A Note

I should resume blogging sometime later in the week. My apologies for the interruption.

Human Genome Completely Mapped

"A scant three years after announcing they had a rough map of the human genome, government and private researchers from around the world announced Monday that they have deciphered 99 percent of the genetic code that makes up a human being," Reuters reports.

"This is a transforming moment," said Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project. "This is the day we rolled out the first edition of the Book of Life."

1-for-3

"If Washington is acting with the best of motives and intends a peaceful, democratic and genuinely independent Iraq to develop, there will be three early indicators. The US will withdraw virtually all its occupation forces and hand over to some kind of transitional, multinational stabilisation force; the UN and other intergovernmental organisations will be heavily involved in the development of democratic governance; and, most significant of all, the US will make no attempt to set up permanent military bases on Iraqi soil."
-- Paul Rogers, April 17, 2003

"The United States is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say."
-- NY Times, April 20, 2003

Anthrax, chemicals and nerve gas: who is lying?

Scott Ritter thinks we've been lied to about those WMDs.

This is the same Scott Ritter who, when he first made these assertions last autumn, was vilified in the US media as "misguided", "disloyal", not to be taken seriously and "an apologist for and a defender of Saddam Hussein". One cable news host, Curtis Sliwa, said on air he was a "sock puppet" who "ought to turn in his passport for an Iraqi one".

Perhaps it's time to give Mr Ritter another chance. It may, in fact, be time to reassess who exactly has been the deceiver and who the dupe in this whole affair. What Mr Ritter and others now allege, with increasing confidence, is a pattern of false information emanating from both Washington and London since last September – lies and distortions that launched a major war and are only now beginning to be widely exposed.

Tell me something new...

The System That Doesn't Safeguard Travel

Over the last two years, Business Week reports, "various federal agencies, including the State Dept., Customs Service, and FBI, have created lists of suspicious travelers, Americans and foreigners. All told, some 13 million people (equivalent to 4.5% of the U.S. population) are now on the terror watch list. Security experts and common sense say 99% of those pinpointed aren't terrorists."

Holy bureaucratic mess, Batman.

Spotty Posting

As you might have gathered, I've been on somewhat of an un-announced hiatus for the past few days. Expect the light blogging to continue for some time, as I'm pretty busy. If I owe you an email response, please be patient. I'm getting to them, s-l-o-w-l-y.

What's Up

* Those WMDs sure are hard to find. Maybe the US has accidentally destroyed the evidence and "given itself an excuse" as to why none have been located. Or maybe Bush has pulled off the "great illusion," as Susan Wright alleges.

* "Many of the same people who led the campaign for war against Iraq signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon," reports Jim Lobe. Those neocons aren't worried about leaving a paper trail, apparently. Nor are they worried about recycling arguments.

* Speaking of Syria, that nation "has introduced a draft United Nations resolution to rid the Middle East of any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons," according to the BBC. As the Mad Prophet suggests, this is a little zinger aimed at the "special relationship" between the US and Israel. There's little chance this resolution would pass, but it wouldn't matter if it did, anyway. After all, there's already a resolution on the books which calls for the establishment of "a zone free from weapons of mass destruction" in the Middle East. Which resolution is that, you say? None other than 687, the very same one that allegedly justified the sanctions against Iraq.

* Bush has now called on the UN to lift the sanctions against Iraq. George Will and Tony Blair, our champions of morality, must be elated.

* Bechtel's hard work has paid off. They're gonna make bundles off the Iraq occupation. So, too, will other multinationals. If the American plan for "reconstruction" is allowed to go forward, Naomi Klein writes, "'free Iraq' will be the most sold country on earth."

* Baghdad didn't fall; it was allegedly handed over.

* What really happened in Mosul?

* Has Senator Bob Graham lost his mind?

* Do you "support the troops"? The US government doesn't...

* The NY Times reports on the "Fox effect." They might as well call it the "propaganda effect."

* Some lawyers and human rights groups are compiling a case for war crimes against the US and Britain for their invasion of Iraq.

* Remember Afghanistan? Bill Berkowitz has a report card on the situation there.

* Who really saved Private Jessica? And what about Private Lori?

