Cosmos Left

Free the Cuban "Miami Five"! Imprisoned in the US for Fighting Terrorism!

Army Specialist Wilson Confronts Rumsfeld in Kuwait

The strains are beginning to show among the ranks of US soldiers in Iraq. Discontent and grumbling are on the rise as more and more troops realize they're being taken for a ride by their military "superiors." Army Specialist Thomas Wilson and other reservists in Kuwait made Defense Secretary Rumsfeld look like the arrogant fool that he is. The issue of inadequate protection raised by Wilson was the reason why the 343rd Quartermaster Regiment refused to carry out their "suicide mission" in October (see "A Portent of Things to Come: US Platoon Mutinies in Iraq by Refusing 'Suicide Mission' ", below).

Oct. 16-23, 2004--Eighteen members of an Army Reserve unit in Iraq were held at gunpoint for two days this week after they refused orders to deliver fuel under conditions so unsafe they dubbed it a "suicide mission." While the US military denies detaining the 18 reservists from the 343rd Quartermaster Company, the soldiers are saying otherwise. Teresa Hill of Jackson, Mississippi played a message from her daughter Amber McClenny: "They are holding us against our will. We are now prisoners ... I'm not even supposed to be using the phone." McClenny told her mother to call her congressman and "raise pure hell."

Jackie Butler, also from Jackson, received a call from an officer in Iraq saying that her husband, Staff Sgt. Michael Butler, "was being detained for disobeying a direct order, and he went on to say that it was a bogus charge that they got against him and some of those soldiers over there, because what they was [sic] doing was sending into a suicide mission, and they refused to go."

The soldiers say they tried to deliver the shipment of fuel to a base, but were turned away because the fuel was contaminated. When they returned to their base, they were ordered to take the fuel to Taji, about 15 miles north of Baghdad. Faced with the prospect of driving the contaminated fuel in broken down trucks that had not been serviced, and lacking an armed escort in extremely hostile territory, the entire platoon just said no.

Former Army captain and military expert Phillip Carter told today's NY Times that we've seen this kind of in subordination in armies that were drafted, as in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The volunteer Army was supposed to solve those problems this kind of problem, Carter tells us.

Yes, that was the idea. The US ruling class decided after its defeat in Vietnam that a volunteer army was better suited for the criminal and murderous wars it must wage to defend the imperialist empire in capitalism's death agony. Better to have a fighting force composed of gung ho, professional soldiers than one composed of drafted, unwilling conscripts. But Carter and the rulers are learning that even a volunteer army is not immune from the laws of the class struggle and capitalism's deepening polarization and contradictions.

The Pentagon is already claiming the 343rd mutiny is an isolated incident. While it's true that their actions are not yet generalized and antiwar sentiments among US soldiers in Iraq have not reached the level they eventually did in Vietnam, Washington is well aware that discontent is growing among rank and file GIs. The 343rd incident comes in the wake of revelations contained in an Oct. 10 Washington Post article entitled, "For Marines, A Frustrating Fight," about a group of Marines from the First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment serving in Iskandariyah, a Shiite community not far from Baghdad where Moqtada al-Sadr commands considerable support.

As you read the Marines' comments below, think how much they will resonate with those 18 reservists from the 343rd:

Lance Corporal Carlos Perez: "Sometimes I see no reason why we're here....We're supposed to be looking for Al Qaeda. They're the ones who are supposedly responsible for the September 11 attacks. This has no connection at all to September 11 because this war started just by telling us about all the nuclear warheads over here....I've only been here two months, but every time you go out people give you bad looks and it just seems like everybody wants to shoot you."

Lance Corporal Edward Elston: "I feel like we're going to be here for years and years and years.... It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence.... We're always going to be here."

Lance Corporal Jonathon Snyder: "Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like 'Oh, it's getting better and better' but when you're here you know it's worse every day."

The September 21 Christian Science Monitor published more comments along these lines. One Marine said: "We shouldn't be here. There was no reason for invading this country in the first place. We just came here and killed a lot of innocent people. I don't enjoy killing women and children. It's not my thing."

No, but it's George Bush's thing, and John Kerry's thing, and the capitalist tycoons on Wall Street's thing.

A US soldier fighting in Najaf declared: "Nine out of 10 of the people I talk to, it wouldn't matter who ran against Bush, they'd vote for them. People are so fed up with Iraq and fed up with Bush." Still another declared: "Nobody I know wants Bush. This whole war was based on lies."

The US rulers are worried about the political sophistication expressed in the above statements by US troops. They know that more and more soldiers realize that they were sent there not to protect America or find WMD or liberate Iraqis but to seize Iraq's oil and line the pockets of Halliburton and Bechtel. The rebellion by these South Carolina-based reservists is sending shock waves throughout the imperialist war command.They know this mutinous act is a portent of a deeper radicalization gathering among the ranks of the volunteer army. The capitalist class and their political stooges are also well aware of the growing GI resistance to their imperialist wars that is manifested in the proliferation of groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War, Bring the Troops Home Now!, and Military Families Speak Out.

And the US rulers know that many soldiers have seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" and been profoundly moved by it. One soldier told the Christian Science Monitor: "Everyone's watching it. It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush." Another stated: "Bush didn't want to attack bin Laden because he was doing business with bin Laden's family."

The rulers know about the increasing interaction between angry GIS and their families back home, a phenomenon facilitated by the revolutionary technology of the Internet. And they know that this antiwar activity by military families is itself interacting with the broader antiwar movement in the United States.

