Abstract

In Fact …

The article contains news and commentary briefs. Recently the Pentagon screened Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 "The Battle of Algiers" for a group of forty officers and civilian experts, on the theory that the film's highly praised quasi-documentary realism would help them understand urban guerrilla warfare in Iraq. A better analogy to the situation in today's Iraq is Israel's predicament in southern Lebanon in 1982. But even if the The Battle of Algiers analogy isn't perfect, it's still worth contemplating. Senator Edward Kennedy charged that a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office showed only about $2.5 billion of the $4 billion now being spent monthly on the Iraq occupation could be accounted for. For daring to criticize the President, Kennedy came under fire from a well-drilled squad of GOP senators, but his office has already released figures showing how foreign aid is being used to attract support for the occupation, including troop contributions present and future, by countries like Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Pakistan. Senator Kennedy's interview, cited above--in which he also called the war in Iraq a" fraud" cooked up in Texas for political advantage--outraged House majority leader Tom DeLay. As he puts it, "It's disturbing that Democrats have spewed more hateful rhetoric at President Bush than they ever did at Saddam Hussein." A group of twenty-seven active reserve pilots and former pilots in the Israeli Air Force have signed an open letter declaring that they will no longer take part in the assassination campaign in the occupied territories. The move, taken by a group regarded as the elite of the military, should give new encouragement to a refusenik movement that has fallen out of the headlines in recent months.