Shocking and Awful - Part 2 of 3

Speaker 1: The United States has already had a busy day attacking. And it was shocking, and it was awesome. Shock and awe. Shock and awe.

Speaker 2: Shock and awe.

Speaker 1: If you have to ask, is this shock and awe, you're not seeing it. We refuse to carry on business as usual while American soldiers Stop!

Speaker 2: You better stop!

Speaker 1: My ass!

Speaker 2: My ass!

Speaker 1: You run my goddamn checkpoint, I'll fucking shoot you! Get out!

Speaker 2: Get out of the goddamn car!

Speaker 1: Sit, mister. In Iraq today, various attacks killed several Iraqis and foreign workers and wounded—

Speaker 2: 4 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq today. One was killed by a roadside bomb.

Speaker 1: Another died in a traffic accident. —to kill and maim U.S. soldiers here. There were 2 deadly ambushes today, one just west of Baghdad— One U.S. soldier was killed when his truck hit a landmine near the Syrian border. Another died in an ambush last night south of Baghdad. —seemed to be following the The number of attacks, and they certainly haven't made Iraqis feel much safer. Today, here in downtown Baghdad, there was a daylight shootout.

Speaker 2: South of Baghdad, 3 more U.S. soldiers killed. Today's deaths bring to 519 the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq since the war began. In Baghdad today, authorities—

Speaker 1: By any measure, the occupation of Iraq has not gone as well as our national leaders had led us to expect that it would. Fatalities continue to mount. Deployments have been extended. Costs are rising, and morale is declining, as more and more Americans, both outside and inside of the military, begin to question both the reasons for going to war and the clarity of the plans for democracy building in Iraq. As news broadcasts continue to report on daily bombings, gunfire and sabotage, Some questions have remained essentially unanswered. What is life like for a soldier on the ground in occupied Iraq? Scared, young, in a hostile land where they don't understand the language or customs, how do these young men and women cope with a complicated and dangerous situation that doesn't seem to improve? Hey, whoa, whoa. Why?

Speaker 2: Hey.

Speaker 1: Why? Because you need to stay safe. All right? Yes, yes, yes. Also, to what extent could these problems have been foreseen? And how long might we expect for this to go on? Lastly, what does it mean for the families of the soldiers to have loved ones in peril, uncertain of their return? To answer this last question, California Representative Maxine Waters Convened an afternoon of testimony before Congress this past September, providing the first real opportunity for some of these family members to speak their minds to their elected representatives.

Speaker 2: I invited these families here today because I believe that they have a unique and important story to tell. They have family members who are or have been on the front lines in Iraq, and the stories that their loved ones tell are drastically different. Our loved ones took an oath to defend country and Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. But there is a commitment that our government makes to our troops, that it will not send our young men and women in uniform into reckless misadventures that put them at risk needlessly. This is the part of the bargain that has been broken here.

Speaker 1: I'm the parent of a 20-year-old active-duty soldier in Ramadi. I'm also, myself, retired from an Army career that spanned from 1970 to 1990. 1996, predominantly in special operations. I was in 8 conflict areas, from Vietnam in 1970 to Haiti in 1994, and I am neither a pacifist nor a liberal.

Speaker 2: Hi, everyone. This is my husband, Mike Robison, First Lieutenant Mike Robison. I received a call from CBS News this morning at 7:45 asking me how I felt about reservists and National Guard tours being extended to 12 months. What? I screamed as I jumped out of bed. Yes, I was informed. The policy was issued by the Army late Friday evening and was never announced, not even when our commander-in-chief addressed this nation on Sunday evening. Thanks again, Department of the Army and President Bush, for showing soldiers and their families exactly how much our sacrifice means to you. I salute your efforts to support our troops. These are some of their questions and some of their The mothers in the South Florida area. First, now that it's very clear and well documented that the president used lies and twisted intelligence to send our loved ones to war, why are they still in Iraq?

Speaker 1: This administration has thrown our loved ones and the Iraqi people together in a dance of death in which they are surrendering their lives, their health, Their mental stability and pieces of their very humanity.

Speaker 2: The commander's wife of Cody's small V Corps communications unit just sent out an email to communicate with other families and reported that during the month of June— in other words, not just for June— in his company, which is not even a large division, there were 5 reported suicide attempts. Has anybody asked themselves why more soldiers are dead after the war than during the war? Does anybody in Washington or the Pentagon care? And he finishes by saying, everyone can sit back and say how much they care about the soldier being killed or how awful it is that a soldier was injured, but who's going to do something about it?

Speaker 1: George Bush issued his adolescent challenge, bring 'em on, from an air-conditioned briefing room while this terrible tragedy was being played out on the bodies and the lives of others.

Speaker 2: We're betrayed by an administration that allows our loved ones to be occupiers, securing safety for Halliburton and Bechtel to reap billions. We're betrayed by an administration that sought to cut combat pay, as our president was saying, bring 'em on, to the armed Iraqi resistance. So please, Mr. President, Donald Rumsfeld, do the right thing and get our husbands out of Iraq. My husband's blood is on your hands. Stop this Stop this madness and bring the troops home now.

Speaker 1: Jeremy Scahill is a producer and reporter for the nationally syndicated daily news program Democracy Now! Over the last year and a half, he has spent 9 months in Iraq reporting on life there as the country prepared for imminent invasion by U.S. troops. He spoke with numerous Iraqis from all walks of life during his time there. and has continued to remain an astute observer of Iraqi life. We met up with Jeremy at the Democracy Now! studios in New York City to speak with him about Iraq, war, and the ongoing occupation. I think that there are people within the CIA, within the State Department, and even with the White House who knew clearly that a tremendous number of young men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces were going to be killed when they occupied Baghdad. And the fact of the matter is that they're not gambling with Jenna Bush's life. Or Dick Cheney's children's lives. They're gambling with the lives of largely poor, urban young people from America.

Speaker 2: Where are you from?

Speaker 1: Houston, Texas. Hey, Lopez, hand me all the rocks.

Speaker 2: Where are you from?

Speaker 1: North Carolina. North Carolina?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Where in North Carolina?

Speaker 2: Durham.

Speaker 1: Where are you from, Walton? Upstate New York. Sergeant Jones. I'm 24, from New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm Private Welch. I'm 26, and I'm from Whitehall, Michigan. Private Reed, 20, from Fayette, Mississippi. Specialist Ruddick, 22, from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Specialist Harris. I'm 20, from New Orleans, Louisiana. Charles von Fann Hudson, Micronesian Islands. Now, the recruiters are all over the place. And they— the Pentagon's making video games. They're making these ads to go in movie theaters. They're making ads to go on television. And, you know, it's all about, I'm an army of Yes, I'm a part of a bigger team, but I'm a— you know, I'm a trained professional soldier. It's all meant to be kind of like this movie image of what it means to be a soldier. Pentagon spends roughly $2.4 billion per year on recruitment, $350 million of that On advertising alone, recruiters are sent out to approximately 75% of all high schools nationwide. For many of those who enlist, the promise of up to $50,000 for college tuition is a significant enticement. Unfortunately, only about 16% of soldiers wind up receiving such assistance. Many of them receive nothing at all.

Speaker 2: How about students?

