The Untamed Fire of Freedom …

Back to Main

January 23, 2005

Dostoevsky’s untamed fire of freedom lets the water in Baghdad evaporate.

Aljazeera: Baghdad residents face water crisis

Most of the Iraqi capital – particularly the western districts – has been without water for the past seven days.

Riverbend reports:

There hasn’t been a drop of water in the faucets for six days. six days. … We’ve been purchasing bottles of water (the price has gone up) to use for cooking and drinking.

…

Water is like peace- you never really know just how valuable it is until someone takes it away.
…

We’ve given up on democracy, security and even electricity. Just bring back the water

The tactic of water denial has been used on Baghdad before.

Posted by b on January 23, 2005 at 15:45 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Operation Limited Freedom – The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is a hub of ‘extreme diplomacy.’ All moves are scripted, and there’s even a hostage negotiator on site.

“This is an assignment like no other,” said Limbert. He was one of 52 Americans who survived the 444-day hostage ordeal in Tehran, where “we moved around freely until the day it all happened. We didn’t face conditions like that.”
Even Soviet diplomats in Afghanistan during the 1980s had greater mobility, said Moscow’s current ambassador in Kabul, Zamir Kabulov. A junior officer at the time, Kabulov reminisced about those years, when the Soviet occupation was the target of Afghan militants, including a young Saudi commander named Osama bin Laden.
“There was no danger of terrorism in the streets of Kabul then,” Kabulov said in a telephone interview with The Times. “A random artillery explosion, yes, but no blown-up cars, no suicide bombings, no ambushes, no kidnappings.”
…
The mission has so many types that Browning counts beds to determine how many work, eat and sleep on the embassy grounds. The number is 3,700.
They include U.S. consultants to Iraqi ministries, one of the largest CIA operations since Vietnam, managers and contractors involved in an $18-billion reconstruction program, and the headquarters staff for the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq.
Security personnel alone number 2,500, a unit only slightly smaller than a full Marine Corps regiment. At its heart, the embassy is home to 135 State Department career diplomats, several hundred U.S. civilian contract employees and local Iraqi support staff.
…
Still, recruitment is a problem and attrition is high. Officials say they lose 30% of all local employees within their first month.
Although the number of Iraqi employees is a fraction of the 600 discussed at the State Department last summer, Limbert says interest among U.S. career diplomats for a Baghdad assignment has been so high that many have had to be turned way.
The perks include a relatively short, one-year assignment, hazardous duty and hardship pay that boost the normal salary by 50%, and the chance to work on the highest-priority foreign policy issue. With little to do but work, few bother to take days off.
For what little time off they get, there are DVDs, a gym, a pool fashioned out of one of the palace’s large fountains, poker nights and informal parties.
“The social life’s not all that bad,” said a 22-year-old civilian on the embassy support staff. “It’s kind of like college.”

and besides a social life thats ok, I am sure the Embassy also has water.

Posted by: Fran | Jan 23 2005 16:13 utc | 1

Holiday Offers Little Joy in Iraq

Posted by: Fran | Jan 23 2005 16:42 utc | 2

Fareed Zakaria:

Bush has also pushed higher on the agenda the question of American hypocrisy. I often argue with an Indian businessman friend of mine that America is unfairly singled out for scrutiny abroad. “Why didn’t anyone criticize the French or Chinese for their meager response to the tsunami?” I asked him recently. His response was simple. “America positions itself as the moral arbiter of the world, it pronounces on the virtues of all other regimes, it tells the rest of the world whether they are good or evil,” he said. “No one else does that. America singles itself out. And so the gap between what it says and what it does is blindingly obvious—and for most of us, extremely annoying.”

Posted by: b | Jan 23 2005 16:45 utc | 3

B: The trick is that French do that, to some extent, but no one takes them seriously, and French arrogance is a part of common wisdom since decades – probably fueled by the American loathing of French, too.
Raimondo could also have found direct parallels with some speeches from Hitler about promoting freedom, white man’s burden, liberation of the masses enslaved by communism, propagating the civilised and enlightened values of the Aryan race, and the like. Frankly, I’m pretty sure Lenin didn’t take at face value that kind of communist messianism, if only because for decades he was convinced the revolution wouldn’t come to Russia before the end of the 20th century. On the other hand, there’s barely any doubt Hitler really thought he was the agent of history, following higher powers that acted through him to get rid of all the undesirables of the world. I suspect that Bush is just as serious. I just wonder if he’ll go into openly provoke catastrophes and a new version of human sacrifices in the hope of causing a direct intervention from “higher powers” (for Bush, basically, the heretical raputre).

