Iraq in the week before U.S. elections

In the week before the U.S. elections, resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq reached new heights, breaking out in areas and regions of the country thought “secure” by U.S. forces only months ago.

Renewed fighting was reported in Fallujah, a city of 200,000 that was nearly destroyed by massive U.S. attacks two years ago. In Operation Phantom Fury, the U.S. had hurled white phosphorus, cluster bombs and napalm against the people of Fallujah. Some 36,000 of the city’s 50,000 homes were destroyed along with 60 schools and 65 mosques, according to the city’s compensation commissioner. Over 5,000 civilians were killed.

Now, attacks in Fallujah against the occupation forces “have increased in frequency and severity,” according to a report from the Inter Press Service (IPS). “‘The Americans brought five dead civilians whom they shot in the city streets in revenge for their casualties,’ a man at the former football field now called Martyrs Graveyard said. ‘We are going to need another graveyard, this one is going to be full soon.’”

At the University of al-Anbar in Ramadi, some 30 kilometers from Fallujah, the entire school has been under siege. “The students or teachers who approach must lift their shirts from 50 meters away and listen to nasty comments of arrogant soldiers who give body checks before admitting people in,” said Saif al-Juboori, a student. Ramadi had been facing electricity and water cuts for about two weeks. “Most residents believe this is punishment for the popular support for Iraqi resistance,” according to the IPS report.

Anti-war sentiment is also growing within the U.S. military, with many soldiers more emboldened to speak out publicly against the war. Numerous stories of individual resistance are breaking through the media, as are heart-breaking tales of how the horror of war affects both Iraqis and U.S. soldiers.

Take the case of Army Spec. Alyssa Peterson of Flagstaff, Ariz. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at the Tal-afar airbase in northwestern Iraq. She died a few months after the invasion, at the age of 27, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge,” according to the Army.

Unsatisfied with the official explanation for her death, activist reporter Kevin Elston spent over two years trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Just weeks ago, a Freedom of Information Act document revealed the truth.

Peterson had shot herself rather than participate in interrogations and abet torture.

“According to the Army’s investigation into her death, Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners,” reported Flagstaff’s public radio station KNAU on Oct. 31. “She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed. ... “On the night of Sept. 15, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” the documents disclose.

Anger and disgust with the U.S. war in Iraq was the centerpiece of the 2006 midterm elections, which were perceived by millions of voters to be a referendum on the war.

But two-thirds of the Democratic Party candidates, in 45 of the most closely contested House races, not only opposed withdrawal but opposed so much as a timetable for pulling out. Only one, Peter Welch from Vermont, supported bringing the troops home in 2006.

The House of Representatives, as specified in Article 1, Sections 7 and 8 of the U.S. Constitution, has the power of the purse. It can cut the budget for any federal program, including the military.

With one stroke of the pen, the House could stop the war by stopping the flow of money to the military. But the vote in the Senate last month on the military budget was 100-0 to approve the GOP-sponsored spending bill. Not one Senator had the backbone or the inclination to stand up and vote “no” to war, torture, aggression and occupation.

Nevertheless, there has been an important shift in the thinking at the top, including in the military, which led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

A joint editorial in four leading newspapers for the military, published the day before the elections, had called for his resignation. The papers—-the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times—are published by the Military Times Media Group, a subsidiary of the Gannett Co., and widely distributed on military bases around the world.

The fact is that the military know the war is lost. The U.S. is unable to conquer Iraq. Even some of the original ideologues and architects of the Iraq invasion—

neocons Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman and David Frum—turned their daggers on the Bush administration in a recent series of interviews in Vanity Fair magazine.

These are not nice people. Perle, the assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and often called the “Prince of Darkness,” has advocated first-strike nuclear attacks on North Korea and Iran. Adelman, former Reagan aide and Pentagon official, is best known for his pre-invasion editorial column in the Washington Post, “Cakewalk in Iraq.” And we can thank Bush speechwriter Frum for coining the phrase “Axis of Evil.”

Once among the loudest apologists and cheerleaders for the war, the three cronies are today filled with pessimism and doubt. “I think if I had been Delphic,” says Perle, “and had seen where we are today, and people had said, ‘Should we go into Iraq?’ I think now I probably would have said, ‘No, let’s consider other strategies.’ ”

With the neocons on the defensive, the people’s struggle to end the war and bring the troops home should take heart and be able to press forward with greater vigor and militancy.