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CounterPunch
December
4, 2002
No-Fly Zones
Over Iraq
Washington's
Undeclared War on "Saddam's Victiims"
by JEREMY SCAHILL
BAGHDAD. The scene would be familiar to any American frequent
flyer. The hum of the aircraft could be the morning Delta shuttle
from Reagan National to JFK; the smell of mediocre snacks, housed
in compact metal containers, fills the cabin; elevator music
playing as flight attendants welcome passengers and help them
to their seats. Businessmen in suits read the morning paper or
shuffle through documents in briefcases.
But this aircraft is a long way from
Washington.
There is a distinct tension onboard the
plane and it is not out of fear of a hijacking or terrorism--at
least not terrorism as defined by the Bush administration.
"Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar, Allah
u Akbar."
God is Great. The pilot's chant is repeated
methodically over the crackle of worn out speakers in the American-made
commercial aircraft as it taxis on the runway. It's 8:30 am and
the daily Iraqi Airways shuttle is about to begin its journey
from Saddam International Airport through the US-imposed no-fly
zone in southern Iraq to its final destination, the port city
of Basra.
As the plane begins its ascent, passengers
get a rare aerial glimpse of a locked-down country, where picture
taking is extremely limited.
The familiar bell rings on board the
plane, alerting passengers that they are free to move about the
cabin. Moments later, the morning shuttle to Basra crosses the
33rd parallel and enters what Washington has declared the southern
"no-fly zone." The flight's chief steward, a Kurdish
man named Riyadh, walks down the aisle. He says that American
warplanes frequently contact the Iraqi pilots and harass or threaten
them. "Usually, we tell them to shut up," he says.
Since the grounding of Iraqi Airways
after the Gulf War, Riyadh has worked as an international telephone
operator at a "Businessman Center" on Saddoun Street
in Baghdad. After 1991, many Iraqi Airways offices were converted
into centers that house multiple international phone lines and
fax machines. For much of the last decade, Iraqi pilots, flight
attendants and plane mechanics have sat on chairs spending endless
hours manually dialing international calls for customers. Due
to the country's severely debilitated international phone system,
a single call can take up to 2 hours or more to get a connection
and often involves dialing the same number hundreds of times.
The receipts for these calls are printed on Iraqi Airways baggage
claim tickets and hotel voucher forms leftover from the 1980s.
While Riyadh still works as a phone operator
most days, today he is smiling. He is once again wearing his
Iraqi Airways uniform. "It's very good to be back again
flying and I hope that I can fly internationally again on Iraqi
Airways. This is our aim and I hope it will be very soon."
As for the presence of American and British warplanes, Riyadh
says, "We have to fly. We have to enter these zones. It's
our country, you know."
For most Iraqis, flying--even within
their own country--has become at best a rare event. A ticket
for a trip to Basra is about 18,000 Iraqi Dinars, or $9, the
rough equivalent of the average monthly salary in Iraq. But for
the past decade, it's not the price that has prevented Iraqis
from flying.
RETURN TO THE
NOT SO FRIENDLY SKIES
After the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq's civilian
air traffic was halted. The US and Britain unilaterally imposed
the so-called no-fly zones, allegedly to protect the Kurds in
the north and the Shi'ites in the south from Saddam Hussein's
forces. According to Washington's interpretation, the sanctions
banned international flights to or from Iraq. To this day, passengers
arriving at Queen Alia Airport in Amman, Jordan will see several
Iraqi Airways planes grounded on the tarmac since 1991.
It wasn't until December 26, 1998 that
Iraq very publicly stated its intent to defend its national airspace
against invading aircraft. Baghdad's declaration came just days
after the end of Operation "Desert Fox"--four days
of massive bombing by the Clinton Administration from December
16-19, 1998.
The Iraqi announcement was preceded by
France's complete withdrawal from participation in the attacks
in the no-fly zones following Desert Fox. The French had ceased
participation in Operation "Northern Watch" in 1996
and had now pulled out of the attacks in the south, leaving Washington
and London to "enforce," as US officials put it, the
"will of the international community" on their own.
As of this writing, however, the Pentagon website for the no-fly
zones continues to list France as a participant.
