British use of cluster bombs condemned
Weapons make battlefield safer, Hoon says
Richard Norton-Taylor and Owen Bowcott The Guardian April 4, 2003
British and American forces were accused yesterday of breaking international rules of war after admitting that they were using cluster bombs against targets in Iraq.
Presented with a storm of criticism, the Ministry of Defence admitted that Israeli-manufactured cluster shells had been fired by the Royal Artillery's long-range howitzers around Basra.

It also said that RAF Harrier jets had dropped RBL755 cluster bombs on targets in Iraq. The weapons, which scatter 147 "bomblets" over a wide area, have an estimated 10% failure rate, leaving unexploded munitions which humanitarian groups say are as dangerous as landmines. Yellow in colour and the size of soft-drink cans, they are attractive to children in particular.

British howitzers with a range of 30km have fired Israeli-made L20 cluster shells on targets described by the MoD as "in the open". Though they are designed to self-destruct if they fail to detonate, they contain 49 bomblets which are lethal over a large area and have a failure rate of up to 5%.

US forces, meanwhile, have been showering batteries of cluster weapons on Iraqi targets with multi-launch rocket systems.

Iraq's information minister accused US-led forces of dropping cluster bombs on Baghdad on Thursday, killing 14 people and wounding 66.

"This morning, these criminals dropped cluster bombs on the Douri residential area of Baghdad, and 14 people - men, women and children - were martyred and 66 were wounded," Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news conference.

US and British commanders insist they would not drop cluster bombs in places where there are civilians present.

The chief doctor at the general teaching hospital in Hilla, six miles south of Baghdad, said this week that 33 civilians had been killed, and 100 injured, after a cluster bomb attack. The US central command in Qatar is investigating the report.

American military officials said yesterday that US B-52 bombers had for the first time dropped six new CBU-105 bombs - guided 500kg cluster bombs - on Iraqi tanks defending Baghdad.

Colin King, author of Jane's explosive ordnance disposal guide and a British army bomb disposal expert in the 1991 Gulf war, said yesterday: "Cluster bombs have a very bad reputation, which they deserve."

Richard Lloyd, director of the campaigning group Landmine Action said yesterday: "Dropping cluster bombs on Iraq contradicts any government claim to minimise civilian casualties. Cluster weapons are prone to missing their targets and killing civilians."

Alex Renton, overseeing Oxfam's aid work from Jordan, said the cluster shells could cause "unnecessary harm". The UN children's fund, Unicef, expressed concern that Iraqi children might confuse the yellow food packets being handed out by American forces with the bomblets, which had identical colouring.

In the Commons, the defence secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, accepted there were risks with cluster bombs.

He said that though the failure rate was "very small" they did leave a "continuing problem". Mr Hoon added: "Balanced against that you really have got to face up to the issue of whether you are going to allow coalition forces to be put at risk because we do not use this particular capability."

It would be necessary to use "far larger weapons" to deal with the same problem if cluster bombs were ruled out, he said.

Cluster weapons were used when it was "absolutely justified ... because it is making the battlefield safer for our armed forces", said Mr Hoon.

Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, has said in a written parliamentary reply that British Challenger 2 tanks in southern Iraq have fired depleted uranium shells. "The post-conflict administrators of Iraq will be responsible for monitoring DU levels in the environment and cordoning off and decontaminating sites of penetrator impacts," he told the Labour MP Llewellyn Smith.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that Iraqi forces stored more than 150 landmines in a mosque containing the tombs of Kurdish martyrs in violation of humanitarian law. The stockpile of abandoned anti-personnel devices was discovered several days ago in northern Iraq by a team from the Mines Advisory Group, a British mine removal charity.

Although Iraq is not party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, said Steve Goose, executive director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, "any use of anti-personnel mines by any armed force is prohibited by customary international humanitarian law, since they are inherently indiscriminate weapons."

#

Finding Saddam not needed for victory: US
The Age April 5, 2003
The White House said today it would consider military action in Iraq a success even if US forces failed to find President Saddam Hussein, whose appearance on Iraqi television could prove he survived a US bombing raid on the first night of the war.

While finding Saddam -- either dead or alive -- would be "helpful," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W Bush's "definition of victory" was removing the current government from power and eliminating the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Fleischer said newly-aired tapes of Saddam were being analysed by the United States and that it was too soon to draw "firm conclusions one way or another" about whether the Iraqi leader is alive or dead. "We don't know," he said.

If Saddam eludes US forces, he would join the ranks of America's most wanted, a list now topped by al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, whom Washington blames for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Fleischer made the comments as Iraqi television broadcast a speech apparently by Saddam urging the people of Baghdad to "strike the enemy with force" and predicting victory over the invading US and British troops.

In the address, Saddam mentioned the shooting down of a US Apache helicopter by an Iraqi farmer in late March. The mention of the incident, originally reported by Iraqi officials on March 24, may be the first clear proof the Iraqi president survived a US bombing on Baghdad on March 20 that targeted him and his two sons.

Iraqi television later showed footage of what it said was Saddam, dressed in a military uniform, visiting residential areas of Baghdad today. But there was no way of verifying when the film was taped.

"What's important in the president's judgment is that the regime be disarmed and that the regime be changed so the Iraqi people can be free and liberated," Fleischer said.

"Certainly any clear resolution about Saddam Hussein's fate helps provide some clarity to that," Fleischer said. "But the definition of victory is those two factors that I cited, that the president has cited."

"In the bigger scheme of things, it really doesn't matter because whether it is him or whether it isn't him, the regime's days are numbered and are coming to an end," he added.

Fleischer said Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair would meet next Tuesday in Northern Ireland to discuss the Iraq war and reviving the Middle East peace process.

Though Fleischer said no dates have been set, Bush administration officials are considering quickly installing an interim Iraqi authority in areas under the control of US-led forces while the government in Baghdad is cut off from the rest of the country.

Several hundred US government officials are already encamped in Kuwait waiting on the word to go into Iraq to set up the post-war Iraq Interim Authority under the leadership for retired General Jay Garner.

A top contender to oversee Iraq's oil industry in the short-term is Phillip J Carroll, Royal Dutch/Shell Group's former chief executive in the United States, US officials said.

Carroll was chief executive of Shell Oil, the company's US subsidiary, from 1993-98. He then joined engineering and construction company Fluor Corp as chairman and CEO, retiring last year. Fluor is among the US companies being considered for post-war contracts in Iraq.

Timothy Carney, a former ambassador to Sudan, is preparing to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry, while Robin Raphel, former ambassador to Tunisia, has been penciled in to run the Ministry of Trade, the officials said.

Kenton Keith, a former ambassador to Qatar, would run the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, US officials said.

The US military and its war allies envision operating the Iraqi government for at least weeks, but probably longer, during the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war.

US officials, aware that they stand to suffer severe international criticism for running what would amount to a puppet government, said they want to involve Iraqis in the running of the government as soon as possible.

The hope is to quickly restart a number of nonpolitical agencies like agriculture and water and others that would not be stacked with Saddam loyalists.

The United States wants to assure the United Nations that it will have a role in the reconstruction of post-war Iraq but what role it would be and how quickly it would start has not yet been determined.

US officials want the UN oil-for-food program to continue in order to get urgent humanitarian aid to the people.

Fleischer declined to comment on any US plans to get the interim authority quickly up and running in southern Iraq, saying the shooting war was still under way.

"This is still a battlefield in many ways, in many places, and that remains the primary mission still is to win the war," Fleischer told reporters.

Fleischer said any interim governing body would be made up of both Iraqi exiles and Iraqis who still live in the country.

President George W Bush, who declared yesterday that "a vise is closing" around Baghdad, planned to meet at the White House later on Friday with a group of Shia, Sunni, and Christian Iraqis who now live in the United States.

- Reuters

#

Kerry says US needs its own 'regime change'
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff April 3, 2003
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. - Senator John F. Kerry said yesterday that President Bush committed a ''breach of trust'' in the eyes of many United Nations members by going to war with Iraq, creating a diplomatic chasm that will not be bridged as long as Bush remains in office.

''What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States,'' Kerry said in a speech at the Peterborough Town Library.

Despite pledging two weeks ago to cool his criticism of the administration once war began, Kerry unleashed a barrage of criticism as US troops fought within 25 miles of Baghdad.

By echoing the ''regime change'' line popular with hundreds of thousands of antiwar protesters who have demonstrated across the nation in recent weeks, the Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential contender seemed to be reaching out to a newly invigorated constituency as rival Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, closes in on Kerry in opinion polls.

Kerry said that he had spoken with foreign diplomats and several world leaders as recently as Monday while fund-raising in New York and that they told him they felt betrayed when Bush resorted to war in Iraq before they believed diplomacy had run its course.

He said the leaders, whom he did not identify, believed that Bush wanted to ''end-run around the UN.''