* 'Betcha haven't seen anything like this reported in the American media.

* Paul Rogers argues that the validity of war-for-oil argument "will be tested by what happens over the next year." If the US moves to "establish a long-term military presence" in Iraq, then it will be hard to deny that the US cares more about Iraqi oil than its people.

* Here's the low down on Abu Abbas.

* Venezuela says it has proof the US was behind last year's coup attempt.

* We've already seen that the Rooskies were in bed with Saddam. Did their intelligence agents use this blog to aid the Iraqis during the invasion?

Going the extra yard(s)

Outrages

"There are so many outrages going on in Iraq that it is becoming impossible to keep up with them," declares xymphora.

The looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities is perhaps the most tragic. This is a different type of 'crime against humanity' than we're used to, but nonetheless one that the Pentagon should be reamed for allowing to happen.

Are we ready to pay attention to the peace? No.

Deborah Orr of the Independent laments that "most of us, inevitably, are going to start drifting off from our obsessive study of Iraq pretty soon."

Syria Postponed

The administration has drawn some flack over its plans for Syria, so Bush is backing off. For now.

Bull Durham thrown a curveball

Baseball is now a Republican sport, apparently. Tim Robbins just got the memo.

Might as well get a jump start on things...

Chomsky on Iraq

There's a good interview with Noam Chomsky (cue the boos from some corners) on ZNet about the Iraq war. Particularly, I thought this was a nice way of putting the issue of WMDs:

Question: There have been no wmd found. Does this retrospectively undercut Bush's rationales for war?

Answer: Only if one takes the rationale seriously. The leadership still pretends to, as Fleischer's current remarks illustrate. If they can find something, which is not unlikely, that will be trumpeted as justification for the war. If they can't, the whole issue will be "disappeared" in the usual fashion.

How true.

Where now?

What next for the antiwar movement? It's a question a lot of people are throwing around.

Matt Taibbi thinks those who denounce what's going on in Iraq right now should get tough and hit America where it would hurt, by targeting its consumer-based economy. He calls for a boycott of everything and anything you can think of.

For years, corporate America and the media have tried to convince us that buying things is a political act, a way of expressing our individuality (Fruitopia instead of flower power, Nikes sold to the tune of "Revolution," peace signs on the walls of Starbucks). Well, let’s call their bluff. Let’s non-participate. Let’s go on consumer strike. Pull a slowdown. We don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to voting for politicians, but when it comes to buying, where our existence is actually necessary, we have a thousand choices a day. It might be the only method we have of making the decision-making class pay attention to our concerns.

Michael Neumann is a bit harsher in his criticism of the failures of the antiwar movement, and instead suggests that we get tough on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The antiwar left, he writes, "needs to demand, as it should have demanded a long time ago, that the US switch sides in the Israel/Palestine conflict. This means that the US should ally itself with the Palestinians and with the Muslim world, against Israel, to secure prompt, unconditional and complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories."

"It is not that the Israel-Palestine conflict is the only important issue in the world; it is just that it is the crucial one," he continues. "Until the US reconciles with the Islamic world on Palestine, it can never demonstrate a commitment to international conventions, or change the tenor of its self-destructive war on terror, or overcome the petulant bitterness that now poisons any attempt to develop a fruitful foreign policy. Get on the right side of this issue, and there is still much to do, but the way is open to doing it."

Saddam's Buddy

Ah, Russia. Will you ever learn?

Top secret documents obtained by The Telegraph in Baghdad show that Russia provided Saddam Hussein's regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations between Tony Blair and other Western leaders.

Moscow also provided Saddam with lists of assassins available for "hits" in the West and details of arms deals to neighbouring countries. The two countries also signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to "obtain" visas for agents to go to other countries and to exchange information on the activities of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qa'eda leader.

The documents detailing the extent of the links between Russia and Saddam were obtained from the heavily bombed headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad yesterday...

As the Dynamic Driveler notes, "This is stupidity of the highest order."

Update: The SF Chronicle has corroborated the Telegraph's claims with their own investigation.

Africa Forgotten

Where there is no oil, Bush turns a blind eye.

