BUSH LAUNCHES WAR ON IRAQ

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Mar. 19 (AGR)— The televised sounds of explosions thundered in Baghdad Wednesday night as US president George W. Bush announced he has ordered the attack and invasion of Iraq to begin.

Bush spoke after the US military struck with Tomahawk cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs dropped from F-117 Nighthawks onto a site near Baghdad, where Iraqi leaders were thought to be, US government officials said.

Bush addressed the nation about two hours after his 48-hour 8pm ultimatum for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to give up power expired.

“Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force,” Bush said in his address to the nation. “We will accept no outcome but victory.”

“On my order, coalition forces have begun targeting selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war,” the president said. “These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign.”

That afternoon, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer braced Americans for casualties. “Americans have to be prepared for loss of life,” Fleischer told reporters.

Military experts are quietly warning that the war will likely yield a high US death toll.

“I don’t think the American public is prepared for the kinds of casualties that might occur in Iraq,” said NBC military analyst Col. Jack Jacobs (ret.).

Bush notified Congress on Tuesday night, under terms of a resolution passed in 2002 authorizing force against Iraq, that diplomacy had failed. The notice was required before or within 48 hours after the start of war.

Bush spent Wednesday making several calls to world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, who condemned military action against Iraq. Shortly before the call, Russia’s lower house of parliament decided to indefinitely put off a vote to ratify a US-Russian nuclear arms treaty because of the threat of war on Iraq. On Monday, Putin had said a war without UN approval “would be fraught with the gravest consequences, will result in casualties and destabilize the international situation in general ... We stand for resolving the problem exclusively through peaceful means. Any other option would be a mistake.”

Russia’s parliamentary speaker, Gennady Seleznyov, said an attack would cause the world to consider that “the US is a terrorist state that can only be dealt with in the Hague tribunal.”

At the United Nations, Russia, France and Germany all voiced final objections to a war they, as well as millions of people around the world, bitterly opposed and tried to prevent. The most outspoken opponents of military action against Iraq had insisted the United States would be acting illegally by attacking Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told the UN Security Council that no UN resolution authorized military action or “the violent overthrow of the leadership of a sovereign state.”

There are also “no indisputable facts” to demonstrate that Iraq threatens the United States, he said. If there were, the Bush administration could exercise its right under the UN Charter to respond in self-defense.

Declaring that military intervention “has no credibility,” Germany’s Joschka Fischer also stressed, “there is no basis in the UN Charter for a regime change with military means.”

Predicting “imminent disaster” for the people of Iraq, Secretary-General Kofi Annan implored the United States and its allies not to forsake humanitarian aid.

“This is a sad day for the United Nations,” Annan said. “I know that millions of people around the world share this sense of disappointment and are deeply alarmed.”

“It’s a tragedy,” said Chile’s UN Ambassador Gabriel Valdes. “Another tragedy is going to begin now.”

History’s deadliest night of airstrikes

During Bush’s Wednesday night war announcement, the president told US soldiers: “The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military.”

Meanwhile, on aircraft carriers and at land bases, pilots were reportedly preparing to launch the deadliest first night of airstrikes on a single country in the history of air power. Hundreds of targets in every region of Iraq will be hit simultaneously. Planned, are thousands of satellite- and laser-guided bombs dropped by stealth warplanes and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from Navy ships, hitting more targets in the first 24 hours than the allied air campaign hit in all 38 days of the first Gulf air war.

US commanders have promised war as it has never been seen before. Planes and armored units will tear across Iraq in a 48-hour blitzkrieg. Cruise missiles will be launched from ships and submarines, British Tornado fighters will fire bunker-buster missiles, and electronic bombs will disrupt communications.

Harlan Ullman, a former US Navy pilot who co-wrote the book Shock and Awe, says it will be nothing like the last Gulf War.

“During the last Gulf War the allies launched 325 cruise and precision-guided bombs on the first day of a 40-day air campaign; now they are talking about 3,000 in 48 hours,” says Ullman. “The idea is to replicate the shock and awe created by a nuclear bomb, but using conventional weapons.”

