US Prepared to Pay 'High Price' to Oust Saddam

Wonderful.

The United States is prepared to pay a "very high price" in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust President Saddam Hussein, a senior official of the U.S. Central Command said Monday.

"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away," the official told reporters, adding that U.S. casualties in the 12-day-old war had so far been "fairly" light.

"If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties," said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named.

Referring to nights in World War II "when we'd lose 1,000 people," he added: "There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking."

Off to Git-mo

"U.S. forces have started rounding up Iraqi men in civilian clothes suspected of being involved with paramilitary squads that have been attacking them in southern Iraq and may ship some of them to the detention center at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay," reports the Washington Post.

Those individuals being transferred should be worried. Very worried.

Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down

In an essay from last October's Progressive, Howard Zinn tried to explain "what war looks like." He wrote then:

In 1935, Jean Giraudoux, the French playwright, with the memory of the First World War still in his head, wrote The Trojan War Will Not Take Place. Demokos, a Trojan soldier, asks the aged Hecuba to tell him "what war looks like." She responds:

"Like the backside of a baboon. When the baboon is up in a tree, with its hind end facing us, there is the face of war exactly: scarlet, scaly, glazed, framed in a clotted, filthy wig."

How true. With casualties mounting amongst coalition forces, and Iraqi civilian casualties (nevermind combatants) reaching into the high hundreds, it's clear that this war is only going to grow costlier and more futile as time goes by, especially with an assault on Baghdad looming. As Robert Parry writes,

Whatever happens in the weeks ahead, George W. Bush has “lost” the war in Iraq. The only question now is how big a price America will pay, both in terms of battlefield casualties and political hatred swelling around the world.

That is the view slowly dawning on U.S. military analysts, who privately are asking whether the cost of ousting Saddam Hussein has grown so large that “victory” will constitute a strategic defeat of historic proportions. At best, even assuming Saddam’s ouster, the Bush administration may be looking at an indefinite period of governing something akin to a California-size Gaza Strip.

The chilling realization is spreading in Washington that Bush’s Iraqi debacle may be the mother of all presidential miscalculations – an extraordinary blend of Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking with a “Black Hawk Down” reliance on special operations to wipe out enemy leaders as a short-cut to victory. But the magnitude of the Iraq disaster could be far worse than either the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba in 1961 or the bloody miscalculations in Somalia in 1993.

Damn those people who sunk us into this mess.

Americans are trigger happy

I'm quite wary of pulling out the Vietnam comparison again, but a few stories have popped up recently that resemble common themes of that conflict. Specifically, there's been a bunch of reports of American soldiers being itchy on the trigger, no doubt due to the fog and pressures of war. In yesterday's NY Times, there was this:

At the base camp of the Fifth Marine Regiment here, two sharpshooters, Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, 28, and Cpl. Mikael McIntosh, 20, sat on a sand berm and swapped combat tales while their column stood at a halt on the road toward Baghdad.

"We had a great day," Sergeant Schrumpf said. "We killed a lot of people."

...Both marines said they were most frustrated by the practice of some Iraqi soldiers to use unarmed women and children as shields against American bullets. They called the tactic cowardly but agreed that it had been effective. Both Sergeant Schrumpf and Corporal McIntosh said they had declined several times to shoot at Iraqi soldiers out of fear they might hit civilians.

"It's a judgment call," Corporal McIntosh said. "If the risks outweigh the losses, then you don't take the shot."

But in the heat of a firefight, both men conceded, when the calculus often warps, a shot not taken in one set of circumstances may suddenly present itself as a life-or-death necessity.

"We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?"

To illustrate, the sergeant offered a pair of examples from earlier in the week.

"There was one Iraqi soldier, and 25 women and children," he said, "I didn't take the shot."

But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.

"I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."

A related story comes from the Times of London, which relayed the criticism of a British soldier wounded by friendly fire from out-of-control American soldiers.

“Combat is what I’ve been trained for," he said. "What I have not been trained to do is look over my shoulder to see whether an American is shooting at me.”

Bush shifts emphasis on war

The LA Times reports on Bush's bait-and-switch. The war in Iraq was initially sold as an endeavor to rid Saddam of WMDs; now it's almost entirely couched in terms of freeing the Iraqi people.

Media chides dissenters

A demonstration against the war in Manhattan last week “provoked a public display of pro-war sentiment by Fox News.”

The news ticker rimming Fox's headquarters on Sixth Avenue wasn't carrying war updates as the protest began. Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them.

"War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!" read one message. "Who won your right to show up here today?" another questioned. "Protesters or soldiers?"

Said a third: "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them."

Still another read: "Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street" - a reference to the film maker who denounced the war while accepting an Oscar on Sunday night for his documentary "Bowling for Columbine."

The protesters said Fox's sentiments only proved their point: that media coverage, in particular among the television networks, is so biased as to be unbelievable.

"They're all bad, but Fox is the absolute worst," said Tracy Blevins, 32, a New York City resident. "The people who report the news aren't journalists. They just say what the government tells them to say."

Fair and balanced, as always.

It is worth noting, however, that other networks have been doing their best to equate protests against the war as being 1) protests against “the troops” and 2) protests which support Saddam Hussein.

To cite just one example, check out Aaron Brown’s interview with Daniel Ellsberg.

See FAIR's special section on Iraq & the Media for further analysis of how the media has been lining up behind the war, and marginalizing dissent.

Jenin-style urban warfare in Baghdad?

"The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April," reports Justin Huggler of the Independent. According to Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the US military will likely mirror Israeli tactics by utilizing converted bulldozers to fight in Baghdad.

This, Huggler reminds us, is "cause for concern."

During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.

Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighbourhood – home to 800 Palestinian families – reducing it to dust and rubble.

...When reporters got into the Jenin refugee camp, we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so the insides of the houses were visible from the street, with personal belongings, sofas, beds, children's toys, hanging precariously from half-collapsed floors.

If this comes to fruition, it will lend an entirely different meaning to Pepe Escobar's contention that the war is causing the "Palestinization" of Iraq.

Update: Nigel Parry elaborates on what exporting Jenin to Iraq would mean.

Hersh: Rumsfeld ignores Pentagon advice

Seymour Hersh has already taken down Richard Perle with an article he wrote for the New Yorker. His sights are set on Donald Rumsfeld in this week's edition of the magazine.

Update: Here's the article by Hersh on Rumsfeld. It was just put up on the New Yorker website.

Takoma's Gone

Smart dolphin.

Update: Takoma has come back.