''I don't think they're going to trust this president, no matter what,'' Kerry said. ''I believe it deeply, that it will take a new president of the United States, declaring a new day for our relationship with the world, to clear the air and turn a new page on American history.''

With a dig at Bush's previous lack of foreign policy experience, Kerry said he would usher in a new US foreign policy if he stood before the United Nations as president.

''I believe we can have a golden age of American diplomacy,'' he said, outlining his own foreign policy credentials in the speech. ''But it will take a new president who is prepared to lead, and who has, frankly, a little more experience than visiting the sum total of two countries'' before taking office.

The criticism appeared to contradict statements Kerry made on March 18, just a day before Bush authorized military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Kerry, who previously had been critical of Bush's efforts to reach out to the international community, was reluctant that day to answer when a television crew asked him whether the administration had handled its diplomatic efforts poorly.

''You know, we're beyond that now,'' the senator said after addressing the International Association of Fire Fighters. ''We have to come together as a country to get this done and heal the wounds.''

Kerry, a Navy veteran of Vietnam, said he strongly supported US troops. ''There will be plenty of time here to be critical about how we arrived here,'' he said at that time. In response to questions after his speech yesterday, Kerry reiterated his support for the troops.

He also joined the administration in blasting ''armchair generals'' who are criticizing the war plan.

''War is war,'' he said. ''It's tough, and I think there's a little too much armchair quarterbacking and Monday-morning reviewing going on. I think we need to trust in the process for a few days here. This is only [14] days old, and they've achieved quite a remarkable advance in that period of time.''

When asked to square his criticism with his pledge of restraint two weeks earlier, Kerry first said that he had tempered his criticism of the administration's diplomatic efforts.

Then he said: ''It is possible that the word `regime change' is too harsh. Perhaps it is.''

Finally, he said his overall criticism of the administration was part of ''the healthy democracy of the United States of America'' and no different from some of the war critiques published on the front page of major newspapers. ''Is that unpatriotic?'' he asked.

A top Republican strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kerry was ''free to express his beliefs, but if anyone should be aware of the sensitivities of how our leaders should be conducting themselves while we're at war, I would think Senator Kerry would.''

''The president doesn't have the luxury of a campaign timeline to address the crisis of terrorism and its manifestation in Saddam Hussein,'' the strategist said.

During his opening remarks and on several occasions as he answered questions from the audience of more than 100 people, Kerry said he was the most experienced candidate in either party in terms of foreign policy and national security background.

''We need a president of the United States who has a vision of the world that is very different from what these excessively ideological unilateralists want to thrust on us and the rest of the world,'' said the 18-year veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Taking aim at Attorney General John D. Ashcroft at one point, the senator added: ''One of the reasons why I am running for president of the United States is that I look forward with pleasure and zeal for the opportunity to appoint an attorney general of the United States who believes and reads and abides by the Constitution.''

Kerry was equally critical of his rivals for the Democratic nomination.

''I believe that I have a better capacity than any other candidate running in the field to be able to stand up and address questions of national security and America's role in the world with credibility and history, and to be able to move us to those areas where we win, which is on the domestic agenda,'' he said.

Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/3/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

#

Iraq Is A Trial Run
Frontline India Volume 20 - Issue 07, March 29 - April 11, 2003
Noam Chomsky, University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political activist, is a powerhouse of anti-imperialist activism in the United States today. On March 21, a crowded and typical - and uniquely Chomskyan - day of political protest and scientific academic research, he spoke from his office for half an hour to V. K. Ramachandran on the current attack on Iraq.

V. K. Ramachandran : Does the present aggression on Iraq represent a continuation of United States' international policy in recent years or a qualitatively new stage in that policy?

Noam Chomsky: It represents a significantly new phase. It is not without precedent, but significantly new nevertheless.

This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it could be others.

The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm" in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war." Notice that new norms are established only by the United States. So, for example, when India invaded East Pakistan to terminate horrendous massacres, it did not establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention, because India is the wrong country, and besides, the U.S. was strenuously opposed to that action.

This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a response to ongoing or imminent attack.

The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds that the United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it. So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may sometime threaten it, then it can attack them.

The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National Security Strategy last September. It sent shudders around the world, including through the U.S. establishment, where, I might say, opposition to the war is unusually high. The Security Strategy said, in effect, that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the dimension - the only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S. domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge.

This is the first exercise of that doctrine. If it succeeds on these terms, as it presumably will, because the target is so defenceless, then international lawyers and Western intellectuals and others will begin to talk about a new norm in international affairs. It is important to establish such a norm if you expect to rule the world by force for the foreseeable future.

This is not without precedent, but it is extremely unusual. I shall mention one precedent, just to show how narrow the spectrum is. In 1963, Dean Acheson, who was a much respected elder statesman and senior Adviser of the Kennedy Administration, gave an important talk to the American Society of International Law, in which he justified the U. S. attacks against Cuba. The attack by the Kennedy Administration on Cuba was large-scale international terrorism and economic warfare. The timing was interesting - it was right after the Missile Crisis, when the world was very close to a terminal nuclear war. In his speech, Acheson said that no "legal issue" arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its "power, position, or prestige", or words approximating that.

That is also a statement of the Bush doctrine. Although Acheson was an important figure, what he said had not been official government policy in the post-War period. It now stands as official policy and this is the first illustration of it. It is intended to provide a precedent for the future.

Such "norms" are established only when a Western power does something, not when others do. That is part of the deep racism of Western culture, going back through centuries of imperialism and so deep that it is unconscious.

So I think this war is an important new step, and is intended to be.

Ramachandran :Is it also a new phase in that the U. S. has not been able to carry others with it?

Chomsky: That is not new. In the case of the Vietnam War, for example, the United States did not even try to get international support. Nevertheless, you are right in that this is unusual. This is a case in which the United States was compelled for political reasons to try to force the world to accept its position and was not able to, which is quite unusual. Usually, the world succumbs.

Ramachandran: So does it represent a "failure of diplomacy" or a redefinition of diplomacy itself?

Chomsky: I wouldn't call it diplomacy at all - it's a failure of coercion.

Compare it with the first Gulf War. In the first Gulf War, the U.S. coerced the Security Council into accepting its position, although much of the world opposed it. NATO went along, and the one country in the Security Council that did not - Yemen - was immediately and severely punished.

In any legal system that you take seriously, coerced judgments are considered invalid, but in the international affairs conducted by the powerful, coerced judgments are fine - they are called diplomacy.

What is interesting about this case is that the coercion did not work. There were countries - in fact, most of them - who stubbornly maintained the position of the vast majority of their populations.

The most dramatic case is Turkey. Turkey is a vulnerable country, vulnerable to U.S. punishment and inducements. Nevertheless, the new government, I think to everyone's surprise, did maintain the position of about 90 per cent of its population. Turkey is bitterly condemned for that here, just as France and Germany are bitterly condemned because they took the position of the overwhelming majority of their populations. The countries that are praised are countries like Italy and Spain, whose leaders agreed to follow orders from Washington over the opposition of maybe 90 per cent of their populations.

That is another new step. I cannot think of another case where hatred and contempt for democracy have so openly been proclaimed, not just by the government, but also by liberal commentators and others. There is now a whole literature trying to explain why France, Germany, the so-called "old Europe", and Turkey and others are trying to undermine the United States. It is inconceivable to the pundits that they are doing so because they take democracy seriously and they think that when the overwhelming majority of a population has an opinion, a government ought to follow it.

That is real contempt for democracy, just as what has happened at the United Nations is total contempt for the international system. In fact there are now calls - from The Wall Street Journal ,people in Government and others - to disband the United Nations.

Fear of the United States around the world is extraordinary. It is so extreme that it is even being discussed in the mainstream media. The cover story of the upcoming issue of Newsweek is about why the world is so afraid of the United States. The Post had a cover story about this a few weeks ago.

Of course this is considered to be the world's fault, that there is something wrong with the world with which we have to deal somehow, but also something that has to be recognised.

Ramachandran: The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and present danger is, of course, without any substance at all.

Chomsky: Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except, interestingly, the population of the United States.

In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran.

Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war.

This has happened, as I said, after September 2002. September 2002 is when the government-media campaign began and also when the mid-term election campaign began. The Bush Administration would have been smashed in the election if social and economic issues had been in the forefront, but it managed to suppress those issues in favour of security issues - and people huddle under the umbrella of power.

This is exactly the way the country was run in the 1980s. Remember that these are almost the same people as in the Reagan and the senior Bush Administrations. Right through the 1980s they carried out domestic policies that were harmful to the population and which, as we know from extensive polls, the people opposed. But they managed to maintain control by frightening the people. So the Nicaraguan Army was two days' march from Texas, and the airbase in Grenada was one from which the Russians would bomb us. It was one thing after another, every year, every one of them ludicrous. The Reagan Administration actually declared a National Emergency in 1985 because of the threat to the security of the United States posed by the Government of Nicaragua.