Bush's emphatic denial that he's planning a compulsory draft reflects the views of the capitalist class he represents. They would prefer to stay with the volunteer army as long as possible, because a move to reimpose the draft may have explosive consequences. They're having enough problems with the volunteer soldiers and the reservists. The Kerry faction of the capitalists argues that US forces are already stretched too thin trying to protect corporate profits and establish worldwide hegemony--and Kerry is supposedly the antidraft candidate!

But this is a debate within the ruling class. Working people should stay out of it. We should oppose any move to reinstitute the draft and support anyone who opposes the US imperialist war machine--both inside the military and outside. We should intensify our efforts to spread socialist ideas and revolutionary politics among soldiers and sailors from Iraq to the US, as well as their families, their families, friends, and co-workers. Because sooner or later, the ideas of Marxism will take root throughout broad layers of the American working class--including those in uniform. Conditions are ripe for this because workers are rapidly losing faith and trust in the institutions of class society. The lies and barbarism of the capitalist rulers are so acute they can no longer be covered up.

This mutiny by the 343rd Quartermaster Company is just the tip of the iceberg. The USS imperialist Titanic is sinking. The ideas of revolutionary Marxism and the fight for a workers and farmers government are the lifeboat for toilers in the US, Iraq, and worldwide. Along that road we will overcome the national chauvinisms that have divided us and put our proletarian internationalist stamp on world politics. Then we shall truly earn the name humanity by cleansing away all the filth of class society that has cursed us with Hiroshima, Dachau, Falluja, and Jenin.

Courtesy of US "precision" bombing in Falluja (Mohammed Khodor/Reuters )

Sept. 15, 2004--While ever-vigilant media watchdogs parse the authenticity of the Bush National Guard documents released by CBS, the mounting toll of atrocities committed by US forces against Iraq's civilian population is largely ignored, obscured, and sanitized. On Sunday, a US helicopter fired on a crowd of unarmed Iraqis that were celebrating the destruction of a Bradley armored vehicle on Haifa Street, Baghdad. Thirteen people died, including a 12 year old tirl and a young Palestinian journalist named Mazen al-Tameizi.  Fifty-five more were  were wounded in this cowardly assault. Eyewitnesses report that the helicopter returned several times to open fire on Iraqis who were trying to remove the dead and injured from the initial attack.

Since the craven American media are complicit in Washington's war crimes, it was up to the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad to tell the truth about the massacre on Haifa Street:

"About 20 meters ahead of me, I could see the American Bradley armoured vehicle, a huge monster with fire rising from within. [It had been damaged by a car bomb that forced the crew to run after a gunfight wounded six of them.] It stood alone, its doors open, burning. I stopped, took a couple of photos and crossed the street towards a bunch of people. Some were lying in the street, others stood around them. The helicopters were still buzzing, but further off now.

"....I had been standing there taking pictures for 2 or 3 minutes when we heard the helicopters coming back. Everyone started running, and I didn't look back to see what was happening to the injured men....I had just reached the corner of the cube [prefab concrete] when I heard 2 explosions. I felt hot air blast my face and something burning on my head. I crawled to the cube and hid behind it. Six of us were squeezed into a space less than 2 metres wide. Blood started dripping on my camera.... A man in his 40s next to me was crying. He wasn't injured, he was just crying.

"I was so scared I just wanted to squeeze myself against the wall. The helicopters wheeled overhead, and I realised that they were firing directly at us.

"....More kids ventured into the street, looking with curiousity at the dead and injured. Then someone shouted 'Helicopters!' and we ran. I turned and saw two small helicopters, black and evil. Frightened, I ran back to my shelter where I heard two more big explosions.... I reached a building entrance when someone grabbed my arm and took me inside. 'There's an injured man. Take pictures--show the world the American democracy,' he said."

This testimony from Haifa Street sounded eerily familiar. Then I remembered why. Fifteen years earlier in Tiananmen Square, with Chinese tanks rumbling in the distance, a square commander told me: "Please, tell world we die for freedom and democracy. Please tell international news."

Mazen was hit in the helicopter's first attack while he and his cameraman were filming the unfolding tragedy. His death was captured on film, which shows the Bradley exploding and a stumbling Mazen looking into the lens and shouting, "I am dying, I am dying." A friend of Mazen told the Telegraph: "People trying to help us were wounded or ran away. After a minute, the helicopters came back and fired again. They came three or four times."

And what does the US military have to say about this cold-blooded murder of Iraqi civilians? According to a US military spokesperson, "Air support destroyed the Bradley vehicle to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people."  The Bradley was already burning, and you don't prevent harm to unarmed civilians by shooting murdering them, you brain-dead war criminal.

The US military went on to say that the helicopters had "fired upon anti-Iraqi forces and the Bradley, preventing the loss of sensitive equipment and weapons." Anti-Iraqi forces? Twelve Iraqis were murdered, Rambo. As for the "loss of sensitive equipment and weapons," we repeat: THE BRADLEY WAS ALREADY BURNING.

In Falluja, six days of continuous airstrikes have killed at least 20 and wounded 40 more. While the US media feed the American people with mantras like "surgical strikes" against "terrorist safe houses," doctors at the Falluja General Hospital tell a different story--seven of the dead included an ambulance driver and his six passengers.

"Every time we send out an ambulance, it gets targeted," hospital director Rafayi Hayad al-Esawi told Al-Jazeera.

The Arab station also reported that US bombs destroyed three homes in Falluja's al-Shurta district, a marketplace, and several homes in the northern section of the city. Al-Esawi told the Independent: "The conditions here are miserable--an ambulance was bombed, three houses destroyed and men and women killed. The American army has no morals."