In late 2000, with the US-led sanctions
capping off a decade of unprecedented suffering among Iraq's
23 million citizens, foreign governments began increasingly to
break ranks with the Washington-led policy. In August 2000, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez became the first foreign elected head of
state to visit Baghdad since 1990.
This set the scene for the first sanctions-busting
flight to Iraq--a Russian plane that landed at the newly refurbished
Saddam International Airport on August 17, 2000. What was significant
is that Moscow did not apply for permission for the flight at
the US-dominated sanctions committee at the UN. The US and Britain
objected to the flight, but to no avail. France's Ambassador,
Jean-David Levitte said, "For many years now, we have considered
that there is no flight embargo against Iraq."
This opening led to a flood of foreign
aircraft into Baghdad, carrying medicines, food and humanitarian
goods, along with foreign dignitaries all speaking out against
the flight bans and the sanctions. It also gave a tremendous
boost to Iraq's successful diplomatic push to renew relations
and trade with its neighbors.
Empowered by this international defiance
of Washington's policy, Baghdad announced that it would resume
domestic flights on Iraqi Airways beginning November 5, 2000.
Shortly after the first plane took off, the Iraqi Information
Minister Mohammed Al Sahaf said, "These flights will continue
despite the threats, as they aim to smash the American-British
criminal acts of imposing illegal no-fly zones."
Today, Iraqi Airways runs an average
of 4 daily flights between Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. Regular
routes on foreign carriers like Royal Jordanian include Amman,
Moscow and Damascus. But the Iraqi skies are hardly friendly.
"PEOPLE
ARE DYING"
Away from the upbeat defiance of the
Iraqi Airways crews, once again flying across their country,
on the ground in cities like Basra lays the harsh reality. With
no declaration of war, American and British warplanes bomb Iraq
an average of 3-4 times a week. Baghdad says over the last decade
more than 1,400 civilians have been killed in the US and British
attacks in the no fly zones. While this cannot be independently
verified, UN statistics say that more than 300 civilians have
been killed in the raids since December 1998.
"If you want to be very cynical
then you say what has in fact resulted from these zones is death
and destruction," says Hans von Sponeck, the coordinator
of the UN Humanitarian Program in Iraq from 1998-2000. "On
average, during the time I was in Iraq, there were bombing incidents
every 3 days. The casualties were in the very areas that they
allegedly established to protect people. How, at a 10,000-meter
height, can you protect a Shi'ite population? That is a fantasy.
The cruel reality is that people are dying as a result of these
no-fly zones."
In 1999, von Sponeck began compiling
what he called "Air Strike Reports" on the US and British
attacks. He submitted these every three months to the Security
Council and Secretary General Kofi Annan. He says that in 1999
alone, there were 132 bombings that caused civilian "casualties."
"The number of people killed were
120, the number of people hurt, 442," von Sponeck said.
"That's only in the year 1999."
"I was very severely reprimanded
particularly by the British authorities for having 'strayed off'
my mandate," he says. "The reports showed destruction
of civilian property in areas where there shouldn't have been
a foreign air zone established in the first place."
These zones cover a sprawling chunk of
Iraqi territory (more than 60% of Iraq), from the 36th parallel
north and from the 33rd parallel south (in 1996 the southern
zone was expanded from the 32nd parallel). Since 1991, the US
has averaged more than 34, 000 military sorties per year over
Iraq, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The no-fly zone bombings represent the longest continuing US
bombing campaign since the Vietnam War. The Pentagon estimates
that it carries out an average of 12 "missions" a month
in Iraq (other figures put the number higher) at a cost of $750,000
per mission. In 2000, the official annual US bill for the southern
"zone" alone was estimated at $1.4 billion.
Since the current Bush administration
took power in Washington, there has been a significant increase
in the frequency and intensity of the bombings, particularly
in the south of the country. Over the past year, the Bush administration
has used the zones to preemptively degrade Iraq's already limited
ability to defend against a large-scale US attack, while not
citing a single incident of attempted repression of Shi'ite or
Kurdish populations as justification.
WAR GAMES AND
PSY-OPS
The Bush administration now portrays
the attacks in the zones as responses to Iraqi radars tracking
US and British planes or to anti-aircraft fire. Largely, Washington
leaves the story about humanitarian justifications to the obliging
media, which continues to report the raids as being motivated
singularly by concern for the rights of Shi'ites and Kurds.