Prowarriors discover economic sanctions

George Will was the first to do it. Now Tony Blair is citing the deadly effects of sanctions as justification for the war on Iraq.

Have they no shame?

Al-Jazeera has changed everything

"So much has changed in this Arab world since the last Gulf War," Fergal Keane writes in the Independent. "The arrival of satellite television stations such as Al-Jazeera has transformed the information landscape: the agenda is no longer dominated by Western news outlets or by the craven and awful state-controlled media. Hour by hour, Arab families follow the progress of this war, and it is being mediated for them by Arab reporters. The information war is being lost in the Arab world, partly because the old sources of information no longer hold sway, and at least partly because nobody here wants to give the coalition the benefit of the doubt."

In a related piece for the Guardian, Faisal Bodi, a senior editor for aljazeera.net, argues that his network is "a threat to American media control -- and they know it."

Pause

The war's been put on pause for the next week or so, according to Reuters.

Be careful, you're next

Rummy has cautioned Iran and Syria on the alleged aid they're providing to Iraq.

Well placed comments, I'm sure. Both countries are next on the hit list, after all.

Update: Colin Powell jumps on board and issues his own warnings.

Conned into war

“The American people, Congress, government and president were conned into this war, in the full sense of the word, by neo-conservatives and hawks in Washington who sold a false bill of goods," says former CIA analyst Robert Baer.

“There was already in place among some circles in Washington an old plan to attack Iraq. After Sept. 11, 2001 it was sold to the president, who was told that this would be a quick, decisive, easy, almost bloodless operation, at little expense and with no resistance by Iraqis, with Saddam Hussein gone at a flash of the muzzle. But it has not worked out that way. Determined Iraqis who stalled mechanized divisions in southern Iraq are not just pockets of resistance. In its first week the war did not go as planned.”

(via NWD)

Putin warns on Iraq war

I wonder if Bush foresaw this when he peered into Putin's soul just about a year and a half ago.

Good morrrrrning, Iraq

Tom Engelhardt writes that the ghost of Vietnam is hovering over the conflict in Iraq. Just one week into the war, he observes, "most of the late arguments and charges of the Vietnam era have reemerged and the official recriminations are already beginning."

Rigged plan reminder

"If the war isn't going well, maybe it's because the Pentagon plan is based on war games that were rigged to ensure a U.S. victory. This Aug. 22 Guardian article reveals that the biggest war game in U.S. military history staged against Middle Eastern adversaries was 'almost entirely scripted to ensure a [U.S.] win,'" declares Alternet's War on Iraq News Log.

Conservatives Tailor Tone to Fit Course of the War

As expected, conservative supporters of the war have started whining about the media coverage.

Something to keep in mind

Unfair War Practices

King George confronts the messenger: "The War over there…sire…is not…ummm…good."

Into the quagmire?

130,000 more troops are being sent to the Gulf. This should be seen as an admission that the initial plan of attack has been a disaster.

Non embedded journalism is a no-no

Phil Smucker, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, has run into trouble with the Pentagon because he never signed up for their embedded journalists program. He's allegedly been detained by the military for relaying too much information in an on-air interview with CNN.

Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke said she is looking into the report but could not confirm that Smucker had been detained. "Our overwhelming experience to date is that people are trying very hard to be very careful, very responsible," she said. "There have been less than a handful of incidents in which someone revealed information they shouldn't."

Yeah, who do these un-embedded journalists think they are!? How dare they try to report information that the Pentagon doesn't think should be reported.

The CSM editor, Paul Van Slambrouck, explains that "Smucker's work in the Monitor is not at issue, but we have read the transcript of the CNN interview and it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in US and British radio, newspaper, and television reports in that same news cycle. Of course, the Pentagon has the final say in the field about any threat the information reported might pose."

(via mousemusings)

Shoot at anything that moves

Sorry for the cliche, but this sounds an awful lot like 'Nam:

U.S. Marines, moving through this still-contested city [Nassiriyah], opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians.

Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods. Occasionally a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys.

It was impossible to know which casualties were civilians and which were members of the Iraqi militias that have ambushed Marine convoys here for days as the Marines tried to cross the Euphrates River on a rapid march north to Al Kut, where they are expected to engage elements of Iraq's Republican Guard.

Signs of battle were everywhere. Burned out-shells of Russian-made tanks lay along the road. Other tanks facing a bridge clearly had been taken out by U.S. aircraft.

Official versions of the battles were unavailable. U.S. casualties appeared light, but it was likely that many civilians had been killed. U.S. troops searching houses found one woman with her husband, who was wounded, and her two sons, who were dead. All had been hit by stray bullets.

The shooting came as U.S. forces, targeted in recent days by Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, became increasingly aggressive in dealing with resistance. Marines were told a tracked amphibious vehicle had been ambushed by a group waving a white flag, and the plan for moving the 3rd Platoon of the 4th Amphibious Assault Battalion of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was aggressive, calling for so-called suppressive fire throughout the area to keep insurgents at bay.

It was early in the morning, and each of the platoon's dozen 27-ton Amtracs carried 18 infantrymen. The vehicles formed a herringbone pattern along the street, and the Marines opened fire as they advanced.

''I started feeling comfortable, like I knew what I was doing,'' said Cpl. David Barringer, 25, a reservist who, in civilian life, is a firefighter from Gulfport, Miss. ``Everything we were taught, it all comes back to you.''

A few hundred yards past the bridge, the Marines came upon the grisly scene of a failed ambush by the Iraqis. U.S. infantrymen reported that a group of 40 Iraqi soldiers on buses apparently had attacked an artillery unit. Approximately 20 Iraqis were killed when the Americans returned fire; the rest were captured. The buses were burned-out hulks.

''I saw a lot of bloodshed,'' said Sgt. Ken Woechan, 23, a reservist and assistant Wal-Mart manager from Ocean Springs. Miss...

Update: Related story, here.

Whacking the Hornet's Nest

Josh Marshall argues that "chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario -- it's their plan" in a Washington Monthly cover story.

(via cursor)

All in the Family

Jim Lobe breaks down the incestous relations of the neocon family. On a related note, The Invisible Worm has been doing some reading about the influence of neoconservatives in the Bush government. Check out what he's been checking out. (scroll down to entry on March 26, 2003)

Squashing 9/11 Investigation

It was the greatest act of terrorism on American soil. Remember it? Ya know, that thing that was invoked countless times to justify this war on Iraq. Well, according to Time, the Bush White House has been dragging its feet on funding the panel created to investigate the 9/11 attacks.

