February 13, 2003

Media Compilation #114: Countering the War Frenzy - Exposing its Insanity


Dear journalist

There is such a flood of news and developments regarding the planned invasion of Iraq by the American-British forces that I must send you a second compilation this week.

Hopefully you'll have time to browse through it and use some of it.

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com

This compilation is archived at
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/Archives2003/MediaCompilation114.htm


"How is it possible that Americans would allow their government to commit this horrible atrocity and not take action? (...) Every night here as I go to sleep I cannot help but think of faces of children I have seen that day. I think of them being put to bed by their parents and how it will be if the bombing starts. It is beyond the imagination that these little children are seen as so expendable, "acceptable collateral damage." What kind of monster finds that acceptable. All for oil."

- Taken from "The View From Baghdad" #2 below.


"I will act as if I do make a difference."

- William James


"The World Wide Web is where the genuine information is today. The mass media have deteriorated into a deceptive and delusional miasma of propaganda pitches designed not to tell the truth about current events, but to spin them in ways that will be profitable to the patricians who own the media outlets and pay for the deceptive advertising that ruin the health and the fortunes of ordinary citizens who are just trying to live their lives in a peaceful and orderly manner."

- John Kaminski <skylax@comcast.net>


"THE NEW NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY published by the White House in September 2002, if carried out, would amount to a radical revision of the political character of our nation. Its central and most significant statement is this: While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists... (p. 6)"

- Taken from A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America at http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-2om/Berry.html


CONTENTS

1. The Flies That Feed Off The Dead
2. The View From Baghdad


See also:

America gripped by fear of 'dirty bomb' attack (Feb 13)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=377887

The President's Real Goal in Iraq
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html
Creating a full-fledged global empire

1 million could join grassroots protest (Feb 12)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,893602,00.html
Groundswell of public opinion across country surprises most hardened campaigners.

NYC Peace Activists Vow to Face Down Bush's War Don't Fence Them In (Feb 12) http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0307/ferguson.php
The mayor and the police chief and the attorney general may not like it, but the masses are about to take to the streets of New York. Despite the Bloomberg administration's unprecedented refusal to allow protesters to march in the city, peace activists insist that hundreds of thousands of people will assemble within sight of the United Nations on Saturday, urging the Security Council to pursue further weapons inspections in Iraq, not war. Organizers with United for Peace and Justice, a network of more than 200 groups, have a permit for a stationary rally starting at noon, on First Avenue north of 49th Street. Protesters in New York will be joined that weekend by more than a million people in 300 cities around the world, a global uprising against President Bush's push for war.

America's 48 hours to kill Saddam (Feb 12)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-574703,00.html
AMERICAN war planners believe that they have little more than 48 hours from the start of a ground war to kill President Saddam Hussein if they are to avoid a protracted conflict and a complicated peace.

White House Publicizes Bin Laden Tape (Feb 12)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2396203,00.html
They once urged American television networks to show restraint in airing his messages!

Bin Laden labels Saddam an infidel (Feb 12)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L11375554

Mass hysteria in DC: store shelves being bared; missile launchers deployed (Feb 12)
http://www.underreported.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=803

America Orders 100,000 Body Bags (Feb 10)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12624416&method=full&siteid=50143
Up to 100,000 'body bags' and 6,000 coffins have been secretly delivered to a US base in Italy, a Catholic archbishop claimed yesterday. Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Pope's Council of Peace and Justice, said the consignment had arrived at the Sigonella base near Catania on the island of Sicily 10 days ago.

European Allies Unite Against US-Led War (Feb 10)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-572838,00.html

The Man from My Lai (pronounced "me lie") - Powell's Flimsy Evidence (Feb 9)
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3009
Only two days after Colin Powell made his presentation to the U.N. Security Council, the evidence he provided is unraveling. Through interviews with experts, intelligence sources, and an examination of the physical evidence, reporters are piecing together facts that refute all of his major claims.

British Refusniks (Feb 9)
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/news/page.cfm?objectid=12622742&method=full&siteid=106694
One in three reservists try to get out of joining the call-up for war on Saddam - HUNDREDS of reservists are refusing to fall in for war on Iraq. More than one in five of those called up have already asked to be excused duty - or have simply not answered the call.

