Informed Comment

10 Killed in four bombings, Including US Soldier
Charges of Corruption In Halliburton Bids

AP reports that that on Monday, guerrillas bombed four coalition and Iraqi military convoys on Monday, killing 8. Among the dead was one American and one Estonian soldier.

Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in western Baghdad, killing 1 US soldier and wounding five other US troops.

On the outskirts of Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb as an Estonian patrol passed, killing one soldier and wounding 5 others.

Near the Australian embassy in Baghdad, guerrillas used a car bomb to attack Australian military vehicles. They eounded 3 Australian soldiers lightly, but killed 3 Iraqis and wounded 6 others.

In Mosul, one suicide car bomber detonated his payload at provincial government offices, killing 3 Iraqi government employees and wounding one. Another car bomber targeted an Iraqi military convoy in the city, wounding an Iraqi general, Mu`tazz al-Taqah.

AP says that guerrilla attacks are up 25 percent since the beginning of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Az-Zaman reports the assassination of Dhari Ali Dulaimi al-Ghariri, a tribal chieftain, in Mahmudiyah. He did not hold an official post other than heading up his tribe, and had not held high office under Saddam Hussein. Mahmudiyah is in a mixed Sunni and Shiite area where there has been violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

In Mosul, guerrillas assassinated Shaikh Sahir Khudeir, who chaired an association of tribal chieftains in the north.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that hundreds of Kurds demonstrated in Kirkuk demanding that the city be incorporated into a new Kurdish superprovince. The Kirkuk issue remains unresolved, with thousands of Kurds coming back. It is among the issues that could throw Iraq into even worse turmoil

In Najaf, the Shiite clergy issued a joint condemnation of what they called the “massacre” of Iraqi military recruits, most of them poor Shiites from the south. The condemnation signals what a tough time the guerrillas have in building a national consensus, since the Shiite clergy see the victims as poor Shiites and do not see the perpetrators as Iraqi patriots.

Billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for Iraq were let to Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown and Root, sometimes in violation of Pentagon rules. The chief civilian in charge of making sure such contracts are on the up and up says she was marginalized and ignored by military officers who ignored the rules.

Gee, I wonder how Halliburton got to be so powerful inside the Bush White House?

Helena Cobban at Just World News insightfully analyses last Friday’s Shiite sermons in Iraq, showing the ways in which the clergy are threatening Shiites with hellfire if they don’t vote.

I pretty much feel that way about Democrats who don’t vote in 8 days.

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Bush is Making us Safer?

The complete lack of interest of the Bush administration in actually securing dangerous materials connected to the old, abandoned Iraqi nuclear program has long belied Bush’s stated concern with Iraq’s alleged weapons as a pretext for the war.

James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger with Khalid al-Ansary reveal in the New York Times today that the Bush administration allowed 380 tons of super-powerful explosives to disappear from al-Qaqaa, one of Iraq’s sensitive military installations, after the war in spring of 2003. These are not ordinary bombs. This explosive material, HMX and RDX, can be used to detonate atomic bombs, collapse buildings, and form warheads for missiles. A pound of it brought down a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.

A lot of the roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of US troops and maimed thousands have been made of HMX and RDX, as suggested by how infrequently the guerrillas have blown themselves up in planting them. HMX and RDX are favored by terrorists because they are stable and will only explode via a blasting cap.

Incredibly, the International Atomic Energy Commission and European Union officials warned Bush before the war that these explosives needed to be safeguarded.

Josh Marshall is suspicious that this major screw-up has been known to the Bush administration for some time, and that it may have pressured the Iraqi government not to mention it.

If Bush cannot even protect our troops from explosives at a sensitive facility in a country he had conquered, how is he going to protect the American public from terrorists who have not even yet been identified?

The disappearance of these explosives is yet one more disaster caused by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s mania to send a small military force into Iraq. Rumsfeld over-ruled the officers in the Pentagon, who wanted hundreds of thousands of troops and knew that many would be needed to secure the country after the war. Why hasn’t Rumsfeld been fired? He ran Iraq for most of the last 18 months and it is beginning to be as cratered as the dark side of the moon.

