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The Battle for Fallujah Intesifies; U.S. Poised to Attack
Najaf
Congress Probes INC's Lobbying Efforts
Poll: U.S. Public Uninformed of Iraq Issues
Death Squad Ambassador: Senate Hearings Begin on Negroponte
Iraq Appointment
Killer Coke: Activist Disrupts Coca Cola Shareholders Meeting
Colombia and the United States: War, Terrorism, and Destabilization
NBC Recognizes 107th Birthday of Amy Goodman's Grandmother
Sonia Bock
The Battle for Fallujah Intesifies; U.S. Poised to
Attack Najaf
The daily carnage in Iraq continued across Iraq yesterday.
Eight Iraqis and one U.S. soldier were killed in clashes in
Fallujah, two U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi were killed in Baghdad
and 43 Iraqis were killed in Najaf. We go to Najaf to get
a report from a peace activist acting as a human shield and
we speak with author Rahul Mahajan about Fallujah.
The daily carnage in Iraq continued yesterday with renewed
fighting in cities and towns across the country. Eight Iraqis
and one U.S. soldier were killed in clashes in Fallujah. The
marines called in air strikes, destroying a minaret that Iraqi
guerillas had reportedly been firing from. U.S. forces say
they are going to begin patrolling the hostile town with Iraqi
forces but have delayed doing so until Thursday.
Renewed fighting also erupted around Najaf and Kufa, with
the US determined to move into some new positions in Najaf.
Militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr
attacked U.S. forces who were replacing Spanish troops at
a fort on the outskirts of town. U.S. gunships responded,
killing 43 Iraqis.
Chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has ordered
Sadr to withdraw his militia and its weapons from mosques
and schools in Najaf. Sadr has threatened to unleash suicide
bombers against American forces if they enter the holy city.
In an interview with the Italian paper "La Repubblica"
Monday, Sadr predicted that if the US arrests or kills him,
the Iraqi people will unleash on them the fires of hell.
Meanwhile, two U.S. troops were killed and five wounded in
Baghdad when a house blew up as they were trying to inspect
it for chemical weapons. After the blast, Baghdad residents
celebrated on top of burnt Humvees.
The Washington Post reports an alarming increase in the number
of U.S. soldiers wounded this month. Doctors say they are
performing one craniotomy per day, where they remove the skull
to get at injured brain tissue. One surgeon told the Post:
"We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery
team did in eight months".
Finally, Iraq's U.S.-selected leaders approved a new flag
for the country, dumping Saddam Hussein's red-and-black standard.
The new design is white with two blue stripes, and although
it has a crescent representing Islam, the flag no longer bears
the words "God is great."
The new design not only abandons the symbols of Saddam's
regime. It also avoids the colors used in other Arab flags:
green and black for Islam and red for Arab nationalism. The
Associated Press notes that the only country in the Middle
East with blue stripes in its flag is Israel, which has a
Star of David on a field of white between horizontal blue
bands.
- Peter Lumsbaine, head of The Najaf Emergency Peace Team,
a handful of peace activists who have arrived in Najaf.
They plan to act as human shields if US troops goes into
the holy city to crush Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
- Rahul Mahajan, is an independent journalist and author.
He has just come out of Iraq, where he spent nearly a month
reporting from the ground. He was one of the only unembedded
journalists to make it into Fallujah. He runs a blog called
empirenotes.org.
Congress Probes INC's Lobbying Efforts
The Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi may have violated
restrictions against using taxpayer money to lobby when it
campaigned for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Congress' General
Accounting Office will investigate the allegation, which if
proven true, means that U.S. taxpayers paid to have themselves
persuaded that it was necessary to invade Iraq.
The Knight Ridder News Service is reporting that the Iraqi
National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi may have violated restrictions
against using taxpayer money to lobby when it campaigned for
the US invasion of Iraq.
The allegation is the subject of a coming investigation by
Congress' General Accounting Office. As Knight Ridder reported,
if the charge proves true, it means that U.S. taxpayers paid
to have themselves persuaded that it was necessary to invade
Iraq.
Officials of the Iraqi National Congress deny the allegation.
But officials at the State Department, which managed the INC's
U.S. government grant, said they believe it did violate the
restrictions, despite what a senior official said were repeated
warnings to the group to avoid lobbying "or even the
appearance of same."
Federal law prohibits the use of U.S. government money for
lobbying on financial matters, such as government contracts.
A grant agreement between the INC and the State Department
prohibited lobbying and propagandizing.
Ahmed Chalabi has long been a favorite of hawks at the Pentagon
and CIA. And there have been internal fights within the Washington
power establishment over supporting him. The INC was the major
recipient of nearly $100 million dollars in US funds in 1998.
And the group hired Shea and Gardner, the law firm of former
CIA director James Woolsey, to represent their interests in
Washington.
- Warren Strobel, senior foreign affairs correspondent
for Knight Ridder newspapers. He has covered that topic
for more than 15 years and is the author of the book "Late-Breaking
Foreign Policy: The News Media's Influence on Peace Operations"
(May 1997) a study of how CNN and other news media affect
U.S. foreign policy and the deployment of American troops
abroad.
Poll: U.S. Public Uninformed of Iraq Issues
A new poll has found that 45% of Americans still believe
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the
invasion of Iraq and 57% believe Hussein gave substantial
support to Al Qaeda despite no known documentary or physical
evidence to date that these statements are true.
A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes
at the University of Maryland has found that 45 percent of
Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction before the invasion of Iraq and 57% believe Hussein
gave substantial support to Al Qaeda.
