The US, UN & Iraq III

Sorry for lack of precision; completely exhausted but must stay up in my time zone for another couple of hours. Meant the statement on German laws prohibiting statements doubting the existence and/or extent of plans to kill persons of the Jewish faith during Hitler's regime. Not sure if the Supreme Court in Germany has declared any of the extreme-right parties illegal yet, but btw the debacle in the Senate concerning the citizenship-for-Turks-law stopped that legislation for a while - fortunately <G>

The doubting of the existence of killing Jews (so-called "Auschwitz Lüge"/'Auschwitz lie) is regulated in § 130 StGB (Criminal Law) of the Federal Republic.
(The most recent case [in English]: http://www.kentlaw.edu/perritt/conflicts/germancase.html)

There have been some right wing parties declared illegal in the last 50 years already, not due to Criminal Law but to constitutional reasons, however. The last attempt (NPD) failed, because most leading ositions were staffed by perons on pay roll of the differerent Federal/State's Offices for the Protection of the Constitution.

Resources of U.S. Congressional Hearings and Resolutions, Federal Agency reports, transcripts of press conferences and the CENTCOM briefings, USAID Fact Sheets, Legislation, Presidential Communications, United Nations Security Council Resolutions, etc. Topics covered include general background information, the Sanctions imposed upon Iraq in 1990, as well as the subsequent Oil-for-Food Programme agreed to by the United Nations Secretariat and Iraq, the Geneva Conventions and Protocols, Energy Resources, Human Rights, Legal Resources, Religious Freedom, Reconstruction and examples of the Leaflets dropped over Iraq by Coalition aircraft before hostilities began:
Government Views of Iraq

Published on Monday, April 21, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
This Occupation is a Disaster. The US Must Leave - and Fast
by Jonathan Steele


Abdul al-Malaki lives opposite the gatehouse of the extravagant palace that Saddam Hussein built in his home town of Tikrit. Flanked by megalomaniac twin statues of the former Iraqi president riding a horse above four missiles, the palace arch was a daily affront to locals.

"The people of Tikrit are like the rest of Iraq. They hated Saddam Hussein. I want to kill him," the 28-year-old cafe-owner spat out his words. But as lorry-loads of US Marines trundled through the arch, he switched focus: "This is an occupation. Nothing else. We will keep quiet for a year and if they have not gone we will kill them."

The gratitude for removing Saddam Hussein on which Washington mistakenly expected to bank for years is almost exhausted. Those who warned the Bush administration against this war have been proved right. Only in the Kurdish areas of the north is there any satisfaction.

The Tikrit cafe-owner's views are replicated throughout the largely Arab parts of Iraq. In Nassiriya, Shia protesters greeted the US proconsul General Jay Garner with shouts of "No to Saddam, no to occupation" last week. In Baghdad, tens of thousands of Sunni and Shia worshippers came out of Friday prayers and marched through the streets, calling on the US to leave.

In the Iraqi capital, where American troop strength is most visible, it is easy to understand why people complain of feeling humiliated. The soldiers' presence is a reminder that Iraqis failed to topple the dictator themselves. Adding to their long list of complaints against him, Iraqis now blame Saddam Hussein for letting the Americans in.

Hassan Ali Hussein, a graduate of the Oil Institute, says he refused a job at the oil ministry because it meant joining the ruling Ba'ath party. Now this principled anti-Saddam man delights in the dictator's overthrow and accuses him of failing to organize urban guerrilla warfare. "Saddam betrayed us. We think there was an agreement between Bush and Saddam for Baghdad not to resist," he says.

The Pentagon's failure to plan for the "day after" adds to the anger. Making the time-honored mistake of re-fighting the last war, the only preparations they made were for food. Air-dropping humanitarian parcels or delivering food by road provides good propaganda images. In a country that had suffered from three years of drought like Afghanistan it also made sense.

