to
divide and conquer, and to present the world with a 'chaotic'
Iraq in which the only coherent, stable force is the US colonial
regime. The purpose of the savage colonial assaults and the
political labeling is to destroy the idea of the Iraqi nation--and
in its place to substitute a series of mini-entities run by
imperial satraps obedient to Washington.
Sunday morning: November 14 .Today Fallujah is being raped and razed,
captured wounded prisoners are shot in the mosques .In New York the mega
malls are crowded with shoppers .
Sunday afternoon: the Marines have blocked food ,water,and medicine
from entering Fallujah..Throughout the US millions of men sit in
front of the television watching football.
Shirer reported that while the Nazis invaded and ravaged Belgium
and bombed Rotterdam.,in Berlin the cafes were full,the symphony
played and people walked their dogs in the park on sunny Sunday
afternoons
Sunday night November 14, 2004, I turn on the television to 60 Minutes
and watch a replay of Mike Wallace's 'interviews' with Yasser Arafat.
Like all US mass media 'stars', he ignores the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon and Sharon's murder of thousands of Palestinians, the
military occupation of Palestine and the wanton destruction of Jenin
and Gaza City. Wallace accuses Arafat of being a liar, a terrorist,
of being corrupt and devious. Thirty million US households watch this
ugly spectacle of a self-righteous Zionist apologist flaunting the
'Western ideals', which are so useful in razing cities, bombing
hospitals and exterminating a nation.
Yes, there are differences between Shirer's account of Nazi propaganda
in defense of the conquest of Europe and the US media's apology for
the invasion of Iraq and Israel's slaughter of the Palestinians: One
is committed in the name of the Fuehrer and the Fatherland, the other
in the name of God and Democracy. Go tell that to the bloated corpses
gnawed by dogs in the ruins of Fallujah.
---------
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University,
New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser
to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of
Globalization Unmasked (Zed). He can be reached at:
jpetras@binghamton.edu
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) In Falluja, Young Marines Saw the Savagery of an Urban War
By DEXTER FILKINS
FALLUJA, Iraq
November 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21battle.html?hp&
ex=1101099600&en=bc339766506f30ca&ei=5094&partner=homepage
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 18 - Eight days after the Americans entered the
city on foot, a pair of marines wound their way up the darkened
innards of a minaret, shot through with holes by an American tank.
As the marines inched upward, a burst of gunfire rang down, fired
by an insurgent hiding in the top of the tower. The bullets hit the
first marine in the face, his blood spattering the marine behind him.
The marine in the rear tumbled backward down the stairwell, while
Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay in silence halfway up,
mortally wounded.
"Miller!" the marines called from below. "Miller!"
With that, the marines' near mystical commandment against leaving
a comrade behind seized the group. One after another, the young marines
dashed into the minaret, into darkness and into gunfire, and wound
their way up the stairs.
After four attempts, Corporal Miller's lifeless body emerged from the
tower, his comrades choking and covered with dust. With more insurgents
closing in, the marines ran through volleys of machine-gun fire back
to their base.
"I was trying to be careful, but I was trying to get him out, you know
what I'm saying?" Lance Cpl. Michael Gogin, 19, said afterward.
So went eight days of combat for this Iraqi city, the most sustained
period of street-to-street fighting that Americans have encountered
since the Vietnam War. The proximity gave the fighting a hellish
intensity, with soldiers often close enough to look their enemies
in the eyes.
For a correspondent who has covered a half dozen armed conflicts,
including the war in Iraq since its start in March 2003, the fighting
seen while traveling with a frontline unit in Falluja was a qualitatively
different experience, a leap into a different kind of battle.
From the first rockets vaulting out of the city as the marines moved
in, the noise and feel of the battle seemed altogether extraordinary;
at other times, hardly real at all. The intimacy of combat, this
plunge into urban warfare, was new to this generation of American
soldiers, but it is a kind of fighting they will probably see again:
a grinding struggle to root out guerrillas entrenched in a city, on
streets marked in a language few American soldiers could comprehend.
The price for the Americans so far: 51 dead and 425 wounded, a number
that may yet increase but that already exceeds the toll from any battle
in the Iraq war.
Marines in Harm's Way
The 150 marines with whom I traveled, Bravo Company of the First
Battalion, Eighth Marines, had it as tough as any unit in the fight.
They moved through the city almost entirely on foot, into the heart
of the resistance, rarely protected by tanks or troop carriers,
working their way through Falluja's narrow streets with 75-pound
packs on their backs.
In eight days of fighting, Bravo Company took 36 casualties, including
6 dead, meaning that the unit's men had about a one-in-four chance of
being wounded or killed in little more than a week.
The sounds, sights and feel of the battle were as old as war itself,
and as new as the Pentagon's latest weapons systems. The eerie pop
from the cannon of the AC-130 gunship, prowling above the city at
night, firing at guerrillas who were often only steps away from
Americans on the ground. The weird buzz of the Dragon Eye pilotless
airplane, hovering over the battlefield as its video cameras beamed r
eal-time images back to the base.
The glow of the insurgents' flares, throwing daylight over a
landscape to help them spot their targets: us.
The nervous shove of a marine scrambling for space along a brick
wall as tracer rounds ricocheted above.
The silence between the ping of the shell leaving its mortar tube
and the explosion when it strikes.
The screams of the marines when one of their comrades, Cpl. Jake
Knospler, lost part of his jaw to a hand grenade.
"No, no, no!" the marines shouted as they dragged Corporal Knospler
from the darkened house where the bomb went off. It was 2 a.m., the
sky dark without a moon. "No, no, no!"
Nothing in the combat I saw even remotely resembled the scenes
regularly flashed across movie screens; even so, they often
seemed no more real.
Mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades began raining down on Bravo
Company the moment its men began piling out of their troop
carriers just outside Falluja. The shells looked like Fourth of
July bottle rockets, sailing over the ridge ahead as if fired by
children, exploding in a whoosh of sparks.
Whole buildings, minarets and human beings were vaporized in barrages
of exploding shells. A man dressed in a white dishdasha crawled across
a desolate field, reaching behind a gnarled plant to hide, when he
collapsed before a burst of fire from an American tank.
Sometimes the casualties came in volleys, like bursts of machine-gun
fire. On the first morning of battle, during a ferocious struggle
for the Muhammadia Mosque, about 45 marines with Bravo Company's
Third Platoon dashed across 40th Street, right into interlocking
streams of fire. By the time the platoon made it to the other side,
five men lay bleeding in the street.
The marines rushed out to get them, as they would days later in the
minaret, but it was too late for Sgt. Lonny Wells, who bled to death
on the side of the road. One of the men who braved gunfire to pull
in Sergeant Wells was Cpl. Nathan Anderson, who died three days
later in an ambush.
Sergeant Wells's death dealt the Third Platoon a heavy blow; as
a leader of one of its squads, he had written letters to the parents
of its younger members, assuring them he would look over them during
the tour in Iraq.
"He loved playing cards," Cpl. Gentian Marku recalled. "He knew all the
probabilities."
More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Company
and quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was a
Bravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski would
sit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40
rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was
big and wide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to
get a better look.
Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of
Bravo Company's most popular soldiers. Unlike most snipers, who
learned to shoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski
grew up near Baltimore, unfamiliar with guns. Though Baltimore boasts
no beach front, Corporal Ziolkowski's passion was surfing; at Camp
Lejeune, N.C., Bravo Company's base, he would often organize his
entire day around the tides.
"All I need now is a beach with some waves," Corporal Ziolkowski
said, during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja's Grand Mosque,
where he killed three men in a single day.
During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death.
The snipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American
soldiers.
In the first battle for Falluja, in April, American snipers had been
especially lethal, Corporal Ziolkowski said, and intelligence
officers had warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.
"They are trying to take us out," Corporal Ziolkowski said.
The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto the roof.
He had been sitting there on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood,
an area controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope.
He had taken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit
him in the head.
Young Men, Heavy Burdens
For all the death about the place, one inescapable impression left
by the marines was their youth. Everyone knows that soldiers are
young; it is another thing to see men barely out of adolescence,
many of whom were still in high school when this war began, shoot
people dead.
The marines of Bravo Company often fought over the packets of M&M's
that came with their rations. Sitting in their barracks, they sang
along with the Garth Brooks paean to chewing tobacco, "Copenhagen,"
named for the brand they bought almost to a man:
Copenhagen, what a wad of flavor
Copenhagen, you can see it in my smile
Copenhagen, hey do yourself a favor, dip
Copenhagen, it drives the cowgirls wild
One of Bravo Company's more youthful members was Cpl. Romulo
Jimenez II, age 21 from Bellington, W.Va.. Cpl. Jimenez spent
much of his time showing off his tattoos - he had flames climbing
up one of his arms - and talking about his 1992 Ford Mustang. He
was a popular member of Bravo Company's Second Platoon, not least
because he introduced his sister to a fellow marine, Lance Cpl.
Sean Evans, and the couple married.
In the days before the battle started, Corporal Jimenez called his
sister, Katherine, to ask that she fix up the interior of his
Mustang before he got home.
"Make it look real nice," he told her.
On Wednesday, Nov. 10, around 2 p.m., Corporal Jimenez was shot
in the neck by a sniper as he advanced with his platoon through
the northern end of Falluja, just near the green-domed Muhammadia
Mosque. He died instantly.
Despite their youth, the marines seemed to tower over their peers
outside the military in maturity and guts. Many of Bravo Company's
best marines, its most proficient killers, were 19 and 20 years old;
some directed their comrades in maneuvers and assaults. Bravo
Company's three lieutenants, each responsible for the lives of
about 50 men, were 23 and 24 years old.
They are a strangely anonymous bunch. The men who fight America's
wars seem invariably to come from little towns and medium-size
cities far away from the nation's arteries along the coast. Line
up a group of marines and ask them where they are from, and they
will give you a list of places like Pearland, Tex.; Lodi, Ohio;
Osawatomie, Kan.
Typical of the marines who fought in Falluja was Chad Ritchie,
a 22-year-old corporal from Keezletown, Va. Corporal Ritchie, a
soft-spoken, bespectacled intelligence officer, said he was happy
to be out of the tiny place where he grew up, though he admitted
that he sometimes missed the good times on Friday nights in the
fields.
"We'd have a bonfire, and back the trucks up on it, and open up
the backs, and someone would always have some speakers," Corporal
Ritchie said. "We'd drink beer, tell stories."
Like many of the young men in Bravo Company, Corporal Ritchie
said he had joined the Marines because he yearned for an
adventure greater than his small town could offer.
"The guys who stayed, they're all living with their parents,
making $7 an hour," Corporal Ritchie said. "I'm not going to be
one of those people who gets old and says, 'I wish I had done
this. I wish I had done that.' Every once in a while, you've got
to do something hard, do something you're not comfortable with.
A person needs a gut check."
Holding Up Under Fire
Marines like Corporal Ritchie proved themselves time and again in
Falluja, but they were not without fear. While camped out one
night in the Iraqi National Guard building in the middle of city,
Bravo Company came under mortar fire that grew closer with each
shot. The insurgents were "bracketing" the building, firing shots
to the left and right of the target and adjusting their fire each
time.
In the hallways, where the men had camped for the night, the
murmured sounds of prayers rose between the explosions. After
20 tries, the shelling inexplicably stopped.