Only two weeks ago, The International Atomic Energy Commission reported that not only had dual-use equipment been stripped from an old Iraq nuclear weapons facility, but even the buildings had been stripped and dismantled. Muhammad al-Baradei said that some of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Iraq has already begun showing up in other countries. But the dual-use equipment, which has applications in nuclear weapons construction, has disappeared. (Hmm. I wonder which neighbor of Iraq might be desperately at work on a nuclear bomb and might be willing to pay top dollar for such equipment?) How bad a job Bush is doing is clear when we consider that we might well be relieved to know that this equipment went to Iran, since that means Bin Laden doesn’t have it.

So let me ask this again. Bush is making us safer? The American public trusts him to fight terror more effectively than Kerry? On what record? Bush appears to have all but just called up Usamah and Khamenei and told them where Saddam’s old stuff was in case they needed it for their programs. And he politely made sure that no pesky US troops would be around to impede their access.

Bush administration spokesmen are being careful to say that the hundreds of tons of explosives stolen from al-Qaqaa are not themselves useful as fissile material, i.e. they are not enriched uranium or plutonium.

But the fact is that one of the first such “missing deadly weapons” scandals to break in Iraq had to do with the disappearance of radioactive materials from Tuwaitha. This theft was known already in the summer of 2003, and worries were expressed that that material could be used to make a dirty bomb.

So Bush not only failed to have al-Qaqaa guarded against theft of HMX and RDX, not only failed to guard against theft of dual-use equipment from a long-defunct nuclear program site, but also failed to do the elementary work of ensuring that the notorious al-Tuwaitha facility was secured against the theft of radiocative materials!

Since Tuwaitha was the great bugaboo impelling the Iraq war in the first place, you would imagine that Bush would have sent out a unit to secure and search it immediately. But no, he politely let the looters have a look-around first, waiting in line.

I know someone is going to write me asking whether the existence of all this equipment and dangerous explosives doesn’t prove that Saddam still had an active weapons program. The answer is a categorical “no.” A lot of this stuff was left over from the 1980s when there had been such active programs, but which were abandoned after the Gulf War. Ironically, the bits and pieces Saddam still had were useless to a major state. But they could be stolen and cobbled together by a small band of terrorists to deadly effect.

I just don’t feel any safer with Bush in the White House. Maybe it is just me.

Reuters has the main stories of mayhem in Iraq on Sunday. The big one is of the cold-blooded murder of nearly 50 Iraqi army recruits in Diyala province. They were killed mafia-style, a bullet in the back of the head. They were unarmed and being trucked back from their training. This was obviously an inside job, since the guerrillas knew where they were and that they were unarmed. Iraqi al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, which is plausible since Monotheism and Holy War does hate Shiites, and the troops were poor Shiites from the south.

I googled Ed Seitz, the State Department security official killed by a mortar shell on Sunday. The story of his death at the hands of nativist Iraqi guerrillas is even more complicated and poignant if it is true that he was a crusader against the anti-globalization movement who tried to keep Canadian anarchists out of the US and used to ask them where Bin Laden is. The contrast of the demand for open borders for corporate purposes and for closed borders with regard to ideas is striking. In some ways, Iraq is proving highly resistant to the distinction, and is if anything turning it on its head. Companies are being chased out of Iraq, but all sorts of ideas are swirling in from Iraq’s nieghbors and from the United States and Europe.

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IRI Suppresses Key Data
Muqtada as Popular as Allawi

In my posting on Sunday, I complained that the International Republican Institute rather unrealistically put a happy face on the results of its most recent poll in Iraq. It is worse. First, the poll is being greeted as a huge joke in Iraq, both because it is widely felt that its methodology was deeply flawed (even a local Baghdad IRI official admitted as much) and because its more positive findings are contradicted by local Iraqi polling. They left out any question about the country’s most popular politician, Ibrahim Jaafari!

Second, they have actively suppressed at their web site slides Q27, which reveal the popularity and recognition ratings of major political figures. Here are some selected findings, arranged according to level of support. (Note, I just don’t have time to type it all up, but am presenting all the top figures along with some others who are important but scored lower).

Support

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim 51.27%

Ayad Allawi 47.01

Muqtada al-Sadr 45.82

Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum 37.51

Hussein Hadi al-Sadr 35.70

Adnan Pachachi 33.09

Fuad Masoum 31.63

Masoud Barzani 31.06

Jalal Talabani 30.49

Salamah al-Khafaji 28.23

Hareth al-Dhari 25.26

Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi 17.95

Ahmad Chalabi 15.07

Raja al-Khuzai 11.18

This list is remarkable for the number of clerics at the top. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Muqtada al-Sadr, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, and Hussein al-Sadr are all Shiite clergymen. The most popular Sunni aside from Adnan Pachachi on this list (why didn’t they ask about President Ghazi al-Yawir? It is bizarre.) is Hareth al-Dhari, the Sunni cleri who leads the Association of Muslim Scholars. AMS is leading a boycott of the elections, though, otherwise al-Dhari is a shoo-in for a seat in parliament.