"They've never wanted the commission and I feel the White House has always been looking for a way to kill it without having their finger on the murder weapon," says Stephen Push, a leader of the 9/11 victims' families, who has been monitoring the commission.

A cynic might be tempted to think that the administration has something to hide. Indeed, we might again wish to ask, what did Bush know?

Surrender claim was false

Remember the story last week that an entire Iraqi infantry of 8,000 men surrendered to the American forces? A lot of people pointed to it as an indication that the war was going well early on. It turns out it never happened.

Mini Rant

To reiterate, I'm not going to reconstruct, blow-by-blow, how the Iraq war is going. For that, please check out The Agonist, who is doing an amazing job of sorting and relaying news in almost-real time. The other links to the right, under the 'iraq war' heading, can be quite useful for getting a rough idea of how things are evolving, too.

I will also try to avoid shoving news about how the war isn't going well in your face as a sort of "told you so." Nor will I be throwing up casualty estimates whenever a bomb goes astray or when it comes out that we're killing civilians, even if by accident. Clearly, I think, things have not been going as planned, but that doesn't embolden me to proclaim, for the umpteenth time, that this war is wrong, immoral, and illegal. We could be partying down in Baghdad, dancing with liberated Iraqis right now and I still would hold the same viewpoint about this war.

This adminstration has led us down a dark, ominous tunnel. I don't know how things will turn out, but neither do the chattering heads in the media, or those resurrected military analysts who keep us oh-so-informed about the tactics our leaders are employing to beat back the evil Iraqi forces.

Money to be made in Iraq

Which Companies Will Put Iraq Back Together? Cheney's Halliburton, for one. It is primed to make a killing on the war.

Speaking of war crimes...

The International Federation of Journalists has issued a press release which condemns yesterday's bombing of Iraqi Television by allied forces, calling it an illegitimate military target.

The bombing was "clearly an action taken to frustrate the use of television by the regime to communicate with the people of Iraq [and] must be investigated by the United Nations," says Aidan White, the IFJ General Secretary. "It appears to be an act of violent censorship that breaks the Geneva conventions."

Amnesty International agrees.

And, perhaps on a related note, it turns out that Al Jazeera has been hacked repeatedly over the last few days.

Beyond the funhouse walls

Geov Parrish offers some prospective sources of information -- sans cheerleading -- regarding the U.S.invasion of Iraq and world response. This is a good little primer to send around to anyone who's looking to escape the barrage of pro-war reporting in the United States. A little outside perspective never hurts.

Yep. That pretty much says it.

Anthony Lappe elaborates on the prisoners of hypocrisy.

The Al Jazeera effect

Mother Jones breaks down the Al Jazeera effect, while Paul Belden argues that the Arab-based station is outdoing the American media with its war coverage. He writes, "if the true face of war is too much for American prime time television, then maybe prime time American television should stick to covering the Oscars, and leave the war alone."

Do you support the troops?

"What about Guantanamo?"

George Monbiot, in the Guardian:

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".

He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they "must at all times be protected... against insults and public curiosity". This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life...(more)

Al Jazeera chimes in on this same issue. Please note that they've launched an English version of their site.

Throwing dirt on the UN

Richard Perle did the UN death dance in last week's Guardian. It's worth reading his opinion piece if you haven't yet. Also check out what what Buzzflash and Lisa English had to say about it.

Old News?

...about that alleged chemical weapons plant found in Iraq.

Update: The AP reports that "U.S. military investigators have found no evidence that chemical weapons have been made in recent years" at the plant.

America finds war is not a video game

"Before the Iraq invasion started," Andrew Gumbel writes, "many Americans imagined the campaign in terms of Hollywood movies or the video-game abstraction of the television coverage of the first Gulf War – that virtual reality in which we drop bombs and only the enemy dies, and off-camera at that.

"But after the setbacks, guerrilla-style ambushes, downed helicopters and disturbing images of US soldiers dying or being taken prisoner over the past two days, the mood has changed abruptly."

Also see the CSM story on how media coverage of the war varies around the globe.

This is Gulf War 2

The Memory Hole has compiled some images of casualties amongst Iraqi and American troops, as well as civilians. Warning: it's pretty graphic stuff.

Paying the Pipers

Bush has asked for $75 billion to pay for the next month of the war. Nearly half of that money is going to pay off the bribes we doled out prior to the war's commencement.

In the chunk of change assigned to the Pentagon, $30.3 billion goes to "coercive diplomacy," $13.1 billion is for military conflict, $12 billion for stability and transition and $7.2 billion for reconstitution, according to an official breakdown given to reporters by defense officials.

Coercive diplomacy refers to the amount of money spent prior to March 20, or the beginning of the war. The money includes the cost of pre-combat work with coalition partners as well as the cost of transporting troops and equipment overseas as the lengthy diplomatic machinations continued.

This last sentence here is somewhat confusing. I'm not sure if the "pre-combat work" is included in the "coercive diplomacy" part of the budget. That seems to be what's implied, but it's not really clear.

Update: The budget for the war doesn't add up, according to the Guardian. Reuters breaks down the bribes.

Congrats!

Charley Reese doesn't think the idea of adopting 22 million Iraqis is a good idea. Nor do I.

War's proceeding; images having impact

A lot of people, I think, are starting to realize the Iraq war is not going to be a cakewalk, as US forces are meeting some stiff resistance.

As for how the invading forces are being received, it depends on who you ask: some Iraqis are elated; others are hostile.

I have also added a link to Al Jazeera to the right. Unless you can read Arabic, the stories at the site aren't going to be of much interest or utility. However, the images likely will be. The Arab broadcasting station is airing a lot of visuals of violence, death, and destruction that aren't being broadcast in the western media, and these depictions are not being well received by the so-called "Arab street." One has to wonder how long it will be before coalition forces decide to do something about this, perhaps by reverting to tactics used to keep Al Jazeera in line during the Afghan campaign.

Speaking of images from Al Jazeera, here's some of the captured American soldiers. Parading these POWs before a camera is, indeed, a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but our beloved friends at Fox have been doing the same thing. I'm sure other networks have been, too.

"Have tonight's war crimes started yet?"

Tom Spencer is going off against the war. Good for him.

Take a Look, George

"One of the first American casualties in the war against Iraq is a Baltimore man, and his family shared their feelings about the war Friday...He is identified as Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall Waters-Bey, 29, of northeast Baltimore, WBAL-TV 11 NEWS reported.

