US colonel killed in Iraq hotel attack,
war architect barely survives
Bloodbath in Baghdad targets Red Cross
Compiled by Eamon Martin
Oct. 29 (AGR)— On the morning of Sunday, Oct. 26., in one of
the most audacious attacks yet, resistance fighters hit the heart
of the United States-led occupation in Iraq, unleashing a barrage
of rockets against the al-Rashid hotel where US officials live and
where visiting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.
The attack narrowly missed Wolfowitz, while one floor below his room,
US Lt. Colonel Charles H. Buehring was killed. The explosions injured
18 others, including a British Treasury official. According to US
officials, the injured included four American soldiers, and seven
American civilians.
It was the launch of a bold and violent offensive that day in a supposedly
secure zone that houses American officials, that then continued with
more rocket attacks well into the night.
Wolfowitz had been on a three-day visit to Iraq that had been designed
to publicize Iraq’s stability — an upbeat image quickly
undermined by the assault on his quarters.
Wolfowitz, one of the authors of the US invasion, was visibly shaken
by the attack, which struck yards from his room on the 12th floor.
An Iraqi Governing Council spokesman told reporters it had been “a
near miss.”
Scores of American officials fled the hotel in pajamas and shorts
after the assault, which apparently used a makeshift rocket battery
on a timer that had been wheeled into a nearby park. Twenty rockets
hit the hotel, blowing the balconies off two rooms, and the windows
out of dozens more.
However, Wolfowitz, speaking to reporters three hours afterwards,
argued that “the big news” was not the rocket attack on
his hotel, but that newly enlisted Iraqis, under US supervision, “are
fighting and killing these people” who are conducting the dozens
of daily attacks. Wolfowitz, though, gave no examples of the extra-judicial
killings of which he boasted.
Despite Wolfowitz’s optimism, the strike from nearly point-blank
range once again pointed up the vulnerability of even heavily guarded
US facilities in Iraq. The slaying of Lt. Colonel Buehring marks one
of the highest ranking US military officers killed during the occupation
of Iraq.
This week, Col. William Darley, a US military spokesman, told reporters
that American forces were now suffering an average of 33 attacks a
day.
But the skilled and carefully timed assault on the al-Rashid Hotel
challenges Wolfowitz’s increasingly shrill claim that the US
is making progress in Iraq in defeating the resistance.
If Wolfowitz had spoken to Iraqis living close to the scene of the
hotel attack he might have revised his opinion about the popularity
of the US-led occupation. Standing on the flat roof of his house looking
at the battered western face of the al-Rashid, Ibrahim Abdul Sattar,
an eleven-year-old, said: “The situation is worse than under
Saddam. We want the Americans to leave.”
In the street below, a young man, who did not want to give his name,
said, “Nobody in Iraq can accept the occupation, absolutely nobody.”
Others were more forthright. Ali Hussein, a grocer in central Baghdad,
told Reuters news agency: “I wish Wolfowitz had been killed.
I wish all Americans here would be killed. The Americans are not human
beings; they are monsters. They lied to the Iraqi people.”
Just a day before the attack that would nearly kill him, guerrillas
in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit had shot down a US Army
Black Hawk helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade only hours after
Wolfowitz left the US garrison stationed there.
Separately, officials also announced that the occupation-backed police
chief of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah, Hamid Hadi Hassan al-Abe,
was shot to death as he left a mosque after prayers on Saturday.
Meanwhile, as Wolfowitz made his harried remarks to the press, unknown
gunmen also assassinated a deputy mayor of Baghdad in an apparent
hit and run shooting. Faris Abdul Razzaq al-Assam, deputy mayor for
technical services, had returned from last week’s international
Iraq donors’ conference in Madrid, Spain, when he was shot Sunday,
the Coalition Provisional Authority announced two days later.