Speaker 1: How about splicing into that, you know, the U.S. soldier who comes back missing his right leg? You know, how about splicing into that the U.S. soldier who gets shrapnel in his spine because he has inappropriate body armor? How about splicing into that the guy who's poisoned from depleted uranium munitions? I mean, let's splice that, and then see how many people want to sign up for the army of one. Experience, explore, see the world. That's basically it. Get to do stuff like— not exactly like this, but— We're just here to do our job. Just here to do our job. It's not, it's not like hardened, well-trained soldiers that are being sent over to Iraq right now. I mean, there's roughly 140,000 U.S. soldiers that we know about that are deployed in Iraq. Now, among those numbers include a tremendous number of Army reservists, include, you know, thousands of soldiers that should not be deployed into a foreign combat zone. You know, they're halfway through their training. And then they're being deployed into, into You know, what's called a hot conflict. We pick the vehicle randomly. There's no set numbers as to which vehicles will be pulled over. There's been a lot of weapons firing in the city of Baghdad, and we hope to eliminate by searching vehicles as they come through and taking weapons away from them. Go! Go out, America! Go out, America! Go out! هاي البوش وهذه الدالبلير أهلاً لكم بلدنا خلي الحالون قصبوا مقصاب هذا وما يطلع التسلاح ساحر موجود قصبه مقصابك صاب هنا قصبه هاي رجال كل العالم وكل العرب وكل الخانة اللي خانوا العراق من معارضة إلى غيرهم إلى غيرهم إلى جميع العذاب اللي جات من الخارج. even those people who were virulently opposed to Saddam Hussein had personal or political you know problems with him were adamant that they weren't going to accept foreign occupation. I would say that a majority of Iraqis wanted Saddam Hussein gone, but that, that same majority of Iraqis did not want him gone at the price of yet another massive attack by the United States. And the fact of the matter is that, that these young kids who are being sent over there are being told that they're going to be going into a situation where people view them as heroes, and it's simply not the case. Little kids throwing rocks. Yeah, little kids throwing rocks at It's not too far.

Speaker 2: So what do you do when that happens?

Speaker 1: They're not bad people, but they have the bad people out there. And where— and the ironic thing, or the telling thing, is that the people who most despise the U.S. occupation are the people who most despise Saddam Hussein. Down, down, USA! Down, down, USA! Down, down, USA! Down, down, USA! Protests and demonstrations occur daily throughout Iraq over a variety of issues— unemployment in Basra, the appointment of a former Ba'athist to a government job in Baghdad, and most often, a simple and deep-felt antipathy towards foreign occupation. While it is encouraging to see that Iraqis are now free to While many Iraqis have not yet voiced their dissent, the level of anger directed towards occupation forces is a disturbing sign that the U.S. military may be in for a long and messy mission. In some cases, as with the village of Hit in central Iraq, things can take an especially violent turn and erupt into what can only be called guerrilla war. The problem was that the American troops entered some houses in Hit. District searching for arms. They wanted to disarm all the weapons here in Heath. And that's what was the reaction of the people in Heath district, to get revenge or revenge upon the American troops here. And they don't want any American person or troop to enter this city, because it is a peaceful city and It is a peaceful town. At the end, it was a battle between Houthi people and the American troops. And at last, the Americans, in fact, withdrew from Houthi and went to another place outside the city. 3 people, little children, were injured and carried to the hospital. The American troops were killed. Go! Go out, America! Go out, America! Go out! What you're looking at is the aftermath and the cleanup effort, which will probably go through the night, from a— what we call a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. It's a fancy name for a car bomb. It looks like it was a fairly large car bomb. At this point, in terms of casualties, we think there were about 15 people killed, a mix of Westerners and Iraqis, and about 40 people injured. Immediately following the explosion, there was a very rapid response from the Iraqi fire department, the local Karatah fire department, who we've worked with in the past, and they've been incredibly courageous and incredibly cooperative with us. Also, the Iraqi police were here, and also a squad led by Sergeant Talon showed up here very early. That building you're looking at behind you was a home for ten people, and we're still digging those people out.

Speaker 2: What's your understanding of why someone would bomb? This building.

Speaker 1: This building? That building? Yeah. Lebanon? Why? I don't know. Maybe some American boy inside. Maybe. I think, I think that. I'm gonna keep on going. Okay. 10 people lived in this house. You know, the best way I can explain The best way I can explain it is it's like a plumber. When the toilet gets clogged, not everybody can do it. You know? It's your job. It's what you do. I mean, it's the best way I know to help people.

Speaker 2: Does it bother you that Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction?

Speaker 1: Well, I look at it this way. You know, our purpose is a whole lot different than what he wanted. You know what I mean? Whether he finds what he wants or not, We still, you know, I mean, it sucks that we came down here for that reason. Or, you know, even if it wasn't for that reason, whatever, you know. A lot of people are very upset about the American occupation. Yeah.

Speaker 2: It's hard to figure out exactly what the endgame is.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I agree. I totally agree. You know, one way or another, I imagine it's about money. These kids are running around, and they're facing guerrilla warfare from people who have lived in this desert climate These soldiers who are over there right now are surrounded by desert. And those deserts are going to become the killing fields. This isn't paintball that they're playing over there. These are real bullets, and these are real people who hate the fact that their country's being occupied. The strain that the occupation is placing on the Palestinian people is enormous. The psychological toll on U.S. soldiers is difficult to measure. We do know that there were 20 reported suicides within the military between March and December of 2003. How many were attempted and the number of nervous breakdowns are pieces of information that the military will not release. There are increasing signs that the military is concerned about how the current massive Iraqi deployment will affect the availability and readiness of ground troops in the near future. The Pentagon had hoped to significantly reduce the number of troops in the Middle East by now, but foreign assistance has been slow in coming, and the violence simply will not diminish. As a result, many reservists have had their tours extended, sometimes for up to 3 times their original length. The Pentagon has also instituted a stop Stop-loss policy, which forces soldiers who would otherwise retire from the military to remain enlisted for up to a year longer than they had signed up for. Thus far, 10,000 troops have been affected by stop-loss. All of this is especially painful, and often infuriating, for those who remain at home, the families of these soldiers. More and more, however, many of them are organizing. And they are beginning to do something about it.

Speaker 2: In our crowd today, we have real soldiers and the families of real soldiers and the veterans who have fought in other wars, and their message is to George Bush, Don't bring them on! Bring them home!

Speaker 1: We are part of a group called Military Families Speak Out. We were formed in November of 2002 with 2 families. We now have over 1,000 families across the country who are joining us, who have relatives in the military and who are speaking out against this war. Estoy en nombre de los casi 350 muchachos americanos que han muerto en esta guerra ilegal. I'm here in the name of the almost 350 kids who have died in this illegal war. Y no necesitamos We don't need any more deaths. I came today to take part in the effort to bring the troops home. I'm very much against the war. I don't think we should have gone there to begin with. So I'm doing everything I can to get the message out to bring the troops home.

Speaker 2: I think so many families of the military are so angry now that they have been told lies.

Speaker 1: Presidente Bush, malamente llamado presidente. Wrongly called President Bush. Ha mentido al pueblo americano y al mundo entero en esta guerra. Has lied to the American people and to the entire world about this war. They they don't know at any one time if it's going to be a friend or foe when they meet it, and Bryce had said that only twenty. 75% of the people are really against the Americans. But when you look at a city of Baghdad with 4 million, that means there's 1 million people in the city that want to kill you.

Speaker 2: You're asking me and my son to sacrifice his life for the personal financial interests of the Bush administration, of Cheney, of Rumsfeld, of their ideological agenda that has nothing to do with the security of the United States of America.

