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1) CIA drone missile blows up six accused potential terrorists

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Dick Eastman

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Nov 5, 2002, 2:53:03 PM11/5/02

1) CIA drone missile blows up six accused potential terrorists in
Yemen;

2) After Labor Walkout, Sharon dissolves Knesset;

3) Israel trains/conditions US troops for urban warfare 4) Spokane
man reports from the Iraq-Jordan Border =========

Item #1:

Tuesday, 5 November, 2002, 07:16 GMT CIA 'killed al-Qaeda suspects'
in Yemen

The explosion happened in a tribal stronghold

America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out an attack
in Yemen that killed six suspected members of Osama Bin Laden's
al-Qaeda network, according to US officials.

The wrecked jeep was taken away for inspection

Unnamed sources say the men died after the car they were travelling
in was hit by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA plane early on
Monday.

Although those killed have not been officially identified, Yemeni
sources say they include Ali Senyan al-Harthi, whom the US has
linked to the attack on the warship USS Cole off Aden in October
2000.

A BBC correspondent in Washington says that this would be the first
time the US had carried out such an attack outside Afghanistan.

Determination

"As I understand it, it was an agency drone," a US official told
the Reuters news agency.

"It would be a very good thing if [al-Harthi] were out of business."

-- Donald Rumsfeld

It was reportedly a Hellfire missile that was used to target Harthi,
also known as Abu Ali, after his car had been observed for a period
of time.

The CIA would not comment publicly on the reports.

Neither would President George W Bush.

But during campaigning for US Congressional elections he told voters
of his continued determination to destroy al-Qaeda.

"The only way to treat them is [for] what they are - international
killers.

"And the only way to find them is to be patient, and steadfast,
and hunt them down. And the United States of America is doing just
that."

The six men were killed on Sunday in the northern province of Marib,
about 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of the capital Sana'a, Yemeni
security officials said.

'Planning attack'

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to say whether American
forces had any role in the attack on Harthi's car, but he congratulated
Yemen on its cooperation with the US in the fight against al-Qaeda.

Harthi is said to have been sheltering in this village

"The arrangement has been a good one and it is on-going," he said.

"It would be a very good thing if he were out of business," he
added, referring to the reports of Harthi's death, while declining
to confirm them.

Earlier, a Yemeni Government source told the BBC that communications
equipment and traces of explosives were found in the car.

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner says it is believed
the occupants may have been planning an attack on Western interests.

"Authorities have been monitoring this particular car for a while
and we believe those men belonged to the al-Qaeda terror network,"
an official told the Associated Press.

On the run

Harthi was wanted by the FBI for his alleged links to al-Qaeda.

He has been on the run in Yemen, pursued by security forces which
have been looking for him and another suspect in the USS Cole
bombing case, Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, for the past year.

Harthi had been moving between locations and hiding amongst the
well-armed tribes.

When Yemeni Government forces came looking for him in al-Hosun, a
tribal village in Marib, last December they were driven back by a
hail of gunfire.

Eighteen Yemeni soldiers and three villagers died in the incident,
but Harthi was not found.

Yemen remains keen to shed its image as a haven for al-Qaeda
militants and says it is holding 85 members of the organisation
arrested after a manhunt.

US military personnel were deployed there earlier this year, also
to co-ordinate a crackdown on militants.

On Sunday two people were injured when a helicopter carrying
employees from an American oil company to Marib came under gunfire
just after take-off and was forced to make an emergency landing at
Sana'a airport.

======

Item #2:

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=227206

Tuesday, November 05, 2002 Cheshvan 30, 5763 Last update - 14:09
05/11/2002

PM Sharon dissolves Knesset, election slated for Feb. 2003 By Yossi
Verter, Nadav Shragai and Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz Correspondents,
Ha'aretz Service and Agencies

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Tuesday that President Moshe
Katsav had acquiesced to his request to dissolve the Knesset and
call elections for early February, 2003.

Sharon, who held an early-morning meeting with Katsav, told a
nationally-televised press conference that his reluctant conclusion
was that early elections were inevitable, adding that dissolving
the 15th Knesset is the least damaging of available options.

"Elections are the last thing this country needs right now," said
the prime minister, "the political blackmail of the far right has
left me no option."

Sharon did not set an exact date for the new elections, but said
they should be held in the first days of February. Asked about
February 4, a date mentioned in media reports, Sharon said: "I'm
being told that this is the date."

Earlier, Katsav told a press conference at the President's Residence
in Jerusalem that, "The prime minister told me that he is unable
to form a stable coalition, and I was persuaded by the prime minister
and was convinced that the conditions demand early elections."

At his press conference, Sharon accused the Labor Party, which
resigned en masse from the national unity government last week, of
"political whimsy," but vowed that he would not allow the new
situation to destabilize the country.

"I will manage to get the budget through; I will not do anything
to change our special relationship with the US; and I will not
change the basic guidelines of the government," the prime minister
said.

Sharon also had harsh words for the right-wing National Union-Israel
Beitenu, which had rebuffed his invitation to join the coalition.

The prime minister said the faction had come with a long list of
demands, including that he change the basic government guidelines
and that he reject a new US-backed peace plan.

Sharon said that from his first day in office, two years ago, he
|decided not to succumb to political blackmail, and that he would
not do so now. He said that under no circumstances would he endanger
the special relationship between his administration and the Bush
White House.

At their meeting Tuesday, Sharon told Katsav that early elections
are inevitable because he is unable to restore the parliamentary
majority he lost last week, when Labor bolted. As part of political
protocol, the prime minister must inform the president of intentions
to call early elections before making the announcement.

The Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee is schedules
to meet Wednesday, ahead of the elections for the 16th Knesset,
which will be held in early February 2003. Among the issues that
are still undeicided is the exact date of the elections, with the
4th and the 11th of February being touted as the most likely dates.