The barbaric practice of destroying ambulances was evident in Ramadi. According to Al-Jazeera, Dr. Khamis al-Saad, general director of Ramadi's hospital, reported that at least 11 people, including a woman and several children, were killed by US airstrikes on Monday,  September 13. Once again, US snipers targeted ambulances and medical workers throughout the city. Two ambulance drivers and members of a medical team driving in the ambulances were also killed.

Webster's defines "terrorism" as "the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion." Every day, Bush is ordering his forces to systematically slaughter the Iraqi people. Gone is all talk of winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Bush has nothing left but terror to try to break the will of the Iraqi people to resist.

Bush will fail, because he has already lost this war.

As you listen to USA Today and CBS dicker over whether a 1973 typewriter could produce a "th" superscript, remember that the entire US political establishment--including the corporate media--are complicit in the systematic slaughter of Iraqi civilians that is being carried out in the name of the American people.

Najaf, Aug. 19, 2004

Bush's soldiers are afraid to die. Al-Sadr's fighters are not.

Iraq's Olympic soccer team is showing courage too. Several members are condemning Bush's crass attempt to use the team to help him get reelected. His latest campaign advertisements display the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan while a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes." 

Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir, who was once the star of Najaf's professional team, had this to say to SI.com: "Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself.

"I want the violence and the war go go away from the city. We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away."

Teammate Ahmed Manajid was even more blunt: "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes." Manajid told  Sports Illustrated that were it not for his soccer commitment he would "for sure" be fighting with the resistance.

"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists? Everyone [in Falluja] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Falluja people are some of the best people in Iraq."

Coach Adnan Hamad added: "My problems are not with the American people. They are with what America has done in Iraq; destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

AUGUST 23, 2004:

These courageous and heartfelt remarks by members of the Iraqi Olympic soccer team are reverberating throughout the sports and political worlds from Athens to Washington.  According to Lawrence Donegan's August 23 article in The Guardian, the spokesman for the Iraqi Olympic team, Mark Clark, had this to say:

"They are not very sophisticated politically. Whoever posed these questions knew the answers would be negative. It is possible something was lost in translation. The players are entitled to their opinions but we are disappointed."

First of all, why is a man named "Mark Clark" serving as the spokesman for Iraq's Olympic team? Shouldn't an Iraqi be the spokesman for Iraq's squad? Didn't Bush "hand over" sovereignty to the Iraqis?

Whomever this Clark character is, he has no business or moral authority lecturing Iraqis on their political sophistication. What a racist, condescending, repulsive and revealing comment by the self-appointed spokesman for Iraq's athletes. They have more political sophistication under their fingernails than Clark has in his entire body. And there was nothing "lost in translation." The whole world reads them loud and clear.

Mr.  Clark should be more concerned with the fact that the Bush campaign violated US copyright laws when it used the Olympic insignia in a recent reelection advertisement.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that Bush may travel to Athens to watch Saturday's soccer final. This cretin knows no shame. One hopes he will regret that decision.

Today, we heard another politically unsophisticated statement from Coach Hamad:

"You cannot speak about a team that represents freedom. We do not have freedom in Iraq, we have an occupying force. This is one of our most miserable times. Freedom is just a word for the media. We are living in hard times, under occupation."

We await a more sophisticated political analysis from Mark Clark.

Caracas, Aug. 16, 2004 (Miguel Gomez/Reuters)

August 18, 2004--In a voter turnout that should shame proponents of US bourgeois democracy, the Venezuelan working class dealt Washington and its counterrevolutionary allies a huge blow by rejecting their attempt to unseat President Hugo Chavez in Sunday's recall election. Ninety percent of Venezuela's voters participated. Of these, two thirds registered a resounding "No" to unseating Chavez and holding new elections. Many waited on lines up to 10 hours to vote. They knew what was at stake for their country.

This was the third unsuccessful attempt by Venezuela's rightists and their US imperialist masters to oust Chavez. In 2002, Chavez was briefly arrested in an ultimately unsuccessful coup that collapsed in the face of massive protests by Venezuela's workers and peasants. Next a general strike organized by Chavez's bourgeois opposition nearly brought the country's economy to a halt. Again, the masses mobilized in support of their elected president.

Mahdi Army militia fighting US occupiers in Sadr City, Aug 5, 2004 (Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty Images)

August 5, 2004--"This is a revolution against the occupation force until we get independence and democracy," a spokesman for Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr told the Washington Post today. Indeed, Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters fought US forces in Najaf and Sadr City (the Shiite suburb of Baghdad), and British soldiers in Basra. In Najaf, Mahdi soldiers shot down a US helicopter with small arms fire, wounding the crew. The two-month-old truce between al-Sadr's militias and the occupation forces is over.

Shaybani's characterization of today's fighting as a "revolution" should get a rise out of FOX's Bill O'Reilly. In April, when Shiite fighters rose up and challenged US and British troops from Basra to Baghdad, O'Reilly told the world with a straight face that no uprising was taking place. Today, August 5, 2004, The Uprising That Wasn't has returned with a vengeance. And it has the support of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people.

"The cease-fire is over because of the actions of the occupation forces, and the situation has started to deteriorate," said al-Sadr spokesman Sheik Abdul Hadi al-Daraji. Iraqis report that at least seven fighters and seven civilians were killed along with 54 wounded in the fighting.

Shaybani also told the Washington Post that US and puppet Iraqi forces had violated the terms of the cease-fire by venturing too close to Najaf's sacred shrines. "We knew they wanted to invade it. We had and have to defend the holy city."

This renewal of the Shiite armed uprising coincides with the outbreak of fierce fighting between Iraqi insurgents and police in the northern city of Mosul that has killed dozens.