On one particularly grim night, a group of marines from Bravo
Company's First Platoon turned a corner in the darkness and headed
up an alley. As they did so, they came across men dressed in
uniforms worn by the Iraqi National Guard. The uniforms were so
perfect that they even carried pieces of red tape and white, the
signal agreed upon to assure American soldiers that any Iraqis
dressed that way would be friendly; the others could be killed.
The marines, spotting the red and white tape, waved, and the men
in Iraqi uniforms opened fire. One American, Corporal Anderson,
died instantly. One of the wounded men, Pfc. Andrew Russell, lay
in the road, screaming from a nearly severed leg.
A group of marines ran forward into the gunfire to pull their
comrades out. But the ambush, and the enemy flares and gunfire
that followed, rattled the men of Bravo Company more than any
event. In the darkness, the men began to argue. Others stood
around in the road. As the platoon's leader, Lt. Andy Eckert,
struggled to take charge, the Third Platoon seemed on the brink
of panic.
"Everybody was scared," Lieutenant Eckert said afterward. "If
the leader can't hold, then the unit can't hold together."
The unit did hold, but only after the intervention of Bravo
Company's commanding officer, Capt. Read Omohundro.
Time and again through the week, Captain Omohundro kept his
men from folding, if not by his resolute manner then by his
calmness under fire. In the first 16 hours of battle, when the
combat was continuous and the threat of death ever present,
Captain Omohundro never flinched, moving his men through the
warrens and back alleys of Falluja with an uncanny sense of
space and time, sensing the enemy, sensing the location of his
men, even in the darkness, entirely self-possessed.
"Damn it, get moving," Captain Omohundro said, and his men,
looking relieved that they had been given direction amid the
anarchy, were only too happy to oblige.
A little later, Captain Omohundro, a 34-year-old Texan, allowed
that the strain of the battle had weighed on him, but he said
that he had long ago trained himself to keep any self-doubt
hidden from view.
"It's not like I don't feel it," Captain Omohundro said. "But
if I were to show it, the whole thing would come apart."
When the heavy fighting was finally over, a dog began to follow
Bravo Company through Falluja's broken streets. First it lay
down in the road outside one of the buildings the company had
occupied, between troop carriers. Then, as the troops moved on,
the mangy dog slinked behind them, first on a series of house
searches, then on a foot patrol, always keeping its distance,
but never letting the marines out of its sight.
Bravo Company, looking a bit ragged itself as it moved up
through Falluja, momentarily fell out of its single-file line.
"Keep a sharp eye," Captain Omohundro told his men. "We ain't
done with this war yet."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Iraq Schedules National Elections for Jan. 30
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1101099600&en=a67b1fd95bdf31f7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 - The Electoral Commission of Iraq said
today it has set Jan. 30 for the national elections, according
to news agency reports.
The announcement was made after violence surged through central
and northern Iraq on Saturday as a tenacious insurgency led by Sunni
Arabs kept up relentless assaults in several major cities, including
Baghdad, Ramadi and Falluja, which the Americans devastated during
an intense weeklong offensive aimed at routing the insurgency.
But areas still beset by violence, including Falluja and Mosul, will
participate in the elections, according to a spokesman for the electoral
commission, Farid Ayar, who was quoted in a report by The Associated Press.
"No Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as
one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province,"
he said.
Elsewhere, the United States military said today that Iraqi and American
forces detained more than 1,450 people in connection with the Falluja
offensive, but more than 400 detainees were later released after being
deemed to be non-combatants.
In the capital on Saturday, insurgents armed with Kalashnikov rifles
and rocket-propelled grenades tried storming a police station at dawn
in the northwestern neighborhood of Amariya, where American and Iraqi
soldiers had engaged in a mosque shootout on Friday. The attack on the
police station left three Iraqi police officers dead and two others
wounded, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, a spokesman for the Interior
Ministry.
Hours later, a car bomb exploded in downtown Baghdad, at the eastern
end of the bridge over the Tigris River leading to the Green Zone,
the fortified compound housing the American Embassy and the headquarters
of the interim Iraqi government. The bomb was aimed at a convoy of
vehicles from a Western security contractor. At least one Iraqi was
killed and another wounded, witnesses said.
Four employees of the Public Works Ministry were gunned down from
a passing car, and three Iraqi national guardsmen died in explosions
in western Baghdad during gun battles with insurgents, Iraqi
officials said.
An ambush on an American military convoy in central Baghdad ended
with the death of one soldier, the military said. Nine others were
wounded in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack, with
insurgents using explosives, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled
grenades. Fighting raged in the rubble of Falluja. Two marines were
killed and four wounded in an ambush on Friday in which an insurgent
deceived the Americans by waving a white flag, military officials
said Saturday.
The weeklong offensive, which began Nov. 8, smashed a haven for the
insurgents, but guerrillas still roam the devastated streets,
sniping at American troops and deterring military engineers brought
in to try to rebuild the city.
American commanders in Falluja say they are seeing an increasing
number of guerrillas using white flags to pose as unarmed civilians.
In a bit of positive news, a Polish woman abducted in October by
insurgents announced her release to reporters in Warsaw in a brief
news conference on Saturday with the Polish prime minister, Marek
Belka, broadcast by the BBC and CNN.
The woman, Teresa Borcz-Kalifa, 54, said her captors had treated her
well. She is married to an Iraqi and had lived in Iraq for 30 years.
Her captors made at least two videos that were shown on Al Jazeera,
the Arab satellite television network, demanding the withdrawal of
Polish troops.
And today, news agency reports said that the Iraqi prime minister's
75-year-old cousin, Ghazi Majeed Allawi, had been freed by captors
who had detained him and two other family members on Nov. 9. A group
called Ansar al Jihad had posted an Internet message saying the three
would be beheaded unless Dr. Allawi called off the siege of Falluja
and released all prisoners in Iraq.
Two of the relatives, both women, were released last week. And today,
Al-Arabiya news channel, quoted by Reuters, reported that Ghazi Allawi
had been freed.
The unrelenting wave of assaults in the Sunni-dominated parts of the
country indicate that the attack on Falluja could have inflamed Sunni
resentment against the American presence.
American and Iraqi officials have found it impossible in the 19 months
since the invasion to persuade hostile Sunni Arabs to lay down their
arms and engage in the emerging political system.
The Sunni Arabs, who make up a fifth of the population here, ruled
the region known as modern Iraq for centuries, until the American
invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Hussein, himself a Sunni, heightened ethnic and religious
differences by installing Sunnis in the most senior positions and
persecuting Shiite Arabs and Kurds. Now, with a power and security
vacuum throughout Iraq, those tensions are reviving and threatening
to unravel the very social fabric of the country.
Sunni-dominated cities exploded during and immediately after the
Falluja offensive. In April, when the Marines tried to take control
of Falluja, thousands of unruly Shiites rose up also, led by the
firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
During the more recent invasion, Mr. Sadr condemned the Americans'
use of force but did not call on his militia to fight. These days,
even radical Shiites appear ready to use legitimate politics to
ensure that Shiites seize majority rule of the country. The most
restive areas in Iraq are in Anbar Province, including Ramadi and
Falluja, and, in the north, Nineveh Province, whose capital is Mosul,
a city of two million that has become a second front of the insurgency.
On Saturday, marines set up roadblocks around Ramadi, the capital of
Anbar, and broadcast messages calling on residents to turn over
"terrorists," Reuters reported. The marines are engaged in a holding
action there. They have a presence at the government center and
several outposts downtown, but they do not have real control of
the city. Insurgents operate freely and regularly murder residents
they say are collaborating with the Americans or the interim Iraqi
government.
Senior American commanders believe that many guerrillas fled Falluja
before the offensive and sought a haven in Ramadi, just 30 miles
west, causing a spike in violence there.
In Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, 225 miles north of Baghdad,
nine bodies of Iraqi Army soldiers with bullet wounds to the head
were discovered Saturday, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, an Army
spokesman. Seven of those were also decapitated. On Thursday, he
said, four headless bodies were found in eastern Mosul.
The group of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi posted an
Internet message dated Thursday that said it had decapitated two
Iraqi soldiers in public. At least one witness said that he saw
the killings and that the bodies had been left in the street for
hours because people had been afraid to collect them.
American and Iraqi forces are trying to root out resilient insurgent
bands in Mosul that pushed the city to the brink of chaos last week.
On Nov. 11, groups of guerrillas stormed a half-dozen police stations
and made off with weapons and uniforms after setting fire to the
buildings and squad cars. Only 800 of the city's 4,000 police
officers stayed on the job.
The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the country's most militant
groups, posted a message on the Internet on Saturday saying it
had shot and killed two members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
A video showed two gagged and blindfolded men being shot in the
back of their heads, Reuters reported.
The car bombing in Baghdad took place at around 12:30 p.m., as a
convoy of sport utility vehicles carrying Western security contractors
drove near the Jumhuriya bridge. A suicide car bomber tried ramming
into the convoy. The security contractors escaped, but an Iraqi man
in a pickup truck behind the bomber was incinerated.
Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Falluja for this article,
Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Mosul, Khalid al-Ansary from Baghdad and
Christine Hauser from New York.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Booming prison numbers prompt reexamination of harsh sentencing
MARK SCOLFORO
HARRISBURG, Pa.
Associated Press
Posted on Sat, Nov. 20, 2004
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/10233361.htm
HARRISBURG, Pa. -The state prison population grew by 44 percent over
the past decade as Pennsylvania embraced mandatory sentencing and
dramatically increased the number of violent criminals forced to
serve their maximum sentence.
But the lock-'em-up approach to corrections - part of a national
trend - has been accompanied by an ever-more-costly price tag and
growing doubts about its effectiveness.
Last month, Pennsylvania quietly joined a growing number of states
taking a step back from the stiffer sentencing policies of the 1990s.
The Republican-controlled Legislature approved a bill that would get
nonviolent drug and alcohol offenders out of prison more quickly and
into treatment programs, and on Friday, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell
signed it.
The policy change is expected to save the state more than $20 million
a year and reduce pressure on a prison system now housing nearly 41,000
convicts, up from 28,302 in 1994. Corrections officials say treatment
has also been shown to reduce the chance the inmates will end up back
in prison.
The typical inmate now spends about four years behind bars before being
released. By one study, Pennsylvania keeps its inmates the longest of
any state, more than twice the national average.
The costs have been staggering. The Department of Corrections has
proposed a $1.34 billion budget for next year, an increase of 295
percent since fiscal year 1992-93, when the budget was just $453
million. It currently employs more than 15,000 people.
Nationally, more than half the states have loosened sentencing
policies in the past three years, said Daniel F. Wilhelm, director
of the State Sentencing and Corrections Project at the Vera Institute
of Justice in New York.
Driving those changes are budget pressures, concerns about the
fairness of sentencing, and falling public concern about crime as
the crime rate has dropped, he said. The nation currently spends
an estimated $40 billion annually on corrections.
Michigan abolished its mandatory sentencing scheme in December 2002.
Kansas passed the nation's most comprehensive mandatory drug-treatment
diversion act last year. Texas put more money into drug treatment.
Other reforms were considered or passed in Washington, Hawaii and
North Carolina.
"What's interesting to note is in a lot of these states, it's not
the liberal Democrats who are championing reforms. It's Republicans
who are at the forefront," Wilhelm said.