Committee chairman Michael Eitan will ask members to approve an
emergency order strictly limiting the campaign funding for each
party and increasing the supervision of each party's campaign
expenditure.

Knesset speaker Avraham Burg said Tuesday that the elections should
be held on February 4, but since that date is set aside as a memorial
day for the 73 IDF soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in 1997,
the elections may be pushed back by one week.

Burg also said that he would be recommending that the Knesset take
an unscheduled recess, to avoid turning parliament into a platform
for populist legislation aimed at drumming up electoral support.

| Israel's last general election was in 1999. Under a system that
has since been scrapped, Sharon was elected in a separate prime
ministerial ballot in February 2000, pledging to end a Palestinian
uprising against statehood - now entering its third year. Once
parliament is dissolved, Sharon's administration becomes a caretaker
government that no member can quit until after election day.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=227227

Tuesday, November 05, 2002 Cheshvan 30, 5763 Last update - 13:58
05/11/2002

Netanyahu says will be Foreign Minister in caretaker gov't By
Ha'aretz Service

Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday that he
would be willing to serve as foreign minister in Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's caretaker government in the run-up to the newly
announced general elections in three months' time.

| "We know that we are in the toughest security situation, we know
we are on eve of war in Iraq... I told the prime minister right
now that I am willing... to take on the position of the foreign
minister," he said.

Addressing a press conference following Sharon's announcement that
the country would go to the polls in February, Netanyahu welcomed
the early elections, predicting that the Likud Party would enjoy
a sweeping victory.

Earlier in the week, Netanyahu conditioned his acceptance of Sharon's
offer on an early ballot and economic stability. Speaking Tuesday,
the former prime minister conceded that an election was not the
best of all available "bad" options, but that it was "the right
thing to do."

Other reactions across the political spectrum ranged from relief
at the fall of 'Sharon's bloody and evil government,' in the words
of Hadash, to anger at the expected high cost of a three-month
election campaign.

At a press conference addressed by the entire Labor Party leadership,
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, whose resignation precipitated the collapse
of the government, described the move as "political maneuvering,"
and blasted Sharon's unity government for "two years of nothing --
no political, social or economic achievements. Never has a prime
minister enjoyed the support of so many, and done so little."

"The government fell because Sharon has contempt for the poor. By
deciding to disband the national unity government, the prime minister
had ended any remnant of unity that existed in Israel. How can
there be unity while settlements are given priority over unemployed?"

Ben-Eliezer asked. "For years, Likud has been betraying the weakest
sectors of society. The Labor Party will work for social and economic
equality. We are a party for all the people, not just for some
sectors."

|Former prime minister Shimon Peres said that the Labor Party left
the government since there was a feeling that the coalition was
not only "treading water" and was "paralyzed," but was only concerned
with self-preservation.

Peres said that Labor had only joined Sharon's national unity
government in the hope of bringing about a diplomatic breakthrough,
but had recently reached the conclusion that the government had
lost its ability to make decisions. "Labor did not leave the
coalition gladly," Peres added, "but did so in the knowledge that
it was doing the right thing."

Peres claimed that instead of investing in the national infrastructure,
the government was investing in the infrastructure of sectors. He
added that the social situation in Israel had never been worse,
and that this situation could not be corrected by a change in the
security situation alone.

Peres also called for resumption of talks for Arab states, saying
that Israel "cannot talk just to the Americans." He slammed the
government's policy of promoting settlements in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, charging that "we cannot tell the Americans we are
removing settlements and then carry on building them."

One of the two candidates seeking to replace Ben-Eliezer as Labor
leader, Haim Ramon, said that incumbent chairman could not provide
an alternative to Sharon. Neither Ramon or Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna,
who is also challenging Ben-Eliezer's leadership, was invited to
participate in the press conference.

Likud minister Danny Naveh backed his party leader's decision,
saying, "he did the right thing. The Likud did not want elections
- we wanted to spare the country such an exorbitant expense. But
the Labor Party has forced us into this position, and we will not
shy away from elections."

The Hadash Knesset faction welcomed the demise of the national
unity government, and called on Israeli voters to ensure that 'the
wickedness of Sharon's government was not given a chance to return."

According to MK Zvulun Orlev (National Religious Party) said that
the |election campaign would cost the country NIS 700 million (GBP
100m approx), adding that he blamed right-wing extremists like
Avigdor Lieberman for the current situation.

Center Party MK Nehama Ronen said that the public must "hold those
who forced these elections on us accountable for wastefulness."

Meretz leader Yossi Sarid told Channel Two that he had predicted
last week, "there was no chance of Sharon forming a new government.
Rats desert a sinking ship," he said, "they don't run to jump
aboard."

Sarid added that, "the national unity government was the worst in
Israel's history and Ariel Sharon was an abject failure."

Likud MK Michael Eitan placed blame for the fall of the government
on Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, saying that he is
responsible for early elections.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an adviser to Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat, said elections were an internal Israeli matter, but
that he hoped Israelis would choose a different government.

"What we are interested in right now is an Israeli government which
is committed to the peace process, because the current government
has failed in achieving peace and stability in the region," Abu
Rudeineh said.

An Islamic Jihad spokesman, Mohammed al-Hindi, said he believed
his group had contributed to the breakup of the coalition. "This
[political crisis in Israel] is another achievement of the uprising,
and this is another failure of the occupation policy against the
Palestinian people," he said.