If somebody were watching this from Mars, they would not know whether to laugh or to cry.

They are doing exactly the same thing now, and will probably do something similar for the presidential campaign. There will have to be a new dragon to slay, because if the Administration lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.

Ramachandran: You have written that this war of aggression has dangerous consequences with respect to international terrorism and the threat of nuclear war.

Chomsky: I cannot claim any originality for that opinion. I am just quoting the CIA and other intelligence agencies and virtually every specialist in international affairs and terrorism. Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy , the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the high-level Hart-Rudman Commission on terrorist threats to the United States all agree that it is likely to increase terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The reason is simple: partly for revenge, but partly just for self-defence.

There is no other way to protect oneself from U.S. attack. In fact, the United States is making the point very clearly, and is teaching the world an extremely ugly lesson.

Compare North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is defenceless and weak; in fact, the weakest regime in the region. While there is a horrible monster running it, it does not pose a threat to anyone else. North Korea, on the other hand, does pose a threat. North Korea, however, is not attacked for a very simple reason: it has a deterrent. It has a massed artillery aimed at Seoul, and if the United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large part of South Korea.

So the United States is telling the countries of the world: if you are defenceless, we are going to attack you when we want, but if you have a deterrent, we will back off, because we only attack defenceless targets. In other words, it is telling countries that they had better develop a terrorist network and weapons of mass destruction or some other credible deterrent; if not, they are vulnerable to "preventive war".

For that reason alone, this war is likely to lead to the proliferation of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Ramachandran: How do you think the U.S. will manage the human - and humanitarian - consequences of the war?

Chomsky: No one knows, of course. That is why honest and decent people do not resort to violence - because one simply does not know.

The aid agencies and medical groups that work in Iraq have pointed out that the consequences can be very severe. Everyone hopes not, but it could affect up to millions of people. To undertake violence when there is even such a possibility is criminal.

There is already - that is, even before the war - a humanitarian catastrophe. By conservative estimates, ten years of sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of people. If there were any honesty, the U.S. would pay reparations just for the sanctions.

The situation is similar to the bombing of Afghanistan, of which you and I spoke when the bombing there was in its early stages. It was obvious the United States was never going to investigate the consequences.

Ramachandran: Or invest the kind of money that was needed.

Chomsky: Oh no. First, the question is not asked, so no one has an idea of what the consequences of the bombing were for most of the country. Then almost nothing comes in. Finally, it is out of the news, and no one remembers it any more.

In Iraq, the United States will make a show of humanitarian reconstruction and will put in a regime that it will call democratic, which means that it follows Washington's orders. Then it will forget about what happens later, and will go on to the next one.

Ramachandran: How have the media lived up to their propaganda-model reputation this time?

Chomsky : Right now it is cheerleading for the home team. Look at CNN, which is disgusting - and it is the same everywhere. That is to be expected in wartime; the media are worshipful of power.

More interesting is what happened in the build-up to war. The fact that government-media propaganda was able to convince the people that Iraq is an imminent threat and that Iraq was responsible for

September 11 is a spectacular achievement and, as I said, was accomplished in about four months. If you ask people in the media about this, they will say, "Well, we never said that," and it is true, they did not. There was never a statement that Iraq is going to invade the United States or that it carried out the World Trade Centre attack. It was just insinuated, hint after hint, until they finally got people to believe it.

Ramachandran: Look at the resistance, though. Despite the propaganda, despite the denigration of the United Nations, they haven't quite carried the day.

Chomsky: You never know. The United Nations is in a very hazardous position.

The United States might move to dismantle it. I don't really expect that, but at least to diminish it, because when it isn't following orders, of what use is it?

Ramachandran: Noam, you have seen movements of resistance to imperialism over a long period - Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War I. What are your impressions of the character, sweep and depth of the present resistance to U.S. aggression? We take great heart in the extraordinary mobilisations all over the world.

Chomsky: Oh, that is correct; there is just nothing like it. Opposition throughout the world is enormous and unprecedented, and the same is true of the United States. Yesterday, for example, I was in demonstrations in downtown Boston, right around the Boston Common. It is not the first time I have been there. The first time I participated in a demonstration there at which I was to speak was in October 1965. That was four years after the United States had started bombing South Vietnam. Half of South Vietnam had been destroyed and the war had been extended to North Vietnam. We could not have a demonstration because it was physically attacked, mostly by students, with the support of the liberal press and radio, who denounced these people who were daring to protest against an American war.

On this occasion, however, there was a massive protest before the war was launched officially and once again on the day it was launched - with no counter-demonstrators. That is a radical difference. And if it were not for the fear factor that I mentioned, there would be much more opposition.

The government knows that it cannot carry out long-term aggression and destruction as in Vietnam because the population will not tolerate it.

There is only one way to fight a war now. First of all, pick a much weaker enemy, one that is defenceless. Then build it up in the propaganda system as either about to commit aggression or as an imminent threat. Next, you need a lightning victory. An important leaked document of the first Bush Administration in 1989 described how the U.S. would have to fight war. It said that the U.S. had to fight much weaker enemies, and that victory must be rapid and decisive, as public support will quickly erode. It is no longer like the 1960s, when a war could be fought for years with no opposition at all.

In many ways, the activism of the 1960s and subsequent years has simply made a lot of the world, including this country, much more civilised in many domains.

#

Red Cross horrified by number of dead civilians
CTV, Canada April 3, 2003
Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw "incredible" levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad.

Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad.

"There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla," Huguenin said in a interview by satellite telephone.

"We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening."

Huguenin said the dead and injured in Hilla came from the village of Nasiriyah, where there has been heavy fighting between American troops and Iraqi soldiers, and appeared to be the result of "bombs, projectiles."

"At this stage we cannot comment on the nature of what happened exactly at that place . . . but it was definitely a different pattern from what we had seen in Basra or Baghdad.

"There will be investigations I am sure."

Baghdad and Basra are coping relatively well with the flow of wounded, said Huguenin, estimating that Baghdad hospitals have been getting about 100 wounded a day.

Most of the wounded in the two large cities have suffered superficial shrapnel wounds, with only about 15 per cent requiring internal surgery, he said.

But the pattern in Hilla was completely different.

"In the case of Hilla, everybody had very serious wounds and many, many of them small kids and women. We had small toddlers of two or three years of age who had lost their legs, their arms. We have called this a horror."

At least 400 people were taken to the Hilla hospital over a period of two days, he said -- far beyond its capacity.

"Doctors worked around the clock to do as much as they could. They just had to manage, that was all."

The city is no longer accessible, he added.

Red Cross staff are also concerned about what may be happening in other smaller centres south of Baghdad.

"We do not know what is going on in Najaf and Kabala. It has become physically impossible for us to reach out to those cities because the major road has become a zone of combat."

The Red Cross was able to claim one significant success this week: it played a key role in re-establishing water supplies at Basra.

Power for a water-pumping station had been accidentally knocked out in the attack on the city, leaving about a million people without water. Iraqi technicians couldn't reach the station to repair it because it was under coalition control.

The Red Cross was able to negotiate safe passage for a group of Iraqi engineers who crossed the fire line and made repairs. Basra now has 90 per cent of its normal water supply, said Huguenin.

Huguenin, a Swiss, is one of six international Red Cross workers still in Baghdad. The team includes two Canadians, Vatche Arslanian of Oromocto, N.B., and Kassandra Vartell of Calgary.

The Red Cross expects the humanitarian crisis in Iraq to grow and is calling for donations to help cope. The Red Cross Web site is: www.redcross.ca

#

Britain admits there may be no WMD's in Iraq
Ruben Bannerjee Al Jazeera April 5, 2003
Well into the war that was supposed to rid Iraq of its alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, a senior British official admitted on Saturday that no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction may after all be found.

Making the startling confession in a radio interview, British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, added in the same breath that he would in any case rejoice the "fall" of Saddam Hussein and his regime - regardless of whether any weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq or not.

The confession reconfirms the worst fears of opponents of the war that "weapons of mass destruction" is only a ruse for the US and the British to go to war against Iraq.

At the very least the admission certainly deals a serious blow to the moral legitimacy that the US and the British have been seeking in prosecuting the war.

Critics of the war across the world have been accusing the US and the British of aiming for regime change in Baghdad under the guise of "unearthing and dismantling weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

There have been constant accusations that the US and the British are eyeing Iraq’s huge oil wealth, promoting Israeli interests, and that its campaign against "weapons of mass destruction" is only a convenient cover-up.

Even countries like Germany, Russia and France had been less than impressed with the US-led war against Iraq saying all along that the task of unearthing weapons of mass destruction, if any, is better left to UN weapons' inspectors.