The other thing that is remarkable about the list is how it is split between anti-American and pro-American figures. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his arch nemesis radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are in a virtual tie for second place, behind al-Hakim. Although al-Hakim earlier cooperated with the Americans, he is increasingly bitter. He spoke out against the US attack on Tel Afar, and today al-Jazeerah reports that he is threatening to reveal the details of Iraqi government torture of prisoners. Al-Dhari is anti-American, as well, though Hussein al-Sadr had dinner with Colin Powell and is a moderate, and Bahr al-Ulum served on the Interim Governing Council.

Anyway, for Muqtada al-Sadr to have a higher recognition rate than Iyad Allawi, and to have about the same level of support, is surely highly embarrassing to the Bush administration. For so many Shiite clerics to be at the top of the list is, likewise. These results were reported in the press (Robin Wright of the Washington Post clearly got access to all the slides or at least to people who had seen them). But it is highly unprofessional that IRI did not post the slides about the relative ranking of politicians to its web site (or at least not to the obvious part of its web site).

Since I am a fan of Dr. Raja’ al-Khuzai, I am sorry to see her numbers so low. Less than half of respondents recognized her name, and she did not place well (though perhaps well enough for a seat in parliament). These results are not surprising, since she led the charge last winter to stop the implementation of Islamic law in personal status matters in Iraq. Apparently that stand, though successful on the IGC, wasn’t very popular. (She is an obstetrician and headed a women’s hospital in Diwaniyah).

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Defending Massad

Those who care anything for freedom of speech and academic integrity should please rise to the defense of Professor Joseph Massad at Columbia University. A concerted campaign has been gotten up against him by the American Likud, aimed at getting him fired.

We don’t fire professors in the United States for their views when we are in our right minds. It happens when the US is seized with an irrational frenzy, as during the McCarthy period. A researcher at the University of Michigan was let go in the 1950s for “tending toward Scandinavian economics.”

You know, we really need a Political Action Committee for professors. The American Association of University Professors is a wonderful organization, but has mainly moral authority (it can de-certify universities that behave egregiously). There are hundreds of thousands of teachers at community colleges, four-year colleges and universities in this country, and they just let themselves be walked all over by small single-issue constituencies who don’t want them teaching this, that or the other thing.

Congress is increasingly a battleground on such matters, and elected representatives tend to cave to special interest groups if there is no money coming in on the other side.

We don’t have to be sitting ducks and put up with this. There are lots of forces in US society that would support the researchers. The debate over attempts by creationists on the school board in Kansas to curtail the teaching of evolution has been informed by city council concerns that such moves may damage the city’s biosciences initiative. It is increasingly clear to a lot of Americans that they can be ignorant and poor or they can cultivate science and get rich. Likewise, a lot of Americans realize that serious security thinking at the university level requires a free-for-all in which you can’t put some subjects off limits for debate.

In the meantime, I urge academics and others to boycott the United States Institute for Peace this year, as long as extremist ideologue Daniel Pipes serves on it. Bush put him on it despite the Senate’s refusal to confirm him. Pipes is leading the charge to have US academics censored for daring speak out against Ariel Sharon’s odious predations in Palestine. Sharon’s state terrorism and expansionism is endangering both Israel and the United States, and puts both Jewish Americans and other Americans at unnecessary risk. Those who attempt to stop criticism of Sharon are in essence giving aid and comfort to extremists of all stripes, who benefit from polarization. In parlous times like the post-9/11 environment, demagogues grow powerful and American values are endangered. Massad is the canary in the mine shaft of American democracy.

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6 US Troops Wounded, More than 28 Iraqis Dead, Over 50 Wounded

On Saturday, Alistair Lyon reported from Baghdad along with David Randall in London that guerrillas wounded 6 US troops; killed at least 24 Iraqi security men and wounded dozens of Iraqi police and national guardsmen; and killed 4 civilians.

Early on Saturday a suicide bomber crashed into an Iraqi police post outside a US Marine base at the small town of Baghadi, 142 miles west of the capital, Baghdad, killing 16 Iraqi policemen and wounding 40 others.