Also of potential interest are:

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=226955

Last update - 02:09 05/11/2002 The next war By Aryeh Dayan (About
opinion polls on the likely constituents of the next Knesset)

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=226956

=========

Item #3:

From: "Vectress" <vec...@rachmones.co.uk> To:
<Aftermath-11-...@yahoogroups.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday,
November 05, 2002 4:26 AM Subject: [Aftermath] Israel Secretly
Training US Troops For Iraq Attack

11/03/2002 - Updated 09:41 PM ET Israel reportedly helping with
U.S. war preparation
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-11-03-israel-usat_x.htm By
John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - Israel is secretly playing a key role in U.S. preparations
for possible war with Iraq, helping to train soldiers and Marines
for urban warfare, conducting clandestine surveillance missions in
the western Iraqi desert and allowing the United States to place
combat supplies in Israel, according to U.S. Defense and intelligence
officials.

The activities are designed to help shorten any war with Iraq and
keep Israel out of it. But working with Israel on the war effort
is highly sensitive. It could undercut already shaky support for
an invasion among friendly Arab states.

Because Israel's activities are classified, they have drawn little
attention or criticism in the Middle East. "The Americans have
asked us to keep a low profile, and we accept that," an Israeli
official says.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, members of the Bush administration,
intelligence officials and diplomats described Israel's involvement:

* Israeli commandos, using their own satellite intelligence and
imagery provided by U.S. intelligence services, have conducted
clandestine surveillance missions of Scud missile sites in western
Iraq, according to the intelligence official and a senior Pentagon
official.

Missiles launched from western Iraq could reach Israel, potentially
carrying chemical or biological weapons. That could prompt an
Israeli response that would drive Arab nations to Saddam's side.

The teams have mapped concrete launch pads built by the Iraqis to
improve the accuracy of their Scuds. They have also conducted
reconnaissance that could help U.S. commandos attack the sites.

* Israeli infantry units with experience in urban warfare during
the Palestinian uprising helped train U.S. Army and Marine counterparts
this summer and fall for possible urban battles in Iraq, a foreign
defense official says. The Israelis have built two mock cities,
complete with mosques, hanging laundry and even the odd donkey
meandering down dusty streets. A defense official said the sites
far surpass U.S. facilities. The location of the training centers
is classified.

* The Pentagon has beefed up stocks of ammunition, fuel and other
basic military staples at six storage depots in Israel over the
past year, U.S.

Defense and intelligence officials say. The material is not part
of normal U.S. military aid to Israel but would be held in reserve
for possible use by U.S. forces in combat contingencies, such as
a threat to Israel by a neighboring state or commando missions into
western Iraq by U.S. forces. The location of the depots is classified.

Israel has declared that it "reserves the right to defend itself
against an unprovoked attack," according to an Israeli official.
But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has told Bush administration
officials that only an attack that caused mass casualties would
prompt a massive Israeli military response.

==========

Item #4:

Man from Spokane, Washington reports from the Jordan-Iraq border

Sunday, Sept. 22: Jordan-Iraq border

There are lines and lines of oil tanker trucks. They sit motionless
in the heat, idling. Their drivers cannot be seen; the windows of
the cabs act as mirrors and reflect the sun and the desert.

I'm sitting in the back of a Chevrolet SUV. We finally pass the
last oil tanker and drive under a pair of arches that come up from
both sides of the road. The driver speaks little English and hasn't
tried to communicate much during the four-hour ride to the border,
but now he leans back and says, "Welcome to Iraq."

In the seat next to me is Barbara Lubin. She is Jewish-American
and the director of the Middle East Children's Alliance. Several
years ago, she traveled around the Gulf countries and raised $4
million to build wheelchair-accessible playgrounds in the West Bank
and Gaza. Most of the playgrounds are now unusable because the
Israeli military has destroyed them or because Palestinian children
were shot while playing on them. This is her sixth trip to Iraq.

Barbara paid for most of the medical supplies in the boxes piled
behind me.

Some of the medicines we brought in our bags from the U.S.; the
rest were purchased yesterday in Jordan. Altogether there is about
$25,000 worth of badly needed supplies, everything from chemotherapy
medications to children's vitamins, syringes to rubber gloves.

The highway is very smooth. I have to squint to look out the window
at the flat, bright desert. Occasionally we pass clusters of picnic
tables and umbrellas.

In the front seat, Henry Williamson is also looking out his window.
"I could live out here," he suddenly says. Henry is a paramedic
from Charleston, South Carolina. He served three tours in Vietnam
as a combat medic and never pointed a gun at anybody. He's wearing
a Veterans for Peace button.

In another SUV in front of us, there are four more Americans. The
six of us compose the 50th Voices in the Wilderness delegation to
Iraq. Since 1995, Voices has campaigned to end the sanctions on
Iraq and has illegally sent medical supplies and toys into Iraqis.
Now Voices is concentrating on Iraq Peace Team, a project to put
nonviolent activists in Iraq before and during an attack. IPT
members will work with media, community groups and religious groups
to raise awareness in the U.S. about the effects of a possible or
ongoing war on Iraqi civilians.

I grab a few hours of sleep. When I awake, we are nearing Baghdad.
Buildings are finally visible. A large ditch filled with garbage
separates four lanes of highway. We pass a small child sitting on
a mound of trash in the ditch, eating. He or she looks up as our
SUV goes by. This time it's Barbara who says it: "Welcome to Iraq."

Monday, Sept. 23: Baghdad

It's just after 8 am, and I'm in a taxi, getting my first good look
around Baghdad. The traffic is heavy; double-decker public buses,
vans and countless Volkswagen Passats clog the streets.

There are blue-and-white road signs in Arabic and English everywhere.
We drive under catwalks, past palm trees and people, through clouds
of exhaust.

The taxi driver offers me a cigarette. I give him a double-sided
copy of the "magic letter," which explains the mission of Voices
in the Wilderness in Arabic and English. It ends with: "We pledge
to do all that we can for our brothers and sisters in Iraq."