Speaker 1: We, as citizens and as parents, We're speaking out against this occupation and war. We felt it was wrong to begin with, and we continue to feel that it's wrong, that the only solution to the problem of Iraq is to end the occupation, end the U.S. occupation, and bring our troops home. Levantemos nuestra voz! We have to raise our voices! Y pidamos la paz! And ask for peace!

Speaker 2: ¿Qué queremos?

Speaker 1: What do we want? No los oigo!

Speaker 2: No! Gracias! Thank you! The Dish.

Speaker 1: The Dish.

Speaker 2: Indeed it is.

Speaker 1: The United States has already had a busy day attacking Iran. It was awesome. Shock and awe. Shock and awe.

Speaker 2: Shock and awe.

Speaker 1: If you have to ask, is this shock and awe, you're not seeing it. We refuse to carry on business as usual while American soldiers and Iraqi civilians die under the machinery of war.

Speaker 2: There was a website set up between American archaeologists and the Pentagon many weeks ago, listing those areas of vital national heritage to Iraq which might be looted, damaged, stormed or burned. The museum was on that list. When I got to the museum, which was far more than a week ago, there were gun battles going on between rioters and looters, bullets skittering up the walls of apartment blocks outside. The looting was on a most detailed, precise and coordinated scale. The people knew what they wanted to go for. Those Grecian statues that they didn't want, they decapitated and threw to the floor. Those earrings and gold ornaments and bullring gods that they wanted to take, they took. And within a few days, those priceless heritage items of Iraq's history were on sale in Europe and in America. I don't believe that that happened by chance. And in the city of Baghdad, against all the international conventions, particularly the Geneva Convention, which have a specific reference to pillage— in fact, pillage appears as a crime against humanity in the Hague Conventions in 1907. upon which the Geneva Conventions of 1949 were based. There is a whole reference to pillage, and the Americans did nothing. They did nothing to prevent the pillage of the entire cultural history of Iraq, of the museum or the documentary history of the National Archives, or the Quranic library of the Ministry of Religious Endowment, or of the 155 other government locations around Baghdad. And one has to ask the question, why was this permitted to happen? I don't know the answer.

Speaker 1: Countdown Iraq will continue in a moment. The art world is calling for an amnesty program to help return some of Iraq's stolen art treasures. We may never We still don't know just how many ancient treasures were actually stolen when looters rampaged through the museum in Baghdad. The Iraqi National Museum, nothing short of an international cultural tragedy. He says it's like the cradle of civilization going up in smoke. Over the weekend— This is everywhere. This morning, a suspicious fire torched what's believed to be the oldest library in Baghdad. It housed valuable books and a handwritten version of the Quran. What happened is equivalent to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. So that our American viewers can understand it, to a looting party taking the entire Smithsonian and destroying everything in it.

Speaker 2: After the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, April 10th to 12th, 2003, it was reported that among the artifacts stolen was a version of the well-loved Ram Caught in a Thicket from the Tombs of Ur, 2500 BC. The title was based on its having been mistaken for the ram in an episode in the Old Testament. It is now recognized as a rearing goat with a flowering plant. This poem was written the day a story datelined Ur with a photo of the now-deposed General Garner appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Datelined Ur. A ram caught in the thicket has gone missing, believed to have gone missing, when they carried off the silver harp of Sumer. Smashed the freshly dug-up clay tablets with the stories we won't get to hear. Trashed the catalogs that would remember. Could have been a thicket you foundered into, stalled in some Sumerian Arcadia. But for us, you were always dancing. You were actually feeding from a tree of life, tender shoots willingly offered. You appear to be safe in London. Did you tremble when they ransacked the one left in Baghdad, the good replica? It was only in the 1920s or so when you and your real brother were farmed out to the cold museums of the glad imperial connoisseurs. At least you could be seen and thought about in Bloomsbury and Philadelphia. The smiling ram is only mildly surprised by the The fount of abundance, placidly enraptured, as if all along he knew it would be there. Ram caught in a thicket. Beloved grazing among lilies. Dateline Ur. Yesterday, under a tent spread wide as the dreams of Abraham, guarded by heavy security at Tallil Air Force Base, those who want to hold on, to keep, to grab To rob, to administer, to loot, to have a piece of the action gathered. These are the men for whom it's now or never. They decide what is renewable or not. Oil in their eyes, limitless as greed. But if imagination is no longer renewable, starting tomorrow? General Garner, viceroy in denim, relaxes, chair tilted back, like one who seeks no gain for himself, knowing he owns it all. We are standing here in front of Oriental Department.

Speaker 1: Talking about the—

Speaker 2: And the computers, the tablet units, the books, books about in Kurdish and in Arabic and in Persian language and Turkish language.

Speaker 1: Taliman, how many volumes?

Speaker 2: 2,000. The ordinary thief or robber came here, he can maybe steal a chair, air conditioning, split unit, but the The books—they are coming to steal the most precious books we have here. Also the manuscripts and the microfilms—they are specialists. They know the value of these books.

Speaker 1: بالنسبة للغات الشرقيات كان عندكم عربي فرسي وكورتي وسورياني أو غير اللغات كمان؟ سورياني عدة.

Speaker 2: إيه. أيها هو اللغات الشرقية وأجنبية الأجنبية. تعرف أجنبي كذا فرنسي ألماني بس يمكن أنت تعرف المجمع ولهذا جبتني الأخوية جبتني المجمع حتى شوفون حال ما ينتشار في المجمع المنظمات البقية اليونسكو وين؟ ما تعرف عن المجمع؟ ليش ما معروف بالمجمع؟ ليش بدأت تجي على المجمع؟ ليش بدأت الحكمة تعمرت وصارت وصفت عليها الملايين الدينانير والدولار؟ ليش المجمع؟ المجمع الأقدم من تلحقنا في سنة ألف تسعمائة وتسعين يلا تأسس المجمع العلمي من اثمانية وأربعين تأسس زين ليش ما كو احتمال للمجمع ليش مجمع مركون عراف ليش شنو السبب وين المنظمات بس يداعون بس دار صدام وفلان احترق كان احترق بآثار راحت الآثار هذه حتى لو راحت وجدين هاي مؤسسة علمية أول مؤسسة علمية تتعرف إيه نرى يعني نرى I am Amal Al-Khawari. I'm Iraqi. And I lived in this area. This house belongs to my father. He built it in the early 20th century. I turned it into a craft center. Actually, it is the first craft center in Baghdad. We didn't have any center for the craftsmen. We tried to keep as much as we could the essence of the building. And as you see, it's almost— you know, it has this essence of the past in it. So many people who— Most of the people who joined us here suffered from war. They needed some help. And it was a great help for them, not only spiritually, but financially, as well.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 2: What was it like the last time the United States bombed Baghdad? What was it like? Could words— I don't think words would express the feeling of the people. It was like hell opening its gates on us.

Speaker 1: It was day and night.

Speaker 2: It wasn't a clever bombing, as they said. It hurt every single Iraqi. And the result of it is even worse. I'm going to ask you to talk about the bombing of Baghdad. What? To do what? To have a new building given to us? We don't want cement.

Speaker 1: We want to have it. This is culture, what we lost, and what they destroyed. Not our culture only, it's humanity's.

Speaker 2: It's human heritage, this one. For 5,000, 6,000 years Iraq has been giving to humanity all this.