On the road out to the airport from Baghdad, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb as a Bradley Fighting vehicle passed, wounding 6 US soldiers.

In downtown Baghdad, guerrillas fired two mortar rounds. They killed two Iraqi civilians and injured another.

In the village of Ishaqi near Samarra, another suicide bomber set off his payload near a checkpoint maintained by Iraqi National Guards, klling 4 and wounding 6. Guerrillas in Samarra itself set off a roadside bomb, killing two more Iraqi policemen.

Guerrillas near Mosul attacked a Turkish truck convoy, killing two drivers and injuring two other Turks.

Gunmen assassinated the chief of the military police (“police guards”) in Irbil, Col. Taha Ahmad, 51. Conflicts among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen in the far north make it difficult to know who exactly was behind such an assassination (-AS).

Al-Hayat is giving the number killed on Saturday as 50, nearly twice the figures in the early Western wire service reports.

Guerrillas bombed the Khana pipeline northeast of Baghdad, setting it ablaze and damaging 150 yards of it. The pipeline pumps crude petroleum to the Dora refinery at Baghdad, so that this sabotage directly harms Iraq’s ability to provide fuel oil and gasoline to citizens.

Guerrillas in Mushahadah, a half-hour drive to the north of Baghdad, also bombed an oil pipeline feeding the Dora refinery.

In Baqubah, an attempt to bomb a pipeline going to Dora was foiled, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat, so it is pretty obvious that there was a coordinated campaign of sabotage directed at Dora on Saturday.

US forces continued to attack Fallujah, and in a raid captured an emerging leader of the Monotheism and Holy War terrorist organization, along with five others.

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Is the IRI Spinning the Poll

I find the cover page at the International Republican Institute web site concerning its recent polling in Iraq to be extremely disturbing. IRI is of course closely linked to the US Republican party and does the polling with US tax dollars (i.e. you and I are paying for it). The web site tries to spin the alarming results of the poll so as to emphasize the positives for the Bush administration. The only positive signs they can come up with, though, are that 64% of Iraqis remain optimistic that next year will be better than this; that 58% of Iraqis believe elections will be held in January; that 2/3s think a civil war unlikely; and that 52 percent of Iraqis believe that religion and state should respect one another but remain separate.

The authors of this screed go out of their way to debunk press reports that a majority of Iraqis favor religious parties, pointing out that few parties polled well. This statement is frankly dishonest; in fact the entire summary is deeply dishonest, and is designed to help Bush win the election. All Americans should be outraged at this misuse of supposed social science and of our tax money.

Before looking at the actual poll numbers, I can signal my disagreements with the summary. Optimism is relative and may or may not tell us much. It is not actually a good sign that over 40% of Iraqis either do not believe that elections can be held in January or don’t know if they can.

The question is not how many think civil war likely. It is who thinks civil war is likely. If Kirkuk does, that is alarming, because they are the ones who would fight such a war. Obviously a civil war is far from the thinking of a largely Shiite city like Basra, of 1.3 million deep in the Shiite south.

Western observers are extremely imprecise in their language about religion and state. Many say that Grand Ayatollah Sistani favors a separation of religion and state, which is completely untrue. He wants Islamic law to be the law of the land, and wants his fatwas on “social issues” to be obeyed. He just doesn’t want clerics to run the Islamic state– he wants it to be laypeople. So the model is more like the Sudan (if Sudan had genuine elections) than it is like Iran. So how exactly the question was asked in Arabic would be key to the answer given and to what that answer actually means. If the Iraqis thought you were asking about clerical rule, then a bare majority is against it. If they thought you were asking about implementing Islamic law, the answer might be different. And, the most popular politicians are the ones who most want Islamic law. The poll does not even ask about Islamic law.

Although Iraqis did not strongly identify with parties, they have over and over made it clear in IRI and other polls who the most popular politicians in the country are. The men named for whom Iraqis would vote are Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the al-Da`wa Party (founded in 1958 as a revolutionary Shiite organization aiming for an Islamic state) and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (the name says it all). Jaafari for some odd reason was not included in this most recent poll (perhaps in hopes that leaving him out of the choices would allow the IRI to deny the clear trend toward theocratic voting). I could not find the slide at the IRI site that gave al-Hakim by far the biggest lead among the rest, but it was reported in the press summaries of the poll.