In testimony before Congress in 2001,
General Tommy Franks, the commander of US Central Command said
the purpose of the zones is to demonstrate "a continued
and significant troop presence to enhance deterrence and show
the United States' commitment to force Saddam to comply with
sanctions and WMD inspections." He said the zones are designed
to "provide access and interaction with Gulf governments;
ensure Iraq cannot easily repair and improve its anti-aircraft
capabilities within the no-fly zones; and, ensure the ingress
and egress routes that would be necessary to prosecute an expanded
war against Iraq remain sufficiently clear of sophisticated surface-to-air
missile systems."
Frank's explanation is far from the reported
humanitarian aims of the zones. As Washington continues its troop
build up in the region, the Pentagon is using the no-fly zones
to prepare combat pilots for a large-scale attack on Iraq. Eliot
Cohen, who directed the Air Force study of the Persian Gulf War
bombing campaign said recently the no-fly zones "have an
added benefit in intelligence and training."
An AP dispatch filed November 12, from
the USS Abraham Lincoln reports: "On quiet days, when the
Iraqis don't shoot at U.S. fighter jets, the pilots practice
spotting targets of attack, like airfields. It's an experience
that 'makes any potential action infinitely easier ... to fly
over the same territory you're going to attack is a real luxury,'
said Capt. Kevin C. Albright, commander of the USS Abraham Lincoln's
air wing. When the Iraqis do fire - an increasingly frequent
scenario - simulation stops and real bombing begins.
"But instead of hitting anti-aircraft
and missile batteries - the usual targets in a decade of coalition
patrols - the pilots now more often strike Iraqi command bunkers,
communications stations and radar directing the attacks. Those
costly, hard-to-repair facilities are essential to Iraq's air
defense."
Rear Admiral David Gove, deputy director
of global operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on November
20 that U.S. and British pilots were "essentially flying
combat missions ... Any opportunity that they have to understand
the capabilities and the layout of Iraqi air-defense weapons
systems is useful for their own experience base."
The Associated Press reported in mid-November
that the Pentagon has also changed its targeting in the no-fly
zones in recent months, "not necessarily hitting back at
facilities from which the hostilities originate, but rather planning
strikes that will do the most to cripple Iraq air defenses."
A simple glance at a map of Iraq tells
an interesting tale about Washington's supposed humanitarian
motives. The Northern No-Fly zone begins at the 36th parallel
and encompasses Iraq's third largest city Mosul, which remains
under the control of the Iraqi government. But almost half of
the population of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (not under
Baghdad's control) live below the 36th parallel and therefore
"outside" the "protection" of US and British
warplanes.
On at least five occasions since October
3, 2002, US planes have dumped hundreds of thousands of propaganda
leaflets over areas in southern Iraq. In late November, the Pentagon
said in one run, warplanes had dropped 360,000 leaflets saying
the no fly zones "protect the Iraqi people."
"Threatening these coalition aircraft
has a consequence. The attacks may destroy you or any location
of coalition choosing. Will it be you or your brother? You decide,"
said a translation of the leaflets distributed by the Central
Command.
"Coalition Air Power can strike
at will. Any time, any place," added the warning. Several
versions of the leaflets have been dropped over areas of southern
Iraq.
A different version dropped earlier says,
"Before you engage coalition aircraft, think about the consequences."
The leaflet has a graphic of a large cloud of smoke caused by
a massive explosion. Debris is scattered amidst the wreckage.
What appears to be the face of an Iraqi soldier is superimposed
over the scene. On the bottom of the leaflet is a picture of
a crouching Iraqi woman in traditional garb and an Iraqi man
holding what appears to be a child. "Think about your family.
Do what you must to survive," the leaflet says.
Another leaflet reads: "The destruction
experienced by your colleagues in other air defense locations
is a response to your continuing aggression toward planes of
the coalition forces. No tracking or firing on these aircraft
will be tolerated. You could be next."
After the first reported dropping of
leaflets in early October, Pentagon spokesperson Navy Lieutenant
Dan Hetlage told the American Forces Press Service, "We
just want them to get the message, 'Hey, this is why we keep
striking.'"
'MEASURED RESPONSE'
OR 'STATE TERRORISM'?