Ramzi Kysia sits in the back seat. He is a 34-year-old Lebanese-American
Muslim who has worked for Voices and lived in Iraq for about four
months.

Before leaving the United States, Ramzi called Dell Computers to
order a laptop to use while traveling. When the salesman asked him
where he was going, Ramzi said "Iraq." Dell refused to sell him a
computer.

Ramzi and I get out at the art museum that is our destination. The
rest of the Voices group arrives in another taxi. Inside the museum,
a beautiful Iraqi woman takes us on a tour of the museum. She jokes
that we should hold hands so we don't get lost.

We go up to the third floor, which is war-themed. The paintings
are from the years Iraq was at war with Iran, and also from the
1991 Gulf War. Many of the paintings are cracking, their frames
scuffed. Mostly, the art seems to be inspired by the pain of war,
not by combat or propaganda. In one painting, a mother nurses a
child on a battlefield. Others are abstract renditions of piles of
bodies.

I wander into a room filled with paintings that stand apart from
the rest.

They are by Leila al-Attar, the celebrated Iraqi artist. She was
once the director of the Iraqi National Art Museum and worked
tirelessly to promote "the role of women, the dignity of their
existence and their humanity."

Two years after the Gulf War, on January 17, 1993, Attar was killed
when an American cruise missile struck her home, collapsing the
house on her family.

Her daughter was blinded in one eye.

On the way out, a painting by Attar I hadn't noticed before catches
my eye:

a self-portrait. It has a large hole in the middle.

T T T

At 11 am, we go to the Canal Hotel, where the United Nations'
Oil-for-Food program is headquartered. The hotel, located on the
outskirts of Baghdad, was chosen with the likelihood of future
bombings in mind.

We meet with Torben Due, an official with the World Food Program,
the organization that oversees the distribution of Oil-for-Food
rations in Iraq.

Due's office is so air-conditioned that it seems frigid. In the
corner there is a U.N. flag; on the wall, a framed photo of Kofi
Annan.

"The program is functioning very well," Due tells us stoically.
"To the extent of food available, it's being distributed."

Oil-for-Food began in the mid-1990s, after a series of U.N. reports
made the effects of sanctions on Iraq impossible to deny: "4,500
children under the age of five are dying each month from hunger
and disease" (UNICEF). "Since the onset of sanctions, the majority
of the country's population has been on a semi-starvation diet"
(WHO). "Famine threatens four million people in sanctions-hit Iraq
- one fifth of the population" (UN FAO). "Thirty-two percent of
children under five, some 960,000 children, are chronically
malnourished - a rise of 72 percent since 1991" (UNICEF).

Oil-for-Food was designed as "a temporary measure to provide for
the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people," not a long-term recovery
plan. But the program has been renewed every six months since 1997.

Assistance to Iraqis through the Oil-for-Food program is provided
in the form a monthly food basket valued at U.S. $5 on the world
market ($5 is the average monthly salary for a university professor
in Iraq). Iraqis can buy it for just over 15 cents.

Due says that in interviews, Iraqis who receive the food basket
admit selling parts to buy next month's 15-cent food basket. Items
in the basket are also sold to buy necessities like shoes.

"We have in Iraq people who are so poor that the food ration is
their main income," Due says. "It is a substantial part of the
population."

Although it's not enough, the success of the program is that it
reaches almost everyone who legally resides in Iraq. In the north,
Kurds distribute the food basket; in the center and south of Iraq,
the Iraqi government is in charge of distribution.

"They are very efficient," Due tells us. "They have an incredible
distribution system. The food is reaching the people."

But what happens if there's a war and the distribution system is
disrupted?

What kind of preparations are being made?

Due becomes uncomfortable and evades our questions. With virtually
the entire population of Iraq dependent on a monthly ration to
live, any disruption longer than a few weeks would result in famine.
"We're concerned about it because it will have an enormous impact
on the humanitarian situation," he says.

Due admits that there is no contingency plan to maintain the
distribution.

"We can't do anything in the middle of a war," he finally says.
"It's always the poor people who suffer the most."

Tuesday, Sept. 24: Baghdad

We load the boxes and duffel bags of medical supplies into taxis.
We are going to donate most of the medicine to the Al Mansour
Hospital, Baghdad's central teaching hospital.

When we get there, the media are waiting. CNN, Reuters TV, Associated
Press and other print and television reporters question, photograph
and film us in the hospital lobby.

Things get chaotic. There are about 50 Iraqi patients, families
and hospital staff milling around. The seven Voices people are
giving interviews or holding up banners that read "No War on Iraq"
and "Sanctions Are A Weapon of Mass Destruction."

A television crew from Mexico interviews me. The reporter is
surprised when I tell him that what we're doing - donating medicines
to a needy hospital - is a violation of U.S. law. "You are saying
it is illegal in the United States to give medicine to an Iraqi
hospital?" he asks. I assure him it is.

He's even more surprised by the penalty: up to 12 years in prison
and $1.25 million in fines. I tell him I've already been in trouble
for this sort of thing: I spent May in an Israeli prison for bringing
food and medical supplies to Palestinians trapped in the Church of
the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Eventually the doctors take the medicine away and the Voices group
is led to Dr. Louai's office. Dr. Louai is the director of Al
Mansour. He went to college in London and speaks very good English.

Sitting at his desk, Dr. Louai tells us how the sanctions have
affected his hospital. Before the Gulf War, Iraq was an affluent
country with a free universal health care system comparable to
those in Western Europe. The U.N.

found that the biggest health problem among children at that time
was childhood obesity.

But after the onset of sanctions, health services gradually
deteriorated.

Soon there were shortages of medicine. Communicable diseases that
had previously been almost nonexistent, like tuberculosis and
measles, reached epidemic proportions. Most medical equipment and
medical journals were embargoed, leaving Iraqi doctors without the
tools, or even knowledge, of modern medical advances.

