Kurt Nimmo's Another Day in the Empire

2003-04-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

Please note: Another Day in the Empire has moved to a new URL:

http://www.drmenlo.com/nimmo

Change your bookmarks. This site will serve as an archive for older posts.

Kurt Nimmo

2003-04-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

Here's Donald Rumsfeld on his way to Iraq. Note the eagerness of the corporate media to suck up and report his lies. Last week Don said there will be no US bases in Iraq. Right. I may be wrong, but the last time Rummy visited Iraq he shook the hand of Saddam Hussein.

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Saddam's version of the Gestapo, Mukhabarat, was so powerful and effective it kept the dictator in office for decades and crushed all opposition. Not even the CIA was able to penetrate it. Yet when Saddam Hussein's regime finally crumbled, we are asked to believe Mukhabarat left around incriminating evidence, namely documentation linking Saddam to al-Qaeda. "Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998," reports Inigo Gilmore of the Telegraph. "The Telegraph found the file on bin Laden inside a folder lying in the rubble of one of the rooms of the destroyed intelligence HQ. There are three pages, stapled together; two are on paper headed with the insignia and lettering of the Mukhabarat."

"Bin Laden and his men considered Saddam the killer of hundreds of Islamic militants," notes Gen. Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan's spy agency InterServices Intelligence. "Ideologically and logically, they cannot work together." Gul may know what he's talking about -- he knew Osama bin Laden; in fact, al-Qaeda is essentially a creation of Pakistan's ISI and the CIA.

While bin Laden never flew to Baghdad to shake hands with Saddam Hussein -- like Donald Rumsfeld did -- he did meet with the CIA while being treated for a serious kidney ailment at the American Hospital in Dubai, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.

Naturally, the US corporate media will embrace this story and chances are the Bushites will use it to justify their invasion of Iraq. Yet the same media refuses to publish anything detailing the business links between the Bush and bin Laden crime families. Moreover, the corporate media refused to report on meetings between Dubya and bin Laden family. "President Bush does not have a relationship with the bin Laden family," Bush spokeswoman Jean Becker told the Wall Street Journal. "He's met them twice."

Dubya met with the family of bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the most heinous crime in American history, and yet this is not a story the corporate media finds worthy of publishing. Normally, it would be splashed across the front page the same way Clinton's little foray into consensual sex with "that woman" was.

Bush needs to sell his invasion of mass murder and wholesale destruction and looting of Iraqi culture to the American people, so the papers allegedly found by the Telegraph purporting a link between Saddam and Osama will soon be offered as indisputable proof that the two were in cahoots. A large number of Americans already believe Saddam and Osama are the same person, or are at least indistinguishable.

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Well, it seems not only the Telegraph found documents in the "bombed-out headquarters of the dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service," but so did the Toronto Star. "The documents were found by correspondent Mitch Potter, the Star's Jerusalem bureau chief. Potter, who has been in and out of Iraq since the war began, was digging through the rubble of the Mukhabarat's Baghdad headquarters with his translator Amir when they uncovered the intelligence treasure trove."

So, who found the document -- the Telegraph or the Toronto Star, or did they find it together? Or maybe the CIA planted more than one copy in the rubble?

I believe this story about as much as I believe the story about the passport of a terrorist found in the rubble of the World Trade Center, or those Osama tapes.

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Donald Rumsfeld: "The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world."

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"The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal."

No, really? A lot of us knew this before Bush invaded Iraq, but it didn't make a whit of difference. I guess it's safe to report it now, after the fact.

"A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. 'They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat,' the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, 'Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies', he added: 'You can draw your own conclusions'."

I guess the Independent didn't hear about the papers found in the bombed out Mukhabarat building in Iraq. Now that it can be shown that Osama and Saddam were buddies, it doesn't matter if the Bushites lied through their teeth. The American people will not care. In fact, they will not even pay attention.

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"Tim Roemer, a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States... [and] a former congressman from Indiana, tried to review transcripts of hearings [on 9/11] held last year by the joint House-Senate intelligence committee. He learned that he lacked permission to see them, even though he served on the joint committee and therefore had read the material before," according to a Guardian story.

Of course not. Do you think the so-called National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States want the American people to learn what really happened on 9/11?

"Zelikow [the commission's executive director] said the commission has clear authority to view the documents but, as a courtesy, is giving congressional and White House officials several days to review the estimated 500,000 pages accumulated by the congressional inquiry."

Remember those documents on Iraq's WMD? Remember what happened to them after the Bushites got a hold of them? Same thing here. Somebody in the White House has put in an order for a gallon or two of whiteout.

"'This is an independent commission, and there's no reason why any branch -- legislative, judiciary or executive -- should be filtering information or denying access'," said Kristin Breitweiser of New Jersey, who lost her husband in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Um, Kristin, in all due respect, you really need to get a handle on the Bushite agenda. If they have their way, you will never learn what really happened on 9/11.

Incidentally, only the Washington Times and the Kansas City Star felt this story was important enough to run it.

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Speak out on the invasion, get prosecuted for treachery. This is what may happen to the anti-war Labor MP George Galloway, according to the Guardian.

"In an interview with Abu Dhabi TV during the Iraq conflict, Galloway said: 'The best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders.' Lawyers for service personnel claim his call for soldiers to disobey what he called 'illegal orders' amount to a breach of the Incitement to Disaffection Act 1934. The maximum penalty is two years in jail... The relevant part of the Act is Section 1, which states: 'If any person maliciously and advisedly endeavours to seduce any member of His Majesty's forces from his duty or allegiance to His Majesty, he shall be guilty of an offence.' Under the terms of the Act, the word 'maliciously' means willfully and intentionally."

That's right, it's "malicious" to urge soldiers not to kill innocent people in violation of the Geneva Convention. It would seem Galloway is the only moral person in the whole British government. Now he may suffer for it.

"Galloway dismissed attempts to prosecute him, but said: 'I hope to have chiseled on my gravestone: "He incited them to disaffect."'

"Human rights lawyers said last night it would be an extremely difficult case to pursue. Roger Bingham of the civil rights group Liberty said: 'Galloway's statement is an expression of opinion. We live in a free-speech, democratic society and elect MPs to speak out on national issues'."

No, Mr. Bingham, the American and British people used to live a democratic society. Now they live in a society where dissent is punished.

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Will NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield lose her job now that she dared speak the truth? "We didn't see what happen when Marines fired M-16s," Banfield said during a Landon lecture appearance today at Kansas State University. "We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?"

No, it's propaganda, not journalism. I guess Banfield's not worried about her career. Maybe she won the lottery and doesn't have to worry about the note on her condo.

"It was a grand and glorious picture that had a lot of people watching," Banfield said, "and a lot of advertisers excited about cable TV news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not sure Americans are hesitant to do this again -- to fight another war, because it looked to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor."

That was the point, wasn't it? Make the criminal invasion of a defenseless people look like a "courageous and terrific endeavor."

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." -- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9

"The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace," write Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. "It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda."

"In close liaison with the Pentagon and the CIA, the State Department has also set up its own 'soft-sell' (civilian) propaganda unit, headed by Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Charlotte Beers, a powerful figure in the advertising industry," explains Michel Chossudovsky. "Working in liaison with the Pentagon, Beers was appointed to head the State Department’s propaganda unit in the immediate wake of 9/11. Her mandate is 'to counteract anti-Americanism abroad'."

Note: Ms. Beers eventually left the State Department "for health reasons." As noted on the Department of State web site, Secretary Powell said Beers' "goal of reaching 'younger, broader, and deeper' audiences will remain with us." In other words, they have to be inculcated to believe invasion means liberation, freedom is the same as dictatorship, and democracy is what happens when the US appoints the leaders of bombed and humiliated countries.

Orwell didn't have nothing on these guys.

2003-04-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest here... before Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks made her now infamous (and widely criticized) antiwar comment in London, I knew absolutely nothing about this band. I don't follow so-called country music, let alone popular culture. Even so, considering the economic boycott of this band -- and being dropped from radio playlists -- for speaking out against Bush and his invasion of pre-meditated murder, it may be time to buy one of their CDs... but then considering the group "apologized," maybe not.

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"Fifty-four percent of Americans said they considered it 'inappropriate' for celebrities to make public comments on political events. One-third of the people said they would boycott a celeb's movie, book or CD on account of such a view," notes Ellis Henican.

Ah, yes, the Great American Public -- it wouldn't know the Bill of Rights if it came up and bit them on the ass. For some reason more than half of them -- if we are to believe this poll -- think celebrities should check their constitutional rights at the door.

"The bully-baiters on Sixth Avenue [the New York Post] published a handy roster of alleged 'appeasers' who should be boycotted too. Besides the predictable slaps at Sarandan, Robbins, Garofalo and Sean Penn, the Post's new blacklist includes Laurence Fishburn, Samuel L. Jackson, Sheryl Crow, the band Limp Bizkit, Jackson Browne, Danny Glover, James Whitmore and Martin Sheen -- all of whom, in one way or another, expressed opposition to the war in Iraq."

"It's doubtful that these aggrieved celebrities are going to find much sympathy from the masses on this one," writes Cinnamon Stillwell. "First of all, they used up any goodwill that may have previously emanated in their direction, by imposing their politics ad nauseam on a fed-up citizenry. And second, it’s difficult to feel sorry for a bunch of spoiled, wealthy, elitists who have finally collided with reality, only to discover that it’s rather unpleasant at times. Get over it, folks! Not everyone is going to agree with you, nor are they going to like you. That’s the nature of living in a democracy, something the Hollywood left seems to have forgotten."

Interesting. 1) Speaking your mind on something as crucial as mass murder is not "imposing" your viewpoints on others; last time I checked, most people had a right or left hand and were capable of turning off the TV or radio (in a democracy, sometimes we have to be exposed to ideas and opinions we don't like), 2) did Robbins really expect everybody to agree with him? If he did, he's naive; I think, more likely, Stillwell is irritated by people who disagree with Bush and the demented neocons. Intolerance to dissent seems to be nearly epidemic these days.

2003-04-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Shi'ites leave Friday prayers in the Kufa Mosque
in the outskirts of Najaf, April 25, 2003.

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"While insisting that America and Britain wanted to let the people of Iraq decide their own fate, General Garner maintained that an Islamic government was incompatible with democratic principles," reports the Independent.

Incompatible, and will not be allowed. You see, "democracy" is what the US says it is, not what the Iraqi people think it is. Free elections mean you vote in who we say you vote in, sort of like Al Gore beating Bush by 600,000 votes and then having the Supreme Court appoint Bush to the presidency. In other words, democracy's fine, so long as the results are in accordance with the ruling elite's interests.

"His British deputy, Major-General Tim Cross, said Iraqis must be allowed to vent their fury after decades of repression. But he added that he did not want to see this lead to a fundamentalist regime similar to neighbouring Iran. He insisted that the Shia majority in the country would not want this either. 'I genuinely believe that many of these people want to be part of a democratic Iraq," he said."

Who are these arrogant white people, telling the Iraqi people what they want? If the Iraqis want a Shi'a theocracy, they should be allowed to have one. Of course, that's not why the US and the Brits invaded Iraq, to bring democracy to the downtrodden. All this high falutin talk of democracy is nothing more than hastily arranged window dressing. Anybody with half an ounce of sense knows why Bush and Crew invaded Iraq -- for the oil and to make sure Israel is the baddest bully on the block.

"Islamic administrations have already been established in a series of towns and villages in the Shia heartland of the south and east, with clerics stepping into the vacuum left by the collapse of the regime. The Shia religious authority, the Hawza, based in the holy city of Najaf, claims it is co-ordinating the takeovers."

Funny how quickly Bush's "liberation" backfired. While Rummy and Major-General Tim Cross blather on about not allowing the people of Iraq have the sort of government they want, the Muslims are ignoring them and setting up their own administrations.

Question: when will the "coalition" attack the clerics?

"Maj-Gen Cross insisted there was no large-scale humanitarian crisis in Iraq, despite warnings from aid agencies that a disaster was likely unless urgent supplies of food and medicine were delivered."

Right. Bomb the hell out of a country and then ignore the results. These folks are sincerely criminal and I only hope one day they will be called to answer for their crimes against humanity.

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"President Bush raised the possibility Thursday that any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were destroyed before or during the U.S.-led war, suggesting for the first time that coalition troops may come up empty in their search," reports the AP.

That's because they didn't exist, like Scott Ritter said. All of Iraq's WMD -- most eagerly acquired with the help of Dubya's daddy and US and German corporations -- were systematically rooted out and destroyed by the UN in the 1990s.

Bush made up the threat of WMD in order to invade Iraq. Now that Saddam's imagined WMD are "destroyed," Bush and the neocons can stop talking about them, the same way they stopped talking about Osama bin Laden. Now they can begin talking about WMD in Iran and Syria.

Pathetically, the comatose American people let them get away with this deceptive and dishonest charade.

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"Faced with resurgent Shiite political activism, US marines have begun patrolling stretches of the Iraqi border with Iran in order to screen border traffic for hostile infiltrators, the US military announced Wednesday," reports Agence France-Presse.

Good luck on that one. I wonder if these Einsteins bothered to look at a map before declaring their intention to seal the border against people who refuse to acknowledge it. If the US can't secure its own border, how do they expect to do the same in Iraq?

Border "incursions" by Muslims will be cited when the Bushites and the Pentagon finally go after the Shi'a. They'll probably also say al-Qaeda has set up camp in Karbala or Najaf and they have WMD. They may also say the new alliance between al-Qaeda and the Shia in Iraq want to kidnap and and eat blond haired, blue eyed American babies for dinner.

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Speaking of borders and such, Geov Parrish writes:

It's the Americans and Brits who cannot conceivably be characterized as anything other than "out-of-region," a fact central to the Shiite demonstrations. But even more central is that Shiites not only control Iran's Islamic government, but they also make up two-thirds of the population of Iraq. Silly Shiites -- upset because America has endlessly promised that Iraq will have the government desired by a majority of Iraqis, and now America shows absolutely no sign of making good on that promise.

Of course not -- and they never did. All we need do is look at history, replete as it is with instances of US and CIA subversion of democracy and popular political movements. The neocons dream of new shahs installed in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

Democracy is inimical. Democracy and human rights get in the way of control and profit.

This is the central issue behind the demonstrations, and as well the ongoing military engagements. Those engagements will, over the coming weeks, magically transform themselves from "Saddam's remnants" to "terrorists," while what will actually be organizing itself is an anti-American insurgency. And they will be fueled by American insistence on having its new colony run by its hand-picked new leaders, none of whom have the least shred of a constituency within Iraq, and at least some of whom have every characteristic necessary to become the sort of American-installed dictator that plagues the Middle East and has plagued Iraq for decades. That includes Saddam, who didn't rise to power by defying the U.S.; he had U.S. backing, and kept it until the invasion of Kuwait. Iraqis remember this, and are determined not to be subjected to another 35 years of hell.

(...)