Moving On

The Israeli leadership wants the Bush administration to push on and "take care of Iran and Syria." Patience. The US is, indeed, seriously considering taking on Syria next, and Iran is not too far behind.

The Land of the Free

A new report from the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that the number of inmates in American prisons has topped 2 million for the first time. Perhaps most disturbingly, the report suggests that 12 percent of black men in their 20s and 30s are behind bars.

Anthrax Whitewash

Anthrax is back in the news. Goody.

Cheering Iraqis are just a diversion, folks

Mark Morford puts the lie of liberation into its proper context.

Last Tango in Baghdad

"The war was a cakewalk after all," observes Jeffrey St. Clair in a piece for Counterpunch. "The three week invasion offered barely a battle to speak of: a few small arms firefights, a couple of wobbly Scuds launched harmlessly into the Kuwaiti desert, an ambush or two. That was about the most the Iraqis choose (or could) mount. Even the gurus of 4th Generation Warfare must feel cheated that the much-ballyhooed asymmetrical street fight never really materialized. The Americans killed nearly as many American and British soldiers as the Iraqis did."

This begs the question: if it was so easy, why was it necessary? How big of a threat was the Beast of Baghdad, after all? Did his rusting army, even the supposedly fearsome Republican Guard, really pose any kind of the threat to the US? Or even the pampered sheiks of Kuwait?

The relentlessly hyped arsenal Weapons of Mass Destruction were never used, if they even existed in any militarily useful condition to begin with. The long-range rockets were never launched. The oil wells and dams were never dynamited, despite Rumsfeld's pompous claims about "environmental terrorism"-surely one of the crudest hypocrisies yet uttered by this apex hypocrite.

Why was it necessary? Who benefits? What will happen once the military moves on?

These are questions that will never get serious answer over here. Indeed, the questions may even never be asked, in the scripted kabuki shows that are passed off as Bush press conferences.

Too bad. They are the only questions that really matter.

Random thoughts on "liberation"

I'm thankful that the Battle of Baghdad was not the bloody, catastrophic incursion that many predicted. Casualties were prominent, but it could have been much worse.

Still, what has transpired over the last few weeks was more a slaughter than a war. It seems like US forces and bombings beat the hell out of the Republican Guard, "degrading its ranks" by many thousands, thus leaving little opposition capable of resisting the American onslaught as it moved north.

. . .

Many people in this country seem to be euphoric about the "quick victory". The triumphalism seems to correspond directly with American media coverage, which depicted a clean war of liberation from the moment American forces entered Iraq. This is not the image of this conflict that the rest of the world is familiar with, a point CBS correspondent Bob Simon explained to Larry King:

"I've just spent more than a month in the Middle East and Europe," said Simon, "and just coming back to the United States, you feel you're watching a different war on television. Not only compared to the Middle East, where anger against the United States is rising by the day, but also in Europe, where television, even British television, is far more skeptical about what's going on, far more skeptical about American war aims, far more skeptical about the number of civilian casualties and about what is actually happening.

"Here," Simon went on, describing the now familiar network regimen we've all been watching, "you see advancing American troops. You see retired American generals. These are the dominant themes on American television. But it's an entirely different picture overseas.

"It's imperative that both sides be shown," Simon continued. "And it's all a question of which side is getting more play. When you're in the Arab world today, the television pictures are almost exclusively of what Americans call 'collateral damage' … and when you're in the United States today, I'm just amazed by the extent to which all you see is the American viewpoint, the advancing American troops and no collateral damage. …

"The point is that with this atmosphere in the United States, I think reporters are very cautious about being critical because they can be perceived as being unpatriotic."

The fall of Saddam's statue is the most egregious example of poorly contextualized reporting, if not outright propaganda. Dozens of Iraqis dancing around the iconic figure plays well for the TV, but it hardly seems to be deserving of the adulation it received within the US. The scene now looks like it was entirely staged.

. . .

Right now, Iraq is an absolute mess, and I'm not confident in the Americans' ability to set things right. Bombing and military incursions are the easy part, especially when confronted with a dilapidated regime. Building credible democratic institutions, on the other hand, will be extraordinarily difficult.