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jan 23 2005 16:59 utc | 4

Clueless Joe:

Oh, yes, he will. Why do you think the Republicans aren’t really all that worried about Al Queda getting nuclear weapons? (And, lest I be accused of hyperbole, it is widely agreed that if and when Musharraf dies, that will happen, and yet the Republican party isn’t rushing to his defense as they ought to be if they are serious about avoiding that possibility.) It’s because if any Islamic terrorist group—or, in fact, any group or nation which is not actively a U.S. ally—uses a single nuke, Bush will have the excuse he needs to use nukes anywhere and everywhere he likes. And you can bet he will like. (I wonder if he realizes that it will cut off the oil supply if the middle east becomes radioactive. Do you suppose anyone has told him?) I think he is actually counting on that, which is the real reason he is so confident that we won’t need a draft. After all, if the U.S. is just going to switch over to dropping nukes, all we really need is a few good pilots…

In Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything, there is a passage that runs something like: “it is actually a lucky thing that it took so long for anyone to realize that neutrons exist, because if they had been found much earlier, then atomic weaponry would have been developed in Europe before World War II, most likely by the Germans.” Just think—all those people who are inordinately fascinated by World War II (and there really do seem to be vast numbers of them) will now get to find out what would have happened if the losing side had had the bomb! How nice for them.

Posted by: Blind Misery | Jan 23 2005 17:40 utc | 5

This reading of Strauss seems to correspond with the Bush inaugural address.
Raimondo needs to recognize the “noble lies” the neocons are feeding to the American people for what they are…the groundwork for totalitarian rule via perpetual war. Bush has, in his inaugural, shown that he has totally aligned himself with the neocons. Anyone who supports Bush, knowing the philosophical basis for his advisors, supports totalitarianism for the American people, not to mention the rest of the world.
Strauss wrote to Löwith in May 1933, five months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor and a month after implementation of the first anti-Jewish legislation, that “Just because Germany has turned to the right and has expelled us,” meaning Jews, “it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected. To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right—fascist, authoritarian, imperial [emphasis in original]—is it possible in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man’ to protest against the mean nonentity,” the mean nonentity being the Nazi party. In other words, he is attacking the Nazis from the right in this letter. He wrote that he had been reading Caesar’s Commentaries, and valued Virgil’s judgment that, “under imperial rule the subjected are spared and the proud are subdued.” And he concluded, “there is no reason to crawl to the cross, even to the cross of liberalism, as long as anywhere in the world the spark glimmers of Roman thinking. And moreover, better than any cross is the ghetto.”
Two months later, in July 1933, he wrote to Schmitt—he did not realize that Schmitt had joined the Nazi party, or seemed not to fully understand what the regime was about in terms of its anti-Semitism—asking for help in getting entrée to Charles Maurras, the French right-wing Catholic leader of the Action Française. What all of this suggests is that in the 1930s Strauss was not an anti-liberal in the sense in which we commonly mean “anti-liberal” today, but an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. Strauss was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of pure fascism. Like Schmitt, what Strauss hated about liberalism, among other things, was its inability to make absolute judgments, its inability to take action. And, like Schmitt, he sought a way out in a kind of pre-liberal decisiveness. I would suggest that this description of fascist, authoritarian, imperial principles accurately describes the current imperial project of the United States. Because of this, examining the foundational elements of Strauss’s political theory helps us to see something important about our current situation, independently of any kind of Straussian direct influence, although there is certainly some of that.
This interview is also essential to read the tealeaves of America’s next four years (at the least), unless those in positions to stop the neocons do so.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 23 2005 17:46 utc | 6