Shiites need no cues from Iran; nor do any other Iraqi. Quite the opposite; it's insulting, particularly to the memory of those clerics and local leaders who were tortured and assassinated during Saddam's numerous purges, to insinuate that a majority population that suffered under a regime for 35 years wouldn't take active steps to ensure they'd control the next regime. It's also insulting to assert that, when the evidence accumulated that Shiites would be frozen out again, they'd need foreign urging to get angry about it.

In other words, there's going to be hell to pay in Iraq in the near future. It will be interesting to see what the US will do -- run with tails tucked or kill a whole lot more people.

I bet on the latter, considering the murderous tenacity of the neocons.

2003-04-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

MP George Galloway after his arrest for "breach of the peace" at Faslane Naval Base, 2001.

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This afternoon I received the following email. So as to not embarrass the clown who sent this, I am not including name or email address.

The conservatives knew there was an alliance between the radical left to fascist Islamic countries. What they didn't know, (sic) there on there payroll. I wonder who from Counterpunch is on Arafat's payroll.

As a evidence that those against the invasion are Saddam or Arafat dupes, this person links to the following article:

Galloway was in Saddam's pay, say secret Iraqi documents

George Galloway, the Labour backbencher, received money from Saddam Hussein's regime, taking a slice of oil earnings worth at least £375,000 a year, according to Iraqi intelligence documents found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad... Asked to explain the document, he said yesterday: "Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?"

Considering the way the Bushites are fond of fabricating evidence, it shouldn't be surprising that Galloway may have been set up. Consider the following, from the Telegraph article:

For more than a decade, Mr Galloway, MP for Glasgow Kelvin, has been the leading critic of Anglo-American policy towards Iraq, campaigning against sanctions and the war that toppled Saddam.

Hmmmmm.

Naturally, it stands to reason, from the demented neocon point of view -- and from plenty of mindless Americans who buy into their destructive blather -- that anybody who is against the wholesale mass murder of the Iraqi people is a Saddam dupe (or now, since the ever-so convenient "disapperance" of Saddam, an Arafat dupe).

As for those of us who write for Counterpunch being on Arafat's payroll... hey, considering the Bush-Enron economy, I could use a little extra spending cash.

2003-04-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

Caption: " Iraqi Shiite pilgrims holding a portrait of Imam Ali, cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, gather on the grounds of the shrine of Imam Hussein in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala, Wednesday, April 23, 2003."

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"We've made clear to Iran that we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy," blustered White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer. "Infiltration of agents to destabilize the Shiite population would clearly fall into that category. That is a position we have made clear to Iran."

Destabilize? Infiltration?

No doubt the Shi'ites of Iran consider the Shi'ites of Iraq as brothers. Religion usually transcends borders, particularly artificial borders long ago imposed on the Middle East by the West.

In 1916 the British and French imposed the Sykes-Picot "agreement" on the Middle East and arbitrarily created national borders. Needless to say the Arabs were not happy about arrogant Europeans carving up their ancient lands. In 1917 the Brits invaded Mesopotamia and occupied Baghdad. Iraq was created and became a British Mandate. The following year Britain used systematic aerial bombardment for first time in history to put down rebellions in Iraq. "I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes," said colonial secretary Winston Churchill at the time.

"To Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, the Iraqis, like all Arabs, were 'niggers', against whom poison gas could be used," writes John Pilger. "They were un-people; and they still are."

Many Iraqis remember Sykes-Picot -- and the squalid racism of haughty Europeans, and now Americans.

The Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq is nothing more than a new Sykes-Picot imposition, argues British MP George Galloway. "If you don't want another century of slavery, of weakness and division, then you will have to stand up now because in the building I work in London, foreigners who have never set foot in the Arab world, who know nothing about you, are deciding to make new countries," said Galloway. The US and Britain "are deciding to break old countries, and are deciding to appoint new corrupt kings and puppet presidents whose tasks will be to rule their countries in the interests of Britain and America rather than in the interests of their own people... I speak as someone who works in the building where Sykes and Picot committed the original sin against the people of the Arab world, and in the same building in which I work, the same imperialists are currently sitting down on the same tables and planning the Sykes-Picot II."

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"The Hawza [the Shia religious body based in Najaf] believe there should be elections so people can decide who should govern us. We want an Islamic state. We do not want to be ruled by any foreign powers including the United States," Abbas Nahidi, a Hawza representative told the Independent.

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"Lieutenant General David McKiernan issued a proclamation putting Iraq’s politicians on notice that 'the coalition and the coalition alone retains absolute authority within Iraq'," reports the International Herald Tribune. "Iraqi leaders who challenge that edict and try to establish themselves as independent power brokers will be viewed as criminals and subject to arrest, McKiernan warned."

(...)

"Exactly how the American general intends to enforce his edict is somewhat unclear since the huge U.S. Army presence in Baghdad is concentrated largely at the international airport, which is miles from any populated area."

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"The refusal of Marine commanders to recognize [Sayed Abbas] Fadhil's new title [as self-proclaimed mayor of Kut] has fueled particularly intense anti-American sentiments here," reports the Washington Post. "In scenes not seen in other Iraqi cities, U.S. convoys have been loudly jeered. Waving Marines have been greeted with angry glares and thumbs-down signs."

"Those feelings seemed to reach a peak today. After the Marines arrested a prominent cleric upon finding a gun in his car, hundreds of people converged on a contingent of Marines outside a medical supply warehouse. A noisy protest ensued, ending only after troops threatened over a loudspeaker to open fire. A few hours later, a few hundred young men staged a spontaneous human blockade on both sides of a narrow bridge over the Tigris River, trapping several Marine trucks for about a half-hour."

(...)

"A spokesman for the party's [the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite political party that has ties to Iran] leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, said he supports Fadhil's claim to be mayor and is considering traveling to Kut to meet with him. Many members of the party, which is headquartered in Tehran and had been banned under Hussein's government, have returned to Iraq over the past two weeks."

No doubt the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is the "influence' from Iran Ari Fleischer was complaining about.

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"The hardest part is still ahead of us, and I think the events that we were watching on CNN showed that," Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told CNN. "The Shi'a in the south would like in some cases fundamentalist religious state or province, that would be much worse than Saddam Hussein in terms of a threat to the United States it would allow al Qaeda to move in."

Right. It stands to reason. If the Shi'a Muslims of Iraq are allowed any degree of power it will result in al-Qaeda using southern Iraq in the same way they used Afghanistan.

"We seen chaos in Baghdad with the proclamation of somebody claims he's the mayor. And this is going to go on and on. So we've really got to now build a Democratic society."

Translation: Arabs are too stupid, primitive, and factious to run their own country and we gawd-fearin' Americans have to do it for them, that is until they learn a respect for democracy.

There's chaos in Baghdad because the US bombed the hell out of it. Because there's no electricity and a lot of people are on the verge of starvation. Because average Iraqis are afraid to go from place to place in their city without some US military cowboy shooting them dead.

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"America's intention to wage an unprovoked war on Iraq is redolent of this earlier colonialist tradition," writes Ghada Karmi. "The racism underlying this emanates from an anti-Arab culture in the US that gained strength after September 11, though it was well established before. Hollywood made several overtly anti-Arab films long before September 11, notably True Lies in 1994, which depicted Arab terrorists bombing American cities. The mass media and countless cartoons now depict Arabs in overtly racist ways and go unpunished; Arabs are being harassed and intimidated, and 2,000 are currently being held without trial in US jails."

2003-04-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

As the administration plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, U.S. officials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspirations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into a fundamentalist government. Some administration officials were dazzled by Ahmed Chalabi, the prominent Iraqi exile who is a Shiite and an advocate of a secular democracy. Others were more focused on the overriding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the dynamics of religion and politics in the region. U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites

Do you believe this? I don't think the Bushites are this stupid. This is another media plant by the neocons so we'll think they were "taken by surprise." I mean, uh-duh. Isn't it obvious the Shi'ites -- long suppressed by Saddam Hussein -- would rise and demand a theocracy after the US invasion? Are we supposed to believe Bush and the neocons are completely clueless? This is propaganda, pure and simple.

Complicating matters is that the United States has virtually no diplomatic relationship with Iran, leaving U.S. officials in the dark about the goals and intentions of the government in Tehran. The Iranian government is the patron of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the leading Iraqi Shiite group.

Oh, come on. Give me a freakin' break. Do they think we're dumb-asses? The Bush neocons know perfectly well the "intentions" of the mullahs in Iran -- like the Catholic or Protestant church, they are interested in consolidating their base of influence and power. Religion (and government) has done this for thousands of years. I guess we're supposed to believe Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Wlolfowitz and the whole neocon clan are members of the lobotomy of the month club...

The administration hopes the U.S.-led war in Iraq will lead to a crescent of democracies in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied territories and Saudi Arabia. But it could just as easily spark a renewed fervor for Islamic rule in the crescent, officials said.

Democracy, my derriere. The Bushites don't hope for a "crescent of democracies in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied territories and Saudi Arabia." In fact, they are working toward the exact opposite. All you have to do is listen to demented warmongers like former CIA kingpin James Woolsey, or top dog neocon and philosophical beacon of mass murder, Norman Podhoretz.

As Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish writes for Electronic Iraq:

For Podhoretz, the global extremism, chaos and violence that the war on Iraq may provoke are not the undesirable side effects of a noble mission, but the necessary pretext for more aggressive American intervention. He says that the U.S. can "win" this war and "reform" Islam provided that America has "the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties."

In other words, the "stomach" to kill a whole lot of people.

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"The American program for the Arab world is the same as Israel's," writes Edward Said. "Along with Syria, Iraq theoretically represents the only serious long term military threat to Israel, and therefore it had to be put out of commission for decades."

"Syria occupies eastern Lebanon and supports Hezbollah -- as well as the military wing of the Amal movement, a more moderate Islamic resistance movement -- as a means of pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights," writes Barbara Demick. "As the conflict drags on, most military analysts conclude that time favors Hezbollah..."

Naturally, this is unacceptable to Israel and its agents in the Bush Administration. "In remarks published Monday, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel has 'a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans,'" reports the Associated Press.

"America's (or should I say Israel's) biggest problem with Syria is its support for resistance movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah groups, which are fighting the bloody, horrific and deadly occupation of the war criminal Sharon and his cronies. Interestingly, that the US accusations against Syria should come at this time," writes Hussein Shobokshi. " While the neocons who have tried to legitimize and sugarcoat all their wicked and twisted policies by false accusations and pollgerized evidence, their true intentions remain the protection of Israel. Israel is the core problem of the main conflict in the Middle East."

"The illegitimacy of [Israel's] occupation has made the Lebanese people compelled to resist this unfair, unjustified and absurd occupation," Ibrahim C. Abou Faycal wrote in 1997. "By simply staying in villages, despite the daily death threats and executions, by plowing their land, by rebuilding, brick by brick, every demolished house, and by holding arms in legitimate defense, the people of South Lebanon have fought oppression and sought freedom. Resistance to oppression is commonly recognized as the right and the duty of the oppressed."

It was this resistance that eventually sent Israel packing from Lebanon in 2000. It was an occupation that cost up to 20,000 lives and lasted for 22 years in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions. "How quickly it is forgotten that Hezbollah is itself a product of the Israeli occupation, founded in 1982 with the aim of driving out the Israeli army and freeing the south of the hellish experience of occupation," writes Hussein Ibish. "The fretting about potential Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns is misplaced, given that since 1996 Hezbollah has almost always carried out such attacks in response to Israeli killings of Lebanese civilians, often only after repeated atrocities."

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Meanwhile, just to make sure Muslims do not misunderstand what Bush and the neocons have in mind for them, Republican Party Chairman Shawn Steel told an audience at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles: "The Islamic community has a cancer growing inside it, which hates Jews, hates freedom and hates Western society... The disease of Islam must be rectified. It's kill or be killed."

Steel, not satisfied with demonizing Muslims, also went on to bash peace activists: "Because of the peace movement, we had the Holocaust."

No, Shawn, we had the Holocaust because guys like Dubya's grand daddy financed and encouraged the Nazis.

2003-04-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

"The Bush administration plans to call for an international donors conference to raise money for Iraq's rebuilding, but it has no current estimate of the final bill, the Pentagon's budget chief said Tuesday.

Lovely, the US bombs the hell out of Iraq -- at the cost of around $20 billion, to say nothing about thousands of people killed -- and now wants the rest of the world to foot the bill to put the pieces back together again.

"Zakheim said he believed there will be more international interest in investing in Iraq's reconstruction than in the case of Afghanistan, which has less appealing prospects for economic revitalization. The initial donors conference on Afghanistan produced pledges of about $2 billion, but the Bush administration complained for months that donors were slow in giving the money."

That's because Afghanistan is a country wallowed in the Middle Ages -- decades of war and civil strife didn't help -- and these folks can't figure out how to turn a buck on it. If there's nothing to exploit, the people are usually left to starve -- or beg for a few scraps from the UN and humanitarian organizations.

"'There's tremendous interest in getting the Iraqis going because, let's face it, the Afghan economy has been a subsistence economy,' he said in an Associated Press interview, 'whereas Iraq is one of the few Middle Eastern countries that is blessed with both oil and water -- in great amounts -- which means that it has a naturally balanced economy.'"

Translation: there's a lot more to steal in Iraq.

"Zakheim said an international donors conference would be held after the World Bank gets a team of experts into Iraq to assess its needs. He said that assessment would take about six weeks."

You know you're screwed when the World Bank and IMF want to get involved.

"On Monday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the United States expects an eventual government of Iraq to be a democracy where the rights of minorities are guaranteed. Some demonstrators in Iraq, particularly from the Shiite Muslim majority, have called recently for an Islamic republic similar to Iran, where top Shiite clerics known as ayatollahs have the final say. Rumsfeld said such a government would not be truly democratic."

It's now obvious Iraqis overwhelmingly want an Islamic theocracy. Granted, for westerners such as myself, the idea of a religious government is abhorrent -- but then I'm not an Iraqi Muslim. Rumsfeld doesn't care what kind of government Iraq gets, so long as it allows the IMF, World Bank, and multinational corporations to control its economy and siphon off its desirable oil resources.

--

--

The political implications are clear: the claim of chemical and biological weapons was a hoax, deliberately concocted by the Bush administration to conceal its predatory aims in the invasion of a country with the world’s second largest oil reserves.

What happened to Iraq’s "weapons of mass destruction"?

Guess what -- the American people don't care. It should be obvious by now they will accept any half-ass lie Bush comes up with the attack other nations and kill their people.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared in television interviews, and in an appearance before Pentagon employees April 17, that the former regime in Iraq had hidden or destroyed the evidence of its illegal weapons programs. “I don’t think we’ll discover anything, myself,” he said. “I think what will happen is we’ll discover people who will tell us where to go find it. It is not like a treasure hunt, where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you find something. I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”

In other words, the entire preface for the war was a sham, a bald-faced lie. Americans don't care. Do you want whipped cream on your outrageous lie, or do you want it delivered like an enema as you flip from channel to channel, looking for more entertainment as Iraqi children tell the press they want to kill themselves because a cluster bomb blew off their arms and killed their families?