In Pennsylvania, prison spending has grown faster than any other part
of the budget, said Montgomery County Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf,
Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "so I think
we have to be smart in regard to how we incarcerate people."
Despite the changes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, much of the
harshest anti-crime legislation from the past decade remains on
the books, and earlier this month California voters narrowly rejected
a referendum to weaken its three-strikes law.
Pennsylvania's decision to pursue more treatment for inmates comes
nearly a decade after tough anti-crime policies were pushed through
a receptive Legislature by then-Gov. Tom Ridge, helped along by two
highly publicized murder cases.
Ridge's 1995 campaign was in its final weeks when pardoned inmate
Reginald McFadden killed two people; Ridge's Democratic opponent had
voted to pardon him. And during the Republican governor's first year
in office, a New Jersey police officer was murdered by parolee Robert
"Mudman" Simon.
Almost immediately, inmates found it much harder to make parole and
parole violators were increasingly sent back to complete their
sentences.
Those changes were widely supported, and many experts believe tough
sentencing laws help reduce crime by keeping habitual criminals off
the streets.
But in Pennsylvania, new mandatory sentencing laws also fed an
astronomical growth in the number of inmates convicted of drug
offenses and other comparatively less serious crimes, so-called
"Part 2" offenders. Their numbers are up 80 percent in the past
seven years.
"I think that there are people that we're confining that we either
don't need to confine for as long a period of time or we don't need
to confine at all," said Corrections Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard.
"There are Part 2 offenders we have in our system that don't need
to stay as long as they're staying."
William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison
Society, recalled the case of a young grandmother from Berks County
with no prior record who was arrested for distributing a small
amount of marijuana within a block or two of a school.
"So all of a sudden she had this horrendous mandatory imprisonment
(the judge) had to give her," he said. "It happens almost every day.
We have these ridiculous situations that serve no one's best interests."
Longer sentences don't necessarily lower the crime rate and can
create problems of their own, said Ryan S. King, a research associate
with the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., reform advocacy
organization.
"You've got people that are being removed from families, social
networks being disrupted, people losing connections to jobs, education.
In essence - particularly when it's concentrated in communities of
color - you have an overall impact that basically disrupts the
community," King said.
The reforms that became law Friday will divert inmates with nonviolent
convictions involving drugs or alcohol - even a theft conviction to
support a drug habit would qualify - into an "intermediate punishment"
program.
Inmates will first do at least seven months in prison, although Beard
said 12 months will probably be more typical. After that, they will
spend at least two months at a community-based therapeutic facility
and the rest of the minimum 24-month sentence at a halfway house or
group home while receiving addiction treatment.
The savings will come because they will spend less overall time in
the system, and considerably less time in state correctional
institutions, where it currently costs $28,000 annually per inmate.
Beard said he is hopeful there will be additional long-term savings
as a result of an expected drop in recidivism and through an
expansion of the program to other classes of inmates.
He said intensive drug or alcohol treatment, combined with aftercare,
could cut in half recidivism rates from their current range of 50
percent to 60 percent. Through shorter sentences, less costly forms
of incarceration and lower numbers of probation violators coming back
in, the state expects to eventually save more than $20 million annually.
"They're still going to do hard time in prison, but we're going to
give them a program that meets their needs, so that when they go out,
they're going to be less likely to prey on society," Beard said.
"I see it as a public safety issue."
Supporters who see the new law as a relatively modest change of
direction hope it is a harbinger of even broader reforms.
"It's not the most creative thing in the world, but insofar as
it's the world we're operating in, it's a good step in the right
direction," DiMascio said.
(c) 2004 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.centredaily.com
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Soaring Interest Compounds Credit Card Pain for Millions
THE PLASTIC TRAP
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
This article was reported by Patrick McGeehan, Lowell Bergman,
Robin Stein and Marlena Telvick and written by Mr. McGeehan.
November 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/business/21cards-web.html?hp&ex=1101099600
&en=70effacd11d42b21&ei=5094&partner=homepage
When Ed Schwebel was whittling down his mound of credit card debt
at an interest rate of 9.2 percent, the MBNA Corporation had a happy
and profitable customer. But this summer, when MBNA suddenly doubled
the rate on his account, Mr. Schwebel joined the growing ranks of irate
cardholders stunned by lenders' harsh tactics.
Mr. Schwebel, 58, a semiretired software engineer in Gilbert, Ariz.,
was not pleased that his minimum monthly payment jumped from $502 in
June to $895 in July. But what really made him angry, he said, was the
sense that he was being punished despite having held up his end of
the bargain with MBNA.
"I paid the bills the minute the envelope hit the desk," said Mr.
Schwebel, who had accumulated $69,000 in debt over five years before
the rate increase. "All of a sudden in July, they swapped it to 18
percent. No warning. No reason. It was like I was blindsided."
Mr. Schwebel had stumbled into the new era of consumer credit, in
which thousands of Americans are paying millions of dollars each
month in fees that they did not expect and that strike them as
unreasonable. Invoking clauses tucked into the fine print of their
contract agreements, lenders are doubling or tripling interest rates
with little warning or explanation.
This year, credit card companies are changing the terms of their
accounts at a historically high rate, said Michael Heller, an
industry consultant.
As those practices spread, they are creating a rift between the
lenders and some of their more lucrative customers, according to
cardholders, current and former bank consultants and regulators
who were interviewed for a joint report by The New York Times and
"Frontline," the PBS documentary program.
People like Mr. Schwebel, who carry balances from month to month
and pay finance charges regularly, feel they should be the favored
customers of the credit card business, which is now the most
lucrative segment of banking. They make up the profitable majority
of the 144 million Americans who have general-purpose credit cards.
To a degree, they subsidize the 40 percent of credit card customers
who pay in full each month without incurring any fees or charges.
But increasingly, they say, what should be a warm embrace has
turned into a painful squeeze as lenders employ new tactics to
extract more and bigger penalties for even the slightest financial
transgressions. In the last few years, lenders have more frequently
raised customers' rates because of slip-ups elsewhere, like late
payment of a phone or utility bill, or simply because they felt
a customer had taken on too much debt.
The practice, called universal default, started after a rash of
bankruptcy filings in the mid-to-late 1990's and has increasingly
become standard in the industry. While MBNA declined to comment on
any specific customer's account, its general counsel, Louis J. Freeh,
the former F.B.I. director, said in a statement that it was being
prudent by raising rates when it had reason to think the risk of
not being repaid had increased.
Edward L. Yingling, executive vice president of the American Bankers
Association, said bankers must have the flexibility to change terms
on short notice. The bankruptcy filings of the 90's - many by customers
who had been paying their bills on time - caught banks off-guard,
he said.
Lenders decided they needed to watch for signs of trouble elsewhere,
like missed car payments, he said. In those cases, he added, there are
only two logical responses: "We're not going to let you have this credit
card loan anymore and we're going to say, 'Pay it off,' or we can say,
'You're now more risky; we're going to raise your rate.' "
Still, some critics say the severity of the punishment does not match
the risk of default. The suddenness and perceived unfairness of the
penalties have left many consumers feeling burned by lenders who
relentlessly courted them with promises of low rates.
To some cardholders and consumer advocates, credit card companies
are acting like modern-day loan sharks, strong-arming their customers
to pay more - with no legal limit on how much they can charge.
In eight years, the major card companies have increased the fee
charged to cardholders for being even an hour late with a payment
to $39, from $10 or less.
Unleashing an Industry
Duncan MacDonald, who, as a lawyer for Citibank was involved in its
successful case for deregulation of fees before the United States
Supreme Court in 1996, now says he fears that he helped to unleash
a monster.
Until that ruling, most banks still charged an annual fee of about
$25 for the use of a card and a single fixed rate to all borrowers,
usually around 18 percent. Applicants either qualified for the
privilege of carrying a card or they did not.
"I certainly didn't imagine that someday we might've ended up
creating a Frankenstein," said Mr. MacDonald, who predicted that
the penalty fees could rise to $50 in another year. "I look at that
and I say to myself, 'Is $50 a fair fee, plus a 25 percent interest
rate and all these other fees that are thrown on, for folks who are
probably not that risky? Is that fair?' "
Mr. MacDonald said federal bank regulators should investigate the
fairness of universal default and some of the banks' harsh penalties.
But regulators and lawmakers have been reluctant to crack down on
a popular consumer product that fuels America's economic engine.
Consumer spending pulled the country through the last economic
downturn, powered largely by purchases financed with debt, to
the tune of $2 trillion.
Few consumer products today are as cherished or reviled as credit
cards. The typical household has eight cards with $7,500 on them.
People like Mr. Schwebel are known as "revolvers" in the industry
because they roll balances over from month to month, never paying
in full.
Without the 85 million Americans who revolve, card issuers would be
struggling to please their investors. But with them and the hefty
finance charges they accrue from the moment cashiers swipe their
cards, the industry is reaping record gains. Last year, card issuers
made $2.5 billion a month in profit before taxes.
"I think it is generally understood that those that use the revolving
part of the credit card are kind of the sweet spot," said Mr. Yingling
of the bankers' association, who spoke on behalf of several of the
biggest issuers, including Citigroup ,J. P. Morgan Chase and MBNA,
all of which declined to make executives available for interviews.
But the lenders' aggressive tactics have prompted a surge in
complaints and lawsuits and even a warning from the primary regulator
of national banks in September. In an advisory letter, the Office of
the Comptroller of the Currency said banks should not raise card rates
without having fully and prominently disclosed the circumstances that
might cause an increase.
Changing the Terms
The case that opened up the industry came in 1978 when the Supreme
Court decided that a bank could charge its cardholders any rate allowed
in the bank's home state. Major banks swiftly moved their credit card
operations to places like South Dakota and Delaware that had removed
caps on interest rates. There is no federal limit on consumer credit
rates.
After that ruling on interest rates, credit cards, which until then
had generally been an uncertain business, started to look potentially
lucrative. Banks began to innovate and compete. They cut the required
minimum monthly payment to 2 percent of the balance, from 5 percent,
to encourage customers to borrow more and stretch out the repayment.
They dropped annual fees and dangled offers of low interest, or none
at all, to lure new customers.
At the same time, legal teams crafted contracts of 12 or more single-
spaced pages that gave the banks the leeway to change their terms
whenever they wanted. A typical term sheet for a Visa card issued by
Bank One , which was acquired this year by J. P. Morgan Chase, includes:
"We reserve the right to change the terms at any time for any reason."
John Gould has worked in and around the credit card business for 25
years, but he said he was shocked when his wife tried to make a last-
minute payment over the phone and was charged an extra $15.
"What a rip," he said. "That does get me mad."
Fees like that are accounting for a greater share of the revenue that
card companies garner from their customers. Last year, they collected
$11.7 billion in penalty fees, more than half of the total $21.5 billion
in fees they collected from cardholders, according to CardWeb, a research
firm.
Mr. Gould, a former executive of MasterCard International who conducts
research for TowerGroup, a company owned by MasterCard, said he did not
think that card companies were trying to trap people into financial
distress. But he said it was "absurd" that 44 percent of them tell their
customers that they might be penalized for one or two late payments with
maximum rates that now exceed 28 percent.
This practice has gone on while the short-term interest rates set by the
Federal Reserve Board have been unusually low, now at 2 percent, he noted,
but the rates have been rising in recent months.