The Iraqi people are confirming that Fidel Castro was right: "It is impossible to intimidate the People. They just get stronger."

That is a lesson that George Bush, Bill O'Reilly, Donald Rumsfeld, and their Iraqi puppet, Iyad Allawi, will learn from Iraq's toilers and the rest of the workers of the world.

Copyright 2004, by Steve Bell

May 25, 2004--Despite a videotape shown Sunday by Associated Press Television News that proves the 45 Iraqis killed by US forces on May 19 in the western Iraq village of Mukaradeeb were attending a wedding party, US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt claimed as late as Saturday that the target was a safe house for foreign fighters.

"There was no evidence of a wedding; no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

This war criminal named Kimmitt deserves a long walk off a short pier.

According to reports by the  Associated Press, the tape showed remnants of the vicious attack that included pieces of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored decorations used for such festivities strewn around the bombed out tent. It also depicts the scene before the attack--a dozen pickup trucks driving across the desert escorting the bridal car. Later we see singing and dancing in the all-male tent in the garden of the host, Rikad  Nayef, for the wedding of his son, Azhad.

It is a tradition in Iraqi tribal customs that the two sexes are segregated at traditional weddings, which is the source of Steve Bell's humor in the cartoon above. The women were off camera, dancing to the tunes of Hussein al-Ali, a well known Baghdad wedding singer hired by the family to perform. Al-Ali's Baghdad funeral was last Thursday.

One of the stars of this video was the organist, who showed up dead in a second video that has emerged, one of the approximately 45 Iraqis slaughtered in this cowardly attack.

There are scenes of young men in traditional white robes, dancing to traditional Arabic music. A boy and a girl are seen holding hands and smiling.

War criminal Kimmitt said US soldiers found rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes and other items that he said suggested foreign infiltration.

No weapons were visible on the videotape.

Kimmitt also denied evidence that children died in the raid, although a "handful of women" were "caught up in the engagement."

However, an AP reporter procured names of at least 10 children whom relatives said were slain in the attack. APTN filmed bodies of five kids being buried in Ramadi on May 19. Iraqi officials say at least 13 children were killed.

Thirty two year old Haleema Shihab, one of Nayef's three wives, told reporters that she grabbed her 7-month old, Yousef, and five-year-old, Hamaz, and started running when the bombing began, with her 15-year old son, Ali, at their side.

"Hamza was  yelling, 'mommy,'  Shihab said. "Ali said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. That's the last time I heard him."

Shihab and her stepdaughter hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 am until sunrise."

Then US soldiers arrived. One of them kicked her to see if she was still alive.

"I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," Shihab told the press, adding that the soldier was laughing, no doubt aping his sadistic commander in chief.

Major General James Mattis, commander of the US 1st Marine Division, whose soldiers participated in the attack, echoed Kimmitt's arrogant contempt for Iraqi workers and farmers:

"I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men."

Not even for the brave soldier who kicked Haleema Shihab while she hid in a bomb crater?

Mattis continued to reveal his ignorance and lack of humanity with this statement:

"Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from [the] nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naive. Plus they had 30 males of military age with them."

A wedding party in a village? That's just off the charts to this military genius. And they had 30 males of military age with them? Guess that proves they were terrorists who deserved to die, right Mattis?

According to the Independent's Justin Huggler May 25 account, the second videotape shows even more specific details of the wedding party that was brutally assaulted by Bush's liberators--a man cradling a baby; children playing and laughing. The tape shows the bodies of at least two children, one of them without a head. US officials are still denying any children were killed, but have no explanation for the video footage of them being buried.

A military official was quoted as saying, "We have not denied anything. We are very open to whatever evidence that comes forward. We still believe that when we got on the ground the intelligence that caused us to believe there were targets on the ground still remains the same. That's unchanged. [Yeah, well that "intelligence" is a murderous monstrosity that should be abolished immediately in the interests of the well being of this entire planet.] It could be that there was a wedding...but there are still a lot of things we don't know which is why we are going to do the investigation."

We know enough to understand that another atrocity has been committed by US imperialism. My Lai, Waco, Rodney King, Nathaniel Jones, Abu Ghraib. Video images don't lie. Washington does.

Survivors say that bombs began falling in the middle of the night without warning. The US claims a ground force was initially sent in, and returned fire after being fired upon. But witnesses report that American soldiers showed up after several hours of air strikes rained death from the skies.

Kimmitt and his cohorts continue to assert that the small village near the Syrian border is a hotbed of "foreign fighters" infiltrating Iraq to fight occupation forces. But one of the wedding guests, a shepherd named Madhi Nawaf, whose daughter and her children were slain in the raid, told the Scotsman newspaper: "Mothers died with their children in their arms. One of them was my daughter. I found her a few steps from the house, her two-year-old son Raad in her arm. Her one-year-old son, Ra'ed, was lying nearby, his head missing. Where were the foreign fighters they claim were hiding there? Everything they said is a lie."

Mr. Nawaf poses a good question for the war criminal Kimmett. Where  is the evidence of foreign fighters? We have bodies of at least 45 Iraqi villagers, women and children included, but where are the bodies of foreign fighters? They're in the twisted mind of Brig. Gen. Kimmett.

While there's little doubt that the US/UK occupation of Iraq has brought Islamic jihadists into Iraq to defend their Muslim brothers and sisters, the overwhelming majority of Iraqi "insurgents" are young Iraqis enjoying widespread popular support.

The only "foreign fighters" causing trouble near the Syrian border are US forces looking to pick a fight with Syria. The Syrians, and anyone else in Iraq trying to defend the Iraqi people from Bush and Blair's murderous assault, have a right to defend themselves against the invaders.