--

Americans may not know squat about what their government is doing in Iraq, but they are up on the latest "reality" TV shows.

"The premiere of the latest Reality TV twist, bachelors donning bizarre Phantom of the Opera-like masks as a psychic reads his sexual prowess, scored an 8.3 rating/12 share," reports Drudge. "Personality hostess Monica Lewinsky's slogan 'It's time for you to unmask!' may soon become the nation's hot pick-up line..."

Surely, while Americans have little concept of what's going on in Iraq -- for instance, the lack of food and clean drinking water, thanks to US cruise missiles and, before that, sadistic sanctions -- they do know what Monica Lewinsky had in her mouth. That's about as close as many Americans get to politics.

--

"How dare Americans allow their government to cause such misery [in the world]."
Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General and human rights activist

--

"Americans are the best entertained and the least informed people in the world."
Neil Postman

--

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. "
Michael Parenti

--

"There is a definitely a whiff of anti-intellectualism -- so characteristic of fascist states -- in the air. Beware of bully boys who worship the military and scoff at museums and libraries. Beware of people whose limited brains see everyone as either an ally or an enemy. Beware of people who can't tell the difference between patriotism and military conquest. Beware of people so stupid and ignorant that they accept anything and everything the political and the media demagogues tell them."
Charley Reese

Apparently, this is a large segment of the American people, if the number of plastic flags and yellow ribbons I see are any indication.

--

"[Antiwar] protests accomplished nothing but self-serving propaganda for an entire class of Americans, which I call the Lily-Livered Left. The war is over and people who could have been doing things that matter instead of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and seeking recognition for it have gone back to Starbuck's for another latte and more discussion about which guru's views are most fashionable and proper."
Michael C. Rupert's introduction to Stan Goff's Wolves and Sheep

2003-04-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

"What the prologue to the war and its aftermath reveal is that the facts of the war are not the issue for the 'anti-war' left and neither is the war itself," writes paranoid nut case and former Marxist David Horowitz (in an unsolicited email -- otherwise known as spam -- he sent here). "The so-called 'anti-war' left is a Neo-communist movement that was launched forty years ago under the pretense of being a 'new left,' and it has been at war with the 'American empire' ever since. During these years of struggle with Communists in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America, and in the aftermath of America's liberation of a billion inhabitants of the Communist empire, this left has been impervious to every good deed America has done and every bad deed its Marxist and now Islamo-fascist enemies have committed. Instead, this 'antiwar' left relentlessly attributes the bad deeds of America's enemies to America itself -- hence the search for 'root causes' every time America is attacked."

Horowitz is paranoid -- because he thinks there are commies under his bed -- and can't seem to shake his feverish impression it's still 1969. The last antiwar demo I went to here before Horowitz's hero Bush attacked the defenseless "Islamo-fascists" of Iraq included 70 year old Protestant ministers and soccer moms with kids in tow. Not exactly Marxist-Leninists of the stripe Horowitz used to hang with.

Moreover, Iraq did nothing to America prior to Bush's illegal and immoral invasion. There were no Iraqi terrorists blowing up buildings in New York. Horowitz fails to make crucial distinctions because he is unscrupulous and attempting to carve out his own niche in the neocon movement.

Horowitz, of course, says nothing about the CIA death lists compiled in Indonesia, Guatemala, and even Iraq. No mention of the undermining of governments in Chile, Zaire, Iran, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Greece, Laos, Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua (and many others) by various US presidents and the CIA (see Mark Zapezauer, The CIAs Greatest Hits). The Soviet Union only wished it could have been as successful at killing people (it killed a lot of its own people, but that's a different story) and overthrowing governments.

2003-04-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the appointed viceroy of Iraq, former Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, making the rounds at the Yarmuk hospital in Baghdad. Garner, of course, is affiliated with JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), "which pays for senior retired U.S. military officers to visit Israel for security briefings by Israeli officials and politicians," as Reuters put it. Garner "put his name to an October 2000 statement blaming Palestinians for the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence and saying that a strong Israel is an important security asset to the United States." No word if Garner supports the shooting of grade school kids or the destruction of olive groves on land the Zionists forcefully ripped off from Palestinian Arabs.

"Garner went on its annual trip to Israel in 1998, Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects at JINSA, told Reuters. In the 2000 statement, Garner and 42 other senior retired officers said: 'We are appalled by the Palestinian political and military leadership that teaches children the mechanics of war while filling their heads with hate... The security of the State of Israel is a matter of great importance to U.S. policy in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, as well as around the world. A strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on,' the statement added."

"What better day in your life can you have than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people, and that is what we intend to do," Garner said as he arrived at the Baghdad airport after a short flight from Kuwait.

Let me see if I understand this right -- Garner and the US helped the Iraqi people by brutally killing a few thousand of them and then installing a non-Arab and Zionist fellow traveler as dictator?

As for the IDF wantonly murdering Palestinians, Garner has called these deaths "inevitable." One has to wonder if Garner, in the months ahead, will say the same about the Iraqis who will likely be killed in Zionist fashion by US occupation troops as Iraqis attempt to take back their beleaguered country.

Here's what David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle had to say about Garner back in February:

"The retired general tapped by the Bush administration to oversee rebuilding of post-war Iraq was, until just a few weeks ago, an executive at a leading defense contractor working on missile systems that would be used to bomb Baghdad."

"David Kirp, a professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy who focuses on ethics, said the Bush administration is sending a profound message to Iraqis by placing a man with Garner's background in charge of reconstruction and humanitarian aid. 'This is a lovely example of our indifference to the people of Iraq,' he said. 'It truly bespeaks a lack of serious thinking on the administration's part'."

"The US denies that men like Jay Garner are in effect the first wave of a military occupation," writes Neil Mackay of the Glasgow Sunday Herald. "The Bush administration insists that it wants these men to work their way out of a job as quickly as possible. Some have mentioned three months as the possible length of their tenure in Iraq - others, more realistically, claim five years is a more likely term, taking the length of the US occupation of post-war Japan as the best comparison. America will be entrenched in this nation for decades to come. The colonisation process has begun already... Ideology is ideology, but in the US government political theory goes hand-in-hand with big business. The end result of the lofty musings of Republican hawks fashioning the concepts behind the new world order is money-grubbing for the yankee dollar. The world isn't just watching the spread of a political philosophy in Iraq, it is watching a conquest by and for US big business as well."

"There can be no better candidate for the job of chief of the civilian administration in Iraq, especially at a time when contracts for billions of dollars for reconstruction have to be handed out, to be paid for by Iraqi oil," writes Uri Avnery.

"Garner has close relations with Israel, his appointment expresses the goal sought by the hawks' group within the US administration," Cairo University's political science department director Hassan Nafaa told the Herald Sun.

Garner's ties to Israel "have aroused the suspicion of Arabs, some of whom now think that the motive of the war was not to free Iraq, but to protect Israel", said the official Egyptian news agency MENA in an analysis.

"In an American term, we are just going to move the ball down the field a little bit at a time and when we get there we will score a touchdown and go home," Garner said in a Sky News Interview.

If you believe this, I have a bridge I can sell you in Brooklyn.

As for the real reason Garner and the Americans -- at the behest of Israel and the Likudites both in Jerusalem and Washington -- will stay on in Iraq indefinitely, consider the words of Zionist Joe Lieberman:

"Obviously, we don't want this to turn into a theocracy. We've got to work hard to win the peace in Iraq and transform the nation's political structure into a representative, democratic government... We may, over the long term, establish some permanent bases in Iraq."

"The United States would have a hard time accepting an Islamic theocracy in Iraq, even if its leaders are popularly elected, two senators said yesterday," the Washington Post reports.

So much for liberation and democracy.

"It's only a small group that has demonstrated for what seems like an Islamic state," Lieberman told CBS' Face the Nation. "They may be jockeying for power within post-Saddam Iraq, themselves. It seems to me that the majority of the Iraqis... will not want to go back to another form of dictatorship and loss of freedoms through a theocracy. They'll want to have a democracy in which all religions, and all forms of Islam, particularly, are free to be observed in whatever way people want to observe them."

I guess Joe considers 200,000 Iraqis a small number -- and this was just the protests in Baghdad. Tens of thousands voiced their opposition elsewhere in Iraq.

Liberman, of course, knows what's best for the Iraqi people -- especially when Israel is involved.

Naturally, Americans know what's best for primitive Iraqi Muslims. "They'd better be careful of what they wish for," writes Lynn Woolley of the far right nut case website NewsMax.com. "We've already seen what the Iraqis do when left to their own devices... the people have been liberated, but they have no concept of what it means to be free. It will take some time to teach them... Already the Pentagon is thinking about establishing some American military bases in Iraq. That's a great idea. We could move our troops from European bases where they are no longer needed or appreciated and place them in a region that needs stability -- and is near the likely trouble spots of Syria and Iran."

Forget Syria and Iran -- the US will soon have its hands full containing outraged Iraqis, the vast majority who want to US out.

Needless to say, nobody will be envious of the Zionist Jay Garner in the months ahead.

2003-04-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

"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," and the New York Times reports.

In other words, the US invaded Iraq not only to control its oil but they want to turn it into Fort Apache, a base of operation for more invasions, more mass murder of Arabs.

"A military foothold in Iraq would be felt across the border in Syria, and, in combination with the continuing United States presence in Afghanistan, it would virtually surround Iran with a new web of American influence."

Translation: Iran's next. In fact, the neocons consider Iran the primary target.

"The fall of the mullahs in Tehran would send a devastating message to the entire Islamic world: Theocracy has been tried, and it has failed," writes neocon Michael Ledeen. "The most important thing is our leaders' words to the Iranians. We want the fall of the regime. That is what the war on terrorism is all about. To remain silent is to be complicit in the repression of Iran. There is no diplomatic 'solution.' We want a free Iran. Don't we?"

Apparently, there is only a "military solution" in response to Islam and a billion Muslims, many who want the US to mind it's own damn business.

--

"Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi on Sunday called for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq until the country holds elections, a process he said could take two years," reports Reuters.

There will never be free elections held in Iraq because the people want an Islamic state. Chalabi knows this.

"'There is a role for the Islamic religious parties, including Shia religious parties, because they have some constituencies. But they are not going to be forcing any agenda or any theocracy on the Iraqi people,' he said."

In other words, there will be no democracy in Iraq. It's obvious the Iraqi people -- most of them Shia Muslims -- want a theocracy and would vote for it if given a chance. They don't want a western-style government -- and they surely don't want the convicted embezzler Chalabi as their leader. If they are not allowed free elections, they will fight a guerilla war against US occupation.

--

"Every day, the rallies held by Battle to prevent Chalabi taking power grow bigger. Every day the American marines in the eastern Iraqi town of Kut, close to the Iranian border, become more nervous," reports the UK Telegraph.

"[Sayed] Abbas is a militant Shia cleric with an unnervingly fine grasp of the political possibilities of post-war Iraq. Some days ago, he walked into Kut town hall and simply took it over, accompanied by hundreds of supporters, many of whom had crossed the border from Iran...

"Now thousands attend his meetings, while the marines consult with rival tribal leaders on how to get him out. Yesterday's rally was bigger than ever. As he spoke, Mr Abbas voiced what are quickly becoming the standard demands: an Islamic, Shia-dominated state for Iraq, and an end to American occupation... Similar events are occurring in towns and cities throughout the centre and east of Iraq. Shia fundamentalists, long cowed by Saddam's brutal methods of crowd control, are striving to exploit a power vacuum yet to be filled by Gen Jay Garner, America's designated civil administrator for Iraq."

"Nerves are beginning to jangle in Washington at the prospect that 'democracy' in Iraq may produce a militant religious regime which strengthens the regional hand of Iran..."

2003-04-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage says Hezbollah "may be the (terrorists') A-team, while al-Qaeda may be actually the B-team," according to Yossi Klein Halevi. But it's not only Armitage who thinks (or wants us to believe) Hezbollah is more of a threat to America than al-Qaeda, but so does Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "In my judgment that's the No. 1 threat" to America, Graham told the St. Petersburg Times. "That threat should be our first priority."

Hezbollah is not a threat to the US -- it's a threat to Israel (or at least northern Israel on the border with Lebanon), but it's not a threat to Americans. "Syria is not a saint -- everybody knows that -- but Hezbollah is mostly a threat against Israel," writes Moshe Maoz, a Hebrew University historian and author of books on Syria and its late dictator, Hafez Assad. "They did attack when there were American troops in Lebanon, but they killed to oust foreign forces from Lebanon. I doubt very much whether Hezbollah will go out of its way to attack America -- this is a danger that I think is . . . not very well based."

"Hezbollah is seen by Syrians and by a huge majority of Lebanese as a very legitimate resistance movement -- in fact as the guerrilla force that got rid of the Israelis after 22 years of occupation," says Patrick Seale, a British journalist considered the West's top authority on Syria.

"Hezbollah arose after Israel 1) invaded Lebanon in what Israelis themselves call "a war of choice," 2) aided a group of thugs who "raped, tortured, mutilated and massacred" hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed Palestinian civilians at Shabra and Shatilla, and 3) began treating the local Shiites like crap," writes Monkey Media. "And now people are suggesting that the United States should take on the job of dealing with the mess Israel created for itself? Absurd."

"The Syrians... permit the Iranians to channel through Damascus airport the arms required by Hizbullah in south Lebanon," notes Andrew Green, a former UKambassador to Syria. "These are regarded as potential levers in negotiations with Israel for return of the occupied Golan Heights. They also give Syria some measure of influence over the Palestinian and Hizbullah resistance. This is tough diplomacy, Middle East style; it hardly amounts to being a rogue state."

Folks, you're being prepared for an invasion of Syria -- or at least a sustained terror campaign.

"No one doubts that the United States has the capacity to obliterate a small group like Hizbullah," writes Marc Sirois. "But doing so would kill innocent civilians here in Lebanon, invite Hizbullah to start targeting Americans again for as long as it was able to do so, and further convince the Islamic world that the war on terrorism is really a modern-day Crusade against Muslims."

2003-04-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

"Tens of thousands of Iraqi Muslims took to the streets of Baghdad after Friday prayers today to demand the departure of U.S. and other foreign troops and the establishment of an Islamic state... The demonstration was peaceful, news agencies reported, but it provided dramatic new evidence that the ouster of Saddam Hussein's secular government has unleashed pent-up religious sentiment, especially among the country's long-repressed Shiite Muslim majority. In the absence of strong government, Islam often provides the organizing principle, and the civic institutions, of Muslim societies," writes Thomas W. Lippman of the Washington Post.