Henry, the paramedic from South Carolina, asks Dr. Louai what
message he can take back to American physicians. Without hesitation,
Dr. Louai answers, "Please tell them to put their help to the Iraqi
doctors by sending magazines, circulars, books and, if available,
new technologies to train these people which are living here, the
Iraqi doctors."

I write this down. The Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane
is interested in sending aid to Iraqi hospitals.

We go upstairs to the children's cancer ward. Big, dirty industrial
oxygen tanks stand next to the elevator. A doctor tells us they
are intended for blacksmiths, but they are all the hospital has.
We walk down long hallways.

There are women with small children everywhere - on beds, on the
floor. None of the children is crying or showing signs of life,
but every unconscious child has a mother nearby.

The group disperses, talking with patients and doctors. I overhear
Bill Quigley, a social justice lawyer from New Orleans, say that
his wife is a nurse in a cancer ward and takes care of four patients.
The doctor says here there is one nurse for every 40 patients.

Dr. Saad Mehdi Hassani leads me around. He seems tired and has a
thousand-yard stare. I'm introduced to Rual Abdul Haziz Assad, a
13-year-old girl with lymphoma. Taking her chart, Dr. Hassani points
out the drugs that the hospital is missing on her protocol. They
have "N/A" scrawled next to them.

"Even folic acid, which is a simple vitamin, one of the vitamin B
complex agents [is missing]," Dr. Hassani says. "[Because] these
items are missing in the protocol, so she has got relapse and
survival rate will decline."

Henry says folic acid is among the medicines we brought. Rual looks
up at us, uncomprehending.

"Can you tell her that she's beautiful," asks David Smith-Ferri,
a writer and stay-at-home dad from California.

"Before she was beautiful," Dr. Hassani says, "but nowadays the
hair is falling because of cytotoxic effects."

"Do you think she's going to get better?" I ask.

"No, I don't think, because she had a lot of missed items in the
protocol and she had a relapse of the tumor. So she has a very poor
survival rate."

If he had the right medicines, could he treat her? Dr. Hassani
shakes his head. "For this patient, no."

We move to the bed of a 5-year-old boy named Ahmed. His chart has
a lot of N/As on it. "Chance of survival is very low because there
is deficiency of one-third of the treatment," Dr. Hassani says.

We go to other beds; most of the kids are missing drugs needed to
treat them. Why are so many drugs unavailable? Dr. Hassani places
the blame squarely on the U.N. Sanctions Committee 661.

Under Oil-for-Food, Iraq can sell its oil on the world market. The
profits are placed in a U.N.-controlled escrow account in New York,
and 28 percent automatically goes toward reparations to corporations
like Citibank and Boeing, and also to cover U.N. administrative
costs. Iraq can then apply to spend the remaining 72 percent of
its money on humanitarian goods and services. The sanctions committee
reviews the contracts and can put any items suspected of being
"dual use" on hold. The U.S. and Britain, through the sanctions
committee, are currently blocking more than $5 billion worth of
humanitarian contracts. In four years, Iraq has received a total
of $21.6 billion in humanitarian goods and services.

"A lot of protocols in our unit have missed or dropped items," Dr.
Hassani says. "Committee 661 prohibits the reach of these items,
so the prognosis will be very poor and survival rate will be very
down. It's a very, very big problem for Iraqi people. And even to
us [doctors], it's a problem emotionally."

I look around the room at dying children and their mothers. As Dr.
Hassani speaks, a small boy lying on a bed is staring at me. Many
of the children around him are unconscious. I have a small bag of
cheap plastic harmonicas, the kind that only play a few notes, and
I want to give him one. But I don't. He doesn't look strong enough
to blow it. I have enough toys for all the kids in the room, but
many appear too weak to play with them.

I give the toys to someone else in our group to hand out and step
into the hallway.

"Quite a world," Barbara says.

"Quite a world," David repeats, sighing.

"Do you want to see more patients?" Dr. Hassani asks me, then sees
the look on my face. "I think that's enough," he says, looking
away. "Most of them have the same problems and the same deficiencies
in the protocol."

T T T

That night we drive to Babylon for the 14th Annual Babylon Music
Festival.

Here, thousands of Iraqis cheer musicians from China, Jordan, New
Zealand, Holland, Thailand, Norway and other countries.

When Henry and I start taking pictures of the performers, smiling
young men crowd around us, wanting us to take their picture, too.
Soon there are so many people laughing, talking and trying to shake
our hands that a security guard comes and makes the crowd disperse.

This helps put the hospital visit in perspective. In spite of 12
years of sanctions, in spite of a devastated economy, in spite of
the threat of another war, Iraqis are able to have fun. For a brief
time at least, Iraq seems vibrant and alive.

I'm exhausted as we drive back to Baghdad.

Thursday, Sept. 24: Baghdad and Basra

The Voices delegation is up early, on a plane to Basra, a city in
Southern Iraq. As our plane takes off, like everyone else, I'm
worrying that U.S. or British fighter planes will shoot it out of
the sky.

Basra is under the southern no-fly zone, which we have to fly
through to get there. The no-fly zones (there is another in the
north) were set up outside the auspices of the United Nations. The
United States and Britain justify them with previous Security
Council resolutions, none of which mention no-fly zones or anything
like them. In essence, they are illegal.

Iraqi aircraft are not allowed to fly inside the zones, which cover
well over half the country. In 2000, Iraqi Airways flights began
shuttling between Baghdad and Basra. Now there are two flights a
day; a round-trip ticket is $20.