Some 40% of Iraqis say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by a religious leader. About 11 percent say they would vote for a candidate endorsed by a political party. But all the most important political parties in the Arab provinces (Da’wa, SCIRI, the Association of Muslim Scholars) are religious. So this result suggests that at least half of the population will vote as Sistani, Da’wa and so forth instruct them. Another 15% would vote as their tribal leaders say. But a large number of tribal leaders are loyal to particular clerics, so that this may not be such a separate group.

The IRI poll is skewed to begin with. Its sample is only 55% Shiite, whereas the population is almost certainly 65% Shiite. The sample is 34% Sunni and 9.3% “Muslim.” Sunnis would be far more likely to represent themselves as just “Muslim” than are Shiites, and therefore the poll is likely to under-count Shiite views significantly. Since, in turn, Shiites are more likely to want a theocracy, given that the Sunni middle classes retain some Baath-era secularism, if Sunnis are over-represented then so would be secularists.

The “optimism” of the Iraqis, which keeps being touted by the US Right in justification of the mess they have made over there, is a more complex issue than they pretend. First of all, we don’t know why they are optimistic about next year being better than this. It could be that they have been plunged into such unprecedented misery that they believe it cannot get worse. “Better” is a relative word, not an absolute one. Second, this poll shows 45% of Iraqis saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, a big jump from June. So the optimism is declining fast, and it is no longer the case that a majority is optimistic. Indeed, more are now pessimistic (45%) than are optimistic (41%). The way the question is asked can also influence the answer. What does “headed in the right direction” even mean to Iraqis? Did they use the word ittijah? Would it have made a difference if they had asked a question like, “Are current policies of the US and Allawi in Iraq likely to produce an improved situation over time?”

Not only are people in the Sunni Arab areas pessimistic, which could be expected, but so are people in Baghdad. And confidence in the northern mixed cities of Mosul and Kirkuk has plummeted. Kirkuk is obviously a tinderbox. Indeed, the only places where optimists form a majority are the deep south around Basra and the Kurdish regions. Even Kurdish optimism is declining from previous highs.

Some 34% of people in Mosul and Kirkuk believe that a civil war is possible or imminent! Since those are the likely sites of a civil war, that over a third think it a serious threat is quite alarming. Moreover, the people of a country are not a good guide to how likely civil war is. Virtually no one in Yugoslavia would have predicted a civil war in 1989. People can learn to hate really fast, in a week or two; and then observers later complain about “centuries-old hatreds,” when in fact very often people had gotten along just fine for decades before the conflagration.

Suspicion of the United States is so great that 2/3s of Iraqis believe that if a non-neighboring state instigated a civil war, it would be America! And 22% believe that it would be instigated by Israel in that case. (Admittedly, this wasn’t thought a highly likely scenario). More Iraqis blamed the US and its allies in Iraq for the current poor security situation than blamed foreign terrorists! And they were four times more likely to blame the US & coalition than to blame armed elements of the former regime!

About 55% say that the current interim government does not represent people like them. Only 8% enthusiastically say it represents them. Half of Iraqis blame the government for being ineffective, and only 44% think that it has been at all effective (the same 8% are enthusiastic). Allawi’s effectiveness rating has fallen from 65% last July to 45% now.

Virtually none of the main points made by the IRI at its website about its own poll are valid in context, which does not exactly inspire confidence in the poll takers. The link to the poll results is given at the bottom of their page, in pdf. Go look at the slides yourself. It is not in fact a pretty picture.

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Eminem on Bush and Iraq: Comments by Hale and White

Philosopher Benjamin Hale responds to my posting about Eminem on Friday:

‘ There are more interesting implications of Eminem’s condemnation of the Iraq War. Eminem, if you remember, was at the center of a controversy a few years ago about some extremely homophobic imagery and references in his songs. Because of this, he found a fan base that more or less does not find compelling the arguments of traditionally liberal, civil rights activists. As well, Eminem has actively challenged Moby, a dance track musician who has outspokenly aligned himself with the more hipped out, peace loving, vegetarian crowd. That is, Eminem’s fan base tends to poo-pooh the arguments of the more politically sensitive hip-hoppers, which breaks down as a sort of rap-world street-feud of Hobbesians versus Rousseauvians that has been brewing since at least the mid-eighties. In a way, Eminem’s challenge to Bush suggests that Baptists and Bootleggers in the music industry can also be very good bedfellows. ‘

Benjamin Hale

Philosophy Department

SUNY at Stony Brook

Stony Brook, NY 11794

Ben White sends in the following perceptive comments:

‘ Good piece on the Eminem song. Thought I’d share a few thoughts on the anti-war hip hop phenomenon.