Speaker 1: You can't give it to us.

Speaker 2: Generation after generation, each generation, each culture—

Speaker 1: Iraq is not only—

Speaker 2: it's so many cultures in Iraq. And each have tried to build up, you know, some— put some stone into this huge pyramid. And the pyramid is down.

Speaker 1: The war against the Kurds is a crime against humanity.

Speaker 2: I used to tell you, it's not Saddam. Iraq is not Saddam. That's the mistake you did. Everybody talked about Saddam. This is Iraq. We— I kept telling them, this is Iraq.

Speaker 1: It's not one man.

Speaker 2: It's generations. It's history. Why are you destroying history?

Speaker 1: I think that's a very good point.

Speaker 2: حلا يا لشا، مواد كيميائية نزبت بالأرض بدت تتخجر منها وبيها هاي اللي ثوته هو. إيش؟ إحنا شفت أنا أقدر أشكر من ضمنهم لأن هو رفض يخرج شوفوا كتب شوفوا مواد. هذا أثر الكتب بقى هذا. أثر الكتب كلها بحيث أتحولت رماد أبيض هون كانت المكتبة المكتبة البنات الموظفات بالطرف الثاني بس هنا كانت عبارة عن ميوزة وكراسي يقعدون بيها الطلاب الأركندشنات كانت موجودة هنا سرقت والبناية هنا هرقوها يعني أبطيار ليش يتركوا على المكتبة ليش ما عن المكتبة ليش ما عن المكتبة ليش مو بالحديقات لأن هذا هو هذا أهم شيء بالكلية كلية هذا مستقبل الدراسات العليا بالعالم أعز شيء بلدنا هو هذا ويعني بدون سبب ميتش يعني أنا أخوي راح بس يمكن من أجل بكلية ألتها أدوس بس من أجل شو فوش بعد تزيد مأساة هاي حريق بس من غير مكتبها تخبر منهم يعني؟ I don't know anything ثلاثين ألف كتاب من خلبيه رسومات أو كتب أجنبية لرسامين عالميين أصليين أطاريح من سنة السبعينات من أساتذتنا اللي جاية من دول اشتراكية دول أمريكا مترجمة كلها كانت هون وكحترقت We're joined right now by Andrew Lawler, who is the archaeology correspondent for Science magazine.

Speaker 1: The idea that this museum would be destroyed was particularly appalling, given that since 1970 everything that is dug up in Iraq, every legal excavation, everything has to go to this museum. So there was untold tens of thousands, as much as maybe 200,000 objects, most of which were probably not well catalogued, a lot of which had not been studied, and a lot of objects such as clay tablets which had never been deciphered. So the loss is absolutely incalculable. It's certainly comparable to the burning of the Library at Alexandria, the sack of Constantinople, or the You know, the question really is, what does it mean to purposefully destroy somebody's cultural heritage? There was a tremendous amount of material that was taken from the regional museums. And I'm not sure exactly how many of these museums there are, but they literally lost thousands of artifacts, very few of which were returned. Which were recovered. And it's not clear who took those, whether, you know, it was simply Iraqis or there were American soldiers involved or— There was an incredible effort by archaeologists afterwards and by art historians to try to catalog what was missing, and a series of publications that were issued in 3 fascicules called Lost Heritage that were pretty widely distributed. They were given out for free Just in the hopes that, you know, that people would run across these things on the market and try to return them. You know, most countries have antiquities laws. And so, for instance, you know, Iraq has a series of antiquities laws that I think were first proposed in the late '30s and then were ratified in the early '40s that largely prohibit any kind of transfer of antiquities from Iraq. You just— you simply can't export them. It's illegal. This isn't farmers finding objects in their fields. This is a systemic process of looting that is going on. And, you know, this is literally, you know, armies of people. These are set up like companies or corporations. These people, they go out there in— and, you know, they have bulldozers and dump trucks and And, um, you know, heavy equipment and hundreds of people. And they have their own security protocols. They have people out there with machine guns and rocket launchers and everything else. And they're systemically looting these places. And that's the consequence of the breakdown of law and order throughout that entire society. It's not a matter of if they should come across something. I mean, these sites are rich. You know, the idea that The idea that a lot of people in the general public may have that somehow to find ancient things is rare is simply not the truth in a place like Iraq. Iraq is filled with valuable artifacts and valuable objects and with history. And there are, you know, tens of thousands of sites, probably, that have important stuff in them. So, talking about the evolution of these city-states and talking about our own evolution as humans in a modern sense, and by that I'm talking about a cognitive dimension. I'm not talking about a biological dimension. I'm talking about how we think, who we are, how we structure societies, how we interact with the world. The fundamental evidence for that and the documentation for a lot of that resided within the Baghdad Museum and resides within the actual archaeological Sites themselves and heavily looted. I saw photos of Umma, which is a major site. It was the capital of the Kassite Empire. And I saw these photographs last week, it has been so systematically looted that what it basically appears to look like, if you look at the photographs, is it's just a series of holes. It's completely pockmarked. I believe that the site can no longer be excavated. In order to do any excavation there whatsoever, you would have to take bulldozers out there. You'd need a Yeah. A fleet of them. And you would probably have to scrape a meter or several meters of the top of the site off and see what you could get from underneath it. I mean, it would just be— it would be a tremendous task, a task that probably nobody could afford, and probably a task that no archaeologist could deal with psychologically. على مر الزمن حتتظهر أو تنطي إسقاطات إسقاطات بحيث ما يعود هناك ثقافة إضافة لهذا الحال الأمريكاني. اللي الآن مفقودة نهائياً لا يمكن أن يقام مسرح حتى المعارض إقامتها ضعيفة وقليلة تجمعات ثقافية حقيقية ما متم خوفاً من المسألة الأمنية واسعة كل هذه الحقيقة ضايعة حالياً على مر الزمن هيبدي تدهور ثقافي في العقلية وخصوصاً بالنسبة للجيل في حقيقة الأمر إنه ال الاحتلال هو احتلال عسكري وثقافي لأن الاحتلال الآن ألغى العقلية الحضارية العراقية السابقة من خلال هذه الفوضى الآن الموجودة إضافة لهذا إنه ال ال الاحتلال فتح فادغطاء كان مغلق وهو الطائفية والعرقية والأثينية كل هذه الآن قبت فبدأت ت أظهر أشياء حقيقة العراقي منفكر بيها من الطائفية والعرقية وما شابه. حقيقة أردنا أن نحرك الوضع الثقافي ونوجد فرد كتلة ثقافية مناهضة للرأي الشمولي. يعني. بلا شك ان الاحتلال هو عبارة عن نص وجد لانغاء وجود فبالمقابل هناك نص مناهض يصر على وجوده اعتقد ان احتفال المثقفين بهذا الجانب سواء كان بالقصة او بالمقالة او بالفكرة حكماً أياً كانت توجهاتهم كانوا مع المشروع الأمريكي أم ضد المشروع الأمريكي هم حتماً يخرجون كلهم من هذا الطريق يعني أقول لك أنه هذا هدم للبنية الثقافية بين أنه مثلاً اللي جاي يصير الأحداث اللي جاي يصير حالياً اللي أنت ذكرت بعض المعطلات بعض الصعوبات أنه تحتاج أن يصير أحد الأنداب نعم بالضبط بالضبط صحيح لأنه عملية تفكيك كما جاء بها جاك درايدة التفكيك البنية الاجتماعية وإعادة تركيبها من جديد ما يعود سوى التفكير بالأكل والجنس لأنه الرأس مالية العالمية يهمها أن الإمبريالزم، الإمبريالزم، yeah. الإمبريالية العالمية يهمها أن أن تتمكن من الاستحواذ على كل شيء في الكرة الأرضية وعلى الشعوب. What does it mean to purposefully destroy somebody's cultural heritage if you want to destroy a people? destroy their history with it. The writing of history is sort of in the eyes and in the hands of the victors. If you remove historical evidence, if you get rid of archives, if you get rid of libraries, if you wipe away cultural monuments, if you wipe away somebody's cultural heritage, then there is no evidence any longer about who a people are.