The Choice Before Us
http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/starhawk/2003-02/msg0000'.html
Somewhere tonight in Iraq, a small girl lies sleeping who in a few weeks may be a lump of scorched flesh buried under concrete. On a basketball court somewhere in the United States a young man lands a jump shot, who in a few weeks may have no legs, or eyes, or have tumors already brooding in his brain from exposure to the depleted uranium of our own weapons. A young boy who is healthy and vibrant today will be racked with cancer. A mother will hear her children crying for food and have nothing to give them but tainted water to quench their thirst. CLIP

Wimps, weasels and monkeys - the US media view of 'perfidious France' (Feb 11)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,893204,00.html
Dissenters in Europe become the first victims - of a war of words. The "petulant prima donna of realpolitik" is leading the "axis of weasels", in "a chorus of cowards". It is an unholy alliance of "wimps" and ingrates which includes one country that is little more than a "mini-me minion", another that is in league with Cuba and Libya, with a bunch of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" at the helm. Welcome to Europe, as viewed through the eyes of American commentators and newspapers yesterday, as Euro-bashing, and particularly anti-French sentiment, reached new heights. CLIP

Real Authors of Iraq Dossier Blast Blair (Feb 8)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12620001&method=full&siteid=50143

MULLAH KREKAR DENIES BAGHDAD-AL QA'IDA LINK (Jan 31)
http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000177.php
Mullah Krekar, the spiritual leader of the Islamic insurgent group Ansar al-Islam, operating near the Iranian border in Iraqi Kurdistan, has denied that his group is a link between Baghdad and the al Qa'ida terror group. CLIP

Level with us, Mr. President - By Edward Kennedy (Feb 8)
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/039/oped/Level_with_us_Mr_President+.shtml
(...) The administration must be forthcoming about the potential human costs of war with Iraq, especially if it pushes Saddam into unleashing whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses. The administration has released no casualty estimates, and they could be extremely high. Many military experts have predicted urban guerrilla warfare - a scenario which retired General Joseph Hoar, who had responsibility for Iraq before the Gulf War, says could look ''like the last 15 minutes of `Saving Private Ryan.''' Nor has the administration been candid about the humanitarian crisis that could result from war. Refugee organizations are desperately trying to prepare for a flood of as many as 900,000 refugees. Billions of dollars and years of commitment may well be needed to achieve a peaceful postwar Iraq, but the American people still do not know how that process will unfold and who will pay for it. No war can be successfully waged if it lacks the strong support of the American people. Before pulling the trigger on war, the administration must tell the American people the full story about Iraq. So far, it has not.

Guantanamo: The USA's Concentration Camp
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/02/08/43153.html
14 attempted suicides at Guantanamo says all about the psychological state of the detainees at this concentration camp maintained by the USA in Cuba for political reasons. The prisoners were taken in Afghanistan, were transported to Guantanamo base, dressed in orange shell-suits and held in conditions of high security under suspicion, but not charges, of belonging either to Al-Qaeda or to the Taliban regime. The psychological problems appear because these people are being treated like sub-humans by a regime which does not even concede to them the right to the status of "prisoner of war", which would entitle them to protection under a number of conventions, the most famous of these being the Geneva Convention.

Our Government Has Already Been Caught Lying About Iraq
http://www.representativepress.org/LiesAboutIraq.html
It turned out that the "Iraqi troops satellite photos" were fake. "We were told that Iraqi troops were massing at the Saudi border. And these satellite photographs were shown to the Saudi leadership, to get them to change their mind and allow US troops to enter their country. Well it turned out that those satellite photos were fake. They never existed. The story was broken in the St. Petersburg Times some months later. And it was something that people were convinced of because we were told it was satellite photographs"- Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies

Soon the military timetable will start to dictate events (Jan 31)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,886027,00.html
The US army's dependence on reservists forces it into an early war.

Saudi Arabia plans for a future without US troops (Feb 10)
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/09/1044725673670.html
Saudi Arabia's leaders are making preparations for an era of military disengagement from the United States. They have also decided to enact what Saudi officials call the first significant democratic reforms at home, and to rein in the conservative clergy that has shared power in the kingdom.

