Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

by Chalmers Johnson

  51. Hornberger, “Sanctions.”

  52. Cortright, “Hard Look”; Richard Garfield, “Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children from 1990 through 1998: Assessing the Impact of the Gulf War and Economic Sanctions,” Columbia University Medical School, July 1999, http://www.nd.edu/~krocinst/ocpapers/op_16_3.pdf.

  53. Richman, “Iraqi Sanctions.” See also David Rieff, “Were Sanctions Right?” in At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), pp. 185-204.

  54. William Rivers Pitt, “Stand and Be Heard,” May 27, 2005, http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/news/stand-be-heard.php.

  55. See Ellen Knickmeyer, “Iraq Puts Civilian Toll at 12,000,” Washington Post, June 3, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201098_pf.html; Associated Press, “Death from Insurgents,” San Diego Union-Tribune, June 3, 2005; Michael Schwartz, “Why Immediate Withdrawal Makes Sense,” TomDispatch.com, September 22, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid-23549.

  56. “Iraqi Civilian Casualties,” United Press International, July 12, 2005, http://ww.wpherald.com/print.php?StoryID=20050712-122153-5519r; Judith Coburn, “Unnamed and Unnoticed: Iraqi Casualties,” TomDispatch.com, July 17, 2005, http://wvw.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=6963; Neil Mackay, “Haditha: The Worst U.S. Atrocity Since Vietnam: Iraqi Women and Children Massacred by American Marines,” Sunday Herald, June 4, 2006, http://www.sundayherald.com/print56107; Peter Beaumont and Mohammed al-Ubeidy, “U.S. Confronts Brutal Culture Among Its Finest Sons,” Guardian, June 4, 2006.

  57. William Langewiesche, “Letter from Baghdad,” Atlantic Monthly, January-February 2005, p. 94.

  58. Dahr Jamail, “Living Under the Bombs,” TomDispatch.com,, February 2, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtmPpid-2166.

  59. “Burying the Bodies,” Harper’s Magazine, January 2002, p. 14.

  60. Samir Haddad, “U.S. ’Fireballs’ Threaten Iraqi Flora,” Islam on Line, June 4, 2005, http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-06/04/article05.shtml.

  61. Derrick Z. Jackson, “The ’Tsunami’ Victims that We Don’t Count,” Boston Globe, January 7, 2005; Patrick Cockburn, “Terrified U.S. Soldiers Are Still Killing Civilians with Impunity, while the Dead Go Uncounted,” Independent, April 24, 2005; Christopher Dickey, “Body Counts: The Pentagon Secretly Keeps Track of Many Grim Statistics in Iraq,” Newsweek, May 11, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.eom/id/7818807/site/newsweek/print/l/displaymode/1098/; and Tom Engelhardt, “How Not to Count in Iraq: The Return of the Body Count,” TomDispatch.com,, May 23, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=2709. Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace observes, “Since the war in Iraq began, U.S. forces have displayed their respect for the Iraqi civilians they came to liberate by failing even to keep count of the numbers they accidentally kill.” See “A Second Chance to Learn the Lesson of Vietnam,” Financial Times, June 8, 2004.

  62. Alan Eisner, “U.S. Seen as Unaccountable in Iraqi Civilian Deaths,” Reuters, May 3, 2005.

  63. Cockburn, “Terrified U.S. Soldiers.”

  64. Robert Fisk, “Brace Yourself for Part Two of the War for Civilization,” Independent, December 22, 2001.

  65. Roland Watson, “U.S. Gunship Opened Fire on Afghan Wedding,” Times (London), July 3, 2002, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0l-3-345233,00.html; Alissa J. Rubin, “U.S. Raid on Afghan Village Prompts Afghans to Demand Changes in War Strategies,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2002.

  66. Anne Gearan, Associated Press, “Bush Rebuffs Karzai on Control of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan,” San Diego Union-Tribune, May 23, 2005.

  67. Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, James Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq,” Lancet 364, no. 9448 (October 29, 2004), pp. 1857–64, summary, http://www.countthecasualties.org.uk/docs/robertsetal.pdf. See also Emma Ross, “Household Survey Sees 100,000 Iraqi Deaths,” Newsday, October 29, 2004; “1,000 Iraqis Dying Each Month: Expert,” Daily Telegraph, April 22, 2005.

