North Korea's War Strategy of Massive Retaliations against US Attacks

An English abstract of a paper by Han Ho Suk
Director, Center for Korean Affairs

1. North Korea Can Engage the US in Total War
North Korea is one of the few nations that can engage in a total war with the United States. The US war planners recognize this fact. For example, on March 7, 2000, Gen. Thomas A Schwartz, the US commander in Korea at the time, testified at a US congressional hearing that "North Korea is the country most likely to involve the United States in a large-scale war."

North Korea, which can and is willing to face up to the sole military superpower of the world, cannot be called a weak nation. Nevertheless, Western press and analysts distort the truth and depict North Korea as an "impoverished" nation, starving and on the brink of imminent collapse. An impoverished, starving nation cannot face down a military superpower. Today few nations have military assets strong enough to challenge the US military. Russia, though weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union, has enough assets to face up to the US. China, somewhat weaker than Russia, too, has strong military that can challenge the US. However, both Russia and China lack the political will to face down the US.

In contrast, North Korea has not only the military power but also the political will to wage total war against the United States. North Korea has made it clear that it will strike all US targets with all means, if the US mounted military attacks on North Korea. That North Korea's threat is no bluff can be seen from the aggressive actions taken by North Korea since the Korean War armistice, most recent of which is North Korea's attempt to capture an American spy plane. In the morning of March 1, 2003, an American RC-132S spy plane, Cobra Ball, took off from a US airbase in Okinawa, and cruised along the East coast of North Korea collecting electronic signals. The US intelligence suspected that North Korea was about to test a long-range missile and the plane was there to monitor the suspected missile launch.

When the US plane reached a point about 193 km from the coast of North Korea, two MiG-29 and two MiG-21 fighter planes showed up unexpectedly. The North Korean planes approached within 16 m and signaled the US plane to follow them. The US pilot refused to follow the command and left the scene posthaste. The US plane was tailed by the hostiles for about 22 min but let the US spy plane go. There are two key points to be observed here.

First, the hostile planes waited for the US plane at the Uhrang airbase, located about 200 km from the point of air encounter. They knew that the US plane was coming. The North Korean planes flew 200 km to intercept the US plane. Did the US plane see them coming? If it did, why no evasive action? After intercepting the US plane, the hostile planes dogged it for 22 min. Why no American planes for the rescue? The US crew must have informed the base of the danger they were in, but no action was taken by the base. If Kim Jong Il had given the command, the MiGs would have shot down the US plane and returned to their base before the US could have scrambled war planes.

Second, North Korea intercepted an American spy plane flying 200 km from its coast. According to the international norm, a nation's territorial air space extends 19 km from its coast line. The US is the exception and claims air space of 370 km from its coast line; any foreign airplane violating this extended air space is challenged or shot down by the US military.

2. North Korea's Massive Retaliation Strategy
North Korea's war plan in case of an US attack is total war, not the 'low-intensity limited warfare' or 'regional conflict' talked about among the Western analysts. North Korea will mount a total war if attacked by the US. There are three aspects to this war plan.

First, total war is North Korea's avowed strategy in case of US preemptive attacks. The US war on Iraq shows that the US can and will mount preemptive strikes in clear violation of international laws, and the United Nations is powerless to stop the US. Any nation that is weak militarily may be attacked by the US at will. It is reasonable for North Korea to deter US attacks with threats of total war.

Second, North Korea expects no help from China, Russia, or other nations in case of war with the US. It knows that it will be fighting the superpower alone. Nominally, China and Russia are North Korea's allies but neither ally is expected to provide any assistance to North Korea in case of war. Neither nation can or is willing to protect North Korea from attacks by the US, and North Korea alone can and will protect itself from US attacks. This principle of self-defense applies to all nations.

Third, North Korea's total war plan has two components: massive conventional warfare and weapons of mass destruction. If the US mounts a preemptive strike on North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plants, North Korea will retaliate with weapons of mass destruction: North Korea will mount strategic nuclear attacks on the US targets. The US war planners know this and have drawn up their own nuclear war plan. In a nuclear exchange, there is no front or rear areas, no defensive positions or attack formations as in conventional warfare. Nuclear weapons are offensive weapons and there is no defense against nuclear attacks except retaliatory nuclear attacks. For this reason, North Korea's war plan is offensive in nature: North Korea's war plan goes beyond repulsing US attackers and calls for destruction of the United States.

The US war plan '5027' calls for military occupation of North Korea; it goes beyond the elimination of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction. The US military regards North Korea its main enemy and likewise North Korea regards the US its main enemy. South Korea, too, regards North Korea its main enemy but North Korea does not regard South Korea its main enemy because South Korea is a client state of the United States and has no ability or power to act independent of the US. North Korea's war plan is not for invading South Korea but for destroying the US.

3. North Korea's Military Capability
All nations keep their military capability secret. North Korea is no exception and it is not easy to assess North Korea's military power. The US claims that it knows North Korea's military secrets. The United States collects intelligence on North Korea using a variety of means: American U-2, RC-135, EP-3 and other high-altitude spy planes watch over North Korea 24 hours 7 days a week. The US 5th Air Reconnaissance Squadron has U-2R, U-2S, and other advanced spy planes at the Ohsan airbase in South Korea. In addition, the US has 70 KH-11 spy satellites hovering over North Korea.

In spite of such a massive deployment of intelligence collection assets, the US intelligence on North Korea is faulty at best. Donald Gregg, a former US ambassador to Seoul and a 30-year CIA veteran, has admitted that the US intelligence on North Korea has been the longest lasting story of failure in the annals of US intelligence. Gregg said that even the best spy gadget in the US arsenal cannot read what's on Kim Jong Il's mind. US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that North Korea uses underground optical fibers for military communication and that it is nearly impossible to plant human agents in North Korea.

Although North Korea's military secrets are impervious to US spy operations, one can draw some general pictures from information available in the public domain.

a) North Korea makes its own weapons

North Korea has annual production capacity for 200,000 AK automatic guns, 3,000 heavy guns, 200 battle tanks, 400 armored cars and amphibious crafts. North Korea makes its own submarines, landing drafts, high-speed missile-boats, and other types of warships. Home-made weaponry makes it possible for North Korea to maintain a large military force on a shoestring budget. North Korea defense industry is made of three groups: weapon production, production of military supplies, and military-civilian dual-use product manufacturing.

North Korea has 17 plants for guns and artillery, 35 plants for ammunition, 5 plants for tanks and armored cars, 8 plants for airplanes, 5 plants for warships, 3 plants for guided missiles, 5 plants for communication equipment, and 8 plants for biochemical warheads - 134 plants in total. In addition, many plants that make consumer products are designed so that they can be made to produce military items with minimum modification. About 180 of defense related plants are built underground in the rugged mountainous areas of Jagang-do. Several small to medium hydro-power plants serve these plants so that it would be nearly impossible for the US to cut off power to the plants.

b) North Korea has its own war plans

North Korea is mountainous and its coasts are long and jagged. The Korean peninsula is narrow on its waste. North Korea's weapons and war tactics are germane to Korea's unique geography. North Korea has developed its own war plans unique to fighting the US in a unique way. North Korea's military is organized into several independent, totally integrated and self-sufficient fighting units, that are ready for action at any time.

c) North Korean soldiers are well indoctrinated

The US commanders admit that North Korean soldiers are highly motivated and loyal to Kim Jong Il, and that they will fight well in case of war. Karl von Clausewitz said that people's support for war, military commanders' ability and power, and the political leadership are the three essentials for winning war. He failed to include the political indoctrination of the soldiers, which is perhaps more important than the other factors cited.

During the Iraq War just ended, the main cause of Iraq's defeat was the low moral of its soldiers. Iraqi soldiers had no will to stand and fight, and they ran away or surrendered without fight. Iraqi soldiers believed in Allah protecting them and became easy preys to the US military. North Korean soldiers are taught to fight to the bitter end. In September 1996, a North Korean submarine got stranded at Kangrung, South Korea, and its crew abandoned the ship. Eleven of the crew committed suicide and the rest fought to the last man except one who was captured. In June 1998, another submarine got caught in fishing nets at Sokcho and its crew killed themselves. Such is the fighting spirit of North Korean soldiers.

d) North Koreans are combat ready

One cannot fight war without military preparedness. North Korea's regular army is for offensive actions whereas its militias are homeland defense. North Korea's regular army consists of 4 corps in the front area, 8 corps in the rear area, one tank corps, 5 armored corps, 2 artillery corps, and 1 corps for the defense of Pyongyang, South Korea has 19 infantry divisions whereas North Korea has 80 divisions and brigades.

A North Korean infantry division has 3 infantry regiments, 1 artillery regiment (3 battalions of 122 mm rocket launchers and 1 battalion of 152 mortars), one tank battalion of 31 tanks, one anti-tank battalion, one anti-aircraft battalion, one engineer battalion, one communication battalion, one light-infantry battalion, one recon battalion, and one chemical warfare battalion.

North Korea's militias consist of 1.6 million self-defense units, 100,000 people's guards, 3.9 million workers militia, 900,000 youth guard units. These militias are tasked to defend the homeland. The militias are fully armed and undergo military trainings regularly.

i) Artillery

North Korea has 2 artillery corps and 30 artillery brigades equipped with 120mm self-propelled guns, 152mm self-propelled mortars, 170mm guns with a range of 50 km, 240 mm multiple rocket launchers with a range of 45 km, and other heavy guns. North Korea has about 18,000 heavy guns. North Korea's 170mm Goksan gun and 240mm multiple-tube rocket launchers are the most powerful guns of the world. These guns can lob shells as far south as Suwon miles beyond Seoul. The big guns are hidden in caves. Many of them are mounted on rails and can fire in all directions. They can rain 500,000 conventional and biochemical shells per hour on US troops near the DMZ. The US army bases at Yijong-bu, Paju, Yon-chun, Munsan, Ding-gu-chun, and Pochun will be obliterated in a matter of hours.

The US army in Korea is equipped with Paladin anti-artillery guns that can trace enemy shells back to the guns and fire shells at the enemy guns with pin-point accuracy. However, it takes for the Paladins about 10 min to locate the enemy guns, during which time the Paladins would be targeted by the enemy guns Gen. Thomas A Schwartz, a former US army commander in Korea, stated that the US army in Korea would be destroyed in less than three hours.

ii). Blitz Klieg

North Korea has tanks, armored cars, and self-propelled artillery for blitz klieg. North Korea has one tank corps and 15 tank brigades. The tank corps has 5 tank regiments, each of which has 4 heavy tank battalions, 1 light-tank battalion, one mechanized infantry battalion, 2 self-propelled artillery battalions.

US tanks are designed to operate in open fields. In 1941, Rommel of Germany defeated British troops in North Africa with tanks. The largest tank battle was fought at Kursk in 1943, in which the Soviets defeated Germans. In 1973, Egypt defeated Israeli tanks with anti-tank missiles. All of these tank battles were fought in open fields. The Gulf War and the recent war in Iraq saw US tanks in open fields. American and Western tank commanders do not know how to fight tank battles in rugged terrains like those of Korea. Tank battles in Korea will be fought on hilly terrains without any close air cover, because North Korean fighters will engage US planes in close dog fights.

North Korea has developed tanks ideally suited for the many rivers and mountains of Korea. These tanks are called "Chun-ma-ho", which can navigate steep slopes and cross rivers as much as 5.5 m deep. North Korea's main battle tanks - T-62s - have 155 mm guns and can travel as fast as 60 km per hour. The US main tanks - M1A - have 120 mm guns and cannot travel faster than 55 km per hour. North Korean tanks have skins 700 mm thick and TOW-II is the only anti-tank missile in the US arsenal that can penetrate this armored skin.

North Korea began to make anti-tank missiles in 1975 and has been improving its anti-tank missiles for the past 30 years. North Korea's anti-tank missiles are rated the best in the world and several foreign nations buy them. The US army in Korea relies on 72 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to kill North Korean tanks. Each Apache has 16 Hell-Fire anti-tank missiles. As shown in the recent Iraq war, Apaches are fragile and can be easily shot down even with rifles. North Korea has about 15,000 shoulder-fired anti-air missiles ("wha-sung") and Apaches will be easy targets for wha-sung missiles. On December 17, 1994, a wha-sung missile brought down an American OH-58C spy helicopter which strayed north of the DMZ.

North Korea has 4 mechanized corps and 24 mechanized brigades. Each brigade has 1 tank battalion (31 tanks), 1 armored battalion (46 armored cars), 4 infantry battalions, one 122mm battalion (18 guns), one 152 mm battalion (18 guns), one anti-aircraft battalion (18 guns), anti-tank battalion (9 armored cars with anti-tank missiles and 12 anti-tank guns), one armored recon company (3 light armored cars, 7 armored cars, and 8 motor-cycles), one mortar company (6 mortars), one engineer company, one chemical company, and one communication company. The US army has A-10 attack planes to counter North Korea's mechanized units. In case of war, the skies over Korea will be filled with fighters in close dog-fights and the A-10s would be ineffective.

The bulk of North Korea's mechanized and tank units are positioned to cross the DMZ at a moment's notice and run over the US and South Korean defenders. The attackers will be aided by SU-25 attack planes and attack helicopters. In addition, North Korea has 600 high-speed landing crafts, 140 hovercrafts, and 3,000 K-60 and other pontoon bridges for river-crossing. North Korea has 700,000 troops, 8,000 heavy guns, and 2,000 tanks placed in more than 4,000 hardened bunkers within 150 km of the DMZ.

iii. Underground Tunnel Warfare

North Korea is the world most-tunneled nation. North Korea's expertise in digging tunnels for warfare was demonstrated during the Vietnam War. North Korea sent about 100 tunnel warfare experts to Vietnam to help dig the 250 km tunnels for the North Vietnamese and Viet Gong troops in South Vietnam. The tunnels were instrumental in the Vietnamese victory.

North Korea's army runs on company-size units. Tunnel warfare is conducted by independent company-size units. Tunnel entrances are built to withstand US chemical and biological attacks. Tunnels run zig-zag and have seals, air-purification units, and safe places for the troops to rest. It is believed that North Korea has built about 20 large tunnels near the DMZ. A large tunnel can transport 15,000 troops per hour across the DMZ and place them behind the US troops.

iv. Special Forces

North Korea has the largest special forces, 120,000 troops, in the world. These troops are grouped into light infantry brigades, attack brigades, air-borne brigades, and sea-born brigades - 25 brigades in total. These troops will be tasked to attack US military installations in Korea, Japan, Okinawa and Guam.

North Korea has the capacity to transport 20,000 special force troops at the same time. North Korea has 130 high-speed landing crafts and 140 hovercrafts. A North Korean hovercraft can carry one platoon of troops at 90 km per hour. Western experts pooh-pooh North Korea's ancient AN-2 transport planes as 1948 relics, but AN-2 planes can fly low beneath US radars and deliver up to 10 troops at 160 km per hour. North Korea makes AN-2s and has about 300 in place. In addition, North Korea has hang-gliders that can carry 5-20 men each for short hops.

North Korea has developed special bikes for mountain warfare. Special forces use these bikes for fast deployments on mountains. Switzerland is the only other nation that has bike-mounted special forces trained for mountain warfare. The rugged terrains of the Korean Peninsula are ideally suited for special forces operations. North Korea's special forces will attack US targets in Japan, Okinawa, and Guam as well. Japan's self defense units are being reorganized to counter this threat.

How good are North Korea's special forces? In September 1996, a North Korean submarine was stranded near Kang-nung and the crew were forced to abandon the ship and land on South Korea. The sub had two special forces agents who had finished a mission in South Korea and were picked up by the sub before the sub ran into a rock. The two men fought off an army of South Korean troops and remained at large for 50 days, during which they killed 11 of the pursuers.

4. Weapons of Mass Destruction
a. Missile Readiness
North Korea is a nuclear state along with the US, Russia, China, the Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, and Israel. North Korea has succeeded in weaponizing nuclear devices for missile delivery. North Korea has operational fleets of ICBM and intermediate-range missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. I have written on this subject previously and will not replicate the details here.

It was May of 1994, nine years ago, when the US military planners had first realized that North Korea had the bomb and devised nuclear attack plans under William Perry, the then US Secretary of Defense. Perry had estimated that North Korea would have about 100 nuclear warheads by 2000. Dr. Kim Myong Chul, an expert on Kim Jong Il's war plans, has recently confirmed that North Korea has more than 100 nukes including hydrogen bombs.

North Korea can produce about 100 missiles a year. It began to make missiles in 1980 and has about 1,000 missiles of various types in place, about 100 of which have nuclear warheads. These missiles are hidden in caves and underground launching pads. At present, the US has no fool-proof defense against North Korean missiles, and in case of war, North Korean missiles can do serious damages: several hundreds of thousands of US troops will die, and scores of US bases and carrier battle groups will be destroyed. The Patriot anti-missile missiles are deployed in South Korea but as shown in the recent Iraq war, the Patriots are not 100% accurate or reliable even under ideal conditions.

b. Biochemical Warfare

North Korea has a large stockpile of biochemical weapons. Each Army corps has a chemical company and each regiment has a chemical platoon. In the May 1994 nuclear crisis, Perry warned North Korea that the US would retaliate with nuclear weapons if North Korea used chemical weapons on US troops.

North Korean troops and citizens are well-prepared for bio-chemical attacks.

5. North Korea's Defense Against US Attacks
a. Fortification

North Korea began to build fortifications in 1960s. All key military facilities are built underground to withstand American bunker-buster bombs. North Korea has 8,236 underground facilities that are linked by 547 km of tunnels. Beneath Pyongyang are a huge underground stadium and other facilities. About 1.2 million tons of food, 1.46 million tons of fuel, and 1.67 million tons of ammunition are stored in underground storage areas for wartime use.

Most of the underground facilities are drilled into granite rocks and the entrances face north in order to avoid direct hits by American bombs and missiles. The B-61 Mod 11 is the main bunker buster in the US arsenal. A recent test showed that this buster could penetrate only 6 meters of rock. The latest GBU-28 laser-guided bunker-buster can penetrate to 30m. North Korean bunkers have at least 80 m of top-cover of solid rocks. North Korea has many false caves that emit heats that will misdirect unwary GBU-28/37 and BKU-113 bunker-busters.

The US military targets enemy command and control centers based on the doctrine of chopping off "the head of the snake." With the top commanders eliminated, the rank and file would be demoralized, leaderless and would surrender. North Korea's extensive underground fortification makes this strategy unworkable. In addition, the underground facilities make US spy planes and satellites impotent.

b. Air Defense

North Korea has a large number of ground-to-air missiles. It has SA-2 and SA-3 missiles against low-flying enemy planes, and SA-5 missiles for high-altitude planes. SA-5 missiles have an effective range of 250 km. SA-5 missiles can hit enemy planes flying over the middle of South Korea.

North Korea has reengineered US shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles captured in Vietnam, and designed its own missile, wha-sung. North Korea began to manufacture wha-sung missiles in 1980. Wha-sung comes in two models: SA-7 that has an effective range of 5 km and SA-16 with 10 km range. North Korea has more than 15,000 wha-sung missiles in place.

In addition to the missiles, North Korea has 12,000 anti-aircraft guns, including 37mm twin-barrel guns, 23 mm automatics, 57mm, 87mm, and 100mm heavy guns. These are mostly manually operated and thus not subject to electronic warfare.

c. Coastal deferens.

North Korea's coastlines are long and jagged. Coastal guns are placed in fortified tunnels along the coastline. North Korea has six ground-to-ship missile bases. North Korea has anti-ship missiles of 95km range, and of 160km range. The latter are for hitting US carrier battle groups over the horizon. North Korean anti-ship missiles can hit ships anchored at Inchon on the west and Sokcho on the east.

America's main defense against anti-ship missiles, the Arleigh Burke class Aegis destroyers are ineffective outside 20-50 km from missile launch pads.

d. Sea Battles

North Korea has two fleets - the West Fleet and the East Fleet. The West Fleet has 6 squadrons of 320 ships and the East Fleet has 10 squadron of 460 ships. The navy has a total manpower of 46,000. North Korean ships are sheltered from US attacks in about 20 bunkers of 200-900 m longs and 14-22 m wide. North Korean ships are small and agile, designed for coastal defense. North Korean ships carry 46km range ship-to-ship missiles and 22-channel multiple rocket launchers.

The main enemy of the North Korean navy will be US carrier task forces. The Russian navy has developed a tactic to deal with US carriers task forces: massive simultaneous missile attacks. In addition, Russia has developed the anti-carrier missile, "jun-gal", that can destroy a carrier. China has developed similar tactics for destroying US carriers. On April 1, 2003, North Korea test-fired a high-speed ground-to-ship missile of 60km range. A US carrier task force of Nimitz class has 6,000 men, 70 planes, and a price tag of 4.5 billion dollars. Destroying even a single career task force will be traumatic.

