From Occupied Palestine

"It was mad chaos like you cannot imagine"
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 3 April 2003.

The dateline was Kifl, Iraq, March 29th. Reuters news agency war correspondent Kieran Murray filed a wire story about the fierce fighting in a small town that claimed the lives of “hundreds of Iraqis” who were “vastly outgunned by the tanks of the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division”. The story of the battle was compelling - almost incredible.

“(US Army) officers said the tank unit fired two 120 mm high velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by tanks.

Iraq: Fabricated pretexts and a war for conquest
An interview with Michel Chossudovsky
JON ELMER
Guerrilla Radio, 31 March 2003

Audio: listen

Jon Elmer, Guerrilla Radio: Professor Chossudovsky, could you share your perceptions on the first two weeks of ‘official’ war in Iraq?

The arrogance of imperial punditry
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 24 March 2003

The arrogance of the imperial pundits' predictions of a swift and surgical war in Iraq has been quickly proven false. One week into so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom the Americans and British have met resistance in every city they have moved on in the south of Iraq. They are in control of very little in the north, and are facing escalating opposition from demonstrations here at home and around the world.

Canada's role in the war on Iraq
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, TML Daily, 20 March 2003

Since the "official" war in Iraq will surely begin before this issue is off the newsstands, outlining the terror and mayhem of "shock and awe" bombing raids in a city the size of Paris is perhaps an unhelpful conjecture: it will be massive, it will be brutal and it will be deadly - "liberation" as defined by the American Empire always is.

For months now, as the diplomatic wrangling at the United Nations Security Council consumed our attention, Canada's stance on supporting the American Empire's adventurism in Iraq relied on Security Council approval. Chretien said as much when he came to Halifax in late February for a $400-a-plate Liberal Party fundraiser.

Lies, wars and empire: Marching to massacre in Iraq
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 13 February 2003

We are being lied to again.

In 1990 it was the infamous Incubator Story: more than 300 babies torn from their incubators in Kuwait City by pillaging Iraqi troops - Bush I used this fact to beat the war drums in half-dozen important speeches leading up to the Gulf massacre. The babies were left "on the cold floor to die", a tearful 15 year old Kuwaiti girl told Congress. But, alas, hyperbole doomed the propaganda department's yarn when it was pointed out that in all of Los Angeles County (pop. 15 million, to Kuwait's 3 million) there were only 53 newborn-babies in incubators. Oh ya, and the Kuwaiti girl who testified? Daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington.

Psychological destruction and the Hiroshima effect
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 6 February 2003

Shudder to think of living in Baghdad on the night the United States and "a coalition of the willing" launch Operation Shock and Awe, raining down 800,000 pounds of cruise missiles in 48-hours onto the densely populated metropolis of four million people.

The burden of justication for pre-emptive version
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 24 October 2002

For the sake of argument, let's do as Bush's audacious, illegitimate, and morally bankrupt regime demands: let's suspend our disbelief of the threat that Saddam Hussein poses to the world with his "potential access to weapons of mass destruction capabilities" and conjured "nuclear mujahedeen".

Let's ignore recent history and disavow the realpolitik of the infamous atrocities committed by Saddam-our-ally during the 1980s. Let's pretend that the US was neutral during the Iran/Iraq war, necessarily skipping unsavory details like the US downing of Iranair Flight 655 in Iranian airspace in July of '88 (killing 290 civilians), and the forgiven "accidental" sinking of the USS Stark by an Iraqi fighter-bomber in May '87 (killing 37 sailors).