US arms trader to run Iraq
Jay Garner, the retired US general who will oversee humanitarian relief
and reconstruction in postwar Iraq, is president of an arms company that
provides crucial technical support to missile systems vital to the US
invasion of the country.
Garners business background is causing serious concerns at the United
Nations and among aid agencies, who are already opposed to US administration
of Iraq if it comes outside UN authority, and who say appointment of an
American linked to the arms trade is the worst case scenario
for running the country after the war.
Garner is president of Virginia-based SY Coleman, a subsidiary of defense
electronics group L-3 Communications, which provides technical services
and advice on the Patriot missile system being used in Iraq. Garner was
involved in the systems deployment in Israel.
SY Coleman has also worked on the Arrow missile defense system, deployed
in Israel, and is involved in the US national missile defense program.
Garner joined SY Technologies, taken over last year by L-3, in 1997, after
leaving the US army.
Jack Tyler, a SY Coleman senior vice-president, confirmed that Garner
still held his position at the company. (Observer
UK)
Cook: Pull out of bloody, unjust war
Last Sunday night, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook launched
a searing attack on the US and British governments for their prosecution
of war on Iraq, breaking the silence since his resignation just a few
days previously.
Writing for the British newspaper, The Sunday Mirror, Cook said: I
have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war. I want our troops
home and I want them home before more of them are killed.
He attacked US president George W. Bush for sitting pretty in the
comfort of Camp David while allied forces risked death in an unnecessary
and badly planned war. It is easy to show you are resolute
when you are not one of the guys in a sandstorm peering around for snipers,
he wrote. Nobody should start a war on the assumption that the enemys
army will cooperate. But that is exactly what President Bush has done.
There is no more brutal form of warfare than a siege, he warned.
People go hungry. The water and power to provide the sinews of a
city snap. Children die. There will be a long-term legacy of hatred for
the West if the Iraqi people continue to suffer from the effects of the
war we started. (Independent UK)
US moves to block UN emergency session on war
The United States, whose military attack on Iraq has been roundly condemned
by the international community, is trying to silence the highest policy-making
body at the United Nations: the 191-member General Assembly.
A proposal to summon an emergency session of the General Assembly to discuss
Iraq has been stymied by strong opposition from Washington. The pressure
has been so intense that no member state has so far taken the initiative
to call for the emergency session.
In a letter to various member states, the United States has argued that
the General Assembly has no voice in the current war on Iraq, and must
therefore refrain from taking up the issue.
The pressure and in some cases implicit threats has followed
discussions between US envoys and foreign ministry officials in several
world capitals.
In an implied threat, the United States said that an emergency session
on Iraq would be unhelpful and viewed as a move directed
against the United States.
The US pressure has been particularly directed at the 116-member Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM), the largest single political grouping of developing nations,
which until last month was chaired by South Africa, and is currently chaired
by Malaysia.
Although Malaysia has not formally requested an emergency session on behalf
of NAM, the countrys Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has lashed
out at the United States.
Hinting at US pressure on NAM, he said the United States has no
right to dictate or decide the responsibility of the United Nations, since
the superpower had no respect for the world body. (IPS)
British soldiers sent home after protesting civilian
deaths
Three British soldiers in Iraq were ordered home for protesting that the
war is killing innocent civilians.
The three soldiers including a private and a technician
are from 16 Air Assault Brigade which is deployed in southern Iraq. Its
task has been to protect oilfields.
The three soldiers face court martial and are seeking legal advice, defense
sources said.
Any refusal of soldiers to obey orders is highly embarrassing to the government,
with ministers becoming increasingly worried about the way the war is
developing.
It is also causing concern to British military chiefs who are worried
about growing evidence of civilians being killed in fighting involving
American soldiers around urban areas in southern Iraq. (Guardian
UK)
Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare
The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting
inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last
April.
If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there
is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the
Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were
civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted
civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she
tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli
tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian
in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli
tank.
Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused
the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an
entire neighborhood home to 800 Palestinian families reducing
it to dust and rubble.
Martin van Crevelds advice to the US marines on what lessons to
draw from Israels bloody urban battle in Jenin was precise: Forget
the helicopters, invest in armored bulldozers. Van Creveld, a professor
of military history and strategy at Jerusalems Hebrew University,
has told reporters that, following his advice, the American military bought
nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.
The Israeli army has routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields
to protect them as they advance, a practice that has continued despite
Israeli court rulings forbidding it. There was no word on whether Israeli
officers had briefed American troops on this tactic.
Close to 1,000 American soldiers were sent to Israel for joint maneuvers
at the beginning of the year. Some were sent to a mock Arab town in the
Negev desert to draw on Israeli experience. (Guardian
UK, Independent UK)
Deal to sell water fuels desperation, critics charge
The US military came up with a solution this week for the penniless people
of Umm Qasr begging for water: Sell it.
Despite general mayhem at distribution points including knife fights
the Army has struck a hasty agreement with local Iraqis to expedite
distribution of water to the roughly 40,000 living here.
Under the deal, the military will provide water free to locals with access
to tanker trucks, who then will be allowed to sell the water for a reasonable
fee.
Were permitting them to charge a small fee for water,
said Army Col. David Bassert, an assistant commander with the 354th Civil
Affairs Brigade. This provides them with an incentive to hustle
and to work.
But with the population badly in need of water, food, and medical supplies,
the arrangement drew its share of critics.
Several Iraqi-Americans originally from this region, who are working as
interpreters and guides with the US military, were incensed at what they
consider an attempt to jump-start a free-market economy during a crisis.
This is bullshit, said an Iraqi-American who asked to be identified
only as Ahmed. They are selling water and this is crazy. Nobody
has any money. (NY Daily News)
Russia slams US liberation of Iraq
This week Russia fired a new broadside against the United States over
its military action against Iraq, scorning claims its troops were liberating
Iraqis and accusing it of defying world opinion.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said: What the United States is doing
challenges not only Iraq, but the whole world.
It is already becoming clear how far removed from reality are their
attempts to present military action against Iraq as a triumphant march
for the liberation of the Iraqi people with minimal casualties and destruction,
he told the Russian Federation Council (upper house).
He counseled Washington and London not to make unsubstantiated claims
to have found caches of banned weapons in Iraq to justify their military
offensive.
If there are claims by coalition forces about discovering weapons
of mass destruction... only international inspectors can make a conclusive
assessment of the origin of these weapons, he said.
No other evaluation and final conclusion can be accepted.
(Reuters)
US forces prepare martial law for Iraq
American lawyers and legal officials in military uniform, toting weighty
law books and ready to establish martial law, are traveling with US and
British troops surging into Iraq.
Any riots and we are going to put them down. Were going to
send in the infantry, said Capt. Jim Wherry of the Judge Advocate
Generals Corps, the armys legal arm.
Offenders, Wherry said, could then be tried under the US Code of Military
Justice, detained for post-war trials by civil authorities or face punishment
meted out by the Americans under Iraqi laws. (AP)
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