In making the confession in an interview with BBC radio, the British Home Secretary however admitted that the non-discovery of any weapons of mass destruction would "lead to a very interesting debate" about the war.

"We will obviously have a very interesting debate if there are no biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons or facilities to produce them found anywhere in Iraq once Iraq is free," the home secretary added.

The US-led forces stand to face a huge global uproar if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq.

US-led forces moving across the Iraqi deserts have been under pressure since the start of the war to find evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But instead of solid evidence, the they have so far raised only false alarms.

From time to time, the US-forces have claimed to have unearthed "suspicious" substances. And each time, the claim has turned out to be without substance.

Today Saturday 5 April, US Marines were reported to be digging up a suspected chemical weapons hiding place in the courtyard of a school in the southeast of Baghdad.

Western media reported that the US Marines were digging after being tipped off by an Iraqi informer. "We don’t have a clue now but we are going to dig it up and check," said General James Mattis, the commander of the Marine division at the scene.

Iraq has always insisted that it does not possess any weapons of mass destruction.

UN weapons inspectors, who scoured the country for several months until the US asked them to leave last month, had repeatedly certified that they had found no credible evidence of Iraq possessing any weapons of mass destruction. -- Al Jazeera

#

Red Cross: Iraq Wounded Too High to Count
The Guardian April 6, 2003
GENEVA (AP) - The number of casualties in Baghdad is so high that hospitals have stopped counting the number of people treated, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday.

``No one is able to keep accurate statistics of the admitted and transferred war wounded any longer as one emergency arrival follows the other in the hospitals of Baghdad,'' the ICRC said in a statement.

``Ambulances are picking up the wounded and running them to the triage areas and on to hospitals,'' it said. ``Some of the wounded try to reach the nearest hospitals by foot.''

The neutral Swiss-run organization - the main aid agency left in Iraq - gave no estimates on the number of deaths and did not confirm U.S. Central Command estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 Iraqi fighters were killed in Saturday's foray into Baghdad by American armored vehicles.

``All of the hospitals are under pressure and the medical staff is working without respite,'' said the ICRC statement. ``Despite the intense and desperate activity, hospital staff is still managing the situation.''

But it said that hospitals urgently needed more water supplies. Given the general power outage in Baghdad, most hospitals and water installations are now being powered by backup generators. It said it was getting many requests for service kits, spare parts and repairs for water plants.

The ICRC said that Red Cross delegates who reached the southern city of Basra reported that the medical situation was generally under control and that there were no signs of epidemics. But it said it feared the worst for other hospitals outside Baghdad and Basra.

#

U.S. Finds No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
Yahoo News April 6, 2003
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Sunday it had not yet found any weapons of mass destruction and it believed there was a diminishing threat that Iraq might use them as U.S.-led troops take over more territory.

"The places it's most likely to be found we haven't even gotten to them yet," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a briefing at Central Command in Qatar.

Brooks said the farther the U.S.-led forces moved into Iraq, the less opportunity there was for Iraq to use any weapons of mass destruction it might have. Washington launched a war against Iraq on March 20, vowing to disarm it of weapons of mass destruction that Baghdad denies it has.

"The closer we get ... there are fewer and fewer options on what can be used to deliver weapons of mass destruction."

"As we continue to advance more areas are taken away. We are pleased that it hasn't been used to date but not satisfied that the threat has gone," Brooks said.

#

Injured overwhelm hospitals
The Sydney Morning Herald April 9, 2003
Health organisations have warned that hospitals in Baghdad have been swamped with casualties now that fierce urban combat has erupted across the city, with supplies dwindling and medical personnel caught in the crossfire and unable to report to work.

The World Health Organisation in Geneva reported that the city's hospitals were seeing 100 combat casualties an hour after a column of United States tanks made an initial thrust into the city.

The WHO said amputations were being performed without sufficient anaesthesia or morphine. A WHO spokesman, Ian Simpson, said doctors and nurses who managed to report for duty at hospitals were finding conditions untenable, with stocks of medicine and supplies vanishing in the crush of civilian and military casualties.

A shortage of fresh water in the city was also threatening the ability of hospitals to carry out operations and depriving the population of sanitation, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned from London. At least one hospital in the southern suburb of Mahmudiya had been overwhelmed by the number of civilian and military casualties, it said.

Water supplies stopped last Thursday because mains electricity, which powers the pumps, had been knocked out by the fighting. Red Cross teams have kept generators running and set up water treatment centres, but moving about was difficult as sporadic fighting spread across the capital.

As the death toll climbs and human misery increases, so does concern that the US military may be alienating the populace it says it is liberating, and fuelling anger in Arab countries and elsewhere.

Defence Department officials have been reluctant to estimate the total number of Iraqi military dead.

But one senior Pentagon official estimated that between 2000 and 4000 Iraqi soldiers had been killed in Baghdad since Saturday.

Walid Murad was one of the Special Republican Guard soldiers whose job it was to stop the US advance into Baghdad. In an interview from the hospital where he was awaiting treatment for a leg wound, he gave a rare account of what it was like to be on the receiving end of US firepower.

"This was the first time that I saw the Americans not as planes, but as men," he said.

"They kept us under heavy bombardment for about an hour."

After the battle, many wounded soldiers like him were taken to Kindi hospital, one of the city's two main trauma centres.

Dazed relatives, their clothing soaked in blood, watched helplessly as the nurses pushed their relatives up the ramp into the receiving ward. Then the trolleys would be returned to the car park, hosed down and readied for the next.

Next to the overflowing morgue, six bodies wrapped in black polyurethane corpse bags tied closed with white string lay unattended on the sand-and-oil covered pavement while flies flew around them. The bags were unmarked except for one with a driver's licence attached with string and bearing the man's name, Hamash Hussein Mohammed. His photo showed the face of a clean-cut man of about 30.

The Washington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times

#

Journalists die in US attacks
The Sydney Morning Herald April 9, 2003
Tareq Ayub, a correspondent for the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television station, died of his injuries after a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad offices, the Arabic news channel reported.

A cameraman, Zuheir al-Iraqi, was hit in the neck by shrapnel in the blast, which the network said was a deliberate strike.

Ayub had been seriously injured and the station aired footage of him being taken away for treatment in a car belonging to rival Abu Dhabi satellite television.

A Jordanian of Palestinian origin, Ayub, 34, was married with two children and had been in Baghdad for less than a week after leaving his normal base in Jordan.

Al-Jazeera's presenter accused the US military of deliberately targeting its offices and recalled that the station's Kabul bureau had been hit in November 2001 during the US-led assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The television station's offices are on the road between the Mansur Hotel and the planning ministry, not far from the Republican Palace compound where fierce fighting raged between US and Iraqi troops early yesterday.

Abu Dhabi TV announced its Baghdad bureau had also been hit and broadcast a live report showing its camera position under attack.

As they filmed the arrival of two US tanks on a major bridge in central Baghdad close to their offices overlooking the river, what appeared to be Iraqi machine-gun fire clattered out from just beneath the camera position.

Several incoming blasts boomed out, engulfing the area in smoke and Abu Dhabi TV said it had lost contact with its correspondent.

In a separate incident, a cameraman of British news agency Reuters was killed and three other staff members were wounded when a US tank fired a shell at Baghdad's main media hotel during fighting across the capital.

US commanders said their troops fired a single tank shell at the Palestine Hotel after being shot at from an upper floor.

But European Union officials said they intended to make representations to the United States to provide greater protection to journalists covering the conflict.

Reuters named the dead man as Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national.

"Taras's death, and the injuries sustained by the others, were so unnecessary," said Reuters' editor in chief Geert Linnebank.

He called into question the "judgement of advancing US troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad".

Jose Couso, a cameraman with the Spanish television channel Telecinco, was also killed after suffering wounds in the leg and jaw in the incident, Telecinco announced during a morning current affairs program.

Reuters has its offices on the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, which houses most of the foreign media covering the Iraq war.

The 15th and 17th floors of the hotel were struck, blowing out windows as fierce exchanges raged on the 20th day of the US-led war. The 14th floor was also damaged.

A hole was knocked in the hotel facade, laying bare the metal structure of a column running past a balcony.

Dubai's Al-Arabiya television channel said its bureau on the 17th floor also suffered damage. General Buford Blount, commander of the US 3rd Infantry Division said a US tank was "receiving fire from the hotel, RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and small-arms fire, and engaged with one tank round. The firing stopped."

But in Greece, the current president of the European Union, government spokesman Christos Protopapas described the strike as repugnant.

Following is a chronology of reporters' casualties during the war:

April 7

Christian Liebig, a correspondent with Germany weekly Focus, and Julio Anguita Parrado from Spanish daily El Mundo are killed after a missile attack on a US operations centre.