Washington's war criminals have a propensity for rudely interrupting wedding celebrations with lethal firepower. Remember in July 2002 US gunships bombed a wedding party in the Afghan village of Kakarak, killing 48 people, mostly women and children, and wounding more than 100.  After a fraudulent US "investigation," the US military was completely exonerated.

Perhaps there's a connection between Washington's habit of attacking weddings in Afghanistan and Iraq and the National Security Agency's deciphering of Al Qaeda code language before Sept. 11. In 1998, the NSA learned "wedding" meant bomb, and the code name for 9/11 was "The Big Wedding."

Let's be sure we connect all the dots.

Moments after Israelis fired on Palestinian protest, May 19, 2004

May 19, 2004--Today Israeli missiles and tanks fired on a peaceful demonstration of largely Palestinian children who were protesting the demolition of their homes and escalating assaults against their people by Tel Aviv's murderous apartheid regime. Israeli media are reporting that at least 22 Palestinian women and children were killed and 50 more were injured, mostly young people.

A Palestinian doctor told reporters that a "state of emergency all over Gaza Strip hospitals" has been ordered by President Yassir Arafat.

This murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing continues unabated because of the full support given Sharon by George W. Bush.  Both of these war criminals use the pretext of "fighting terror" to justify the state terror they are unleashing against Palestinians and Iraqis in their respective criminal occupations. But in Gaza and the West Bank as well as Iraq, it is defenseless civilians who are being slaughtered by Israeli and US forces.

Sharon and Bush--the true axis of evil on this planet.

It's time for the Israeli and US working classes to throw these gangsters in the dock and try them for war crimes.  Along the way, we can fight for socialist governments that would put human needs and peace before profits and war.

The whole world is waiting.

Brought to you by those men of peace--Sharon and Bush

May 18, 2004--Israel continues to thumb its nose at humanity and international law with its murderous assault on the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed at least 19 Palestinians since its latest offensive began, including an 11-year-old boy and his 15-year-old sister. Yesterday, Israel tanks, bulldozers and gunship helicopters sealed off Rafah from the rest of the Gaza Strip, causing panic among Palestinians trapped there.

Since last week the Israeli army has demolished over 100 Palestinian homes, leaving thousands homeless. At least 32 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in intense fighting. Israel has been demolishing entire neighborhoods in the Occupied Territories for years, justifying these outrages on the grounds of self defense because suspected Palestinian fighters lived there. But collective punishment is a violation of international law, from Gaza to Falluja.

Amnesty International just release a report charging Israel with war crimes for destroying more than 3,000 Palestinian homes over the last three years. The report called these demolitions "grave breaches of the  Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes."

One of the report's authors,  Donatella Rovera, said that "In vast majority of cases, it's wanton destruction. It's unnecessary, disproportionate, unjustified and deliberate."

Bush gave Washington's stamp of approval to Sharon's latest war crimes with the obligatory caveat that they were "troubling." [Translation: we're taking international heat for this, but you do what you have to do to get the job done.]

The Village Voice's Rich Perlstein writes this week that National Security Council Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams, the Iran/Contra convicted liar, met recently with a Christian fundamentalist outfit named Apostolic Congress to assure them that Bush's endorsement of Sharon's Gaza pullout was in keeping with their political and theological agenda.

These Christian ultrarightists expressed opposition to any Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, fearing it may lead to a Palestinian state, which would upset their little theological apple cart. These fundamentalist fanatics believe that unless Israel stays intact and David's temple rebuilt, Jesus Christ won't make his grand return in the Second Coming.

Abrams assured the Apostolic Congress that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."

Three weeks after Abrams' pow-wow with the Christian zealots, Bush reversed Washington's decades-long policy and backed Tel Aviv's sovereignty over portions of the West Bank in exchange for Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza.

Shiite militiamen outside Moqtada al-Sadr's office in Amara, 5/05/04

May 5, 2004--Fresh from his humiliating defeat at Falluja, where his marines were forced to withdraw, or "reposition" themselves five miles back, and still reeling from the still exploding Abu Ghraib prison scandal, now George Bush is calling off his "Wanted Dead or Alive" posse he'd previously ordered to kill or capture Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

"The Iraqis will deal with Mr. Sadr," Bush told Al Arabiya, the Arab television network based in Dubai. "We are very respectful for the holy sites in Iraq. We understand their importance to the Iraqi citizens. Mr. Sadr is occupying those sites as if they're his, and I think the Iraqi citizens are getting tired of that."

Occupying those sites as if they're his?? No, you demented sadistic thug, YOU ARE OCCUPYING IRAQ AS IF IT'S YOURS, AND THE IRAQI CITIZENS ARE GETTING TIRED OF THAT.

Unlike Bush, Sadr's ready to die for his people (Al-Jazeera)

That's right. It's official Coalition policy to forbid Iraqis from displaying photographs of the militant Shiite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr. The US has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis so they can enjoy the same right Americans possess--the right to be told by George Bush what photos are permissible to see.

Iraqis can't see images of Sadr and Americans can't see images of the growing number of GIs coming home in flag-draped caskets. So decrees the Emperor Bush.

There was a recent report that an Iraqi man was beaten to death by US soldiers for refusing to take down a picture of Sadr. On April 21, Army News Service reported that a US soldier nearly started a riot when he forced a shopowner to remove Sadr's photo. An angry crowd gathered and started throwing rocks at the soldier to let him know their version of democracy doesn't square with his commander in chief's.