A carrier is protected by a shield of 6 Aegis destroyers and nuclear attack submarines. An Aegis destroyer has an AN/SPY-1 high-capacity radar system that can track more than 100 targets at the same time. An Aegis can fire about 20 anti-missile missiles at the same time. Thus, a career force can track a total of 600 targets at a time and fire 120 anti-missile missiles at the same time. The anti-missile missiles have about 50% success under ideal conditions. In actual battle situations, the hit rate will be much lower and the best estimate is that the Aegis shield can intercept at most 55 incoming missiles. Therefore, a volley of about 60 missiles and rockets will penetrate the Aegis shield and hit the career.

North Korea acquired OSA and KOMAR high-speed missile boats in 1968, and began to build its own missile boats in 1981. It has more than 50 missile boats, each equipped with 4 missiles of 46km range and multiple rocket launchers. In addition, North Korea has about 300 speed boats, 200 torpedo boats and 170 other gunboats. In case of war, North Korea's small crafts and submarines will swarm around US career task forces and destroy them.

North Korea has 35 submarines and 65 submersibles. These crafts are equipped with torpedoes and will be used to attack US careers. They will also lay mines and block enemy harbors. North Korea has a large supply of mines. North Korean submarines are small but they are equipped with 8km rocket launchers and 70km anti-ship missiles, and they could do some serious damage to US careers..

e. Air Combats

North Korea has three air commands. Each command has a fighter regiment, a bomber regiment, an AN-2 regiment, an attack helicopter regiment, a missile regiment, and a radar regiment. Each command can operate independently. North Korea has 70 airbases, which are fortified against US attacks. Underground hangars protect the planes and have multiple exits for the planes to take off on different runways. North Korea has several fake airfields and fake planes to confuse US attackers.

It is said that North Korea's planes are obsolete and no match for US planes. North Korea has 770 fighters, 80 bombers, 700 transports, 290 helicopters, and 84,000 men. In case of war, North Korean planes will fly low hugging the rugged terrains and attack enemy targets. US planes are parked above ground at bases in Korea, Japan, Okinawa and Guam, and make easy targets for missile, rocket and air attacks. When war breaks out, North Korean missiles, rockets and heavy guns will destroy the 8 US airbases in South Korea, and any plane in the air would have no place to land.

North Korea's fighter planes are ill-equipped for air-to-air combats at long distances. but they can hold their own in close-quarter air combats. MiG-21 fighters from Bongchun and US F-15 from Ohsan would meet in less than 5 min, assuming they took off at about the same time. In about 5 min, hundreds of MiG21s and F-15s would be swirling in the skies over Korea. Ground-to-air missiles and air-to-air missiles would have hard time telling friends from foes. F-15Es are equipped with a radar system that lock on at 180 km for large objects and 90 km for small objects. Sidewinder missiles have an effective range of 16km, AMRAAM missiles of 50km, and Sparrow of 55km.

Korea is 100 km wide and 125 km long, and so US air-to-air missiles would be of limited use and effectiveness, because North Korean MiGs would approach the US planes in close proximity and commingle with US planes, and air-to-air missiles will become useless and machines guns will have to be used. MiG19s have 30mm guns, MiG21s have 23mm guns, and F-14s have 20mm Valkans. North Korean pilots are trained to hug the enemy planes so that air-to-air missiles cannot be used. In contrast, US pilots are trained to lock on the enemy at long distance with radar and fire missiles. US planes are heavily armed with electronics and less agile than the light, lean MiGs that can climb and turn faster than the US planes.

F-14s are about 3.3 times heavier than MiG21s, and F-150Es are about 3.6 times heavier. MiG21s are 16.6 m long whereas F-14s are 19.1 m and F-15Es 19.43 m long. MiG21s cab climb to 18km, whereas F-1A can climb to 15.8 km and F-16 to 15.2 km. MiGs get upper hands in close-range dogfights in which agility matters. In Vietnam, US planes were forced to jettison auxiliary gas tanks and bombs in order to engage MiGs. F-150 E planes will carry BLU-113 bunker busters that weigh 2,250 kg each in the next war in Korea. Loaded with such a heavy bomb, F-15s will become easy targets for North Korea's MiGs. US fighter-bombers will be protected by F-15C fighter escorts.

MiG21s are North Korea's main workhorse. The MiG21 debuted in 1965 in Vietnam and proved itself as an effective attack fighter. In 1999, North Korea bought 40 MiG21s from Kazakhstan. During the Vietnam War, MiG17s shot down dozens of American planes. North Korea sent more than 200 pilots to fight in the Vietnam War. They were tasked to defend Hanoi and shot down scores of US planes. North Korea sent 25 pilots to Syria during the 3rd Arab-Israeli war of 1966, and 30 pilots to Egypt and Syria during the 4th Arab-Israeli war of 1973. In 1976, North Korea sent more than 40 pilots to Syria.

f. Electronic Warfare

The United States excels in electronic warfare and no nation comes anywhere near the US capability. North Korea began developing its own electronic warfare methods in 1970. It is believed that North Korea has advanced electronic warfare ability. It has numerous counter measures for US electronic warfare. During the recent war in Iraq, the US dropped e-bombs that disabled the Iraqi electronic devices. North Korea relies heavily on non-electronic command and control means, and hence US e-bombs will have limited impacts in North Korea.

North Korea trains about 100 hackers a year and has computer virus battalions in place. These hackers are capable of interrupting US communication networks. In a war game conducted in 1991 by US war planners, North Korea came out the victor with and without nuclear weapons. Kim Jong Il has no doubt that his army can beat the US army.

6. US Military Defeats in the Past
Military power dictates the outcome of war. In assessing the next war in Korea, the military power of the opponents must be examined objectively. Until now, North Korea's military power has not been properly studied. In general, Western experts tend to underestimate North Korea's military strength. Politicians in America and South Korea play down North Korean threats for political reasons.

It has been said that North Korean army is large in numbers but their equipment are obsolete, and hence it is a weak army. The US war planners assess North Korean army using computer simulations of war in Korea. US war plan for the recent Iraq war was refined using more than 40 computer-simulated wars in Iraq. The computer simulation models use weapon system features among other factors to determine the outcome.

It is true that the advanced weapons were instrumental in the US victory in the Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. On the other hand, the US army was defeated by ill-equipped foes in Korea and Vietnam. The latter two wars show that superior weapons do not always lead to a victory. North Korean and Chinese forces in Korea and the Vietnamese forces fought with superior tactics and stronger fighting fighting spirits.

In the next war in Korea, the US army will face an enemy much more determined and better equipped than the army in the Korean War of 1950-53.

The United States in the General Assembly

by Stephen R. Shalom;
April 22, 2003

Two decades ago, conservative columnist George Will wrote "it is bad enough we pay for the United Nations; surely we do not have to pay attention to it."[1] Since that time, US payments to the United Nations have become much less reliable, but US readiness to ignore the world organization is as great as ever. US behavior in the Security Council, where it tried to bully, bribe, and spy upon other Council members to endorse its illegal war against Iraq has been much discussed, but the US record in the General Assembly has received very little coverage. It is a record that is worth looking at, however, for it reveals an astounding level of imperial arrogance.

The UN General Assembly, in its 57th session, running from September 2002 to the present, passed a total of 306 resolutions. Most of these, 235 of them, were passed without a vote; one other resolution involved a vote, but was passed unanimously. The remaining 70 resolutions were contested, meaning that there was at least one abstention or negative vote. Data regarding these 70 resolutions is shown in the table at the end of this article.

On 11 of these 70 contested resolutions, the United States voted with the majority - that is, voted in the affirmative. Some of these votes were nearly unanimous. On a resolution endorsing a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (57/9), only North Korea voted no. On a resolution dealing with the law of the sea (57/141), only Turkey voted no. On a resolution supporting conventional arms control on the regional and subregional level (57/77), only India voted no. And on a resolution appealing to states to offer scholarships to Palestinian refugees for higher education (57/120), Israel was the lone abstainer (and no one voted in the negative).

On the other 59 contested resolutions, 84 percent, the United States either abstained or voted no. Sixteen times the U.S. was joined in its no vote or abstention by at least 10 other countries, but much more often - 43 times, comprising 61 percent of all the contested resolutions -- Washington's abstention or no vote was part of a small minority. On 29 occasions the United States either cast the lone negative vote or else had as its voting partners only Israel and/or a few tiny Pacific island nations. The Pacific islands were usually Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, and sometimes Palau as well. The Marshall Islands (population 74,000), Micronesia (population 136,000), and Palau (population 19,000) are all in a "compact of free association" with the United States, rely heavily on US financial assistance, and are totally dependent on the US for their defense. Micronesia and Palau house US military bases.[2]

On what sorts of issues did the United States buck the Assembly's consensus?

Resolution 57/11 called for the lifting of the US embargo against Cuba; there were only three negative votes: the United States, Israel, and the Marshall Islands.

Resolution 57/49 called for cooperation between the United Nations and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization; Washington cast the sole negative vote.

Resolution 57/57 expressed its opposition to an arms race in space; the United States, Israel, and Micronesia were the only no votes.

Resolution 57/58 called for nuclear weapons states to reduce their non-strategic nuclear arsenals; the United States joined with the UK and France in voting no. Resolution 57/59 urged a nuclear-free world; the six no votes all came from nuclear weapons states: the United States, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, and Israel.

Resolution 57/62 aimed to uphold the authority of the 1925 Geneva Protocols banning the use of chemical and biological weapons. The resolution called upon states which had signed the Protocols with reservations to withdraw their reservations. The only non-affirmative votes were the abstentions from the United States, Israel, and Micronesia. (The United States signed the Protocols with reservations.)

Resolution 57/71 called simply for the General Assembly to continue studying the question of missiles and their implications for world peace and security. The United States, along with Israel and Micronesia, voted no. Resolution 57/65 endorsed further consideration of the relationship between disarmament and development. Only the United States voted no. Resolution 57/73, which advocated a nuclear-weapons free southern hemisphere, received negative votes only from the United States, Britain, and France. Resolution 57/78 laid out a path to total nuclear disarmament - earning negative votes only from the United States and India. The United States, Israel, and Micronesia voted no on resolution 57/97, which dealt with nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. On resolution 57/100 on the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, the United States cast the sole no vote.

On four other resolutions dealing with nuclear weapons (57/79 on disarmament, 57/84 on reducing the nuclear danger, 57/85 on the legality of nuclear weapons, and 57/94 on the prohibition of nuclear weapons), the United States was one of several dozen nations to vote no. And on resolution 57/56, calling for international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, the United States was one of 55 abstainers.

The United States was also one of two dozen abstainers on resolution 57/74 urging the signing and ratification of the land mine convention (a convention Washington has refused to accept).

More than a dozen resolutions dealing with Palestine were contested, with the United States and Israel joined by a few Pacific island nations generally pitted against the opinion of the world. These were by no means extreme resolutions. For example, 57/110 called for the peaceful settlement of the Palestine question, with a two-state solution, the principle of land for peace, and an end to "all acts of violence including military attacks, destruction and acts of terror." 57/125 urged the application of the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war to the occupied territories. 57/198 affirmed the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people. 57/188 demanded that Israel apply to Palestinian children the rights of the child and the Geneva conventions. 57/126 restated the view that the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were illegal and demanding the cessation of settlement activity (a view consistent with Security Council resolution 465 from 1980, which had been adopted unanimously, including the affirmative vote of the United States). Washington voted no on each of these General Assembly resolutions.

Resolution 57/112 called for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights -- Syrian territory conquered in 1967 -- in the context of a comprehensive peace. Negative votes were cast only by the United States, Israel, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands.

Resolution 57/190 urged states to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child and for signatories to withdraw their reservations to the Convention. The vote was 175-2-0, with only the United States and Micronesia dissenting. Resolution 57/226 called upon states to give adequate priority in their development strategies and expenditures to the right of their citizens to food. Washington cast the sole negative vote. The United States, along with Israel and Palau, were the only countries to vote no on resolution 57/227 which called for states to allow freedom of travel and the freedom of foreign nationals to remit funds to their relatives in their countries of origin.

The United States was one of seven nations voting against continued UN support for the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (resolution 57/175).

Resolution 57/199 adopted and urged acceptance by all states of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Protocol provided for international visits to make sure that prisoners were not being tortured. There were only four negative votes: from the United States, Micronesia, Palau, and Nigeria.

Resolution 57/132 reaffirmed the right of peoples of non-self-governing territories to self-determination and to dispose of their resources in their best interest. Only the United States, Israel, and the Marshall Islands voted no. 57/139 endorsed UN efforts to disseminate information about decolonization; the United States, Israel, Micronesia, and the UK cast the four negative votes. The United States, Britain, and Micronesia voted no on 57/140, which called for the implementation of the declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples.

That development is a basic right was affirmed in resolution 57/223, which also noted that the lack of development was no excuse for abridging other internationally recognized rights. The United States, along with Australia, Micronesia, and Palau, voted no.

The United States had many supporters in its negative votes against resolutions promoting a democratic and equitable international order (57/213), reaffirming people's right to peace (57/216), and warning of the dangers to human rights posed by globalization (57/205).

All told, on the 70 contested resolutions, the United States voted affirmatively 11 times, abstained 10 times, and voted no 49 times. Thus, the United States cast negative votes on 70 percent of the contested resolutions. No other nation rejected the international consensus as often. Israel voted no 38 times (54 percent), Micronesia 36 times (51 percent), the Marshall Islands 23 times (33 percent), Canada 11 times (16 percent), Sweden 8 times (13 percent), and Brazil 0 times.

These data do not tell the whole story of the US role in the General Assembly, of course. In many cases, resolutions which were adopted without a vote had involved votes on particular parts of the resolution.

So for example, resolution 57/189, adopted without a vote, expressed the Assembly's concern about the discrimination against girl children and violations of their rights. But before the text was adopted as a whole, operative paragraph 1 was put to a vote. That paragraph stated:

1. Stresses the need for full and urgent implementation of the rights of the girl child as guaranteed to her under all human rights instruments, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, as well as the need for universal ratification of those instruments;

The retention of the paragraph was approved by a vote of 168 in favor to 2 against (the United States and the Marshall Islands) with 1 abstention (Israel).[3]

Resolution 57-215, also adopted without a vote, condemned forced disappearances. The resolution made reference to the International Criminal Court; the US sought to remove this wording, but the Assembly by a lop-sided vote (166-1-9) retained it, with only the United States voting no.[4]

* * *

The US Declaration of Independence acknowledged the need for "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The United States government today shows no such respect. To be sure, the views of the entire world should not matter if one is right. But in its consistent rejection of justice, peace, and international cooperation, Washington's General Assembly voting record is not right, but shameful.

Notes
Quoted in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Loyalties, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984, p. 94.
CIA World Factbook, 2002
General Assembly Press Release, Dec. 18, 2002, GA/10124.
GA/10124.

Iran Embeds Badr troops in Iraq’s Shiite centers,
Races US for control

DEBKAfile Special Report

April 22, 2003,
The first great pilgrimage to Karbala that Iraqi Shiites were permitted to make in almost 30 years, starting Tuesday, April 22, may prove the defining event in the US-Iran contest for influence over Iraq’s majority Shiite community. The freedom to commemorate the 7th century death in battle of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was a mark in America’s favor. However, the striding pilgrims arrived with banners calling on the Americans to leave Iraq. Some also demanded an Islamic state to replace the Saddam regime. The three-day event in which a million or more dancing, chanting worshippers form processions around self-flagellating ecstatic youths will sorely test American skills in maintaining order without angering crowds inflamed by competing imams, especially at the ceremonies’ climax on Wednesday, April 23.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Baghdad and Tehran report that the Iranians raised the military stakes by pouring thousands of Al Badr Brigades troops into Iraq on Sunday and Monday, in advance of the pilgrimage and in breach of its understandings to Washington. One column of 3,000 men, heading south from Kurdistan, seized control of sections of the strategic town of Baqubah in the Diyala region only 50 km northeast of the Shiite al Azamiya and Saddam City districts of Baghdad. Baqubah also straddles the main Baghdad-Iran routes. A second Badr Brigades contingent of 3,000 to 4,000 crossed from Iran into Iraq near the southeastern town of Al Amarah and advanced into al Kut, where it split into three sub-units, one each for Nasiriyah, Najef and Karbala.

The troops in southern Iraq are in civilian clothes and drive civilian vehicles, much like armed militiamen, while in Baquba they sport Iranian Revolutionary Guards camouflage uniforms and move around in Iranian army vehicles.

The Badr Brigades are in fact an undercover elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They are made up of foreign elements, mostly Iraqi and Afghan Shiites. The Badr Brigades thrust into Iraq this week was in effect an Iranian military movement timed to coincide with the Karbala celebration and spearhead the rise of local Iraqi Shiite militias in Iraq’s heartland region against the American military presence. Some 70 percent of Iraq’s estimated 12,000 Shiites inhabit the area between Karbala and Najef in the south and Baquba in the north, including Baghdad.

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, Iran, in addition to moving Badr Brigades units into Iraq’s Shiite centers, made a further three tactical moves:

1. It pumped thousands of trained, well-armed guerrilla fighters through Basra and Al Amara into the Najef and Karbala regions to mingle with the pilgrims and manipulate the mood of the crowds from within.

2. The infiltrators delivered weapons, explosives and cash to pro-Iranian Iraqi leaders, arming them to fight pro-American or even moderate elements in the Shiite community.

3. They sent into Iraq the rabble-rousing Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, deputy head of the Supreme Assembly of the Iraqi Revolution, SAIRI, and brother of its leader, Ayatollah Muhammed Bakir al-Hakim, from Tehran where they live. He arrived with a group of fighters to stir into action the scores of clandestine anti-Saddam SAIRI cells believed to consist of between 1,500 and 2,500 militants.

Intelligence reports from the field point to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s men as having murdered Majid Khoei in the Najef mosque on April 10. The young, long-exiled Iraqi Shiite cleric had been designated as main American conduit to Iraq’s Shiite leaders.

The al-Hakim brothers are doubly dangerous to US plans for a democratic, multi-ethnic and stable Iraq. In the first place, behind their political-religious front, they command substantial military strength. DEBKAfile’s sources in earlier reports exposed French attempts to persuade the Iraqi Ayatollah to deploy his fighting units in Iraq against the US military presence. The second problem is the plausible formula he preaches that the US will find it very hard to debunk. His thesis in a nutshell is this: The best political course for Iraq is the parliamentary system of one-man, one-vote, without a sectarian agenda. The future government in Baghdad should uphold religious values rooted in Islam, the Sharia should be the main source of legislation. But the rights of all religious minorities will be respected.

On the face of it, what could be more democratic? The ayatollah welcomes a free general election no less than the Americans. And no wonder. Since the Shiites account for some 60 percent of the Iraqi population, the election results are a foregone conclusion: the Shiites will take over government in Baghdad by perfectly democratic means, displacing the Sunnites who ruled under Saddam Hussein and setting up a pro-Iranian, anti-American administration.

Many of the banners carried by the pilgrims thronging Karbala were prepared in advance and distributed by SAIR. They all carried the same message: The Americans must leave, No foreign rule for Iraq. We want an Islamic state. (For Islamic, read Shiite).

Tehran clearly seized on the Karbala pilgrimage as its opening for a mighty shove against the American presence in Iraq. No one is willing to predict whether the confrontation will pass quietly or degenerate into armed clashes with the potential for spreading to other parts of the country, including Baghdad itself.

The US-UK military command under US General Tommy Franks appears calm in the face of this potential. Troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division are watching over security from a distance, mainly keeping an eye on the 70-km long pilgrimage route between Karbala and Najef. However, military sources have discovered that coalition forces deployed between Basra and Baghdad have been quietly placed on the ready, in case of trouble erupting on Wednesday. Washington has also forwarded a grave caution to Tehran with a demand to withdraw the Badr Brigades troops from Baquba and Karbala and keep them out of Baghdad.

How the American forces stand up to these Iranian and pro-Iranian provocations among the Shiite pilgrims in the latter part of this week will strongly affect the outcome of the developing US-Tehran standoff; it will even shape Washington’s posture on Iran, Syria and the militant Shiite Hizballah’s home base in Lebanon.

A Skewed History of Asia of Paul Wolfowitz

by TIM SHORROCK

[posted online on April 17, 2003]

Washington, DC

On the Sunday before US troops seized the city of Baghdad, Paul Wolfowitz went on television to sell his vision for a future Middle East. A free Iraq, he said, would serve as a democratic beacon for the region just as Japan was the model for Asia. "The example of Japan, even in countries that had bitter memories of the Japanese, inspired many countries in East Asia to realize that they could master a free-market economy, that they could master democracy," he told Fox News Sunday.