"As he held a picture of his son, Waters-Bey's father, Michael, said: 'I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son.' He then walked away in tears, with his family behind him."

"It's all for nothing, that war could have been prevented," said Waters-Bey's sister, Michelle. "Now, we're out of a brother. [President] Bush is not out of a brother. We are."

War Bloggin?

I will not, like some brave souls, be following this war with a keen eye for detail. It's just too daunting a task. The newly added links to the right, however, should be useful for anyone looking for a quick update as to what's going on. My lone piece of advice is to stay away from the television. Watch it for amusement; do not watch it in order to get informed.

Interesting Parallel

(via Barney Gumble aka MWOWWWW)

A reckless path

"Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal?" The fact that these questions are being asked in Bush's favorite rag, the Washington Times, is remarkable.

(via liberal arts mafia; thanks to them for the shout out, btw. I presume it's for what's below)

Propaganda

Note to self: do not watch Fox News during wartime. It will only make you sicker.

#94?

I have not seen this in an "official" news report, but have read about it in two separate places: the IDF allegedly broke up the memorial service for Rachel Corrie with the very same bulldozer that was used to kill her.

If anyone could confirm this, I'd be much obliged.

Dissent

Here's an overview of the protests against the war in Iraq that broke out yesterday. Check out some pictures, too.

Yup

I deserve some credit here, I think :)

Globalization not proven to help poor

Reuters reports that the International Monetary Fund has "admitted there is little evidence globalization is helping poor countries." A new study commisioned by the IMF found that "economic integration may actually increase the risk of financial crisis in the developing world."

The Negative US Image Abroad

"Bush's global leadership has acheived something unprecedented: not a single foreign country has a majority with a positive feeling toward this nation," proclaims MyDD.

Support Impeachment?

From Mousemusings:

Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) is tallying support for impeachment of Bush & Co. Please send him an e-mail: john.conyers@mail.house.gov Now!

Top White House anti-terror boss resigns

"The top National Security Council official in the war on terror resigned this week for what a NSC spokesman said were personal reasons, but intelligence sources say the move reflects concern that the looming war with Iraq is hurting the fight against terrorism," reports UPI.

"Rand Beers would not comment for this article, but he and several sources close to him are emphatic that the resignation was not a protest against an invasion of Iraq. But the same sources, and other current and former intelligence officials, described a broad consensus in the anti-terrorism and intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq would divert critical resources from the war on terror."

"Hardly a surprise," says one former intelligence official. "We have sacrificed a war on terror for a war with Iraq. I don't blame Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread thought that the war on terror is being set aside for the war with Iraq at the expense of our military and intel resources and the relationships with our allies."

War On

So it has begun. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is the call name.

"The pundits are already predicting that the antiwar movement will wane as people in the United States and United Kingdom 'unite behind the troops,'" says Ali Abunimah. "This is an understandable sentiment. But we should resist the pressure to make a virtue of blind conformity. If the war was wrong before it started, the dropping of bombs does not suddenly make it right. It is still wrong. We must oppose it. I support the troops. I support them not being sent to be killed in a distant country that presents absolutely no threat, and to kill innocent people and destroy and occupy their country. I support them being brought home at once. Not one American or British soldier should die in this war. We should also remember that America's armed forces are disproportionately composed of the economically and socially disenfranchised, people who, denied a slice of the 'American dream' at home by failing schools, racism, the prison industry, and growing economic inequality, must seek to escape by joining the military. Empires have always sent their poorest, least educated and most marginalized to fight in the distant provinces."

"The Administration hopes that a quick victory will not only silence critics and confer an ex post facto legitimacy on the war but also give momentum to its larger political agenda," the editors of The Nation write. "But even if there are minimal casualties and devastation, that will not justify overturning international norms developed over sixty years. Nor can it legitimize a worldview that will make Americans the target of international outrage and make the world less secure."

The UN has failed

David Morris writes that Bush was right to claim that the UN has not lived up to its responsibilities on Iraq. Indeed, Morris argues, "The United Nations failed the global community. But for the opposite reason expressed by Bush."

On Sunday, the Security Council was told that the United States would attack Iraq within a matter of days. Yet the United Nations didn't act. Realizing it didn't have the votes to pass a resolution in favor of war, the United States decided to withdraw the resolution. But a few days before Chile had come up with a compromise resolution that would have given Iraq up to 45 days to comply with all the UN's demands. France had come up with its own similar compromise proposal that contained a check list of five steps that Iraq would have to take over the next 4-6 weeks to avoid a war.

It appears likely that the Security Council had the 9 votes necessary to enact these resolutions. But when push came to shove, France and Germany and Russia and China and the others on the Security Council who had insisted they were opposed to war decided not to put it to a vote. That allows the United States at least the fig leaf of relying on earlier United Nations resolutions (678 and 687) to invade Iraq.

A vote against war by the Security Council would have formally declared the United States a rogue nation if it attacked Iraq. Kofi Annan could have followed up the vote by refusing to withdraw the inspectors from Iraq because the Security Council had set a rigorous timetable for compliance and the inspectors needed to stay on the job.

Instead, the UN did nothing, and now the United States has initiated an immoral act of aggression which flies in the face of international law.

Victory for the Neocons

Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times dissects the PNAC's victory.

They've won. They got their war against Afghanistan (planned before September 11). They're getting their war against Iraq (planned slightly after September 11). After Iraq, they plan to get their wars against Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Last Sunday, one of them, Vice President Dick Cheney, said that President George W Bush would have to make "a very difficult decision" on Iraq. Not really. The decision had already been taken for him in the autumn of 2001.

...The American corporate media are not inclined to spell it out, and the absolute majority of American public opinion is anesthetized non-stop by a barrage of technical, bureaucratic and totally peripheral aspects of the war against Iraq. For all the president's (sales)men, the whole game is about global preeminence, if not unilateral world domination - military, economic, political and cultural. This may be an early 21st century replay of the "white man's burden". Or this may be just megalomania. Either way, enshrined in a goal of the Bush administration, it cannot but frighten practically the whole world, from Asia to Africa, from "old Europe" to the conservative establishment within the US itself...

Read the whole piece. It does a good job laying out just how the neocon vision of a remade Middle East has come to dominate the thinking of the Bush administration.

Talking Heads

Check out Slate's Field Guide to Iraq Pundits.

Saturday

If war starts by then, get out into the streets.

