12.12.2003

Off Target: Concluding that many civilian deaths in Iraq are avoidable, Human Rights Watch releases a new report on the US use of cluster bombs in populated areas and the targeting of specific Iraqi military leaders. "Its no good using a precise weapon," says HRW director Kenneth Roth, "if the target hasn't been located precisely." Democracy Now speaks with Fernando Suarez del Solar whose son, Jesus, was among the one of eight American GIs killed by unexploded cluster bombs in Iraq.

Courageous Kucinich: During a recent debate among Democratic presidential candidates, Ted Koppel harangued Dennis Kucinich, suggesting he's a "vanity candidate": "You're not doing terribly well with money; you're doing even worse in the polls. When do you pull out?" Kucinich answered, "When I take the oath of office. When you're there to cover it." In a sharp rebuke of a media that takes the focus of politics away from issues only to fixate on cash and cache, Kucinich went on, "I want the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country. We start talking about endorsements, now we're talking about polls, and then we're talking about money." In what many see as retaliation for the candidate's crowd-pleasing speech, ABC has pulled three of its "off-air producers" who were covering the campaigns of Kucinich, Sharpton, and Braun.

Zinn! Historian Howard Zinn, in the speech he hopes a Democratic presidential candidate will one day read, calls for the removal of all US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: "I am proposing a fundamental change in the foreign policy of our country... I believe that we should use our great power not for military purposes but to bring food and medicine to those areas of the world that have been devastated by war, by disease, by hunger. If we took a fraction of our military budget we could combat malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS. We could provide clean water for the billion people in the world who don't have it and would save millions of lives. That would be an accomplishment we could be proud of. But how proud can we be of military victories over weak nations, in which we overthrow dictators but at the same time bomb and kill the people who are the victims of these dictators?"

No comments: