The US, UN & Iraq II

'Why do they hate us?'
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
September 27, 2001

Most Arabs and Muslims knew the answer, even before they considered who was responsible. Retired Pakistani Air Commodore Sajad Haider - a friend of the US - understood why. Radical Egyptian-born cleric and US enemy Abu Hamza al-Masri understood. And Jimmy Nur Zamzamy, a devout Muslim and advertising executive in Indonesia, understood.

In the United States, military planners are deciding how to exact retribution. To many people in the Middle East and beyond, where US policy has bred widespread anti-Americanism, the carnage of Sept. 11 was retribution.

And voices across the Muslim world are warning that if America doesn't wage its war on terrorism in a way that the Muslim world considers just, America risks creating even greater animosity.

The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East were as shocked and horrified as any American by what they saw happening on their TV screens. And they are frightened of being lumped together in the popular American imagination with the perpetrators of the attack.

But from Jakarta to Cairo, Muslims and Arabs say that on reflection, they are not surprised by it. And they do not share Mr. Bush's view that the perpetrators did what they did because "they hate our freedoms."

Rather, they say, a mood of resentment toward America and its behavior around the world has become so commonplace in their countries that it was bound to breed hostility, and even hatred.

And the buttons that Mr. bin Laden pushes in his statements and interviews - the injustice done to the Palestinians, the cruelty of continued sanctions against Iraq, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the repressive and corrupt nature of US-backed Gulf.

Against the background of that humiliated mood, America's unchallenged military, economic, and cultural might be seen as an affront even if its policies in the Middle East were neutral. And nobody voices that view.

From one end of the region to the other, the perception is that Israel can get away with murder - literally - and that Washington will turn a blind eye. Clearly, the US and Israel have compelling reasons for their actions. But little that US diplomats have done in recent years to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians has persuaded Arabs that the US is a fair-minded and equitable judge of Middle Eastern affairs.

...in the Middle East and beyond, where US policy has bred widespread anti-Americanism...

What was notable about this press conference was the absense of many notables, including Time, Newsweek, USA Today, The Washington Post and Hearst columnist Helen Thomas.

WASHINGTON (March 10) - Iraq has placed explosives at the Kirkuk oil fields in northern Iraq to prevent them from being taken over in the event of a U.S. invasion of the country, U.S. officials told Reuters Monday.

''There are indications that has taken place,'' one official said, adding that the movement had occurred ''recently.''

Iraqis had also been seen moving explosives toward oil fields in the south as well as the north, a defense official said. ''And that makes us suspicious of their intentions.''

The United States has been building forces in the Gulf region for a possible war against Iraq over its weapons program.

''We certainly have very serious concerns about Saddam Hussein setting fire to the oil fields,'' another senior U.S. official said.

The officials did not reveal the sources of their intelligence.

Reut12:43 03-10-03

Smart-Mobbing the War
By GEORGE PACKER


You can find America's new antiwar movement in a bright yellow room four floors above the traffic of West 57th Street -- a room so small that its occupant burns himself on the heat pipe when he turns over in bed and can commute to his office without touching the floor. Eli Pariser, 22, tall, bearded, spends long hours every day at his desk hunched over a laptop, plotting strategy and directing the electronic traffic of an instantaneous movement that was partly assembled in his computer. During the past three months it has gathered the numbers that took three years to build during Vietnam. It may be the fastest-growing protest movement in American history.