"What are they going to do if we have a spike in interest rates?" Mr.
Gould said. "What are they going to start charging people, 35 percent,
38 percent? If it comes to that, you might as well go to the loan sharks."
But Andrew Kahr, a financial services consultant who devised some widely
used consumer-lending strategies, including the zero-percent teaser
rates, said consumers should be able to recognize that the business
is a "game of chance." Interest rates shooting past 25 percent may
seem scandalous to some, Mr. Kahr said, but they are "no less
realistic" than the low introductory rates many cardholders receive.
The lenders offer tantalizingly low initial rates because that is
what it takes to lure customers from competitors, said Mr. Kahr,
who was a founder and chief executive, until 1986, of the San
Francisco lending company now known as Providian. After he left,
Providian ran afoul of state and federal regulators for some of
its credit card practices, and agreed to a $300 million settlement.
But, he said that banks cannot earn an adequate return by lending
for less than it costs them to borrow, so they look for ways to
recoup losses on the low-rate chasers.
"They do better when they apply these price increases selectively
to customers who statistically have become more risky, or to those
who have violated the rules of the account," Mr. Kahr said.
Still, some cardholders complain that they did not know the rules
until after they were punished for breaking them. Linda Sherry,
editorial director for Consumer Action, an advocacy group, said
"the consumer really has no rights to find out anything, to demand,
'Why is this being done to me?' "
Last month, a consumer advocacy group in San Diego, the Utility
Consumers' Action Network, filed suit against Discover Financial
Services, the issuer of the Discover card, asserting that it had
changed the rules late in the game. The group contends that a
recent rewording of Discover's universal-default policy is unfair
to consumers, especially those in difficult financial situations.
The change, disclosed to cardholders in April, allowed Discover
to raise the interest rate to 19.99 percent, from as low as zero,
for a single late payment. But the infraction did not have to
follow the revision, because Discover reserved the right to look
back 11 months for a late payment that could justify the increase.
"It has gotten to the point where the fine print is becoming
almost outright abusive of their customers," said Michael Shames,
executive director for the consumer group. "The customers who are
affected most by this practice are those who, for one reason or
another, are having trouble making payments and have a large balance."
Jennifer Kang, a spokeswoman for Discover Financial, said she could
not comment because of the pending litigation. Discover executives
declined repeated requests for an interview.
Mr. Heller of Argus Information & Advisory Services in White Plains,
the industry analyst who has studied the rate of change in credit
card terms, said that his research showed that in the first half of
this year, MBNA - the card issuer that doubled the interest rate for
Mr. Schwebel, the Arizona engineer - repriced a smaller share of its
card accounts than the industry average.
But MBNA, in the statement from Mr. Freeh, said: "If we see indications
that a customer is taking on too much debt, has missed or is late on
payments to other creditors, or is otherwise mishandling their personal
finances, it is not unreasonable to determine that this behavior is
an increased risk. In the interest of all of our customers, we must
protect the portfolio by adjusting a customer's rate to compensate
for that increased risk."
The Credit Score
The interest rate on a credit card is theoretically correlated to
the likelihood that a borrower will make good on his debts. Lenders
typically measure those odds by a three-digit number known as a
FICO score.
Calculated by and short for the Fair Isaac Corporation, a company
in Minneapolis, that score has become the most vital of statistics
to many Americans.
Credit scores are used to determine everything from how much a
person can borrow to how much he or she pays for life insurance to
whether he or she can rent a home. A utility company in Texas even
experimented last summer with using credit scores to set prices
for electricity.
The number crunchers at Fair Isaac do not make lending decisions.
They simply take information collected by the three largest credit-
reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and apply
mathematical formulas to boil it down to a single number on a
scale that runs to 850.
"Lenders use that score, almost like a thermometer, to determine
if they're going to grant credit or not," said Tom Quinn, a
spokesman for Fair Isaac. He estimated that his company had
calculated a credit score for about 75 percent of American adults.
The average FICO score is 720, he said. A score below 620 lands a
consumer in the riskiest category, known as subprime, and virtually
ensures the highest borrowing rates, if the consumer can obtain any
credit at all. Credit reports generally note only those payments made
at least 30 days late.
Consumers with better-than-average scores are usually, but not always,
eligible for the lowest rates. As Steve Strachan, a flower importer
in York, Pa., learned, a relatively high credit score does not
guarantee favorable terms.
A thick credit report on Mr. Strachan from January showed a FICO
score above 730, but by then he had already been through a battle
with the issuer of a card that had once been his favorite method
of payment.
In the 1990's, Mr. Strachan traveled frequently from his home on
the West Coast to Amsterdam and other foreign cities to meet with
suppliers of tulips and exotic flower varieties that he distributed
to domestic florists and wholesalers. He obtained a WorldPerks Visa
card that rewarded him with seat upgrades through Northwest Airline's
frequent-flier program.
"I used that card whenever I possibly could because of the travel
benefits," he recalled, sitting in his living room before stacks
of credit card bills, change-of-terms notices and other correspondence
between him and several lenders. "Never paid a penny of interest."
He was such a valued customer then, he said, that US Bank, which
issued the card, had extended him a high credit limit of $54,000 even
though the card rate was just one percentage point above the prime rate.
When the economy wilted after the collapse of the stock market in early
2000, so did Mr. Strachan's business. He began using his credit lines
on that Visa card and a few others to stay afloat, paying smaller
portions of his growing balances.
Then, in May of last year, US Bank sent Mr. Strachan a letter telling
him that it planned to raise the card's rate to 20.21 percent, nearly
quadrupling the existing rate of 5.25 percent.
"I wasn't late, and I didn't go over the credit limit, and I didn't
write bad checks," Mr. Strachan said. A representative of US Bank told
him he was using too much of his available credit, he said.
A US Bank spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Strachan's account.
The monthly interest charge on his $50,000 balance jumped from $209
in June to $756 in July and $808 in August. He eventually persuaded
the bank to restore the original rate, but the bank closed the account,
shutting off a key source of credit.
By then, Bank One, another creditor, had compounded Mr. Strachan's
woes. He was carrying a balance of about $70,000 on one account when
the bank started raising his rates, first to 19.99 percent in April
2003, then to 22.99 percent the next month, then to 24.99 percent in
June. By October of last year, he was incurring a monthly finance
charge of about $1,500 on a $77,000 balance.
"It was like they almost all had a little meeting in the back room
and said, 'Let's get Strachan,' " he said of his creditors. "How does
it serve them to treat people like that? Are they trying to force
them into bankruptcy?"
Lawyers he consulted advised Mr. Strachan to take the easy - and
increasingly popular - way out by filing for bankruptcy protection,
but he refused. He is struggling to make good on his debts "because
I have principles and ethics."
But the battle to dig out of a deepening hole has taken a toll. Mr.
Strachan said he had lost 30 pounds and described himself as a
"broken man."
Lately, he said, Bank One has periodically reduced his credit limit
to a level just above his remaining balance, leaving him little
margin for error. Some months, he said, if he were to pay only the
minimum due, the ensuing finance charge would put his balance over
the limit, triggering a penalty fee.
By doing that, he said, "They create their own little monster."
The Regulators
Consumer complaints prompted the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency, which oversees the nationally chartered banks that
constitute most of the major card issuers, to warn banks about
giving fair notice of term changes and about sending out tempting
offers to people who are unlikely to qualify for them.
Julie Williams, the acting comptroller, said in an interview that
as long as the lenders were not intentionally deceiving their
customers, they were free to set whatever rates and fees their home
states allow. If customers do not want to pay a particular rate,
"they have choice," she said. "They can find another card."
But consumers clearly are unhappy with the choices they have. About
80,000 people lodged complaints with the comptroller's office last
year. Ms. Williams said the largest single source of their ire was
credit cards. Those complaints are routed to examiners who monitor
the banks, she said, but the examiners' foremost concern is to make
sure the banks are financially sound.
Ms. Williams described her agency as a "tough regulator," but critics
contend that the comptroller's office has taken strong action against
only one major issuer of credit cards in the last five years. In
2000, the O.C.C. joined in an investigation into Providian that
had been started by the San Francisco district attorney's office.
Providian customers complained that they had been hit with late fees
for payments that had been sent in on time but not credited to their
accounts for days or weeks. Some said the resultant penalties pushed
them over their credit limits, leading to additional fees.
Later, Ms. Williams said, the two agencies joined forces to extract
$300 million in a settlement with Providian.
The comptroller's office has since angered state attorneys general
by trying to limit their ability to regulate how national banks
behave in their states.
Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general of New York, said his office gets
"thousands of complaints every year about credit card issues relating
to the major banks, the major card issuers." But more often, he said,
the banks' response has been that " 'we don't need to deal with you
because the O.C.C. has told us - indeed, directed us - not to deal
with state enforcement entities.' "
Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School who has been a
vocal critic of consumer lenders, said the comptroller's office should
do more than express discomfort with the practices of credit card
companies, as it did in September.
The regulators did not say that "those are unfair practices, they are
unsafe and unsound and don't do them," Ms. Warren said. "Instead, they
said it's a problem. Look, if they think it's a problem, then tell the
credit card companies to stop doing it."
"Secret History of the Credit Card,"produced in conjunction with this
article, will be shown Tuesday on "Frontline" (PBS, 9 p.m. in most
cities).
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
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8) MSNBC 'Imus' Segment Refers to 'Raghead Cadaver'
Muslims urged to renew demand for apology, reprimand
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/19/04)
http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=203&page=AA
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/19/04) - CAIR is once again calling on people of
conscience to demand an apology from the MSNBC cable television network for
anti-Arab/anti-Muslim remarks made on its "Imus in the Morning" program.
In a segment today commenting on the apparent execution of a wounded Iraqi
in Fallujah by a U.S. Marine, a fictitious "Senior Military Affairs
Advisor" to the program justified the killing by referring to a
"booby-trapped raghead cadaver." The fictitious advisor also said the
killing provided an "Al-Jazeera moment" causing the "Muslim masses to
respond with their routine pack of rabid sheep mentality."
Yesterday, CAIR issued a similar call for an apology for a November 12th
"Imus" program that referred to Palestinians as "stinking animals" and
suggested that they all be killed.
SEE: Palestinians Called 'Stinking Animals' on MSNBC's 'Imus'
http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=201&page=AA
"We thank all those who already contacted the network to express their
concerns about the racist remarks and ask that they keep up the pressure
until those concerns are properly addressed," said CAIR Executive Director
Nihad Awad.
Don Imus, the program's host, has a long history of controversy over
anti-Arab and Islamophobic remarks. As early as 1985, he was forced to
apologize for referring to Arabs as "goat-humping weasels." (Sunday Mail,
4/21/85) He has also been criticized for using the derogatory term
"raghead." (Accuracy in Media) In a reference to the crash of an Iranian
airliner earlier this year that killed 43 passengers, Imus said, "When I
hear stories like that, I think who cares." He then stated: "Too bad it
wasn't full of Saudi Arabians." (National Iranian American Council)
Earlier this year, CAIR announced a "Hate Hurts America" campaign designed
to counter hate speech on talk radio.
SEE: http://www.cair-net.org/hatehurtsamerica/
ACTION REQUESTED: (As always, be POLITE and RESPECTFUL.)
Contact NBC and MSNBC to renew your demand for an apology and a reprimand
for all those involved in both programs. (Send a demand for an apology even
if you sent one based on the earlier alert.)