There's no known documentary or physical evidence to date
that these statements are true.
Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified before
Congress in January that no weapons were found and prewar
intelligence on Iraq was "almost all wrong."
CIA Director George Tenet last month rejected assertions
by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq had cooperated with
al-Qaida.
Other senior officials including Richard Clarke and Hans
Blix as well as various intelligence analysts and whistleblowers
have also come forward.
Despite that record, many Americans continue to believe that
the threat from Iraqi weapons and its alleged links to terrorism
justified the war. The poll also found that that conviction
correlates closely with support for the war and President
Bush.
- Steven Kull, director of the Program
on International Policy Attitudes at the University
of Maryland. PIPA carries out research on public opinion
on foreign policy and international issues by conducting
nationwide polls, focus groups and comprehensive reviews
of polling conducted by other organizations.
Death Squad Ambassador: Senate Hearings Begin on
Negroponte Iraq Appointment
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding hearings
today on John Negroponte's appointment to the Baghdad embassy.
Negroponte's reputation as ambassador to Honduras from 1981
to 1985 earned him a reputation for supporting widespread
human rights abuses and campaigns of terror.
Two events happened last week that at first glance may not
seem to be related. Honduras announced that it was withdrawing
its troops from Iraq, following the lead of Spain's new government.
The second event was that President Bush announced he was
appointing John Negroponte to head up the U.S. embassy in
Iraq. Perhaps the two events are just a coincidence, or maybe
the Hondurans know something most of the world hasn't been
told. And that is the record of John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador
to Honduras during the 1980s.
Negroponte currently serves as U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations. But it is his reputation as ambassador to Honduras
from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting
widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. As
ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in coordinating
US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring
up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras. During his term as
ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual
human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway
than Argentina.
According to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in
1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and
kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun
reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities
of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 3-16,
that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations.
Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful,
killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's
National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported
that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still
missing.
Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte,
says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions
from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation
in Honduras. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to
Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million to over $77 million.
Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army's loyalty in
the battle against popular movements throughout Central America.
In the hearings on Negroponte's appointment to his current
post as UN ambassador, he was questioned by Senate Foreign
Relations Committee staff members on whether he had acquiesced
to human rights abuses by death squads funded and partly trained
by the Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified that
he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran
government policy. "To this day," he said, "I
do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras."
Today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding
hearings on Negroponte's appointment to the Baghdad embassy,
which will be the largest US embassy in the world, with some
3,000 employees and more than 500 CIA officers. But many Democrats
have indicated that they will not question Negroponte about
his record in Central America, calling it ancient history.
When asked about the appointment, Democratic Senator Chris
Dodd said, "It's critically important that we get an
ambassador there."
- Sister Laetitia Bordes, a Catholic nun with the Society
of Helpers, a Catholic community of women. She joins us
from San Bruno California.
Killer Coke: Activist Disrupts Coca Cola Shareholders
Meeting
At Coke's annual shareholders' meeting, labor rights activist
Ray Rogers, confronted Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO Douglas
Daft, citing the murder of two union leaders who filed suit
in a federal court in Florida, alleging Coke contracted with
paramilitary death squads to torture, kidnap, and murder union
leaders at its bottling plants in Columbia. Rogers joins us
in our firehouse studio.
On the morning of December 5, 1996, two men on a motorcycle
arrived at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Antioquia, Colombia,
where according to eyewitnesses they breezed past a guardhouse
at the factory's front gate and onto plant grounds. The men
approached Isidro Gil, head of the plant's union of bottling
employees, and in plain sight of his co-workers shot him ten
times, mortally wounding him. Just one hour later, another
top union officer was kidnapped from his home, and that evening
the union's offices were ransacked and burned to the ground.
Two days later, after gunmen with the Colombian paramilitary
group A.U.C. threatened further violence against employees,
plant managers distributed union resignation forms to workers.
All of them signed the forms.
In July of 2001, the union representing Colombia's Coca-Cola
employees filed suit in a federal court in Florida, alleging
Coke contracted with paramilitary death squads to torture,
kidnap, and murder union leaders at its bottling plants. Though
the lawsuit was initially thrown out, charges of collusion
with Colombian paramilitaries continue to dog the company.
An amended version of the lawsuit was filed this month with
the same federal court in Miami, and at Coke's annual shareholders'
meeting in Wilmington, Deleware last Wednesday, Coke Chairman
and CEO Douglas Daft went on the defensive, telling investors
that his company had no role in the killings.
But Coca-Cola's denial would not go unchallenged. Following
Douglas Daft's denial of culpability, the floor was opened
to comments from the assembled shareholders.
- Ray Rogers, director of Corporate Campaign confronts
Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO Douglas Daft at a shareholder's
meeting April 21, 2004.
Ray Rogers continued his critique for several more minutes
before his microphone was cut off and security officers dragged
him from the room; he joins us today in our firehouse studio.
Colombia and the United States: War, Terrorism, and
Destabilization
We speak with longtime journalist Mario Murrillo about his
new book, Colombia and the United States: War, Terrorism and
Destablization Murrillo teaches media and communications and
is co-host of Wake-Up Call on the Pacifica radio station WBAI
in New York.
NBC Recognizes 107th Birthday of Amy Goodman's Grandmother
Sonia Bock
Amy Goodman's grandmother Sonia Bock turned 107 years-old
this month. NBC recognized her today in its popular centenarian
birthday segment. Happy Birthday Sonia, from the entire crew
at Democracy Now!
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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