Even if Iraq had a "strong government" (imposed by the US) the Shiites would still go into the street after prayers because they want a theocracy and not a US-imposed "democracy." Obviously, if Bush wants to convert the de-Saddamized Iraq into a corporate and military fiefdom, he will have to do something about Islam as an "organizing principle," or find a way to defang the Muslim clerics the same way Saddam did. Unfortunately, for the latter to happen, Bush and his hand-picked cronies will have to do much the same thing Saddam did -- which is to say bring back the torture chambers, the police raids, the executions, and mass exile of those capable of turning the Iraqi people against the US and its imposed client.

Meanwhile, an exiled Muslim cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq. is urging Iraqis to converge on the Shiite holy city of Karbala and voice their opposition to Bush and his hand-picked cronies.

"I call on Iraqis to converge in Karbala to oppose any sort of foreign domination and support establishment of an Iraqi government that protects freedom, independence and justice for all Iraqis," al-Hakim was quoted by state-run Tehran television as saying, according to the Associated Press.

Analysts say al-Hakim's appeal to religious feeling and imagery is reminiscent of the tactics used by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ahead of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.... "Al-Hakim is resorting to tactics used by Iran's religious leaders in the '70s to topple the pro-U.S. shah: provoking people's religious sentiments and winning their hearts," said leading Iranian political commentator Davoud Hermidas Bavand... Al-Hakim's brother said his group would work with other opposition parties in the new Iraq... "I don't know why America is scared of us, we don't want to make a revolution, but we want to create safety and stability in Iraq," he said at council headquarters in Kut. "We are looking forward to establishing a democratic Iraqi government chosen by the people themselves."

Bush and the neocons, of course, are not interested in a democratic Iraq -- in fact, this is anathema to their plan. What the Bushites want is a docile client state with passive Muslims who do not revolt, who don't mind their poverty -- or at least don't revolt against it in any serious or effective way. A democratic Iraq -- with its own democratically elected leaders -- would never allow a massive US military presence in their country (for the neocons this is critical if the Middle East is to be "redrawn" by Israel and the US).

--

Is it possible Israel wants to kill the best and brightest scientists in Iraq? According to a number of Iraqi scientists and university professors, Israel is currently running its own version of the US Phoenix program aimed at 500 Iraqi armament scientists who were involved in the country’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, or so reported the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Moreover, an unidentified French general says the scientists hunted by Israel are the same ones who were listed by UN weapons inspectors for interviews during their mandate in Iraq which was terminated two days before the unleashing of the US-led war on March 20.

Nothing like having the UN do your prep work for you.

According to IslamOnline.com, Iraqi scientists and professors "sent an SOS e-mail complaining American occupation forces were threatening their lives... In their e-mail... they said they have dictated their message to a respected Iraqi scientist in the Netherlands over phone, urging him to circulate it to all parties concerned to protect them from the arbitrary inquires and arrests by the U.S. occupation forces... Iraqi scientists asserted that occupation troops demanded them, particularly physicists, chemists and mathematicians, to hand over all documents and researches in their possession."

It should be obvious by now what the Bushites and the Israelis want to do -- reduce Iraq to an impotent third world country -- more than a decade of brutal sanctions have already paved the way -- steal its bountiful oil, split it into ethnic Bantustans, and set up military bases to attack other upstarts in the neighborhood. It's all about destabilizing, rendering the Arabs impotent, and stealing their oil.

--

"An ambitious report entitled 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s,' which appeared in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim in February 1982 disclosed a strategy aimed at making the whole of the Middle East a kind of "living space" for Israel," writes Pravda. "The report, drawn up by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist and formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel, set out the scenario of the 'division of Iraq'... Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria -- Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors..."

As Israel Shahak, the notable Israeli scholar known for his dedication to a peaceful solution in the Middle East, explained:

"The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the 'best' that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: 'The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part' (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old. 2)..."

It's an old plan -- the new part is to get America to do the fighting and dying.

2003-04-15T18:08:00.000-07:00

Hearts and minds? Here's a photo of protesters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday. They are against the US appointed governor Mashaan al-Juburi. Well, they must think they live in a democracy or something. The US military decided to teach them otherwise and killed ten or more of them. The US says they were fired on "at least two gunmen," insisting they did not aim at those against Mashaan al-Juburi. "We were at the market place near the government building, where Juburi was making a speech. He said everything would be restored, water, electricity, and that democracy was the Americans," said a witness, Marwan Mohammed. "As for the Americans, they were going through the crowd with their flag. They placed themselves between the civilians and the building. The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing. Then they prevented the people from recovering the bodies."

I guess the Israelization of Iraq is in full swing. Iraqis will be treated like Palestinians -- gunned down for throwing stones.

"There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet," another witness reported the gathered chanting. "You are with Saddam's fedayeen," retorted Mashaan al-Juburi, to which the crowd replied, "The only democracy is to make the Americans leave."

"No to America. No to Saddam," chanted Iraqis from the Shia Muslim majority near the southern city of Nasiriyah, where talks on post-Saddam Iraq were being held. Arabic television networks said up to 20,000 people marched. As if to underscore how badly Bush's imposed democracy is going in Iraq, not even Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime CIA bankrolled leader (and the Pentagon's choice to rule Iraq) of the INC attended the talks.

In Baghdad, hundreds of people chanting "our blood and our soul we give to Iraq" gathered outside the Palestine Hotel in protest against the US presence.

Not even the Kurds are onboard. "No people in the world want to remain occupied," Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told the pan-Arab Al Hayat daily. "If they stay for a long time and act like occupiers, then they will face resistance."

Bush's "liberation" is crumbling. The Iraqis want the Americans out. No way are the Americans going to leave. The result will be a running guerilla war. Bush should take note of what happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan.

"Guerilla resistance will not end even after the Iraqi government is toppled and its army destroyed," writes Henry C K Liu. "Drawing upon British experiences in Malaysia and Rhodesia, the force ratio of army forces to guerilla forces needed for merely containing guerilla resistance, let alone defeating a guerilla force, is about 20 to 1. US estimates of the size of Iraq's guerilla force stands at 100,000 for the time being. This means the US would need a force of 2 million to contain the situation even if it already controls the country."

"This only marks the beginning of the next war in Iraq, and that's the dangerous part that we need to be concerned with," explains CBS News analyst Col. (Ret.) Mitch Michell. "Those forces that aren't going to give up and go back to a normal way of life, that still hold the grudge, that still believe in Saddam's ideals and the ideals of the Baathist party will go into hiding, and they will come out as terrorists."

Funny how occupied people hold grudges. Calling them terrorists will not make matters any better.

2003-04-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

It appears Sen. Bob Graham, presidential hopeful, wants to out-Bush the Bushites. "After a speech Saturday to Miami's Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center, Graham said that U.S. officials 'ought to consider launching cruise missiles or another form of warfare on terrorist camps in Syria after giving Syria time to dismantle the camps,' reported the Miami Herald" (and subsequently carried by the rightwing website NewsMax). Note the audience.

--

Iraq didn't attack Israel during Operation Illegal Invasion, nor did Syria. It would be suicide for either country to attack Israel, but this has not stopped Israel from making it appear Syria wants nothing more than to kill Israelis. "A top Israeli official on Monday warned Syria not to 'play with fire' after Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara made a strong anti-Israeli statement amid strains between Washington and Damascus," reports Agence France-Presse.

Faruq al-Shara apparently angered the Israelis by speaking the truth. He told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera Washington's policy in the Middle East is dominated by the "Jewish lobby," a fact understood by everybody except clueless Americans.

Even the Jerusalem Post has commented on the power of the Jewish lobby over Washington. This influence is "far disproportionate to the size of the community, Jewish leaders and U.S. officials acknowledge. But so is the amount of money they contribute to [election] campaigns," writes Mark Weber. "As long as the 'very powerful' Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace."

In regard to WMD, Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bouthayna Shaaban said:

"Of course Syria has no chemical weapons. They (Americans) have been talking for years about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But so far, the presence of these weapons has not been confirmed... There are biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East region. They are in Israel, not in Syria."

Even if Shaaban is lying, it hardly negates the fact that the only state in the Middle East with nukes capable of taking out its neighbors is Israel. You rarely hear about this in the US corporate press.

No doubt the thin-skinned Israelis regard the truth as an "anti-Israeli statement."

--

Meanwhile, the hypocrites in the Bush administration are tweaking the pressure on Syria. "The US says it has blocked a pipeline used to pump Iraqi oil to Syria, in volume that allegedly violated UN sanctions," reports the BBC. "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed a pipeline had been 'shut off'."

The US and Israel, of course, wrote the book on how to violate UN sanctions and resolutions.

History serves. After the French occupation of Indochina in July 1941 President Roosevelt embargoed oil shipments to Japan -- and on December 7, 1941 the Japanese navy and air force struck not just south to occupy Dutch-ruled Indonesia and acquire an alternative source of oil, but everywhere else in the Southwest Pacific, including Pearl Harbor.

Maybe Bush and Rummy think the Syrians are stupid and will attack somebody?

2003-04-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

"The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon, the Guardian learned yesterday."

Don't believe it. Sharon insists the US get rid of Hezbollah. Anybody who bothers to read history knows Hezbollah was the result of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. "By 1978, Lebanon's Shiites, a badly neglected under-class, were probably the largest religious group in the country if not yet an outright majority," writes Marc Sirois.

Heavily represented in the South, their towns and villages bore the brunt of Israeli reprisals for Palestinian attacks... On June 6 [1982], the Israeli Defense Forces rolled out of the area they already occupied and, despite a promise to the United States that they would advance no more than 40 kilometers, headed for Beirut... What amazed Israeli soldiers and their officers was the way they were greeted by the Shiite population in the South. In village after village, the interlopers were welcomed as liberators and showered with flowers and rice. Some Palestinian groups had so badly mistreated their natural allies that people threw their arms open to invading troops... It did not take long, though, for the Israelis to wear out their welcome. In short order, the Jewish state dispatched "experts" on civil administration in occupied areas who promptly replaced traditional village elders and other leadership figures with more "reliable" elements from among the local population. The result was anger at the Israelis and total distrust of the administrators they had installed... Over the succeeding months, Israeli occupation forces steadily eroded whatever remained of the locals' respect for them via such tactics as draconian restrictions on movement that kept farmers from tending their fields and collective punishment that penalized hundreds of people for the actions of a single individual... Just over six months after the Israelis arrived in the South, the kettle of rage among a community that had once invited them into their homes finally boiled over... Hizbullah did not yet exist as we know it today but the ingredients for a Shiite "awakening" were all on hand, and the catalyst of Israeli occupation was drawing them to the same place... Over the next few years... militiamen and a group of Shiite clerics formed the core around which a new group congealed. Eventually it became Hizbullah... What is undeniable is that the Israelis had acquired a deadly new enemy, one whose adherents were neither afraid to die nor willing any longer to sit quietly while the international community let a foreign occupier dominate their homeland. It took until late 1983, however, for the Israelis and just about everyone else to realize that the rules of the game had changed forever... Thus it was that a combination of lopsided military power, undeserved diplomatic privilege, wholesale disregard for civilian casualties, and unbridled arrogance made the Jewish state suffer as badly as it did in Lebanon. Israel has every right to fear its long-time tormentors, but none to call them terrorists.

Disgraced by the Shiites and forced to leave Lebanon, the Israelis now want the US to do what it did in Iraq to the people of southern Lebanon.

"If you control Iraq, you can affect the Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah, both geographically and politically," says Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington.

"Israel is urging the Bush administration to target Hezbollah following the war in Iraq, arguing that the militant Shiite organization threatens the stability of the Middle East and the security of the United States worldwide," writes Ori Nir of Forward.

"Even if it loses support from its state sponsors or its ability to act freely in Lebanon, Hezbollah still enjoys significant advantages over Al Qaeda. Hezbollah maintains a large arsenal of weapons, and is widely respected and admired throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds for what is perceived as its victory in driving Israeli military forces out of Lebanon."

Note: Hezbollah does not have F-16 fighter jets, tanks, cruise missiles, or a huge and organized army -- but it does have small arms, rockets, RPGs, and a tenacious will to fight. Unlike Saddam's Republican Guard, Hezbollah will not simply melt away if the US invades Lebanon.

It hardly matters if the US and Israel persuade Syria and Iran to stop backing Hezbollah. It will continue to fight until the situation in the Middle East changes. It's called guerilla warfare and Hezbollah has demonstrated it is very skillful at waging this kind of war.

--

Just in case you had any doubt who's running the total war show, consider the remarks of Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz:

"We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it is proper that this be done by the Americans. It begins with removing the threat of Hezbollah in south Lebanon; distancing long-range rockets; moving Hezbollah away from the south, up to dismantling [Hezbollah]; stopping Iranian aid to Hezbollah via Syrian ports; and halting the granting of the cover of respectability to the terror headquarters of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad based in Damascus, from which they dispatch orders and "We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it is proper that this be done by the Americans. It begins with removing the threat of Hezbollah in south Lebanon; distancing long-range rockets; moving Hezbollah away from the south, up to dismantling [Hezbollah]; stopping Iranian aid to Hezbollah via Syrian ports; and halting the granting of the cover of respectability to the terror headquarters of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad based in Damascus, from which they dispatch orders and funding to Palestinian terrorist organizations."

--

"Americans say the Bush administration is now likely turn its military forces on North Korea, Syria and Iran, even as they express opposition to the policy of preemptive attack that President George W. Bush invoked in invading Iraq, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.... 48 percent said it was wrong for the United States to try to change a dictatorship to a democracy."

Not that it matters. The Bush neocons have their agenda -- dictated by far right think thanks and the Likudites -- and the opinions of the American people will not change the drift toward total war in the Middle East and elsewhere. One has to wonder why the New York Times and CBS even bother with these polls.

2003-04-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

"In the evening in central Baghdad, a fierce firefight broke out in an area that had been considered secure for several days," writes the New York Times.

How can the US military consider any part of Baghdad -- a city larger than Chicago where there are presumably thousands of people opposed to the occupation of their country -- "secure"? This will be an increasing problem until the US leaves Iraq. Baghdad will never be secure -- i.e., occupied and controlled by the US at the behest of the demented neocons -- and it is lunacy to believe it will.

"In the capital, scores of black leather vests stuffed with explosives and ball bearings were found by American marines at a Baghdad school and shown to reporters. And American forces in western Iraq stopped a busload of men who had $650,000 in cash and a letter offering rewards for killing American soldiers."

Baghdad is becoming the West Bank and Gaza in record time. Maybe the Israelis have some tips for Bush on how to deal with suicide bombers. Maybe they can punish the families of suicide bombers the way the Israelis do -- by knocking down or blowing up suicide bomber family homes?

--

"A US. Marine was shot and killed at a Baghdad checkpoint by a man carrying a Syrian identification card, US Central Command said."

Right. This guy might as well wore a t-shirt saying: ATTACK SYRIA.

"In another sign of the threat of suicide attacks, US. forces stopped a bus later in the day near the Syrian border that was carrying 59 men of military age who had with them US$630,000 in US$100 bills and a letter offering a reward for killing American soldiers."

I bet the CIA is working overtime cranking out these letters. These Syrian terrorists must be the stupidest terrorists in the world -- letters, US money, Syrian ID cards.