At the disposal of the supreme allied commander, General Tommy Franks, are the most sophisticated planes and most lethal payloads in existence. F-15Es launching new joint air-to-surface stand-off missiles (JASSM) and RAF Tornados unleashing Storm Shadow missiles will swarm into Iraqi airspace within minutes of General Franks giving the order to invade. At dawn hundreds of helicopters will appear as entire brigades are dropped deep into Iraq, the first mass ground operations, to seize Iraq’s oilfields.

“The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder,” Bush declared. “We will meet that threat now with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”

“We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace,” Bush explained.

US and UK defy United Nations

On Monday, Mar. 17, the United States and Britain walked away from the United Nations, withdrawing their bid for a second resolution and abandoning their pursuit of UN Security Council support for war against Iraq. The dramatic decision to withdraw came as closed-door Security Council talks on the crisis were due to begin.

Bush, who failed to get the nine votes he needed for Security Council authorization for an attack on Baghdad, had vented his anger at the United Nations on Sunday because the world body refused to give him the legitimacy he desperately needed for a war.

Facing stiff opposition to a British-US-Spanish resolution implicitly calling for a military attack on Iraq, the three Western allies decided Monday to forego a vote rather than suffer a humiliating defeat in the 15-member Security Council.

That night, Bush told Americans and Iraqis alike that military confrontation would ultimately make them safer.

“The tyrant will soon be gone,” Bush vowed in a 13-minute speech. “All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end,” he said.

“The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours,” Bush said, announcing his nation’s departure from the concerns of the world body.

Bush also told the Iraqi forces not to destroy oil wells or obey instructions to use chemical or biological weapons, or they would face war crimes trials. “It will be no defense to say: I was just following orders,” Bush warned.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, looking distraught and dejected, told reporters Monday that almost every government and peoples around the world had hoped that the crisis could be resolved peacefully.

With the United Nations appearing marginalized, the mood in the corridors of the world body was gloomy.

Both Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain and Ambassador John Negroponte of the United States blamed France for the Security Council deadlock.

That contention was dismissed by French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, who told reporters that both the United States and Britain were nowhere close to getting the nine votes needed to adopt the resolution.

The divisive resolution needed nine votes and no vetoes to be adopted by the 15-member Council.

The only publicly declared “yes” votes were: the United States, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. The “no” votes or abstentions were from France, China, Russia, Syria and Germany. The six fence sitters were: Angola, Guinea, Mexico, Chile, Pakistan and Cameroon.

Blair confronts insurrection, abandonment

While Bush spoke on Monday night, Robin Cook, head of the British House of Commons and member of the Labor Party, let rip months of frustration with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Iraq policy as he announced his resignation from cabinet.

In urging the British Commons to assert its authority by voting to block British involvement in a war “that has neither international authority nor domestic support,” Cook challenged US motives - and warned that “we delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action” if Britain simply blames the threatened French veto at the UN.

Following Cook’s dramatic departure, the next day Blair was abandoned in a rash of resignations.

Junior health minister Lord Hunt, middle-ranking home office minister John Denham, and Anne Campbell, parliamentary private secretary to the trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, had all quit in protest.

“I have agonized over this issue for many weeks,” Lord Hunt told the BBC. “But I have decided today to resign from the government because I don’t support the pre-emptive action, which is going to be taken without broad international support or indeed the clear support of the British people. I’m also concerned about the long-term consequences for international stability of such pre-emptive action and the precedent that it makes.”

Blair faces a rebellion by up to 200 Parliament ministers (MPs), many from his own party. Labor Party discontent over Blair’s stance on Iraq burst into the open last week when more than 40 MPs called for Blair to resign.

John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, issued a statement on behalf of the 40 MPs in the campaign that read: “It is time for the Prime Minister to consider his position. If he is not prepared to stand up to George Bush, he must make way for those that will,” it said.