More spying

"European Union officials have launched an investigation after bugging devices were found at offices used by several delegations - including those of France, Germany and the UK," reports the BBC. The French paper Le Figaro broke this story, and proclaimed that the US was responsible, no doubt due to the recent Observer story.

That charge has since been thrown into question. "We do not know who is behind it. I don't know who was on the other end of the line," says EU spokesman Dominique-Georges Marro.

Still More Lies

Stephen Zunes has penned a critique of Bush's March 17 address which prepared the nation for war.

I'm actually tired of reading these critiques. The lies are so transparent and Gobbelesque that it's absolutely astrounding that anyone can believe any claim that emerges from the Bush White House.

NYC and the War

"Operation Atlas" is ready to get underway in NYC once an Iraq war starts. The plan calls "for cops armed with submachine guns and armored gear to be stationed around the five boroughs with random sweeps for explosives at mass-transit hubs. Hundreds of extra cops will be on hand at places of worship, landmarks, tourist attractions and hotels." It will cost upwards of $5M per week.

A related story about how the government is preparing the public for casualties relayed details of NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg's meeting with Bush. Bloomberg said after the meeting, in which he begged for more money for security operations, "The president has listened and he has made his decision, and I know all New Yorkers are behind him and the troops overseas."

Someone should probably tell the billionaire mayor that the NYC city council has adopted an anti-war resolution.

DU

The US has vowed to use depleted uranium in Iraq once again. According to the BBC, "Colonel James Naughton of US Army Materiel Command said Iraqi complaints about depleted uranium (DU) shells had no medical basis." That's not quite what the World Health Organization says.

Read more about DU's legacy in Iraq, as well as a more general analysis of what the first Gulf War has wrought.

Preoccupied

"The Iraq crisis has virtually blocked out every other emergency in the world," says the Executive Director of Unicef, Carol Bellamy. "Donors have been reluctant to commit resources to other major humanitarian emergencies because they're uncertain how much they might be asked to do for Iraq. That's understandable, but it's a real crisis for children in need in other countries."

In other words, Czar Dubya's preoccupation with Iraq is putting millions around the world at risk, albeit for different reasons than the threat of "history's deadliest night of airstrikes" and the further application of American violence. The situation is particularly dire in Africa, according to George Monbiot of the Guardian.

Martial Law

We're currently at Orange Alert. If we go up to Red, martial law will be declared in New Jersey. Martial law might be coming to an area near you, too.

Not to worry, though. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the government has the right to scale back individual rights during wartime, and that he will be sure to ratchet your rights "down to the constitutional minimum." After all, Scalia says, "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires."

Good to know.

(via cursor)

Random stuff

* Here's some more documentation about Bush's habit of lying.

* More IDF terrorism in Gaza.

* US claims about Iraq's weapons capabilities continue to come under scrutiny, even after war has been more or less declared. UN inspectors are furious about the way the Bush administration has used them.

* Here's a faith-by-faith guide as to where the major religious denominations stand on war with Iraq.

* The US will invade Iraq no matter what, even if Saddam were to go into exile...

* Here is the full text of Robin Cook's resignation speech in the House of Commons.

(sorry to go listy again)

Sick

I'm sick, so don't expect much here in the near future. Whenever I feel better, I'll have to catch up on the work I'm missing...which will also prevent me from spending much time here. :(

I'm also extraordinarily depressed, as I'm sure many are. Fearful, too. The world just sucks right about now, and looks to get much worse in the coming days.

War after Wednesday, says Bush

Well, our soon-to-be war criminal in chief has spoken. War is almost here.

I'll be spending a good portion of the day tomorrow on the phone with the offices of my Senators and Congressional Representatives, urging that anything and everything be done to reel this administration in before war is kick started. I will also be calling for the commencement of impeachment proceedings. That's a viable option right now, without question.

Other protest activities are lined up both for before and after the missiles are launched. Check them out here. It's also time to start thinking about what to do if war comes.

Rachel Corrie

A good deal of attention is being paid to the death of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old Evergreen St. College student and member of the International Solidarity Movement, who was killed in Gaza by an IDF bulldozer yesterday.

With typical callousness, IDF spokesman Jacob Dallal proclaimed, "This is a regrettable accident. We are dealing with a group of protesters who were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger."

Yeah, it sure as hell looks like those protesters were "putting everyone in danger":

This is a tragedy, of course, but the larger tragedy is the fact that, as Starhawk writes, "Young women, but more often young men, get killed in Gaza and the West Bank every day, and the world pays no attention. What was different today is that Rachel Corrie was an American."

But, as we all know, American lives are just worth more. 3,000+ die on 9/11 and the world practically comes to a halt. Now, the US government is primed to set in motion a policy which will ignite the skies over Iraq as never before and put millions of lives in danger, and what is the typical reaction? Silence. Indifference. Willful ignorance. Complicity.

Update: Check out some of the emails Rachel sent to family and friends during her time in Gaza. Sad stuff.

War is a'comin

Lots of good suff via antiwar.com today. Be sure to check these stories out:

* Bush Gives UN 24 Hours – or It's War

* Allies Prepare Public for Heavy Loss of Life in Iraq

* Iraq War Will Be Great al-Qaeda Recruiting Tool

* US Blames Italy for Forged Iraq Documents

* Iraq Destroys Half Their Missiles in Two Weeks (how 'bout that for cooperation)

* Rumsfeld urged Clinton to attack Iraq

Monday on PBS

Here's an email I got:

This Monday, March 17, PBS will present three hours of in-depth programming on the background and possible consequences of the impending war with Iraq, beginning at 8 p.m. ET (check local listings) with "The Long Road to War: A FRONTLINE Special Report," and continuing at 10 p.m. ET with "What's Next For Iraq: A NOW With Bill Moyers Special Edition." (Again, please check local listings. We're unable to provide local broadcast times to our customized subscribers.)

In "The Long Road to War," FRONTLINE draws on more than 12 years of its reporting on Iraq to relate the history of the U.S. confrontation with Saddam Hussein. The two-hour special examines the mind and methods of Saddam, how the West armed Iraq, the origins of the first Gulf War and its ragged end, the frustrating effort to disarm Iraq through U.N. inspections, how Saddam survived efforts to undermine his power, and the long-standing effort by Washington hawks to remove him. FRONTLINE's website -- at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/ -- will feature a special editors' selection of the best online material from our past coverage of Saddam's Iraq, as well as updated links, readings, and more.

And in "What's Next for Iraq," NOW With Bill Moyers looks at the possible scenarios for Iraq's future, including the relationship between the U.S. and Iraqi dissidents, and also considers the responsibility of the American media, particularly the major TV news networks, in covering the events of the past weeks and months leading up to war.