Speaker 2: On March 5th, 2003, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, artists held a silent antiwar draw-in in the Assyrian galleries as an act of respect for the civilizations of Mesopotamia and for the threatened cultural sites of Iraq. This poem is called Drawing the Assyrians. Our sketching pencils tell us who you were. Your hands as long as your forearms, long curved fingers tending the tree of life. Your feet in their sandals equally long, cascading toes taking the ground seriously. From curve of shoulder to curve of buttock, one clear contour ran, singing like a shoreline seen from high in the air. You were happy with your bare, solid shoulders. There was always some smell of spring— boxwood, mulberry, cedar, cypress, pistachio, tamarisk, or poplar— fashioned into Ashurnasipal's palace there in Kalhu, later Nimrud. Was this how it felt then to be alive, knowing their bodies as bodies are known by touch, bodies sensing themselves as surfaces spread out, embraced by space, not scaffolded by muscle and bone? Such small, tender parts are indicated. The hollow at the wrist. Knob of elbow, like the tip of a lemon. Those kneecaps signaled by 3 horizontal ridges. I had to press down hard over my knee with the palm of my hand to get that idea. A rainy light from a 19th century atelier Shrouds us, camped out on this floor at the Met, in our impertinent devotion. Winged, hawk-beaked creatures fertilize another blooming tree of life with sponges shaped like hand grenades or pineapples, saturated with oil and pollen. Their gardening pails look like ladies' purses. Someone from Paper Tiger Video mutters, Don't bomb the chicken-headed ladies. The news scrolls by on bands of cuneiform passing at the groin across your garments. Look how the letters seem to float just above the etched fabric. Cuneiform marks so cleanly chiseled, they might have been stroked into resilient clay. This may have been the work of captive craftsmen. Oh, don't bomb the chicken-headed ladies. Oh, don't bomb Nineveh. Don't bomb Ur. Don't bomb the last of the ziggurats, which tells us what the Tower of Babel looked like. Oh, don't bomb human bodies while they still hold immortal life.

Speaker 1: I'm a Muslim. OK.

Speaker 2: He says—

Speaker 1: Indeed it is.

Speaker 2: Indeed it is.

Speaker 1: It was awesome. Shock and awe.

Speaker 2: Shock and awe.

Speaker 1: Shock and awe. If you have to ask, is this shock and awe, you're not seeing it. We refuse to carry on business as usual while American soldiers and Iraqi civilians die under the machinery of war.

Speaker 2: In the last 10 years of unbridled corporate globalization, the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5% a year. And yet the number of poor in the world has increased by 100 million. Of the top 100 biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. The top 1% of the world has the same combined income as Yes. —as the bottom 57%, and that disparity is growing. And now, under the spreading canopy of the war against terror, this process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down on us and cruise missiles skid across the skies, while nuclear weapons are stockpiled to make the world a safer place, Contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and democracies are being undermined.

Speaker 1: A key element of the U.S. grand strategy today is to obtain further penetration, further control, and further exploitation of the Third I call it globalization at gunpoint.

Speaker 2: The Economist called the new rules in Iraq a capitalist dream and described the rules that Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. occupier in Iraq, as a wish list for foreign multinationals. This wish list, which was granted as part of the now-infamous Order 39, which was on September 19th, was a transformation of the Iraqi economy, using basically traditional IMF structural adjustment policies, but in one fell swoop. So, Order 39 announced that, contrary to Iraq's constitution, which places clear restrictions on foreign ownership of the Iraqi economy and deems essential services protected and not able to be privatized. These were just completely overthrown. And 200 Iraqi state firms were put up for privatization.

Speaker 1: This means giving the United States greater access to markets, labor, and resources across the Third World. This is explicitly spelled out in the Bush September 2002 National Security Strategy, which calls for spreading free trade and free markets across the globe— and, of course, this is code for the freedom of U.S. capital in particular to exploit those countries and region— they have been trying to put it into effect in Iraq. 2 months before the Governing Council was even formed, in May 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion, The Wall Street Journal obtained 100,000 A 300-page document detailing how the U.S. intended to create an economy in its own, quote, image.

Speaker 2: What's starting to happen is that international legal experts are coming forward, not from the left, but from international conservative law firms, to say these contracts are extremely risky and they won't be respected. The only legal way out of this bind is the U.S. has to get a regime in Iraq quickly that's pliant enough to ratify the laws. That's the only way that they can make them legal. It is illegal. And Paul Bremer has gone on record since September of last year as telling us he wants to restructure Iraqi economy. He's not mincing his words on that. He wants to restructure the Iraqi economy, and he has been doing that by removing tariffs from Iraq, removing all domestic domestic subsidies, by imposing a maximum flat tax of 15%, with loopholes so big Halliburton can go right through, and by, most importantly, coming up with an order that allows, you know, foreign corporations to own 100% of any Iraqi sector, with the exception of oil, and then, on top of that, to remove 100% of their profits out of Iraq without delay at any time. And these laws have been reimposed, you know, this year, 2004. It's not simply laws that were passed in 2003. They've been reimposed. And there's been numerous, numerous other things, such as recently, you know, in the beginning of April and in the end of March, we have seen Paul Bremer impose laws that will strip the current Iraqi governmental ministries and possible future Iraqi governmental ministries of their ability to change the contracts that Bremer has given out to U.S. corporations and to change the economic structuring that Paul Bremer has imposed on Iraq over the past year. So he's stripping away future sovereignty of Iraq, not only present sovereignty.

Speaker 1: One of the main reasons the U.S. felt compelled to go to war against Iraq in 2003 was that sanctions were on the verge of collapse. If sanctions had collapsed, massive multibillion-dollar oil deals that Saddam Hussein had signed with France and Russia would have come to fruition. It would have left France and Russia in a stronger position in Iraq than the United States, with a toehold into the Persian Gulf. And, of course, this was coming at a time when the U.S. strategy has been to brook no rivals and to prevent the rise of any imperial challengers.

Speaker 2: I think that it explains the silence of the of Germany, Russia, China. What they're waiting to see is whether Bremer is going to respect the contracts that Saddam Hussein signed with Russian, Chinese and French companies. If— my sense is that if they will respect it— you know, there have been noises being made that they're not going to respect contracts signed by Saddam Hussein. And my feeling is that if they do go down that route, then you'll start hearing a lot of noise from Russia, France, China, Germany, the countries whose companies were in there and had those deals. Right now, I think what we're seeing is actually some pretty heavy backroom negotiating. And I think the deal that's being made, frankly, is, if you respect the contracts that we signed with Saddam Hussein, and we'll— which you could also make an argument were illegal. We will respect the contracts, your equally illegal contracts, being signed by the occupational authority. And I think that the position of a genuine anti-occupation movement should be that neither should be respected, that any free— new free sovereign Iraqi government should not be saddled either with the debts and contracts of their dictator or of their occupier.