Sources: Associated Press, Australian Sunday Times, BBC News, CNN, Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, Knight Ridder, Manchester Times, MSNBC, NBC, Reuters, This is London, Times UK, Washington Post

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Worldwide, people still say ‘no to war’

Compiled by Nicholas Holt

Mar. 19 (AGR)— Last week, thousands and thousands across the globe marched in protests against a looming US war on Iraq. Carrying signs with such messages as “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease” above a picture of US President George W. Bush, tens of thousands of US citizens from more than 100 cities surrounded the White House in an antiwar protest on Saturday, Mar. 15.

As part of a breakaway march during the demonstrations, a group of 25-30 anarchists stormed the World Bank building. They ran through the building, spray-painting slogans and knocking over statues. Most of the group escaped out the back door, but five were arrested. Police estimated pro-war counter-protesters at about 75.

Upon seeing a group of Muslim protesters in head scarves, some of the pro-war demonstrators told them to go back where they came from.

“This is just ignorance,” said Amir Reza, 24, a financial adviser from Charlotte, North Carolina, and an Iranian Muslim.

At least 80,000 people were in the streets of San Francisco, California. Aggressive arrest sweeps by police picked up 175 protesters, non-protesters, tourists, and shoppers.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the center of Madrid, Spain, denouncing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s support for a US-led war on Iraq.

Prominent actors, writers, opposition politicians, and union leaders led a colorful demonstration as marchers of all ages chanted “No to the war” and waved placards that said “Aznar Murderer.”

“They want a war, but we are not going to leave them in peace,” said Portuguese writer and Nobel laureate Jose Saramago, reading a pacifist manifesto to thousands of cheering protesters in Madrid’s central square.

It was one of several protests across Spain, where polls show more than 80 percent of the population oppose an attack on Iraq.

In Barcelona, hundreds of thousands of protesters formed a human chain which stretched across the city from the US consulate to the regional headquarters of Aznar’s ruling Popular Party.

Several hundred people attended a musical and cultural festival against war on Iraq in Mexico City’s main square on Mar. 15.

A half dozen bands, dance groups, and children’s theater companies held an anti-war cultural festival in the Mexico City event, and a smaller group headed by writers and intellectuals marched to the US embassy.

In San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, about 50 US citizens, many religious activists, gathered with anti-war placards in front of the US embassy.

In another Central American nation, Guatemala, hundreds of people listened to songs and carried placards reading “War is also terrorism.” The group marched through downtown Guatemala City to the US embassy. Students in Bucharest, Romania, marched as did Japanese elderly who remembered the suffering of World War II. Many demonstrators were organized by leftist parties, unions, and peace groups.

Many also lampooned Bush as a dangerous cowboy or worse. In Tokyo, about 10,000 people demonstrated, some carrying signs reading, “Bush the terrorist.” In Hiroshima, about 2,500 people held candles outside the city’s peace monument to spell out “No War” and “No Nukes.”

In Brussels, Belgium, cartoons of Bush were held alongside signs saying, “No war for oil.”

Hundreds of mostly young Germans blocked the main entrance to the US military’s Rhine-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, blowing whistles.

After a couple of hours, German riot police began arresting those who refused to leave.

Later, more than 100,000 people -­ by police estimate -­ turned out in Berlin carrying candles, flashlights, and torches for a 21-mile-long vigil spanning from east to west.

About 50,000 demonstrators gathered in Paris’s Place de la Nation under a huge US flag with a Nazi swastika painted over the stars and the words “killers and criminals” painted over the stripes.

Many Muslims marched in the Paris protest, with many people holding Palestinian flags and Arabic signs. About 2,000 people gathered in front of the United Nations (UN) offices in Beirut, Lebanon, waving banners reading, “No to American Hegemony,” and , “Americans, we ask, why do you hate us? We ask, why do you kill us?”

About 7,500 activists chanted, “Yankee go home!” in the Turkish port city of Iskenderun, where the American military has been unloading transport equipment.