Maybe the US populace is even more stupid than these alleged terrorists because chances are they will believe these obvious fabrications.

--

Meanwhile, Zionist war criminal and apologist for mass murder "ideologist" Richard Perle told the International Herald Tribune "that the United States would be compelled to act if it discovered that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been concealed in Syria."

Of course, there are no Iraqi WMD, and even if there were the Syrians would be idiots to have them in their country. Perle is lying again and fabricating excuses for Bush to kill innocent Syrians.

"Asked if this meant it would go after other countries after Iraq, he replied: 'If next means who will next experience the 3d Army Division or the 82d Airborne, that's the wrong question. If the question is who poses a threat that the United States deal with, then that list is well known. It's Iran. It's North Korea. It's Syria. It's Libya, and I could go on... So the message to Syria, to Iran, to North Korea, to Libya should be clear. if we have no alternative, we are prepared to do what is necessary to defend Americans and others. But that doesn't mean that we are readying the troops for a next military engagement. We are not.'"

Perle means to defend Israelis, not Americans. He doesn't care about Americans, they are to be used as fodder in the war he and the demented warmongering neocons have devised for Sharon and the rabid rightwing Likudites in Israel.

"There is no doubt that if some of the organizations that are determined to destroy this country could lay their hands on a nuclear weapon they would detonate it, and they would detonate in the most densely populated cities in this country, with a view to killing as many Americans as possible."

Oh, like say Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Again, Perle means Israel, not the US. He knows Syria or Iran wouldn't nuke the US for that would surely signal their demise. Perle wants us to think Arabs are homicidal and don't care about their children. On the other hand, Bush has decided to make nuclear weapons part of the US offensive arsenal. Moreover, while Syria and Iran don't have nukes, Israel does -- about 200 of them. Considering how wantonly the Israelis kill Palestinians -- and peace activists -- it's not a stretch to fathom them nuking somebody. "Hitler called the Jews 'untermenschen' or sub-human and Sharon calls Palestinians cockroaches," writes Dave Silver. So what do you do to cockroaches? Exterminate them.

2003-04-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

Iraqis are apportioning a lot of blame to the American forces, who they say have taken care to protect oil wells while leaving them at the mercy of plunderers... It is very unfortunate that the American forces are taking a neutral position in most cases. It's not neutrality, but criminal neutrality because they know that it was them who overthrew the regime and authority.

Al-Jazeera

Rumsfeld said it -- the US is not a police force and, besides, "stuff happens." Seriously, the US is not in Iraq to protect average citizens -- it's there for the oil, to "send a message" to other Arabs, and protect Israel (pick your order of importance; I choose the latter since the majority of the Bush chicken hawk neocons are Zionists and Sharon bootlickers).

Just in case you have any doubt about the US role to protect Israel from the results of its own racism and violence against pretty much defenseless Palestinians, check out this article:

"Our goal is to make sure (Iraq) is not in a position to threaten" Israel, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Friday, describing the U.S. air strikes around [the remote Iraqi border town] Qaim as "preventive medicine."

In fact, it might be argued, the entire Iraq invasion was an operation at the behest of the troublesome Israelis. "...clandestine U.S. forces took to the rugged western desert of Iraq even before the March 19 start of the war, hunting for Scud launchers [that can fire missiles at Israel]. Since then, special operations reconnaissance teams, quick-strike squads and spy drones have scoured the vast western reaches... 'The potential threat against Israel is still not over,' said Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz."

And it won't be, either, so long as Israel messes with its Arab neighbors and talks of Greater Israel stretching from "the Litani river [in southern Lebanon], to the northeast, the Wadi 'Owja, twenty miles south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-'Arish; and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan" (as Ben-Gurion once declared).

--

"[Bushite and political swami Karl Rove] was critical of the frequency with which newspapers and television networks alike had sought Americans' opinions on the progress of the war and the performance of the president."

We're not supposed to have opinions, or comment on dictator Bush's so-called performance -- since America is no longer a democracy, we're expected to simply pay or taxes for illegal and immoral wars, wave our little plastic flags, and keep our opinions to ourselves. Karl Rove and Bush find such opinions burdensome and counterproductive. Like the UN, the citizens of this onetime republic are "irrelevant."

--

My own dual loyalties--there, I admitted it--were drilled into me by my parents, my grandparents, my Hebrew school teachers and my rabbis, not to mention Israeli teen-tour leaders and AIPAC college representatives. It was just about the only thing they all agreed upon. Yet this milk- (and honey-) fed loyalty to Israel as the primary component of American Jewish identity--always taught in the context of the Holocaust--inspires a certain confusion in its adherents, namely: Whose interests come first, America's or Israel's? Leftist landsmen are certain that an end to the occupation and a peaceful and prosperous Palestinian state are the best ways to secure both Israeli security and American interests. Likudniks think it's best for both Israel and the United States to beat the crap out of as many Arabs as possible, as "force is the only thing these people understand."

But we ought to be honest enough to at least imagine a hypothetical clash between American and Israeli interests. Here, I feel pretty lonely admitting that, every once in a while, I'm going to go with what's best for Israel. As I was lectured over and over while growing up, America can make a million mistakes and nobody is going to take away our country and murder us. Israel is nowhere near as vulnerable as many would have us believe, but it remains a tiny Jewish island surrounded by a sea of largely hostile Arabs. Perhaps it was a strategic mistake for America to rush to Israel's aid in 1973, but given the alternative, I really don't care. As Moshe Dayan told Golda Meir at the time, the "third temple" was crumbling. Tough luck if it meant higher gasoline prices at home.

Eric Alterman, Can We Talk?

Is it possible the Arabs are "hostile" because Israel won't lave them alone? Is it possible they are hostile because Israel steals their land (Syria, Egypt) and kills dozens of Palestinian Arabs each week (to say nothing of western peace activists) simply because they resist occupation of their ancestral land and demand to be something less than third class (non) citizens?

As for dual-loyalty... if you can't decide which country deserves your allegiance, you may wish to move from the US to Israel.

Now if only Wolfowitz, Perle (an Israeli spy), Feith, and all the other Zionist neocons would move to Israel...

2003-04-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

"Mr. Bush has said that the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, forced him to an entirely new concept of national security -- one that intercepted threats early, before they could damage American citizens. Vice President Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, pressed him to make a radical break with the age of containment and deterrence," writes the New York Times.

Did Saddam "damage American citizens"? No. This "new concept of national security" is nothing more than national belligerence -- the US will attack weak countries such as Iraq because they can and nobody can do anything about it. They won't attack North Korea and Iran because they have armies capable of putting up a defense, unlike Iraq (it now seems the plan was to enfeeble Iraq by 12 years of cruel and harsh sanctions and then attack it).

Iran and North Korea might actually accelerate their nuclear programs, perhaps building a fearsome arsenal as fast as possible to increase the cost and dangers to the United States if it were to attack them.

This would be the smart thing to do. The US will never invade North Korea because the cost is simply too high. As for Iran, its military did not wither under more than a decade of crippling sanctions.

Senior Pentagon officials and senior counterterrorism officials have suggested that the United States government will now turn its attention to Hamas, the Palestinian group that has used terrorism to fight for a Palestinian state, and Hezbollah, which has strong ties to Syria and Iran. Indeed, in recent weeks, Mr. Rumsfeld has spoken more openly about Syria's support of Iraq and the threats it has posed to coalition forces.

Sure, because Hamas and Hezbollah don't have modern armies like North Korea and Iraq. Cowboys in Humvees and Bradley fighting machines with air support can take care of these guys the same way they took care of the disorganized and essentially defenseless Iraqis. Of course, it should be remembered that Hezbollah kicked Israel's ass and forced them to leave Lebanon.

At a press briefing last October, Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, said that Hezbollah was clearly on the administration's radar screen.

Feith, a Zionist, received his orders from Sharon. Hezbollah poses absolutely no threat to the United States or its citizens; it does, however, pose a threat to Israel.

"Many believe the 'Syria-next' scenario to be improbable," writes Asia Times Online. "For one thing, the Bush administration knows that an assault on Syria would merely polarize the Middle East further. And, perhaps more significantly, even Washington hardliners don't really believe a war is needed to change Syrian behavior."

Translation: they have a stronger and more organized military than Iraq. They are not a small organization of terrorists, like Hamas or Hezbollah.

Bullies always pick their fights. They usually pick on the little guy who can't defend himself.

2003-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

As Michel Chossudovsky points out, the killing "of two journalists on the 8th of April bears a direct relationship to the timing of US military operations in Baghdad. The killings were an integral part of the Pentagon's war plans. They marked a turning point in the disinformation campaign." According to BBC correspondent Kate Adie, in an interview with Irish TV, the Pentagon had "threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists. Uplinks is where you have your own satellite telephone method of distributing information, the telephones and the television signals. According to the Pentagon official they would be 'targeted down... Who cares... They've been warned."

But it's not only the "unembedded" media that apparently came under attack, but humanitarian organizations as well. "On the same day, April 8th, a convoy of seven vehicles of the Red Cross (ICRC), involved in re-supplyng the city's hospitals, was 'caught in cross fire'. Thirteen people were killed including the ICRC delegate in Baghdad (who is a Canadian). The vehicles 'were clearly marked with large red crosses visible from a distance.' (Health Newswire Consumer, 10 April 2003). The press reports suggest that the convoy had been deliberately targeted. The Red Cross was the last independent international aid agency operating in Baghdad. It suspended its operations that same day, April 8th."

--

Swiss journalist Arnold Hottinger hit the nail square on the head when he said: "For the ideologues in Washington, a pro-American Middle East would also be a pro-Israeli Middle East. For them, Middle East countries have to change, and that change can be brought about by bombing them."

Naturally, in Europe where they have more freedom of the press than in America, journalists are free to say such things. Here they would be fired (as was the producer Ed Gernon -- who produced the CBS mini-series "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" -- for saying the rise of Hitler was a cautionary tale for the United States, because "it basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history.")

--

Finally, as for the looting and criminal behavior in Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld said the following:

"Stuff happens."

Rumsfeld suggested that many of the television images beamed around the world showing acts of looting were being shown repeatedly, exaggerating the effect. Even so, he said, looting is common problem worldwide at times and in places where law enforcement has broken down.

Never mind that you killed all the cops, Rummy.

"U.S. troops won't be a police force," reports KVOA. "According to a spokesman at U.S. Central Command, it will be up to the Iraqis themselves to take responsibility for law and order. And the commander of the U.S. war effort has issued orders saying troops can't use deadly force to prevent looting."

In other words, the US doesn't care about looting or violence in the street.

It's the oil -- and Israel's security -- stupid.

2003-04-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Photo caption: "United States Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, of U.S. Central Command, displays a 55-card deck of playing-sized cards that feature members of Iraqi leadership during a news conference at the Coalition Media Center, at Camp As Sayliyah, in Doha, Qatar, Friday, April 11, 2003. Brooks said that decks of the cards would be distributed among members of Coalition forces to aid in finding and capturing former Iraqi leaders considered dangerous or guilty of crimes. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)"

--

From John Stanton's Biblical Vengeance in the 21st Century

Even as the US daily mocks the Geneva Convention, impugns the Law of Armed Conflict and Rules of Engagement through the use of cluster bombs and indiscriminant murder of Iraqi men, women, children and livestock, it has accelerated the pace of the conquest to arrive more swiftly to its end-game. The finish will see US corporations -- along with an assortment of dubious support organizations -- making "liberated" Iraqi's market-friendly. They will control the price of oil decimating the one bargaining tool that remained for the Arab world, that being OPEC. Already, as widely reported, the US House of Representatives is trying to ensure that wireless carrier Qualcomm
US weapons makers see a great new market in the forthcoming remake of Iraq's military forces. Their products are field tested and ready for the big defense trade exhibitions like the 4th LAD, the International Exhibition and Conference on Defense Technology to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in April, and the Paris Air Show to be held in June. With America under Bush no longer bound by arms agreements, every country will want to stock up. US oil companies like ExxonMobil are already hard at work in Southern Iraq getting product on line. McDonalds and other fast food chains are eager to open up shop in Iraq.

The Southern Baptists and other militant evangelical Christian organizations headed by the likes of Rev Franklin Graham who called Islam a "wicked religion" are on the border in Jordan waiting to setup new ministries in Iraq, as reported by Matt Engel in the Guardian. The starving will be enticed with food and water to "praise the Lord" and reject Islam, which these US based militant groups despise. No doubt they will sign a sheet saying they are praying for "President Bush" too.

(...)

There should be little doubt about what the Bush plan is for Iraq and the rest of the region. As CNN reported, one of Bush's henchmen James Woolsey, former CIA Director under Bill Clinton and likely player in the new government of Iraq, stated recently of regimes in Iran, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, "We want you nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country. Is on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you v the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family - most fear: We're on the side of your own people." Woolsey is part of the militant, stridently pro-Israel group that advocated attacking Iraq back in 1998. The US government in Iraq may include another of this sect; Jay Garner, a defense contractor and retired military officer whom once applauded the Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians. In short, the new government of Iraq will be culled from Bush loyalists from the Project for a New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the omnipresent American Enterprise Institute. All of who advocate imperious global US rule and a greater Israel and who are on record on that score.

2003-04-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

Photo caption: "British Sgt. Maj. Pat Geraughty holds his rosary beads along with his weapon in Basra, southern Iraq, Thursday April 10, 2003. (AP Photo/Tony Nicoletti, Pool)" Onward Christian soldiers! And those silly Arabs think the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq is the beginning of a new Crusades.

--

The United States is scrambling to pull together the first of several meetings of "free Iraqis," probably to be held next week at an airbase outside Nasiriyah, to debate the form and makeup of the new local and national governments, according to U.S. officials... The White House has designated special presidential envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to preside over the talks with Iraqis on self-governance, along with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker and a Pentagon official.

Military to Tap Interim Rulers

Lest we forget the primary reasons for the brutal invasion of Iraq -- Zalmay Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun, was a Unocal consultant, he worked for the NSC (as senior director for Southwest Asia), the State Department, was assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for policy planning, working under Paul Wolfowitz, and also worked on defense and political issues at the Washington office of Rand (a "think tank" fond of calling mass murder in Iraq a "dynamic process"). He also headed the Bush-Cheney Transition team for the Department of Defense and has been a Counselor to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. In other words, Khalilzad is a neocon insider.

Lamis Andoni writes:

Khalilzad has been a true spokesman for the hawks on all issues with the exception of the US role in the Israeli- Palestinian "peace process". He has argued that Palestinian-Israeli peace would allow the US to set up a security pact which includes Israel and Arabs, to undercut "hostile states" and consolidate its interests in securing oil supplies and protecting Israel.

No doubt the interests of the Iraqi people will come in a distant second.

--

"Today in Iraq, tens of millions are free," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said during a pro-war rally in Washington yesterday.

Yeah, "free" to have their furniture stolen or their sisters and daughters raped. Free to be killed by neighbors out to settle old scores and unrestrained by police. Free to be blown to smithereens by a bunker buster.