  68. Iraq Body Count Database, http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/; Eisner, “U.S. Seen as Unaccountable.”

  69. Roberts, Lafta, Garfield, Khudhairi, and Burnham, “Mortality.”

  70. James Carroll, “Was the War Necessary?” Boston Globe, July 22, 2003; Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, “Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders,” New York Times, June 23, 2004; Jeremy Scahill, “The Other Bomb Drops,” Nation, June 1, 2005.

  71. Jeffrey D. Sachs, “Iraq’s Civilian Dead Get No Hearing in the United States,” Daily Star (Lebanon), December 2, 2004, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_ID-10&article_ID-10594&categ_id-5. The best treatment of the social meaning of bombing and of how little “civilization” has affected the international law covering it is Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing, trans. Linda Haverty Rugg (New York: New Press, 2001). His main conclusion: “The laws of war protect enemies of the same race, class, and culture. The laws of war leave the foreign and the alien without protection.”

  72. Editorial, “A Failure of Leadership at the Highest Levels,” Army Times, May 17, 2004, http://www.armytimes.com/print.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php. See also Charles Aldinger, “Rumsfeld Criticized by Influential Military Paper,” Reuters, May 10, 2004.

  73. Edward Alden, Peter Spiegel, and Demetri Sevastopulo, “Chain of Command: Can Torture in Iraq Be Linked to the White House?” Financial Times, June 17, 2004.

  74. Quoted by Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 247.

  75. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 24.

  76. Timothy Garton Ash, “The Forward March of Liberty Has Been Halted— Even Reversed,” Guardian, November 17, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5334944-103677,00.html.

  77. Richard A. Serrano, “Lindh Case Possible Sign of Abuse; Captors Instructed to ’Take Gloves Off while Questioning,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2004. Also see “A TomDispatch Interview with Mark Danner,” TomDispatch.com,, February 26, 2006, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtmPpid-63903; William Pfaff, “Torture: Shock, Awe, and the Human Body,” International Herald Tribune, December 21, 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1221-30.htm.

  78. Dave Lindorff, “A First Glance at Bush’s Torture Show: John Walker Lindh Revisited,” Counterpunch, June 5/6,2004.

  79. McCoy, A Question of Torture; and McCoy, “The Bush Legacy of Legalized Torture,” TomDispatch.com,, February 8, 2006, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=57336.

  80. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 76-77; Kenneth Roth, “The Law of War in the War on Terror,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 1 (January/February 2004), pp. 2-7; “CIA Renditions of Terror Suspects Are ’Out of Control’: Report,” Agence France-Presse, February 6, 2005; Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, “Rule Change Lets CIA Freely Send Suspects Abroad,” New York Times, March 6, 2005; Jeffrey St. Clair, “The Road to Rendition: Torture Air, Incorporated,” Counterpunch, April 9/10,2005.

  81. “U.S. Army Failed to Conduct Full Probe into Iraqi Torture Claims: Rights Group,” Agence France-Presse, January 24, 2005; Matt Kelley, Associated Press, “U.S. Holds About 10,500 Prisoners in Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 2005; “U.S. and Iraq Lock Up Record Number of Suspects,” Agence France-Presse, April 10, 2005; Sidney Blumenthal, “See No Evil,” Salon, June 1, 2005, http://fairuse.laccesshost.com/news2/blumenthal-see-no-evil.html.

  82. Matthew Rothschild, “Stripping Rumsfeld and Bush of Impunity,” Progressive, July 2005, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052805X.shtml. It should be noted that although the United States ratified the International Convention Against Torture in 1994, it tried during July 2002 to block the U.N.’s measures to create enforcement mechanisms but failed in the attempt. See Patrick Martin, “U.S. Seeks to Block Enforcement of Anti-Torture Treaty,” World Socialist Web site, August 5, 2002, http://www.wsws.org/article
s/2002/aug2002/tort-a05_prn.shtml. For key excerpts from the Convention Against Torture, see Philippe Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules from FDR’s Atlantic Charter to George W Bush’s Illegal War (New York: Viking, 2005), pp. 257-60.