Wolfowitz, who was President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is turning history on its head. Japan was not the inspiration for the democratic upsurge that swept through East Asia in the 1980s. Instead, it was the junior partner to the United States during the cold war, when Washington created an alliance of anticommunist dictators who supported American foreign policy while repressing their own people. Those policies didn't inspire democracy in Asia; if anything, they helped to stifle it.

The symbiotic relationship between Washington and Tokyo was forged in 1948, when the United States "reversed course" in its occupation of Japan to focus on the containment of communism. Almost overnight, US policy shifted from punishing Japanese bureaucrats and industrialists responsible for World War II to enlisting them in a global war against the Soviet Union and China. The shift was symbolized by Nobusuke Kishi, who was prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Kishi was minister of commerce and industry in the wartime Tojo Cabinet and labeled a "Class A" war criminal for helping run Japan's colonial empire in Manchuria.

"The part of Japanese imperialism which was made powerless after the defeat in the war wanted, of course, to revive itself," Muto Ichiyo, a Japanese writer who worked closely with the US antiwar movement in the 1960s, once explained to me. "But they knew perfectly well that the situation had changed. They knew also that fighting against America again would be both impossible and purposeless. So they adopted a very clear-cut strategy: Japan will concentrate on the buildup of the economic base structure of imperialism, while America will practically rule Asia through its military forces."

Japanese industry profited handsomely by supplying the Pentagon with steel, munitions and even napalm when the United States fought wars in Korea and Vietnam. Then, as Washington propped up South Korea's Park Chung Hee, the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos and Indonesia's Suharto with vast quantities of military aid, Japan kept their economies alive with financial aid and investments from Mitsui, Sumitomo and other big corporations. Japan's collaboration with Washington was carefully hidden from the Japanese public but greatly appreciated by American leaders, as shown from newly declassified documents stored in the National Archives.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser, met with Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka to discuss Japan's role in post-Vietnam Asia. Nixon, according to a White House transcript, told Tanaka that he "realized that Japan has a special problem with respect to playing a military role in the Pacific and Asia." But "Japanese economic influence could be decisive in many areas," he added. "It is in our interest that there be a strong, vigorous Japanese economy, so that Japan could play a vital role in Southeast Asia."

Tanaka was happy to oblige, telling Nixon that Japan "should cooperate with the Southeast Asian nations and the ROK [Republic of Korea] in providing both aid and investment." In South Korea, which Nixon and Tanaka agreed was "essential" to Japan's security, he said Japanese aid would "create a situation in which disaffected South Korean elements are not tempted to serve North Korean interests." Tanaka's promises pleased Nixon, who "hoped to see not just a United States policy, but a US-Japan policy for Asia."

In Wolfowitz's rosy view of history, the millions of Koreans, Filipinos and Indonesians who rebelled against their authoritarian governments were following in Japan's footsteps. That is false. In reality, democratic activists in those countries endured torture, imprisonment and military repression imposed by governments backed by the Pentagon, financed by Japan and tolerated by Wolfowitz and other American officials in the name of US national security.

On April 7, Wolfowitz told the Washington Post that he "met quite a few dictators up close and personal in my life." Indeed he has. It was under Wolfowitz's watch at the State Department that Reagan invited South Korean military dictator Chun Doo Hwan to the White House in February 1981, nine months after Chun murdered hundreds of demonstrators in Kwangju. And it was Wolfowitz, who was US ambassador to Indonesia during the 1980s, who urged Congress to look beyond the "important and sensitive issue of human rights" to acknowledge "the strong and remarkable leadership of President Suharto."

A more accurate analogy between postwar Asia and US policy today would be the United States installing friendly leaders in Baghdad willing to do US bidding in the Middle East, and subservient, pro-US governments providing the economic underpinning to the new US imperialism. Then, after decades of US-imposed "democracy," the Iraqi people would rise up to forge their own future. That's how long it took Asians to reject the idea that democracy doesn't grow out of the barrels of American guns.

When Britain Invaded Iraq... in 1921

Jonathan Glancey
Saturday April 19, 2003
The Guardian

Gas, chemicals, bombs: Britain has used them all before in Iraq

No one, least of all the British, should be surprised at the state of anarchy in Iraq. We have been here before. We know the territory, its long and miasmic history, the all-but-impossible diplomatic balance to be struck between the cultures and ambitions of Arabs, Kurds, Shia and Sunni, of Assyrians, Turks, Americans, French, Russians and of our own desire to keep an economic and strategic presence there.

Laid waste, a chaotic post-invasion Iraq may now well be policed by old and new imperial masters promising liberty, democracy and unwanted exiled leaders, in return for oil, trade and submission. Only the last of these promises is certain. The peoples of Iraq, even those who have cheered passing troops, have every reason to mistrust foreign invaders. They have been lied to far too often, bombed and slaughtered promiscuously.

Iraq is the product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient history, thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Kurdistan at the end of the first world war. Unsurprisingly, anarchy and insurrection were there from the start.

The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying dogs of war to "police" them. Terror bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers, delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were all developed during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during Britain's League of Nations' mandate. The mandate ended in 1932; the semi-colonial monarchy in 1958. But during the period of direct British rule, Iraq proved a useful testing ground for newly forged weapons of both limited and mass destruction, as well as new techniques for controlling imperial outposts and vassal states.

The RAF was first ordered to Iraq to quell Arab and Kurdish and Arab uprisings, to protect recently discovered oil reserves, to guard Jewish settlers in Palestine and to keep Turkey at bay. Some mission, yet it had already proved itself an effective imperial police force in both Afghanistan and Somaliland (today's Somalia) in 1919-20. British and US forces have been back regularly to bomb these hubs of recalcitrance ever since.

Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence was soon repaid.

An uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen against the British occupation swept through Iraq in the summer of 1920. In went the RAF. It flew missions totalling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines. The rebellion was thwarted, with nearly 9,000 Iraqis killed. Even so, concern was expressed in Westminster: the operation had cost more than the entire British-funded Arab rising against the Ottoman Empire in 1917-18.

The RAF was vindicated as British military expenditure in Iraq fell from £23m in 1921 to less than £4m five years later. This was despite the fact that the number of bombing raids increased after 1923 when Squadron Leader Arthur Harris - the future hammer of Hamburg and Dresden, whose statue stands in Fleet Street in London today - took command of 45 Squadron. Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon troop car riers, Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night "terror" raids. Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 "with excellent moral effect".

Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.

Conventional raids, however, proved to be an effective deterrent. They brought Sheikh Mahmoud, the most persistent of Kurdish rebels, to heel, at little cost. Writing in 1921, Wing Commander J A Chamier suggested that the best way to demoralise local people was to concentrate bombing on the "most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected the attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle."

"The Arab and Kurd now know", reported Squadron Leader Harris after several such raids, "what real bombing means within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out, and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured, by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape."

In his memoir of the crushing of the 1920 Iraqi uprising, Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer L Haldane, quotes his own orders for the punishment of any Iraqi found in possession of weapons "with the utmost severity": "The village where he resides will be destroyed _ pressure will be brought on the inhabitants by cutting off water power the area being cleared of the necessaries of life". He added the warning: "Burning a village properly takes a long time, an hour or more according to size".

Punitive British bombing continued throughout the 1920s. An eyewitness account by Saleh 'Umar al Jabrim describes a raid in February 1923 on a village in southern Iraq, where bedouin were celebrating 12 weddings. After a visit from the RAF, a woman, two boys, a girl and four camels were left dead. There were many wounded. Perhaps to please his British interrogators, Saleh declared: "These casualties are from God and no one is to be blamed."

One RAF officer, Air Commodore Lionel Charlton, resigned in 1924 when he visited a hospital after such a raid and faced armless and legless civilian victims. Others held less generous views of those under their control. "Woe betide any native [working for the RAF] who was caught in the act of thieving any article of clothing that may be hanging out to dry", wrote Aircraftsman 2nd class, H Howe, based at RAF Hunaidi, Baghdad. "It was the practice to take the offending native into the squadron gymnasium. Here he would be placed in the boxing ring, used as a punch bag by members of the boxing team, and after he had received severe punishment, and was in a very sorry condition, he would be expelled for good, minus his job."

At the time of the Arab revolt in Palestine in the late 1930s, Air Commodore Harris, as he then was, declared that "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand, and sooner or later it will have to be applied". As in 1921, so in 2003.

jonathan.glancey@guardian.co.uk

Israeli report clears Israeli troops over Rachel Corrie's death

by Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
Monday April 14, 2003
The Guardian

An Israeli army investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, has concluded that its forces were not to blame for her death. It accused Corrie and other members of the International Solidarity Movement of "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous" behaviour.

Corrie, 23, was crushed to death by an army bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, as she protested against house demolitions.

The investigation, led by the chief of the general staff of the Israeli Defence Force, found that Israeli forces were not guilty of any misconduct. The result of the investigation comes as Tom Hurndall, 21, from London lies in hospital with severe brain damage after being shot in the head on Friday by an Israeli soldier as he tried to help a Palestinian woman and her children.

Mr Hurndall was also a peace activist working with the ISM. He was shot in a different area of Rafah while wearing the same kind of bright orange vest as Corrie when she died. Yesterday his family arrived from London to visit him in hospital in the southern Israeli town of Beersheva.

The army report obtained by the Guardian says Corrie: "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death. "The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved."

However, Joe Smith, 21, from Missouri who witnessed Corrie's death said that the army's description bore little resemblance to what he saw. "Rachel was kneeling 20 metres in front of the bulldozer on flat ground. There was no way she could not have been seen. We only maintain positions that are clearly visible. "She had been doing this all day but this time the driver did not stop. Once she had fallen under the bulldozer, the driver stopped when she was under its middle section and reversed," he said.

The report also says that the army was patrolling no man's land by the border zone, searching for explosives. But according to Mr Smith, Corrie believed that they intended to demolish the house where she had been staying. The report points out that Rafah is an extremely dangerous place where Israeli troops regularly come under attack from guns and explosives.

A spokesman for the Israeli Defence Force said yesterday that while it did not accept any responsibility for Corrie's death, it was going to change its procedures to prevent future accidents. He said that the level of command of similar operations would be raised and civilians in the area would be dispersed or arrested before operations.

In addition, observers would be used and CCTV installed on the bulldozers to compensate for blindspots which the IDF believe contributed to Corrie's death.

Tom Wallace, a spokesman for the ISM, said that the army's investigation had been far from credible and transparent as it had promised. "The conclusions are outrageous. If they found that the driver was not culpable what did they find to explain this? How could they find a driver who had run someone over in a slow and deliberate manner in no way responsible?" he said.

Corrie's parents, Craig and Cynthia, from Washington, had called on the US state department to investigate the death of their daughter.

They were unavailable for comment yesterday.

Remembering Rachel Corrie

Thursday March 20, 2003
The Guardian

Millions remember a Chinese man standing in front of a tank in Beijing in 1989. I am ashamed to say that I never knew his name. This week a young American woman was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she stood with arms outstretched, trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian Arab house in the Rafah refugee camp. I know her name: Rachel Corrie (Rachel's war, G2, March 18). She was 23 years old. George Bush has been silent about her death, but she should be remembered as representing the best of America. He will be remembered as representing the rest.
Bill Speirs
General secretary, Scottish TUC

No one reading Rachel Corrie's emails can fail to be moved by the death of a brave young woman whose life was crushed from her as she tried to protect Palestinian homes from destruction. Every day Palestinian lives, no more or less important than Rachel's, are lost in similar ways. Their homes are bulldozed and their land stolen as they are herded into small areas, in what is fast becoming a giant open-air prison.

It is more vital than ever that internationals continue to travel to the Palestine territories to show we support the right of refugees to return to their homes and to exercise their right to democratic statehood.
Chris Dunham
International Solidarity Movement
contact@ism-london.org


While weightier issues obviously preoccupy people at the moment, I wondered what press reports we might read if a 23-year-old US peace activist had been killed by an Iraqi bulldozer while trying to prevent it destroying people's homes.
Joseph Cocker
Leominster, Herefordshire

Rachel Corrie died under a bulldozer for her beliefs

Now her reputation is being blogged to death

John Sutherland
Monday March 31, 2003
The Guardian

So many bodies lie mouldering in the sand this last fortnight that Rachel Corrie's mangled corpse is probably already forgotten. She was the American student bulldozed into the dirt while trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian houses. G2 published a selection of her emails. Whether or not one agreed with her and the International Solidarity Movement to which she belonged, Rachel emerged as a woman prepared to put her body where her mouth was.

Barely had her body cooled than Rachel was promoted on the Palestine National Authority website as a heaven-sent martyr ("Israel killed another Angel").

Martyrisation demands retaliatory demonisation. Having been bulldozed to death, Rachel was duly blogged to death. The front-page news stories came out on March 17. By the next day, sites such as the aptly-named SharkBlog (hosted by Stefan Sharkansky) were in full mephitic flow. The Shark himself led the charge with a riff on "The Prime of Miss Rachel Corrie", casting her as Mary MacGregor, the idiot girl in Muriel Spark's novel. She had committed "suicide by bulldozer" as deliberately as her Palestinian buddies with their body bombs.

Accompanying emails were less literary. J Lichty, for example, posted his opinion that, "This deluded harpie did not want peace, she did not want human rights, she wanted victory. Victory for the enemies of America, victory for the enemies of the Jews, victory for the enemy of civilisation."

Jack Rich emailed his assent to this analysis: "Yeah, you've got it exactly right: this poor dupe sacrificed her life so that her poseur profs back home might preen for the cameras."

"What was she protecting?" asked Mickey: "Terrorists and a building used to make bombs to murder innocent civilians; she should burn in hell for an eternity." (The theology, as elsewhere, implies Christian fundamentalism rather than Judaic zealotry).

On another site, Rachel's parents were blackguarded by blog. It was they "who more than likely taught her these bizarre values; they must have been members of the same pot-smoking hippie commune as John Walker Lindh's mom and dad".

Pictures had accompanied the news reports of Rachel's death, megaphone in hand, standing in front of the menacing bulldozer. A pose inescapably reminiscent of Tiananmen Square. Another picture showed her fallen in front of the murderous blade. Questions were asked as to whether the images had been "manipulated".

Two days later a contrary photograph of Rachel appeared, first in the Seattle Times (the article accompanying it has since been removed). It depicts her snarling, shawled and in a Palestinian street demonstration, tearing up a paper US flag. The provenance given for the photograph (a mysterious snapper called "Khalil Hamra") led nowhere. Where, then, had it come from? Paranoia suggested the Israeli secret service, which monitors such events. This picture also looked, to some expert eyes, doctored.

None the less, the damage was done. Americans are hypersensitive about desecration of the Stars and Stripes. Rachel was not a human shield protecting innocent Palestinians but a traitor and a terrorist sympathiser. It didn't help that her mother announced that "Rachel was opposed to this war on Iraq."

The insult to the flag provoked an even more savage blogguarding campaign. "Tom", for example, who declared that, "Anyone who would burn an American flag deserves to be bulldozed to death!!! Hopefully the US government will aim some bulldozers at the next group of war protesters, those anti-American motherfuckers."

What have we come to? The speed with which this kind of devil's advocacy can now (thanks to the net) be mounted, its sheer unbridled violence and its moral irresponsibility are, to the thoughtful mind, more frightening than any of those WMDs for whose (dubious) existence Britons are, at this moment, laying down their lives. Stop the world: I want to log off.

RACHEL CORRIE'S WAR - Her emails

Tuesday March 18, 2003
The Guardian

This weekend 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. In a remarkable series of emails to her family, she explained why she was risking her life

February 7 2003

Hi friends and family, and others,

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me - Ali - or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say, "Bush Majnoon", "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: "Bush mish Majnoon" ... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it - and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees - many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. And then waving and "What's your name?". Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously - occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving - many forced to be here, many just agressive - shooting into the houses as we wander away.

I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza". Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you will start.

My love to everyone. My love to my mom. My love to smooch. My love to fg and barnhair and sesamees and Lincoln School. My love to Olympia.

Rachel

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February 20 2003

Mama,

Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can't. People can't get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can't get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won't make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal.

The Gaza Strip is divided in thirds now. There is some talk about the "reoccupation of Gaza", but I seriously doubt this will happen, because I think it would be a geopolitically stupid move for Israel right now. I think the more likely thing is an increase in smaller below-the-international-outcry-radar incursions and possibly the oft-hinted "population transfer".

I am staying put in Rafah for now, no plans to head north. I still feel like I'm relatively safe and think that my most likely risk in case of a larger-scale incursion is arrest. A move to reoccupy Gaza would generate a much larger outcry than Sharon's assassination-during-peace-negotiations/land grab strategy, which is working very well now to create settlements all over, slowly but surely eliminating any meaningful possibility for Palestinian self-determination. Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me. I have a small flu bug, and got some very nice lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we still sleep keeps asking me about you. She doesn't speak a bit of English, but she asks about my mom pretty frequently - wants to make sure I'm calling you.

Love to you and Dad and Sarah and Chris and everybody.

Rachel

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February 27 2003

(To her mother)

Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again - a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby - one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.

This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses - the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses - right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.

I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed - the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in the world. There used to be a middle class here - recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people's vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can't.

If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours - do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed - just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.

You asked me about non-violent resistance.

When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family's house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn't completely believe me. I think it's actually good if you don't, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I'm much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I'm doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above - and a lot of other things - constitutes a somewhat gradual - often hidden, but nevertheless massive - removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities - but in focusing on them I'm terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon's possible goals), can't leave. Because they can't even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won't let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can't get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don't remember it right now. I'm going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don't like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I've ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.

Rachel

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February 28 2003

(To her mother)

Thanks, Mom, for your response to my email. It really helps me to get word from you, and from other people who care about me.

After I wrote to you I went incommunicado from the affinity group for about 10 hours which I spent with a family on the front line in Hi Salam - who fixed me dinner - and have cable TV. The two front rooms of their house are unusable because gunshots have been fired through the walls, so the whole family - three kids and two parents - sleep in the parent's bedroom. I sleep on the floor next to the youngest daughter, Iman, and we all shared blankets. I helped the son with his English homework a little, and we all watched Pet Semetery, which is a horrifying movie. I think they all thought it was pretty funny how much trouble I had watching it. Friday is the holiday, and when I woke up they were watching Gummy Bears dubbed into Arabic. So I ate breakfast with them and sat there for a while and just enjoyed being in this big puddle of blankets with this family watching what for me seemed like Saturday morning cartoons. Then I walked some way to B'razil, which is where Nidal and Mansur and Grandmother and Rafat and all the rest of the big family that has really wholeheartedly adopted me live. (The other day, by the way, Grandmother gave me a pantomimed lecture in Arabic that involved a lot of blowing and pointing to her black shawl. I got Nidal to tell her that my mother would appreciate knowing that someone here was giving me a lecture about smoking turning my lungs black.) I met their sister-in-law, who is visiting from Nusserat camp, and played with her small baby.

Nidal's English gets better every day. He's the one who calls me, "My sister". He started teaching Grandmother how to say, "Hello. How are you?" In English. You can always hear the tanks and bulldozers passing by, but all of these people are genuinely cheerful with each other, and with me. When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them - and may ultimately get them - on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity - laughter, generosity, family-time - against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I also haven't seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people.

Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

Rachel Corrie Deserves Justice

by Charley Reese
Monday, April 21, 2003

Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American girl who was murdered by the Israelis. She was standing on a large mound of earth trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer from smashing the house of a Palestinian doctor in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli bulldozer plowed right over her and then backed up, further crushing her frail, young body. Of course, the Israelis claim it was an accident. But there are photographs, taken by her companions as it was happening, that clearly show she was perfectly visible to the bulldozer driver. You can see them on the Internet.

The question for us is, are we going to seek justice for this idealistic American girl, or are we going to allow the spineless, corrupt government in Washington to accept, without investigation, the Israeli excuse, as it always does? It just so happens that Israel has apparently decided to drive out international observers. The Israelis killed Rachel; they shot another international observer in the face and a third one in the head — all within the past few weeks. These are not "militants." They are idealistic young people trying in a nonviolent way to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, printed a number of Rachel's e-mails to her family (strange how gutless the American press is when it comes to Israel). They are a very sad read. She told her mother she had nightmares about bulldozers and tanks, and in one prophetic paragraph said: "When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here ... coming here is one of the better things I've ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide."

Speaking of the Palestinians, with whom she was living, she wrote: "I know that the situation gets to them — and may ultimately get them — on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity — laughter, generosity, family time — against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death.

"I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. ... I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel."