CONTACT:
Mr. Rick Kaplan
President
MSNBC
1 MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094-2419
TEL: 201-583-5050
FAX: 201-583-5179
Mr. Neal Shapiro
President
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112-0002
E-MAIL: rick.kaplan@msnbc.com, neal.shapiro@nbc.com
COPY TO: imus@msnbc.com, alana.russo@msnbc.com, leslie.schwartz@msnbc.com,
fccinfo@fcc.gov, cair@cair-net.org
- PLEASE ANNOUNCE, POST AND DISTRIBUTE -
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Holiday in Falluja
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 2:03 PM
hEkLe Falluja, Iraq www.ftssoldier.blogspot.com
These are ugly times for the US military in Iraq. It seems everywhere
you turn, more and more troops are being killed and maimed in vicious
encounters with determined rebel fighters. The insurgency is mounting
incredibly in such places as Baghdad, Mosul, and Baquba; using more
advanced techniques and weaponry associated with a well-organized
guerilla campaign. Even in the massively destroyed city of Falluja rebel
forces are starting to reappear with a callous determination to win or
die trying. Many critics and political pundits are starting to realize
that this war is, in many aspects, un-winnable.
And why should anyone think that a complete victory is possible?
Conventionally, our US forces win territory here or there, killing a
plethora of civilians as well as insurgents with each new boundary
conquered.
However, such as the recent case in Falluja, the rebel fighters have
returned like a swarm of angry hornets attacking with a vicious frenzy.
I was in Falluja during the last two days of the final assault. My
mission was much different from that of the brave and weary infantry and
marines involved in the major fighting. I was on an escort mission,
accompanied by a squad who's task it was to protect a high brass figure
in the combat zone. This particularly arrogant officer went to the last
battle in the same spirits of an impartial spectator checking out the
fourth quarter of a high school football game.
Once we got to the marine occupied Camp Falluja and saw artillery being
fired into town, the man suddenly became desperate to play an active
role in the battle that would render Falluja to ashes. It was already
rumored that all he really wanted was his trigger time, perhaps to prove
that he is the toughest cowboy west of the Euphrates.
Guys like him are a dime a dozen in the army: a career soldier who spent
the first twenty years of his service patrolling the Berlin Wall or
guarding the DMZ between North and South Korea. This sort of brass may
have been lucky to serve in the first Gulf War, but in all actuality
spent very little time shooting rag heads. For these trigger-happy
tough guys, the last two decades of cold war hostilities built into a
war frenzy of stark emptiness, fizzling out almost completely with the
Clinton administration. But this is the New War, a never ending, action
packed "Red Scare" in which the communist threat of yesteryear was
simply replaced with the white knuckled tension of today's "War on
Terrorism".
The younger soldiers who grew up in relatively peaceful times interpret
the mentality of the careerists as one of making up for lost
opportunities. To the elder generation of trigger pullers, this is the
real deal; the chance to use all the cool toys and high speed training
that has been stored away since the '70s for something tangibly
useful.and its about goddamn time.
However, upon reaching the front lines, a safety standard was in effect
stating that the urban combat was extremely intense. The lightest
armored vehicles allowed in sector were Bradley tanks. Taking a glance
at our armored humvees, this commander insisted that our section would
be fine. Even though the armored humvees are very stout and nearly
impenetrable against small arm fire, they usually don't hold up well
against rocket attacks and roadside bombs like a heavily armored tank
will.
The reports from within the war zone indicated heavy rocket attacks,
with an armed insurgent waiting on every corner for a soft target such
as trucks. In the end, the overzealous officer was urged not to
infiltrate into sector with only three trucks, for it would be a death
wish during those dangerous twilight hours. It was suggested that in
the morning, after the air strikes were complete, he could move in and
"inspect the damage".
Even as the sun was setting over the hazy orange horizon, artillery was
pounding away at the remaining twelve percent of the already devastated
Falluja. Many units were pulled out for the evening in preparation of a
full-scale air strike that was scheduled to last for up to twelve hours.
Our squad was sitting on top of our parked humvees, manning the crew
served machine guns and scanning the urban landscape for enemy activity.
This was supposed to be a secured forward operating area, right on the
edge of the combat zone. However, with no barbed wire perimeter set up
and only a few scattered tanks serving as protection, one was under the
assumption that if someone missed a minor detail while on guard, some
serious shit could go down.
One soldier informed me that only two nights prior an insurgent was
caught sneaking around the bullet-ridden houses to our immediate west.
He was armed with a rocket-propelled grenade, and was laying low on his
advance towards the perimeter. One of the tanks spotted him through its
night vision and hastily shot him into three pieces. Indeed, though it
was safe enough to smoke a cigarette and relax, one had to remain
diligently aware of his surroundings if he planned on making it through
the night.
As the evening wore on and the artillery continued, a new gruesome roar
filled the sky. The fighter jets were right on time and made their
grand appearance with a series of massive air strikes. Between the
pernicious bombs and fierce artillery, the sky seemed as though it were
on fire for several minutes at a time. First you would see a blaze of
light in the horizon, like lightning hitting a dynamite warehouse, and
then hear the massive explosion that would turn your stomach, rattle
your eyeballs, and compress itself deep within your lungs. Although
these massive bombs were being dropped no further than five kilometers
away, it felt like it was happening right in front of your face. At
first, it was impossible not to flinch with each unexpected boom, but
after scores of intense explosions, your senses became aware and
complacent towards them.
At times the jets would scream menacingly low over the city and open
fire with smaller missiles meant for extreme accuracy. This is what Top
Gun, in all its glory and silver screen acclaim, seemed to be lacking in
the movie's high budget sound effects. These air-deployed missiles make
a banshee-like squeal, sort of like a bottle rocket fueled with
plutonium, and then suddenly would become inaudible. Seconds later, the
colossal explosion would rip the sky open and hammer devastatingly into
the ground, sending flames and debris pummeling into the air. And as
always, the artillery-some rounds were high explosive, some were
illumination rounds, some were reported as being white phosphorus (the
modern day napalm).
Occasionally, on the outskirts of the isolated impact area, you could
hear tanks firing machine guns and blazing their cannons. It was
amazing that anything could survive this deadly onslaught. Suddenly a
transmition came over the radio approving the request for
"bunker-busters". Apparently, there were a handful of insurgent
compounds that were impenetrable by artillery. At the time, I was
unaware when these bunker-busters were deployed, but I was told later
that the incredibly massive explosions were a direct result of these
"final solution" type missiles.
I continued to watch the final assault on Falluja throughout the night
from atop my humvee. It was interesting to scan the vast skies above
with night vision goggles. Circling continuously overhead throughout
the battle was an array of attack helicopters.
The most devastating were the Cobras and Apaches with their chain gun
missile launchers. Through the night vision I could see them hovering
around the carnage, scanning the ground with an infrared spotlight that
seemed to reach for miles. Once a target was identified, a rapid series
of hollow blasts would echo through the skies, and from the ground came
a "rat-a-tatting" of explosions, like a daisy chain of supercharged
black cats during a Fourth of July barbeque. More artillery, more
tanks, more machine gun fire, ominous death-dealing fighter planes
terminating whole city blocks at a time.this wasn't a war, it was a
massacre!
As I look back on the air strikes that lasted well into the next
morning, I cannot help but to be both amazed by our modern technology
and disgusted by its means. It occurred to me many times during the
siege that while the Falluja resistance was boldly fighting us with
archaic weapons from the Cold War, we were soaring far above their heads
dropping Thor's fury with a destructive power and precision that may as
well been nuclear. It was like the Iraqis were bringing a knife to a
tank fight.
And yet, the resistance toiled on, many fighting until their deaths.
What determination! Some soldiers call them stupid for even thinking
they have a chance in hell to defeat the strongest military in the
world, but I call them brave. It's not about fighting to win an
immediate victory. And what is a conventional victory in a
non-conventional war? It seems overwhelmingly obvious that this is no
longer within the United States hands.
We reduced Falluja to rubble. We claimed victory and told the world we
held Falluja under total and complete control. Our military claimed
very little civilian casualties and listed thousands of insurgents dead.
CNN and Fox News harped and cheered on the television that the Battle of
Falluja would go down in history as a complete success, and a testament
to the United States' supremacy on the modern battlefield.
However, after the dust settled and generals sat in cozy offices smoking
their victory cigars, the front lines in Falluja exploded again with
indomitable mortar, rocket, and small arm attacks on US and coalition
forces.
Recent reports indicate that many insurgents have resurfaced in the
devastated city of Falluja. We had already claimed the situation under
control, and were starting to turn our attention to the other problem
city of Mosul. Suddenly we were backtracking our attention to Falluja.
Did the Department of Defense and the national press lie to the public
and claim another preemptive victory? Not necessarily so.
Conventionally we won the battle, how could anyone argue that? We
destroyed an entire city and killed thousands of its occupants. But the
main issue that both the military and public forget to analyze is that
this war, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is completely guerrilla.
Sometimes I wonder if the West Point graduated officers have ever
studied the intricate simplicity and effectiveness of guerrilla warfare.
During the course of this war, I have occasionally asked a random
lieutenant or a captain if he at any time has even browsed through Che
Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare. Almost half of them admit that they have
not. This I find to be amazing! Here we have many years of guerrilla
warfare ahead of us and our military's leadership seems dangerously
unaware of what it all means!
Anyone can tell you that a guerrilla fighter is one who uses hit and run
techniques to attempt a breakdown of a stronger conventional force.
However, what is more important to a guerrilla campaign are the
political forces that drive it. Throughout history, many guerrilla
armies have been successful; our own country and its fight for
independence cannot be excluded.
We should have learned a lesson in guerrilla fighting with the Vietnam
War only thirty years ago, but history has a funny way of repeating
itself. The Vietnam War was a perfect example of how quick, deadly
assaults on conventional troops over a long period of time can lead to
an unpopular public view of the war, thus ending it.
Che Guevara stressed in his book Guerrilla Warfare that the most
important factor in a guerrilla campaign is popular support. With that,
victory is almost completely assured. The Iraqis already have many of
the main ingredients of a successful insurrection. Not only do they have
a seemingly endless supply of munitions and weapons, they have the
advantage to blend into their environment, whether that environment is a
crowded market place or a thickly vegetated palm grove. The Iraqi
insurgent has utilized these advantages to the fullest, but his most
important and relevant advantage is the popular support from his own
countrymen.
What our military and government needs to realize is that every mistake
we make is an advantage to the Iraqi insurrection. Every time an
innocent man, woman or child is murdered in a military act, deliberate
or not, the insurgent grows stronger. Even if an innocent civilian is
slain at the hands of his/her own freedom fighter, that fighter is still
viewed as a warrior of the people, while the occupying force will
ultimately be blamed as the responsible perpetrator.
Everything about this war is political.every ambush, every bombing,
every death. When a coalition worker or soldier is abducted and
executed, this only adds encouragement and justice to the dissident
fervor of the Iraq public, while angering and demoralizing the occupier.
Our own media will prove to be our downfall as well. Every time an
atrocity is revealed through our news outlets, our grasp on this once
secular nation slips away. As America grows increasingly disturbed by
the images of carnage and violent death of her own sons in arms, its
government loses the justification to continue the bloody debacle. Since
all these traits are the conventional power's unavoidable mistakes, the
guerrilla campaign will surely succeed. In Iraq's case, complete
destruction of the United States military is impossible, but through
perseverance the insurgency will drive us out. This will prove to be
the inevitable outcome of the war.