Left over? (Feb 11)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,893062,00.html
The left in America was once a powerful force that fought for civil rights and helped to end the Vietnam war. But today, with the US poised to attack Iraq, where are the voices of dissent? Gary Younge goes in search of the opposition.

YellowTimes.org Shut Down! Stifling the Voice of Reason (Feb 11)
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/yt.html
The well known alternative news publication YellowTimes.org was just shut down without explanation by its hosting company! It recently published an article by an Iraqi nuclear scientist! The campaign to stifle dissent and censor any questioning of current U.S. policies vis-a-vis the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, has reached new levels. CLIP

Tax break 350 top economists deride Bush's revival package (Feb 11)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,893211,00.html
More than 350 top economists, including 10 Nobel prize winners, yesterday signed a damning critique of President Bush's economic stimulus package.

ICC Judges Election a Global Justice Milestone - An Experienced and Diverse Bench Chosen
http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/02/icc020803.htm
(New York, February 8, 2003) The first 18 judges elected to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a highly qualified and diverse bench, represent a major milestone on the road to the court's opening, Human Rights Watch said today. The ICC is the world's first global court to try those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The U.S. Press and the Israeli Government (January 24)
http://www.bankindex.com/read.asp?ID=1619
Witnesses watched as more than 60 Palestinian shops were bulldozed to the ground this week in one West Bank village, while the owners stood by and watch helplessly. But not one American in ten saw or heard about this in the US press.

Israel Proposes Gradual Withdrawal Plan (Feb 8)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030208/wl_nm/mideast_dc&e=1

New Anti-Terror Bill: Critics Cry Foul (Feb 8)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/08/attack/main539929.shtml
WASHINGTON | The Justice Department is preparing to attempt to expand the 2001 Patriot Act to increase surveillance within the United States while restricting access to information and limiting judicial review, a nonprofit government watchdog group asserted Friday. The Center for Public Integrity said it obtained a copy of the draft legislation from a government source. The document, labeled "confidential," was posted on the organization's Internet site along with an analysis. CLIP

Anti-U.S. Sentiment Builds in Afghanistan (Feb 10)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/10/MN67257.DTL
Stepped-Up Attacks And A New Call For Holy War - Islamabad, Pakistan -- A call to wage holy war against American-led forces and their allies in Afghanistan by a self-proclaimed spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has pointed up the dangers of rising anti-U.S. sentiment ahead of a possible war with Iraq. (...) Observers fear that nongovernmental organizations, which are similarly falling victim to increased attacks -- 16 in the last two weeks alone -- will be forced to pull their international personnel and suspend operations in the face of the more severe attacks promised by anti-coalition forces should America attack Iraq. "If that happens, the already slow reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan may grind to a halt," said the worried diplomat. CLIP

We may be soon carrying a continent wide ID card (Jan 30, 2003) http://cbc.ca/witness/security/tools2.html
North America ID Card - Soon North Americans may be carrying around a de facto ID card. It would start with the most common form of ID used - the driver's licence. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators is proposing that North Americans carry a universal and hard to forge drivers' licence that would include biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or retinal scans. But privacy advisors warn that initiatives such as this may be passed with little public input and may not even work. Bruce Schneier says, "The problem isn't knowing who you are. The problem is stopping you from doing bad things. All those terrorists got an airline ticket under the name that their ID showed. The problem wasn't identification. The problem was intention." (...) Hi-Tech Tracking: A simple technology used by pet owners has the potential to be the most effective and invasive security technology yet. By passing a scanner over the lost pet with an implanted microchip a veterinarian can pick up the number and locate the owner in a database. It wasn't until September 11th that people began to recognize how valuable this technology might be in a disaster. (...) Research is currently underway to marry this to a satellite-based global positioning system. "It's the first product where - through GPS information and through our data centre - people actually sit and monitor the whereabouts and vital signs of a loved one such as an elderly parent or a child." This technology could become the ultimate in biometric identification - and with it the potential to turn us all into walking bar codes.