Rumsfeld’s special ops here AT HOME
The bottom line is that the Pentagon death squads are active and death-ready on US soil without the meager congressional oversight that has characterized the nsa, batf, fbi, etc.
This is rather unpleasant news.
Guess, if Israel to kill people in U.S., allied nations then it’s a-okay!
Israel to kill people in U.S., allied nations
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
Published 1/15/2003 7:14 PM
Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to
the war on terror that will include staging targeted
killings in the United States and other friendly
countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told
United Press International.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has forbidden the
practice until now, these sources said, speaking on
condition of anonymity.
The Israeli statements were confirmed by more than a
half dozen former and currently serving U.S. foreign
policy and intelligence officials in
interviews with
United Press International.
But an official at the Israeli Embassy in Washington
told UPI: “That is rubbish. It is completely untrue.
Israel and the United States have such a close and
co-operative intelligence relationship, especially in
the field of counter-terrorism, that the assertion is
ludicrous.”
With the appointment of Meir Dagan, the new director
of Israel’s Mossad secret intelligence service, Sharon
is preparing “a huge budget” increase for the spy
agency as part of “a tougher stance in fighting global
jihad (or holy war),” one Israeli official said.
Since Sharon became Israeli prime minister, Tel Aviv
has mainly limited its practice of targeted killings
to the West Bank and Gaza because “no one wanted such
operations on their territory,” a former Israeli
intelligence official said.
Another former Israeli government official said that
under Sharon, “diplomatic constraints have prevented
the Mossad from carrying out ‘preventive operations’
(targeted killings) on the soil of friendly countries
until now.”
He said Sharon is “reversing that policy, even if it
risks complications to Israel’s bilateral relations.”
A former Israeli military intelligence source agreed:
“What Sharon wants is a much more extensive and tough
approach to global terrorism, and this includes
greater operational maneuverability.”
Does this mean assassinations on the soil of allies?
“It does,” he said.
“Mossad is definitely being beefed up,” a U.S.
government official said of the Israeli agency’s
budget increase. He declined to comment on the Tel
Aviv’s geographic expansion of targeted killings.
An FBI spokesman also declined to comment, saying:
“This is a policy matter. We only enforce federal
laws.”
A congressional staff member with deep knowledge of
intelligence matters said, “I don’t know on what basis
we would be able to protest Israel’s actions.” He
referred to the recent killing of Qaed Salim Sinan al
Harethi, a top al Qaida leader, in Yemen by a remotely
controlled CIA drone.
“That was done on the soil of a friendly ally,” the
staffer said.
But the complications posed by Israel’s new policy are
real.
“Israel does not have a good record at doing this sort
of thing,” said former CIA counter-terrorism official
Larry Johnson.
He cited the 1997 fiasco where two Mossad agents were
captured after they tried to assassinate Khaled
Mashaal, a Hamas political leader, by injecting him
with poison.
According to Johnson, the attempt, made in Amman,
Jordan, caused a political crisis in Israeli-Jordan
relations. In addition, because the Israeli agents
carried Canadian passports, Canada withdrew its
ambassador in protest, he said. Jordan is one of two
Arab nations to recognize Israel. The other is Egypt.
At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
said, “I have no intention of stopping the activities
of this government against terror,” according to a CNN
report.
Former CIA officials say Israel was forced to free
jailed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and 70 other
Jordanian and Palestinian prisoner being held in
Israeli jails to secure the release of the two
would-be Mossad assassins.
Phil Stoddard, former director of the Middle East
Institute, cited a botched plot to kill Ali Hassan
Salemeh, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics
massacre. The 1974 attempt severely embarrassed Mossad
when the Israeli hit team mistakenly assassinated a
Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway.
Salemeh, later a CIA asset, was killed in Beirut,
Lebanon, in 1976 by a car bomb placed by an Israeli
assassination team, former U.S. intelligence officials
said.
“Israel knew Salemeh was providing us with preventive
intelligence on the Palestinians and his being killed
pissed off a lot of people,” said a former senior CIA
official.
But some Israeli operations have been successful.
Gerald Bull, an Ontario-born U.S. citizen and designer
of the Iraqi supergun — a massive artillery system
capable of launching satellites into orbit, and of
delivering nuclear chemical or biological payloads
from Baghdad to Israel — was killed in Belgium in
March 1990. The killing is still unsolved, but former
CIA officials said a Mossad hit team is the most
likely suspect.
Bull worked on the supergun design — codenamed
Project Babylon — for 10 years, and helped the Iraqis
develop many smaller artillery systems. He was found
with five bullets in his head outside his Brussels
apartment.
Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons
of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad’s highly secret
Metsada department, would stage the operations, former
Israeli intelligence sources said. Kidon is a Hebrew
word meaning “bayonet,” one former Israeli
intelligence source said.
This Israeli government source explained that in the
past Israel has not staged targeted killings in
friendly countries because “no one wanted such
operations on their territory.”
This has become irrelevant, he said.
Dagan, the new hard-driving director of Mossad, will
implement the new changes, former Israeli government
officials said.
Dagan, nicknamed “the gun,” was Sharon’s adviser on
counter-terrorism during the government of Netanyahu
in 1996, former Israeli government officials say. A
former military man, Dagan has also undertaken
extremely sensitive diplomatic missions for several of
Israel’s prime ministers, former Israeli government
sources said.
Former Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Gal Luft, who
served under Dagan, described him as an “extremely
creative individual — creative to the point of
recklessness.”
A former CIA official who knows Dagan said the new
Mossad director knows “his foreign affairs inside and
out,” and has a “real killer instinct.”
Dagan is also “an intelligence natural” who has “a
superb analyst not afraid to act on gut instinct,” the
former CIA official said.
Dagan has already removed Mossad officials whom he
regards as “being too conservative or too cautious”
and is building up “a constituency of senior people of
the same mentality,” one former long-time Israeli
operative said.
Dagan is also urging that Mossad operatives rely less
on secret sources and rely more on open information
that is so plentifully provided on the Internet and
newspapers.
“It’s a cultural thing,” one former Israeli
intelligence operative explained. “Mossad in the past
has put its emphasis on Humint (human intelligence)
and secret operations and has neglected the whole
field of open media, which has become extremely
important.”
Copyright © 2001-2005 United Press International
==========================================