For much of the past decade, the US and
British attacks in the no-fly zones have been given cursory notice
by major corporate media outlets, if at all. The story, usually
with a Washington dateline, reads the same almost every time:
"US warplanes bombed an Iraqi command and control post in
southern Iraq after Iraqi radar locked on allied aircraft patrolling
the No Fly Zone, according to a statement from US Central Command."
The story almost always goes on to inform readers that "The
pilots returned safely to base." Then, of course, the story
explains that the zones were "established after the 1991
Gulf War to protect minority Kurds and Shiites from Saddam."
Recently, because of the loud beating
of the war drum, these attacks are receiving more attention in
the media. But primarily from the angle of "Iraqi defiance."
The Bush administration asserted that Iraq's firing on US aircraft
entering Iraqi airspace constituted a "material breach"
of the November 8 UN Security Council resolution on Iraq. The
charge was quickly, though diplomatically, rebuffed by Secretary
General Kofi Annan and several foreign governments, including
Security Council member China. There are no UN resolutions that
prohibit Iraq from maintaining its military or taking action
in defense of its territory.
Hans von Sponeck, a 32-year veteran of
the United Nations and a former Assistant Secretary General,
scoffs at the characterization of these zones by the US media
and government officials as having a basis in the UN charter
or Security Council resolutions.
"That's a total misnomer,"
he says. "There is no UN mandate for the establishment of
these two no-fly zones. There is always a reference to resolution
688, which deals with an appeal to the Secretary General to ensure
the protection of minorities in Iraq. That is not, by a wide
stretch of the imagination, an agreement that you can establish,
in some other country, airspace that belongs only to you and
is blocked to the national aircraft. It is an illegal establishment
of a zone for bilateral interests of the US and the UK."
But despite the public protests raised
by von Sponeck and a handful of other UN officials, Washington
continues to receive support from the UN in the form of silence.
Baghdad has consistently criticized the
United Nations Iraqi-Kuwaiti Observation Mission (UNIKOM), which
monitors the demilitarized zone between the Iraq/Kuwait border,
for refusing to document the violations of Iraq's sovereignty
by the US and UK warplanes and to properly name the parties entering
the demilitarized zone. In its reports, UNIKOM refers to the
warplanes as "unidentified planes."
In early December, Iraq's Foreign Minister,
Naji Sabri, wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
accusing the US and UK governments of practicing "blatant
state terrorism" by bombing civilian targets in Iraq. Sabri
said that from October 18 to November 17, 2002, the no-fly zone
bombings had killed 10 people and wounded seven others. He said
Baghdad reserves the right of "legitimate self-defense under
the UN Charter and international law."
After the letter was made public, President
Bush responded. "A regime that fires upon American and British
pilots is not taking the path of compliance," Bush said.
"A regime that sends letters filled with protests and falsehoods
is not taking the path of compliance."
Shortly after an incident in mid-November
in which Iraqi forces fired on American warplanes that had entered
the country's airspace, US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called
Iraq's actions "unacceptable" and alleged that Iraq
was the "only place on the face of the earth where our forces
are being fired on and the response is measured."
"I DIDN'T
FORGET THAT. NEVER."
For the civilians who live within the
zones, Washington's actions in Iraq hardly seem measured. Throughout
the south of the country, residents report almost daily over-flights
by US warplanes. Many people say the constant rumble of the planes
and air raid sirens are causing psychological problems, especially
among women and children. Almost everyone knows someone who has
been killed, injured or affected by the foreign warplanes over
the past decade. Far from feeling comforted by the planes, residents
say they are terrorized.
"At the beginning [when the zones
were first established], they said they wouldn't bomb civilian
people and we accepted that," says Ikbar Fartus, an English
teacher at a primary school in Basra. "We went out to school,
to the market because we were sure that the [US] President didn't
lie or something like that. But since then, things proved that
they didn't speak true."
Fartus speaks from direct experience.
Through the winding roads and alleys
of the poor Basra neighborhood of Al Jummhurriya lays a street
now known as Missile Street. It was named after a deadly US no-fly
zone bombing on January 25, 1999. According to UN reports at
the time, an AGM-130 satellite-guided cruise missile slammed
into the middle of the residential neighborhood, killing 17 civilians,
at least 4 of them small children playing in the streets. Among
the dead was a 6-year-old boy named Haider.