Washington did not seem to know Iraq was different. The one thing people are not short of is food, thanks to the monthly rations of basics such as rice, sugar, cooking oil, tea and flour that every Iraqi receives, regardless of income. In a sanctions-damaged economy, 60% rely on the state-run program and on the eve of war Saddam Hussein sensibly issued up to five months rations in one go.

Instead of concentrating on food aid, the US ought to have prepared teams of water and power engineers, as well as flown in extra troops to prevent the postwar looting that breaks out in every country when regimes collapse (there should have been no surprise here).

The immediate priority is to provide security and get the lights and telephones back on. But a far greater problem looms. Ten million Iraqis, who depend on the state sector for jobs, have not been paid for a month. Washington may parrot the mantra about turning Iraq into a free-market economy, but this is for the birds. The poverty that hundreds of millions of Russians and other eastern Europeans faced in the over-hasty dismantling of a state-run economy is as nothing to what is hitting Iraqis. Eastern Europe at least had a "transition". In Iraq the budget and the government that ran it collapsed overnight.

Who is going to pay the doctors, teachers, bus-drivers, and other government employees now? Many Iraqis are looking to the UN oil-for-food program, and suggesting additions. The UN should take over paying government salaries to the thousands of people who are currently working for nothing in the mood of postwar solidarity. Looting has had most of the international media attention but the enormous amount of work being done free in the country's hospitals is equally important. When electricity returns and schools resume, no doubt most teachers will work for nothing too.

Another proposal is that every family that benefits from subsidized food rations and is listed at one of the scheme's 45,000 well-run distribution points should be given a monthly cash handout of $10 per person. This would ease the threat of postwar poverty and pump-prime the local market.

Along with humiliation over defeat and anger at the postwar chaos, resentment over colonization is on the rise. People point to the fact that the oil ministry was the only government office in Baghdad that the US did not bomb and protected from looters by planting a ring of troops around it on day one of "liberation". Episodes like the massacre in Mosul when on two consecutive days last week US troops fired into crowds of protesters have classic imperial overtones and feel like the foretaste of greater repression to come.

In the vacuum of power the mosques are emerging as the main source of resistance. The good news is that far from confronting each other, Sunni and Shia clerics and worshippers are uniting behind a common agenda. Many are fundamentalists but Iraq's progressive secular forces say this is not the primary issue at this stage. "What we're faced with today is not a choice between secularism and religion. We're facing an invasion and foreign rule. We have to work together to end it," says Dr Wamid Omar Nadmi, a leading political scientist at Baghdad university.

Every aspect of today's chaos and the danger of clashes between Iraqis and their occupiers highlight the need to get a UN presence into Iraq fast. The UN should expand the oil-for-food system to head off the poverty crisis. It should appoint a UN administrator to start brokering intra-Iraqi talks and forestall US efforts to create an Iraqi government of US placemen.

One of the Pentagon's many failed predictions was that someone, if not Saddam Hussein, would surrender to US forces in the face of overwhelming US military might. Had that happened as in Japan and Nazi Germany, it could have given Washington the right of continuity which its failure to get UN backing before the attack had denied it. Instead, the postwar occupation runs counter to international law as much as the war itself. The UN has a moral obligation to take over and, hard though it will be to get it past Washington's veto, the EU states and Russia should draft a security council resolution to authorize a strong UN role as soon as possible.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Gelis, This administration is never going to allow the UN to take over the postwar occupation of Iraq. France? No way. Russia? No way. China? No way. c.i.

CI, was not aguing that point ... George et al has their proverbial mammary, gland in the proverbial wringer ......

The only way out is with his tail between his legs.

I feel that it is a choice, in Bush's mind, of winning or losing in 04.

Bush with tit and tail -- can he still win in '04?