Bloodiest day yet
Sunday’s attack on the al-Rashid Hotel was closely followed by
a dramatic series of suicide car bombings the next day, which devastated
Red Cross headquarters and three police stations, slaughtering at
least 35 and injuring 224 in the bloodiest day in the Iraqi capital
since the start of the US occupation. The dead included a US soldier,
eight Iraqi policemen and at least 26 Iraqi civilians.
The almost simultaneous car bombings in every corner of the capital
on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan gave notice that
it was open season for attacks on all symbols of Iraq’s reconstruction.
At the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in
central Baghdad, witnesses said a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed
vehicle, apparently an ambulance, right up to security barriers outside
the building at about 8:30am. The vehicle detonated with the subsequent
blast wrecking a dozen cars in the area and blowing down a 40-foot
section of the Red Cross building’s front wall, while inside
there was heavy damage, with shattered glass, doors blown out and
collapsed ceilings.
Then, in quick succession, explosions went off at the al-Baya’a,
al-Shaab and al-Khadra police stations. The explosions outside police
stations left streetscapes of broken, bloody bodies and twisted, burning
automobiles. Ambulances, sirens wailing, crisscrossed the city all
morning.
Just hours after the attacks in Baghdad, two US patrols were ambushed
Monday night near Mosul, while inside the city, an Iraqi Civil Defense
Corps building came under grenade and Kalashnikov rifle fire.
The following night, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, at least six severely charred
and mutilated bodies, including those of schoolchildren, lay on the
ground in the town of Falluja after a pickup truck blew up about 150
yards from a police station. Another eight people were wounded, according
to hospital sources.
In Fallujah, the main crossroads of the town is adorned with graffiti
proclaiming, “Fallujah will be the graveyard of Americans.”
The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division operating there came under
attack every day this week.
“Whenever they enter Fallujah, they’ll be attacked,”
policeman Assou Nadim Hamid told a reporter.
During a first tour in Fallujah earlier in the year, the 82nd Airborne
division killed 20 Iraqis during two public demonstrations against
the occupation within two days, and when the division returned last
month, its paratroopers killed eight Fallujah policemen in an incident
still under investigation. Just this week, 82nd Airborne soldiers
were also accused of coldly shooting an Iraqi detainee dead, and were
caught on camera beating a truck driver in the town.
On Monday, at a hastily arranged press conference, US President George
W. Bush said those who are responsible for the attacks “can’t
stand the thought of a free society. They hate freedom. They love
terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos.”
Bush blamed the mounting guerrilla attacks in Iraq on US progress
being made there; saying occupation successes are making insurgents
more desperate.
“The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis
become, the more electricity that’s available, the more jobs
are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate
these killers become,” Bush told reporters.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC, CBS, CNN, The
Economist, Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Knight Ridder, New York
Times, Reuters, Washington Post
Opposition to Grove
Park Inn building grows
By Charlie Thomas
Asheville, North Carolina, Oct. 27 (AGR)— The
most active booth at Saturday’s Urban Trail Arts Festival
wasn’t an official booth. It was the “Save Our Square”
folks, who brought photos, drawings, and a scale model of the
proposed ten story condo that the Grove Park Inn wants to build
on the park across from the Cottonwood Cafe.
While people just walked past most of the other booths, there
was always a knot of activity around the PARC tables in front
of Bonnie’s Little Corner, across the street from the Festival.
PARC’s campaign to sway City Council against the plan includes
collecting signatures of those opposed, to be published as a newspaper
ad.
“Most people are against this building,” said Julie
Brandt, the spokesperson for People Advocating Real Conservancy
(PARC). “When we ask people to sign the ad, people are eager
to get involved and to do what they can. There is a tremendous
amount of opposition to City Council selling our public parkland
to private developers. Some people are discouraged and think that
this is already a done deal. That is exactly what they want us
to think, so we will go away. In fact, opposition is just starting
and will build from here.”
One volunteer said that she had gathered signatures for other
issues in the past but that she had never seen such overwhelming
public support for a project like the newspaper ad. “On most
issues, people are really divided. Not this time. Almost everyone
is against selling the park to build luxury condos.”