Privacy Commissioner Warns: Privacy Under Attack (Jan 17) MUST READ FOR ALL CANADIAN JOURNALISTS!
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/ar/02_04_10_e.asp
Read Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski's Annual Report, where he warns that the Canadian government is rapidly eroding personal privacy in the wake of September 11.

Health Workers Balk at Smallpox Vaccinations (Feb 7)
http://www.iwon.com/home/health/health_article/0,11720,511678|02-08-2003:06:00,00.html
Health-care professionals are citing medical, political and financial reasons for not towing the U.S. government line and getting smallpox vaccinations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shipped 204,600 doses of vaccine to 40 states, as part of its stated effort to inoculate 500,000 health-care workers who would likely be caring for smallpox patients. But the CDC reports that those workers aren't rolling up their sleeves en masse: Only 687 people in 16 states had volunteered since the program was inaugurated two weeks ago. This apparent slow start seems to reflect a deep ambivalence among doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals not only about the vaccine, but also about the war against terrorism. CLIP



1.

From: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0126-04.htm

"DOES TONY HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THE FLIES ARE LIKE THAT FEED OFF THE DEAD?'

By Robert Fisk
The Independent
January 26

On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind.

"Just for the record," the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see -- the filth and obscenity of corpses -- cannot be shown. First because it is not "appropriate" to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war.

That of course was in 1991. The "highway of death", they called it -- there was actually a parallel and much worse "highway of death" 10 miles to the east, courtesy of the US Air Force and the RAF, but no one turned up to film it -- and the only true picture of the horrors we saw was the photograph of the shrivelled, carbonised Iraqi soldier in his truck. This was an iconic illustration of a kind because it did represent what we had seen, when it was eventually published.

For Iraqi casualties to appear on television during that Gulf War -- there was another one between 1980 and 1988, and a third is in the offing -- it was necessary for them to have died with care, to have fallen romantically on their backs, one hand over a ruined face. Like those First World War paintings of the British dead on the Somme, Iraqis had to die benignly and without obvious wounds, without any kind of squalor, without a trace of shit or mucus or congealed blood, if they wanted to make it on to the morning news programmes.

I rage at this contrivance. At Qaa in 1996, when the Israelis had shelled Lebanese refugees at the UN compound for 17 minutes, killing 106 civilians, more than half of them children, I came across a young woman holding in her arms a middle-aged man. He was dead. "My father, my father," she kept crying, cradling his face. One of his arms and one of his legs was missing -- the Israelis used proximity shells which cause amputation wounds -- but when that scene reached television screens in Europe and America, the camera was close up on the girl and the dead man's face. The amputations were not to be seen. The cause of death had been erased in the interests of good taste. It was as if the old man had died of tiredness, just turned his head upon his daughter's shoulder to die in peace.

Today, when I listen to the threats of George Bush against Iraq and the shrill moralistic warnings of Tony Blair, I wonder what they know of this terrible reality. Does George, who declined to serve his county in Vietnam, have any idea what these corpses smell like? Does Tony have the slightest conception of what the flies are like, the big bluebottles that feed on the dead of the Middle East, and then come to settle on our faces and our notepads?

Soldiers know. I remember one British officer asking to use the BBC's satellite phone just after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. He was talking to his family in England and I watched him carefully. "I have seen some terrible things," he said. And then he broke down, weeping and shaking and holding the phone dangling in his hand over the transmission set. Did his family have the slightest idea what he was talking about? They would not have understood by watching television.

Thus can we face the prospect of war. Our glorious, patriotic population -- albeit only about 20 per cent in support of this particular Iraqi folly -- has been protected from the realities of violent death. But I am much struck by the number of letters in my postbag from veterans of the Second World War, men and women, all against this new Iraqi war, with an inalienable memory of torn limbs and suffering.

I remember once a wounded man in Iran, a piece of steel in his forehead, howling like an animal -- which is, of course, what we all are -- before he died; and the Palestinian boy who simply collapsed in front of me when an Israeli soldier shot him dead, quite deliberately, coldly, murderously, for throwing a stone; and the Israeli with a chair leg sticking out of her stomach outside the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem after a Palestinian bomber had decided to execute the families inside; and the heaps of Iraqi dead at the Battle of Dezful in the Iran-Iraq war -- the stench of their bodies wafted through our helicopter until the mullahs aboard were sickened; and the young man showing me the thick black trail of his daughter's blood outside Algiers where armed "Islamists" had cut her throat.