Not to say that things are going swimmingly well, but The Current Administration so far has managed to bring disappointment to the naysayers. I note the negative media reports, but they contrast with information I get by e-mail from folks On-The-Ground over there. Even in and around Karbala, my correspondents paint rather a different picture of the average Iraqi's response to events. There is some religious unrest, a considerable amount of it, but cooperation with US troops seems pretty widespread, and there is notably little of the bitterness or disatisfaction the various wire-service and broadcast reporters appear to delight in bringing up. I just dunno ... I get the impression some folks desperately want to see the US fail and Iraq plunge into chaos. I suspect those folks are in for a bit of disappointment yet.

Thanks to Walter for informative response! Kara - that was your answer re "freedom of the press" in Germany; maybe someone should tell that anonymous conservative in the Counterpunch link <G>

As I said before, what happens when push comes to shove and the Iraqi citizens tell the US to shove democracy .... should they be allowed to do so?

What happens if one of the neighors decide to back up the choice?
More bunker buster diplomacy?

We be the peace makers .....

from HofT's previous link (or secondary links)
On April 5, 1984, Ronald Reagan issued another presidential directive (NSDD 139), emphasizing the U.S. objective of ensuring access to military facilities in the Gulf region, and instructing the director of central intelligence and the secretary of defense to upgrade U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities. It codified U.S. determination to develop plans "to avert an Iraqi collapse." Reagan's directive said that U.S. policy required "unambiguous" condemnation of chemical warfare (without naming Iraq), while including the caveat that the U.S. should "place equal stress on the urgent need to dissuade Iran from continuing the ruthless and inhumane tactics which have characterized recent offensives." The directive does not suggest that "condemning" chemical warfare required any hesitation about or modification of U.S. support for Iraq
Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm

Joyce Battle: I have not personally seen documents that indicate that the Reagan administration supplied Iraq with chemical weapons. However, the documents we recently posted on the Internet demonstrate that the administration had U.S. intelligence reports indicating that Iraq was using chemical weapons, both against Iran and against Iraqi Kurdish insurgents, in the early 1980s, at the same time that it decided to support Iraq in the war. So U.S. awareness of Iraq's chemical warfare did not deter it from initiating the policy of providing intelligence and military assistance to Iraq. There were shipments of chemical weapons precursors from several U.S. companies to Iraq during the 1980s, but the U.S. government would deny that it was aware that these exports were intended to be used in the production of chemical weapons .

Documentation on Early Cold War
U.S. Propaganda Activities in the Middle East
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the World Wide Web documents concerned with an early Cold War campaign to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, launched 50 years before current efforts to achieve United States "public diplomacy" goals in the region.
Soon after the events of September 11, the administration of George W. Bush announced a wide-ranging campaign to improve the image of America in Arab countries and in the greater Muslim world. One year later, its results appear unimpressive: a recent Pew Research Center poll found increasingly unfavorable international views of the U.S., "most dramatically, in Muslim societies."
The documents collected here describe an earlier program to expand and revitalize American propaganda directed at the Middle East, and the methods that were utilized, including graphic displays, manipulation of the news, books, movies, cartoons, activities directed at schools and universities, and exchange programs. U.S. propaganda efforts were assisted by collaborating governments, the news media, academics, publishers, and private associations. The documents show that many of the factors that generated resentment of the U.S. during the 1950s, and that impeded the effectiveness of U.S. propaganda, have persisted into the 21st century.
Topics discussed in the documents include:
The objectives, targets, and methodology of U.S. propaganda.
Propaganda planned to win popular acceptance for the shah of Iran after he was restored to power by a British-American coup.
Propaganda seeking to enhance America's image by demonstrating its "overwhelming and increasing industrial and military strength," including its nuclear capabilities, to Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq.
The U.S. government's identification of religion, including Saudi Arabia's conservative interpretation of Islam, as "an important asset in promoting Western objectives," including anticommunism, in the Middle East.
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB78/

Very good stuff, Blatham -- from a source I hadn't seen before.

The persistence, over the years, of policies which demanded the "US presence" in "key areas" is also an excellence example of the US consistently demanding from the UN while undermining it -- playing both ends against the middle... And now calling the UN obstinate and uncooperative.