Al-Jazeera accuses US forces of firing on one of its vehicles near Baghdad and says its office in the southern city of Basra "was the direct target of shelling" on April 2.

April 6

US NBC television journalist David Bloom, 39, "embedded" with US troops in Iraq dies near Baghdad, apparently of natural causes.

Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, a 25-year-old Kurdish translator working with the BBC, dies after a US plane bombs a Kurdish-US convoy in northern Iraq in a "friendly-fire" attack.

April 4

Washington Post editorial columnist Michael Kelly is killed when the Humvee vehicle in which he is travelling with US troops plunges into a canal while evading Iraqi fire on the approach to Baghdad's main airport.

April 2

Kaveh Golestan, 52, a prize-winning Iranian photographer working as a cameraman with the BBC, dies when he steps out of his car onto a landmine in Kifri, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

March 30

Gaby Rado, 48, covering the war for British television network ITV, is killed when he falls from the roof of the Abu Sanaa hotel in Sulaymaniya, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. The circumstances of his death are not known.

March 22

Australian cameraman Paul Moran, 39, on assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is killed in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi town of Khurmal, under Kurdish control.

ITN correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, is believed to have been killed by US-British fire near Basra. Lloyd's French cameraman 43-year-old Fred Nerac and Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman are still missing.

AFP

#

Amid the fragments of lives, new enemies are made
The Sydney Morning Herald April 9, 2003
The American bombs that shattered a middle-class neighbourhood vaporised more than houses and people, writes Paul McGeough in Baghdad.

Looking deep into the Baghdad blackout, I can see the tiniest pinprick of red light - but this light casts a beam that is as enormous as it is confronting.

It's on the levee that stops the Tigris River from flooding into what was Saddam Hussein's presidential compound. Tonight the leader's sprawling complex is the forward base for the US thrust into Iraq, and the red light marks the bivouac of a US infantry unit.

Tonight those turbid Tigris waters separate more than me and the US soldiers.

I'm on the east side of the city; just back in my room at the Sheraton after a dash to the middle-class suburb of Mansour.

Along the way it seems most of the armed men who have been behind sandbags, guarding government buildings, are gone. The Foreign Ministry, the Information Ministry and the Planning Ministry stand naked to US attacks.

But there is still one guard near the inter-city bus station, and he seems to be there for the long haul. He cradles a grenade launcher as he sits by his pavement post in a brown, crushed-velvet armchair.

There are signs of the morning's progress through the city of the US armoured column that took the compound. The road near the bus station is cratered, its perimeter wall has been blasted and an incinerated police car lies off to the side of the road.

On Sadoun Street a man dressed in black jeans, black open-necked shirt and a black leather vest approaches and tells me: "Three thousand today". I think he is talking about the war's death toll, but it turns out that he's a currency dealer, offering 3000 Iraqi dinars to the US dollar.

We speed past al-Zawra Park, where Iraqi forces are hiding cannons and truckloads of ammunition in the shadow of the gum trees; and past another public garden, from which four Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles streak westwards into the setting sun.

Then we lurch around a traffic island adorned with a jowly bust of the caliph al-Mansour. It was he who built the ancient round city of Baghdad in AD762.

He had traits in common with today's leader - he had an edifice complex and he was a security paranoid. But not even he could have had the high-tech, high-powered US 3rd Infantry in mind when he mused about how the trade-route Tigris, as he did centuries ago, would bring the world to the city that had yet to become the setting for the tales of The Thousand and One Nights.

I've broken away from observing the battle for the presidential compound to look at a gaping hole in the ground in Mansour, but it is the second visit of the day to this neighbourhood for the silver-haired Sabah, who is more than a driver to us.

He comes behind us, cleaning up our mess; arriving at the door early each morning with a flask of Madame Sabah's excellent Turkish coffee or, late at night, with a couple of cans of Red Bull when he thinks we need an energy hit; he produces a meal from nothing when all the restaurants are closed; and he looks out for us in the daily war of attrition with the rest of Baghdad - fast-thinking currency bandits, slow-thinking information bureaucrats and the like.

Earlier, Sabah walked out of Mansour's al-Saha restaurant - with our take-out lunch - only minutes before a huge explosion made shards of its windows, lacerating customers and freaking the neighbourhood. But that is nothing compared with the real damage a block away.

Four or five houses have disappeared and in their place is a crater maybe 30-40 metres wide and 15-20 metres deep.

Some of the photographers use a chilling term they picked up from the US military in Afghanistan to describe what might have happened to a dozen or more people thought to have died in this missile attack. They have become "pink mist".

The smouldering crater is littered with the artefacts of ordinary middle-class life in Baghdad - a crunched Passat sedan, a wrought-iron front gate, the armrest of a chair upholstered in green brocade and a broken bedhead.

The top floors of surrounding buildings are sheared off. Mud thrown by the force of the blast cakes what is left of them, and the nearby date palms are decapitated. Bulldozers and rescue crews work frantically, peeling back the rubble in the hope of finding survivors.

Neighbours and relatives of the home-owners weep openly in the street, some embracing to ease the pain and all of them wondering why such a powerful missile was dumped on them after the US has stated its heavy bombing campaign is over.

But this is an opportunistic strike. Four bunker-busters - 2000-pound JDAM bombs - are dropped on the house in which the US "believes" Saddam, his sons and other top officials "might" have been meeting.

Anonymous US officials are quoted saying that on Monday they had received intelligence of a high-level meeting in Mansour of Iraqi intelligence officials and, "possibly", Saddam and his two sons, Qusay and Uday.

But that cuts no ice with the neighbours. The nearest house has stood for 43 years but now it is on the verge of collapse and the adult children of the blood-splattered engineer Fadel al-Imam, aged 75, are working to convince him he must leave.

With his back to the door of his wrecked library, where floor-to-ceiling shelves bulge with a lifetime's collection of engineering texts and there is a shattered photo of his policeman father in the service of the last Western occupiers of Iraq, the British, he says: "I reserve the right not to obey any government.

"This will create more enemies for the Americans. Even those who were feeling good about the arrival of the Americans will want to fight now."

We can only guess at what will happen next.

Washington is in a hurry to show Iraqis and the world that it has come here as a force for its version of good. But even as it pulls down statues of Saddam, desperate to satisfy its hope for a legitimising and "spontaneous" revolt, the people of Baghdad are reluctant to respond.

And probably more so after any future opportunistic strikes.

All they see is the nightmare around them - the vandalism of their telephone system; the terror of the blackouts; the trauma of overburdened, ill-equipped hospitals struggling to cope with the dead and injured; and an imminent health crisis as millions go without clean water.

Donald Rumsfeld seems to recognise some of this. Despite the capture of the compound, he says: "I can't say we are at a tipping point."

And showing that they remember none of their own history here, Britain's top commander, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, wants civilian Iraqis to do the heavy lifting. "What we are looking for is the effect on the people of Iraq. Once they say this regime no longer exists in our psyche, then we have reached it."

How much more firepower will they apply to make the people do their bidding?

The next step for the Americans is likely to be an advance on the east of the city on several fronts. And it is when they get into the labyrinthine suburbs on this side, as opposed to the parkland they now hold on the west bank, that we will have a sense of the extent of the street fighting to come.

So far the military engagement in Baghdad has been conventional. There will be no street-fighting, no guerilla tactics until small US units make targets of themselves as they patrol the exposed streets and alleys of the east.

We can't reckon yet on how many in the Republican Guard and Saddam's fedayeen will look over their shoulder and see the consolidating grip of the US-led invasion force on the rest of the country or at the ravaged presidential compound now in US hands, and conclude that it is time to shed their uniforms and join their families.

As evening set in, I could see a couple of Americans sitting on the levee wall, dangling their legs as they took the last of the sun after an at-times ferocious, day-long battle to wrest control of the compound from the Republican Guards who stayed to fight.

And on the internet I was able to look at pictures, taken by my colleagues with US forces, of other US soldiers tramping through Saddam's trashed ballroom, sitting back in his armchairs and rifling his desk.

Now it is 5am, pre-dawn. The pinprick of light is gone and Iraqi fighters are lobbing countless missiles at the compound. There is the crackle of intense small-arms fire. This will probably prove to be no more than an irritant in the overall scheme of things, but it does confirm that this is not the "tipping point".

This is Day Two of the US occupation of the presidential compound, but it is the Iraqi flag that still flies on the Republican Palace.

#

Bunker busters probably missed Saddam: reports
The Sydney Morning Herald April 9, 2003
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein likely survived a US airstrike - aimed at killing him and his two sons with four massive bombs - which destroyed three houses and killed up to 14 people in a residential area, according to British intelligence sources quoted today.

"He was probably not in the building when it was bombed (on Monday)," The Guardian quoted a source as saying.