Ikbar Fartus was his mother.
To this day, she bears the name of her
dead son. In Iraqi culture, a woman takes the name of her first-born
and is forever known as the mother of that child. Fartus is known
by everyone as Um Haider, the mother of Haider. She lives every
day of her life haunted by that January morning when her son
was taken from her by US missiles. It tears her apart every time
she tells the story, but she says she wants it to be known.
"Until now, I didn't forget what
happened on that day. At 9:30 in the morning we were sitting
and I was teaching my children," she remembers. They heard
the rumble of the warplanes, "then a big bomb happened.
The glasses of the windows and the dishes and cups, glasses in
the kitchen, all of them fell down and broke. Our faces were
full of blood because of the [flying, broken] glass. Two of my
children were with me, Hindu and Hamza. But Haider and my other
son, Mustafa, they were out in the street."
A devout Muslim, she remembers putting
on her cover before running quickly out of the house. "I
saw the street is full of smoke and dust and it was like midnight.
Then, I ran quickly and called my children 'Haider, Mustafa,
Haider, Mustafa.' I didn't find them."
She begins to cry, but continues the
story through her tears. "At last, I saw a small hill of
broken wood and iron and pieces of dust and then I saw my oldest
son, Haider, full of blood, his face--the blood covered his face
and his body. His head and the circle of blood under his head
on the ground. I didn't forget that. Never."
She regains her composure. "He closed
his eyes. Then I called him, touched him, moved him. He didn't
answer me."
She then heard her other son, Mustafa,
faintly calling "mamma, mamma."
"I saw him, his eyes full of blood
and all his face and head full of injuries and blood," she
says. "I tried to carry both of them but I couldn't."
Knowing that her firstborn son, Haider,
was dead, she held Mustafa in her arms, ran to the road and took
a taxi to the hospital. Mustafa survived the attack. He lost
two fingers and lives with shrapnel in his liver.
Tragically, Um Haider's story is not
rare among the Shi'ite population of southern Iraq. And these
stories cannot be ignored when President George W Bush or members
of his administration speak of the potential for Shi'ite rebellion
against Saddam in concert with a US led attack. Nor can Washington's
history or the Bush family track record with the Iraqi Shi'ites
be cast aside.
PULLING THE
PLUG
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces entered
and swiftly occupied neighboring Kuwait, a move that ultimately
led to the Gulf War. The invading Iraqi Army was comprised largely
of Shi'ite and Kurdish conscripts. At the onset of the allied
ground offensive, many of them deserted their posts outright;
others did so after Saddam ordered a withdrawal from Kuwait.
Unwilling to die for Saddam on the one hand and being sent into
a totally unwinnable war on the other, the retreating soldiers
were prime candidates for a rebellion against the government.
Add to this the repression, misery and suffering experienced
throughout southern Iraq and the ground was ripe for an uprising.
On February 15, 1991, in a carefully
crafted and well-publicized statement, then-President George
HW Bush appealed to "the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people
to take matters into their own hands--to force Saddam Hussein
the dictator to step aside." To underscore the point, Bush
repeated it verbatim in another speech that day. In early March
1991, a massive Shi'ite rebellion swept across southern Iraq
from Basra to the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. Ba'athists
were tortured and executed in massive numbers throughout the
south; pictures and portraits of Saddam were smashed to pieces.
By mid-March, the Iraqi government lost control of 14 of the
country's 18 provinces.
As the rebellion spread, representatives
of the most prominent Shi'ite cleric in Iraq attempted to contact
American forces that were then occupying parts of Iraq to assess
Washington's support. The US Commander in the region, General
Norman Schwarzkopf refused to meet with them. American and other
allied forces, meanwhile, destroyed and confiscated Iraqi munitions
that could have been used by the rebellion. But the deathblow
to the uprising came when the US lifted the over-flight ban on
Iraqi aircraft, allowing the Iraqi government to send in attack
helicopters to mercilessly crush the rebellion in late March.
On top of this, the elite Republican Guard units that General
Schwarzkopf had allowed to retreat to Baghdad at the end of the
war led the counteroffensive on the ground against the rebellion.