But George Bush and Tony Blair and Dick Cheney and Jack Straw and all the other little warriors who are bamboozling us into war will not have to think of these vile images. For them it's about surgical strikes, collateral damage and all the other examples of war's linguistic mendacity. We are going to have a just war; we are going to liberate the people of Iraq -- some of whom we will obviously kill -- and we are going to give them democracy and protect their oil wealth and stage war crimes trials and we are going to be ever so moral, and we are going to watch our defence "experts" on TV with their bloodless sandpits and their awesome knowledge of weapons which rip off heads.

Come to think of it, I recall the head of an Albanian refugee, chopped neatly off when the Americans, ever so accidentally, bombed a refugee convoy in Kosovo in 1999 which they thought was a Serb military unit. His head lay in the long grass, bearded, eyes open, severed as if by a Tudor executioner. Months later, I learned his name and talked to the girl who was hit by the severed head during the US air strike and who laid the head reverently in the grass where I found it. Nato, of course, did not apologise to the family. Nor to the girl. No one says sorry after war. No one acknowledges the truth of it. No one shows you what we see. Which is how our leaders and our betters persuade us -- still -- to go to war.



2.

From: Sand <palestine@uruklink.net>

The View From Baghdad

February 4

Dear Friends, Greetings from Baghdad!

It is very late here and I am sleepy. The hotel will not stop playing the theme from "The Last of the Mohicans" over and over again and we have had an exhausting day. Once again I will try to give you some idea of what it is like to be in Iraq during this time. And once again, as I have little time, this may be somewhat disorganized. But first I just have to share some very strong impressions.

It becomes clear so quickly here that the Iraqis are not prepared and cannot prepare for war. They wait for the terror to come as helpless as any people have ever been. They are totally unprepared. They are severely lacking medically and only have food to last three months. They have nowhere to go and if Team Bush does as they have threatened, and Baghdad is "leveled to the ground," they will have murdered five million helpless people. These people are sitting ducks. The US is the biggest military might in the world. The Iraqis are a depleted people, stripped of all economic support and without resources. The word genocide has been raised by some of the humanitarian workers here and as the days pass I see it also. It is the murder of a whole people.

Do you remember the old movies of Christians being thrown out into the coliseum to be killed by lions? It seems a little like that from the view from here.

The insidious nature of the sanctions become more and more apparent as we go deeper into the society and see the lives of everyday people. Every person in Baghdad receives rationed food. Iraqi cannot supply its own people under the sanctions. The UN oversees the "Food for Oil" program and people receive rations papers based on the number of persons in a family. At one time the Kurds in the north grew wheat which was sold throughout Iraq. But with the sanctions they can no longer sell directly in Iraq. Without a market they have stopped growing the wheat. An ancient agricultural tradition dies as the fields grow dusty. And a culture begins to wane.

People are beginning to come to us for medicine. A waiter needs cough syrup for his little boy. A woman is waiting for us at the hotel for vitamins for her children. Someone's uncle has pneumonia and needs antibiotics. The waiter has tears streaming down his cheeks and you can see it is humiliating for him to ask.

Today we saw a part of the food distribution, visited an orphanage and walked in a very poor neighborhood where we were mobbed by children.

Yesterday was a very difficult day as we went to a bomb shelter which was hit in February, 1991. It was filled with over a thousand people, mostly women and children. 480 died. The shelter was a very large concrete structure built into the ground. The walls were at least six feet thick made of concrete and rebar. The shelter was two stories deep into the ground. We were told that the people came there from the surrounding neighborhood to feel safe. They made their beds on the floor and slept during the bombing of Baghdad. At 4:30 in the morning a rocket sliced open the roof of the shelter and exploded. A few minutes later another rocket bore in through the hole made by the first and went through to the second level. From the survivors we hear that there was horror and chaos. People in the immediate area were incinerated on the spot. As the inferno grew the temperature was estimated to reach 450 degrees. All along the floor of the shelter you can see the marks of incinerated bodies. You can see the shape of the person and sometimes even the features of the face. I will tell you the hardest thing was to see a mother and her child, a black blotchy outline and smears of blood, etched into the floor. I just could not imagine it. There are photos of the victims on the walls and you cannot help but look at the outlines etched on the walls and floor and the photos and wonder, "was that her?"