The Times said Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, told the US Central Intelligence Agency that it believed Saddam left the targeted building in Baghdad just before it was bombed.

"We think he left the same way he arrived in the area, either by a tunnel system or by car, we're not sure," the paper quoted a British intelligence source as saying.

A US B-1 bomber struck the building in the al Mansour residential area in response to intelligence that Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, were meeting inside with senior Iraqi intelligence officials.

The bomber struck the building with four 900 kg guided bombs, two of them bunker busters, US officials said.

Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Washington press briefing that the airstrike had been "very, very effective", but it was not known if the targets were still alive.

"What we have for battle damage assessment right now is essentially a hole in the ground, a site of destruction where we wanted it to be, where we believe high value targets were," McChrystal said yesterday.

"We do not have a hard and fast assessment of what individual or individuals were on site," he added.

After the attack, a US source said the target was a restaurant. But US officials later said the intended objective was 100 metres from the only restaurant in the neighbourhood, and that it was hit.

Al-Saa'a restaurant, a popular Baghdad eatery that serves grilled fare, appeared intact yesterday, except for blown-out windows and doors.

Three houses were reduced to rubble and at least 20 houses and nearly two dozen nearby shops were damaged, some seriously, from the force of the blast, which left a 500 metre radius of debris and a massive crater.

"It felt like a strong earthquake," said Nahid Abdullah, 26, who lives in the neighbourhood.

Strewn over surrounding streets were everything from doorknobs or ceiling beams to bits of wooden furniture and light fixtures. The bombs uprooted three orange trees that once stood outside the houses and left a palm tree in one backyard completely charred.

The body of an elderly man was found on Monday night. Today, rescuers using a bulldozer and their bare hands dug out the body of a small boy and the decapitated body of a 20-year-old woman. The bodies were placed in blankets and quilts and put aside on the footpath.

Neighbours said as many as 14 people, including at least seven children, may have been killed. Scores have been injured in adjacent homes and shops, where the debris and shrapnel blew out doors and windows.

Scores of Iraqis have been killed and hundreds injured in the US-led air campaign on the capital. Civilian casualties have increased dramatically since US forces arrived in the capital last week, with neighbourhoods close to where fighting take place suffering the most.

Taleb Saadi, a doctor at Baghdad's al-Kindi hospital, said between 30 and 35 bodies arrived at the hospital yesterday, and as many as 300 injured people were treated at its emergency ward.

The streets were quiet yesterday, with most Baghdad residents sheltering in their homes.

North of the capital, thousands were fleeing in buses, trucks, vans and light trucks packed with food, clothes, blankets and cooking supplies.

While rescue workers searched for more bodies in al-Mansour with the help of neighbours and volunteers, relatives squatted on a footpath across the road. Some wept; others buried their faces in their hands.

When the body of the young woman was brought out, torso first and then her severed head, her mother started crying uncontrollably. She later collapsed and was helped into a car.

A US official said the Pentagon was confident that Saddam and his sons were in al-Saa'a restaurant before it was bombed.

"Our intelligence was solid," the official said. He did not elaborate on the source of the intelligence.

He said Saddam was known to frequent the restaurant, apparently believing coalition forces would not target him so close to a civilian centre.

On April 4, state Iraqi television showed lengthy footage of Saddam, or at least a man who looked exactly like him, on a walkabout of several Baghdad districts, including al-Mansour, when al-Saa'a appeared in the background.

Those close to Saddam say the Iraqi leader is so obsessed with security that very few people know about his movements. He maintains dozens of residences and uses doubles to keep people guessing.

Coalition strikes have aimed at top Iraqi leaders from the very start of the war.

On the opening day of the war on March 20, US President George W Bush authorised a strike on a suburban Baghdad compound where Saddam and his sons were thought to be staying. But US intelligence officials suspect Saddam survived.

Yesterday, reporters were allowed to visit al-Saa'a. Not a single policeman was in sight.

AFP and AP

#

Edited by author 04-10-2003 02:21 AM
The Reason Why
by George McGovern The Nation April 21, 2003
Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Alfred, Lord Tennyson "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (in the Crimean War)

Thanks to the most crudely partisan decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the nation has been given a President of painfully limited wisdom and compassion and lacking any sense of the nation's true greatness. Appearing to enjoy his role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces above all other functions of his office, and unchecked by a seemingly timid Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a largely subservient press and a corrupt corporate plutocracy, George W. Bush has set the nation on a course for one-man rule.

He treads carelessly on the Bill of Rights, the United Nations and international law while creating a costly but largely useless new federal bureaucracy loosely called "Homeland Security." Meanwhile, such fundamental building blocks of national security as full employment and a strong labor movement are of no concern. The nearly $1.5 trillion tax giveaway, largely for the further enrichment of those already rich, will have to be made up by cutting government services and shifting a larger share of the tax burden to workers and the elderly. This President and his advisers know well how to get us involved in imperial crusades abroad while pillaging the ordinary American at home. The same families who are exploited by a rich man's government find their sons and daughters being called to war, as they were in Vietnam--but not the sons of the rich and well connected. (Let me note that the son of South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson is now on duty in the Persian Gulf. He did not use his obvious political connections to avoid military service, nor did his father seek exemptions for his son. That goes well with me, with my fellow South Dakotans and with every fair-minded American.)

The invasion of Iraq and other costly wars now being planned in secret are fattening the ever-growing military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned in his great farewell address. War profits are booming, as is the case in all wars. While young Americans die, profits go up. But our economy is not booming, and our stock market is not booming. Our wages and incomes are not booming. While waging a war against Iraq, the Bush Administration is waging another war against the well-being of America.

Following the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the entire world was united in sympathy and support for America. But thanks to the arrogant unilateralism, the bullying and the clumsy, unimaginative diplomacy of Washington, Bush converted a world of support into a world united against us, with the exception of Tony Blair and one or two others. My fellow South Dakotan, Tom Daschle, the US Senate Democratic leader, has well described the collapse of American diplomacy during the Bush Administration. For this he has been savaged by the Bush propaganda machine. For their part, the House of Representatives has censured the French by changing the name of french fries on the house dining room menu to freedom fries. Does this mean our almost sacred Statue of Liberty--a gift from France--will now have to be demolished? And will we have to give up the French kiss? What a cruel blow to romance.

During his presidential campaign Bush cried, "I'm a uniter, not a divider." As one critic put it, "He's got that right. He's united the entire world against him." In his brusque, go-it-alone approach to Congress, the UN and countless nations big and small, Bush seemed to be saying, "Go with us if you will, but we're going to war with a small desert kingdom that has done us no harm, whether you like it or not." This is a good line for the macho business. But it flies in the face of Jefferson's phrase, "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." As I have watched America's moral and political standing in the world fade as the globe's inhabitants view the senseless and immoral bombing of ancient, historic Baghdad, I think often of another Jefferson observation during an earlier bad time in the nation's history: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

The President frequently confides to individuals and friendly audiences that he is guided by God's hand. But if God guided him into an invasion of Iraq, He sent a different message to the Pope, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the mainline Protestant National Council of Churches and many distinguished rabbis--all of whom believe the invasion and bombardment of Iraq is against God's will. In all due respect, I suspect that Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice--and other sideline warriors--are the gods (or goddesses) reaching the ear of our President.

As a World War II bomber pilot, I was always troubled by the title of a then-popular book, God Is My Co-pilot. My co-pilot was Bill Rounds of Wichita, Kansas, who was anything but godly, but he was a skillful pilot, and he helped me bring our B-24 Liberator through thirty-five combat missions over the most heavily defended targets in Europe. I give thanks to God for our survival, but somehow I could never quite picture God sitting at the controls of a bomber or squinting through a bombsight deciding which of his creatures should survive and which should die. It did not simplify matters theologically when Sam Adams, my navigator--and easily the godliest man on my ten-member crew--was killed in action early in the war. He was planning to become a clergyman at war's end.

Of course, my dear mother went to her grave believing that her prayers brought her son safely home. Maybe they did. But how could I explain that to the mother of my close friend, Eddie Kendall, who prayed with equal fervor for her son's safe return? Eddie was torn in half by a blast of shrapnel during the Battle of the Bulge--dead at age 19, during the opening days of the battle--the best baseball player and pheasant hunter I knew.

I most certainly do not see God at work in the slaughter and destruction now unfolding in Iraq or in the war plans now being developed for additional American invasions of other lands. The hand of the Devil? Perhaps. But how can I suggest that a fellow Methodist with a good Methodist wife is getting guidance from the Devil? I don't want to get too self-righteous about all of this. After all, I have passed the 80 mark, so I don't want to set the bar of acceptable behavior too high lest I fail to meet the standard for a passing grade on Judgment Day. I've already got a long list of strikes against me. So President Bush, forgive me if I've been too tough on you. But I must tell you, Mr. President, you are the greatest threat to American troops. Only you can put our young people in harm's way in a needless war. Only you can weaken America's good name and influence in world affairs.