PARC is also using the web to organize. PARC supporters send out
email messages to everyone they know, asking them to go to PARC’S
web site (www.ashevilleparc.org), sign the ad, and then forward
the email widely. The web site will show the names of those who
have signed the newspaper ad, and the amount of money contributed
to date to pay for it. People can also give money online.
City Council member Carl Mumpower voted in favor of the proposal.
He said, “To this point the strongest arguments in favor
of ongoing exploration of the GPI initiative are the continuation
of a long standing history of creative development efforts within
our city core, potential economic impacts, tax generating utilization
of a space that is currently paved or isolated, potential for
more residential eyes on our city plaza, a net increase in green
space on the plaza, and symmetry with the existing plan for improving
our downtown public space. It is my personal belief that the vilification
and hostility of many of the arguments being used are clouding
constructive discussion of the pluses and minuses of this proposal.”
Longtime Kenilworth resident Frank Adams counters, “No one
I know wants that building there. No one. Besides, that’s
the public’s property.”
Asheville business owner David Lynch said, “One of the strangest
arguments for the building is that it will increase green space.
There are two proposals. One is to redo the City/County Plaza
area. That includes turning some parking spaces into lawn and
trees, and that will obviously increase green space. The other
proposal is to build this ten story building. It will kill trees
and lawn and decrease green space. These two proposals are not
even related to each other. The pro building side wants to confuse
the two, thinking that somehow that is a clever argument. It’s
just misleading.”
Barry Summers, another PARC member, said that, as disturbing as
the proposal to sell public park space to private developers to
build a condo is, the process used by Council is even worse. “At
every turn, the GPI and the Conservancy have gamed the process:
getting an inside track to build a building where the public doesn’t
want it, writing the guidelines themselves and then exceeding
them, using city staff to “sell” the proposal, and confusing
the public and the Council about virtually every aspect of the
issue. Public reaction to the project, once they see the actual
dimensions of the building, and how much land will be lost, is
best described as outrage.”
For more information, please visit www.ashevilleparc.org, http://main.nc.us/packfaq,
or www.osybc.org.
Immigrant workers fight for compensation
for Sept. 11 illnesses
By Katherine Stapp
New York, New York, Oct. 24 (IPS)— Speaking in Spanish, a
young woman with dark braided hair calmly described crawling on
her hands and knees through air conditioning ducts to clean the
thick dust that had settled there. Her boss repeatedly ordered her
into the shafts because she was “the best” at the job.
Others were down in the smoldering hole at Ground Zero, handling
the asbestos, silica, mercury, heavy metals and poisonous combustion
by-products that coated the rubble.
More than two years after hijacked planes smashed into the World
Trade Center, unleashing a toxic cloud of dust and debris that blanketed
Lower Manhattan, hundreds of day laborers hired to clean up the
mess are still suffering from severe breathing problems, skin rashes,
nausea, depression and anxiety.
At a recent workshop hosted by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and
Education Fund, none of the 25 workers in attendance said they had
been warned by their employers that the work was dangerous.
Some who had been given face masks or respirators by labor groups
were told to remove them, most likely to keep their co-workers from
asking for similar protective equipment.
On average, they earned about 60 dollars a day. In a bitter irony,
one worker produced a paycheck from her employer that bore the slogan
“Safety is No Accident.”
Now, a coalition of labor and immigrants’ rights groups is
racing against time to help the laborers file claims for workers
compensation, a state-run program that provides medical treatment
and cash benefits for workers injured on the job — regardless
of their legal status.
Workers have only two years after they first become aware of their
injury to file a claim, and advocates say the clock is ticking.
“These were the invisible workers behind the scenes making
sure the offices and buildings were clean so people could go back
to work and get back to their lives,” said Beverly Tillery,
of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH).
“Unfortunately, they are the group that’s suffering along
with everyone else but no one is paying attention to their needs.”