Freedom, ain't it wonderful?

DeLay said the illegal invasion is not over yet, "but make no mistake ... our army of virtue is beating back the tide of terror."

Ah, yes, virtue -- American style. DeLay may wish to visit the Al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad to get a better idea of what "beating back the tide of terror" really means.

Overwhelmed hospitals in Baghdad are running out of drugs and anesthetics and are short of water and electricity, the Red Cross said Monday... "There is no doubt really that the resources and staff of these places are really stretched to the limit," said Florian Westphal, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, the main aid agency left in Iraq. "They have very little power, if any. This morning, for example, they said they were functioning entirely with generators."

Red Cross: Iraq hospitals overwhelmed

God bless America!

--

"The collapse of civil order in Iraq poses a more immediate problem," writes the Independent. "A period of lawlessness and looting in the gap between Saddam Hussein's tyranny and benevolent military rule by the Americans and British may be inevitable, but that does not make it any more comfortable for the families cowering in their homes as gangs of thugs roam the streets.

Hey, these gangs are a gift from the Pentagon! At least Iraqis don't have to worry about Saddam anymore. The "collapse of civil order" is a small price to pay for "freedom" American-style, even if your kids were JDAMed to death or your home flattened by a cruise missile.

--

It really is dangerous to become a CIA asset:

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

Exclusive: Saddam Was key in early CIA plot

Incidentally, this "conspiracy theory" was put forward by Richard Sale of United Press International.

--

The Americans and their British allies have now come face to face with the Iraqi people, with all their complexities and racial, sectarian and religious mosaic... Certainly, those who danced in the streets in front of the cameras are few, perhaps 1,000 persons... They do not represent the overwhelming majority of Iraqis..

Don't think it's all over

They were probably the same folks looting.

The same may be said of those robbing and looting before the eyes of the US Marines in Baghdad and the British in Basra.

Bite my tongue.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda only emerged because of the presence of US troops on Saudi soil; a presence the Muslims perceive as humiliating for them and desecrating for Islamic shrines. Disagreements have begun to show in the opposition factions. What is certain is the Sunnis, who are counted as supporters of Saddam's regime, will turn into an opposition because they are secularists who mostly believe in Arab nationalism.

It seems the US and Israel never learn. In response to Arab nationalism, Israel bankrolled Hamas. Now Hamas is blowing up kids in pizza shops and on commuter buses in Israel. Of course, Hamas is a good excuse for far right-wing nut cases like Sharon to continue their vicious war on Palestinians.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda emerged because the CIA spent billions of dollars to create Islamic mercanaries to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. The biggest backer of the mujahideen was Ronald Reagan and the CIA.

Do you think Reagan should be tried as a supporter of terrorism?

Lebanese Shi'ite sources close to Hizbollah have confirmed to me an Iraqi Hizbollah is being founded.

Gee, this is really surprising. But then a pro-Israel viceroy (Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, a JINSA and Sharon yes-man) will likely rule Iraq, so it stands to reason an Iraqi version of Hizbollah will be the response.

Recall that Hezbollah essentially kicked Israel out of Lebanon in 2000.

"Hezbollah's ideology is based in the Shi'a tradition of Islam, specifically in the concept of Willayat Al-Faqih put forth by Ayatollah Khomeini and other Islamic scholars in Iran," notes military.com.

Shia account for about 65% of Iraq's Muslim population.

According to Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, US troops "will face bullets, guns, blood and suicide attacks within Iraqi territories."

Same thing the Israelis faced in Lebanon.

2003-04-10T15:15:00.001-07:00

Photo caption: "An Iraqi looter pushes a cart as smoke rises from Saddam Hussein hospital in downtown Baghdad, Thursday, April 10, 2003."

--

Uncle Walt, a.k.a. Walter Cronkite, has called Dubya "grossly arrogant" for invading Iraq without the approval of the United Nations. He made the comment during an appearance at Elon University in North Carolina.

Cronkite is, of course, being nice. I'll go one better -- not only is Bush arrogant, he's a sociopath for invading Iraq and killing an as of yet undetermined number of innocent Iraqis. Hopefully, one say soon, he will be considered a war criminal and prosecuted by The Hague.

--

The right-wing nut jobs over at NewsMax.com really get steamed when celebrities speak the truth. "I think the entire world is going to be united against us," Jane Fonda said Tuesday at a lecture in P.C. Vancouver, British Columbia. "I don't know if a country where the people are so ignorant of reality and of history, if you can call that a free world."

Maybe Fonda is on to something the hacks over at NewsMax.com refuse to accept.

"For decades we've been reading about how American schoolchildren can't find Mexico or Canada on a map, and yet nothing seems to change," says Eric Ransdell, a foreign correspondent. "These people who don't know the difference between Switzerland and Swaziland then become the main consumers of news. And in poll after poll they tell us that they want less foreign news and more of what I call 'selfish journalism' -- which stocks to buy, sex and beauty tips, 10 steps to a healthier colon and so on. It becomes this horrible feedback loop where people are sent out of our schools in a state of complete ignorance of the rest of the world and then, maybe because they're embarrassed, clamor for even less information on something they know almost nothing about."

--

It now appears "liberation" in Iraq is the freedom to loot and steal from your neighbors. It also appears to have brought "violent chaos".

"A dangerous power vacuum opened in Iraq on Thursday as the triumphant overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime was quickly followed by violent chaos in many parts of the country," writes the Financial Times. "A suicide bomber on Thursday night attacked US soldiers in Baghdad killing and wounding an unknown number of marines... But the dangerous lawlessness now confronting US and British forces was brutally underscored by renewed fighting in Baghdad, widespread looting and the murder in the southern city of Najaf of a prominent Shia leader who had supported the invasion by coalition forces... The developments, which punctured the mood of optimism of the previous 24 hours, deepened concerns that US and British forces could struggle to establish order and install a new administration for the country."

Is it possible more than a few Iraqis may begin to think they were better off under Saddam than they are now?

2003-04-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

For those who believe everything the coffered ninnies at Fox and CNN tell them about Bush's Iraq invasion, consider the words of Chris Hedges.

Before you dismiss Hedges as a raving leftist malcontent, consider his experience as a journalist in the following places: El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the West Bank and Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, the Punjab, Iraq, Bosnia, and elsewhere.

"I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, shot at in the marshes of southern Iraq, imprisoned in Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held prisoner for a week by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite rebellion following the Gulf War, strafed by MIG-21s in Bosnia, fired upon by Serb snipers and shelled for days in Sarajevo with deafening rounds of heavy artillery that threw out thousands of deadly bits of iron fragments.

(...)

"The reasons for war are hidden from public view. We do not speak about the extension of American empire but democracy and ridding the world of terrorists -- read "evil" -- along with weapons of mass destruction. We do not speak of the huge corporate interests that stand to gain even as poor young boys from Alabama, who joined the Army because this was the only way to get health insurance and a steady job, bleed to death along the Euphrates. We do not speak of the lies that have been told to us in the past by this Administration -- for example, the lie that Iraq was on the way to building a nuclear bomb. We have been rendered deaf and dumb. And when we awake, it will be too late, certainly too late to save the dead, theirs and ours.

"The embedding of several hundred journalists in military units does not diminish the lie. These journalists do not have access to their own transportation. They depend on the military for everything, from food to a place to sleep. They look to the soldiers around them for protection. When they feel the fear of hostile fire, they identify and seek to protect those who protect them. They become part of the team. It is a natural reaction. I have felt it.

"But in that experience, these journalists become participants in the war effort. They want to do their bit. And their bit is the dissemination of myth, the myth used to justify war and boost the morale of the soldiers and civilians. The lie in wartime is almost always the lie of omission. The blunders by our generals -- whom the mythmakers always portray as heroes -- along with the rank corruption and perversion, are masked from public view. The intoxication of killing, the mutilation of enemy dead, the murder of civilians and the fact that war is not about what they claim is ignored. But in wartime don't look to the press, or most of it, for truth. The press has another purpose."

The Press and the Myths of War

2003-04-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

Photo: "An Iraqi man smiles as he carries a set of police lights he looted from the top of a police car in Saddam City, a suburb of Baghdad, April 9, 2003. "

--

An interesting rumor has surfaced in the wake of the Anglo-American "victory" in Iraq: Saddam did an Osama (the now infamous disappearing act) and we will never hear from him again. According to the rumor, Condoleezza Rice cut a deal with Saddam through Vladmir Putin because the US didn't relish the idea of a long and bloody campaign, particularly in 120 degree heat, so they worked out a deal. For brokering the deal Russia gets to keep its Iraqi oil contracts.

Of course, rumors are just that -- rumors. But then the AP reported this today:

There are rumors the Iraqi president escaped a massive airstrike and is hiding in the Russian Embassy as part of a deal between Washington and Moscow... Lebanese parliament Speaker Nabih Berri hinted Wednesday that Hussein might have taken shelter at the Russian Embassy in Baghdad as part of a U.S.-Russian deal. "Why did the Russian ambassador return to Baghdad? What did [U.S. National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice do in Moscow?" Berri asked reporters. "Is Saddam Hussein in the Russian Embassy in Baghdad?"... The Moscow correspondent of Arab news channel Al-Jazeera quoted a Russian source as saying a U.S.-Iraqi deal for a cease-fire was in the works, and that Hussein's safe exit from Baghdad had been assured in return for a halt to Iraqi resistance. The source, a ranking military intelligence officer, said CIA elements who were in Baghdad before the start of the war were trying to arrange the deal, Al-Jazeera reported.

If, indeed, this invasion was about freedom and liberation for the Iraqi people, the Russian scheme to save Saddam and its oil contracts would have been put aside and the US would have hunted down Saddam and brought him to justice. Of course, this is not about justice or liberation: it's about oil, stupid, and the security of Israel in a hostile neighborhood.

Meanwhile, for public consumption, US Special forces are raking the rubble of a building bombed on Monday in search of Saddam's corpse. The US is also reportedly searching Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown north of Baghdad. Don't be surprised if Saddam goes the way of Osama -- wanted dead or alive and missing in action forever.

--

Paul Wood of the BBC writes:

"We've just learned from the US marines that the US flag that was put on the face of Saddam yesterday -- it was replaced by an Iraqi flag when the people shouted for that -- was the flag that was flying over the Pentagon on September 11.

For a lot of the American marines, they think this war is all about defeating terrorism, they will tell you that over and over again. There is also a connection in the minds of the American public between the regime of Saddam and what happened on September 11, and apparently the flag that was draped over this face was flying over the pentagon when the plane crashed into it. "

This "connection" was meticulously planted through Bush propaganda in the months leading up to the Iraq invasion. The neocons attempted to connect Saddam and Osama repeatedly -- and even though they had absolutely zero proof of a connection, large numbers of Americans bought into the ruse. In fact, a lot of Americans can't tell the difference between Osama and Saddam.

It wasn't P. T. Barnum who said, "There's a sucker born every minute," but rather Joseph Bessimer, a notorious confidence trickster of the early 1880s. Even so, the expression is as relevant now as back then.

--

"The West may have watched the pictures of jubilant crowds in Baghdad with joy, but in the Arab world most people watched with dismay. Many turned their televisions off, unable to watch any more," writes Justin Huggler.

Arabs view the US invasion as a colonialism, not as a selfless act of sacrifice by American GIs in the name of Iraqi liberation (an absurd proposition if there ever was one, considering US history, a subject not of interest to most sheeple in America).

"In Cairo, where people crowded round windows of electrical stores to watch scenes from Baghdad on televisions, some dismissed the Iraqis celebrating in the streets as 'illiterates'. 'It is only the thieves and the looters who are celebrating,' an Egyptian lawyer told the BBC."

The real "thieves and the looters," of course, are Bush and his neocons.

--

Meanwhile, for many Iraqis, liberation will mean starvation. The World Food Program and the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to Peter Almond of the UPI, have suspended operations in Iraq. "The reason was the rising concern for looting and anarchy among the population... 'The law and order situation is very poor' across Iraq, Antonia Paradela, a spokeswoman for the United Nations' World Food Program,' told Britain's Sky News television from Kuwait. "There is looting in U.N. and Iraqi government food warehouses, and nobody is stopping it. We are assembling the largest humanitarian operation ever, four times as much as for Afghanistan. But we cannot start while there is no security for our delivery teams.'"

Hey, the oil fields are safe, Saddam may have escaped unscathed, and the US will soon have bases to attack other Arabs in the neighborhood. Really, that's all that matters. Starvation is simply a PR problem.

--

Speaking of death, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday more people will die and the war -- er, invasion -- is not over yet. "Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceaucescu in the pantheon of failed, brutal dictators, and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom," said Rummy. (Note the rumor mentioned above; Condi may have arranged for this new Ceaucescu to live a comfortable life in Russia.)

"It is hard to find a single person. It is hard to find them when they're alive and mobile, it's hard to find them when they're not well, and it's hard to find them if they're buried under rubble," Rumsfeld said about Saddam. Translation: the US will never find him, in fact the US may soon stop talking about him (like they stop talking about Osama).

Besides, the fickle attention of the gullible people of America need their attention directed at the next target: the imams of Iran or the regime of Bashar al-Asad in Syria.

As for starvation... well, that's simply the cost of empire paid by other people, mostly Arabs in this case. No doubt the Bushites think it is worth it. Or, as former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said of the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi kids under harsh and brutal US-imposed sanctions, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."

2003-04-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

"The capital city is now one of those areas that has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at U.S. Central Command in Qatar. (U.S. Declares Baghdad Now Free)

Certainly, the "regime" no longer has control. But who does? The looters and street criminals.

Surely, this unchecked criminality must warm the heart of the average Iraqi.

"Baghdad is today rapidly disintegrating into a lawless city with hordes of looters taking to the streets... Initial jubilation as US troops took control of five main districts of the city has swiftly been replaced by concerns that the sudden collapse of Saddam Hussein's hold has created a new and dangerous security nightmare... The police force had completely disappeared"(The fall of Baghdad)

Ah, the smell of liberation -- and there are no longer any police to stop the criminals from terrorizing the population. Of course, as for terrorizing, they would certainly take second place to the US military.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, where gushing praise for the US war machine is not so prevalent, the media reports viewpoints beyond those published by the US corporate media.

British troops have been received cordially in Basra since they established control over the city on Monday, the most frequent reaction being smiling "thank you"s from children... But to many of the hundreds who were wounded in the two-week battle for the city, the feelings are bitterness, anger -- and for some a longing for Saddam Hussein to remain in charge... "The United States created Saddam, gave him weapons, made him strong and then forgot about us," says Fadila, a nurse. "They've used him up now, so they're putting someone like him in his place."

No End To Love For Saddam, Hate Of US Occupation

No doubt, in the weeks and months ahead, there will be more than a few ambushes, suicide bombings, and other attacks on US troops. These are the kinds of things people do under foreign occupation.

Welcome to the West Bank (and Gaza) of the Euphrates.