Speaker 1: I'm here today with George Bush Sr. And George Bush Sr. is a personal— he's a consultant for the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is going to benefit. They're going to make millions, probably billions, on selling their weapons. It's war profiteering. It's insider trading. Top, you know, ex-government officials get these defense industry contracts and profiting off of the death and destruction of people in Iraq and all over the world.

Speaker 2: Get down from the sidewalk now! Off the sidewalk now!

Speaker 1: Because we're putting out a message to all war profiteers: if you think you're going to make profits off the death of the Iraqi people, whether it's Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Bechtel, you are put on notice. We are going to expose you, and we are going to make it as difficult as hell for you to stay open. Companies like Bechtel and Halliburton definitely play an important role in foreign policy and defense policy, or you could say offense policy, in the United States. The federal government consults with these companies before they go to war, and so determines the nature of the war. So, for example, in October 2002, the federal government, Dick Cheney's office, met with a bunch of companies, including Halliburton and ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco, to talk about how they would take over the Iraqi oil fields. Undoubtedly, they looked to profit from it, and they definitely steered the way the war was conducted in their private meetings with Dick Cheney and the U.S. administration.

Speaker 2: Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via corporate multinationals like Bechtel, like Chevron, like Halliburton. Once again, it's a small, tight circle that connects corporate, military and government leadership The promiscuousness, the cross-pollination is outrageous.

Speaker 1: I've worked in almost every aspect of investment banking. And lately I've been concentrating mostly on fund management. And so, for me, it's natural to understand the implications of privatization to the Iraqi public, what it would create. And it's very important that the United States corrects its track as quickly as possible. I mean, one of the very ominous signs is that there has been appointed an American to be in charge of the privatization program of Iraq. This is completely uncalled for. When we put this combined with the attempt to push through the Governing Council a law which permits international companies to have unlimited ownership in Iraq, it's very clear what the designs are: wholesale ownership by foreign companies, and Iraqis will end up being employees of foreign firms. And this is totally unacceptable. I consider this, as an economist, economic imperialism. I think initially when the When the U.S. military and the U.S. administration decided to occupy Iraq, they had these plans for a free market democracy, as they would call it. This is a country with a great deal of wealth. It had a lot of oil. It's the perfect place to test a free market. This— a free market is not going to really work in a place where people don't buy goods from. I mean, and Afghanistan, for example, doesn't have a lot of goods except opium. Right. And so you can't really test a free market, whereas here you could have a flat tax, you could open up the borders, have no taxes, and it could prove that free trade worked. So they had these grand plans. They wanted to privatize. And in fact, the first overseer of Iraq, Jay Garner, didn't think that would work. He had some experience in the country, having worked in Kurdistan, and he was opposed to privatization. And so, for those reasons, among others, he was fired from his job and replaced by Paul Bremer, who went right ahead and set up a couple of different laws, one that especially looked at the privatization of everything Iraqi except the oil resources. And the oil resources are seen as sacrosanct, 'cause that's the mainstay of Iraqi wealth. And Iraqis would be very upset if that was wholly turned over So that clearly was off the table. However, the rest of it didn't actually work either. There's a tender which is about to be decided on September 5th for the mobile telecom in Iraq. The tender calls for 3 companies to start operating in 3 areas of Iraq. Iraq, north, central, and southern Iraq. The conditions for the tender are such that it makes it impossible for an Iraqi company to be doing this, because it requires that the companies that enter the bids should be experienced, they should have experience in more than one country. And since Iraq is in a state of just coming out of war, naturally there is no such company in Iraq. The tender for the Iraqi cell phones went to a company from Egypt called RASCOM, which set up the first new Irakna mobile system that functions only in Baghdad right now. There's been a lot of rumors that the company that got it got it because of their links to members of the governing council, and that there was some hanky-panky, some— that was going on, in which members of the American administration occupying Iraq were trying to steer the contract to certain friends of theirs, which in fact failed, but spoke volumes as to how they were doing business. So, obviously, they're putting very high walls It's a very, very much not a level playing field. You know, we are being taken for a ride.

Speaker 2: It's important to understand that even if every troop were to come home tomorrow and a so-called sovereign Iraqi government were to come into power, Iraq would still be privatized. It would be privatized by these laws that were written by another country. It would be privatized by foreign companies that would be controlling their essential services. And it would be colonized by the fact that they now have 70% unemployment because of attacks on the public sector. That is colonization.

Speaker 1: Capitalist globalization, as I mentioned, has led to large-scale turmoil, upheaval, dramatic social change and political instability throughout the Third World. And so the U.S. is seeking new forms of control, new ways to try to stabilize that situation. And we're seeing this played out in Iraq with U.S. efforts to create a pro-U.S. neocolony, much more directly controlled by the United States than Saddam Hussein's government ever was. But we are also seeing the potential pitfalls and dangers of this in the kind of explosive resistance we're seeing in the streets of Iraq today. This whole grand strategy, mapping out this grand strategy, is one thing, but accomplishing it is another. And the history I trace in my book shows that these grand schemes of empire often backfire, create unintended effects and generate even greater resistance than existed before. The free market privatization plan has basically failed. And despite the fact that the neocons and the people in the U.S. administration thought that Iraq would be the perfect place to do the experiment, presumably people would want to invest because it is potentially very wealthy, second-largest reserves of oil in the world. However, when they arrived, they discovered the oil infrastructure was in very bad shape, in no small part because of the sanctions. And therefore they weren't able to export the kind of oil to bring in the kind of income they were expecting. So they didn't have the money. The second thing is Saddam Hussein had basically employed pretty much everybody to work in the ministries and the companies and the fields and that sort of thing. They got very minimal wages, but they all had a job, despite a whether they did work or not. So when some of the managers of these institutions came along, they were like, well, we could make ourselves a lot more efficient. We could get rid of these surplus workers. And we could actually maybe get in some international investment that was lacking for the last 10 to 20 years because of sanctions and various other things. So one daring fellow who ran, I believe, a vegetable oil company suggested that he would go first and experiment. So he fired his surplus workers and invited foreign investment. But then something he didn't expect happened. His workers who no longer had a job were pretty upset, so they came back and they killed him. And as a result, this whole sort of privatization scheme collapsed. And when the American government realized this was happening, they put all their privatization plans on hold. The next thing that happened was they realized that a lot of these laws they'd enacted in order to allow everything to be privatized, Paul Bremer suggested, actually passed a resolution that would, or an executive order that would have allowed the privatization of every sector, was basically discovered to be illegal under international law. Now, this was way back in December. Subsequently, in March and April, because of the incredibly bad judgment and bad planning on parts of the military, as the resistance started to rise, the security situation deteriorated, and as a result, nobody wants to go into Iraq to set up a business because it's too dangerous and there's no guarantee that their business will continue to exist. That's not to say that people don't Work in Iraq. Plenty of companies work in Iraq, but only if they have money from the U.S. government or they have guarantees that their businesses will not be nationalized in the future or ransacked. And that, again, once again, mostly comes from foreign governments.