This is a history not forgotten in southern
Iraq when President George W Bush, the son, speaks of the potential
for rebellion in the south. Furthermore, Basra and other southern
cities and villages have been the frontline victims of 12 years
of economic sanctions and contamination from the heavy use of
depleted uranium munitions by US and UK forces during the Gulf
War. The food supply is poisoned and cancer rates are out of
control. The hospitals of the south are like morgues full of
children with cancer and indescribable birth defects. People
live with air raid sirens, American and British warplanes and
regular bombings. The suffering at the hands of Saddam has been
eclipsed by the terror of the Washington-led policy. Perhaps
it could be said that many if not most Iraqis in the south hate
Saddam Hussein. But would President Bush venture a guess at what
they think of him or his father?
'LITTLE' BUSH
HAS "NO KUWAIT"
Today, 12 years after the Gulf War, pundits
and officials in Washington speak of the Iraqi Army turning on
Saddam and of a Northern Alliance-style force made up of Shi'ites,
Kurds and dissident Sunnis rebelling against Baghdad. They prefer
to ignore history. Iraq, like Iran, is a predominantly Shi'ite
country. Southern Iraq is overwhelmingly Shi'ite and its people
fought on the side of Saddam Hussein during the bloody Iran-Iraq
war.
The uprising in 1991 was fuelled by tens
of thousands of Iraqis who had been sent into Kuwait to fight
an unwinnable occupation war. Since then, American policy has
been based on the notion that relentlessly starving, depriving
and bombing 23 million Iraqis will lead to a rebellion against
the government. The policy has been an utter failure that has
only strengthened Saddam Hussein and his grip on power. Iraq
has been made the crucifix of the Middle East, but the blame
for the unprecedented suffering has not fallen at Saddam's feet.
As one Iraqi official recently put it, "the current Bush
has no Kuwait."
"You see 1990 is not 2002,"
says Saeed Al Musawi, Iraq's Deputy Foreign Minister. "Yes,
Iraqi troops entered Kuwait. Yes, it was a use of force against
a sovereign country. The situation was rectified and Iraq paid
a heavy price. Now, they say 'we want to change the government.
We don't like the president.' We are a nation of 7,000 years
of civilization. This talk is not only an insult to us but to
the dignity of all human beings."
Throughout Iraq, and regardless of their
political opinions of the government, people are bracing for
a US invasion. More than 500 Shi'ite clerics, including the Imams
at the holy shrines at Najaf and Kerbala (next to Mecca, the
most sacred sites of Shi'ite Islam) recently issued a fatwa,
a religious decree, calling on all followers--Iraqi and non-Iraqi--to
fight a jihad against any invading American forces.
In recent months, Saddam Hussein has
taken several moves that seem intended to show Bush that Iraq's
government is stable and unconcerned with internal strife. He
virtually emptied the country's prisons, even releasing political
prisoners. Weapons are being distributed in areas throughout
the country, while most Iraqis already own some sort of gun.
Clearly, the firepower for an uprising is in circulation and
the government in Baghdad seems incredibly unconcerned about
this. What's clear is that Saddam Hussein is banking on the premise
that Iraqis despise Bush and his "crusader army" more
than they hate Saddam.
Like no other people in recent history,
the Iraqis know what it means to suffer. A once great civilization
has been reduced to what Denis Halliday, a former UN Humanitarian
Coordinator in Iraq, called a handout society. Their collective
faces have been pressed into the mud and rubbed there for 12
years in front of the world's eyes. Like a plague, US foreign
policy has swept through the homes of all ordinary Iraqis, while
leaving the government firmly in power. No assassination or coup
or invasion will erase this from the hearts and minds and memories
of the tens of thousands of Iraqi children who have grown up
in pure misery, watching their parents humiliated, beaten down,
killed. Long after Saddam Hussein is gone, no matter how he goes,
America will be facing the children of Iraq for generations to
come. Among them will be Mustafa and his siblings, whose 6-year-old
brother Haider was killed by a US laser-guided cruise missile
during Washington's undeclared war against Iraq.
Jeremy Scahill
is an independent journalist. He reports for the nationally-syndicated
radio programs Democracy Now! and Free Speech Radio News. He
reports frequently from Iraq, where he and independent filmmaker
Jacquie Soohen coordinate http://www.iraqjournal.org,
the only website providing independent reporting from Iraq. He
can be reached at jeremybgd@yahoo.com.
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