We lost many soldiers in the final battle for Falluja, and many more
were seriously wounded. It seems unfair that even after the devastation
we wreaked on this city just to contain it, many more troops will die in
vain to keep it that way. I saw the look in the eyes of a
reconnaissance scout while I talked to him after the battle.
His stories of gore and violent death were unnerving. The sacrifices
that he and his whole platoon had made were infinite. They fought
everyday with little or no sleep, very few breaks, and no hot meals.
For obvious reasons, they never could manage to find time to email their
mothers to let them know that everything turned out ok. Some of the
members of his platoon will never get the chance to reassure their
mothers, because now those soldiers are dead. The look in his eyes as he
told some of the stories were deep and weary, even perturbed.
He described in accurate detail how some enemy combatants were blown to
pieces by army issued bazookas, some had their heads shot off by a 50
caliber bullet, others were run over by tanks as they stood defiantly in
the narrow streets firing an AK-47. The soldier told me how one of his
favorite sergeants died right in front of him. He was taking cover
behind an alley wall and as he emerged to fire his M4 rifle, he was shot
through the abdomen with a rocket-propelled grenade. The grenade itself
exploded and sent shrapnel into the narrator's leg. He showed me where
a chunk of burned flesh was torn from his left thigh.
He ended his conversation saying that he was just a dumb kid from
California who never thought joining the army would send him straight to
hell. He told me he was tired as fuck and wanted a shower. Then he
slowly walked away, cradling a rifle under his arm.
--
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10) Fate of Lawyer in Terror Case Hinges on Sheik's Words
By JULIA PRESTON
November 14, 2004
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/1706139.php
Midway through the third day of a grueling cross-examination by a
prosecutor in her terror trial, Lynne F. Stewart used an offhand
phrase to summarize a telephone conversation she had with a news
reporter in June 2000 that is a central point of contention in the
case.
"I'm just giving you the words of the sheik," Ms. Stewart said that
she told the reporter, a Reuters correspondent in Cairo, as she
read for him a statement from an imprisoned client, Sheik Omar
Abdel Rahman. Ms. Stewart, a veteran defense lawyer, is accused
of aiding terrorism by breaking strict gag rules imposed on the
sheik by the federal government and relaying a warmongering message
from him to his Islamic followers. The State Department has designated
the sheik's organization in Egypt, the Islamic Group, a terrorist
organization.
From the evidence presented by prosecutors during the trial, which
began in late June in Federal District Court in Manhattan, it is
clear they agree with Ms. Stewart's summation of the crucial phone
call. The prosecutors finished presenting their case last month and
Ms. Stewart's lawyer, Michael E. Tigar, rested his defense this week.
So far there has been little dispute about the key facts involving
Ms. Stewart and two co-defendants, Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic translator,
and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a United States postal worker on Staten Island
and a paralegal for the sheik.
The trial is continuing as Mr. Yousry and then Mr. Sattar present their
defense cases. The issue the jury will decide is whether Ms. Stewart,
by disseminating Mr. Abdel Rahman's words beyond his jail cell, was
participating in terrorism, as the government says, or legitimately
defending a client shunned by the public, as Ms. Stewart contends.
Ms. Stewart's fate hinges on the weight and meaning the jury will
give to the words of the sheik, a blind fundamentalist Muslim cleric
serving a life sentence in federal prison for inspiring a thwarted
bombing conspiracy in New York City.
The prosecutors have produced no evidence of any terrorist action
that resulted from Ms. Stewart's conduct. In the statement that she
provided the reporter on June 14, 2000 after a prison meeting a month
earlier with the sheik, Mr. Abdel Rahman withdrew his support for a
cease-fire the Islamic Group was observing in Egypt. But he only
called for a debate among his followers. Indeed, the statement was
a mild one for a man who, the prosecutors' evidence has shown, had
in the past issued explicit calls for Muslims to murder Americans by
any possible means.
The trial has focused on events in Egypt and the prosecutors have
not suggested any direct threat to the United States.
Nor have they shown that Ms. Stewart had any detailed knowledge of
hundreds of telephone calls that Mr. Sattar, the paralegal, made from
his home to Egyptian militants across the globe, including one man,
Rifai Taha, who was working with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Transcripts of the calls, which were secretly recorded by the F.B.I,
make up most of the prosecutors' evidence.
Instead, the prosecutors' case against Ms. Stewart on terrorism
charges is based on showing what she knew of the sheik's past calls
for bloodshed in the name of jihad, or religious struggle, and of
his influence over his followers in the Islamic Group who had claimed
responsibility for several attacks before the cease-fire. This is
why the prosecutors spent several weeks early in the trial reading
aloud virulent sermons by Mr. Abdel Rahman that had already been
part of the evidence in his 1995 terror trial, in which Ms. Stewart
was his lead defense lawyer.
That is also why one prosecutor, Andrew Dember, unleashed a withering
sequence of questions to show that Ms. Stewart knew the sheik's
name had been associated, whether fairly or not, with gruesome
attacks against tourists in Egypt and with Al Qaeda's attack in
Yemen on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000.
Mr. Dember also spent several hours of his cross-examination pressing
Ms. Stewart about her own avowedly radical views. He sought to show
that she was inclined to be an active supporter of the sheik's holy war.
"I think that to rid ourselves of the entrenched voracious type of
capitalism that is in this country that perpetuates sexism and racism,
I don't think that can come nonviolently," Ms. Stewart told the court.
"I'm talking about a revolution of the people that overthrows
institutions."
But Ms. Stewart, who remained generally calm and articulate under
Mr. Dember's interrogation, said she was surprised by his questions
about her personal opinions.
"I have done a lot of cases that involved a certain level of violence
and my personal views were never at issue," she said. "Because I'm the
lawyer, it's not about my personal views. It is about what happened,
what could be the motive that led to violence, perhaps."
Behind these arguments are diverging assessments of Mr. Abdel Rahman
held by Ms. Stewart and her longtime legal adversaries, the prosecutors
in the Southern District of New York. One of them, Patrick J. Fitzgerald,
was one of the prosecutors in the 1995 trial that sent the sheik to
prison for life. He investigated and prosecuted several other Al Qaeda
cases and traveled to the Middle East to probe the Cole bombing.
Mr. Fitzgerald was familiar with several calls Mr. Bin Laden had
issued after 1995 to free the sheik from jail, and the trail of Al
Qaeda violence that had followed those calls. He wrote special prison
rules in 1997 that barred the sheik from communicating with anyone but
his lawyers and his wife, citing a high risk of bombings whenever Mr.
Abdel Rahman spoke.
To Ms. Stewart, however, Mr. Abdel Rahman was an ailing and weakened
client, an Islamic scholar unfairly muzzled from expressing his
theological views. Some of the more emotional parts of her testimony
involved her descriptions of him after years of solitary confinement.
He could not even read Braille, she said, because diabetes had dulled
the sensation in his fingertips.
"He could not hear birds, he could not hear anything," she said. "He
was alone."
The sheik "commanded a certain respect with the public in Egypt," she
said. He had "a sense of righteousness," she said.
Apart from the terror charges against Ms. Stewart is a much more
concrete case in which she is accused of intentionally violating the
prison rules. By adding two counts of providing material aid to
terrorism, prosecutors have escalated what might be seen as procedural
transgressions by Ms. Stewart into accusations that could bring her
a jail sentence of at least 35 years, if she is convicted on all counts.
Mr. Dember succeeded in making Ms. Stewart appear somewhat oblivious,
in the global environment after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, to
the threats that her client's extremist anti-American views could pose.
But the jury will determine whether the prosecutors reached too far in
trying to construe her dissonant views and provocative legal practice
as acts of terror.
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11) Government Looking at Military Draft Lists
By ALMA WALZER
The Monitor
McALLEN, November 15, 2004
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ts_more.php?id=62232_0_10_0_C
McALLEN, November 15, 2004 - It's taken one year, seven months
and 19 days of combat in Iraq for the Lone Star State to lose
100 of its own.
Texas is the second state, after California, to lose 100 service
members, according to The Associated Press.
With continuing war in Iraq and U.S. armed forces dispersed to so
many other locations around the globe, Americans may be wondering
if compulsory military service could begin again for the first time
since the Vietnam War era.
The Selective Service System (SSS) and the U.S. Department of
Education now are gearing up to compare their computer records, to
make sure all men between the ages of 18 and 25 who are required to
register for a military draft have done so.
The SSS and the education department will begin comparing their
lists on Jan. 1, 2005, according to a memo authored by Jack Martin,
acting Selective Service director.
While similar record checks have been done periodically for the past
10 years, Martin's memo is dated Oct. 28, just a few days before the
Nov. 2 presidential election, a hard-fought campaign in which the
question of whether the nation might need to reinstate a military
draft was raised in debates and on the stump.
It took several more days, until Nov. 4, for the document to reach
the Federal Register, the official daily publication for rules and
notices of federal agencies and organizations.
The memo was also produced after the U.S. House voted 402-2 on Oct.
5, against House Resolution 163, a bill that would have required
all young people, including women, to serve two years of military
service.
Under federal law, a military draft cannot be started without
congressional support.
About 94 percent of all men are properly registered for a draft,
according to Richard Flahavan, associate director of the office of
public and intergovernmental affairs for SSS.
Martin's memo is just a routine thing, Flahavan said.
"Back in 1982 a federal law was passed that basically linked
federal grants, student loans and federal assistance to students
with Selective Service," Flahavan said. "You had to register with
Selective Service with a Social Security number (in order to receive
federal assistance), and as a consequence of the law the Department
of Education came up with an agreement on how to exchange and compare
data to comply with the law.
"It just so happens that the current agreement in effect expires next
month," Flahavan said. "All we did is update the agreement slightly,
but it has no substantive changes. There is nothing new or shocking
to link this to some type of draft right around the corner because
its all been in place for almost 18 years."
Flahavan said the written agreements between SSS and the Department
of Education normally run for about four or five years and suggested
that a reporter search the 1999 or 2000 records of the Federal
Register for the most agreement.
A search of the Federal Register by The Monitor found four such
agreements between the two agencies, with effective dates as
follows: Jan. 1, 1995; July 1, 1997; Jan. 1, 2000; and July 1, 2002.
All four agreements lasted for 18 months, during which time the
SSS and the Department of Education could complete their comparisons.
The most recent agreement, which began July 1, 2002, actually expired
Jan. 1, 2004, according to federal records located by The Monitor.
"This has nothing to with current events," Flahavan said. "This is just
the periodic renewal of previous agreements - this one is 18 months but
normally it runs four years and that's why we're doing it now. I'm not
quite sure why it's 18 months versus the normal number of years."
Flahavan said the agency was required to place the agreement in the
Federal Register.
"That's fine and we did," Flahavan said. "We believe the public wouldn't
stand for a draft that isn't fair and equitable.
"And the only way to be fair and equitable is if everyone who should
register is registered, because that's the pool from which the people
who would be drafted would be selected from. So you want everyone who
should be in the pot in the pot," Flahavan said.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, who officially begins representing
western Hidalgo County residents in January, said Congress has voted
on record against a draft.