The stated goal of the no-fly zones is to protect Iraqi civilians
on the ground. But Turkish Air Force jets are allowed to fly inside
the northern zone to bomb Kurdish villages, and U.S. and British
attacks have killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians. The United Nations
did a study of the U.S. and British bombing raids between December
28, 1998 and the end of May 1999, and investigators found that 73
civilians were killed and 257 injured in 20 different locations.

We get in a taxi-van at the Basra airport. Thamer, our government
minder, shows us a book of American slang he's studying. It contains
explanations of terms like clunker, bad ass, blah-blah and Jesus!
"What about hanky-panky?"

Thamer asks innocently, and we all laugh.

We drive straight to the Sinibad Diarrhea Clinic to donate medicines.
From there we go to an elementary school.

At the school, we go from classroom to classroom introducing
ourselves. One of the Voices people is a teacher, and she relays
greetings from American students. All of the Iraqi students are
little girls. They are silent and motionless, cowed by six strange
foreigners.

Eventually the Voices delegation moves to an empty room to talk
with the teachers. I start to videotape, then duck out and go back
into one of the classrooms. There is no teacher now, and the students
giggle and point at me.

I turn the LCD screen around on the camera, so the girls can see
themselves on the small monitor. They crowd around and start
laughing. I'm quickly surrounded by 25 laughing 8-year-olds.

They start to wave at the camera and yell out greetings in Arabic.
After a few minutes, they begin jumping up and down. They climb on
the desks, on the window sill, on each other. They're laughing and
screaming, and I'm laughing, too; the noise is deafening. Things
are getting out of control, and I'm worried the girls on the desks
will fall off. I'm trying to tell them to get down, but everyone
is excited and yelling and they don't pay much attention. Someone
starts throwing water from a water bottle.

The scene is so amazing, I turn the monitor on the digital camera
around to make sure it's still recording. Suddenly all of the noise,
jumping and chaos stops. A few seconds later I turn the screen
around again, facing the girls, and they start cheering and bouncing
up and down again.

One of the teachers pokes her head in and students shut the door
and block it with their bodies. Ten minutes later, I make my way
outside and am mobbed by a hundred little girls.

Back in the van, I play the footage for the other Voices people.
Barbara's eyes get red, and she's near tears. "God bless 'em," she
says.

"Show this to Bush," someone later advises me.

T T T

That evening, we go to see Um Heider, a close friend of many Voices
workers.

Her name means "Mother of Heider"; she has been called that since
her son Heider died almost four years ago. Um Heider is an English
teacher. Her husband does not work; he fought in the Iran-Iraq war
and now suffers from psychological problems.

We sit with Um Heider's family, neighbors and children. There are
about 20 people. Everybody is laughing and talking. The children
are excited and rowdy.

Before coming, we were warned by Danny Muller, a full-time Voices
worker leading the delegation, "under no circumstances" to talk
about Heider, who died when he was 6. Voices has arranged for
journalists and delegations to hear Um Heider tell the story in
the past, and Danny doesn't want to put her through telling it
again. This will be a purely social visit, he says.

On January 25, 1999, a U.S. AGM-130 satellite-guided cruise missile
exploded in the street right outside the house, now called "missile
street." Heider was brought inside, where he died from his wounds.
His little brother Mustafa was maimed. In all, 19 died, most of
them children.

With all the handshakes, hugs and kisses, it takes a long time to
say goodbye. Outside, the same neighborhood kids who were excited
to see us when we arrived are still there. They say what they can
to us in English: "My name is Muhammad!" "My name is Ali!" "Good
morning!"

Back at the hotel, we learn that the United States has just bombed
the Basra airport.

Friday, Sept. 27: Basra

We're sitting in the office of Dr. Assad Essa, pediatrician and
chief resident of Ibn Ghazwan Hospital in Basra. He, like every
doctor I will meet in Iraq, complains about the sanctions committee
denying or putting medical supplies indefinitely on hold.

"We had a very big difficulty about the blood preparation because
we haven't a bag for the blood," he says. "You know, that is very
important. In order to donate the blood, you should put it in a
special bag. A few months ago, we had a shortage in this bag. So
you have patients, you want to give them blood, there is a donor,
but you haven't a bag. How you can give them blood?

This is the sanctions. This is the difficulties and obstacles which
are related to the sanctions."

Dr. Essa is especially angry about the denial of a centrifuge and
blood platelet separator specifically meant for his hospital. "Is
it a human behavior? Is it?" he asks us. "They refuse a medical
machine, a purely medical machine."

The conversation turns to cancer and depleted uranium (DU).

Iraq is experiencing an unexplained cancer epidemic, and the south
is the hardest hit. Much of the cancer is being linked to DU
munitions used by American troops against Iraqi tanks in 1991. DU
is a nuclear waste that remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years;
it's used to tip U.S. anti-tank shells and cruise and Tomahawk
missiles. When a DU round explodes, the DU turns into a respirable
dust and disperses. The Gulf War Syndrome suffered by many returning
American soldiers is widely attributed to DU exposure.

Most U.S. media, however, exclude DU issues while debating another
attack on Iraq.

Large areas surrounding Basra are contaminated with DU. It's in
the water and the soil, and once it enters the food chain it does
not leave. Dr. Essa tells us that his hospital has cancer rates
six times pre-1991 levels.

Birth deformities have also increased. "[We] have a large number
of patients with congenial abnormalities," Dr. Essa says. "About
four or five times [the amount before the Gulf War]. Cases we
haven't seen previously. Even we haven't seen them in books."

Three photo albums are passed around. They are average family photo
albums;

their covers have pictures of an idyllic farm, of dolphins, of the
sky.

Inside are pictures of the deformed babies born in Ibn Ghazwan. I
have never, ever seen anything like the pictures in the books.

