This Was The Week That Was #50
4/18/04 - 4/24/04
Howard J.Ehrlich
The weekend witnessed two national demonstrations. On Saturday a rally of somewhere
between 1,500 to 3,500 participants protested the meeting of the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank. On Sunday a “March for Women’s Lives” attracted what Pacifica Radio
called the largest rally in the national capitol in American history. At the least it was the largest demonstration for reproductive rights. Speakers emphasized the recent attacks on civil liberties and reproductive rights noting that since 1995 close to 450 state laws were passed restricting access to abortion.

As of this writing, 707 Americans have been killed in Iraq and almost 4,000 have been
injured or wounded in action.
The Shrub has tried unsuccessfully to hide the number of American casualties in Iraq.
This included a ban on photographs of military coffins. Activists this week obtained and
distributed hundreds of photos of military coffins at the Dover Air Force Base, the military
mortuary. Although the coffins are sealed and covered by a flag, the President sanctimoniously
called the release of the photographs an invasion of privacy.
The military blockade of Fallujah continued for a second week with casualties increasing.The rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure has been slowed due to the continuing hostilities, and the withdrawal of General Electric and Siemens from most of their operations. Work on at least
two dozen power plants has been suspended. (NY Times)

Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, in an interview with the San Diego Union -
Tribune, said “I think some heads should roll over Iraq.” Zinni asserted that he warned the White House that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be more dangerous because of the ethnic and
religious conflicts that could be expected to occur.

Bush the First wrote in his memoirs a message obviously ignored by the Shrub and
countless others:
“Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.
Apprehending him was probably impossible. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad
and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling
aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding
the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to
aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could
conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

Fear of flying..... Three separate investigations of the Transportation Security
Administration found that “airport security is lax” and that the TSA is “overly bureaucratic,”
“unresponsive,” and “inflexible.” The Government Accounting Office used secret testing of TSA
agents’ ability to screen dangerous objects. (Associated Press)

Born to hate..... The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project counted 751
active hate groups in the United States in 2003, as well as 497 radical right websites. Racist
skinhead groups doubled in number, and the Aryan Nations and Klan also showed an increase in
numbers. The World Church of the Creator (renamed the World Church of Creativity) and the
National Alliance, once the most important hate group in the country, began falling apart in 2003. (splcenter.org)

Thinking the unthinkable..... USA Today reported this week that for two years prior to the
September 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercizes
simulating hijacked airlines used as weapons to crash into targets.

And who would have thought..... Colonial Administrator, Paul Bremer, announced that
the US would begin reinstating the “honorable men” who served as senior officers in Hussein’s
army. He also said that he would hire thousands of teachers who were low-level Baath Party
members. (NY Times)

Throw away the key?.... A study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the
person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison. Most of the
exonerations were for rape or murder. The research team, directed by University of Michigan law
professor Samuel R. Gross, speculated that a look at lesser crimes and persons still imprisoned
might yield even larger numbers of innocent persons. (NY Times)

On the environmental front.....The Sierra Club foiled a right-wing attempted takeover of
their board of directors in a landslide vote. At issue were the dissident attempts to adopt an anti-
immigration policy.
In a victory for environmental activists, Daryl Cherney and the estate of Judi Bari (who
died of cancer in 1997), were awarded $2 million in settlement for false arrest and harassment by
the FBI. (Baltimore Sun)

This week in history..... First recorded slave revolt (1526); US invades the Dominican
Republic (1965); First celebration of Earth Day (1970); Chernobyl erupts – the greatest
meltdown of a nuclear power plant (1986).
Remember every calendar’s days are numbered.