Well, this lovely young girl will never have a chance to dance or have boyfriends. Her death, of course, went minimally noticed by a news media so adamantly determined to play the three monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) when it comes to Israel. After all, merely telling the truth will get you labeled an anti-Semite.

What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is a crime against humanity, and our government is an accessory because the politicians in Washington are too damned gutless to criticize Israel. I read another e-mail a year or so ago from a young American girl working in Ramallah with a children's theater group. When she presented her American passport to an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint, he wiped his bottom with it and sneered, "This is what we think of your American passport."

I've begun to think, however, that there is no cure for stupidity and cowardice. Palestinian children will stand in front of a tank and bounce a stone off the turret, but Americans, living in the land of freedom, will say, "Well, I agree with you, but I'm afraid to say anything." Afraid of what? Being slandered? Getting death threats? Take it from me, they don't hurt one bit.

Freedom isn't worth a damn if you're afraid to use it.

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Rachel's last mail

Thursday March 20, 2003
The Guardian

On Tuesday we ran a series of emails from Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli army bulldozer. Here we publish her final exchange with her father

March 11, 2003

Rachel,

I find writing to you hard, but not thinking about you impossible. So I don't write, but I do bore my friends at lunch giving vent to my fear. I am afraid for you, and I think I have reason to be. But I'm also proud of you - very proud. But as Don Remfert says: I'd just as soon be proud of somebody else's daughter. That's how fathers are: we're hard wired not to want our children, no matter how old they are, no matter how brave they are, and no matter how much good they are doing, to be subject to so much threat or even witness to so much suffering. You may say (have said) that it is wrong for me to stick my head in the sand; but I say I am only trying to (or just wishing I could) stick your head in the sand - and that's different. Hard wired. Can't be changed on that aspect of the issue.

I love you, and please take care!

Dad
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March 12, 2003

Hi papa, thank you for your email. I feel like sometimes I spend all my time propagandising mom, and assuming she'll pass stuff on to you, so you get neglected. Don't worry about me too much, right now I am most concerned that we are not being effective. I still don't feel particularly at risk. Rafah has seemed calmer lately, maybe because the military is preoccupied with incursions in the north - still shooting and house demolitions - one death this week that I know of, but not any larger incursions. Still can't say how this will change if and when war with Iraq comes.

Thanks also for stepping up your anti-war work. I know it is not easy to do, and probably much more difficult where you are than where I am. I am really interested in talking to the journalist in Charlotte - let me know what I can do to speed the process along.

I am trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I leave here, and when I'm going to leave. Right now I think I could stay until June, financially. I really don't want to move back to Olympia, but do need to go back there to clean my stuff out of the garage and talk about my experiences here. On the other hand, now that I've crossed the ocean I'm feeling a strong desire to try to stay across the ocean for some time. Considering trying to get English teaching jobs - would like to really buckle down and learn Arabic. Also got an invitation to visit Sweden on my way back, which I think I could do very cheaply. I would like to leave Rafah with a viable plan to return, too.

One of the core members of our group has to leave tomorrow, and watching her say goodbye to people is making me realise how difficult it will be. People here can't leave, so that complicates things. They also are pretty matter-of-fact about the fact that they don't know if they will be alive when we come back here. I really don't want to live with a lot of guilt about this place - being able to come and go so easily - and not going back. I think it is valuable to make commitments to places so I would like to be able to plan on coming back here within a year or so. Of all of these possibilities I think it's most likely that I will at least go to Sweden for a few weeks on my way back - I can change tickets and get a plane from Paris to Sweden and back for a total of around 150 bucks or so. I know I should really try to link up with the family in France but I really think that I'm not going to do that. I think I would just be angry the whole time and not much fun to be around. It also seems like a transition into too much opulence right now - I would feel a lot of class guilt the whole time as well.

Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life. I love you very much. If you want you can write to me as if I was on vacation at a camp on the big island of Hawaii learning to weave. One thing I do to make things easier here is to utterly retreat into fantasies that I am in a Hollywood movie or a sitcom starring Michael J Fox. So feel free to make something up and I'll be happy to play along.

Much love Poppy.

Rachel

Lesson from History- Resistance to occupation uniting factions in Iraq

by HAROON SIDDIQUI
Toronto Star
April 20 2003

" Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies but as liberators." That's not George W. Bush but Lt.-Gen. Stanley Maude addressing Iraqis after the British occupation of Baghdad in 1917. With the Ottoman empire's surrender a year later, the British proclaimed the three Mesopotamian provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul as Iraq.

Running into resistance, they set aside Maude's assurances, reached for gas shells and opted for the "wholesale slaughter" of Arab tribes, in the phrase of another British officer.They quelled the uprising, at the cost of 10,000 Iraqi and 450 British dead, and an expenditure of the then-staggering sum of £40 million. They also installed their own man, Amir Faisal. The son of the sheriff of Mecca and leader of the Arab Revolt, he was imported from his European exile following his overthrow in Syria by the French.

The British even stage-managed a "referendum" to crown him king — to the strains of "God Save The King." The British spent the next decade battling the autonomy-seeking, oil-rich Kurds. The job was accomplished by merciless air bombing, with colonial secretary Winston Churchill even urging the use of mustard gas.

This bit of history provides disturbing parallels to current events: the American invasion of Iraq; the raising of the American flag, albeit temporarily, at Umm Qasr and on a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad; and the American machinations over who should rule Iraq.

A more recent parallel is also relevant. After the justified American war on terrorism in Afghanistan, it was the United Nations that organized the conclaves of Afghans that picked Hamid Karzai as president, bestowing on him legitimacy.

In Iraq, the show is all American. While Bush and retired Lt.-Gen. Jay Garner, head of the planned interim American administration, are saying all the right things — the president promising "a government of, by and for the Iraqi people" — the Americans do have their Prince Faisal in tow. They have flown Ahmed Chalabi back to Iraq, which he left as a child in 1956. But they are shunning the Shiite majority, especially the groups with the largest following.

Popular resistance has already begun. In Basra, Najaf and Karbala, as well as in parts of Baghdad, anti-American marches are accompanied by declarations of self-governance.In Mosul, which is half Kurd and half Sunni Arab, U.S. soldiers have killed 10 of the latter in a mini-uprising.

Commentators are raising the spectre of civil war — the Lebanonization of Iraq — given its religious and ethnic divisions.

But while the Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Chaldean Christians (former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz) and Marsh Arabs have at times been at each others' throats, their real battles have always been with unrepresentative and often oppressive central governments — and with foreign occupiers.Now, they are more likely to turn against the Anglo-American forces than on each other.

The Shiite majority — 60 per cent of Iraq's 23 million people — is concentrated in the south and in the teeming Baghdad suburb of Sadr (formerly Saddam) City. They have been victimized many times over. Frozen out of power by the minority Sunnis who have ruled ever since Prince Faisal, they were targeted by Saddam. He killed 20,000 of them, including 250 of their revered clerics.They see the promised dawn of democracy as their chance at majority rule.

The group that claims the largest following among them is led by Syed Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, who has been in exile in Iran since 1984. He opposes the interim American administration, preferring it to be Iraqi, and he boycotted Garner's first enclave of potential leaders.

Another quasi-religious group boycotting the process is Al-Dawa. It is alleged to have committed terrorist acts against the Saddam regime as well as against Americans in Lebanon.

A third force is the Howza, Shiite centres of learning and spirituality. The one with the largest following is led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Najaf.

Americans are wary of turban-wearing politicians, especially those with links to Islamic Iran. But not all Iraqi Shiites take their cue from Iran, religiously or politically. Iraqi Shiites fought with Iraqi Sunnis in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Among non-Shiites, the most persecuted are the Kurds, at between 4 million and 5 million.Saddam killed about 180,000 of them, including 5,000 in a chemical attack. But they have had their best period since the 1991 Gulf War, thanks to the American-enforced no-fly zone.They are divided between two legendary leaders, each controlling his own turf. But Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani co-operated in teaming up their militias with American troops on two missions: moving west into Saddam's oil fields and east to eliminate Al-Ansar guerrillas. The latter, followers of Osama bin Laden, held a sliver of land along the Iran border.

The Kurds have given up on independence and pledged to work within a pluralistic Iraq. They have earned the right to a Quebec-like autonomy in a federal, democratic Iraq.

The Sunnis are scattered. London-based Monarchy Movement is led by Sharif Ali bin al-Hussaini, 45, a descendant of Faisal. He has little support.

Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, led by a Shiite, Iyad Alawi, includes Sunni former military officers and civil servants.

Another distinct group, the Marsh Arabs, have little clout.Theirs is a 6,000-year-old culture. But reacting to their 1991 revolt, Saddam drained their swamp at the mouth of the Gulf, burned the reed beds and poisoned the lagoons. About 100,000 Marsh Arabs moved to cities, 40,000 escaped to Iran and an unknown number were killed. It was Stalinesque ethnic cleansing and a catastrophic environmental disaster.

Iraqi religious and ethnic groups need to work out their differences at the ballot box. That is also the best guarantee of moving the militants among them away from violence.

This rare opportunity is an unarguable benefit of the American invasion. It will be lost by any American attempt at creating a client state.

Far more ominously, it may replicate the mistakes of the British and the French whose agenda for the Middle East, as laid down between 1915 and 1922, turned out to be durable and disastrous.

Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus.E-mail: hsiddiq@thestar.ca

The unthinkable is becoming normal. Do not forget the horror

The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war
John Pilger
20 April 2003

Last Sunday, seated in the audience at the Bafta television awards ceremony, I was struck by the silence. Here were many of the most influential members of the liberal elite, the writers, producers, dramatists, journalists and managers of our main source of information, television; and not one broke the silence. It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the "test case", says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini's definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing "incredible'' levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is "debated'' on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue.

The unthinkable is being normalised. The American essayist Edward Herman wrote: "There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public.''

Herman wrote that following the 1991 Gulf War, whose nocturnal images of American bulldozers burying thousands of teenage Iraqi conscripts, many of them alive and trying to surrender, were never shown. Thus, the slaughter was normalised. A study released just before Christmas 1991 by the Medical Educational Trust revealed that more 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children were killed or died as a direct result of the American-led attack. This was barely reported, and the homicidal nature of the "war'' never entered public consciousness in this country, let alone America.

The Pentagon's deliberate destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure, such as power sources and water and sewage plants, together with the imposition of an embargo as barbaric as a medieval siege, produced a degree of suffering never fully comprehended in the West. Documented evidence was available, volumes of it; by the late 1990s, more than 6,000 infants were dying every month, and the two senior United Nations officials responsible for humanitarian relief in Iraq, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned, protesting the embargo's hidden agenda. Halliday called it "genocide".

As of last July, the United States, backed by the Blair government, was wilfully blocking humanitarian supplies worth $5.4bn, everything from vaccines and plasma bags to simple painkillers, all of which Iraq had paid for and the Security Council had approved.

Last month's attack by the two greatest military powers on a demoralised, sick and largely defenceless population was the logical extension of this barbarism. This is now called a "victory", and the flags are coming out. Last week, the submarine HMS Turbulent returned to Plymouth, flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates' emblem. How appropriate. This nuclear-powered machine fired some 30 American Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraq. Each missile cost £700,000: a total of £21m. That alone would provide desperate Basra with food, water and medicines.

Imagine: what did Commander Andrew McKendrick's 30 missiles hit? How many people did they kill or maim in a population nearly half of which are children? Maybe, Commander, you targeted a palace with gold taps in the bathroom, or a "command and control facility", as the Americans and Geoffrey Hoon like to lie. Or perhaps each of your missiles had a sensory device that could distinguish George Bush's "evil-doers'' from toddlers. What is certain is that your targets did not include the Ministry of Oil.

When the invasion began, the British public was called upon to "support'' troops sent illegally and undemocratically to kill people with whom we had no quarrel. "The ultimate test of our professionalism'' is how Commander McKendrick describes an unprovoked attack on a nation with no submarines, no navy and no air force, and now with no clean water and no electricity and, in many hospitals, no anaesthetic with which to amputate small limbs shredded by shrapnel. I have seen elsewhere how this is done, with a gag in the patient's mouth.

One child, Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the boy who lost his parents and his arms in a missile attack, has been flown to a modern hospital in Kuwait. Publicity has saved him. Tony Blair says he will "do everything he can'' to help him. This must be the ultimate insult to the memory of all the children of Iraq who have died violently in Blair's war, and as a result of the embargo that Blair enthusiastically endorsed. The saving of Ali substitutes a media spectacle of charity for our right to knowledge of the extent of the crime committed against the young in our name. Let us now see the pictures of the "truckload of dozens of dismembered women and children'' that the Red Cross doctors saw.

As Ali was flown to Kuwait, the Americans were preventing Save The Children from sending a plane with medical supplies into northern Iraq, where 40,000 are desperate. According to the UN, half the population of Iraq has only enough food to last a few weeks. The head of the World Food Programme says that 40 million people around the world are now seriously at risk because of the distraction of the humanitarian disaster in Iraq.

And this is "liberation"? No, it is bloody conquest, witnessed by America's mass theft of Iraq's resources and natural wealth. Ask the crowds in the streets, for whom the fear and hatred of Saddam Hussein have been transferred, virtually overnight, to Bush and Blair and perhaps to "us''.

Such is the magnitude of Blair's folly and crime that the contrivance of his vindication is urgent. As if speaking for the vindicators, Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, reported: "[Blair] said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.''

What constitutes a bloodbath to the BBC's man in Downing Street? Did the murder of the 3,000 people in New York's Twin Towers qualify? If his answer is yes, then the thousands killed in Iraq during the past month is a bloodbath. One report says that more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed within 24 hours or less. Or are the vindicators saying that the lives of one set of human beings have less value than those recognisable to us? Devaluation of human life has always been essential to the pursuit of imperial power, from the Congo to Vietnam, from Chechnya to Iraq.

If, as Milan Kundera wrote, "the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting", then we must not forget. We must not forget Blair's lies about weapons of mass destruction which, as Hans Blix now says, were based on "fabricated evidence". We must not forget his callous attempts to deny that an American missile killed 62 people in a Baghdad market. And we must not forget the reason for the bloodbath. Last September, in announcing its National Security Strategy, Bush served notice that America intended to dominate the world by force. Iraq was indeed the "test case". The rest was a charade.

We must not forget that a British defence secretary has announced, for the first time, that his government is prepared to launch an attack with nuclear weapons. He echoes Bush, of course. An ascendant mafia now rules the United States, and the Prime Minister is in thrall to it. Together, they empty noble words – liberation, freedom and democracy – of their true meaning. The unspoken truth is that behind the bloody conquest of Iraq is the conquest of us all: of our minds, our humanity and our self-respect at the very least. If we say and do nothing, victory over us is assured.

WMDs - So where are they, Mr Blair?

Editorial, Independent UK
20 April 2003

Not one illegal warhead. Not one drum of chemicals. Not one incriminating document. Not one shred of evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in more than a month of war and occupation

So where are they? In case we forget, distracted by the thought of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, looted museums and gathering political chaos, the proclaimed purpose of this war, vainly pursued by Britain and the US through the United Nations, was to disarm Saddam Hussein and to destroy weapons of mass destruction deemed a menace to the entire world.

But, Mr Blair, where are they? A month has passed since American and British troops entered Iraq, more than a week since the fall of Baghdad. But thus far not even a sniff. Not a drum of VX or mustard gas, not a phial of botulin or anthrax, not a shred of evidence that Iraq was assembling a nuclear weapons programme.

But that wasn't what they told us. Remember Colin Powell at the Security Council two months ago (though today it seems another age on another planet): the charts, the grainy intelligence satellite pictures, the crackly tapes of the intercepted phone conversations among Iraqi officials? How plausible it all sounded, especially when propounded by the most plausible figure in the Bush ad- ministration.

And what about those other claims, wheeled out on various occasions by Messrs Bush, Blair, Cheney and Rumsfeld? The Iraqi drones that were supposed to be able to attack the US east coast, the imports of aluminium tubes allegedly intended for centrifuges to enrich uranium, the unaccounted-for lethal nerve and germ agents, in quantities specified down to the last gallon or pound, as if exact numbers alone constituted proof. All, it seems, egregious products of the imagination of the intelligence services – one commodity whose existence need never be doubted.

Maybe the Saddam regime was diabolically cunning in the concealment of these weap-ons, but the shambolic manner of its passing suggests otherwise. Maybe, as those "US officials" continue to suggest from behind their comfortable screen of anonymity, the weapons have been shipped to Syria for "safekeeping". But that theory too is dismissed by independent experts.

Indeed, it collapses at the first serious examination. Why should Saddam part with his most effective means of defence, when the survival of his regime and himself was on the line? Nor will that hoary and disingenuous line advanced by our political masters wash any longer – oh yes, we know a lot more, but if we told you, we would be showing our hand to Saddam and endangering precious intelligence sources.

Just believe us, old boy, the Government told us, and you'll see we were right all along. And the British, being on the whole a reasonable and trusting people, mostly accepted the word of their rulers.

Well, Saddam is now gone. And with him has disappeared any conceivable risk to those intelligence sources (assuming they ever existed). So just what was this information on the basis of which Washington and its faithful ally launched an unprovoked invasion of a ramshackle third world country? A country with a very nasty regime to be sure, but not a great deal nastier than some other potential candidates for "liberation" in the Middle East and elsewhere.

If only for the credibility and reputation of our country, this newspaper hopes that enough weapons of mass destruction will be discovered to justify a war that has grievously weakened the UN, strained the Atlantic alliance and split the European Union.

But they'd better be found pretty soon. Having rushed into war to suit its own military and domestic electoral timetable, the Bush administration now has the nerve to claim that a year may be required to establish the whereabouts of the WMD – and that it may never do so unless led to them by co-operative Iraqis. But no longer can London and Washington rely simply on the impossibility for the former Iraqi regime to prove a negative, that the weapons do not exist. It is up to the "coalition" of two to provide proof positive that they do.

This pointless war cannot be un-made. But we urgently need to know that the invasion was not illegal as well. With Britain and the US in full control of Iraq, a month should suffice. If no "smoking gun" has turned up by then, a full parliamentary inquiry is essential – into the competence and accountability of the intelligence services, and into how our Government used them to sell a mistaken and reckless policy.

Anthrax, chemicals and nerve gas: who is lying?

Growing evidence of deception by Washington

By Andrew Gumbel
The Indepedent UK

20 April 2003


If US and British forces are scratching their heads at their inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, perhaps they should talk to Scott Ritter, the United Nations weapons inspector who famously quit in 1998, after seven years on the job, and has been a controversial figure ever since.

For months, Mr Ritter has said Iraq's capability of producing or deploying chemical or biological weapons was 90-95 per cent destroyed on his watch and was very unlikely to have been built up again under international sanctions and the constant surveillance of spy satellites and US and British war planes.

Iraq's nuclear programme was dismantled at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, he said, and factories to produce chemical or biological agents deactivated shortly thereafter. Any leftover nerve agents would only have a shelf life of five years and would probably be useless by now. The anthrax and botulism toxin that Iraq produced was never weap-onised and, although it was put into warheads at one point, was no more than harmless sludge that "could only kill you if it landed on your head".

This is the same Scott Ritter who, when he first made these assertions last autumn, was vilified in the US media as "misguided", "disloyal", not to be taken seriously and "an apologist for and a defender of Saddam Hussein". One cable news host, Curtis Sliwa said on air he was a "sock puppet" who "ought to turn in his passport for an Iraqi one".

Perhaps it's time to give Mr Ritter another chance. It may, in fact, be time to reassess who exactly has been the deceiver and who the dupe in this whole affair. What Mr Ritter and others now allege, with increasing confidence, is a pattern of false information emanating from both Washington and London since last September – lies and distortions that launched a major war and are only now beginning to be widely exposed.

Exhibit number one is a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last summer. "The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents." he said. "And they continue to pursue the nuclear programme they began so many years ago." Mr Ritter says this is pure fiction.

Mr Cheney attributed his information to high-level defectors, including Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal. Supposedly, Kamal led UN inspectors in 1995 to a chicken farm stuffed with secret documents on ongoing weapons programmes. Actually, according to Mr Ritter, Hussein Kamal told US intelligence that the weapons had been destroyed, and the chicken farm documents subsequently examined by UN inspectors corroborated that.

Exhibit number two is the briefing paper issued by Downing Street on 24 September, which first alleged the purchase of uranium for nuclear weapons use from Niger. The documents indicating this purchase have now been exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as glaringly obvious fakes.

The timing of the nuclear allegation was crucial in persuading the US Congress to grant President Bush full war powers against Iraq a few weeks later. Several angry congressmen who voted in favour now want to know how and why they were misled.

"This is a breach of the highest order, and the American people are entitled to know how it happened," Henry Waxman of California wrote to the President last month. "I believed that you had access to reliable intelligence information that merited deference... The two most obvious explanations – knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence – both have immediate and serious implications."

Exhibit number three is the list of dangerous substances that President Bush and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said the Iraqis had not accounted for. Another distortion, according to Mr Ritter. The 15,000 litres of anthrax on the list, for example, was a hypothetical projection of future production at a biological plant that was closed down long ago.

Mr Ritter has not, of course, been vindicated quite yet. US intelligence may really know something, and significant hidden caches of weapons could still materialise. But the pattern of deception and unsubstantiated allegation is unmistakable, even as the political embarrassment for the Bush administration deepens.

Fake documents and exaggeration

The claims

By Sheelagh Doyle

20 April 2003

Nuclear

Claim President Bush said satellite photographs show Iraq rebuilding facilities at sites that were part of its nuclear programme in the past, so "the threat is real" of continuing nuclear activities.

Reality Satellite photos were believed to be of Iraq's former nuclear complex at Tuwaitha. The IAEA, which repeatedly inspected the site, said Tuwaitha "now conducts civilian research in the non-nuclear field".

Claim The British Government said that if Iraq obtained fissile material and other essential components from foreign sources, "Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years".

Reality The claim seemed accurate. However, controls on fissile material and the presence of international experts inside Iraq meant the risk of Iraq developing a nuclear device was very low.

Claim Britain said Iraq sought "significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The US identified the source as Niger.

Reality The IAEA concluded documents on which UK/US claims were based were fake.

Claim Britain and US warned several times that Iraq had made repeated attempts to import 60,000 specialised aluminium tubes and other equipment used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Reality The IAEA finds "no indication" that Iraq tried to import the tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment.

Chemical

ClaimThe US said Iraq had continued to rebuild and expand facilities that could be quickly diverted to chemical weapons production, such as chlorine and phenol plants.

Reality Iraq's chemical site at Al-Qaqaa was bombed in the first Gulf War, and remaining stocks were removed and destroyed by the UN experts. There was no indication that its production of chlorine and phenol had a military purpose.

Claim Secretary of State Colin Powell released satellite shots of a weapons factory at Taji purporting to show that the site had been cleaned up before the arrival of UN inspectors.

Reality The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said the photos could show routine movement at the plant.

Biological

Claim US releases picture of a drone which, if fitted with a spray tank, could "deliver biological agents" to Iraq's neighbours or even the US if transported to other countries.

Reality Iraq dismantled a drone following its discovery by UN inspectors – who were not convinced the unmanned aircraft was a proscribed item.

Claim Mr Powell said "we know from Iraq's past admissions" that it has successfully weaponised ricin.

Reality The UN inspectors said a single test was carried out in November 1990, but it was considered a failure and the project was abandoned.

Claim Mr Powell said Saddam had the "wherewithal to develop smallpox".

Reality UN inspectors did not consider smallpox to be a matter of concern and did not mention it except to report that there was "no evidence" of Iraq engaging in smallpox research.

Iraq war: Unanswered questions

BBC News Online takes stock

BBC News
17 April 2003

One feature of the war in Iraq was the speed and immediacy with which many events were reported by the media. Some of these turned out to be not quite what they seemed, others are still surrounded by confusion. Was this the fog of war, effects-based warfare, propaganda, or error? Click on the headings below to go straight to a particular section.

Scuds

Coalition account: On day one of the war, 20 March, military spokesmen for the US and UK announce that "Scud-type" missiles have been fired into Kuwait. This was significant because Iraq was banned from having Scuds or other missiles of a similar range under UN resolutions.

Clarification: Three days later US General Stanley McChrystal reports: "So far there have been no Scuds launched."

Umm Qasr falls

Coalition account: The fall of Umm Qasr, an Iraqi town and port near the border with Kuwait, is announced and reported several times in the first days of the war - the first of these on 20 March. On 21 March Admiral Michael Boyce, UK chief of defence staff, and Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, report that the town has fallen to coalition forces.

Other reports: Various media outlets report heavy fighting in Umm Qasr on 22 and 23 March.

Basra uprising

UK military's account: On the evening of 25 March British military intelligence officials report a "popular civilian uprising" in Basra. Major General Peter Wall, British Chief of Staff at Allied Central Command in Qatar, confirms that it appears an uprising has taken place, but that it is in its infancy and British troops are "keen to exploit its potential". The officials say Iraqi troops in the city turned mortar fire on their own civilians in an attempt to crush the unrest.

British journalist Richard Gaisford, who is with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards just outside Basra, says British troops are bombarding the mortar positions in an effort to support the uprising.

Other reports: Also on 25 March Arabic television stations report no sign of an uprising and that the city is quiet. Iraqi officials deny reports of an uprising, calling them "hallucinations".

Further UK account: On 26 March, deputy commander of British forces Major-General Peter Wall says the uprising is "just the sort of encouraging indication we have been looking for". But he adds: "To avoid any excessive optimism at this stage I should say we don't have any absolutely clear indication of the scale and scope of this uprising or exactly what has engendered it."

Conclusion: There is still no independent verification that an uprising occurred in Basra.

Tank column

Initial reports: On the evening of 26 March reports emerge that a column of 120 Iraqi tanks and armoured vehicles are heading south out of Basra. Major Mick Green, of the UK's 40 Commando, is quoted by the Mirror newspaper as saying: "We have no idea why this column has come out at the moment. Their intentions or motives are totally unclear but they have adopted an offensive posture and do not want to surrender, so we have attacked them."

Later reports: Newspapers and news bulletins the next morning carry accounts of fierce fighting and a large battle.

Clarification: Later on 27 March, a British military official is quoted as saying: "It was 14-0." This is understood to have meant that the Iraqi column consisted of only 14 vehicles. The official put the initial reports down to "the fog of war" and an erroneous radar signal.

Market explosions

On 26 March an explosion at a market in Baghdad's Shaab district kills at least 14 civilians. The BBC's Andrew Gilligan visits the scene. "What seemed to be two missiles landed in a busy shopping parade. The nearest military building, civil defence headquarters, is I have to say at least quarter of a mile away," he reports. The cause of the blast is still disputed.

Iraqi account: Following the first blast, at Shaab, Iraq claims that coalition forces are targeting Iraqi civilians.

US account: Initial briefings from US officials say coalition aircraft targeted nine Iraqi missiles and launchers in Baghdad during 26 March. Officials say Iraqis have placed the missiles in a residential area less than 100 metres (300 feet) from homes. Later in the day, the Pentagon insists that they did not target the market area in Baghdad. Major General Stanley McChrystal of the US joint staff says he did not know whether the explosions were caused by a stray US weapon or perhaps Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles that fell back to earth.

A US military spokesman at coalition Central Command says: "Our early intelligence report provides no conclusive evidence that we have caused the damage in the civilian marketplace. One possibility and high probability is that it was caused from the fallout from the regime's anti-aircraft fire."

Other reports: The BBC's Andrew Gilligan says that explanation is "unlikely because we simply haven't heard any anti-aircraft fire in the city for the past four days".

On 29 March, an explosion at a market in the Shula district of Baghdad kills more than 50 civilians.

US account: A US Central Command spokesman in Qatar suggests the likely cause was Iraqi fire. One issue likely to be examined in both market bombings, the New York Times reports, is the relatively small size of the craters, in the case of the attack at Shula they were closer to the kind associated with mortars, artillery shells or small bombs, than to the kind of craters commonly caused by American bombs or missiles in Baghdad.

Other reports: The British Independent newspaper reports on 2 April that its correspondent in Baghdad, Robert Fisk, has found a 30-centimetre-long piece of shrapnel at the site of the Shula bombing showing the serial number of the bomb. The newspaper says that the number identifies the cause of the explosion as a US anti-radar missile manufactured in Texas by the Raytheon company and sold to the US navy.

UK Government account: On 2 April UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says of the first bombing, in the Shaab district: "It is increasingly probable that this was the result of Iraqi - not coalition - action."

On 3 April the UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon says that the there is no evidence that the market bombings were caused by coalition missiles other than evidence provided by the Iraqi regime. He says that there are Western intelligence reports that Iraqi officials had "cleared up" the site of the Shula bombing "to disguise their own responsibility for what took place".

Conclusion: Coalition officials say both bombings are still under investigation.

Executions

UK account: At a press conference on 27 March with the US president at Camp David, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair says that Iraq has executed two British soldiers whose bodies were shown on Arabic television.

"If anyone needed any further evidence of the depravity of Saddam's regime, this atrocity provides it," he says. "It is yet one more flagrant breach of all the proper conventions of war."

Iraqi denial: Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf says that Mr Blair has "lied to the public" about the soldiers. "We haven't executed anyone."

Later reports:: The British prime minister's spokesman later said that there was no "absolute evidence" that the UK servicemen had been executed.

Chemical weapons find

On 27 March, George W Bush says that US forces have destroyed a camp in northern Iraq belonging to Ansar al-Islam. Washington's assertion that there was a link between Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the Baghdad regime rest mainly on the alleged links between Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda. US officials have consistently maintained that the discovery of the poison ricin in London was linked to this camp. UK officials have denied this.

US account: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers says on 30 March: "We attacked and now have gone in on the ground into the site where Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda had been working on poisons. We think that's probably where the ricin found in London came from."

Other reports: In London on 31 March two newspapers, the Mirror and the Sun report that the American finds at the Ansar al-Islam site offers proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The Sun argues that this justifies the war against Iraq.

Later US account: On 1 April US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks says coalition troops are yet to find any banned weapons in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld insists Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be found in areas in and around Baghdad and Tikrit.

Capture of Iraqi general

British account: On 30 March British forces involved in clashes in Basra say they have captured an Iraqi general. UK Group Captain Al Lockwood says the general is being asked to co-operate with UK forces in the planning operations against Iraqi resistance in Basra.

Other reports: Qatari television network al-Jazeera interviews Lieutenant General Walid Hamid Tawfiq, an Iraqi commander in southern Iraq. He insists that no general has been taken prisoner by the British.

UK retraction: The UK Ministry of Defence retracts earlier claims on the capture of a general. It is believed that a captured officer was mistaken for a general.

Checkpoint deaths

Late on 31 March, US troops open fire on a civilian van that fails to stop at a checkpoint. Seven Iraqi women and children are killed, according to US officials.

US account: US officials say the driver of the car failed to stop after warning shots were fired over the car and then at its engine. Soldiers fired at the passenger cabin "as a last resort". US soldiers at checkpoints were said to be jumpy after a suicide attack at a checkpoint had killed four servicemen. Pentagon officials insist that the correct procedures were followed, and that soldiers had acted in "the appropriate way".

Other reports: William Branigin, a reporter with the Washington Post embedded with the US Third Infantry, witnesses the shooting and has a different account. He says that 10 people were killed, and no warning shots were fired. He reports that after the shooting Captain Ronny Johnson, the commander at the checkpoint, yelled at his platoon commander: "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!" US forces, according to William Branigin, offered the survivors of the incident financial compensation.

Cluster bombs

Iraqi account: Officials in the Iraqi capital say that US forces have been dropping cluster bombs on civilian areas in Iraq. First reports of the use of cluster bombs in the war appear in the Western media on 3 April.

Coalition denial: US and British officials deny the use of cluster munitions. British military spokesman Colonel Chris Vernon said: "We are not using cluster munitions, for obvious collateral damage reasons, in and around Basra."

Later UK account: A military official in London tells BBC News Online: "We have used them elsewhere." He said they were an effective weapon of warfare, for example to target a convoy of military vehicles, but were only used in the open far from built up areas. UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon defends the use of cluster bombs in Iraq on 4 April, saying they are legal and not using them would put British soldiers at greater risk.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/2929411.stm

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

It is due to US Military Supremacy - Pure and Simple

The collapse -Analysis of the reasons why Baghdad was so quick to fall
Galal Nassar
Alhram Weekly, Egypt
17 - 23 April 2003 Issue No. 634

No strategic analyst or military commentator around the world was able to predict what took place on the morning of Wednesday, 9 April 2003, as American armoured vehicles and marines drove into the Al- Firdaws Square in the heart of the Iraqi capital. The aim was to set the stage for the spectacular fall of Baghdad. Iraqi renegades, assisted by an American tank, demolished a huge statue of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In another scene, an American soldier covered the face of Saddam's statue with the US flag for a few minutes before replacing it with an old Iraqi flag.

How did Baghdad fall that easily? How could that happen without any serious resistance when compared with that of Umm Qasr, Basra, the Fao peninsula, Nasseriya, Najaf, and Karbala? What was Israel's role in the invasion? Was the Iraqi loss military or political? The list of questions is endless.

On that morning, there was a great fall as well as a great escape. Surprisingly, US soldiers did not encounter any resistance as they drove through the streets and squares of Baghdad. Instead, they were greeted warmly and scenes of anarchy, looting and destruction swiftly followed. The feelings of Baghdad's inhabitants, as conveyed by the media, were puzzling; there was a quick shift from a sentiment of resistance of occupation to that of resentment and revolt against the institutions of Iraq's dictatorial regime. The resolve to resist occupation and defend the homeland collapsed as anger and revolt against the regime took hold. Baghdadis overlooked the fact that defending the regime is one matter and defending the fatherland quite another.

At the time of this writing, there are many questions that baffle Arabs with respect to what really happened in the ancient land of Mesopotamia. For instance: where did the military and political leadership go that morning? Where were the Iraqi armed forces and their weapons? Where were the security and police forces? Why did everybody abandon their homeland? What made Iraqis behave in that manner, that is, looting and destroying everything? What shape will the future Iraqi government take and who will preside over it?

Arabs are also deeply concerned about whether any new government will be able to obtain the support of the Iraqi street, with all its ethnic and sectarian diversity; the role that the British and the Americans will play in any future government; and the distribution of Iraq's petroleum resources. There are also concerns over the fate of the Kurds and whether they will be satisfied with anything less than their own independent state.

Many Arabs are wondering whether there was a deal between Saddam and the US, with Russian mediation, to concede Baghdad without a bullet being fired. Or was Saddam killed, along with his family, the Ba'ath Party and the army? They also wait for news of the Arab volunteers who went to Baghdad to participate in its great battle. But perhaps most importantly. is the conclusion of the war on Iraq a message to all Arab regimes and peoples? Is this as great a catastrophe as that of 1948?

Dozens of questions persist and answers are still being sought in a bid to assuage the collective sense of impotence that is being felt all over the Arab world over what has happened in Iraq. As the details of the military operations of this war were rather hazy, some observers were keen to focus on the battle for Baghdad as the decisive point in the conflict. They even scoured the military history books, looking for city battles that effectively altered the courses of wars.

Some analyses rather misguidedly compared the upcoming battle for Baghdad to that of Leningrad, which endured a 900-day siege with 1.25 million citizens and soldiers perishing. Others were more objective, invoking the battle and siege of Stalingrad, which lasted 30 days, resulted in 120,000 Soviet casualties and heralding a decline in Germany's military power. Some even compared Baghdad with the allied British, American and Soviet forces and their infiltration of Berlin, Hitler's capital.

All of these commentators were trying to draw parallels to better understand what would take place in Baghdad.

Retired Major-General Ahmed Abdel-Haleem, an expert in military strategy and member of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs, attempted to solve some of these puzzles. He thinks that what happened in Iraq was the natural conclusion of a several year old internal situation in Iraq. He said that many observers and analysts were fully aware of the fragile internal situation in Iraq but chose not to air their views when the invasion commenced, as it was an issue of national security that affected the vital interests of a sister Arab country. He was fully aware that the Iraqi armed forces were experiencing real problems in the acquisition of weapons and in maintenance and training. Twelve long years of sanctions had led to a degradation in the quality of the Iraqi military and rendered them virtually helpless. Additionally, Iraqi forces on the various fronts lacked professionalism and were thus overrun in each and every battle in which they fought without much effort being required on the part of the invading forces. Thus, the battle for Baghdad ended up being not much of a battle at all.

Moreover, the military's loyalty to the regime was weak; a factor that led many soldiers to take off their military uniforms, abandon their weapons and posts and escape to their homes. Aside from this, many Baghdadis have harboured a decades long hatred for Saddam's regime, especially the economically deprived Shi'ites. The Shi'ites under Saddam were isolated in a dilapidated complex of housing projects that lacked even the barest essentials required for a dignified existence despite all of Iraq's riches. This may explain what happened in "Saddam City", far and away the largest Shi'ite stronghold in Baghdad.

Retired Major-General Mohamed Ali Bilal, commander of Egyptian forces in the 1990-91 Gulf War, believes that analysts were so concerned with the battles taking place in the south of Iraq, namely the Fao peninsula, Basra and Nasseriya, that they overlooked the three-week long air raids that took place in Baghdad. In military speak, this was the "softening up of Iraqi defences". However, Iraqi defences were not only "softened up" but also brought to their knees.

General Bilal went on to say that, "as a professional military, we had realised that it was illogical for the Iraqi armed forces to triumph over two of the greatest military powers in the world (in addition to some units from Australia). Rather, what was realistically required from the Iraqi political and military leadership and Iraqi people was to resist for the longest possible time in the hope that increasing losses to the invaders would turn public opinion in the invading countries and the world at large against the war before occupation was possible."

Lieutenant-General Saadeddin El-Shazili, the Egyptian army's chief of staff during the 1973 War, believes that the great battle for Baghdad was an opportunity for the Iraqis to make the US pay a heavy price in terms of losses before the city fell into their hands. Nevertheless, it seems that American psychological warfare, which broke the Iraqi will to resist, succeeded. The city fell without any effective resistance. The US's prior ambition had been to lay siege to the city without breaking through so as to avoid any street warfare. Even the notion of a siege was a nightmare scenario owing to the perils that might have befallen their forces. El- Shazili emphasises that besieging and strangling Baghdad, as the invaders had desired, would have been militarily and logistically impossible given the numbers of American forces available at the time. The Americans would thus have had to wait for the arrival of additional forces, such as the Fourth Mechanised Infantry Division.

In fact, in El-Shazili's opinion the Iraqis did not lose the battle militarily, rather they lost for political reasons. As we review the theatre of operations in Baghdad, we can see that Baghdad is defensible in most battle scenarios: it is the largest Iraqi city and represents five per cent of Iraq's area -- 275 square kilometres. Baghdad is almost circular in shape, divided in the middle by the Tigris River. Baghdad encompasses five main districts: Al- Rasafa and Al-A'zamiya to the east of the Tigris, and Al-Karkh, Al-Kadhimiya and Al-Mahmoudiya to the west.

Al-Rasafa has long, wide streets: Al-Rasheed, Al- Jumhuriya, Al-Kifa, and Al-Sheikh Omar, all of which meet at Al-Tahrir Square to the south. From that square, streets branch off and connect with the Al-Rummanah neighbourhood of the Eastern Karradah Quarter. Al-A'zamiya is located at the opposite end of Al-Kadhimiya which is, in turn, connected to Al-A'zamiya via the Al-A'immah bridge. On the western bank of the Tigris, Al-Karkh faces Al-Rasafa and the southern part of Al-Kazimiya; Al-Rasafa is connected by five bridges across the Tigris and includes Al-Ma'mun, Al-Yarmuk, Al- Baya', Al-Washash, Al-Hurriya, Al-Salam, and the Al-Uruba neighbourhoods, as well as the city of Al- Mansur. The Al-Mahmudiya region is largely rural.

The extended quarters and wide streets of Baghdad may have facilitated the use of paratroopers and helicopters and the deployment of tanks and armoured vehicles; but they would also have facilitated a considerable amount of street-fighting, had it taken place, given the abundance of side streets and alleyways.

The neighbourhoods of Baghdad are rather divided and might possibly have been isolated. For instance, Saddam City, which lies in the Al-Rasafa region, contains two and a half millions Shi'ites, whereas the Al-Karkh region, (on the western bank of the Tigris River facing Al-Rasafa and south of Al-Kadhimiya), includes the old quarter as well as the offices of large institutions and companies. Al- Sa'dun, which lies at the heart of the capital, is full of modern shopping centres, hotels and traditional bazaars. However, the existence of six bridges connecting both banks of the Tigris, the proximity of neighbourhoods, the overlapping of different quarters, and the population density would have rendered any process of dividing or isolation a dangerous adventure.

Although Baghdad's topography renders it suitable for all types of battles, the manner and duration of confrontation around and inside the city would have depended on pre-positioned defences. Iraqi defences were prepared to confront the American forces, both outside and inside the city, however, as in 1991, the regime lost command and control over the armed forces leading to a swift collapse.