W e hear much talk these days, as we did during the Vietnam War, of "supporting our troops." Like most Americans, I have always supported our troops, and I have always believed we had the best fighting forces in the world--with the possible exception of the Vietnamese, who were fortified by their hunger for national independence, whereas we placed our troops in the impossible position of opposing an independent Vietnam, albeit a Communist one. But I believed then as I do now that the best way to support our troops is to avoid sending them on mistaken military campaigns that needlessly endanger their lives and limbs. That is what went on in Vietnam for nearly thirty years--first as we financed the French in their failing effort to regain control of their colonial empire in Southeast Asia, 1946-54, and then for the next twenty years as we sought unsuccessfully to stop the Vietnamese independence struggle led by Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap--two great men whom we should have accepted as the legitimate leaders of Vietnam at the end of World War II. I should add that Ho and his men were our allies against the Japanese in World War II. Some of my fellow pilots who were shot down by Japanese gunners over Vietnam were brought safely back to American lines by Ho's guerrilla forces.

During the long years of my opposition to that war, including a presidential campaign dedicated to ending the American involvement, I said in a moment of disgust: "I'm sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars in which young men do the dying." That terrible American blunder, in which 58,000 of our bravest young men died, and many times that number were crippled physically or psychologically, also cost the lives of some 2 million Vietnamese as well as a similar number of Cambodians and Laotians, in addition to laying waste most of Indochina--its villages, fields, trees and waterways; its schools, churches, markets and hospitals.

I had thought after that horrible tragedy--sold to the American people by our policy-makers as a mission of freedom and mercy--that we never again would carry out a needless, ill-conceived invasion of another country that had done us no harm and posed no threat to our security. I was wrong in that assumption.

The President and his team, building on the trauma of 9/11, have falsely linked Saddam Hussein's Iraq to that tragedy and then falsely built him up as a deadly threat to America and to world peace. These falsehoods are rejected by the UN and nearly all of the world's people. We will, of course, win the war with Iraq. But what of the question raised in the Bible that both George Bush and I read: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul," or the soul of his nation?

It has been argued that the Iraqi leader is hiding a few weapons of mass destruction, which we and eight other countries have long held. But can it be assumed that he would insure his incineration by attacking the United States? Can it be assumed that if we are to save ourselves we must strike Iraq before Iraq strikes us? This same reasoning was frequently employed during the half-century of cold war by hotheads recommending that we atomize the Soviet Union and China before they atomize us. Courtesy of The New Yorker, we are reminded of Tolstoy's observation: "What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen." Or again, consider the words of Lord Stanmore, who concluded after the suicidal charge of the Light Brigade that it was "undertaken to resist an attack that was never threatened and probably never contemplated." The symphony of falsehood orchestrated by the Bush team has been de-vised to defeat an Iraqi onslaught that "was never threatened and probably never comtemplated."

I'm grateful to The Nation, as I was to Harper's, for giving me opportunities to write about these matters. Major newspapers, especially the Washington Post, haven't been nearly as receptive.

The destruction of Baghdad has a special poignancy for many of us. In my fourth-grade geography class under a superb teacher, Miss Wagner, I was first introduced to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the palm trees and dates, the kayaks plying the rivers, camel caravans and desert oases, the Arabian Nights, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (my first movie), the ancient city of Baghdad, Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent. This was the first class in elementary school that fired my imagination. Those wondrous images have stayed with me for more than seventy years. And it now troubles me to hear of America's bombs, missiles and military machines ravishing the cradle of civilization.

But in God's good time, perhaps this most ancient of civilizations can be redeemed. My prayer is that most of our soldiers and most of the long-suffering people of Iraq will survive this war after it has joined the historical march of folly that is man's inhumanity to man.

#

BAGHDAD FALLS
By Paul McGeough, The Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in Baghdad April 10, 2003
Jubilation and wholesale looting in Baghdad yesterday signalled the end of the regime of Saddam Hussein as thousands of United States troops met little or no resistance on their way into the heart of the city.

The US military declared that Saddam's rule over the capital had ended. Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said at central command in Qatar: "The capital city is now one of those areas that has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control."

Marine tanks rolled into the heart of the city, greeted by people cheering, waving white flags and gesturing with V-for-victory signs. "We were nearly mobbed by people trying to shake our hands," said Major Andy Milburn of the 7th Marines.

Symbolically, the Americans stationed tanks and other military vehicles around the very heart of Baghdad - Tahrir Square on the east bank of the Tigris River.

There were wild scenes as residents - some in tears, others singing and dancing - crowded on to city freeways, showering the Americans who rode into town atop their tanks with flowers and the classic Iraqi greeting for foreigners: "Welcome! Welcome in Baghdad."

"Today Baghdad is like Berlin in 1945," an egg-seller told the Herald.

In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ropes and pulleys were attached to a six-metre statue of Saddam in central Baghdad and it was pulled down by a US tank.

The crowd stamped on the toppled dictator. Crowds of Iraqis yelled "Hello, hello" as the Americans advanced through traffic. "No more Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to the troops. "We love you, we love you."


There was no sign of any arm of government. The Information Ministry, which has tried to keep the foreign press on a tight rein, was abandoned and none of the agencies that might maintain law and order was on the streets.

And while the people clearly felt that they had shaken off the Saddam yoke, US officers said there was still some resistance - small and disorganised, but fierce.

But the jubilation in Baghdad prompted the US military to say it believed the whole of Iraq had now reached a "tipping point" at which ordinary people began to realise that the Saddam administration was over.

There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, Uday or Qusay, all of whom were targeted in a "bunker-buster" bombing attack on a residential area in Baghdad on Tuesday.

But presuming his era had ended, a white-haired man in the inner city took a poster of Saddam and beat it with his shoe - a traditional insult. Others gathered to spit on or kick the portrait.

"Come see, this is freedom," the man said. "This is the criminal, this is the infidel. This is the destiny of every traitor. He killed millions of us ... Oh people, this is freedom."

But another old man who has spent the past few weeks quietly telling the Herald how much he longed for this day, said simply: "Now we dance."

The looting was on such a scale that it caused traffic jams in the eastern suburbs as huge crowds ripped all that they could from government buildings - air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, hat-stands and anything else they could carry.

They brought trucks and packed their cars so high that much of the loot fell off as they drove away. With great high spirits, they hijacked police cars and motorcycles, full-length curtains and sports trophies.

The used wheeled office chairs to push their loot away into the suburbs while some guarded their booty on street corners, waiting for family vehicles to return to collect it.

One of them said: "This is our peace dividend."

When they had done with the Transport Ministry and the headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, a part of Uday Hussein's fiefdom, they torched the buildings. They stole dozens of Uday's thoroughbred horses from a nearby stables.

On Palestine Street, a favourite regime venue for rallies and shows of military and Ba'ath party support, Iraqis looted a Trade Ministry warehouse, emerging with air-conditioners, ceiling fans, refrigerators and TV sets.

Posters of Saddam were shredded, statues pushed over and many people chanted "Bush! Bush!" and "America! America!" as others tore up 250-dinar notes bearing the face of the dictator. Not far away a bare-chested young man danced in the middle of an intersection, madly swirling his shirt over his head.

In a central square a crowd of about 20 Iraqis threw their shoes at a statue of Saddam and ripped a metal plaque off the marble pedestal.

The crowds relished saying things that a few days ago would have had them tortured or imprisoned. They spat at portraits of Saddam and denounced him with great bitterness.

Murtha Odari, a 27-year-old army deserter, said: "He is a criminal - he killed so many of our people. He made us fight against Iran. He invaded Kuwait and now he makes us fight the world. Now we are so happy."

Asked why he had joined in the Saddam cheer squads over the years, he said: "We were scared. We did not have a choice."

Standing outside the blazing Olympic headquarters, 46-year-old Abu Mantazar condemned the looting. And while he celebrated the arrival of the Americans, he had a warning for them. "Before it was so bad for us - so this makes us happy. We look forward to having a new government and an end to this mess.

"Look, the US is welcome here - but not for long, just for a while to help the next Iraqi government get going. And after that they have no right to stay here; and while they are here they must see us as human beings and not as barrels of oil."

Streets in the centre of the city were virtually deserted. Small numbers of men in civilian clothing carried Kalashnikovs and local people said a group of militias still stationed at the eastern end of Synak Bridge were diehard Syrian volunteers.

US infantry units began pushing in from the east and the marines from the west on Tuesday night, planning to link up on central Tharir Square in the centre.

They claimed to have secured all routes into the capital as the last resistance they faced was put down early yesterday.

As his men set up checkpoints at an intersection about three kilometres from the city, marine Lieutenant Geoff Orazem said: "I love being in Baghdad." But one of his men was confused, asking: "Hey man, what city is this?"