COSMOS LEFT prints this image of Moqtada al-Sadr as a gesture of solidarity and admiration for his courage in standing up to US imperialism, and as a concrete way of showing the world that not all Americans share Bush's conception of democracy.--April 23, 2004

That's right. It's official Coalition policy to forbid Iraqis from displaying photographs of the militant Shiite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr. The US has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis so they can enjoy the same right Americans possess--the right to be told by George Bush what photos are permissible to see.

Iraqis can't see images of Sadr and Americans can't see images of the growing number of GIs coming home in flag-draped caskets. So decrees the Emperor Bush.

There was a recent report that an Iraqi man was beaten to death by US soldiers for refusing to take down a picture of Sadr. On April 21, Army News Service reported that a US soldier nearly started a riot when he forced a shopowner to remove Sadr's photo. An angry crowd gathered and started throwing rocks at the soldier to let him know their version of democracy doesn't square with his commander in chief's.

COSMOS LEFT prints this image of Moqtada al-Sadr as a gesture of solidarity and admiration for his courage in standing up to US imperialism, and as a concrete way of showing the world that not all Americans share Bush's conception of democracy.--April 23, 2004

Bush lied. They died.

Meanwhile, back in the home of the brave and land of the free, Bush and the Pentagon prohibit media outlets from printing photographs of dead soldiers returning home in flag-draped caskets. We've been seeing some lately only due to a Freedom of Information Act request by First Amendment activist Russ Kick, which the Pentagon now regrets complying with and vows never will happen again.

We also owe much to Tami Silicio and David Landry, two former contractors for Maytag Aircraft who were fired for sending pictures they took of coffins in a military transport airplane to the Seattle Times.

The US rulers, aware that images of flag-draped coffins of GIs helped fuel the movement against the Vietnam war, do not want Americans to see the harsh reality of this monstrous war. This is not some slick, easy-to-sanitize, video game war from above like Daddy Bush's aggression 13 years ago. This is an unwinnable colonial war where an entire people are the enemy of US soldiers.

The war maniacs in Washington learned two lessons from Vietnam: 1) don't show dead GIs on America's televisions; and 2) don't keep body counts of the civilians you are slaughtering; blow it off as collateral damage.

Some slip into cynicism and say that Americans don't care how many people from other nations die in Washington's wars; it's only when Am erican bodybags start coming home that the majority of Americans get upset. There's some truth to that. As long as American workers are imbued with the values of US capitalists, alien class values that infect us with national chauvinism, many don't give a rat's ass how many workers from other nations are butchered by US imperialism.

But over time, US workers will shed those alien class values and realize our proletarian internationalism--our very humanity. We will make the connection that the occupants of the mass graves now being dug in Iraq by Bush were victims of the same capitalist system as the soldiers in those coffins that the Pentagon doesn't want us to see.

And then the Bushes and O'Reilly's and the brain dead lemmings who follow them will feel the wrath of the US working class.--April 24, 2004

Iraqi strikes a burning car with shovel after 4 Americans were shot dead and later mutilated--Falluja, March 31, 2004 (AFP/Karim Sahib)

April 1, 2004--They lied about WMD in Iraq. They lied about Iraq's links to Sept. 11 and Al Qaeda. And the US rulers lied most of all that they would be greeted as liberators with open arms by cheering throngs of appreciative Iraqis.

The brutal acts of reprisals by angry Iraqis against four American "contractors" in Falluja yesterday reflects the seething resentment and anger among the Iraqi people for the murderous invasion and occupation of their country by US and UK imperialism.

When tens of thousands of your people are murdered by foreign armies invading your country in an illegal and preemptive war based on lies, this after a prior war killed hundreds of thousands and economic sanctions snuffed out the lives of another million of your countrymen, most of them children, when your women and children are shamed and your culture defiled, when you watch your families gunned down at checkpoints in cars, including three year old boys, when your children's flesh are splattered all over the ground from bombs, when your national dignity and sovereignty are raped, well, you get a little pissed off, and when you lash back at the other side and cause them some pain, it feels good.

George W. Bush was feeling good the first day he ordered the attack on Iraq, pumping his fist enthusiastically before the slaughter he was unleashing had even begun.

The graphic scenes of the hangings, dismemberments, mutilations and parades are disturbing, just as the scenes from Mogadishu were back in 1993 when Somalians angry that American forces had just killed thousands of their people produced a few Black Hawk Downs of their own.

I was in Tiananmen Square the night of June 4, 1989, when the Chinese army massacred hundreds of students and workers to violently end the mass movement for democratic rights. As the tanks advanced toward Tiananmen Square, killing anyone in their way, the people were already exacting th eir revenge, pouncing on young recruits and bashing their heads in with bricks.

The next morning, while walking up the Avenue of Eternal Peace, there were a number of equally gruesome images dotting the charred landscape. During the night, a tank driver who had crushed 11 demonstrators to death was himself killed by angry witnesses, who burned his corpse and hung him from a bus.

The people of Beijing were wracked with pent-up rage and fury over the army's terror and barbarism--and frustrated at its overwhelming military superiority. The residents of Fallujah, Iraq, are gripped with similar sentiments this week. They have been in the forefront of massive US firepower for over a year. Their citizens have been shot to death in THEIR streets for peacefully protesting against the US occupation. Even a group of new cops were "accidentally" gunned down by US troops, who regularly bust down people's doors in midnight raids, terrorize their kids by screaming at them, "Get your fucking hands up, NOW!!"; kidnapping the men and hauling them off to gulag camps; shooting wounding Iraqis on the ground until they're dead, and cheering about it.

This kind of conduct tends to piss people off.