  83. The basic sources are Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004); and Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith, eds., In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005). See also Katharine Q. Seelye, “A P.O.W. Tangle: What the Law Says,” New York Times, January 29, 2002; Lisa Hajjar, “In the Penal Colony,” Nation, February 7, 2005, pp. 23-30; Rachel Meeropol, ed., America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the “War on Terror” (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005); and Rothschild, “Stripping Rumsfeld and Bush of Impunity.”

  84. Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 51.

  85. David Rose, “The Truth about Camp Delta,” Observer, October 3, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5030363-l11575,00.html; David Rose, Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights (New York: New Press, 2004); Jane Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture,” New Yorker, February 14, 2005; Bob Herbert, “Is No One Accountable?” New York Times, March 28, 2005. A New York Times editorial stated, “Report after report shows that a vast majority of those swept up in American anti-terrorism campaigns were innocent”; see “Self-Inflicted Wounds,” New York Times, February 15, 2005. Also see Steve Crawshaw, “Torture Doesn’t Work,” Prospect Magazine, no. 122, May 2006, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id-7440.

  86. Editorial, “A Very Bad Deal,” New York Times, October 8, 2004.

  87. The basic source is Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/books%20-%201996/Shock%20and%20Awe%20-%20Dec%2096/index.html (note that the military strategists who wrote this book misspell “blitzkrieg” throughout). See also Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Torture of Others,1’ New York Times, May 23, 2004.

  88. Woodward, Bush at Wan p. 96.

  89. Naomi Klein, “Torture’s Part of the Territory,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2005. See also William Pfaff, “The Truth About Torture,” American Conservative, February 15, 2005, http://amconmag.com/2005_02_14/print/articleprintl.html.

  90. David Brooks, “The Age of Conflict: Politics and Culture after September 11,” Weekly Standard 7, no. 8 (November 5, 2001).

  91. Tim Golden, “After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law,” New York Times, October 24, 2004.

  92. “Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operations Considerations,” March 6, 2003, classified secret, “no foreign dissemination,” http://www.yirmeyahureview.com/archive/documents/prisoner_abuse/detainee_interrogations_in_the_global_war_on_terrorism.htm. In regard to John Yoo, see also Maria L. La Ganga, “Scholar Calmly Takes Heat for His Memos on Torture,” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2005.

  93. Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, “Interrogating Donald Rumsfeld,” TomDispatch.com,, January 11, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2116.

  94. Edward Alden, “Attempt to Find Legal Justification for Torture Leaves Lawyers Aghast,” Financial Times, June 10, 2004; and Editorial, “Torturing the Law, if not Prisoners,” Financial Times, December 8, 2004.

  95. Sodei Rinjiro, “Remember in re Yamashita [327 US 1 (1946)]!’ Japan Focus,http://www.japanfocus.org/116.html. See also Andrew J. Bacevich, “Command Responsibility,” Washington Post, June 28, 2005.

  96. Human Rights Watch says that Rumsfeld may bear “command responsibility” for abuse in Iraq and asks that the United States name a special prosecutor to investigate his role. “Demand for Rumsfeld Abuse Inquiry,” BBC News, May 24, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/americas/4475133.stm.

  97. Hersh, “Gray Zone”; Arkin, Code Names, p. 321, s.v. “Copper Green.”

  98. Quoted by Dana Priest, “Spirited Debate Preceded Policies,” Washington Post, June 23, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61942-2004Jun22?language=printer.

  99. Josh White, “U.S. Generals in Iraq Were Told of Abuse Early, Inquiry Finds,” Washington Post, December 1, 2004.

  100. Sidney Blumenthal,” Abuse’? How About Torture?” Salon, May 6, 2004; Editorial, “Mr. Rumsfeld’s Responsibility” Washington Post, May 6, 2004; Bob Herbert, “The Rumsfeld Stain,” New York Times, May 23, 2005.