Meanwhile according to voxfux, the "CIA organized this mornings take down of the Saddam Statue in Baghdad’s Liberation Square as another FAKE OUT. In this city of over 5 million people about seventy of what appeared to be Iraqi dregs and delinquents and news paparazzi with Betacam crews descended on Liberation Square for another in a long line of lies, and psy-ops and disinformation, designed to fake us all out. CNN kept the camera angle close up because if they pulled too far out you noticed that there weren’t a whole lot of people out for this fake out, 'liberation"... Let’s make that perfectly clear. Secondly those same people who are tearing up Saddam’s posters are the same people who are going to be taking pot shots, every chance they get at their new liberators. Because remember this there is only one person in this world more hated than Saddam Hussein and that is George W. Bush."

2003-04-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

The following short article is a bit harsh, but contains a big kernel of truth. Note that it was written by a former Marine:

Jar-Head Marines Are Not Too Bright Today.
Can't figure out what flag to put up.
date: Wed, 09 April 2003 10:45 (EST)

Once again I am reminded of my days in the U.S. Marine Corps and the amount of incredibly ignorant people in it.

Watching the live coverage of the events in Baghdad Firdos Square, One was able to see that some Marine put the U.S. flag around the neck on the statue of Saddam. Obviously that was realized to not be such a good idea by the powers that be and the flag was quickly replaced by the "pre-Gulf War" Iraqi flag.

This is just once again proof that US forces are mostly comprised of stupid, insensitive, testosterone filled little rednecks. They think this is a game. They think this is actually proof that the U.S. is number one.

Of course when these "boys" are home and begin to suffer from strange illnesses, one can make a sure bet that their tune will change to frustration and anger as they realize they have ultimately been abandoned by the Federal Government. Once they are back, they will eventually tire of watching MTV and playing with their X-Box. They will grow up and then the reality of the world will set-in.

Their sob stories will come out (just a little though) and most of us who knew this war was absolutely wrong will have no pity for them. While their stories begin to come out, America will be on to it's next round of warring and we will have a new group of ignorant hillbillies deployed some where else.

2003-04-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

A top U.S. State Department official said Wednesday that the war on Iraq should be a lesson for other regimes pursuing weapons of mass destruction, but insisted that the United States is seeking the peaceful elimination of those weapons programs.

Except that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, unless you consider pesticide and bottles "marked in strange ways" as world-threatening WMD.

"Discoveries of weapons of mass destruction might not be confirmed until after the war when investigators can talk to Iraqis who helped make, use and hide them, some Central Command officials said."

How convenient.

"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," John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, has told the world.

Yeah, the "appropriate lesson" to be gleaned from the invasion of Iraq: do what we say or we'll invade, we'll kill your people, wreck your infrastructure.

"If you want to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction than with implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East. The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military superiority. [Patrick] Clawson [a policy analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy], whose institute enjoys close ties with the Bush administration, was candid during a Capitol Hill forum on a post-Hussein Iraq in 1999: 'U.S. oil companies would have an opportunity to make significant profits,' he said. 'We should not be embarrassed about the commercial advantages that would come from a re-integration of Iraq into the world economy.'... But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran.

UC Berkeley journalism professor Sandy Tolan, Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2002 (as quoted by Bill and Kathleen Christison)

So, the next time you hear Bush or Bolton talking about WMD, think Israel's security interests, think oil, and think McDonalds with Arabic menus.

--

"We want you nervous," said [former CIA director and Bushite neocon] Woolsey to [Iran and Syria]. "We want you to realize that now, for the fourth time in 100 years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you – the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family – most fear. We're on the side of your own people."

Patrick J. Buchanan, On to Damascus?

Allies? What allies? Does he mean the Brits and a few Aussies, the coalition of the browbeat and the bribed?

"World War IV" is a term popularized by militant Zionist Norman Podhoretz, who has been shrieking for war on no fewer than six or seven Arab countries. But why should anyone care what Woolsey says? Because James Woolsey is slated for a position of power in the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq. Moreover, Woolsey echoes John Bolton at State and Israel's Ariel Sharon, who has also been howling for the United States to take down Iran and Syria, as soon as Baghdad falls.

You can bet Arabs will love this, especially considering Woolsey is connected with Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), which promotes military and strategic ties between the United States and Israel. Woolsey serves on the board of advisers of JINSA, as well as the Pentagon's DPB.

If [Woolsey] soon pops up in Baghdad, you can bet that the "clash of civilizations" is imminent, if it has not begun already. To Woolsey's mind, the US is already engaged in what he and many of his fellow neoconservatives call "World War IV", a struggle that pits the US and Britain against Islamist and Wahhabi extremists like al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, Iranian theocrats, and Ba'ath Party "fascists" in Syria and Iraq. In their view, the Cold War was World War III.

Jim Lobe, Watch Woolsey

So, do you think the Arab vassals will go quietly into the Zionist night, or will they carry on a bloody guerilla war against the invaders?

"A reporter for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, traveling with the US forces as they pushed up from Kuwait towards Baghdad, compared the American soldiers’ shocked and bewildered reaction to unexpected Iraqi resistance to the opening phase of the war in Lebanon, where seemingly invincible IDF troops met unexpectedly fierce resistance in 1982," writes Mark Ames.

"The enemies of both America and Israel use terror to instill fear in the hope that they will either force their enemies to change their policies, or destroy them. As a rule, terrorists work to radicalize both the aggrieved population and the perceived oppressor. The oppressor is forced into becoming ever more brutal, and through its brutality, the local population (in this case the Iraqis) becomes further radicalized until the situation becomes unbearable for the occupier. This is what drove out the Israelis from Lebanon."

Will it drive the US out of Iraq?

"The far-right always prospers from the fear promoted by terror and the war against terror. Without terror, fear, a state of siege and isolation, Sharon and his coalition of racist freaks could not count on staying in power. On the other hand, without Sharon and his ethnic cleansing ministers, the terrorists would have a hard time growing their own power base. The two complement each other. Even economic decline under Sharon hasn’t dampened his support, in the same way that America’s economic decline hasn’t hurt Bush, so long as fear keeps his support strong."

In other words, for both Sharon and Bush, terror's the best deal going for their political objectives.

2003-04-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

"Soliciting suicide bombers, hiding munitions in holy sites, using civilians as human shields -- these are clear violations of the rules of armed conflict. No one should believe they can get away with such crimes. This resolution puts the world on notice that war crimes being committed in Iraq will be prosecuted," said Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Lawmakers Want to Try Iraqi Leaders

Good luck, Joe. First you have to find him. Seems you can't even kill him, let alone find him.

"He was probably not in the building when it was bombed," a well-placed source said. The source added it was believed that President Saddam had been in the building earlier.

Saddam survived attack on building say British intelligence sources

Let's call it the "Osama Syndrome," or the "Bin Laden Disappearing Act."

At least 40 senior officials were understood to be meeting President Saddam and his sons in a bunker at the back of the building, connected to a restaurant. Iraqi officials said they found two bodies in the rubble and were searching for another 14 they thought were still buried, but said no members of the leadership had been killed.

Does somebody have to remind the Pentagon Iraq is not Rhode Island? No doubt there's more than a few people in Iraq willing to hide Saddam Hussein.

Since the devastating attack on Iraq by U.S. forces began nearly three weeks ago, officials are learning more and more about the sadistic nature of Saddam's regime. Iraqis on the ground have started talking to U.S. troops, detailing everything from the lack of adequate health care to the execution of entire families as a means to silence children who say aloud they don't like Saddam.

What Fox doesn't tell you is Iraq had the best health care system in the Arab world before Bush Senior imposed sanctions and Clinton followed through on them. In other words, Iraq has a terrible health care system because the US ruined it. In fact, before the Gulf War and sanctions, primary medical care reached about 97% of the urban population, and 78% of rural residents (according to UNICEF). That's better than most places in the United States. But never mind. Fox is, after all, the Bush Ministry of Propaganda. Its duty is to demonize Saddam and make excuses for Bush's immoral and illegal invasion.

It's almost absurd the way Fox and the corporate media carries on about how sadistic and totalitarian Saddam is -- an undisputed fact but one that served the US well until Saddam fell out of favor with Washington.

Fox does not mention, of course, that the CIA brought to power the Ba'ath regime the marines are now supposedly chasing around -- or futilely attempting to kill -- as declared war criminals.

"Iraqis have always suspected that the 1963 military coup that set Saddam Husain on the road to absolute power had been masterminded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," writes Mohamoud A Shaikh. "New evidence just published reveals that the agency not only engineered the putsch but also supplied the list of people to be eliminated once power was secured -- a monstrous stratagem that led to the decimation of Iraq's professional class...

The overthrow of president Abdul Karim Kassim on February 8, 1963 was not, of course, the first intervention in the region by the agency, but it was the bloodiest -- far bloodier than the coup it orchestrated in 1953 to restore the shah of Iran to power... [Author Said Aburish, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (1997)] reckons that 5,000 were killed, giving the names of 600 of them -- including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who formed Iraq's educated elite. The massacre was carried out on the basis of death lists provided by the CIA... The lists were compiled in CIA stations throughout the Middle East with the assistance of Iraqi exiles like Saddam, who was based in Egypt. An Egyptian intelligence officer, who obtained a good deal of his information from Saddam, helped the Cairo CIA station draw up its list."

"In Freedom’s name America made sure that any possibility of secular democratic reform in the Middle East was shut off," writes Alexander Cockburn (Wild Justice; The Price, Alexander Cockburn; NYPress: Vol. 14, Iss. 39). "Mount a coup against [Iran's democratically elected] Mossadegh in the mid-1950s, as the CIA did, and you end up with the Ayatollah Khomeni 25 years later. Mount a coup against Kassim in Iraq, as the CIA did, and you get the agency’s man, Saddam Hussein."

No, Fox wouldn't dare mention this, nor would CNN or any of the other corporate media giants. But facts is facts -- Saddam Hussein is a creature of the CIA and US policy. The US wanted Saddam to torture his own people. So all the platitudes murmured now -- excuses to murder Iraqi children -- are severely disingenuous, to say the least.

The real criminals are in Washington -- Saddam's henchmen are pikers by way of comparison. The real threat to world peace is George Bush, not Saddam Hussein.

2003-04-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

More on the murder of journalists at the Palestine Hotel:

BLITZER: You heard Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon press spokeswoman, suggest earlier -- she had 300 conversation with various news organizations saying, Look, a war is an inherently dangerous situation. We cannot guarantee your safety. If you stay in various hotels, you're taking your life into your own hands because the Iraqis themselves might use you, in effect, as human shields, thinking that the U.S. military won't respond because you're there. And she says that simply is not going to wash.

Is this what Victoria Clarke really thinks? Does she think journalists expect the US military to protect reporters and cameramen? No, she can't be that stupid. In essence, she is saying get out of Baghdad. Don't report the news (except the news the Pentagon deems appropriate... you know, kindly soldiers handing out teddy bears in Basra). The Iraqis have yet to use western journalists as human shields.

AMANPOUR: No. 1, I would say that most of the journalists who are there have got a lot more experience in risky situations in war than some of the spokespeople who are giving out those comments. No. 2, in the first Gulf War, the Al Rasheed was off limits for hitting because journalists were in there. And No. 3, even if there were Iraqi officials in there, were they firing, and were they holding journalists as hostages or human shields? There's no evidence of that.

Actually, I'm amazed CNN let Amanpour say this. Maybe she'll get fired now. I think there's one thing Amanpour is missing, though... journalists are no longer "off limits," in fact they are targets. Why? Because if they're in the Palestine Hotel they can report on the invasion without Pentagon supervision. Tommy Franks and Dubya won't stand for that. Remember: you're either with us, or against us. If you're against us -- in other words, reporting the truth -- you will be killed.

I wonder... did the Israelis teach the US military how to target journalists?

Maybe peace activists will be next.

2003-04-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a prime example of why the Pentagon wants to bomb al-Jazeera (above). You're not supposed to see things like this. The Pentagon knows that if you see too many images like this, you may demand and end to Bush's illegal and immoral war.

"The tank was receiving fire from the hotel, RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and small-arms fire, and engaged with one tank round. The firing stopped," said General Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, speaking at Baghdad's international airport.

French TV film shows US tank blasting hotel

I guess they were firing their cameras, which is, of course, more damaging to the Anglo-American effort to kill Iraqis than any number of RPGs.

"I did not hear any shots in the direction of the tank, which was stationed at the west entrance of the Al-Jumhuriya (Republic) bridge, 600 metres north-west of the hotel," said Herve de Ploeg, the journalist and film editor on contract with the French channel who filmed the attack.

Al-Jazeera television said on Tuesday its cameraman Tarek Ayoub was killed during a U.S. air raid on Baghdad which also set the Arab network's office ablaze... Jazeera, one of the most widely watched channels in the Arab world, has come under fire from U.S. and British officials for showing images of slain Western soldiers and U.S. prisoners of war."

US Bombs Al-Jazeera Baghdad Office - Kills Cameraman

So much for freedom of the press. Of course, that freedom is only good for the corporate types over at Fox and CNN, you know those who are the Dubya Ministry of Propaganda. It really steams them that Arabs watch their own satellite news station -- and those stations report the truth. I mean, how many Americans would support this dirty war if they had to see dismembered kids and old women every time they tuned in?

Jazeera and fellow Arab network Abu Dhabi TV are the only two international channels with their own offices in Baghdad... All other media organizations used to operate from a press center at the Information Ministry, but they moved to a hotel after the ministry was bombed.

Yeah, and when they moved into the Palestine Hotel they were attacked. The message is clear: don't report the news as you see it, report the news as the Pentagon wants you to see it. If people see too much blood and guts and kids minus arms with third degree burns, well, they might join the protesters who are now being targeted with rubber bullets in Oakland. The Pentagon calls this sort of thing coming to terms with mass murder in our names the Vietnam Syndrome.

"It seems as if the George W. Bush administration has kicked the Vietnam syndrome," writes H. R. McMaster of the Hoover Institution. "Maybe it is time for the rest of us to do the same."

Naturally, neocon psychopaths have "kicked the Vietnam syndrome" -- those without conscience, however, usually don't have to kick anything -- while the rest of us struggle with the morality of murdering innocent people. It helps if they are not permitted to know the truth or see gruesome images of children killed in their name.

It also helps to kill the journalists.

2003-04-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

Look at the expression on this Iraqi man's face. If he became a suicide bomber tomorrow, would you blame him? If an Iraqi killed your kid, would you want to kill Iraqis? If so, why is it "terrorist" for Iraqis to feel the same way?

--

From the UK Mirror:

But do you know how many more evil regimes currently operate? Try Zimbabwe where opponents of Robert Mugabe are arrested and tortured. So why not invade there? So why don't the coalition put things right? The answer is simple. Either corporate America do not need regime change, or military America knows it could not pull it off.

The truth about this grossly immoral war is that America's right wing, pro-Israeli politicians planned to oust Saddam years ago. September 11 gave them the cover to destroy the most powerful Arab state, re-draw the Middle East and control the Earth's second biggest oil reserves.