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 23 2005 17:56 utc | 7

@ Uncle $cam
This article probably displays the absolute arrogance of the neocons. They can come right out and tell us that there will be foreign intelligence operatives working on US soil, killing whoever they like and it is “a policy issue” and of no concern to the FBI.
In addition, that this comes from from a Moonie media outlet leads me to believe that it has the nod of approval from the WH.
Yessirree bob, these are interesting times.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 23 2005 18:08 utc | 8

“Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguiny and expensive war of modern times.”
Ulysses Grant.
Alert and Alarmed: Whose liberty? Whose freedom?

Posted by: HTH | Jan 23 2005 18:59 utc | 9

From “terrorism” to “tyranny”.
Bush’s speech writers. 18 Jan. 2005.
“US President George W. Bush will start his second term with many of his closest and long-time aides at his side. The visual picture will largely look the same after his inauguration on January 20, but Bush’s words may sound different.
Michael Gerson, his chief speech-writer, who helped craft nearly every one of Bush’s speeches during his first term, is leaving. Gerson, 40, is expected to be replaced as head speech-writer by Wall Street Journal editorial-page writer William McGurn.
Gerson is one of the best-known presidential speech-writers. One sign that he was no ordinary speech-writer was the fact that he had an office suite on the second floor of the West Wing of the White House, in an area close to the president.”
(…) ChinaDaily
Here is W. McGurn spouting out his own speech (Oct. 28, 2004):
Excerpt:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the silencing of Bob Casey continues to rattle through our political halls today. It does so because even three decades after the Supreme Court believed it had dispatched of the issue once and for all, we see the hubris of the assumption: Blackmun locuta est; causa finita est.
The idea that Roe is the last word has been echoed in follow-up High Court rulings, and even Attorney General John Ashcroft, during his confirmation, declared Roe v. Wade settled law. The problem is that no one believes him. In fact Roe is arguably the least settled law in the country.”
(…)
NatReview
He will have to drop the latin, that’s for sure.

Posted by: Blackie | Jan 23 2005 20:22 utc | 10

more…
The Iraq debacle has set them back – to leap forward!
After expending so much effort on plugging terrorism, and its close association to 9/11 and Muslims and/or Ay-rabs (in prep. for controlling much of the ME and particularly Saudi – remember thoses Saudi terrarists?) it has now been judged that more scope, more freedom , a less narrow focus, is needed.
Terrorism is too thin, too last week, has been cogently contested. Hail tyranny! After all, the leaders of any country or group can be taxed with tyranny – duh, no freedom there. Then, it is just the leaders who are blamed….
There is a lot oil in the ME, but it exists in other places too.