Since Bush has decided to don the mantle of liberator, he should be held accountable on this issue. Hopefully, I'm wrong and this war isn't the crude, imperialist power grab I think it is. I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise up until this point, however.

Liberation makes for good PR

This was the picture of the day from yesterday. American media were quick to seize on the statue's fall as the indelible image of liberation. But, as Steve Johnson, television critic for the Chicago Tribune, emphasized, "Few of the American news outlets emphasized how small the crowd of Iraqis around the statue really was."

So, what do you see? Throngs of liberated Iraqis or just good PR?

Update: Atrios throws some cold water on the triumphant moment. Of particular note, the flag the Americans initially draped over the statue was the one that flew over the Pentagon on 9/11. Real subtle, guys.

Blix: Iraq war planned long in advance

Hans Blix has finally said what should be obvious now: the question of Iraqi WMDs was exploited to justify a war that had been planned long ago.

Betrayal on All Sides

With the apparent American victory over Iraq, John Bradley of the Arab News writes, the "message has been clearly sent: No country, certainly no country in the Middle East, can ever withstand even a half-baked military campaign against it led by the United States. America now rules the world, either directly or by proxy; and there is nothing anyone can do about it."

Nothing, that is, but wait for history to take its course, for Fortune’s wheel to turn as it inexorably does, crushing underneath those who once danced on top of it. But not in our lifetime. Yes, there will be more terrorism, and Osama Bin Laden — or at least his infamous voice — was heard once more yesterday, calling for suicide attacks and thus giving more easy justification, as he did on Sept. 11, to America’s imperial ambition. Thanks, Osama, you’ve done us all about as much good as George W. Bush. Both are two sides of the same coin.

So what of the immediate future? Some things can surely now be taken for granted. The hastily concocted “road map” for Middle East peace will be implemented, creating a still-born Palestinian state completely dependent politically and economically on Israel. A democracy of sorts will come to Iraq, and sooner or later to much of the Middle East — just enough to give the people a sense of freedom while allowing America to justify at home a continued “partnership” with the rulers of the region. As in the 1990s, when those on the Left suddenly found themselves disenfranchised after the Berlin Wall came down and Stalinism was replaced in Eastern Europe with that cruder system of exploitation, undiluted capitalism, so now those on the side of basic justice and human rights know that the international, independent judges have been bought off, and there is no longer any recourse to moral argument.

Morality, in a word, has been thrown out the window. The only hope now is that the US will somehow be kept in check by those ordinary Americans who, like the vast majority of the world’s people, feel betrayed and abused by what the Bush “regime” has done — all the more so for being carried out under their very noses.

It is worth noting that while liberation is being shouted by the victors, much of the Arab world has reacted with despair to the fall of Baghdad.

A Week Later

I'm back, just in time for the chest bumping, hand slapping, and triumphal rhetoric about how we've liberated the Iraqis and toppled their evil dictator. Images like these are sure to be shoved down our throats for some time as hubris and imperial arrogance runs rampant.

But things are just getting started. With an occupation, installation of a puppet, and further interventions in the Mid East on the way, it's much too early to say whether we have achieved anything close to a "victory."

With that in mind, here's some stuff from the past week or so that you're hopefully familiar with already:

* CNN's Aaron Brown was interviewed on Democracy Now! last week. Not surprisingly, he tap danced around the tough questions.

* Bush's constant invocation of God makes Europeans nervous. Me, too.

* Ari Shavit explores the the burden of the neocons in Ha'aretz.

* The Iraq war is meant to send a signal to the rest of the world. "We are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their national interest," says John Bolton, the American undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. In particular, Syria is the next candidate for regime change. North Korea might be put on the war agenda, too.

* Lance Brown has started up a worthwhile project to catalog the activities of the neocons and those affiliated with the Project for the New American Century: PNAC.info. Check it out, bookmark it, and spread the word.

* The Iraq war may be coming to an end, but it also signals the beginning of a much longer, sustained conflict that will likely last the next 30 years, according to Paul Rogers. In other words, the campaign against Saddam was a trial run for a much more ambitious project.

* Check out Spinsanity's list of some of the misconceptions and myths about the Iraq war.