On the contrary, it's the US which acts blindly and obsessively and... "just sick enough to be totally confident..."

We have got so many responses with many valuable links mentioned on these meanwhile three loooooong threads that certainly some aren't noticed, overlooked.

(The Bush/Saddam photo is from here as well.)

Aw, for Chrissakes! Could we all take a short break from this tsunami of negativity and reflect on fact this year 2003 is the 100th anniversary of the brothers Wright taking off in a winged contraption at Kitty Hawk??

100 years means there are people alive now who were alive then - and look, just look, at what we have achieved since!

Well, let's see. There were those darlin' World Wars, America's swift and harmless interventions in Vietnam and central America. The enormous growth of the defense industry, its adorable influence on government. Ah -- that cute mushroom cloud we played around with quite a lot. In a hundred years, what's happened to our public education? Gotten real good, hasn't it! Why, at 23rd in the world, we're right up at the top, pretty much, nearly. And, to boot, we have a president who comes from -- gosh -- the middle range of that system -- isn't that great! Not only that, but he worked hard and successfully to get where he is, just like a real American president, didn't he! We've learned to be so discerning in our entertainment choices and the hours we spend on it -- it's so sweet and helpful in our lives. We are very well informed by a variety of independent and dependable news media. Oh, and we're honest too -- and you can tell from a quick scan of our media, our corporations, our major accountants, and above all, our legislators -- only a few wind up in jail thanks to our vigilance. Our national security system can be depended on, like, totally, that's for sure. Our judicial system is great too -- it springs directly from the Bible. We stalwartly defend the rights of those who have charges brought against them, giving them legal help no matter what, insuring that they are not held for indeterminate lengths of time away from the reach of our Constitution. Don't we. We're gotten to be so popular and respected around the world -- why, it almost takes my breath away. We generously help other countries ---well, okay, maybe not as generous as many others but... you know. We're really good to the less well off in our own country: seniors, and others who depend on our truly excellent healthcare system haven't a single complaint. We've been able to make sure that everyone gets to vote! Easily! No mistakes! All the votes are counted! Never a problem, not in my memory...

Wow. The Wright brothers must be looking down at us and...

...are those smiles on their faces, or

...do they look kinda dyspeptic?

May I leave the antique planes?

From the BBC-website:


From an AP interview (published in SFGatecom)

Ms HofT, The oldest person in the US just passed away at 113. That one's worth a WOW! c.i.

Tartarin
Aren't we a bundle of negativity? Smile your still alive aren't you and I presume living well, Try celebrating the positive instead of dwelling on the negative It's much more satisfying.

Hoft, thanks for the reminder about the Wright Brothers. I have read a good deal about the anniversary this year because it is a big deal in North Carolina. I am a flying addict and have been since I was 10 years old, so you have cheered me up just by mentioning what has happened to powered flight in those 100 years.

In case any of you missed this story:


National Briefing: West

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

CALIFORNIA: LUCKY DOG

As dog days go, April 15 started out pretty badly for Dosha, a 35-pound mutt in Clearlake. First it was hit by a truck. No bones were broken, but Officer Bob McDonald of the Clearlake Police didn't know that. He saw a dog in pain, and unable to locate the owner, shot it in the head, apparently to put it out of its misery. The next stop was the dog pound, where Dosha was left for dead in a freezer. Two hours later, Dosha's luck turned. An animal control officer checked the freezer and found one live dog with hypothermia and a wounded muzzle. Dosha is now doing well under a veterinarian's care. (NYT)


I read the follow-up of this story today. His frantic owner was found and visits him (not it) at the vet two or three times a day.

Kara, I've got to admit that that dog story cheered me up. It's sort of sad to realize that us humans can respond emotionally to the good fortune of one dog, but not equally to all the people that died during Gulf War II. Why is that? c.i.