One thing you can do right away, is ask around about the “no-fly” zones in Iraq. Almost every politician I know believes our bombers are blowing up stuff in Iraq under one United Nations resolution or another. I hope you know that we are making those bombing runs with the Brits when the Pentagon gets a hankering for target practice -- especially now that Puerto Ricans don’t want us bombing their islands. Yes, we are blasting various buildings that might be housing military stuff, but in the process we have killed thousands of civilians over the years. And it is all illegal. The only reason we get away with this civilized form of political terrorism, where our pilots don’t have to commit suicide, is because we are the most powerful nation in the history of the world. But like Goliath, not quite powerful enough.
The fig leaf for the “no-fly” zone was the joint decision of the U.S., British and French to launch operation “Provide Comfort,” providing humanitarian aid to Kurds in the north and Shi’ite Muslims in the south. The operation banned Iraqi aircraft and helicopters in the two, which have been widened in the years since, long after their supposed reason for existence ended. France pulled out in 1998 when it said the operation had changed to military from humanitarian. The bombs have kept falling even though there never has been a U.N. resolution giving them any grounding in international law. We rarely hear of any results of the raids, but the Islamic world totes up the deaths and chalks them up to American imperialism. Why not? I noted two weeks ago that our financial markets were trying to make a recovery from its steep losses on the opening day of trading and suddenly nosedived. There was nothing on the wires here that would explain the nosedive, but a minute before it began, the French wires reported heavy U.S. and British attacks in Southern Iraq. This is where our Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz would like to set up a puppet regime to begin military expansion toward Baghdad.