HOW DID BAGHDAD FALL MILITARILY?: But, how did US forces manage to divest the Iraqi regime of its command and control over Iraqi forces? In the first couple of weeks of the conflict, US and British field commanders relied heavily on air supremacy over Iraq, attempted to quickly reach and besiege large cities, and avoided any engagement with Iraqi forces in conventional battles which might have slowed the momentum of their forces. They also fought in a way that minimised losses and their ability to manoeuver with speed and agility. These forces approached Baghdad from the southwest, southeast and the centre, and as week three began they changed their strategy to prepare the theatre of operations for the battle in Baghdad.

The new strategy relied on keeping the door wide open to all possibilities with respect to the battle ahead. The US aimed to disperse Iraqi forces around the capital and to exploit their own agility through rapid operations. Thus, they would not take heavy losses and they could accurately gauge Iraqi capabilities, all the while retaining the element of surprise.

Throughout week three, American operations were like a dress rehearsal of what the battle for Baghdad might have turned out to be. These operations relied on several major points:

First, the effective use of both actual operations and their psychological effects. This was apparent in the battles for Saddam International Airport and the southern, eastern and western suburbs of Baghdad.

Second, the continual emphasis on a potential Shi'ite revolt with US military assistance or on a mutiny taking place within the Iraqi military.

Third, breaking the Iraqi resistance by helping the British to infiltrate Basra, declaring it under their control, and taking over Nasseriya, Najaf and Karbala regardless of the extent of losses sustained by their population or the Anglo-American forces.

Fourth, isolating the capital from its suburbs through the use of air and rocket bombardment. Targetting Republican Guards units at the entrances and exits of Baghdad in order to prevent them from retreating.

US and British bombing aimed to destroy the morale and military resistance of Baghdad's defences at both official and popular levels and to instigate discord and resentment against the regime. This is exactly what took place.

Anglo-American plans to break through Baghdad came as a result of the resistance they encountered in the towns of southern Iraq. Thus, the American military command sought to multiply the number of their air sorties and to proceed with more missile attacks, not only on Baghdad but on all of Iraq.

THE ESCALATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND MEDIA WARFARE: Psychological and media warfare also had profound effects on the Iraqi people. In Baghdad in particular it pushed them to surrender. The unremitting bombing campaign, directed television and radio programmes, and leaflet barrages that called on the population to surrender and to abandon the regime had huge effects on Iraqi morale. However, satellite networks being used to convey the Iraqi point of view were the source of concern for the American planners. Indeed, Mohamed Said Al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi minister of information, practically became a media star in the days before Baghdad's fall.

The media war continued to escalate, culminating in the third week of the war when Al-Jazeera and the Abu-Dhabi satellite network focussed their cameras on scenes of destroyed civilian homes and the human tragedy of war. The spotlight was especially intense in the high class Al-Mansour quarter, west of central Baghdad -- 14 victims lost their lives in that raid. The US military viewed these media images as biased pro-Iraqi propaganda. Consequently, the Americans bombed the offices of both satellite networks in central Baghdad, killing Al-Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub and seriously injuring an Iraqi cameraman in his neck. As the reporters of the two satellite networks sought refuge in the Filasteen Hotel -- a media centre and residence for more than 400 international reporters -- the hotel was also bombed and two reporters (of Reuters and a Spanish television network) were killed. A number of others were injured and moved to hospital for treatment.

Major-General Bilal views the American attempt to control media and information in the context of eliminating the last pockets of Iraqi resistance in Baghdad -- that is, the invading forces were poised for more bombardment of residential quarters in order to tighten their grip on Baghdad. This was also the case in operations to take over Tikrit.

Naturally, the invading forces did not want the neutral or anti-war television cameras to be reporting from the killing fields, disseminating daily scenes of death and destruction to the world. Bilal also noticed that the Cable News Network (CNN) and other western networks, which escorted the invasion forces, broadcast their pictures in a manner that served the objectives of America's psychological war. Also, their reports were subject to heavy editing. Thus, these networks were covering relatively bloodless battles waged by the invading forces, pictures of Iraqis welcoming the occupation troops, press conferences of American and British officials and scenes of looting and the destruction of the symbols of Saddam's regime.

In contrast, Major-General Bilal points out that the Arab satellite networks covered war scenes that undermined the propaganda and psychological warfare of the US and Britain. Arab networks broadcast pictures of American and British prisoners of war, Iraqi resistance in towns, and more importantly, pictures of Iraqi victims and casualties. At this point, Bilal indicates that the invasion forces had lost the most crucial weapon in their arsenal, that is, a monopoly over propaganda. This was the invading army's most potent weapon.

During the 1990-91 Gulf War, a propaganda monopoly was possible due to CNN's exclusive coverage. During this war, that monopoly was broken due to the plethora of networks covering events.

It is noteworthy that the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera and the Abu-Dhabi satellite network are located in a residential area in the heart of the city. There were no military targets nearby and they could not have been bombed by mistake. This was confirmed by Majid Abdel-Hadi, correspondent for Al- Jazeera in Baghdad.

FROM BEERSHEBA TO BAGHDAD: It is important to consider the Israeli contribution to the American and British war effort. Israelis supplied intelligence reports regarding the military and social situation inside Iraq. They also trained US special forces for urban warfare, utilising years of Israeli experience in crushing Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories. In return, Israel obtained $10 billion in the form of aid and loan guarantees from the US administration prior to the start of hostilities with Iraq.

Some sources close to the Israeli security apparatus revealed that 10 fluent Arabic speaking Israeli officers joined the American forces in Iraq. Their mission was to participate in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners of war. Sources also pointed out that Israeli assistance began on 5 November 2002. At that time, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariff and USA Today published reports that security and intelligence cooperation between the US and Israel was at a peak in preparation for the upcoming strike against Iraq. They also said that Israel had built special miniature towns to train US Marines in urban warfare. Two of these towns in the Negev desert were specially designed to train American Special Forces. American experts attested that these two towns included mosques, narrow streets and alleyways and even donkey carts to best simulate conditions in Iraq.

Other sources revealed that two weeks before the invasion, Israel supplied the US with military personnel specialised in urban warfare with operational experience that they had earned through missions in Palestinian refugee camps. Consequently, these Israelis played an important role in the war against Iraqis.

Military cooperation between the US and Israel has not been limited solely to logistical participation and support. The Pentagon also moved fuel storage and military equipment to Israel. It seems that this cooperation was highly successful as evidenced by the fact that an Israeli missile was dropped on Baghdad by coalition forces and its parts were shown on Iraqi television. This missile was the fruit of a joint American-Israeli military cooperation which is estimated to be worth billions of dollars. Israeli army special units were also allowed to patrol the west of Iraq prior to the commencement of military operations to ensure that Iraq does not use these areas for Scud launches against Israeli cities

THE POST-WAR FORCES: Many within the Pentagon and US Central Command believe that invading Iraq has accomplished in days what US diplomacy failed to realise in years. Thus, the role played by the political establishment in post-war Iraq must be with the full consent of the US's military establishment.

American forces are likely to deploy on Iraq's border with Iran, where the mostly Shi'ite opposition to the pro-American Iraqi transitional government will be positioned. Likewise, the situation at the Syrian border will require a similar US troop deployment to protect Iraq against popular resistance movements and hostile anti-American militias, which Washington suspects that Syria supports.

As opposition to the US occupation increases and the possibility of an Iraqi resistance grows, the US will follow a course of absorbing resentment and combating resistance. To this end, a process of recruiting an indigenous Iraqi military is expected. The next step would be to declare amnesty for all Iraqi military forces with the exception of the security apparatus and intelligence institutions, due to their tribal loyalty, ideological commitment and personal devotion to the defeated Ba'athist regime. Thus, the deployment and assignment of US forces is likely to be as follows:

First, forces will be required to protect the new government, its leaders and international organisations operating in Iraq. Second, forces will likely be deployed on the Iranian border in areas where hostilities are expected to break out. Third, forces will be needed to secure oil fields and facilities. Fourth, forces will be deployed on the Syrian border. Finally, forces will follow up the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as per the US's claims.

This requires the US to have between 70-100,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq for the medium to long- term. Allied countries are expected to commit a further 50,000 troops, provided that overall command and control is maintained by the Americans. As with the case of Afghanistan, the Americans will prefer to involve Muslim and Arab countries in this mission lest the accusation is levelled that Iraq is being occupied by "infidels".

As for the type of forces stationed in Iraq, there will be two divisions. One is the 101st Airborne Division. The other will be a mechanised infantry division, possibly the Fourth Mechanised Infantry Division. If hostilities break out with Iran or Syria, then one of the divisions will have to be armoured. In order to make its presence felt, US forces will need two infantry brigades with air and surveillance capabilities so as to be deployed on Iraq's borders. Special Forces will also be needed in order to track down Saddam Hussein and his deputies.

As per the experience of Kosovo, the cost of each soldier in Iraq is likely to be approximately $120,000 per annum. Thus, the overall troop deployment in Iraq is likely to cost between $15-$20 billion per annum.

BAGHDAD DID NOT FALL: When the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohamed Al-Doori, told reporters gathered in front of his residence in New York that, "the game is over," everybody thought that Iraq had admitted defeat and would submit to the occupation. What Al-Doori meant, something that was subsequently realised by every Iraqi, is that Saddam's regime had fallen but Baghdad did not fall.

When the dust settles and the initial euphoria over the collapse of Saddam's regime subsides, Iraqis will realise that they are facing a US and British occupation fuelled by greed for oil and Zionist aspirations. It is, thus, inevitable that there will be popular resistance to American occupation and the American supported transitional government. The resistance militias will find support from various organisations and countries that also oppose the American occupation of Iraq. They will find that the looting of Iraq was allowed to happen to increase the bill of Iraq's reconstruction and subjugate the Iraqi people. Why were Iraqi universities, their scientific facilities, medical institutions and the French, German, and Chinese embassies the prime targets of destruction and looting? In stark contrast, Iraq's oil fields have been under the very tightest of security ever since the invasion began.

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

Where Has The Iraqi Army Gone?

By Abdul Raheem Ali,

Islam On Line
Cairo April 9

The disappearance of the Iraqi army in Baghdad, no doubt, has become the troubling question now and the talk of many people, who believe that the Iraqi army vanished into thin air.

“The cakewalk entrance of the U.S. troops into the heart of Baghdad can be explained in accordance with three key scenarios,” Mohammed Abdul Salam, a military expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPS), told IslamOnline.net Wednesday, April 9.

The military expert said that the massive U.S.-led air strikes on the positions of the Republican Guard units around Baghdad were effective and put an end to their resistance.

As for the second scenario, he said, the Iraqi regime committed a blunder when it divided the Republican Guard into small units, which led to their disintegration.

‘A Deal’

“The third one has to do with a deal hammered out between the leaders of the Republican Guard to lay down their arms without resistance,” he added.Abdul Salam further said the latest events in Baghdad came as a real surprise to all military analysts.He, nevertheless, said that the U.S. control over Baghdad has marked the collapse of the Iraqi government but not the regime, which is based on large-scale section of the Iraqi population, military formations, political groups and coherent tribes.“To my way of thinking, the new Iraqi regime would only be stabilized if it was merged into the old guard. I believe that there is no other option but to this one to form a new Iraqi regime,” he said.

“Add to that, we can never talk about a stable Iraq without tackling first a number of thorny issues such as the Sunni Arabs, cadres of Baath party, tribes and clans close to Saddam and the Iraqi armed forces,” he added.

Future Holds Myriad Of Surprises

Abdul Salam said that the few days ahead hold a lot of surprises, noting that no one could predict the next moves precisely.“Has war come to an end? Would resistance pockets carry on with their fighting? No body knows,” he said.The military expert also went for the claims that Saddam had taken shelter in his northern home town of Tikrit.“The U.S. troops have already begun laying siege to Tikrit but I think the U.S. will seek a political solution (to the crisis) since they do not want to engage in more battles with the Iraqi fighters, hoping that it would someday rebuild the Iraqi army,” he said.

Abdul Salam also said that the situation in southern Iraq is far from being stable yet, pointing out that the U.K. troops there wanted to stabilize the region by appointing some chiefs of Iraqi tribes to run the southern cities.He further said that the northern part of Iraq “derives its sensitivity from the presence of the Kurdish fighters (peshmerga).”“From the very beginning, the U.S. troops did not intend to capture its cities, including Kirkuk and Mosul, and that’s why they did not intensify their air strikes there,” he added.

As for the central part of Iraq, Abdul Salam said that the situation there would rely on the U.S. future plans for post-war Iraq.The military expert said some locals have already taken control of a number of Iraqi cities, asserting that they would target the members of the ruling Baath part in these cities.

Earlier in the day, U.S. tanks and troops poured into the heart of Baghdad with Marines sending a towering bronze statue of Saddam Hussein crashing to the ground amid loud cheers from a handful of Iraqis on a central Baghdad square.

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

Saddam's great disappearing act

BBC NEWS:

2003/04/16

The disappearance of Saddam Hussein and his top aides has sparked contradictory rumours about their fate - are they dead, alive and still in Iraq or have they fled the country?

Some Baghdad residents are convinced that the Iraqi leaders survived US efforts to kill them. The BBC's Middle East analyst, Roger Hardy, says many experts also think that Saddam Hussein is still in Iraq - and that is the view of senior British officials.

The Americans twice bombed buildings in Baghdad where they thought the Iraqi leader was hiding - on the first day of the war, and then again on 7 April when they targeted a restaurant in the suburb of Mansour. The residents of an area in northern Baghdad - around the Adhamiya mosque - say Saddam Hussein appeared there two days after the Mansour raid. They told a correspondent for the New York Times that Saddam Hussein delivered a tearful but defiant farewell message, outside the mosque.

By the time US troops - and a BBC correspondent - arrived at the mosque some hours later, they say, Saddam and his younger son Qusay had already made their escape.

'Fighting in the same trenches'

According to one man, Saddam Hussein and his entourage turned up in three cars. The embattled Iraqi leader then stood on one of the cars to address the crowd.

"I am fighting alongside you in the same trenches," the man quoted the Iraqi president as saying.

The Adhamiya area has long been a stronghold of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, the New York Times reports.

The BBC's Roger Hardy says it is believed Iraqi officials had laid careful plans for the top leadership to be dispersed to different locations inside the country.

When Saddam Hussein told several foreign visitors that he had been born in Iraq and would die in Iraq, he probably meant it, Hardy says.

Rumours abound that the ousted Iraqi leader fled abroad, perhaps to Syria, perhaps with the help of Russian diplomats.

On Sunday, a half-brother of the ousted leader, Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, was picked up by US forces near the Syrian border.

US troops are now scouring Iraq for the missing leader - the Ace of Spades in a pack of cards issued to help the military identify fugitive Iraqi leaders.

The US military has announced rewards of up to $200,000 for information leading to Iraqi regime leaders.

DNA claim

The US operational commander, General Tommy Franks, insists that he has a sample of Saddam Hussein's DNA. And US Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said on Monday that US experts were carrying out forensic examinations at "a variety of sites".

In the Arab world conspiracy theories about the collapse of the Iraqi regime are rife. Some commentators view with suspicion the relatively light resistance encountered by US forces when they entered Baghdad. Abd al-Aziz Salamah, the former deputy head of the Egyptian Intelligence Service, speculates about a possible deal that allowed Saddam Hussein to leave Baghdad in return for Iraqi forces giving up the fight.

But "informed sources" quoted by the Jordanian paper al-Dustur said a senior Republican Guard commander and two other dissident military commanders helped the US forces to target the Iraqi leadership. After the Mansour bombing a few US tanks ventured into central Baghdad to "test the implementation of the plan to liquidate the Iraqi leadership", the sources said. Finding little resistance, the main US force then poured in. The sources claim that all the senior Iraqi leaders were killed in the air raid, apart from Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf and Vice-President Izzat Ibrahim. Soon after the Mansour raid, US Government officials were quoted as saying there were indications that Saddam Hussein had been killed.

But Britain's intelligence agency, MI6, reportedly told the CIA that the Iraqi leader had left the building moments before the air strike.
American officials are playing down speculation about his disappearance saying that, since his regime is history, his fate is irrelevant.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/2953863.stm

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

Reasons for Baghdad’s fall ­

Michael Young
THE DAILY STAR



The most disheartening scenes last Wednesday, when Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed, occurred in Arab living rooms. It was there that satellite stations tried wretchedly to come to grips with the collapse of a tyranny they had somehow associated with Arab pride. And when no explanation came, some stations ignored the event altogether.
It was only a matter of time before conspiratorial explanations were advanced to justify the debacle. Several theories have been floating around for days, and four in particular come to mind. All have one thing in common: they affirm that Baghdad fell so easily because the US cut a deal with its defenders.
Lebanon’s Parliament speaker, Nabih Birri, was behind an early theory arguing that Saddam had been spirited out of Iraq thanks to a US-Russian quid pro quo, whereby the Iraqi leader saved his neck in exchange for neutralizing Republican Guard resistance in Baghdad. At around the same time the daily Al-Hayat peddled a slightly different story line, saying senior Iraqi officers gave Baghdad up, not Saddam.
On Monday, Beirut’s daily Al-Mustaqbal interviewed an Iraqi major who offered yet another explanation. Major Amer Ahmad explained that the absence of any central coordination over Iraqi forces suggested to him that a deal had been cut by Saddam and the Republican Guard behind the army’s back. Ahmad pointed to army accounts that a Saddam aide, General Sufyan Jgheib, had “used an American Apache helicopter to visit units of the Republican Guard in Baghdad and ask them not to fight.”
A fourth theory, advanced by the commercial intelligence company Stratfor, cited German intelligence sources as speculating that senior Iraqi officers and intelligence chiefs handed over much of Iraq, including Baghdad, to the US. The story is that Saddam and his son Qusay were killed in the initial “decapitation attack” opening the war. Two officials, Taha Yassin Ramadan and Tareq Aziz, then led resistance efforts, but were later killed by the military chiefs who were paid off and allowed to escape.
Stratfor did not confirm the story and even listed problems with it. However, two questions the skeptics have been unable to answer are: Why did Iraq fall so easily? And, where did all the Iraqi soldiers and elite units go? To date, no clear answers have been provided, although this need not prove a conspiracy. It is conceivable that Saddam’s system was so geared against internal threats that it simply broke down when confronted with powerful modern armies.
The truth may take much time before emerging. Already, the US military is stamping its interpretation on the war, partly in an effort to make sure it fits in with the Pentagon’s agenda. Two recent examples of this were General Tommy Franks’ interview with CNN Sunday evening, and an extended article in the New York Times, also on Sunday, which largely regurgitated American officers’ readings of the war.
One problem with conspiracy theories is that their contradictions make them more credible to believers, and are held up as confirmation of an intricate plot. While no source has cited evidence for the contention that the US transacted with Iraqi officials, many will respond this merely attested to a cover-up, validating their suspicions.
Still, the unconfirmed accounts of Baghdad’s fall should not be dismissed out of hand. If the Iraqi capital surrendered through negotiations, it wouldn’t have been the first to do so. Nor would the US necessarily want to publicize this just yet: by admitting it encouraged senior officers to commit treason, the US might anger many Iraqis and discredit local allies who helped it turn the armed forces around.
One can’t help but feel these theories will serve another, less worthy purpose. They will detract from the fact that last Wednesday Iraqis were delighted to be rid of a despot. If it was all a farce, many will argue, then maybe the celebrations were a fabrication too.

Michael Young writes a regular column for THE DAILY STAR. His weblog is www.beirutcalling.blogspot.com

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

Baghdad Did Not Fall - It Was Handed Over

Opinion-Analysis, Jalal Ghazi,Pacific News Service, Apr 14, 2003

Arabic media are using the word "safqa" to explain the sudden collapse of Baghdad and the Iraqi regime. Translated into English, "safqa" means "a deal made fast and in secrecy."

Arabic media are speculating that a "safqa" -- Arabic for a secret deal -- was arranged between the United States and the Baath regime to hand over Baghdad. Although nobody can pinpoint the exact terms, there are three clear outcomes. First, the lives of many American and British forces as well as most senior Baath officials were spared. Second, Baghdad itself did not turn into the bloodbath widely anticipated by military experts. Third, the war was shortened dramatically, saving the region -- especially Saudi Arabia -- from catastrophic consequences.

The following clues, gleaned from Arabic and U.S. media, suggest why the fall of Baghdad was premeditated.



None of the seven rescued POWs was hurt. On the contrary, all seven were found in good condition. All were found dressed in pajamas rather than the standard uniforms for prisoners of war, indicating that they were being treated as guests rather than as POWs. Usually, Arabs give pajamas to guests who sleep over in their houses.

Arab reports point out that POW Jessica Lynch was similarly treated; she was kept in the cleanest room in an Iraqi hospital until she was rescued on April 2.

In both cases, American forces were tipped off about the location of the POWs by unknown Iraqi citizens. Kuwaiti prisoners, by contrast, who were captured during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait more than 12 years ago, are only now being discovered.