“Most if not all of the immigrant workers who were cleaning
these buildings don’t have health insurance, and workers compensation
is the only way they’ll get ongoing medical treatment for the
illnesses they suffered at Ground Zero,” she added in an interview.
“But it can be very difficult to maneuver, and without real
assistance and support they’ll get swallowed up by the system.”
As a first step, many of the workers are being examined by doctors
at the Mount Sinai Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine
in Manhattan, which has been given funding to screen workers involved
in the clean-up and recovery efforts.
Spanish-language workshops run by a coalition of New York-based
advocacy groups then show the workers how to fill out their claim
forms, line by line.
Health problems among all workers who spent time near the disaster
site are widespread.
Preliminary data released by Mount Sinai found that some 80 percent
of emergency responders reported at least one respiratory symptom
attributable to the aftermath of Sept. 11, including sore throat,
chest tightness, cough, and wheezing. One-half were still having
problems one year after the attacks.
Of about 150 day workers examined at Mount Sinai, about three-quarters
are suffering from upper airway diseases, says Dr. Rafael de la
Hoz, who has been treating the workers.
Others report aggravated asthma or bronchial disease, back and musculo-skeletal
pain, and psychological problems like post-traumatic stress disorder
and depression. Basically none were given protection during the
clean-up.
“We are still seeing the effects two years after the episode,
so these are definitely long-term problems,” said de la Hoz.
“Other diseases can take a longer time frame to manifest. Cancer-causing
agents, for example, may not cause illness for five to 10 years.”
NYCOSH and The Latin American Workers Project are now spearheading
efforts to locate and assist day laborers who worked in the clean-up,
mostly of hundreds of surrounding buildings in the financial district.
Such workers are hired by the hour or day, usually from designated
spots on street corners.
A mobile clinic set up at Ground Zero in January and February 2002
saw 416 laborers, most of them from Colombia and Ecuador.
Workers Project Executive Director Oscar Paredes told IPS that some
workers are now homeless, having lost everything because they were
too sick to work.
“A lot of people don’t know about their rights,”
he said. “They are just now starting to contact us about their
health problems.”
“We know that this type of sickness, especially in terms of
asbestos exposure, could last for the rest of their lives. I’m
optimistic about the fight we have ahead of us, but it can take
years to get benefits.”
The Latin American Worker’s Project has documented more than
600 day laborers who helped in the clean-up. Combined with the numbers
cited by other community organizations, Paredes says there are probably
about 3,000 workers in need of assistance.
He added that the city and the federal government also hold responsibility
for minimizing the dangers posed by airborne toxins at the time,
and for falsely reassuring the public that the air was safe to breathe.
According to de la Hoz, “There was a big rush to bring business
back to the World Trade Center; it was a massive around-the-clock
operation. And there was a downplaying of the risks involved.”
“Companies were profiting from the operation and wanted to
do the job as quickly as possible without regard to protecting the
health and safety of the workers,” he added.
“An unfortunate confluence of factors conspired to undermine
workers’ health, especially the segment of the population that
didn’t have access to safety training or equipment.”
The state attorney general’s office was reportedly investigating
companies involved in the clean-up for possible labor violations,
but the office refuses to comment.
Studies are ongoing into the long-term and immediate health effects
of Sept. 11. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
just allocated more than nine million dollars to continue basic
research and to expand worker training for disaster preparedness.
But many say the bigger problem is the vulnerability to abuse of
day laborers around the country, in part because most lack legal
immigration status.
The National Employment Law Project notes that day laborers have
a higher rate of workplace injuries and fatalities, are subjected
to pervasive wage and hour violations, and lack access to social
and legal services that could help them enforce their workplace
rights.
Luis Gutierrez, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives
from Illinois, is fighting to get a hearing for the Day Labor Fairness
and Protection Act, a proposed federal law that expands and protects
the workplace rights of day laborers and other temporary workers.
The act was first introduced two years ago but was killed in committee.
Gutierrez reintroduced it in August, and says he will continue doing
so until he gets a hearing.
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