We hope you'll join us on Monday night, and on the Web following the broadcasts.

Check 'em out.

GYWO 21

Tomorrow

Catch Up

I've been preoccupied over the past few days with a good deal of work and a new gift I've received from the devil. The blog, unfortunately, has had to take a place on the sideline. Here's a catch-up post:

* What happens if Bush “wins”? It's a scenario to start thinking about.

* Bush has proclaimed his desire to bring "democracy" to the Mid East. The State Department thinks this new version of the domino theory is a pipedream.

* If We Care About Elizabeth Smart, Why Not the Children of Iraq?

* "Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein," writes Roger Morris in the NY Times. The last regime change in Iraq didn't turn out too well, and there are signs that it won't this time around, either...especially if we stick around for 20-25 years.

* Some senior US intelligence officials "have concluded that al Qaeda has effectively been defeated," reports CBS News.

* Camille Taiara explains how the media enables the Bush administration's war on public information.

* The prospect of rebuilding Iraq after an assault will be a bonanza for several US-based multinationals. Halliburton tops the list, no doubt due to the Cheney connection. Dick's still on the payroll, after all.

* "The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, including the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq," report Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post. Assuming the allegations by the FBI aren't disinformation to throw scrutiny away from the US' role in forging the document, my vote for the "foreign government in question" is Israel. Mossad is most definitely up to the task, and Israel has been "cheering from the sidelines" for war for the past few months.

* If you're itching for a good dose of war propaganda, your first stop should always be the Wall St. Journal editorial pages. See examples here and here.

* Rahul Mahajan argues that an Iraq war will be illegal, with or without a UN Resolution.

* There were another batch of protests around the world against the war today. See a summary of today's activities. If these protests don't work, direct action is the next step.

* Michael Tomasky explores "how the right-wing media shot a true story down, and how the bulk of the mainstream press accepted those terms." He's referring, of course, to the Observer's story about American spy operations against members of the UN Security Council. In general, the American press has dropped the ball on the runup to Iraq.

* Will the war begin on March 18? I doubt it.

* More astroturf from the Republican party! Yay! Recall this.

* More anti-French idiocy.

* The CSM reports on the impact of Bush linking 9/11 and Iraq.

* Robert Dreyfuss asks, "Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?"

* Here's an interesting primer on war and the economy from a libertarian perspective.

* "A former military aide to General Norman Schwarzkopf has warned that a US-led war against Iraq could turn into a disaster that echoes the bloody debacle of Somalia rather than the relatively painless 1991 Gulf war," reports the Independent.

* UN personnel in Iraq are being told to get ready to evacuate. I wish they would listen to my advice.

* The ever-brilliant Paul Rogers explores the myth of a clean war – and its real motive.

* The White House jumps whenever the Weekly Standard says to. But we already knew that, right? With Bill Kristol at the helm, the Standard is practically the right arm of PNAC.

Bring 'Em Home

Support the campaign to make this billboard a reality.

(via The Mad Prophet)

Don't blame us...

In the event of war, Saddam Hussein is going to kill his own people and then blame it on the US!!!

"We need to keep [Saddam's] record in mind," says Donald Rumsfeld. For we know that Hussein "will seek to maximize civilian deaths and create the false impression that coalition forces target innocent Iraqis, which, of course, is not the case."

So, does this win the award for propaganda story of the day, or what?

US looking to blackmail?

Martin Bright, one of the authors of the Observer article that broke the story of US spying on members of the UN Security Council, was interviewed last week on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation show Lateline.

In an exchange with host Tony Jones, Bright highlighted a part of the story which has not been heavily scrutinized in media reports. He said:

It's quite clear what they [the NSA] were going for was not only the voting patterns and the voting plans and the negotiations with other interested parties such as the French or the Chinese, it wasn't just the bare bones, it was also the office telephone communications and email communications and also what are described as 'domestic coms', which is the home telephones of people working within the UN.

This can only mean that they were looking for personal information.

That is, information which could be used against those delagates [sic].

It's even clear from the memo that this was an aggressive operation.

Maybe I'm catching on late here, but, if true, this allegation makes the spy story much more significant.

Blight is suggesting that the NSA was not merely looking for information to give the US an inside track on the deliberations within member states of the Security Council. It was also searching for personal information which could be used, specifically, as blackmail.

If it wasn't before, this story should now be regarded as a major scandal.

(via media revolution)

Bush's Lies

Here's a handy little reference sheet: Bush's Top 31 Iraq Lies.

MOAB Test

"The Air Force on Tuesday tested for the first time the biggest conventional bomb in the U.S. military's arsenal, a 21,000-pound munition that could play a dramatic role in an attack on Iraq," the AP reports. This weapon, known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), dwarfs the so-called Daisy Cutter, which was used to devastating effect in Afghanistan.

The military denies that the testing of the MOAB is meant to coincide with the buildup to war in Iraq. However, the spokesman for the Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the site of the test, admits that the weapon could surely be made available for the war planners. Indeed, the Evening Standard claims the Pentagon is sending a videotape of the test to Iraq "as a warning" of what will likely happen during a military assault. There's no reason to think that the military would avoid using this weapon if it was functional, as it appears to be.

Paul Rogers has more on the MOAB -- what it is, how it developed, and why its use is likely to destroy civilian lives in their thousands.

Mohammed's Arrest Likely Staged

The peculiar story of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's arrest continues to unfold. The former spy chief of the Pakistani ISI, Hameed Gul, claims that Mohammed was arrested prior to last week and his apprehension is now being used for political purposes.

"He has not been arrested from the house where he was (said to have been) arrested," Gul says. "It is a media hype created to justify George Bush's war in Afghanistan. As Americans prepare to attack Iraq, they can show to the people that their war in Afghanistan was also bearing fruits."

The ISI has also released a videotape of the arrest. According to the AP, "Mohammed's face was not shown in the short videotape although he was seen being handcuffed and having a black hood placed over his head. It showed that only Pakistani police and ISI agents were involved in the actual arrest of Mohammed." The tape was "scratchy and of poor quality," and "appeared to be cut and spliced together." After viewing the tape, many journalists in attendance concluded that the arrest was staged.

A War on Independent Journalists

Kate Adie, a BBC war correspondent, has revealed that the Pentagon is threatening "to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq." In an interview on Irish radio, Adie claimed that the US is planning to do this "in order to control access to the airwaves." Another guest on the radio show, author Phillip Knightley, says the Pentagon has warned that it may "bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side."