Now, genuine national liberation movements target military forces, not civilian ones. Of course, we don't know the full story yet about these four "contractors" who worked for a North Carolina-based outfit called Blackwater Security Consulting. According to a March 31 report by AP writer Sameer N. Yacoub, Blackwater is a security firm that hires former military members from the US and other nations to provide security training and guard services.

APRIL 1, 2004:

There are unconfirmed reports that a gun was inside the burned out vehicle that became a funeral pyre for the Americans. Big surprise, given Blackwater's mercenary relationship with the US military. The US government and its kept press make it sound like Blackwater employees were running a catering service in Fallujah, delivering food to a town that has been a hotbed of fierce anti-US sentiment since last year's invasion and the scene of recent intense gun battles with US marines.

Right. The truth is already coming out. World Socialist Web Site's James Conachy wrote today that AP cameras videotaped a US Department of Defense identification card amidst the vehicle wreckage. The April 1 NY Times reports that Falluja witnesses say several of the slain men had Defense Department badges. The Times also states that a "senior military officer said the four were retired Special Operations forces -- three Navy Seals and one Army Ranger.

Oh really. Then perhaps the suspicion harbored by many Falluja residents that the men were working for the CIA, so glibly scoffed at by Pentagon media whores, is accurate after all.

This is where George Bush and the US capitalist class he represents have brought us. This tragedy is the fruit of Washington's criminal aggression against the people of Iraq. This is the depth of Iraq's hostility toward the US occupation.

Warmongering ruling class jackals will try to use the Falluja tragedy to reverse the flagging support among Americans for this latest nightmare courtesy of imperialism. All those opposed to this war must meet this call for blood with the same firm and resolute demand we've raised all along--the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq.

What happened in Falluja to those US mercenaries was the toxic result of the seething hostility to the US occupation combined with a lack of a revolutionary working class leadership in Iraq. The horror of that day shows why more than ever it is imperative to build an international working class movement that will fight capitalism and the brutal wars it spawns.

Iraqi Shiites protest US shutting down of newspaper, March 30, 2004 (Reuters/Lazlo Balogh)

"Where is democracy now?"

This is the question thousands of Shiite followers of cleric Moztada Al-Sadr posed to George W. Bush following the move by US troops to shut down Al Hawza, a newspaper reflecting the views of Sadr. The angry Shiite crowd showed up at the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad today to let Bush know what they think of his version of democracy.

The US-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) claims that Al Hawza had violated a coalition law forbidding newspapers "from creating instability through inciting violence against the coalition forces" in two recent articles. One had the audacity to suggest that a US missile slaughtered 53 Shiites on February 10, not a terrorist car bomb, as US officials were quick to allege. The second objectionable article accused Coalition boss Paul Bremer of following "in the steps of Saddam," by overseeing an occupation that was brutally violating the rights of Iraqis.

A coalition spokesperson whined, "The false information in that paper was hurting stability. [!!] It was stirring up a lot of hate. It was making people think we were out to get them. [Now why on earth would they think that!] If people actually believed that coalition forces were slaughtering civilians it could be real dangerous. That's incitement."

These idiots obviously think we're all as stupid as they are.

The Iraqi people don't need a newspaper to piss them off about the fact that they currently have no rights, no national sovereignty, no dignity; that hundreds of them have been shot dead in raids by US stormtroopers; that thousands have been kidnapped from their homes in front of their families and carted off to US-run gulags; that the country lies in ruins.

Budapest, Hungary, March 20, 2004

March 21, 2004--Yesterday, after a year's hiatus, the world's "other superpower" returned to the streets in angry mobilizations denouncing the criminal US invasion and occupation of Iraq. From one end of the globe to another, the international working class gave George W. Bush and Anthony Blair an unequivocal message: "End the Occupation Now!"

One million in Rome. 300,000 in Barcelona. 1000,000 in London (where signs called Bush the "world's worst terrorist"). 30,000 in Tokyo. Tens of thousands in Berlin, Manila, Paris, Sydney, Seoul, Madrid (where banners read, ""USA Invades the World - Stop Them!", "U$A Imperialists" and, "Your War, Our Dead"), Buenos Aires, Ankara, Santiago, Caracas, Brazil, Greece, the Netherlands and Thailand.

News24.com reported that in Cairo, Egypt, thousands assembled in Tahreer Square holding signs reading, ""No WMD, but 20 000 Iraqi civilians killed - this is Bush's democracy!"

One protester remarked, "We are not for Saddam, but they (the Americans) have replaced an unjust regime with chaos."

At a university in the southern Egyptian city of Minya, about 2,000 students and teachers denounced the US occupation of Iraq and France's prohibition against wearing the Muslim veil in schools.

Barcelona, March 14, 2004 (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

March 14-15, 2004--US workers could learn a thing or two from our brothers and sisters in Spain. After Spain suffered its own September 11 terrorist attack on March 11, when synchronized bombs killed over 200 people at Madrid's train station, the Spanish people did now cower before the government, begging it to suspend democratic rights; they did not bury their heads in the sand over what Madrid was doing in their name; they did not react like sheep, passively accepting everything the government said.

Instead, Spaniards mobilized in the millions throughout the country on March 12, demanding that Madrid tell the truth about the terrorist attack as well as protesting Prime Minister Aznar's support for the US occupation of Iraq.

After Madrid was quick to blame the atrocity on the Basque separatist group, ETA, the entire nation erupted in anger, correctly sensing that the bombings had more to do with Aznar's slavish support for the Iraq war.

On Saturday thousands protested outside the offices of the ruling Popular Party, chanting, "Our dead, your war," "Who did it?", "No more cover-ups," and "Aznar, because of you, we all pay." Some protesters said: "We cannot vote without knowing who the assassins are. The government is hiding information. They think we're idiots."