  101. On the use of women in the armed forces as torturers, see Erik Saar, Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo, with Viveca Novak (New York: Penguin, 2005); Philip Kennicott, “A Wretched Picture of America,” Washington Post, May 5, 2004; Marie Cocco, “Chain of Prisoner Abuse Starts at the Top,” Newsday, May 24, 2005; Daniel Eisenberg and Timothy J. Burger, “What’s Going on at Gitmo?” Time, June 6, 2005, pp. 30-31; Adam Zagorin and Michael Duffy, “Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063,” Time, June 20, 2005, pp. 26-33.

  102. Quoted by Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” New Yorker, May10,2004, p. 43. For the text of General Taguba’s report, see http://www.antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=2479. For the 279 photographs and 19videos from the army’s internal investigation of torture at Abu Ghraib, see Joan Walsh, “The Abu Ghraib Files,” Salon, March 14, 2006, http.7/www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/print.html.

  103. “Gen. Richard Myers,” Fox News.

  104. Associated Press, “Army Probe Finds Abuse at Jail near Mosul,” March 26, 2005.

  105. Suzanne Goldenberg, “Former Guantanamo Chief Clashed with Army Interrogators,” Guardian, May 19, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4927249-111575,00.html; Peter Spiegel and Edward Alden, “Focus Back on General in Charge of Detention,” Financial Times, June 10, 2004.

  106. Dan Eggen and R. Jeffrey Smith, “FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo,” Washington Post, December 21, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14936-2004Dec20?language=printer.

  107. Reuters, “Red Cross: Guantanamo Tactics ’Tantamount to Torture,’” November 30, 2004.

  108. Rose, “Truth about Camp Delta.”

  109. Scott Higham, Josh White, and Christian Davenport, “A Prison on the Brink: Usual Military Checks and Balances Went Missing,” Washington Post, May 9, 2004.

  110. James Sturcke, “General Approved Extreme Interrogation Methods,” Guardian, March 30, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5158950-103550,00.html; Andrew Buncombe, “Green Light for Iraqi Prison Abuse Came from the Top,” Independent, April 3, 2005, http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story-6259098chost=38cdir=70.

  111. Will Dunham, “U.S. General Urged ’Outer Limits’ Iraq Interrogation,” Reuters, May 2, 2006, http://www.alertnet.org/printable.htm?URL=/thenews/newsdesk/N02295252.htm.

  112. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), “General Officer Assignments,” news release no. 203-04, March 22, 2004; ibid., no. 1210-04, November 24, 2004; Gerry J. Gilmore, “Casey Takes Over Iraq Commander’s Reins from Sanchez,” American Forces Press Service, July 1, 2004; Reuters, “U.S. Replaces General Who Ran Prisons in Iraq,” ABC News, November 24, 2004; Eric Schmitt and Thorn Shanker, “Posts Considered for Commanders After Abuse Case,” New York Times, June 20, 2005.

  113. John Hendren, “4-Star Plans After Abu Ghraib,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2004, http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_101604I.shtml.

  114. Dave Moniz, “Gen. Karpinski Demoted in Prison Scandal,” USA Today, May 5, 2005.

  115. Editorial, “Impunity,” Washington Post, April 26, 2005. See also Editorial, “American Homicide,” Boston Globe
, March 29, 2005; Josh White, “Top Army Officers Are Cleared in Abuse Cases,” Washington Post, April 23, 2005; Seymour Hersh, “The Unknown Unknowns of the Abu Ghraib Scandal,” Guardian, May 21, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5198906-103677,00.html.

  116. Sonni Efron, “GOP Committee Targets International Red Cross,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2005, http://fairuse.laccesshost.com/news2/latimes688.html; Caroline Moorhead, “Speak No Evil,” Financial Times, June 18-19, 2005.

  117. Burton J. Lee III, “The Stain of Torture,” Washington Post, July 1, 2005.

  118. American Embassy, London, “Visit of President Bush to Northern Ireland, April 7-8,2003,” http://www.usembassy.org.uk/potus03/potus03c.html.

  119. William R. Polk, introduction to The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia, Milbry Polk and Angela M. H. Schuster, eds. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), p. 5. See also Suzanne Muchnic, “Spotlight on Iraq’s Plundered Past,” Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2005.

  120. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Owl Books, 1989, 2001), p. 450.