To date, none of the seven war prisoners has spoken directly to American TV reporters, unlike American soldiers injured in the fighting, who became instant media sources. We are told the seven POWs were taken to Kuwait for medical treatment and intelligence debriefing.


American tanks rolled into Baghdad with very little resistance while Basra, nowhere near as heavily fortified as Baghdad, sustained almost three weeks of fierce resistance.

The fall of Baghdad was so sudden that it left many of the Arab and Muslim volunteers who went to Iraq to fight the coalition forces in total disarray. Initially given weapons and uniforms, thousands of these volunteers -- who came from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere -- wound up having no one to tell them what to do. Al Jazeerah reports that some are now still fighting U.S. forces while others are actually attacking Iraqi civilians.


Baath forces refrained from destroying a single bridge in Baghdad, which could have blocked U.S. tanks access to the city, at least temporarily. Moreover, only a handful of Iraq's oil fields were set on fire, leaving the vast majority intact almost in accordance with Bush's demands.


None of the senior Baath officials has surrendered to date, with the exception of two high-level scientists. Instead, tens of thousands of Baath operatives managed to disappear without a sign of internal divisions. This strongly suggests that the departure of the Baath regime was ordered from the most senior levels and was highly organized. It also explains why most of the Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guards, were nowhere to be found when U.S. forces entered Baghdad.


Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Al-Douri, a high level Baath functionary, was quoted in both American and Arabic media as saying, "The game is over" and that he had not been in contact with Saddam Husssein for weeks. When asked why he used the word "game," the Ambassador replied, "the war is over." Meanwhile, Al-Jazeerah reported that he has been allowed to travel to Syria and that he may be asked to represent the new Iraqi government at the United Nations.

While Arabs all over the Middle East now routinely talk of the deal that saved Baghdad, they also speculate that the same deal may have saved Saddam. Unlike the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, which preoccupied U.S. forces for months, the hunt for the dictator no longer appears to be the top priority for U.S. forces in the wake of Baghdad's fall.

Where could Saddam be if he is still alive? Some Arab media experts speculate he may have sought refuge in Mecca, the most sacred Islamic place in the world. No non-Muslims ever lived in and very few have even set foot in this holiest of Muslim cities.

If it turns out that Saddam is indeed in Mecca, it would be one further clue that the architect of the "safqa" or deal between the Baath and the United States was Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah -- a trusted intermediary of the Bush family and the only Arab leader invited to President Bush's Crawford Ranch.

For the Saudis, as well as for many other Arab leaders, the deal offers the one hope of sparing the Middle East the consequences of a bloody and prolonged war of resistance in Iraq. For the Americans, the deal offers a chance of stabilizing post-war Iraq and its neighbors, leaving the door open for what Bush calls the roadmap to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

PNS associate Jalal Ghazi (jalalghazi2002@yahoo.com) monitors and translates Arab media for New California Media, a project of Pacific News Service, and WorldLink TV.

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

Deal with Iraqi Commander Opened Baghdad to Marines

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly April 11
Updated by DEBKAfile

April 13, 2003, 11:32 AM (GMT+02:00)

Saddam’s scientific adviser and liaison with the UN arms inspectors, General Amer Hammoudi Al-Saadi, was not the first Iraqi general to turn himself in to American forces. Just before closing its last edition on April 11, DEBKA-Net-Weekly received the first fragmentary reports from its intelligence sources of another general who trod the same secret path before him.

Those reports shed partial light on the ease with which the US 1st Marines Expeditionary Force was able to reach the heart of Baghdad on Wednesday, April 9, without encountering substantial Iraqi resistance. In one case, the Republican Guards supposed to defend the Diyala River bridges and keep American forces out of east Baghdad suddenly stopped shooting and deserted their posts. In general, large sections of the elite SRG divisions charged with defending Baghdad melted away without inflicting or suffering casualties.

In this sense, the keys to east Baghdad were handed over by the high commander of Iraq’s elite

Special Republic guards, General Maher Safian Al-Tikriti, another of Saddam Hussein’s cousins. This was the upshot of discussions that took place between him and US special forces and CIA officers deployed undercover in the Iraqi-controlled parts of Baghdad.

General Takriti agreed to let US forces roll into central Baghdad unopposed across bridges that were not blown up in return for an American guarantee of safe exit from the city for his troops and a promise they would not be pursued..

Twenty-four hours after American troops entered Baghdad, American B-52 bombers carried out a “bunker-buster” raid against the presidential bunker command system underneath the Dora district of southern Baghdad. It was the US bombers’ second sortie against the same site. The first attack on March 19 was the war’s opening shot, described as a “raid of opportunity” against a leadership target. American bomb experts were much better prepared for the second bombardment; they had discovered by then that Saddam’s subterranean edifices can only be destroyed by repeated pounding that eventually crack the walls until they cave in.

On the whole, US commanders know much more about the vulnerabilities of these underground command posts and the movements of senior Iraqis through their subterranean passageways than they did on March 19. The question is does this knowledge come from intelligence data gathered by US special forces teams operating on the ground? Or the product of deals, ad hoc or not, with Iraqi commanders?

The deal with Safian Al-Tikriti was one of four transactions pulled off at the same time.

Kirkuk-Mosul: Neither of those oil-rich northern cities was taken by bombardment or battle but through surrender deals negotiated between US special forces and the Iraqi commanders charged with defending the towns and their oil installations. The Iraqi units agreed to hold the fort and hold their surrender in abeyance until US forces arrived to take over. As it happened, the Kurdish militias jumped the gun and entered the oil cities before receiving a signal from the Americans, who had no choice but to give them air cover.

Al Amara: While looters were rampaging and setting fires in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul, the Iraqi 4th Corps quietly withdrew from its positions at the strategic town of Al Amara on the Iraq-Iran border and made way for a single US Marine battalion. The deal here was for the Iraqi 10th Armored Division, the backbone of the fighting force, to be allowed to head north without interference. These Iraqi troops are gone from Al Amarnah – but no one knows where they ended up.

General Al-Saadi: Saddam’s scientific adviser turned himself in Saturday, April 12, taking with him some of Iraq’s WMD secrets. He sat quietly at home waiting to be picked up as arranged in his secret exchanges with the Americans before the war. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources add that for some reason no one came to collect him – possibly because a trap was suspected. In the end, he took the initiative and escorted by a German television crewman presented himself to the US generals in Baghdad, keeping his side of the bargain.

All these secret deals – especially the one with General Takriti - raise two important questions:

1. Was the Baghdad transaction the only one closed with Safian Al-Tikriti ? Or was it part of a package?

2. Were this and any other trades approved in full or in part by Saddam Hussein or his sons? If so, what did they get in return? Does it mean that the decisive battle will take place in Tikrit after all? This would depend on whether General Al-Tikriti dealt with the Americans with the knowledge of Saddam and his sons or betrayed him – not merely to save his men but to keep the town of Tikrit and his clan’s homes safe. If that is what happened, then Tikrit, like Najaf, al Kut, Karbala and Baghdad, will fall to the Americans without much real opposition.

.....Series on the Conspiracy Theories on the Conquest of Baghdad

The Deal

by Walid Rabbah,
Sawt al-`Urouba (ARABIC VERSION)

ONE day after the start of the war against Iraq American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared on American television screens to say something that the press interpreted as some sort of American propaganda. In reality, though, it was the basis for what was later to take place.

Rumsfeld said that there had been communications between the Americans and leaders in the Republican Guard in Iraq. He said that the details could not be disclosed now, but urged listeners to wait for coming days.

Three days later the American media played an audio tape on which recorded voices could be heard speaking in Arabic guiding American forces to important bombing targets. The voices were translated immediately in the headquarters of the American forces so that orders could be issued accordingly.

In fact, Rumsfeld was not just talking at random. There had been communications that took place in total secrecy between the leaders of the Republican Guard and the Commanders of Saddam's Fedayeen, unbeknownst to the Iraqi leader and his son who was in charge of a huge military organization that could have made life hell for the American forces had they joined the battle.

The communications grew in intensity after the Republican Guard entered its first battle against the American forces in the environs of Baghdad, and after much of its equipment was destroyed. The Americans could see that they were facing a force with high military preparedness, one that was well trained and could inflict tremendous losses on the American forces whenever they tried to enter Baghdad.

The offer proposed by the American command in Iraq to the Republican Guard and Saddam's Fedayeen was generous. The offers were run past Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who okayed them immediately. The provided for:

1. In return for not opposing American forces and for laying down their weapons, the United States will give the following:

Transportation for the Republican Guards top echelon to secure locations outside of Iraq,

Transportation of the Republican Guards leaders of the second echelon to "liberated" places of which the Anglo-American forces had control inside Iraq,

Granting to the top echelon of the Republican Guards large sums of money, with lesser sums going to the second echelon,

Granting some of the leaders of the top echelon of the Republican Guard, and to those who had not committed "war crimes" official roles in "liberated" Iraq after the end of the war,

Granting American citizenship and residency in the United States to some of the first echelon commanders and their families, depending on their wishes,

Establishing a balance between the Iraqi Opposition that will have a limited role in the administration of Iraq on the one hand, and Republican Guard commanders who did not fight the American forces, on the other.

2. As a guarantee of this (which the commanders of the Republican Guard did not completely trust), the United States disclosed some of its agents whom it had planted among the "human shields" who were guiding the American military to positions to be bombed and where President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership could be found. A brief meeting was held between one of the agents serving as a "human shield" and some members of the Republican Guard during which the latter were handed official written documents addressed to the first echelon of the Republican Guard. These reassured the Republican Guard commanders that the assurances were reliable.

The documents provided for:

After the occupation of Saddam International Airport, Republican Guards of the top echelon should arrive at the airport so that they could be transported away. If that proved impossible, a place should be agreed upon where an Apache helicopter or two could land somewhere near Baghdad in order to transport them away.

Some commanders of the second echelon should secure themselves within the Iraqi Republican Palace adjacent to the Airport. American forces would fire some shells at it in order to announce that they had taken it, then American forces would transfer them to the airport.

Orders should be issued to the commanders of the Second Echelon of the Republican Guard not to resist and to lay down their weapons, together with promises of their safety, and that of their families, and they would be transported to secure locations. In turn they were to issue orders to those of lower rank in their commands not to put up resistance. The Republican Guard's first echelon used a deception to get lower ranks to accept such an order by telling them that the resistance would be carried on secretly in accordance with a plan prepared by the Iraqi leadership to protract the war and catch the American forces in a trap that had been laid for them. This trick was used on the lower ranking commanders of the Republican Guard.

First and Second echelon commanders of the Republican Guard would be given sums of money in dollars as a down payment to guarantee the implementation of the agreement.

Human Shields

From the beginning, the heads of the American Central Intelligence Agency followed a plan to use the work of agents posing as "human shields." The CIA chiefs used peace activists in America carefully and systematically. They sent three groups of peace activists to the region, and in particular into Baghdad on the basis that that would be the place where the decisive battle would be fought.

The deception worked with the Iraqi leaders who placed different groups of human shields in important places such as: factories and manufactories that had great importance for the population. Storehouses of weapons belonging to the Republican Guard were located inside those factories and manufactories, and this fact was openly acknowledged. But inside, hidden under ground, there were huge stockpiles of weapons sufficient for waging a resistance struggle for years. These were ostensibly civilian installations but on the inside were military. These included centers where rockets were gathered for destruction under the UN supervised program, while some of them were stored in underground military storehouses.

The Iraqi measures, whereby they distributed the human shields to vital locations, was in fact a trap set for the Iraqis, for the human shields carried difficult-to-detect delicate communication devices for communicating with the American forces during the bombing. It later became clear that these devices played an outstanding role in pinpointing the positions of Saddam and his leaders, as well as places where weapons were being stored.

Occupation of the Airport
The occupation of Saddam International Airport was a turning point inasmuch as it enabled the American forces to carry out their entire plan as it had been detailed in the documents that they had been given and as they had been promised. The commanders of the Republican Guard were reassured, in particular those of the first echelon, that what the American forces had promised them was the truth. The Republican Guard commanders then provided complete information about the various military positions around the airport and inside of it. They also gave complete information about the tunnels that extended from the Republican Palace to inside the airport, tunnels that had been built especially so that the Iraqi president could use them should he ever be in danger. American forces occupied these tunnels, unknown to any but the first echelon of the Republican Guard.

On the second day after the occupation of the airport Muhammad Sa`id as-Sahhaf assured the world that Saddam International Airport was still in the hands of the Iraqi forces. He based his assurances on a promise of an "innovative and unusual" sort of response, as he put it, when Iraqi fighters and Republican Guards would sweep from the palace through the tunnels and on towards the airport in a surprise attack on the American forces occupying the airport. He did not know even as he spoke that American forces had discovered the location of those secure tunnels and that they would confront the small numbers of Iraqis who were sent there, under the leadership of third echelon commanders of the Republican Guard, and who would find the Americans waiting for them.

Time at that difficult juncture was golden. The American forces saw that the road had opened up to Baghdad, so they carried out two essential operations simultaneously:

The first operation: to introduce tanks to the approaches of Baghdad from where they would penetrate to the area of the Palestine Hotel, on condition that they would not cross the bridge to the opposite bank. This occurred after they were sure that orders had been issued to the Republican Guard to disappear in accordance with the "secret plan" to which the first echelon commanders had already alerted their junior officers.

The second operation: to prepare a military transport plane of at least 200 seats to transport the first echelon commanders of the Republican Guard and some members of the second echelon to secure locations.

The orders given to the American soldiers who advanced to secure a bridgehead for the rest of their forces were as follows:

First: attempt to silence the media that were transmitting pictures of the places where the breakthrough was occurring (this is what took place when the offices of al-Jazeera TV, and the Abu Dhabi TV station, were shelled) and to try to herd the journalists into a place from which they could not move, except by order of the coalition forces, or, to be precise, the US Marines.
Second: To cut communications and electricity off from the area and to attempt to shell the little electricity generators in the area in order to completely knock out any means for transmission once and for all.

Third: To shell the satellite dishes on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. It was here where the al-Jazeera journalist Tariq Ayyoub was martyred.

Fourth: To deal with the limited resistance in the area of the bridge with small arms rather than with artillery bombardment because some of the second echelon the Republican Guard were too late to reach the appointed meeting places in time and might possibly have to reach the coalition forces by crossing the Sanak Bridge.

Military Aircraft
Many first-echelon commanders of the Republican Guard gathered at Saddam International Airport. They had to wait eight more hours before the rest of the commanders showed up. The American command found to their surprise that the first echelon commanders of Republican Guard forces had brought along with them the top commander of Saddam's Fedayeen, a man who took his orders directly from Saddam Hussein's son. This convinced the American forces that they had put Saddam's Fedayeen out of action along with the Republican Guard. After that commander informed them that had been attracted by the agreement reached with the Republican Guard, and requested that he be accorded the same terms that had been granted to the Republican Guard, consent was granted immediately.

The American military aircraft took off from Saddam International airport at 8:00 p.m. on the third day of the occupation of the airport. Some sources in the American command maintain that the plane flew directly to the United States, via Germany. Others say that it took them by way of Kuwait. What is certain, however, is the fact that they left for the United States. At the same time two helicopters were whisking the second echelon commanders of the Republican Guard to Basra where they were met by British forces.

The Fate of Saddam Hussein

Some American political sources maintain that those secret communications between Republican Guard commanders and the Americans took place according to American instructions that were issued to the Republican Guard leaders so as to prevent their being detected. The most modern technology was used, including tiny transmitter-receiver devices that had been given to the Republican Guard Commanders in their first meeting with the Human Shields. This is the secret of how they kept Saddam Hussein in the dark about their contacts.

The final task of the Republican Guard Commanders gathered at the airport was to give the important information about the location of the Iraqi president and his leadership in what was to be their last meeting in al-Mansour. This information enabled the American forces to aim at the place where the meeting was being held and strike it with guided missiles. Most probably the Iraqi President and his leadership, including his two sons, were killed in the bombardment. None of the leadership was saved from that attack except Muhammad Sa`id as-Sahhaf, the Information Minister, whose whereabouts are still unknown. He alone among the members of the leadership was out of the area at the time of the attack, which came shortly after he delivered a press statement in front of the Palestine Hotel that day.

Saddam's Family
The American Authorities have kept quiet about the whereabouts of Saddam's family, in particular the women and children among them, although they know where they are, and whether they are living or dead. There are some reports that they are in Syria. Others have said that they slipped away to Tikrit. In fact, however, the American forces bombed the location where the family was staying and were able to catch the whole family together after they slipped away to the place where the President's half-brother Barzan at-Tikriti was staying. When his house near Baghdad was bombed the family was wiped out.

A Final Word: This information was leaked by American sources. Nevertheless, it should be more than 75 percent true because it originated with political and not military personnel.

One question remains: Where did those mountains of weapons go? Where did the forces who "melted away" into the angry Iraqi population go?

The Marines did discover vast storehouses of weapons that could have been used by the Republican Guard -- though they were in fact never used -- heavy weapons, light weapons in a huge store room in Baghdad. American forces are keeping that quiet -- which is a further indication of the proof of what we have said.

But one major question remains open. If they did not find the bodies of Saddam, his leaders and his two sons, the matter remains a source of embarrassment. Coming weeks will no doubt provide us much more information.

After Saddam-The controversy over Ahmad Chalabi.
By Max Singer
June 20 2002

While much attention is paid to the consensus in Washington that Saddam Hussein must be replaced, the debate over his successor has largely been hidden.

Yet the question of who would replace Saddam is a critical component of U.S. strategy, both with respect to how Saddam should be ousted and the American vision for the Middle East.


The debate over who should succeed Saddam begins with Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi opposition movement, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). People who know him well think he has the potential to be one of the great Arab leaders of this century. But there are widely divergent judgments about Chalabi among senior American policymakers and among those counted as experts on the Middle East.

The State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and the experts associated with them believe that Chalabi is a small-time opportunist and playboy trying to use his position in the INC to make something for himself.

They recognize that he is intelligent and charming, but believe that he is of dubious integrity and without the qualities required for leadership and respect in the Arab world, or the strength to lead either a revolution or a new government. A prominent exception to this pattern is James Woolsey, who was the director of the CIA part of the time it was helping the INC, and does not share these negative views.

But first, the undisputed facts. Chalabi is from one of the old powerful and wealthy Baghdadi families which were forced into exile when the Baath Party seized power in 1958. He studied at MIT and then earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1969. Rejecting opportunities at American universities, he returned to the Arab world to teach mathematics at the American University in Beirut, where he met his wife, the daughter of one of the signers of the Lebanese declaration of independence.

Chalabi is a modern man of the West, who founded a successful software company in London and who understands democracy deep in his bones. What makes him truly exceptional is that he also continues to be deeply a man of the East, with the sensibilities and loyalties of his ancient Baghdad Arab and Muslim roots. Because of the family connections that still count for so much in the Middle East, he is comfortable negotiating with Sunni tribal sheikhs and Shia ayatollahs, familiar with the patterns of relationships that go back generations and form the structure of Iraqi and Arab politics.

In 1978 he opened the Petra bank in Amman, Jordan, in which he invested much of his capital and which was very successful until it was seized by the Jordanian government in 1989. The State Department and the CIA often say Chalabi's bank was seized because he had improperly diverted assets, and note the Jordanian government claim that Chalabi was wanted for questioning and that the bank failed some time after it was seized.

On closer examination, however, the story of Chalabi's supposed Jordanian scandal does not hold water. Those familiar with the facts say the bank was seized because Chalabi had been using its international connections to obstruct Iraq's efforts to finance its war with Iran. As a result, Saddam put pressure on Jordan's King Hussein to close the bank. This view is consistent with the official report of the Jordanian officer assigned to seize the bank, the fact that much of the money lost was Chalabi's own, that it was Crown Prince Hassan who protected Chalabi by personally driving him to the border when the bank was seized, that King Hussein held four friendly public meetings with Chalabi (the last in 1998), and that the king subsequently worked to restore Chalabi's position in Jordan.

It is likely that the best-informed people at the State Department and CIA know better, and yet find it useful not to debunk the anti-Chalabi story. We must look elsewhere, then, to discern the real reason for the bureaucratic antipathy to Chalabi.

After the Gulf War the CIA was trying to arrange a coup against Saddam by Iraqi generals in Saddam's inner circle. They believed that such a coup would become more likely if there were a small domestic political opposition movement which might be a reason or an excuse for the generals to remove Saddam. The CIA had already created an opposition organization called the Wifaq that they controlled and which was composed of former Iraqi military officers and former Baathist Party leaders. They recognized, however, that the Wifaq lacked political credibility and so they offered to help Chalabi create a new organization called the "Iraqi National Congress." The agency thought Chalabi would create a small and tame propaganda organization that would not cause too much trouble, but Chalabi created a genuinely representative Iraqi political organization that was independent and that decided it wanted to fight to overthrow both Saddam and his whole regime.