Posted by: Blackie | Jan 23 2005 20:48 utc | 11

Lying Bastard

Testifying before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2003 about the rebuilding of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the story of Jumana Michael Hanna, an Iraqi woman who had recently come to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad with a tale of her horrific torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Hanna’s tale — more than two years of imprisonment that included being subjected to electric shocks, repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted — was unusual in that she was willing to name the Iraqi police officials who participated in her torture, “information that is helping us to root out Baathist policemen who routinely tortured and killed prisoners,” Wolfowitz said. But Hanna’s story, which 10 days before Wolfowitz’s testimony had been the subject of a front-page article in the Washington Post, appears to have unraveled. Esquire magazine, in this month’s issue, published a lengthy article, by a writer who was hired to help Hanna produce a memoir, saying that her account had all but fallen apart.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 23 2005 20:58 utc | 12

Reminds me of the babies ripped out of incubators by Saddam’s henchmen, attested to by the o-so-innocent-pretty-young girl, Nariyah, daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. (Gulf War I.)
One link

Posted by: Blackie | Jan 23 2005 21:45 utc | 13

So, if they don’t choose the freedom that has been chosen for them what happens to all those dehydrated, feverish, but not-quite dead Iraqis?
Maybe the Neandercons planning on shipping them all to New Hampshire…..

Posted by: RossK | Jan 24 2005 1:07 utc | 14

Detroit Free Press (Knight Ridder):
U.S. in danger of losing the war – Analysis finds troubling trends in Iraq: Rising fatalities, attacks

Unless something dramatic changes, the United States is heading toward losing the war in Iraq.
A Knight Ridder Newspapers analysis of U.S. government statistics shows the U.S. military steadily losing ground to the predominately Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq.
The analysis suggests that, short of a newfound will by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large escalation of U.S. troop strength, the United States won’t win the war.

Nothing really new here, but finally its getting some publication.

Posted by: b | Jan 24 2005 8:03 utc | 15

Riverbend also notes that Monsanto is forcing Iraqi farmers to buy their GM seeds…
Instead of sustainable agricultural models
Vandana Shiva calls such practices the equivalent of genocide because monsanto is making seeds that cannot reproduce (and thus have to be bought each year) …seeds like commit suicide because it’s good for biz…
She also notes

As decision making is centralized away from local communities to national governments—and ultimately to corporate board rooms, financial markets, institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO—representative democracy loses its base in economic democracy. As local and national governments lose control over economic resources and priorities, elected leaders can no longer build a political base by championing programs responsive to family and community needs.
Political demagogues of the far right emerge to fill the void by channeling the anger and insecurity created by empire’s program of scarcity, injustice, and exclusion into an us-versus-them politics that blames particular national, racial, culture, or religious groups. The rise of the LePens in France, the Fortuyns in Netherlands, Haiders in Austria, and the Narendra Modis in India is a result. So there is a strong affinity between the forces of empire and a politics of hate that justifies policies of domination and exclusion. So long as people’s attention is focused on fear and hatred of foreigners or members of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, they are distracted from organizing to deal with the system of institutional domination and exploitation that is the real source of their insecurity.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 24 2005 23:56 utc | 16

Walking wounded

Posted by: Coming to a town near you | Jan 25 2005 1:55 utc | 17

Torture still routine in Iraqi jails, report says

Posted by: Plus ca change…. | Jan 25 2005 2:14 utc | 18

monsanto continued its drive to take over the worlds food markets when it announced monday that they are going to buy the seed giant Seminis for $1.4 billion.

Seminis, with sales representing 20 percent of last year’s global commercial fruit and vegetable market, offers more than 3,500 seed varieties in nearly 60 species.

Posted by: b real | Jan 25 2005 23:18 utc | 19

@breal I keep coming back to the US forcing Iraqi farmers to buy patented seed and then threatening lawsuits if they dare to save seeds. the criminality is even more outrageous when we know that many of the “patented” seeds are the result of millennia of third world peasant agriculture, “claimed” by the genetic analysts at the agricorps in much the same way that the conquistadores stuck a flag in the ground and said “This land and all its people now belong to Spain.”
theft, Enclosure, extortion. jeez, I just love the free market.
myself, I resolutely plant only open-pollinated (Open Source as it were) cultivars.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 25 2005 23:38 utc | 20

i was researching this Seminis takeover a bit more & vandana shiva, in her 2000 book stolen harvest: the hijacking of the global food supply, points out that monsanto spent over $8 billion buying seed companies between 1995 and 1998. tell me they aren’t setting us up & expecting big payoffs down the road. $2.3 billion takeover of Dekalb. Delta and Pine Land for $1.8 billion. Cargill’s int’l seed operations in central and latin america, europe, asia, and africa for another $1.4 billion. Paying 30 times the market value for Holden Seeds and 24 times the market value for a stake in MAHYCO, india’s largest seed company. and so and so forth. damn. i’m afraid to look at the period since 1999.

Posted by: b real | Jan 26 2005 2:29 utc | 21

Back to Main