* Ever wonder what it would have been like if Fox News had been around during key historical moments of the past? Go here for a sneak peek.

* Former CIA director James Woolsey announced that the campaign in Iraq signals the start of World War IV. Considering this provocative declaration, it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on Woolsey, as Jim Lobe suggests.

* Matt Welch says it's time to start preparing for the second Patriot Act. Republicans want to make such legislation permanent.

* If you haven't already, read Arundhati Roy's piece from last week's Guardian.

* Al Jazeera may be biased, but it's not nearly as biased as the US media.

* Did the US military deliberately target journalists? Reporters Without Borders thinks so.

Hiatus

I'm taking a break from blogging for a few days, mostly b/c I have tons of work to get done. I'll also be away for stretches of this time doing research. Hopefully, I'll be back next week.

Let Us Count the Lies on the Road to War

Sydney H. Schanberg writes about the Bush administration's lies, double takes, and reverses in this week's Village Voice.

"Maybe, when victory over Iraq comes, a relieved public will look upon these civilian warriors as heroes and bold visionaries, rather than blinkered souls suffering from raging hubris," he declares. "But we are all shaped differently and, after living for several years in the third world, I cannot see Edens being created by this war. It looks like just another application of weed-killer being poured over problems that are much too deeply rooted to die out so easily."

"I also have no illusions about truth-telling suddenly taking hold as a guiding principle among nations. But minimum levels of candor and openness are critical to keeping democracies alive—even empires with democratic origins. And for my money the captain seems at the moment to be purposefully steering the ship to a place well below those minimums."

US Air Attacks Turn More Aggressive

The US military is taking off the safeties. The Washington Post reports that the war architects "have shed their early caution in striking some targets in Baghdad and have embarked on more aggressive air attacks that run the risk of larger numbers of civilian casualties."

Al Jazeera bombed

I've been waiting for this to happen: the US military has bombed the Basra hotel which is being used by Al Jazeera as a base for correspondents.

"The Basra Sheraton, whose only guests are al-Jazeera journalists, received four direct hits this morning during a heavy artillery bombardment," reports the Guardian.

"The shelling of the Basra Sheraton mirrors a similar incident during the Afghan war, when al-Jazeera accused the US military of deliberately targeting its Kabul office, despite having told the Americans where its reporters were based."

A "media war," indeed. First hacking, now this.

Shut up and wave the flag

Kurt Nimmo:

Let's face it. Since it's not our kids hurt, not our neighbors killed, most of Americans don't care what the US government does in Iraq. Most Americans don't care what the rest of the world thinks, they are oblivious to calls for peace and sanity.

"American support for presidents tends to surge during international conflict or crisis, a phenomenon well-documented in the last century that has come to the forefront of national politics in the last 12 years," writes John Buchel. "The phenomenon is known as the 'rally 'round the flag' effect, or simply the rally effect...The rally effect is evident in current public opinion polls that rate Bush's approval at around 70 percent..."

Let's call it the "rally 'round murder" effect instead.

In Switzerland, nearly all citizens have put white flags on their roofs, as a sign of peace and opposition to the ongoing invasion. The Swiss know right from wrong, unlike the Americans. The Swiss Foreign Ministry has decided to document US-British war crimes against Iraqi civilians.

"The initial data available so far reveals the dirtiness of U.S.-British warmongers, the fakeness of their claims about a clean war, as well as their indifference to the lives of innocent, unarmed Iraqi civilians," said Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy Rey.

Not only is the US government indifferent, so are millions of average Americans. Of course, on 9/11, they demanded the entire world grieve with them, now they expect the whole world to back them in pointless and criminal mass murder of innocent people who have absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

But it's not only indifference to murder or supporting it by supporting Bush the unpresident -- now you are expected to shut up and not make your opposition known.

"Freedom of speech has many prices," writes Gene Schenck of Lower Windsor Township, Pennsylvania. "The soldiers who died for this country in many wars have paid for it over and over. Free speech also carries a cost for those free speakers who might suffer the scorn of their fellow citizens. But those who undermine their own country at this crucial time need to know they encourage the enemy to keep fighting and the price tag for that is additional risk for the soldiers who serve your nation. Those soldiers represent you, your nation and its unique freedoms. Shame on those of you who undermine your country's strength at this critical moment."