Speaker 2: What's happening is that somebody needs to insure these companies to go into a very risky situation. The U.S. Import-Export Bank is being presented, being put forward as the insurer of last resort, which means that they would offer insurance to, say, a Bechtel to come in and privatize the water in Iraq. But then, if a new Iraqi government then decides to renationalize that asset, it would be the U.S. taxpayers, not Bechtel. That would be on the hook. So the U.S. taxpayers not only pay with their $87 billion in terms of bankrolling this reconstruction boondoggle, but they will then have to potentially pay again when it becomes clear that these contracts were illegal to begin with.

Speaker 1: You see a lot of propaganda in the in the in the U.S. media, a lot of talk about democracy and new interim constitution, the governing council, how people. Are welcoming the U.S. troops. This is all false. The Union of the Unemployed was an answer to the situation, and it was brought up from among the ranks of unemployed workers. The main demand of the Union of the Unemployed was to provide unemployment benefit to the unemployed workers. That's the only That's the only demand. Of course, we demanded the immediate providing of jobs to the Iraqi workers. Three out of four Iraqis, according to the International Monetary Fund, don't have a job. This is a huge, huge problem and is sowing a lot of resentment. The fact that people see. These American occupiers, the soldiers, and they also see foreign workers coming and doing those jobs that they would like to do. And a lot of things that people are being imported for, whether it's truck driving or cooking, are jobs that people in any country can do, and most certainly they can do in Iraq. Iraq has very sophisticated doctors and civil engineers, too. Many of those people were fired because they were seen to be Ba'athists. Now, given that 10% of the population was a member of the Ba'ath Party, It was— it has created many problems, especially since in order to rise within the ranks, you had to be a member of the Ba'ath Party. As a result, every experienced doctor, teacher, engineer is now out of work. And as a result, things are not functioning very well, because most people have no idea where the equipment is or the services are. Since the '40s, the working movement in Iraq have been active. Thousands get to the streets. Thousands clash with the police. Many hundreds of workers have been martyrs to the working-class movement in Iraq. So these achievements are not Saddam's achievements. These achievements are the workers' achievements. Now they are attacking these achievements with the help of the U.S., with the help of Paul Bremer. They want to falsify the cause of Iraqi workers. But they don't know that there are independent workers who would organize their own workers. And we succeeded in that. This demonstration was organized by the UUI, Union of Unemployed in Iraq. It started at the headquarters of the union, which is— which was at the end of Rashid Street, near Tahrir Square. It crossed the bridge, al-Jamhoria Bridge, and approached the CPA headquarters, which was the presidential palace, al-Qasr al-Jamhoria. And there we shouted slogans that demanded jobs or social benefits for all unemployed people in Iraq. A lot of the services have not been fully restored. So, in Baghdad, 50% of the time there's no electricity. Now, Iraq was a very modern economy with, you know, completely functional electricity before the first Gulf War, with good hospitals, good education system, and all of this was for pretty much free. So most of this stuff no longer functions. The sewage plants that were bombed by the Americans in the first Gulf War continue to be inoperable, and therefore the water for Iraqis is polluted. So that's a major deterioration in the quality of life. Children's playgrounds are empty and abandoned. The main park in Baghdad is unused. Even under Saddam Hussein's time, people went and played there, and that no longer happens. The restaurants and the cafés along the river, those have closed down, partly because the Americans have barricaded those areas because they're worried about, you know, attacks from The movie theaters are pretty much, if not entirely, shut down. The quality of life has definitely deteriorated, especially where, you know, public life, just community life is concerned. Those things have disappeared. Under Saddam and his clique, there were a few people who were beneficiaries, and the majority of Iraqis simply were spectators. We are creating now the same circumstance. The Iraqi public at large are spectators. There is a small clique who are beneficiaries, along with the international companies. So where is the real change in terms of economics? Where is the real change? If the peace dividend is going to accrue to international companies, then And I'm sorry to say, this is a formula which is unfair. And I think in the long run it's a formula for disaster.

Speaker 2: I think the Thank you.

Speaker 1: Thank you. These fish!

Speaker 2: These fish!

Speaker 1: The United States has already had a busy day attacking. And it was shocking, and it was awesome. Shock and awe.

Speaker 2: Shock and awe. Shock and awe.

Speaker 1: If you have to ask, is this shock and awe? We refuse to carry on business as usual while American soldiers and Iraqi civilians die under the machinery of war.

Speaker 2: I think these demonstrations had a particular historical significance. They had a historic significance for those that went on them, because people knew at that very same time as they were marching, you know, from Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square, there were people marching across Berlin, across New York, in Rio, in Johannesburg. So there was a sense of being part of an international movement.

Speaker 1: I'm a member of the United Nations.

Speaker 2: Even though they didn't stop the war, actually, the effect of those demonstrations was to make it really difficult for both Bush and Blair to, as they say, move on.

Speaker 1: Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake!

Speaker 2: Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake! The demonstration in Britain on the 15th of February was just incredibly broad. I went to it, like everybody else. And you could see people from years back who'd been involved in CND, Quaker organizations, then, on the other hand, many, many young people who'd been involved in actions to stop roads and airports. And so, it just reached deep into British society.

Speaker 1: Free, free, free!

Speaker 2: No more, no more, no more, no more! Push the peace!

Speaker 1: By invading Iraq, we have given an enormous boost to the recruitment of al-Qaeda. We have put this country at far greater risk of attack. You can say something to America. No war no more. Oh, thank you. No war. You have something to say? The same. The same. No war. Che pensate di Bush? Bush is shit. We you don't care about Bush. Eh, but you have. Together is very bad. Peace and love. Peace and love.

Speaker 2: Il massimo, ma il massimo della veramente della involuzione umana.

Speaker 1: Dateci una mano a portare un chilometro di pace! The movement against the war in Italy was very, very strong. February 15th, 2003, in Rome, there were 3 million people.

Speaker 2: Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: 3 million people. The biggest manifestation, the biggest demonstration.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: In the world, I think. Then, when the war has exploded completely in— during the last month, in April 2004, people have begun to say, stop this war, go away, we don't want to be— you know, the Italian Constitution forbids formally the—

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Article 11 of the Italian Constitution forbids formally the participation of Italian soldiers to war operations. War is refused by the Italian Constitution. What do you want to say to America? I want to say America— I want to tell them that they have to stop the war, because we are tired of war. War brings a lot of problems, like our buildings, our properties Are spies because of war, so I want them to stop the war. Okay. I'm from La Bella. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you too. Bye bye. Ciao ciao ciao ciao. Goodbye. Mi pare che la guerra non sia finita. Comunque ci sono le condizioni che non si possono definire pace. Questo è quello che pare evidente alla situazione che c'è in Iraq. Perché pacificato secondo lei? Just to say that we don't want war in any poor country. If they want any war, they can make it in their country, not in our country. I'm here to protest against the war in Iraq. On trouve que l'attitude de Bush, elle est injustifiée. Ses arguments, ils sont pas prouvés du tout. Et en tant que citoyen français, on trouve qu'il faut privilégier la diplomatie à la place de la guerre. Ils sont pas impérialistes, ils sont militaristes.

Speaker 2: Adnan! Adnan! Touché, détaillé, vide de l'extrême droite, du moins qu'il soit lâché! Je pense que si on n'est pas solidaires, c'est tous les pays qui vont en pâtir. All the Arab regimes are collaborating with the neo-colonial powers and oppressing their people. But they are supported by George Bush, the dictator. That's why I say there is no democracy in America.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: George Bush is a dictator, and he is supporting the Arab dictators in our region. But in my country they don't encourage demonstrations at all, at all. And this is a tragedy. The Arab regimes, I say here, I am critical of all Arab regimes because they collaborate with the American imperialism and colonialism. They work together. And in fact they somehow during the Gulf War in 1991, Egypt participated in In the war against Iraq. I was against that.