U.S. Will Violate UN Charter if It Acts Without Approval

'Bout time Kofi chimed in.

Secretary General Kofi Annan warned today that if the United States fails to win approval from the Security Council for an attack on Iraq, Washington's decision to act alone or outside the Council would violate the United Nations charter.

"The members of the Security Council now face a great choice," Mr. Annan said in The Hague, where he was trying to broker a United Nations deal on Cyprus. "If they fail to agree on a common position and action is taken without the authority of the Security Council, the legitimacy and support for any such action will be seriously impaired."

...Responding to a question on the United Nations Charter, Mr. Annan said the charter is "very clear on circumstances under which force can be used.

"If the U.S. and others were to go outside the Council and take military action, it would not be in conformity with the charter," he said.

Robert Scheer is less diplomatic with his words: "When Bombs Fall, U.S. Will Join Ranks of War Criminals."

Take that, Frenchies!

I think this piece of news confirms that we have a bunch of morons working in Congress. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and these people are spending legislative time on "freedom fries."

Say it ain't so, Seymour!

Write an article, get labeled a terrorist. Such is life in George Bush's America.

A 2nd Resignation

Another US diplomat has resigned in protest over the American march to war in Iraq. Agence France Presse reports,

John Brown, who joined the State Department in 1981, said he resigned because he could not support Washington's Iraq policy, which he said was fomenting a massive rise in anti-US sentiment around the world.

In a resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Brown said he agreed with J Brady Kiesling, a diplomat at the US embassy in Athens who quit in February over President George W Bush's apparent intent on fighting Iraq.

"I am joining my colleague John Brady Kiesling in submitting my resignation from the Foreign Service - effective immediately - because I cannot in good conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq," he said.

Allied bombs a threat to Iraqi people

Iraqis are starting to realize that the Pentagon is going to pulverize their society. Apparently, they just got the memo that many of their fellow citizens will be "shocked and awed" into early graves by the American assault.

God Doesn't Approve; Nor Does Daddy

Dubya thinks war on Iraq is part of God's calling for him. He should probably get in touch with the Pope about this, as John Paul is thinking about branding Bush a war criminal if he starts bombing.

After checking in with the Vatican, Dubya should also make an effort to talk to daddy. He has some good advice.

Investigation into UN Spying

The UN has launched an inquiry into the allegations that the US has been spying on fellow members of the security council. A 28-year-old woman who works for the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been arrested, likely for leaking the NSA memo to the Observer.

Meanwhile, the US media is still asleep at the wheel.

An unblinking look at the reality of warfare

Since we only get sanitized images of war via our media, it might be worth taking a look at a collage of images and words of what war really looks like put together by The Memory Hole. Be forewarned, this is pretty disturbing stuff.

Vietnam 2 Preflight Check

Haven't we been down this road before?

Follow the Policy: Why So Long for Iraq to Comply?

Why has it taken Saddam Hussein so long to comply with the UN? Perhaps because the US has maintained a policy of punishing Iraq, principally by maintaining sanctions no matter what. According to Sam Husseini, this gave Saddam Hussein the "incentive for non-compliance with the inspectors. Now, the U.S. policy seems to be invasion no matter what Hussein does."

"How much must we suffer before a new light dawns?"

That's what George Partington is asking in this late night ramble.

UN Inspectors Should Ignore the US

From where I sit, it looks like the US is not going to get UN approval for a military strike, but will go forward with one anyway.

So, when the US tells the UN inspectors to get the hell out of Iraq to make way for bombing, what would happen if they refused to leave?

This would throw a huge monkey wrench into American plans, as I would doubt the US would start a war with UN personnel still on the ground. It would also put immense pressure on the US to stand down and not violate international law, as Jimmy Carter alleges it is about to do in today's NY Times.

Obey Your Oath

Lawrence Mosqueda reminds American troops that they have a duty to disobey all unlawful orders.

Faking and Hiding Evidence?

Documents alleging that Iraq has tried to revive its nuclear arms programme are fake, according to IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei. How much of the other evidence which condemns Iraq has been faked? Anyone want to venture a guess?

In a related story about the progress made by UN weapons inspectors, the Times of London reports that a recently declassified study from the UN "contained a hidden bombshell with the revelation that inspectors have recently discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone with a wingspan of 7.45m, suggesting an illegal range that could threaten Iraq’s neighbours with chemical and biological weapons."

"US officials were outraged that Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, did not inform the Security Council about the drone, or remotely piloted vehicle, in his oral presentation to Foreign Ministers and tried to bury it in a 173-page single-spaced report distributed later in the day. The omission raised serious questions about Dr Blix’s objectivity," the Times alleges.

This last piece of information is sure to run hot in pro-war corners.

Update: Blix denies that he was covering up anything. "Dr Blix said that Iraq should have declared the drone," the Times reports, "but it would not be illegal unless it went further than the UN permitted range of 150km or was equipped to disperse chemical or biological weapons. Iraq says that its range is 55km."

Whitewashing "The Plan"

To the surprise of many, ABC’s Nightline aired a segment on the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) last week. I caught the show, and figured I’d weigh in here with my impressions. (Thanks to Ray Sweatman for motivating me to post this, which is adapted from an email I sent him.)

In general, I thought the show was a whitewash. Nightline presented no new information with their report; outside of journalistic ineptitude, there’s no reason why this story could not have aired months ago, when it might have had a chance to influence public discourse. Instead, it airs when war is pretty much a foregone conclusion, and after most people have made up their mind about whether Dubya should unleash the dogs of hell.

What particularly annoyed me was the way Nightline framed the story. Ted Koppel opened things up by quoting Neil MacKay’s piece from the Sunday Herald (which broke the PNAC story last September, at least in journalistic circles) and Chris Floyd’s follow up article on it for the Moscow Times. Koppel basically called both authors conspiracy theorists, which was entirely unfair. Nightline didn’t break this story – other folks had to – and now along comes Teddy K. to put the facts straight. That’s the way this was outlined.

Koppel then played off the conspiracy theme to introduce a taped segment by one of the Nightline journalists (Jackie Judd). The rest of the show tears at the conspiracy notion until the audience is left with the impression that Bill Kristol and the boys really have American interests at heart and aren’t the imperialists they so plainly are (and readily admit, albeit in different words).