In Thailand, about 1,000 people protested outside a UN office in Bangkok, listening to speeches from a makeshift stage.

Thousands marched in cities and towns across New Zealand.

Hundreds of thousands of Baghdad residents poured into the streets of the capital on Saturday to protest US war plans as UN weapons inspectors supervised the destruction of Iraqi missiles.

Like anti-war protesters taking part in demonstrations around the Middle East and many other countries, Iraqis waved banners calling for peace.

Baghdad’s protesters also carried portraits of President Saddam Hussein along with signs demanding “Not USA War, Yes to Peace,” while members of the ruling Ba’ath Party, armed with AK-47 assault rifles made sure everyone stayed in formation. Spontaneous protests are rare in Iraq.

In Moscow, more than 1,000 Communist and leftist demonstrators rallied near Russia’s Foreign Ministry, waving red flags, portraits of Hussein, and signs that read “USA World Cannibal.”

In Stockholm, Sweden, speakers rallied 3,000 protesters to the theme of ending “the US and British war hysteria.”

More than 1,000 people in Athens, Greece carrying banners that read “Stop the war” and “No to the barbarism of war” marched to the US Embassy in central Athens. In the northern port of Thessaloniki, three antiwar marches merged at the US Consulate.

In San’a, Yemen, tens of thousands heeded President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s call to turn out for antiwar rallies amid tight security.

In Nicosia, Cyprus, around 3,000 Greek Cypriots marched to the US Embassy and hung cloth banners bearing antiwar messages on barbed-wire barricades. Scores of Christians and Muslims in Iligan, Philippines pelted effigies of President Bush and the Philippine defense secretary, Angelo Reyes, with stones and tomatoes before torching them.

People also burned effigies of Bush in Calcutta, India, while demonstrators chanted: “Raise your hands against US imperialism.” Others held up placards depicting Bush as Hitler.

Italy once again saw some of the largest demonstrations. As estimated half a million demonstrators gathered in Milan in a protest called by the General Confederation of Labor, the country’s largest trade union, with a membership of about five million.

“Italian and European workers can add another aspect to the peace movement: a struggle against the precariousness of labor and the precariousness of peace,” said Titti Di Salvo, international spokeswoman for the union, explaining that the union protests are “a new angle for interpreting the Iraqi crisis.”

On Friday, Mar. 14, workers all over Europe sat down on their jobs for 15 minutes amidst blaring anti-aircraft sirens, pot-and-pan banging, and chants of antiwar slogans, to protest war on Iraq.

The walkout, held the day before March 15’s worldwide peace demonstrations, took a different shape in each European city.

In the northern Italian city of Florence, hundreds of workers gathered near Ponte Vecchio, in the old city.

“We met here, because it was here, in this neighborhood, that the first German bombs fell in the fall of 1943,” said Franca, 73, one of the members of the Florence committee against the war. Many residents looked up at the sky with alarm when they heard the anti-aircraft siren go off. “This is war, the fear that hits you and the pain that never goes away.”

Church bells rang in solidarity with the first Europe-wide strike ever.

In Germany, where polls show the overwhelming majority of the people oppose a war, the strikes briefly halted vehicle production at three Volkswagen factories and a DaimlerChrysler plant. Trams ground to a halt on the eastern city of Halle.

The European labor movement hopes civil society, the population at large, and workers can stop this war, and have an influence on the policies of European governments, said an European Trade Union Confederation spokesman in Switzerland.

On the same day, police arrested 80 protesters, including former president of the Pacific Exchange Warren Langley, during nonviolent protests that knotted up morning hour rush-hour traffic in San Francisco’s financial district.

“People ask me, who I’m representing,” Langley said. “ I’m representing the establishment. And there are a lot of people out there who feel like I do. Now is the time to take the next step in speaking your conscience.”

Antiwar activists called the action a preview of the “shutdown” of the Financial District being called for the first business day that after a US attack on Iraq.

Sources: Associated Press, Bay City News, DC Indymedia, Inter Press Service, Reuters, Washington Post