Speaker 1: Please give peace a chance. Please give peace a chance. In Malaysia, there is a great deal of. Suspicion about what is happening, especially after September 11th. Initially, after September 11th took place, there was a great deal of sympathy for what happened in New York and Washington. And in fact, not only did the ruling coalition, but also the opposition parties, including the Islamic Party, went to visit the U.S. Embassy to express sympathy for what had happened. But with the buildup to the war against Iraq, there was very, very little sympathy for what was going on. I think things cannot just be left to conditions to develop, circumstances to develop. I think there has to be a certain volunteerism, a willingness willingness of people to sacrifice, to organize, to mobilize. And until that happens, in many situations, it is quite possible for drift to take place, that mobilization will be on other basis rather than on a progressive basis. And that is— that can be potentially very, very dangerous.

Speaker 2: Fuck! Fuck!

Speaker 1: I'm not going to be complicit in that, I'm afraid. New Zealand, while not as complicit as Australia and the United States and Britain in making it a day of shame, is still playing a role that must be ended. So can I please encourage you to take up that challenge and let the government know what you really think about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: Ta-ra-ra, boom, deor. War doesn't work no more. It could go nuclear. Ta-ra-ra, boom!

Speaker 1: Power to the people! All power to the people! All power to the people! All power to the people! All power to the people!

Speaker 2: All power to the people! In many ways, it's more remarkable that Canada didn't support the war in Iraq, because, I mean, even Bush's kind of lapdog NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico, separated ways on the Iraq War for the first time In Canada, it was the first time in 30 years that we actually had a sovereign foreign policy. It was really the first time since the Vietnam War. And Canadians, I think, took a lot of pride in that. And that's not to say that we didn't kind of support it in less overt ways, because we actually had ships in the region. But our prime minister at the time, Jean Chrétien, said that he didn't support the war because it didn't have a UN mandate.

Speaker 1: And—

Speaker 2: And if you just start toppling regimes that you don't like, where do you— when do you stop, and who decides? So it was somewhat of a fair comment. But because we're Canadian, we— you know, our government tended to oppose the war in a kind of quieter, more apologetic way.

Speaker 1: This war, it wasn't about oil. It wasn't even about water. It was actually about the most valuable The public sector. It is worth untold trillions of dollars in every country in the world that still has public education, public healthcare, roads, utilities, ports. Their goal is the total privatization of planet Earth.

Speaker 2: But, I mean, I guess the really interesting thing about Canada and the war is that before September 11th, Canada was a major exporter of arms. There was— I would say that our countries were definitely— we were on the route to a deeper integration with the U.S. That's the phrase that's used, deep integration, where it's sort of NAFTA-plus. And the border was really disappearing between the 2 countries. And there was sort of a sense that, you know, we might even have a single currency. And, you know, we share the same culture in so many ways. I think that's a very important point. Is that the idea of Canadian sovereignty was somehow passé. And what's happened since September 11th and the 2 wars is that Canadians— all the polls are showing that Canadians feel more different than Ameri— different from Americans than they have in several decades.

Speaker 1: Amigos de México, my friends. Mi misión táctica: hacer responsables el supuesto presidente George W. Bush y su pinche banda de pandilleros ante una tribunal internacional. Amigos de México, my friends, ¿qué pensaron ustedes de Bush? Imagina que perdió por edad, pero es por el petróleo. Apoyaríamos económicamente y moralmente para que caiga este señor que está.

Speaker 2: Claro, sí lo apoyamos en su causa. Claro, ánimo, ánimo, adelante.

Speaker 1: 3 marines murieron y uno resultó herido cuando el helicóptero en el que viajaban se estrelló en el sur de Irak, y un soldado británico falleció en combate cerca de Basora. El Comando Central insistió, como todos los días, en que la coalición tiene bien definidos los blancos militares, pero la realidad indica que no siempre es así. 12 personas murieron, entre ellos 9 niños. Estamos indignados por esta necedad y esta terquedad de la política de Bush, ¿no? Que es una política de exterminio. Entonces es como para que todo el mundo nos sintamos indignados, ¿no?

Speaker 2: No me parece justo que porque tienen las armas ellos lleguen y maten. Yo me siento indignado. Con el pueblo estadounidense, más que nada con su gobierno. Tengo, por supuesto, una gran tristeza y un coraje que no para, ¿no? Porque cada vez estamos peor, porque ya no nos apoyamos. No me parece lo correcto, porque deberíamos estar unidos en contra de la guerra.

Speaker 1: Nosotros venceremos.

Speaker 2: Enseñando la paz, no la violencia.

Speaker 1: Ofreciendo gentes para ir a Irak. Ofreciendo los hijos de los pobres para ir a Irak.

Speaker 2: 12 años que nosotros estuvimos en el abandono. ¿Y por qué? Porque también Estados Unidos estuvo apoyando la guerra aquí en nuestro país para que asesinaran a muchos niños, ancianos, mujeres. Y entonces por eso estamos en contra de lo que es la guerra. These are beans made from incredible tendencies, beans that were grown here in El Salvador, a country that has suffered, is bathed in blood, and has suffered the bombs sent by the government. ¡Valga la pena! ¡Valga la pena!

Speaker 1: People in El Salvador are very aware of the human cost of war, because we suffered a war of 12 years where the U.S. government actually armed, trained and financed the Salvadoran Armed Forces. And actually, a genocide against the Salvadoran people was committed. committed during that war. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: Es una salida donde puede haber más de cien.

Speaker 1: Berlusconi! Ariel Sharon! Oleg Kvart! No rush, not the best. Listen up. George Bush! Tony Blair! Berlusconi!

Speaker 2: At 11:00, people would stop doing whatever they were doing to go out to the terraces or the windows, With pots and pans and kitchen utensils and make noises to protest against it. I was really amazed, because it was one of the most crowded demonstrations I've ever seen. Queremos la paz. Queremos jamás. I'm Müge Sökmen. I'm from the Peace Initiative of Turkey. I'm a publisher, and I'm now working on a world tribunal on Iraq.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 2: To investigate about the crimes that were committed during the last war on Iraq and also the sanctions. The idea came to us after the war started in Iraq, the recent war started in Iraq, because we were working so hard to stop it. We almost felt we were— you know, we almost felt we would stop the war with our hands. So when it started, we took it as a shock. And you were in Iraq at the time? Something personal, and we started looking for ways to say something about it. We do believe that all over the world, the people— the people of the world, in all the countries, raise their voices very openly, very clearly, they expressed themselves very clearly saying that they are against this war. But we suddenly realized once again maybe that in the international community there is no mechanism to stop this war. The United Nations wasn't efficient and the governments may, even if they did not join in, kept quiet. And so we We realized that there— we couldn't depend on something else. We had only ourselves to depend on.

Speaker 1: We are the people of the world. I know the meaning of that word. You must speak out. You must be vocal. And then, when all that's done, you must vote, just like the Spanish have voted, and show how democracy works. The fish.

Speaker 2: The fish.

Speaker 1: The Dish.

Speaker 2: The Dish.