Nightline essentially allowed the PNACers to make their case without any significant challenge to their worldview. Ian Lustick, a UPenn professor, was presented as a foil, but he popped up very briefly in the taped segment and his contribution was marginal. In contrast, Bill Kristol was allowed to make his sales pitch, and given the opportunity to elaborate at length about his theory on foreign policy.

The fact that Kristol was interviewed extensively in the taped segment and then allowed to go one-on-one with Koppel in studio is unacceptable. Nightline could have just as easily aired the pre-taped journalistic piece, and then put Kristol on with someone else, someone who was not a PNAC flack. Take your pick: the previously mentioned MacKay, Jay Bookman (who wrote the first major American op-ed piece on PNAC for AJC), Nick Lemann (he wrote about PNAC even prior to MacKay, for the New Yorker), or Jim Lobe (the IPS reporter who has written extensively on PNAC, frequently for Foreign Policy in Focus), to name the obvious options.

Overall, yes, it's good that the PNAC story made its way onto television. I suppose the more people know about the plan, the better. Hopefully, it will encourage viewers to investigate this further.

I do, however, feel like the program served more as political inoculation than anything else. It connected few dots, and led the viewer to believe that a bunch of smart folks were simply contributing ideas to the foreign policy debate, and not actually exploiting historical circumstance and their close proximity to the corridors of power to drive through an ideological agenda that has, for the most part, been hidden from public scrutiny.

Rather than taking a deep, probing look at the PNAC, Nightline can now put it on its list of stories covered. This is not something that deserves 20 minutes at 11:35pm. It’s the story that needs to be placed at the center of the debate on Iraq, precisely because you cannot understand what’s been going on for the past few months (years?) without knowing about PNAC. More or less, this Nightline report left the viewer with the notion that “there’s nothing to see here, folks.”

And, as anyone who has been following this story all along knows, that’s hardly the case.

[NB: A transcript of the Nightline program is available here.]

Economic Calamity

If case you didn't know (meaning: you probably still have a job), the economy is in absolute shambles. To make things even worse, those Bush tax cuts promise to make a Keynesian revivification impossible because of the massive and growing deficit we face down the road.

Who will suffer the most...

Should we go to war against these children?

George Bush says we should. 13-year-old Charlotte Aldebron doesn't agree. Who do you think we should listen to?

Also see some pen pal letters written to American students from their colleagues at the Al-Adamia Secondary School for Girls in Baghdad.

(pic and link via gordon coale)

Bush's performance

Check out a few questions which weren't asked of Bush during Thursday night's "news conference." I use scare quotes because it looks like the entire charade was scripted.

Congrats, Amira

Amira Hass has won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for 2003. If you're not familiar with her reporting, check out a brief bio and then read her latest report on the IDF's retaliation for the recent suicide bombing.

Bodies Continue to Pile Up

Terrorism? Without a doubt. What, then, do you call this?

Detainees Murdered

The US military has admitted that two prisoners being held at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan have been murdered. "The men died while under U.S. control, and a military pathologist listed homicide as their official cause of death," reports the Washington Post. "The death certificates for both men said they had died of blunt force injuries, in addition to other causes."

Ok, people, let's try to connect the dots...

Palestinians Impoverished; Their Economy in Shambles

From the NY Times:

A study issued today by the World Bank reported that almost two million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are living below a poverty level of $2 a day, triple the number before the conflict began with Israel more than two years ago.

The result means that 60 percent of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories now lives in poverty, as defined by the World Bank.

The study, which covered the period from the beginning of the conflict in September 2000 until the end of 2002, found a steep decline in economic indicators across the board. More than half of Palestinians are unemployed, the study found, and investment in the Palestinian economy collapsed from an estimated $1.5 billion in 1999 to just $140 million last year.

A separate study issued by the United Nations found that Palestinians were apparently turning to subsistence agriculture to survive. Both organizations, which presented their results jointly here today, said that the cause of the collapse of the Palestinian economy was the closures imposed on Palestinian areas by the Israeli Army...

There is a Way to Stop the War

What Can the World Do if the US Attacks Iraq? Convene the UN's General Assembly and begin "Uniting for Peace."

The Pentagon Papers

A movie based on the story of the Pentagon Papers is airing this Sunday, March 9th, on FX at 8PM. Check it out and make Daniel Ellsberg happy.

Walkout Against the War

There was a Moratorium to Stop the War today. Thousands of college and high school students ditched class in protest. Infoshop has a round up of some of the more prominent walkouts.

Getting Close

France, Russia, and Germany have more or less said no war via the UN. The US is now thinking about abandoning a second resolution against Iraq.

Since the US has hit its target for the number of troops that will be needed for an invasion, it's likely that the administration will shift gears and declare the UN irrelevant. War may come as soon as next week, according to several reports.

Water Scarcity Ahead

UNESCO has released a massive, 600-page study which claims that "as many as 7 billion people in 60 countries could face water scarcity by 2050. In just 20 years, the report predicts, the average supply of water per person worldwide will have dropped by one-third, affecting almost every nation and especially those already on the economic edge."

Healthcare in Bushland

Bush touted free-market Medicare yesterday in his speech to the AMA about the need for healthcare "reform". As part of his proposal, Bush outlined a new prescription plan which will be, according to the Washington Post, "a bonanza for the pharmaceutical and managed-care industries, both of which are huge donors to Republicans."

Bruce C. Vladeck, the official in charge of Medicare under the Clinton administration, says the Bush plan is "the kind of proposal the pharmaceutical companies would write if they were writing their own bill."

In the meantime, a new report has come out which indicates that 75 million of Americans have been without health insurance at some point within the last two years.

"The findings in this report should represent a sea change in the way we think about the uninsured," says Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, the sponsor of the study. "Now that almost one out of three non-elderly Americans experienced significant periods without health insurance, the uninsured problem is no longer simply an issue of altruism about other people, but it is also one of self-interest for us all."

Mohammed's likely being tortured; Osama's on the run

US intelligence officials are hopeful that the information being tortured out of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will soon lead to Osama Bin Laden's capture.

Bush stumbles towards war

Justin Raimondo does an excellent job drawing together the recent developments concerning Iraq, Turkey, and North Korea in his latest column. The events of the past week make war in Iraq much more difficult to pull off, but Raimondo argues that this isn't deterring the Bush administration.

"Not even the fast-softening domestic support for this war, and the President's simultaneous drop in the polls, have so much as slowed them down," he writes. "That this administration is still hurtling toward war with Iraq at warp speed is the full measure of its utter recklessness, its fanatic irresponsibility, and its unfitness to rule."