"It was a near unanimous vote in the House," Doggett said. "When things
are filed in the Federal Register, there will be standards, and they are
a reminder that if we cannot get more international participation that
the risk of a draft remains out there.
"And I think we do need people to remain watchful of this possibility."
Doggett said one type of "draft" was already being used by the military.
"I'm concerned that a very real form of the draft is there now for those
already in the service," Doggett said. "People are being forced to stay
in beyond their commitment, and that's an indication of being overextended.
"I want us to pursue policies that don't overextend us and involve more
international participation, so that Americans don't have to do all the
dying and endure all the pain for these international activities,"
Doggett said.
Flahavan said the computer records check would help Selective Service
with its compliance rates.
"From 1999 to 2000, it was dropping about a percent a year," Flahavan
said. "It's now inching back up about a percent a year. Last year it
was 93 percent.
"At the end of 2004 we anticipate about a 94 percent compliance rate,"
Flahavan said. "We're pleased we've got it back on the rise and that's
where we want to keep it - that's our goal."
Draft Gear Up?
Who Has To Register?
All male U.S. citizens and
male aliens living in the U.S. between the
ages of 18 and 25
Dual nationals of the U.S.
and another country, regardless of
where they live
Young men who are in prison
or mental institutions do not
have to regsiter while they are
committed, but must do so if they
are released and not reached age 26
Disabled men who live at home and
can move about indiependently.
Myths
Contrary to popular belief, only
sons and the last son to carry a
family name must register and they can be drafted.
What Happens In A Draft
Congress would likely approve a
military draft in a time of crisis,
in which the mission requires more
troops than are in the volunteer military.
Selective Service procedures would
treat married men or those with
children the same as single men.
The first men to be called up will
be those whose 20th birthday falls
during that year, followed by those
age 21, 22, 23,24 and 25.
The last men to be called are 18
and 19 years of age.
Historical Facts
The last man to be drafted was in June 1973.
Number of Drafted for WWI : 2.8 million
Number of Drafted for WWII: 10 million
Number of Drafted for the Korean War: 1.5 million
Number of Drafted for the Vietnam War: 1.8 million
Source: Selective Service System
Posted by: Gilbert Zarate on Nov 15, 04 | 12:04 am | Profile
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12) 47 Parties Boycott Elections in Iraq
Xinhua News Agency (China)
November 17, 2004
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-11/17/content_2230350.htm
Baghdad - Forty-seven Iraqi political and religious
parties have decided to boycott the general elections
due in January in protest against the extended use of
force throughout the country, a joint statement said
on Wednesday.
The reason for the move was "the (US-Iraqi) assaults
in cities like Najaf, Karbala, Samarra, Sadr City,
Adhmiya, and especially the genocidal crimes in
Fallujah," said the statement obtained by Xinhua.
"These crimes prevent us from taking part in the
political process going on under the control of
occupation forces," added the statement, signed by the
parties and groups, mainly Sunni factions led by the
Muslim Clerics Association.
At least eight Shiite groups and one Christian party
were also among them.
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13) Greenspan Sees No Rise Soon for the Dollar
By MARK LANDLER
FRANKFURT
November 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/business/20greenspan.html
FRANKFURT, Nov. 19 - Alan Greenspan came to the home of the euro
on Friday and suggested that the relentless decline of the dollar
might well continue, offering little relief to those here who worry
that the United States is seeking to gain a competitive advantage
for its industries from a weaker currency.
In a speech to a banking congress here, Mr. Greenspan, the chairman
of the Federal Reserve, said that ballooning foreign borrowing on
the part of the United States poses a future risk to the dollar's
value.
He said that foreign investors, who help finance the large American
trade and budget deficits by buying Treasury securities and other
dollar-denominated assets, would eventually resist lending more money
to the United States, causing the dollar to fall further.
Mr. Greenspan's comments came two days after the Treasury secretary,
John W. Snow, appeared to rule out intervening in currency markets to
help Europe and Japan - both heavily dependent on exports to sustain
economic growth - stem the decline of the dollar. Mr. Snow, speaking
in London, prodded European leaders to tackle their home-grown economic
problems.
Taken together, the two speeches appear to be sending an unmistakable
message that Washington, on the heels of President Bush's election to
a second term, is prepared to tolerate a weaker dollar for the
foreseeable future.
A falling dollar makes it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad
and risks reviving inflation and sending interest rates higher in the
United States. But for American manufacturers, who have been shedding
jobs for years, it provides a powerful shot of adrenaline by making
their exports cost less abroad and adding to pressure on foreign
industries to raise the price of imported goods in the United States.
Given the uncertainties surrounding the global economy, Mr.
Greenspan likened predicting the dollar's path to "forecasting
the outcome of a coin toss."
While Mr. Greenspan, as he often does, relied on carefully chosen
phrases open to various interpretations, the message seemed clear
here to European bankers, who laughed nervously at the metaphor:
The dollar, which has fallen to record lows against the euro this
week - giving fits to European politicians and business executives
- is likely to fall even further.
To analysts, the speech had a laissez-faire tone, leaving events in
the hands of the market and giving speculators free rein to bet
against the American currency without worrying that officials would
get together to slap them down.
On Friday, in New York, the stock market reacted by falling sharply.
At the close of trading, the Dow industrial average was down more
than 115 points, to 10,456,91, a decline of more than 1 percent.
Currency traders drove the dollar to its lowest level in four and
a half years against the Japanese yen, and near its record low against
the euro. Treasury notes fell the most in two weeks.
The hints from Washington policy makers that they have no intention
of supporting the dollar could add to the strains between the United
States and Europe, which is increasingly worried that the rise of the
euro is choking off its tenuous recovery. In France and Germany,
growth in the third quarter dropped to 0.1 percent, as exports dried up.
European leaders are already raising distress flags. Germany's
minister for economics, Wolfgang Clement, urged Asia, Europe and
the United States to take coordinated action to stop the slide. The
president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet - who is Mr.
Greenspan's counterpart here - has called the shifts in exchange
rates "brutal."
Mr. Trichet, who traveled a few blocks from the headquarters of the
European Central Bank to appear on the same panel as Mr. Greenspan,
pointedly declined to repeat that characterization.
Both central bankers later flew to Berlin for a meeting of the G-20,
which includes the Group of 8 industrialized countries, as well as
emerging economies. The downward path of the dollar is likely to be
high on the agenda, but there is little hope for a concerted response.
Analysts said Mr. Greenspan's speech made it clear that the Federal
Reserve would make no effort to influence the process of narrowing
the United States' current account deficit, either through interest
rate increases aimed at deliberately supporting the dollar or by
intervening in the market.
The current account deficit, which encompasses annual trade as well
as the balance of financial flows, has gone from zero in 1990 to
nearly $600 billion this year. The nation's accumulated debt to
foreign investors is $2.6 trillion, equivalent to 23 percent of
the annual output of the economy.
"It was an either-or message," said Thomas Mayer, the chief European
economist at Deutsche Bank . "Either the current account deficit
comes down. Or the market will do it, but at a cost to the dollar.
Will the Fed play a role in this? Probably not. It will stick to
its mandate."
Speaking on a panel that included the deputy governor of the Bank
of Japan, Kazumasa Iwata, Mr. Greenspan devoted most of his remarks
to the effect that American fiscal policy has on global markets.
"Current account imbalances, per se, need not be a problem," he
said in a characteristically technical speech, "but cumulative
deficits, which result in a marked decline of a country's net
international position - as is occurring in the United States -
raise more complicated issues."
Mr. Greenspan said foreign investors, in part because they fear
having too much money at risk in the United States, would
eventually become reluctant to take on more such assets.
"It seems persuasive that given the size of the U.S. current
account deficit, a diminished appetite for adding to dollar
balances must occur at some point," Mr. Greenspan said. "But
when, through what channels, and from what level of the dollar?
Regrettably, no answer to those questions is convincing."
This is not the first time Mr. Greenspan has warned about the
risks of a rapidly widening current-account deficit. In testimony
before Congress last February, he said "foreign investors, both
private and official, may become less willing to absorb ever
growing claims on U.S. residents."
As he did last winter, Mr. Greenspan said on Friday that his
preferred remedy would be for the Bush administration to bring
down the current account deficit by taking steps to shrink the
federal budget deficit. That would make more domestic savings
available in the United States, reducing the dependence on
foreign borrowing.
But analysts did not interpret Mr. Greenspan's remarks as a
rebuke of the White House - which has indicated that it will
seek to make the deep tax cuts of its first term permanent -
but rather an effort to let the markets find their course.
That will be cold comfort to many Europeans, who say that
their currency is absorbing the bulk of the pressure from the
declining dollar, since Japan and other Asian countries have
intervened aggressively in the market to prevent their currencies
from rising significantly against the dollar.
Mr. Greenspan took issue with that suggestion, saying that based
on his review of recent statistics, Asia's "very large" central
bank interventions had had only a "moderate" effect on exchange
rates.
For his part, Mr. Trichet seemed determined not to breathe another
word about the dangers of a rising euro. Describing his previous
comments on the subject as "poetry," he turned aside questions
about the exchange rate.
Mr. Mayer of Deutsche Bank said Mr. Trichet's silence suggested
that his earlier efforts to talk down the currency had fallen short.
"They are basically seeing that there is very little they can
do about it," Mr. Mayer he said. "They are not in a position to
change interest rate policy to address it."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
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14) US soldiers in Iraq suffer horrific brain and mental injuries
By Rick Kelly
20 November 2004
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/sold-n20.shtml
According to official figures, the Iraq war has so far seen 9,000 US
soldiers wounded in action, in addition to the more than 1,200 troops
killed. These wounded, whose numbers may well be underestimated,
include those with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, lost limbs and other
injuries caused by landmines and bombs. Less well known, however, is
the terrible toll enacted through brain and psychological injuries,
which frequently have devastating and permanent effects.
The war has seen unusually high rates of traumatic brain injury (TBI).
This head injury causes life-long damage in many cases. Symptoms
include memory loss, difficulty with attention and reasoning, headaches,
confusion, anxiety, irritability and depression.
TBI rates in previous wars have been estimated at about 20 percent.
In July, a San Francisco Chronicle survey of troops being processed
through Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington DC indicated
that as many as two-thirds of all soldiers wounded in Iraq suffer from
the condition.
The increase in brain injury cases is largely due to the advanced body
armor and helmets now used by US forces. As the death rate of wounded
troops has declined compared to previous conflicts, the rate of TBI has
shot up. The nature of the Iraq war has also increased the number of brain
injuries. Rocket propelled grenades, mortars, and other explosive devices
cause concussive shock blasts damaging to the brain.
Traumatic brain injury often goes undetected until the affected soldier
returns home and his or her family notices that something is wrong. The
San Francisco Chronicle reported on the case of Sgt. 1st Class Alec Giess,
of the Oregon National Guard, whose truck rolled over him as it crashed
while avoiding a suspected land mine:
"Geiss' wife, Shana, noticed after his return that the easygoing,
relaxed dad who went to Iraq had become a quick-tempered man who
couldn't remember the family's daily schedule, jumped up screaming
when the family cat landed on his bed and couldn't tolerate crowds.
The world inside his head, Giess said, was even stranger: he felt
bewildered, with no sense of time other than 'daytime' and 'nighttime.'
He also felt cut off from his emotions. 'When my kids come and hug me,
I don't feel a thing,' he said."
