Yoshie:
Regarding the ongoing bombing of Iraq you wrote:
"Given the simultaneity of the attacks against Iraq and Yugoslavia, it is a
shame that we couldn't generate a united opposition to both on the
grassroots activist level. (Lots of people who protested agaisnt the Gulf
War were uninvolved in protests against NATO.) If we had, the protests
would have been a lot bigger. Any thoughts on this?"
Yoshie
I'm still confused and dejected about the lack of any significant
protests. But the Iraq bombings during the time of the Kossovo campaign
were not noted even on the back pages of the nation's dailies .The Pro NATO
campagin propaganda was so effective that many of this nation's Anti-Gulf
War activists and its most fervent and sincere leftists bought into it.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but had it not been for the excellenet postings
on this list I too would have bought into it all
I've attached a related piece from today's Boston Globe
Best Wishes
Frank
Iraq fires at Western air patrols
By Reuters, 08/14/99
NKARA, Turkey - Iraqi gunners stepped up
resistance to Western air patrols yesterday, firing
surface-to-air missiles at warplanes monitoring a no-fly
zone over northern Iraq, a US Air Force officer said.
It appeared to be the first use of such missiles since
December of last year, when Iraq actively started
challenging US and British planes patrolling the no-fly
zones over its south and north set up after the 1991 Gulf
War.
''To the best of my knowledge this is the first time they
have used those weapons since December 28,'' the
spokesman at the warplanes' Incirlik airbase in southern
Turkey said.
He did not say how many missiles had been launched.
All the Operation Northern Watch aircraft had departed
the area over northern Iraq safely, he said.
In Baghdad, Iraq said Western planes attacked sites in
northern Iraq yesterday before antiaircraft defenses and
missile units forced them to return to their bases in
Turkey.
''Ten hostile formations ... flew over regions in
provinces of
Duhok, Arbil, and Nineveh and attacked our service
installations,'' the official Iraqi News Agency quoted a
military spokesman as saying.
''Our brave missile and ground resistance forces
intercepted those crows and forced them to leave our
airspace and return to the bases of evil where they came
from in the Turkish territories,'' the spokesman said.
Clashes between Iraqi air defenses and the US and British
jets are frequent but generally involve Iraqi
antiaircraft
artillery fire or simple lock-ons with radar guidance
systems.
A US F-16 jet responded to the missile launch yesterday
by
firing a high-speed antiradiation missile, and F-15s and
F-16s dropped guided bombs on an artillery site and a
communications site around the Iraqi city of Mosul.
This story ran on page A4 of the Boston Globe on
08/14/99.
� Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