There are pictures of babies with claws, with heads like footballs,
without faces. One newborn appears to be a pair of buttocks with
arms. Another resembles a frog. Others are missing pieces of their
skull, their brains visible. Some babies are lumpy and shapeless.
Many were born with their organs outside their bodies; their
intestines bulge out of holes in their backs or stomachs.

I ask how many are still alive. "Unfortunately, the majority of
these albums' pictures died immediately after birth," Dr. Essa
says.

I can't move. Although many of the babies' eyes are open and they
appear to be looking at the camera, this is a book of the dead.

We end the meeting to go visit some of the patients. "Would it be
a problem if I don't go up to the ward?" Bill, the lawyer from New
Orleans, says. "I'm full. I'm over full."

Upstairs, we stand around the bed of Sabrin Hassan, 37 days old.
She is emaciated and has long, bony limbs. Dr. Essa explains Sabrin
has congenital heart disease.

"That's why she's having a hard time breathing," Henry says quietly,
his hand on her head.

Dr. Essa says she is malnourished and unfit for operation. Eventually
her heart will fail.

Sabrin's mother tearfully asks the doctor if we've come to fix her
daughter's heart.

I can't look at little Sabrin any more. Dr. Essa is talking and
I'm recording him with a minidisc recorder. I concentrate on watching
the bouncing sound levels on the recorder to keep from breaking
down. But I can't shut out Dr. Essa's words:

"We want our condition to become better than this, and our situation,
and the medical supply for the Iraqi people become better, in order
to work in a good manner - in order to help as much of the Iraqi
people. Our aim is to save these people, especially these patients.
And we hope that our situation become better by lifting the sanctions
and our lives become better than this. And we want to live in peace.
That's what we want."

T T T

That night, we're visited by Adil Rahim, who taught Voices members
Arabic when a delegation lived in Basra for two months. He received
his master's degree in literary discourse analysis and teaches at
the University of Basra. "I am teaching my students not to look at
American society in the eyes of Powell or Cheney, Condoleeza Rice,"
he says. "But in the eyes of Walt Whitman, Hemingway, Martin Luther
King."

His voice quavering, Adil asks Barbara to place a white flower in
New York City on behalf of all Iraqi people in remembrance of Sept.
11. "We have no problem with the American people," he says, "We
are in the same human family."

Adil pleads with us to do something to stop another attack on Iraq.
He worries about his eight-month-old daughter. I ask her name.
"Salah, which means comforting somebody sad," Adil says. "I would
be very grateful for doing your best to avoid this little child
from being bombed."

In Basra, air raid sirens announce the daily overflights of American
and British warplanes. "Yesterday we heard explosion," Adil tells
us. "This is the no-fly zone. We are the people of the no-fly zone
area. We say, 'Please let us alone. Let us live peacefully, without
any explosions or bombing.' Daily we listen to the jets hovering
over. I'm really, really afraid."

Saturday, Sept. 28: Baghdad

Back in Baghdad, the Voices delegation attends a dinner party given
in our honor. It is in the courtyard of the house of a wealthy
Iraqi art gallery owner. The art dealer, Qasim Alsabti, is incredibly
articulate and enjoys hosting dinner parties. Last week there was
a party for the Baghdad CNN bureau here.

We meet several prominent Iraqi artists, whom Qasim has also invited.
They speak excellent English, they're fluent in French, they have
e-mail addresses. Their drivers wait outside.

Qasim says more people were expected, but no one is going out any
more because they're worried about the war.

Fish roasts over an open spit, and I drink a glass of Arak, an
Iraqi alcohol made from licorice. It's hard and clear, but when
water is added it turns white. One of the artists raises a toast
for world peace.

I switch to wine and fill my plate from a bowl of Iraqi dates,
which are famous throughout the Middle East and the world. "If you
eat Iraqi dates, you need woman," says one of the artists. "This
is Iraqi Viagra."

The conversation shifts to the impending war. Qasim says that if
the U.S.

attacks, he will sit with his Kalashnikov and wait in his house,
"because this is my home and no one will take it away from me."

After dinner, we go next door to Qasim's art gallery. The paintings
and sculptures are stunning. "Some people are thinking we are still
making art with horses and landscapes, but you can see this is
contemporary art," Qasim says, New Age music playing in the
background.

He insists that his driver take us back to our hotel. As we're
leaving, I pass under a stone archway with the name of the gallery,
Heywar, etched in Arabic.

"It means dialogue," Qasim says, pointing to the engraving. "We
need dialogue."

Sunday, Sept. 29: Baghdad

The Aameriyah shelter was built in the western Baghdad neighborhood
of Aameriyah in 1984. The walls are two meters thick, and the
shelter can hold more than a thousand people. An underground floor
has bathrooms, a kitchen and storerooms for food and medical
supplies. When Baghdad was bombed during the Gulf War, Aameriyah
residents took refuge here, among televisions, bunk beds and air
conditioning.

Inside, it takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the lack of
light. An occasional bare lightbulb hangs from the ceiling, but
the shelter is mostly dark and gloomy. The ground-level floor is
wide open and spacious; there are only a few areas sectioned off
by walls.

From a large hole in the ceiling, daylight comes into the shelter.
Below the hole there is rubble and a deep depression in the concrete.
It took two 2,000-pound smart bombs to do this on February 13,
1991, at 4:30 am. They both did exactly what they were supposed to
do: the first opened up a hole at the weakest point in the ceiling,
the air ducts, so moments later the second could go in through the
hole and kill everyone inside. Both bombs were laser-guided, accurate
to within six feet.

U.S. war planners claimed senior Iraqi government leadership was
hiding in the shelter. They were wrong; it was a place ordinary
Iraqis took refuge to escape the bombs. More than 400 people were
killed. It was termed, of course, "collateral damage." For four
days, the Pentagon and the first Bush administration denied Aameriyah
was bombed until photo evidence by foreign journalists proved
otherwise.

The Iraqis have not cleaned up Aameriyah much. The bodies and most
of the debris have been taken away, but the bomb shelter has been
preserved as a mo nument to the victims. It looks as if it was
bombed last week.

The walls and ceiling are blackened from the heat and smoke. In
some areas, there is still paint, burned and peeling. Paneling,
rods and wires dangle from the ceiling.

Wreaths and framed pictures of the dead are everywhere. Most of
the pictures are grainy blowups of smaller black-and-white photos,
so individual features are difficult to make out. They are on the
walls, on easels, on the floor.

The effect is haunting. Many photos are of babies or kids. A pencil
sketch of six members of one family is propped up by a wall.

Along one side of the shelter, there are photos of the immediate
aftermath of the bombing. There are bodies and body parts lying on
pieces of plastic outside the shelter. There are corpses with no
arms, legs or heads - just rounded hunks with ribs sticking out.
One photo is of women crying and collapsing on the ground. Another
is of the dead body of a little girl, blood running out of her
eyes, nose and ears.

The other two Voices people I'm with are ready to leave. I still
want to see basement level. The water lines, which were attached
to two gigantic water tanks, blew open when the second bomb hit.
The basement filled up with water; I can see the water line is
about five feet high. The temperature in the shelter reached over
1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the water boiled with people in it.
Human skin and hair are still stuck to the walls.

I'm alone down here. I have only been to two other places where
I've felt the weight of the entire world crushing down on me in a
similar way: the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., and the
bloody scene of a helicopter attack in Gaza City that killed a
nine-year-old girl.

Outside, the guide brings us into a trailer to sign a book. There
are messages written in Arabic, written by visitors to the shelter.
I don't know what I can say. It's my country that was responsible
for this atrocity.

Finally I write: "I came to Iraq because I refuse to accept that
this will happen again."

Monday, Sept. 30:

outskirts of Baghdad

Congressman Jim McDermott, of Seattle, and David Bonier, of Michigan,
give a press conference at the Rostamia Water Treatment plant. The
conference is held here because the two congressmen want to draw
attention to the fact that in 1991, this plant, like all the other
sewage treatment plants in Baghdad, was bombed by Coalition forces.
According the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is a
signatory, it is a war crime to bomb civilian infrastructure.

"People don't understand what war really does," McDermott says.
"In the 1991 Gulf War, we destroyed the sewage treatment plants
and sewage system of one of the cities that had the best system in
the Middle East. The death rate for children under the age of five
is a 100 percent increase. Fifty thousand children a year die
prematurely because of this destruction that war brought."

Dr. Tom Nagy is also here. He's a George Washington University
professor who is famous in the anti-sanctions movement for unearthing
a declassified U.S.

Defense Intelligence Agency paper that spells out how sanctions
will prevent Iraq from providing clean water to its citizens. Dated
only a few days before the beginning of the 1991 bombing campaign,
the document predicts what the effect of poor drinking water would
be on Iraqis, "particularly children," and how Iraq would fail to
stop the disease epidemics that would follow.

When the Rostamia plant was bombed, the sewage flowed directly into
the Tigris River. Twelve years later, sewage from the 1.5 million
people this plant serves is dumped into the river whenever the
plant loses power. Rivers in Iraq take in about 500,000 tons of
raw sewage every year.

Ibrahim Hussein, director-general of the Baghdad Sewage Authority,
has the same complaints as the doctors I met in Baghdad and Basra.
Where the doctors can't get medicines to treat patients, Hussein
can't get the parts to keep his plants running. Crucial motors
constantly break down, and more than half of the aerators don't
work. The Sanctions Committee is blocking delivery of the parts
Hussein needs for repairs and upgrades.

"There are so many items they consider dual use," Hussein says.
"They consider stainless steel dual use. But when you have a pump
with an impular with stainless steel, is it dual use?"

I ask him if preparations are being made for the possibility that
the U.S.

will target Baghdad's sewage treatment plants again. "We are making
preparations, but what can we do?" Hussein says, shaking his head.
"I mean, it's not so easy for us to make new treatment plants. What
we will do, we will throw directly into the river, without treatment.
And this is a big, big problem."

T T T

At 7 pm, I'm by the river again, this time sitting in an outdoor
cafe with Ramzi and Danny, and their Iraqi friend Dhiar.

We end up talking about the war. Almost all conversations I have
in Iraq are about war. Dhiar advises me to stay outdoors when the
bombing starts. "You don't want the building coming down on you,"
Danny says.

This kind of advice is important to me: I have no plans to leave
Iraq, even if the U.S. attacks again. I want to be here documenting
and publicizing the effects on civilians.

Dhiar asks Danny what he thinks the chances of another war are.
Dhiar is worried because of something Ramzi suggested. "I told him
to get out of the city," Ramzi says.

"I am not scared for me," Dhiar tells us. "I am scared for my
family."

Dhiar is about my age. He made it through December 1998, when the
U.S.

launched more than 400 Tomahawk and cruise missiles into Baghdad.
There is no advice or comfort I can offer him. "We are professional
here with bombings," Dhiar says.

My heart is heavy as I walk back to the hotel. It's cool out, and
there are people on the streets. In my room, I read the news and
I hear all of the arguments for another war on Iraq. But it still
makes no sense to me. It makes no sense that anyone would want to
bomb these people.

Nathan Mauger is a peace activist from Spokane. He also writes for
www.iraqjournal.org and can be reached at iptnath...@yahoo.com.

To learn more about the Iraq Peace Team project, or to get involved,
check out www.iraqpeaceteam.org.

==================

The world is fast learning the truth. America's criminal ruling
elite is responsible for the war-instigating September 11, 2001
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http://alberta.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/4578.php