Despite the continuing trend for most mainstream rap artists to focus lyrically solely on the standard commercial fare (clothes, jewellery, sex etc), there is a groundswell of anti-Bush/anti-war commentary emerging from the underground scene into the spotlight.

The Eminem song is good proof of this, as was the lyric by perhaps the US’ biggest rapper Jay-Z as early as last year, when he rhymed in the track ‘Beware of the Boys’, “We rebellious, we back home/Screamin’ ‘Leave Iraq alone!’”

In terms of an election effect, the fervently anti-Bush sentiment in urban black communities should be acknowledged. In the track ‘Down with Us’, featuring a whole host of well-respected artists, one line goes, “In the ghetto ‘No War’!/When people all around us are starvin’ and homeless/What is Bush focussed on?”

Even a very mainstream artist, Jadakiss, has released a successful track called ‘Why’, in which he raps, “Why they let the Terminator win the election? Come on, pay attention!” The video features protestors marching against a ‘surveillance’ society and war.

From the perspective of this column, this phenomenon is noteworthy, if only

because of the effect it might have on election day. One website urges a vote for Kerry in no uncertain terms – ‘Vote or Die!’ While the black urban vote might always have been traditionally Democrat, the ‘Bush effect’ could be interpreted as persuading the non-voter that this time it’s worth casting his ballot paper. ‘

Ben White

Churchill College, Cambridge, UK

Here are the complete lyrics to Mosh (thanks to Chris Thompson):

‘ [Intro]

[I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

And to the Republic for which it stands

One nation under God

Indivisible・

people…this is it…It feels so good to be back..]

[Verse1]

Scrutinize every word, memorize every line

I spit it once, refuel, reenergize, and rewind

I give sight to the blind, mind sight through the mind

I ostracize my right to express when I feel it’s time

It’s just all in your mind, what you interpret it as

I say to fight you take it as I’m gonna whip someone’s ass

If you don’t understand don’t even bother to ask

A father who has grown up with a fatherless past

Who has blown up now to rap phenomenon that has

Or at least shows no difficulty multi task

And juggling both, perhaps mastered his craft slash

Entrepreneur who has held long too few more rap acts

Who has had a few obstacles thrown his way through the last half

Of his career typical manure moving past that

Mister kiss his ass crack, he’s a class act

Rubber band man, yea he just snaps back

[Chorus]

Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness

As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed

Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,

Come with me, and I won’t stear you wrong

Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog

Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,

We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp

We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors..cum

on.

[Verse2]

To the people up top, on the side and the middle,

Come together, let’s all bomb and swamp just a little

Just let it gradually build, from the front to the back

All you can see is a sea of people, some white and some black

Don’t matter what color, all that matters is we gathered together

To celebrate for the same cause, no matter the weather

If it rains let it rain, yea the wetter the better

They ain’t gonna stop us, they can’t, we’re stronger now more then ever,

They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go,

Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know

Stomp, push up, mush, fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home come

on just . . .

[Chorus]

Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness

As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed

Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,

Come with me, and I won’t stear you wrong

Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog

Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,

We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp

We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors, come

on

[Verse3]

Imagine it pouring, it’s raining down on us,

Mosh pits outside the oval office

Someone’s trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying

we’re responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered

This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding,

How could we allow something like this, Without pumping our fist

Now this is our, final hour

Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice

Let me simplify the rhyme, just to amplify the noise

Try to amplify the times it, and multiply it by six

Teen million people are equal of this high pitch

Maybe we can reach Al Quaida through my speech

Let the President answer on high anarchy

Strap him with AK-47, let him go

Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way

No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil

No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain’t loyal

If we don’t serve our own country we’re patronizing a hero

Look in his eyes, it’s all lies, the stars and stripes

They’ve been swiped, washed out and wiped,

And Replaced with his own face, mosh now or die

If I get sniped tonight you’ll know why, because I told you to fight

[Chorus]

So come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness

As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed

Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,

Come with me, and I won’t stear you wrong

Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog

Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,

We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp

We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors

[Outro]

[Eminem speaking angrily]

And as we proceed, to mosh through this desert storm, in these closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the present, and mosh for the future of our next generation, to speak and be heard, Mr. President, Mr. Senator

[End] ‘

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