With support from the CIA and more than $10 million of his own and his family's money, Chalabi's INC created an open political opposition movement in northern Iraq from 1993-1996, operating newspapers, radio stations, and a lively political process involving Iraqis from all parts of the country. It also created a small military force that succeeded — with help from one of the Kurdish militias — in attacking and destroying two divisions of the Iraqi army.

Despite later loose charges to the contrary, the money received by the INC from the U.S. was well-accounted for and spent with extraordinary efficiency, greatly impressing many Congressional visitors who came to see for themselves, and making some of the Americans brought by the CIA to work with the INC among the most loyal of Chalabi's supporters to this day.

It is a mark of Chalabi's character that he has gained such a large band of volunteer advisers and supporters not only among Iraqis but also in England and the US. And despite being as fractious a group as any set of exile political figures, and quite diverse, the Iraqis who have joined the INC have continued to keep Chalabi as their clear leader despite the year-long effort of the State Department to find an alternative under the cover of "broadening and unifying the opposition."

Chalabi's admirers today also include leading academic experts on the Middle East who have known him well for many years, such as Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese Arab who is the author of the much-admired book The Dream Palace of the Arabs, and Bernard Lewis, probably the premier scholar of Islam in the world. A number of U.S. senators have also come to know him, including Joseph Lieberman and Trent Lott.

Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz all know from their personal contact with Chalabi — and their own checks of his background — that the State/CIA view of him as a small-time exile opportunist of shady character is wrong. They believe, on the contrary, that Chalabi is a man who has the character, vision, and strength needed to become an outstanding leader who can help move the Arab world away from the path of anti-American and backward-looking tyranny and toward a path of struggle toward modernity and democracy. If their assessment of him is sound, Chalabi could be the key figure in the success of President George W. Bush's new policy against terrorism, tyranny and threats of biological and nuclear war.

Differences of emphasis and nuance in the judgment about key facts and personalities are natural, but the gap in understanding between State and CIA on one side and Chalabi's admirers on the other is impossibly wide.

One side or the other must have the facts wrong. And the question of which group is correct about Chalabi is crucial for U.S. policy. Bush should do whatever he needs to do to decide who is right and to make a policy decision about whether the U.S. is going to support Chalabi. We cannot afford to take the chance of sacrificing such a decisively valuable potential partner out of reluctance to come to grips with an uncertainty, especially one that seems to be the product of bureaucratic enmities and Saudi fears of what would happen if a great Arab democrat came to power nearby.

— Max Singer is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University

A New Statement for Ansar Al Islam

Apr 18, 2003
Source: Ansar Al Islam Website, Translated By Jihad Unspun

Ansar Al Islam published a new statement after a long absence of news about the group and after the intense attacks on its locations. The statement shows the details of the events that took place during the American and Talbanis strikes and the widespread rumors by the Talbanis about killing and arresting large numbers of the group.

The statement reviews how the group was involved in this war. Galal Talbani, The head of The Kurdish National Federation party, exploited the war against Iraq to push the Americans to fight Ansar Al Islam and eliminate them. Talbani refused to help the Americans unless they target Ansar Al Islam, and he manipulated his militia to fight with the Americans for this purpose. Talbani resorted further to ally with some non-military Islamic groups especially the Islamic Jamaa, whose locations in the mountainous areas of "Khormal" and "Ahmedaweh" provide strategic forts for Ansar Al Islam fighters. The alliance between the Talbanis and the Islamic Jamaa requires the latter to evacuate its locations as soon as the American air strikes on Ansar Al Islam areas start under the pretext of avoiding the air raids. Ansar Al Islam described this alliance as a treachery for the Mujahideen who will have to face this new plight where their back forts in the North West of their locations are emptied by their Muslim brothers in the Islamic Jamaa. Therefore the Talbani militia and the Americans had another advantage where they can easily enter the evacuated locations and surround the Mujahedeen areas from the North West then they can isolate the group and the flow of ammunitions.

On the eve of the 22nd of March, the Ansar Al Islam locations were under intense bombardment with Cruiz 105 missiles. Nevertheless, the group incurred slight losses because they anticipated these strikes, and only one of the Mujahedeen martyred however the Islamic Jamaa incurred huge losses and 60 casualties despite their alliance with the Talbanis.

As soon as the American air strikes started in the area, the Islamic Jamaa evacuated its secure locations; consequently, the headquarter of Ansar Al Islam decided to evacuate its frontline locations to the mountainous areas near Iran in order to prevent the Talbani militia from surrounding them and because the number of Ansar Al Islam Mujahedeen is not sufficient to control the emptied locations of the Islamic Jamaa.

The American planes relentlessly bombarded the locations of Ansar Al Islam for 8 days using bombs that weight several tons which devastated many villages and claimed the lives of civilians and their livestock so that the Talbanis themselves admitted that in one night, 28 American warplanes extensively bombarded a limited Mujahedeen area. The Mujahedeen did not have any weapons that can resist the American brutal shelling because their planes were flying on high altitudes that cannot be attacked by Mujahedeen weapons.

Nevertheless, the Mujahedeen resorted to performing several martyrdom operations that cast terror in the hearts of their enemies. In one of these operations an Ansar Al Islam fighter called "Aboul-Hoor" detonated himself in a car inside a location where the Americans and the Talbanis gather. The explosion killed more than 50 including an Australian journalist. In another operation, 5 Mujahedeen penetrated to a joint headquarter for the Americans and the Talbanis. 3 of the Mujahedeen named "Abou-Bassir", "Wria" and "Abou-Gharib" attacked the headquarter with hand grenades and gun fires, and they killed 40, including 15 American soldiers and CIA officers, and injured 75 including 30 Americans. The 3 Mujahedeen martyred while the other 2 returned safely to their locations.

In the wake of the air strikes, large numbers of American troops and Talbani militia started a major ground attack with the help of warplanes coverage and missiles bombardment on the Mujahedeen locations that became no longer protected after the treason of the Islamic Jamaa. A tough battle took place with the Mujahedeen that estimated the casualties of their enemies to be more than 200.
When the Americans found that the ground attack was unsuccessful, they returned back to brutal bombardment with warplanes and missiles that killed many Mujahedeen. Therefore, the headquarter of Ansar Al Islam decided to spread in the mountains and the caves with changing their places regularly to prepare for major martyrdom operations.
The statement confirmed that the Mujahideen leaders are safe and in good conditions although they took part in the battles so that one of the missiles hit their headquarter and destroyed it while they were inside but they managed to get out of the ruins such as the military leader "Abou-Abdullah Al-Shafeii".

A prominent member of the Ansar Al Islam Counsel called "Halkaord" denied the Talbani rumors about the martyrdom or the arrest of Mujahideen leaders "Ayoub Afghani" and "Abou-Wael". He asserted that the Mujahideen morale is high, after they endured the severe bombardment of all the American weapons whether missiles, smart or stupid bombs. He attributed the trivial losses of the Mujahedeen to their expectations that the Americans will target their buildings because they are the only targets in these arid mountains. Therefore, the Mujahedeen moved to the nearby mountains and watched and laughed at the Americans warplanes bombarding the group's modest buildings with Cruiz missiles and smart bombs that cost millions of Dollars. "Halkaord" said that eth Talbani militia have become totally impotent to confront the Ansar Al Islam fighters after their defeats in the battles with the Mujahedeen. He added that the Mujahideen have carried out numerous martyrdom operations that claimed the lives of a large number of Talbanis including the military and political leader of the area of "Sharhzor" "Shawkat Al-Haj Mushir" who is also the representative Galal Talbani.

"Halkaord" called for disbelieving the Kurdish mass media that are monopolized by the Talbanis who are trying to hide their failure to fulfill their promise, before the American aggression, to eradicate the Mujahideen despite the unlimited support by the Americans. The Talbanis resorted to publish imaginary reports and figures about the Mujahideen losses, but the Mujahideen are safe and preparing for more operations against the enemies. He finally commented on the statement of the Talbanis about killing 120 Ansar Al Islam fighters saying "They are dreaming".

A Message From The Amir Of The Mujahideen In Baghdad

(Abu Iyad Amir of Mujahideen in Baghdad)
Apr 18, 2003
Source: CDLR
-reported by Jihad Unspun

We remind our viewers that the statements, opinions and points of view expressed in this article are those of the author and shall not be deemed to mean that they are those of Jihad Unspun, the publisher, editor, writers, contributors or staff.

My brothers Assalamualaikum warahmutallahi wabara katuhu, salutation from Allah I send to all of you.

My brothers I am sorry for the delay in sending this message to you; in the time when you want to know what's going on because we were extremely busy in a matter Allah (swt) knows how much importance is attached to it. And I realise I have been late in communicating to you and I want to share this great information, great news from Iraq-ul-Islam. Indeed it is a great piece of news, I need to ask you to listen to the message, read it and contemplate about it because it is going to be the last message from me that I am able to relay to you from Aman. After that I will never be able to send it to you in this way. What has happened is that all the brothers in Baghdad have been here for the last 30 days. But last week when Sahaaf the Iraqi information minister last spoke and just after that the two US tanks entered on that day we sent our delegation the letter to Aman. From there the message was passed and the reason why it was sent via this route is because we had previously arranged to receive people and additional support there. This is the reason why the communication link is going to be one-way i.e. from me to the Ummah.

First of all I must carry the salutation of 8000 Mujahideen in Iraq. (n.b. not the Iraqi army but Mujahideen who have come voluntarily from Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Albania, Bosnia etc) I carry the salutation of the brave who are eager to meet the enemy to die for the sake of Allah (swt). Salutation of the soldiers of Allah and the horses of Islam and salutation from the friends of Allah his Angels and Gibrael (as) and his wings. I carry for you the salutation of the riders of the daytime and the worshippers in the night-time.

In order for me to carry the great news (Busharah); this Busharah is for those people whose eyes are full of tears, the tears are shed because they see the people of the cross in the Muslim land in Dar-ul-Salaam, in Baghdad, in the cradle of the Abbassi Khilafah. I send this good news to all those people who have been misled by the magicians and the majic of the pharaoh of this time. The magic of pharaoh at the time of Musa (as) did not deceive the eye of the believer, like Musa (as). Those tricks of the magicians of today, the jews and the media, they deceived many Muslims of the world and defeated them even before the battle has started. By the almighty Allah, the great lord of the throne, the situation in Iraq is not the way the jews tried to show or demonstrate by their own majic. We are going to tell you the truth from the reality not from hopeful thinking, not wishes, not dreams nor is it a matter of propaganda.

I will start off by explaining why the Iraqi forces retreated from Baghdad and from all other cities. This is not an issue of defending the soldiers of the Baath Party, as you are all well aware what our stance is regarding the Baath kufr regime, rather a matter to purify the truth (Haq) of the situation. All that happened in this withdrawal was in accordance with our consultation between the leadership of the Mujahideen and the leadership of the Iraqi forces. This after the bombing in Baghdad by the enemy of Allah had intensified to the level that they themselves started to send bombs each one weighing 10 000 tonnes. A new type of bomb was released one that compares to small nuclear type bombs over Baghdad. They (US) used it because it was a new type of bomb that had not been banned internationally and they dare not use Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) because they themselves would not be able to defend themselves against such weapons. After all this we realise they are going to persist in bombing, killing and destroying without desiring to come and fight face to face. After all this we realise the enemy of Allah in the Pentagon is sitting and they do not know what to do. Especially when they faced resistance in Umm Qasr, which is only a small place (consists of 2 roads), and it took them 14 days to take control of 2 small roads. This is not to mention the cities of Iraq and the big cities of Baghdad. So they (kuffaar) realised that they need to use very powerful bombs as a tactic that will weaken the people of Iraq in order to destroy as much as they can from the infrastructure of Iraq, to inflict maximum damage on the Iraqi army and Iraqi people thus leading to an uprising. The shia who have been trained by the US will fight against the Iraqi regular army and the kurds from the North and there will be fighting on the streets between the regular army, Iraqi army and the Iraqi people whilst the Americans continue the bombing everywhere. After all this we decided to adopt the tactics as in Afghanistan.

We cannot fight as a regular army with a cowardly enemy who doesn't want to engage in land warfare. They have superiority over us by their airpower therefore the only way we can fight their regular army with their air superiority is to lure and engage them in street to street fighting or a guerrilla war. But there is no Tora Bora (mountains in Afghanistan) and there are no mountains in Iraq like the mountains in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen (Taliban) in Afghanistan retreated from all the cities one after the other and gave them all up so the bombing could stop (to save the innocent Muslim civilians) but the cowards never stopped the bombing and never came down to meet us. And yet up until now the Muslims have inflicted maximum damage on them and they can't even claim victory in Afghanistan.

We decided to use the same technique and the Iraqi leadership thank Allah accepted our Shura and that showed us a sign of responsibility from them that they realised that they could not fight the US as a regular army. Especially when you are living among your own people because the kuffaar will destroy you and destroy your own people so retreat but this will mean you have lost the war politically. This is the sole reason why we retreated especially after we found that there are enough places to be protected in, ones that are much better than Tora Bora. These are the bunkers and tunnels of Iraq, they were constructed by the Iraqi forces in 1989 and Alhumdulillah it is good news. The location of these places is guarded, nobody knows where they are except a few people in the Iraqi leadership. I can tell you the good news that all the Mujahideen are going to stay in the streets. All the Iraqi regular army will go to the bunkers 150,000 fighters who are extremely loyal to the regime and with them there is 150 Iraqi air jets MiG 27 (n.b. none of the media has covered the whereabouts of these fighter jets) and 2500 Iraqi tanks.

The agreement was that all the forces of Iraq, artillery, army, intelligence, informers, Republican Guard, Fidaaee Saddam and all other troops will retreat from their places, leaving behind them all those weapons that Iraq manufacturers, and come to the bunkers leaving the cities for the kuffaar to enter. They informed Al Jazeera (Qatari based news agency) to declare that the whole city of Baghdad is empty.

Alhumdulillah we kept with us the young Mujahideen those who used to be called Fidaaee Saddam (n.b. Fidaaee means someone who is trained to sacrifice his life for his cause). With the help of the brothers and the Ulemah with us they converted them to become Fidaaee Islam; they have denounced the Baath Party regime, they have denounced their views on Arab nationalism and declared the Shahadah accepting the Tawheed (Islamic monotheism) and declared to die for the sake of Allah and all this especially when they have been trained to be martyrs.

We will handle the enemy forces and the regular forces are not used to this type of warfare, they are used to a different type of fighting. These tunnels are in 3 different areas, I cannot mention their location for security reasons.

You may doubt about all that has taken place - where is the Police?, where is the Republican Guard?, where is the peoples army? that consists of 1 million strong. He has left the peoples army outside because they are just militia, the Mujahideen are outside and all they have taken with them is his Republican Guard and have left some of the Fidaaee Saddam outside to deal with any small uprising in the region.

We were aware that there was going to be an uprising from the kurds, the shia and even the people and that was what America was gambling on we decided not to give them this opportunity and this resulted in the war between us and them.

Oh Muslims the fighters in Iraq they have retreated and fortified themselves underground militarily and no enemy of Allah will dare to come there except to be destroyed.

Oh Muslims when the order to vacate all the cities came to the Iraqi forces, they were deserted when the American entered and they found no resistance. They claimed victory and invited all the cameras of the world to show what was happening to demoralise the army but they forget that there was no army there to be demoralised.

However this (propaganda) would have affected some of the people in Iraq so we decided to cut the power supply (electricity) completely, no communication and there will be no television that can be seen by the Iraqis. They demonstrated victoriously and they came out with all the media whom foolishly, from the arab media and Muslim media, started to repeat what the kuffaar had shown which was only one side of the story. You saw how they demonstrated their hatred and started to motivate the people to loot, to cause anarchy and to uprise. Thank Allah there was no Iraqi forces, no Iraqi soldiers, no Iraqi police in the street otherwise there would have been fighting and blood up to the knees.

Oh Muslim Ummah Iraq is strong, strong by the Mujahideen whom are collecting from the land of Iraq artillery, all the weapons they want, they have the enemy they wish to meet and inshallah will continue to fight until either they are victorious or attain martyrdom.

Allah (swt) says: Man has been created and is (in a state of) hurry Muhammad (saw) said: Man is always impatient

What you see in Iraq is a military tactic, nothing more than that and what the media shows is not the truth. Rather you saw the looting, killing and the uprising start due to the absence of the Iraqi forces, Iraqi police and the Mujahideen. All of this was manufactured, ordered and incited by the approval of the American forces, to prove or show that there is no system left (i.e. it has been abolished).

Oh Brothers whosoever wants to come to us there is no way because our trip is to be the last trip and if you do so you will be putting your life at risk. There is no need for you to think about coming now, be patient wherever you are and prepare yourselves wherever you are. Until the appropriate time you will join the Mujahideen inshallah, with full details of how to reach us and how to enter and after that we will give the notice to the Mujahideen wherever they are.

In the end we say to you the crusaders did not achieve any objective, did not achieve what they came for, they came for the oil and the oil by Allah is under our eyes, we can see them and we are close to them. And whenever they start it by Allah we will burn it over their heads and whatever money they spend to build it we will destroy it. The crusaders understand there is a trap and there is no way for them to go out. We are always able to capture from them, able to kill from them soldiers. By Allah we can see them but they cannot see us and we are around them but they are not able to recognise us. By Allah we can kill them one after one and we have started to do this just make the Dua and do not worry about the weapons; Allah (swt) is with us and we have plenty of weapons but the victory always comes with Tawakkul and Iman.

Oh Brothers beware victory doesn't come until after hardship. In the Battle of the Trench (Ahzaab) remember the example of the Trench the Muslims worked hard to build the trench and the trench was 9km long. They built it in extremely cold weather conditions in a few days and that hardship brought victory in the end.

Remember Salahudeen never got victory until after he fought them and got defeated and he fought them again and then he defeated them (enemy); remember always that the fight must depend on Allah and your own efforts. Don't wait for Sufyani (An evil person who slaughters women & children but sees Islam being attacked and defends the Muslims and Islam Allah (swt) gives him victory but he refuses to repent) and all other Hadiths talking about Sufyani. Whether Saddam Hussein is Sufyani is irrelevant and insignificant in fact we Ahluh Sunnah wal Jammah Muhaditheen consider these Hadith to be Daeef.

Therefore make Dua for us, by Allah the Mujahideen meet the enemy every day, our operations with your Duas keep coming to us. With the Maddad of Allah we are able to hunt them and fight them the way the fox hunts and fights against the chicken.

We call upon all the Muslims, in particular the ones in the Arabian Peninsula to be ready, the confrontation (Ma'ma') is going to start in the Arabian Peninsula. By Allah we have discovered very rich land and very cultivated land full of weapons, good for training and an enemy we can see. So be prepared and be firm the Jihad will be on your doorstep and remember those days they are coming, they are going to be long days, they are going to be very difficult days it needs your Dua.

Let me tell you about some of the nights we could see them and they couldn't see us. One of those nights one of the brothers known as Abu Ahmad Afghani he was sitting and crying so they asked him why are you crying he said we used to pray to Allah (swt) that at the time of the Jihad against the Soviet Union and Russia they used to surround us from all directions but we could see them and we were waiting for the right time to start to kill them. I pray to Allah he gives me the same opportunity again. Where I am sitting in a place I can see them all moving around me and I am just waiting for the right time to kill from them. I wish I can have the same situation inshallah and Allah grant me to be in the land of Palestine where I will be in the same situation and have the same opportunity to fight there. After that he went out from his checkpoint and he started to reconnaissance and he came back and he said there are about 40 US patrol guards. The brothers said what do you think he said lets take them. So we all gathered together, all of us were happy and made Takbir amongst ourselves as if we were going to have a feast. By Allah we went out in an organised way and when the enemy came we was killing them the way you kill chicken and slaughtered them one after one. Each one of us came back with weapons we had taken off the enemy Alhumdulillah we killed 12, captured 8. Also amongst them were Sabees as well because we couldn't distinguish between man and woman from them; Wallahee what a Sabee they are.

Jihad operations there are very good and you heard about the martyrdom operation in the square of Baghdad. (n.b. its been reported that this operation was carried out on the 2nd day after the so called liberation of Iraq it caused at least 14 US soldiers to die and another 48 were injured).

The next day we went there and there was a very strong wind Allah (swt) sent upon them (the enemy) a strong wind because of this they were running away leaving their artillery and we were able to capture 2 soldiers and take their own artillery the story continues and is too long (to mention here).

Inshallah Victory will be soon for the Muslims

Abu Iyad Amir of Mujahideen in Baghdad