And I wonder exactly who shot that rocket. Does he or she know the horrible result? What officer gave the command? Who authorized this?

Another thing that is becoming clear is the resignation of the people here in Baghdad. They seem to believe that it is inevitable they will be bombed; that war is coming and they will be destroyed. I have come to recognize this kind of sigh when they speak about the coming onslaught. A little shudder. It is difficult for them to talk about the future. Or perhaps it might be better to say "a future".

I have never spent time with people anywhere without hearing about plans for the future. "This child is planning to go to the university" or "this summer we hope to take a vacation". Or "Tomorrow I will see my friend" or whatever. People in Iraq do not speak about the future. At first I just could not figure it out, what was lacking in conversations. There was a missing element. It was the future. They do not know if they will have a future.

When they speak of this inevitable war they just hope that somehow, they and their families might survive. They know that within a few weeks they will lose friends; perhaps family. You can see that parents are overly protective of their children. There is this desperation. And you can see that they want to believe that we can somehow help them. "You are Americans, perhaps you can speak to the president and explain that we are no threat".

Today we went to a restaurant high about the city. As we were looking out at the city a young man approached two of us. He wanted to know why Americans wanted to bomb Iraqi people. We tried to explain the oil thing and he kept on asking, with a genuine innocence, "Why?". We could tell that he really thought we knew something and could explain it to him. It just did not make sense to him and he really wanted to understand.

It's gotten out that there are these American women in town who are working for Peace. Everywhere we go we get a thumbs up. We flash the peace sign and they flash it back. Sometimes we are treated almost like celebrities, with people coming up in the streets and thanking us. Men in suits, women in chadors, young men and women in jeans with hip haircuts, they all take a moment to thank us. They tell us they know it is not the American people who want to bomb them. They are completely lacking in hostility. When we say we are from the United States at first there is this surprise and then, immediately a smile.

Last night three of us also met with this totally wonderful group of 43 Spanish actors, dancers and singers. They plan to take over their embassy here. They embody word "vivacious" completely. After we had talked a while and described our work here and in the US, one of the reporters with them began to ask us about the American people. Why were they allowing this to happen. How could they tolerate this action by our President? Don't Americans read? How is it possible that Americans would allow their government to commit this horrible atrocity and not take action? Whoa, these were such hard things to describe. And we never did completely satisfy their questions. Maybe we don't fully understand it ourselves.

There are many Europeans here. Members of the European Parliament are here. They are all outraged and radical. They speak of the American "Bully" and in one press conference yesterday the US was described as "arrogant" and "full of itself". It's kinda the way I see it. It's embarrassing when you see the common view Europeans have of people in America.

We are moving about the city a lot and seeing many things. Orphanages, hospitals, etc., and meeting with officials of various programs. There has not been time for small quiet talks with Iraqi people. We are moving fast.

A quick note to Rick Abraham. I am with your friend Diane Wilson and just love her! For the rest of you Diane is a fourth generation fisherman from the Texas Gulf coast. She has spent the last fifteen years fighting environmental pollution. She has tied in the environmental issues to this war very nicely. Tonight we were talking about the reality that if we had developed or were in the process of developing alternative energy, there would be no Iraqi war. Without the need and greed for oil, we would not be bearing down on these people to take control of their oil.

Thursday we go to Babylon!! We will spend the day with a family and see their buffalo farm. Doctors without Borders are here and tomorrow morning we will meet with them.

Every night here as I go to sleep I cannot help but think of faces of children I have seen that day. I think of them being put to bed by their parents and how it will be if the bombing starts. It is beyond the imagination that these little children are seen as so expendable, "acceptable collateral damage." What kind of monster finds that acceptable. All for oil.

And I cannot help but think of that one young man who looked at me so direct and asked with such urgency, "Please help us."

Good night all, and Peace,

Sand




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