Iraqi tanks and armoured personnel carriers were abandoned across the suburbs with articles of military clothing scattered around - apparently those of fighters who had changed into civilian clothing for their getaway.

The US military cordoned off with tanks the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, where international media crews have been based.

When a motorist approached one of the tanks and failed to slow down, one of the soldiers opened fire on him.

US commanders are now focusing on targets to the north - Saddam's home town of Tikrit, still a stronghold of loyalist troops, and the northern city of Mosul.

Brigadier-General Brooks said of the scenes in Baghdad: "That's a very important point in the operation. Militarily, however, we proceed on a plan that says there is more to follow. All of the regime is not gone, there's still regime appendages in a variety of places. There's still capability."

Amid the jubilation, some Baghdad citizens remained indoors, still wary of the advancing troops and not yet certain that Saddam's influence has disappeared. Baghdad radio could be heard faintly transmitting patriotic songs.

Late yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross temporarily suspended its operations in the city after one of rescue convoys came under fire, leaving at least one person seriously injured.

with Reuters, Press Association

#

Edited by author 04-10-2003 02:27 AM
CASUALTY LIST
The Sydney Morning Herald April 10, 2003
  
US
• Dead (in combat) - 81**
• Wounded - 172
• Missing - 10
• Dead (non-combat) - 15
UK
• Dead (in combat) - 8
• Wounded - 74
• Dead (non-combat) - 22
IRAQ
• Dead (military) - 2,320#
• Dead (civilian) - 1,252*
• Wounded (civilian) - 5,103*
NOTE: These casualties were announced by US, British and Iraqi authorities or independently confirmed by Reuters correspondents.
* = Minimum Iraqi estimates as of April 3
** = Figure does not include unconfirmed toll from US bombing of convoy south of Mosul on April 6
# = US military estimates relating only to fighting in or near Baghdad. No other figures available.
Non-combat is defined as accidents, US or British fire killing/wounding their own troops or other incidents unrelated to fighting.
 
#

Descent into a charnel-house hospital hell
The Sydney Morning Herald April 10, 2003
A searing visit to a trauma ward has Paul McGeough questioning the very essence of humanity.
  
There's a man who goes up to his roof terrace every time the fighting starts. Often in his underwear, he watches with his hands spread nonchalantly on the parapet wall.

In a vegetable patch down by the Tigris River, a family of gardeners always crane their necks to see what is happening as the F/A-18s, usually in pairs, wheel in from the south.

And now, a Vespa motor scooter is careering erratically down Abu Nuwas Street - its rider with his face turned to the sky as an Iraqi surface-to-air missile whistles off in pursuit of a United States fighter jet.

The plane is so low I can count the missiles clipped to its wings - five. The SAM seems to be catching up; the jet does an evasive belly roll, clears the area, takes a new bead on the high-rise that the pilot and his colleagues are trying to demolish, and fires. It's a direct hit.

Baghdad is gripped by a fatalism about life and death. People can't run, so sometimes they don't even bother to hide as the world's most ferocious firepower is turned on a sprawling city with a defenceless civilian population of five million.

The instinctive reaction of parents is to get their children out of the city. Some are even making them walk to the country. But Wael Sabah was stuck in Baladiyat, on the city's far eastern flank where, neighbours say, she thought her children were out of harm's way.

But their descent deep into hell starts the second the pilot in a low-flying F/A-18 pulled the trigger, unleashing a missile that rips apart their home and their lives.

Tiny 12-year-old Noor, her long black plait a tangle of blood and dust, is dead; in the next cubicle in the Kindi Hospital trauma ward, her younger brother, Abdel Khader, is dead; and across the way, their mother is dying in a sea of her own blood.

If it is possible to have a nightmare within a nightmare, Kindi Hospital is it. The horror of war in Baghdad is distressing, but it is not possible to walk into this hospital without questioning the very essence of humanity as we think we know it.

Kindi has too much death and too much pain. It doesn't have enough medical staff, drugs and equipment; it's running out of body bags and clean water is dependent on electricity in a city of day-long blackouts.

Patients facing emergency surgery can have only 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, the same amount an Australian doctor might prescribe for muscle pain, and there is a critical shortage of anaesthetics. They have resorted to making their own fracture-fixing frames with lengths of steel and moulding clay.

Hygiene is poor - the wards and emergency rooms are filthy and because its laundry has been forced to close by the blackouts, doctors are making do with torn gowns instead of towels and wipes.

Patients keep arriving in a procession of racing ambulances, muddied utilities and battered taxis. An army of exhausted, weepy support staff help them on to trolleys, scattering the flies that feed on the blood of the last patient.

And dozens of relatives stand in the shadows of the forecourt, consoling each other about the dead and waiting for news on the half-dead. Men cry openly, uncontrollably; women wail, clutching each other for support.

Anger at the West occasionally becomes violent. Guns have been cocked and punches thrown at foreign reporters seen to be intruding on Iraqi grief.

A woman drops to the floor in the waiting area, screaming her 12-year-old son's name: "Feran! Feran! Tell me where he is!" Another son tries to console her, assuring her that he is merely wounded after an air strike on their neighbourhood, and that he's going to be fine.

But Feran had just been declared dead on arrival at Kindi.

A utility races in - lights on, horn blaring. On the back, an old man sobs broken-heartedly. He cradles a small boy who seems lifeless, his eyes peering blankly from pools of his own blood; the rose-coloured stain on his white shirt is getting bigger and his tongue hangs from his mouth in a foamy mess.

His head is split open but there is no time to learn his story. He is wheeled into the hospital. A medical team takes one look at him, decides he needs services they can't provide and he is wheeled back out; into an ambulance that screeches off through the hospital gates, to another medical centre.

The utility gives chase, with the man on the back still in tears. And nobody has time for the two corpses next to him which have been locked in an intimate embrace by the movement of the vehicle.

Kindi's 12 operating theatres are in use around the clock. A haggard and tearful Dr Tarib Al Saddi stands outside the hospital, trying to have a break, hoping to compose himself as the wind whips at his soiled white coat.

"I have done 12 operations today - crushings, fractures and amputations. You see that these Americans are hitting civilians - their homes, their streets, their cars and even those who walk about. They hit anyone. One of the ambulance drivers says they have struck Al Yarmuk Hospital, so now we worry about a strike here."

Lips quivering and cheeks stained by his own tears, Dr Al Saddi goes on: "Everyone is anxious and angry, maybe I'm the only calm one here."

He locks onto a disconsolate woman in black, slumped against a wall. He makes me look at her beautiful face, into her tragic eyes, and says: "She was driving in the car with her 23-year-old son. They put a bullet in the head because he failed to stop at an American check-point."

The woman cuts in: "He was innocent. We were on our way home. Why do the Americans do this? God forgive them!"

Dr Al Saadi asks: "How can anyone who comes to liberate a country do this - lacerate and destroy our people? Do they really think that somehow after a few days this woman will love them?"

There is little talk of Saddam Hussein here.

Hazem Mohammed Jabeel, 37, feels the need to prompt his wounded seven-year-old son, Ayman, to give reporters a V-for-victory sign. And despite the fact that his wounded foot will be keeping him here for some time, Haroot Manouk, a 32-year-old fighter, wants to soldier on: "We'll show them, you'll see, all of you will see."

Surgeon Mohamed Kamil says there has been a marked change in the nature of Kindi's workload since the arrival of US troops in Baghdad at the weekend. "We're now getting not just shrapnel wounds, but pieces of people," he says. "These are wounds from missiles and rockets. They are amputations. They require more urgent surgery."

The numbers have been rising steadily at the hospital - today it received more than 200 injuries and 35 corpses. Six other hospitals serving the city report similar figures and now they are having the overflow from Iraq's hard-pressed military hospitals foisted on them.

Nothing prepares a visitor for the scene at the hospital morgue. I've been into several in Iraq now and I think I know what to expect - the bodies are always mangled, frequently burnt beyond recognition, but usually treated with as much dignity as each having its own cold metal tray allows.

But when the double refrigeration doors are opened on one of several buildings out the back at Kindi, there is just a pile on the floor - maybe 20 or 25 corpses; it is impossible to tell.

Some of the faces are scorched black. Some have their clothes ripped off, their intestine hanging out. Limbs protrude from the pile, lying across other corpses and it is impossible to tell who is who in this Dalian drama.

The traffic to and from the morgue is pitiable. Hospital orderlies wheel the dead in and families bring makeshift coffins to take the dead out.

And when a group of foreign cameraman moves in to film the scene, the four men charged with moving the bodies in and out of the morgue react badly, angrily chasing them away.

"Why are you taking photos? For Bush?" one of them yells, waving his arms. "Tell him to go to hell."

#