Many other incidents of TBI are even more severe. ABC News reported last
month on the situation in one Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto,
California. "The majority of [TBI patients], they're incontinent, both
bowel and bladder, so we have to retrain them when to use the toilet,
how to use the toilet," nurse manager Stephanie Alvarez said.
Each patient at the facility is given a "memory book," which describes
that day's schedule, and other important information. For many wounded
soldiers this includes a reminder of why they are in hospital. "I had
a head injury from an explosion in Iraq on June 14, 2004," one
soldier's book read.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
The US military is also experiencing a very high rate of post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) among troops. Many of the symptoms are similar
to traumatic brain injury. Post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers can
experience feelings of detachment and isolation, poor concentration and
memory, depression, insomnia, flashbacks, as well as headaches,
gastrointestinal complaints, and immune system problems. Like TBI,
soldiers suffering from psychological disorders have high rates of
alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide.
A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine in July
found that up to 17 percent of the surveyed Iraq veterans suffered
from PTSD, generalized anxiety, or major depression. This probably
underestimated the true scale of the problem, since the soldiers in
the study served in the early phase of the war, before the Iraqi
resistance really intensified.
"The bad news is that the study underestimated the prevalence of what
we are going to see down the road," Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, executive
director of the Veterans Affairs (VA) national center for post-traumatic
stress disorder, told the Los Angeles Times last Sunday. "The
complexion of the war has changed into a grueling counterinsurgency.
And that may be very important in terms of the potential toxicity of
this combat experience."
"This is urban warfare," declared Dr. Alfonso Bates, the VA's national
director for readjustment counseling. "There's no place to hide in Iraq.
Whether you're driving a truck or you're a cook, everyone is exposed to
extreme stress on a daily basis."
There have been at least 30 reported suicides among soldiers in Iraq-a
rate nearly one-third higher than the Army's historical average. Many
more suicides occur in the US by those who have finished their tour
of duty, but since the Pentagon does not track these incidents the
number is not known.
Associated Press, however, reported on October 18 that at least 12
Marines had killed themselves after returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.
"Military people are heavily vetted for any psychological problems
before they enter the service," noted Steve Robinson, executive
director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. "They're screened
very well when they come in, and they're supposed to be screened
very well when they leave. So when a Marine takes the ultimate step
of checking out by taking his own life, it should make the hair on
the back of your neck stand up. These are the guys who aren't
supposed to do that."
There is mounting evidence that the rate of suicide and psychological
disorders is at least partially due to the brutality of the US-led
occupation. Most of those serving in the military were drawn from
working class and impoverished rural regions, and enlisted either
to get a job or to advance their education.
These young people have been dispatched to a war that was based on
a series of flagrant lies, and that violated numerous precepts of
international law. They are now being ordered to intimidate and
terrorize the Iraqi people, and to crush any resistance to the
occupation and Iyad Allawi's stooge interim government. The
killing and brutalization of the Iraqi people has triggered
guilt, shame and serious psychological problems for many soldiers.
Last month Associated Press reported the case of Jeffrey Lucey,
a 23-year-old Marine who suffered from serious depression and
became dependent on alcohol after returning from Iraq in July 2003.
On Christmas Eve he told his sister how he had been ordered to shoot
two unarmed Iraqi soldiers. "He took off two dog tags around his
neck, then threw them at me and said, 'Don't you understand? Your
brother is a murderer,'" she recalled. Lucey killed himself
in June.
Former Army sergeant, Matt La Branche, told the Los Angeles
Times that the memories of his nine-month stint as a machine-
gunner in Iraq left him "feeling dead inside." He constantly
struggles with the image of the Iraqi woman who died in his arms
after he had shot her. The woman's children were also wounded in
the incident. "I'm taking enough drugs to sedate an elephant, and
I still wake up dreaming about it," he said.
Affected soldiers receive grossly inadequate treatment from the
military establishment. Brain trauma and psychological injuries
often require months of expensive and intensive rehabilitation,
long-term drug therapy and psychological counseling. Facilities
that were already underfunded and overstretched are now at
breaking point.
Receiving treatment is especially difficult for sufferers of PTSD.
Army psychologists are pressured to get their patients back out in
the field as soon as possible, while the macho culture cultivated
within the ranks leads many soldiers to deny that they have a
problem. The New England Journal of Medicine study found that less
than half of all soldiers affected by PTSD sought treatment, fearing
stigmatization or damage to their careers.
Officials also leave many families of PTSD sufferers completely
unprepared for the shock of having to deal with the condition. One
woman told the New Yorker how she had been advised prior to the
return of her husband from Iraq: "When he was coming home, the Army
gave us little cards that said things like 'Watch for psychotic
episodes' and 'Is he drinking too much?' A lot of wives said it was
a joke. They had a lady come from the psych ward, who said-and
I'm serious-'Don't call us unless your husband is waking you up
in the middle of the night with a knife at your throat.' Or,
'Don't call us unless he actually chokes you, unless you pass
out. He'll have flashbacks. It's normal.'"
Such treatment is indicative of the way in which tens of thousands
of young people are being used as cannon fodder in Iraq.
Responsibility for their suffering rests with the criminals
in the White House who launched the war of aggression, and more
broadly, the entire US political establishment which is united
on maintaining the indefinite occupation of Iraq.
Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
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15) Troops Round Up Corpses, Weapons in Fallouja
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Their operation in the city has shifted to cleanup and
rebuilding, amid sporadic fighting.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer
November 19, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-fallouja19nov19,1,370254
6.story
FALLOUJA, Iraq - The Marines used a grappling hook with a long line
to shift the battered body, so they would be protected by distance if
the corpse were booby-trapped.
"It's tough work," said Pfc. Keel Jesse, wearing surgical gloves and
a mask, like the other U.S. troops collecting dead insurgents. "But
someone has to do it."
Down the road, in the city's gritty, industrial southeast, Army Capt.
Douglas Walters was getting ready to blow up a car bomb factory, where
an already-rigged Chevrolet Suburban was parked with a current Texas
registration sticker in the windshield.
"They had everything they needed here," Walters said, surveying what
might look like an auto body shop but for the boxes of mortar rounds
and other explosives.
The battle for this former rebel stronghold has shifted to cleanup and
reconstruction, even though pockets of resistance remain. Fighters
occasionally emerge from homes or bunkers to fire at U.S.-led forces,
but the troops are going house to house to wipe them out.
A trip with Marine officers on Thursday offered a glimpse of what passes
for life in this devastated, still largely deserted city, which became
a worldwide symbol of resistance to U.S. power last spring. Amid the
sporadic fighting, some troops have turned to such tasks as clearing
out arms caches and organizing humanitarian aid.
"This is not a linear battle, where one part ends and you move on to
the next thing," said Marine Col. Craig Tucker, who heads one of the
two regimental combat teams that swept down from the north early last
week. "We have a lot of things going on at once right now."
On Thursday, most of the explosions appeared to be the result of
troops blowing up some of the trove of captured munitions. U.S.
airstrikes, artillery blasts and mortar fire have diminished
substantially.
More civilians are emerging now, often carrying white flags, but they
are still a rare sight in this beaten city. Some have gathered at
places like Al Hadra al Muhammadiya mosque, once a hotbed of rebel
activity but now a clinic and help center staffed by U.S.-allied
Iraqi troops.
"What about my father and my uncles?" Yhedder Ahmed, 14, asked as
Tucker stopped by the mosque. On a previous visit, the commander
had promised to find out the status of the men, who were arrested
as insurgents.
"Tell him that his father and uncles are doing well, but they were
found with weapons and will remain in custody," Tucker told the boy
through an interpreter. "No harm will come to them."
The Iraqi commander, Col. Saad Ali, was worried about what would
happen as refugees begin returning to a city that lacked a
functioning infrastructure or economy.
"The men must have jobs," said Ali, who hails from the southern
city of Basra.
Earlier in the week, an Iraqi who was waiting in line at the center
was shot dead. In Fallouja, even seeking medical aid at a clinic
sponsored by U.S. forces might be considered collaboration by some.
Across the street to the north, Marines used wheelchairs to lug ammo
boxes and weapons next to a building bearing the inscription, Islamic
Benevolent Committee of Fallouja. The two-story facility had
apparently been a combination clinic and guerrilla command center.
The compound, U.S. commanders said, had been overrun while it
was occupied by followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-
born militant said to have been based in Fallouja.
Inside, Marines found literature and banners of Zarqawi's group,
Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad, which has renamed itself the Qaeda
Organization for Jihad in Iraq. A computer and files also were
seized.
Outside, troops discovered two weapons caches in white metal
containers, including antiaircraft missiles, land mines, mortar
shells and AK-47 rifles. Lacking wheelbarrows, Marines used
wheelchairs from the clinic to take the materiel to a vacant lot,
where it was to be blown up.
Deep in the southeastern sector, a dense, mazelike neighborhood of
junkyards and anonymous automotive service outlets, soldiers had
cordoned off several blocks. This industrial zone had long been
known as a redoubt of insurgents; it had been pummeled by airstrikes
for weeks before the invasion.
Inside the cordoned zone, amid the dozens of seemingly identical
storefront workshops, troops found a car bomb factory and, two
doors down, a site where roadside bombs were manufactured.
At the car bomb site, parts of vehicle doors were hung on the
walls. They were often removed to pack explosives, then reattached
to the vehicles. A welding machine stood in the main work area
alongside boxes of ammunition, blasting caps, timers and various
explosive materials. Inside an office were dozens of license
plates, presumably from the stolen vehicles used in attacks.
"This one was ready to go," Walters said, pointing to the green
Suburban with tinted windows. No one could explain how the vehicle
got a 2004 Texas inspection sticker.
The vehicle, along with everything else in the shop and the bomb
factory, was later destroyed in a booming explosion that shook
the city.
In northeastern Fallouja, where some of the most intense fighting
has been concentrated in recent days, Capt. Lee Johnson tracked
insurgents.
Intelligence data led him to almost a dozen homes where suspected
rebels were holed up, had stayed or had stored weapons. He found
some of them sitting in a house, their athletic shoes off and
their weapons nowhere to be seen.
"They all took their sneakers off and pretended to be civilians,"
Johnson said.
As he spoke, he stood alongside a 6-foot bunker dug by insurgents.
A metal slab placed atop the ditch was meant to provide cover. On
the streets behind him, his troops - backed by two tanks - were
going through houses, a hazardous process.
The streets were littered with spent ammunition from battles that
occurred early in the invasion. Commanders suspected that guerrillas
reoccupied some of the houses as troops pushed south.
U.S. forces estimate that as many as 1,600 guerrillas have been
killed. Family members and Iraqi volunteers have removed some
bodies, but the threat of booby-trapped corpses has prompted
Iraqis to shy away from the grisly task.
On Thursday, U.S. teams began removing corpses to avert a health
crisis. Members of one crew threw a grappling hook attached to a
long line, then turned over the remains while taking cover. Other
Marines kept their weapons trained on nearby vehicles, alert for
attacks. After it was deemed safe, the bodies were quickly zipped
into black vinyl bags and hoisted onto a 7-ton truck.
They were taken to a makeshift morgue with refrigeration units on
the grounds of a former potato farm, Tucker said. There, he added,
the people of Fallouja could claim the remains of their husbands,
sons and fathers.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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