On Sunday, the Popular Party, which was leading the opposition Socialist Party in all the pre-election polls, was booted out of office by an angry and aroused electorate, who left little doubt Aznar's close alliance with Bush and his war was the major reason he's history.

In the ensuing days, the evidence is pointing to Al-Qaeda involvement in the bombings. A phone call from Al Qaeda's military wing in Europe; a tape whose speaker claimed Al Qaeda responsibility for the bombings that were intended to punish Spain for its alliance with "the criminal Bush."

Then the tell-tale Koran was found, just as it was following Sept. 11, plus the cell phones which triggered the explosions were traced to 2 Indians and 3 Moroccans, one of whom is reportedly linked to the Madrid-based Al Qaeda cell that allegedly helped plan Sept. 11.

It's no secret to readers of COSMOS LEFT that we strongly suspect much of the terrorism attributed to Al-Qaeda originates with US, British or Israel intelligence. This may be the case with the Madrid attacks. Certainly the tell-tale signs of planting evidence to finger Muslims for the crime are already evident. We know these terrorist outfits have double agents and agent provacateurs infiltrating their ranks. Or it could have been an operation carried out by an infusion of newer jihadists eager to inflict revenge on the infidels slaughtering their people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Whoever is responsible for the Madrid outrage, the Spanish people drew the correct conclusion that "their" government's alliance with Bush on Iraq lies behind the March 11 attacks.

It's the war, stupid, the Spanish masses told Aznar's imperialist government.

At the March 13 demonstration outside the Popular Party's Madrid offices, a protester held a sign saying, "The bombs that fell on Iraq are exploding in Madrid."
This is an expression of proletarian solidarity with Iraq's toilers who are under the gun of US imperialism. The Spanish workers didn't succomb to the terrorism hysteria. They calmly, firmly, and with great dignity and passion took to the streets to place concrete demands on Aznar and put him on notice that his days in power were numbered.

If the Madrid attacks were supposed to help Aznar in the election, that idea backfired badly. The victorious Socialist Party is socialist in name only; it is actually a bourgeois, pro-imperialist grouping that sold out the Spanish working class 7 decades ago. Its new leader, Rodriguez Zapatero, promises to withdraw Spain's 1400 troops now in Iraq. But the Socialist Party does not have an absolute majority, and will have to share power in a coalition government with regional parties. We shall see if Zapatero has the cajones to stand up to US imperialism and pull out of Iraq.

Even the terminology glibly bandied about regarding the "exit strategy" for Washington: "premature withdrawal," "pull out of Iraq," "don't want to withdraw too soon," gives away the fact that US imperialism is fucking Iraq.

The rest of the world notices when the most powerful nation rapes a defenseless people; that's why Washington is the most hated and feared outlaw regime on the face of the earth--running neck and neck with Zionist Israel.

The Madrid bombings showed once again why Marxists have strongly opposed terrorism as a tactic for revolutionary change for over 150 years. The atrocity in Spain, just like the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and DC, was reactionary and anti-working class to the core. Terrorism not only counts workers as its primary victims, it also usually strengthens the forces of reaction, war, and repression--witness the ease with which Bush exploited Americans' 911 fears into support for his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Terrorism is anti working class because it views the toilers as mere objects in the historical process. Terrorists have written off the strategy of mobilizing the working masses to overthrow oppressive class rule. Instead, the practitioners of terror orient most toward the ruling class, to the exploiters, in the futile hope of pressuring them to change.

Whether or not the terrorism attributed to Al-Qaeda came from Al-Qaeda or from the CIA and Mossad, there is no shortage of angry, demoralized, despairing Muslims willing to join the ranks of an organization that gives them a chance strike back at the nation slaughtering Muslims from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine. Their ranks are growing in part because of the ongoing crisis in working class leadership that leaves a huge political vacuum for petty bourgeois ideologies like Islamic fundamentalist terrorism to fester.

This is why US imperialism has not hesitated to bolster fundamentalism and terrorism in the Middle East to crush socialists and communists vying for political influence in the working class of those countries.

Contrary to Bush's lies, the world is not safer due to the US occupation of Iraq, as the Spanish people have just learned. Terrorism is on the rise and won't stop until the US working class breaks through the fog of patriotism and national chauvinism and realizes our interests lie with workers from Madrid to Beijing.

The day is coming when the workers in Spain, the US, and the rest of the world will figure out that the only way to defeat terrorism is to disarm the imperialist war machine from Washington to London to Paris to Berlin.

No to imperialist wars! Open all the intelligence files from Washington to Madrid! End all aid to Israel! Israel out of the Occupied Territories! US out of Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan!

March 2004--After waging a heroic fight for almost five months, Southern California grocery workers, sold out by the bureaucratic misleadership of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, were forced to end their strike and approve a wretched contract that gave the supermarket bosses the two-tier wage and benefits structure they were looking for.

Meanwhile, striking coal miners in Huntington, Utah, are stepping up their fight for union representation at the Co-Op coal mine by strengthening their picket lines and reaching out for solidarity from workers across the country.

With the demise of the California grocery workers strike, the fight by the predominantly Mexican workers at Co-Op to join the United Mine Workers of America is now the most important labor struggle in the United States.

Readers should compare the coverage of the grocery workers' defeat found in the Militant ("California grocery workers end strike, bosses gain concessions")and the World Socialist Web Site ("Union surrenders benefits, wages in sellout of California grocery strike").

For the latest on the Co-Op miners strike, check out the March 15 Militant article, "Utah coal strikers strengthen picket line."