Shame on you for opposing mass murder. Now shut up and wave your little plastic flag.

Blair's war

I've been recommending a bunch of Frontlines recently, so here's another one:

Almost exactly a year ago, in early April of 2002, British Prime Minister Tony Blair traveled to Crawford, Texas, to meet with President Bush. Blair, who knew that Iraq had been at or near the top of the administration's agenda since Sept. 11, 2001, wanted to know Bush's true intentions toward Saddam Hussein.

"I was told by a Cabinet minister who is very close to Blair," Matthew D'Ancona, deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph, tells FRONTLINE, "that Blair looked Bush in the eyes and realized that America was going to war with Iraq, come what may...Blair came away from Crawford thinking at a very deep level about what he could do to ensure that this conflict did not do irreparable damage to the international community."

In "Blair's War," this Thursday, Apr. 03 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE tells the story of how and why the United States and Britain find themselves fighting a war in Iraq without the help of their most important allies, and the story of the man at the center of it all, Tony Blair, who risked everything in a failed effort to bridge the gap between the U.S. and the key players of Western Europe. Through interviews with insiders in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Washington, the report examines the failure of diplomacy in the months leading up to war and what that failure may cost, not only for Tony Blair but for the United States and the international order.

Maybe this will shed some light on why Tony has seemingly sacrificed his entire political career over the Iraq issue.

Subtle. Real Subtle

Here's a friendly piece of advice from incublogula:

When invading an oil-rich country like Iraq you might not want to name your helicopter bases in the country "Exxon" and "Shell" -- especially when some of the world believes your war against terrorism is really a war for oil.

Coalition divided over battle for hearts and minds

There's some growing friction between British and American soldiers over how the war should be fought in Iraq. "What is striking is the emphasis senior British military figures are placing on the differences between their approach and that of the Americans on the ground," Richard Norton-Taylor and Rory McCarthy of the Guardian report. "They have gone out of their way to draw attention to nervous, 'trigger-happy' US soldiers."

On a related note, three British soldiers in Iraq have been sent home for protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians.

Al-Jazeera to return

Al-Jazeera's English-language site, which has been knocked offline by hackers, will eventually come back.

Who's accountable?

There's a lot of talk flying around about how the military plan has thus far been a disaster, and how Rumsfeld and the civilian leadership of the Pentagon are to blame.

Fair enough. But let's not let Dubya off the hook here. If things keep going badly, the axe will eventually fall on someone, but not the President.

Even though he may not be making specific decisions on the military plan, Bush deserves to be held accountable. He led us into this mess; he's responsible for it.

That being said, there's plenty of blame to go around, on both sides of the aisle. Let's not forget that point, either.

(tip o' the hat to the dynamic driveler, who made a similar point in a comment to a previous post)

A quick appraisal

Ahmed Bouzid examines some of the bad predictions and basic questions about the Iraq invasion thus far. Of particular note, he writes,

it is now clear, no matter how this war ends, that it takes a whole lot to get Saddam Hussein to use his weapons of mass destruction. His country is under invasion by forces bent not only on removing him, but on killing him, his family, and anyone else who stands in the way. And yet, he has refrained from using the weapons. Whether he will use them or not when US and British ground troops begin storming Baghdad remains to be seen. But what is clear is that the notion that Saddam Hussein was simply beyond containment, let alone that he would have used weapon of mass destruction for offensive purposes given the American Damocles over his head, has now been decisively discredited.

Indeed. Where are those WMDs?

Syria backs Iraqis against ‘illegal’ invasion

Warnings recently went out to Syria to back off on the Iraq issue; first from Rumsfeld, then from Powell.

Syria's response? Go to hell, America.

Filling the reservoirs of discontent

About two weeks ago, the NY Tiimes reported that "Al Qaeda and other terror organizations have intensified their efforts to recruit young Muslim men, tapping into rising anger about the American campaign for war in Iraq."

The AP confirms that the efforts are bearing fruits, as the war is spurring the recruitment of militants in Pakistan who are outraged at the display of "American aggression.''