Ask yourself again why we have invaded a sovereign state.

How would you feel if China eventually decides to make Britain a puppet state, and drives its tanks into the Palace of Westminster?

Will we have a moral case to oppose them? Or like the Iraqis who tread on our unexploded cluster bombs, will we not have a leg to stand on? Think about it.

Well, I don't know about the Brits, but most Americans don't want to go there. Large numbers of them believe Saddam and Osama are the same person. Some of them apparently think Iraqi children are expendable, or some of them are so disconnected from reality they don't think innocent people are suffering -- CNN and Fox, of course, don't show this suffering -- and millions of Americans not only think Bush is doing the right thing, but he is admirable. But then Hitler was loved and admired, too.

Nearly a whole nation suffering from mass delusion.

Is there something in the water?

--

Speaking of water:

The current invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia poses a grave threat to the right to water of Iraq's 24 million inhabitants, almost half of them children under the age of 15. Anglo-American military forces have already laid siege to numerous urban centers in southern and central Iraq, disrupting electrical, water and sanitations systems that sustain millions of civilians. With the approach of summer, when temperatures in this region regularly exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the likelihood of water-borne disease epidemics is alarmingly high... The situation is leading to a rise in disease and we've already seen some incidents of cholera now in the south, as well as what we call Black Water Fever, which is extremely deadly if you're under 5...(The cholera outbreak is) of extreme concern to us because not only does it show that there's been a major impact due to unclean water in the area, but also our ability to get in and reach these people in the middle of a combat zone is extremely limited right now.

Water under siege in Iraq: US/UK military forces risk committing war crimes by depriving civilians of safe water

2003-04-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

"Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide," cried Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12 (above, left). Ali's story was carried by the UK Mirror, not CNN or the Fascist News Channel (otherwise known as Fox). On Fox and CNN, only bad men hooked up with Saddam get blasted, not innocent kids like this. "Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy," said Dr. Sadek al-Mukhtar. "Now I do. War should be against the military. America is killing civilians."

It's not only killing civilians, but journalists as well (no, not Geraldo). The other photo above is of a journalist pulled out of the the Palestine Hotel (appropriately named); the hotel was targeted by the US military yesterday. The "coalition" also bombed al-Jazeera's offices (remember: the military keeps telling us how "smart" its bombs are, so we can only assume all the journalists and children killed and maimed in Iraq were killed and maimed on purpose).

In the last 19 days, 8 journalists have died in Iraq. No, they didn't die in Saddam's torture chambers, but at the hands of the Anglo-American war machine. "The death of [al-Jazeera's] Ayyoub makes this one of the most dangerous wars in media history with eight press lives now lost, following the death yesterday of two reporters -- one from Spain and the Germany -- in an Iraqi rocket attack on a US army command center south of Baghdad," writes the Guardian.

Now, if the Anglo-American butchers of Baghdad (and everywhere else in Iraq) could find Samia Nakhoul, who reported the Ali story, they could lob off a tank round in his general direction.

Support "our" troops! If little Ali had arms, he might even wave a plastic US flag...

2003-04-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

"Mr Wolfowitz has been involved in the Pentagon's creation of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which is preparing to begin operations in the southern Iraq port city of Umm Qasr," the Bush Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, reports.

Humanitarian Assistance? These demented neocons are truly Orwellian. Is it humanitarian to indiscriminately cluster bomb children?

"We expect a severe deterioration of the health situation during the days to come due to the daily bombardment that results in damage of infrastructure and sharp rise in civilian casualties," Fadela Chaib, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman told Reuters.

"We must make sure that Baghdad does not become another Basra," said Wivina Belmonte, spokesperson for the U.N Children's Fund.

"We are barely past the two weeks of this war, and already we've made enormous progress," boasted Wolfowitz.

Dead babies, market bombings, terrorizing an entire population in the name of big oil corporations and the "security" of Israel -- for the vampire Wolfowitz, this is progress.

2003-04-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

The unavoidable fact is that the Internet is incompatible with a totalitarian system of government. Therefore, either we are a bunch of delusionary paranoids, and what we see happening in this country is only a figment of our feverished imagination, and, consequently, the Internet will not be banned, or we are right, and it will disappear. Actually, the disappearance of the current free Internet will serve as a litmus test that will accurately mark our final loss of freedom.

-- Servando González, Kiss Your Internet Good-bye.

2003-04-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

It's something millions of people have paid for with their lives over the centuries -- the arrogance and cruelty of western Christianity. At "Camp Bushmaster" (no kidding) in the desert near Najaf, Iraq, US Army chaplain Josh Llano will give water to both Muslim Arabs and heathen US soldiers if they convert or accept Jesus. "It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized," reports the Miami Herald. "He calls himself a 'Southern Baptist evangelist,' and justifies the war and killing with a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, which he often recites: 'Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's... This means we are called upon by our government to fight and that is giving unto Caesar, as the Bible tells us."

No, this isn't the Crusades. It's just Americans doing what they do best.

--

Not only will they be Christianized (ask Franklin Graham and the Christian Zionists about this) but their cultural heritage will be looted by rich "influential [art] dealers," according the Sunday Herald. "It has emerged that a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with US defense and state department officials prior to the start of military action... The group is known to consist of a number of influential dealers who favor a relaxation of Iraq's tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities. Its treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as 'retentionist' and has said he would support a post-war government that would make it easier to have antiquities dispersed to the US." In other words, these rich looters were unable to steal Iraq's antiquities.

Funny how people are "retentionist" when it comes to their cultural identity.

"News of the group's meeting with the government has alarmed scientists and archaeologists who fear the ACCP is working to a hidden agenda that will see the US authorities ease restrictions on the movement of Iraqi artefacts after a coalition victory in Iraq."

First, the US bombs the hell out of Iraq, and then the carpetbaggers move in and steal everything not nailed down. Finally, in absence of their own culture (remember: Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization) US corporations can import a McDonaldized culture for shell-shocked Iraqis.

That's what Bush's "liberation" is all about -- Christianizing the heathens and selling them buckets of KFC chicken. Oh, and they also have some mighty fine oil and, besides, Israel doesn't like them so they have to be colonized (again). Last time around, they resisted to the point where Winston Churchill thought gassing them was a good idea. Of course, gas is messy and ineffective, so this time around we used clusterbombs.

2003-04-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

Geoff Hoon, the [British] Defense Secretary, suggested yesterday that mothers of Iraqi children killed by cluster bombs would "one day" thank Britain for their use... Mr Hoon said that cluster bombs were "perfectly legal" weapons with an "entirely legitimate military role" and his advice had been that they protected British troops from unnecessary risk... "It was an outrageous thing to say. Does he seriously think he will win hearts and minds with talk like that? It was a typical quote from a conqueror, not a liberator," [Alice Mahon, MP for Halifax] said.

I don't know if Hoon has any kids. I can't imagine a father saying such things. But then Nazis running extermination camps loved their kids and put millions of innocent people to death, many of them children. Hoon, Blair, Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, et al -- these are modern Nazis, political psychopaths, capable of ordering terrible atrocities in the name of political abstractions. And like Nazis before them, they will eventually lead their people into ruin and chaos.

2003-04-05T20:21:00.000-08:00

Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Bill Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Bill Kristol says no. True, the press is very negative, but when you examine the facts in the field you see that there is no terrorism, no mass destruction, no attacks on Israel. The oil fields in the south have been saved, air control has been achieved, American forces are deployed 50 miles from Baghdad. So, even if mistakes were made here and there, they are not serious. America is big enough to handle that. Kristol hasn't the slightest doubt that in the end, General Tommy Franks will achieve his goals. The 4th Cavalry Division will soon enter the fray, and another division is on its way from Texas. So it's possible that instead of an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks it will be a less elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months, but nevertheless Bill Kristol has no doubt at all that the Iraq Liberation War is a just war, an Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Bill Kristol says no. True, the press is very negative, but when you examine the facts in the field you see that there is no terrorism, no mass destruction, no attacks on Israel. The oil fields in the south have been saved, air control has been achieved, American forces are deployed 50 miles from Baghdad. So, even if mistakes were made here and there, they are not serious. America is big enough to handle that. Kristol hasn't the slightest doubt that in the end, General Tommy Franks will achieve his goals. The 4th Cavalry Division will soon enter the fray, and another division is on its way from Texas. So it's possible that instead of an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks it will be a less elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months, but nevertheless Bill Kristol has no doubt at all that the Iraq Liberation War is a just war, an obligatory war.

Ari Shavit, White man's burden

Bill Kristol, the Zionist, is a coward. He believes non-Zionist children should die in Iraq so Israel can be top dog on the Middle Eastern block. Kristol is a war criminal, or should be charged as one after this illegal and immoral war is over. If this war is "obligatory," well, Kristol needs to go over there and kill Iraqi children himself, otherwise he's a coward. No doubt Bill would change his mind -- and piss his pants -- if he was confronted with fellow soldiers minus arms, with their brains blown out, with their intestines wrapped around their knees.

When is America going to finally wake up? Bush needs to be run out of Washington along with the demented and murderous neocons. Unfortunately, we have to wait until next year for this because Congress will never impeach Bush -- too many of them think just like he does. But then, if the last election is any indication, the Bushites will fix the next election, too.

2003-04-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

The US military is reportedly in Baghdad. They must be invisible because nobody can see them. "A reporter touring several sections of the city by car at midday saw no coalition soldiers," reports the Washington Post.

"It's like a jihad. They were given a rifle and told to become a martyr," said Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, of fighting between US forces and volunteers from Jordan, Egypt, and Sudan.

It's not like a jihad, it is a jihad. Suicide bombings and ambushes will now become a permanent feature of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq.

"As the U.S. troops drove into Suwayrah, hundreds of young men in civilian clothes waved from the roadside. 'Look at all the Republican Guard waving at us,' said Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings of Sarasota, Fla., suggesting the men on the roadside had quickly changed out of their uniforms."

This is about standard for the course. All young Iraqi men will now be suspected of directly collaborating with Saddam Hussein, the same way all young Palestinian men are suspected of working for Hamas or Arafat.

"At another location south of Baghdad, 3rd Infantry soldiers found an ambulance that was carrying cases of grenades, a rocket propelled grenade launcher, and boxes of classified Republican Guard documents... 'We see these ambulances racing around all the time, now I'm going to have to think twice about them,' said Staff Sgt. Thomas Slago of Los Angeles."

Again, the West Bank and Gaza. Next up: shooting up ambulances. Can murdering peace activists and UN workers be far behind?

Meanwhile, it's the Osama bin Laden factor. "The United States said Friday that victory in Iraq does not depend on finding Saddam Hussein and rejected the possibility that US forces may not find the banned weapons central to the US case for war," reports Agence France-Presse.

No, of course not. Saddam (and Osama) are excuses. The real objective is to take over Middle Eastern countries, one by one, and install pro-US-Israel governments. Saddam will now become invisible and references to him will soon be relegated to the inner pages of the New York Times.

"'We don't know' if the Iraqi leader is alive, said [Ari] Fleischer. 'In the bigger scheme of things it really doesn't matter, because whether it is him or whether it isn't him, the regime's days are numbered and are coming to an end.'"

Note: it does not matter if Bush gets Saddam or not. He can be marginalized, or so they think. Saddam and WMD were an excuse to get an army on the ground in Iraq.

"'I think that the Iraqis don't want to have Saddam Hussein statues left behind. They don't want Saddam Hussein's torture left behind. They don't want his brutality left behind,' the spokesman said."

Only the Bushites know what Iraqis want.

Meanwhile, the Bushites are drawing up plans to attack Iran and North Korea. "In the aftermath of Iraq, dealing with the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be of equal importance as dealing with the North Korean nuclear weapons program," Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton said. "This is going to be a substantial challenge."

"Sometimes people think we're a little bit 'the-sky-is-falling, the-sky-is-falling' on these regimes that the president called the axis of evil," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. "Once we have a better atmosphere after Iraq, one of the things we're going to have to look at is how the world gets itself better organized to deal with issues concerning weapons of mass destruction."

Of course, once the Iranian oil fields are "secure," and there are sufficient numbers of Iranian resistance fighters and suicide bombers, all mention of WMD will shrink back to the inner pages of the War Street Journal.

"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world," says extreme right winger Jesse Helms.

Lovely. As for the rest of us... we need to shut up, support "our" troops, keep paying our war taxes, and wave our little plastic flags. Some of us, as well, may want to think about what all this selfish and violent empire grabbing means to us personally: soon enough we will be asked to donate our kids to Bush's Armageddon.

No doubt Ariel Sharon is smiling.

2003-04-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

Caption: "An alleged suicide bomber appears on Arabic television network al-Jazeera, April 4, 2003. The network said the tape was made by two Iraqi women before they set off a suicide car bomb that killed three soldiers, a pregnant woman and the driver, northwest of Baghdad. Photo by Al-Jazeera/Reuters."

It didn't take long for Iraq to turn into the West Bank and Gaza.

--

"In a move that could signal the beginning of the final and most difficult stage of Operation Iraqi Freedom, American troops entered Baghdad Saturday morning," says Fox News.

No, the most difficult stage lies ahead -- occupation. The Iraqis will fight against the Americans like the Palestinians fight against the Israelis. There will not be a final stage until the US leaves.

It's a good deal for some people in the Bush administration, I mean those with lingering and not so lingering connections to the death merchant industry. Ask Cheney's wife, she worked for Lockheed Martin for a while. We know where her husband worked.

"With U.S. commandos already inside the Iraqi capital, columns of Army and Marine armored vehicles advanced from the south. They met occasionally stiff resistance, fighting Iraqi tanks as well as army, Republican Guard and Fedayeen forces."

I bet they also met average Iraqi citizens determined to fight against the invasion of their country. Of course, Fox doesn't say that. It's only the evil remnants of Saddam's "paramilitaries" (i.e., citizens with guns and maybe RPGs) and the Republican Guard and Fedayeen.

"They're pretty much cut off in all directions," Air Force Cpt. Dani Burrows said Saturday morning. "Pretty much what you've got here is a chokehold around Baghdad."

Now what, Einstein? Siege warfare? Starve them out? Saturation bombing? How else to defeat around 5 million Iraqis who don't want you invading their country?

"In Washington, a senior administration official said the airport was under U.S. control but not considered secured, in part because it was within range of artillery inside the capital city."

Yeah, just like the Israelis aren't safe from those home-made mortars the Palestinians cobbled together. Or roving suicide bombers. Or the booby-trapped alleyways of Jenin. Baghdad will soon become Gaza City on steroids. It will be the Jenin refugee camp.

"A senior Defense official also said that the large stash of a mysterious white powder found in an industrial plant near Baghdad is not a chemical weapon. Investigators are still determining exactly what the substance is and what it might be used for, but officials are certain it is not a synthetic toxin of any sort."

Old news. For a while there everybody thought it was anthrax or something. Probably a batch left over from a shipment sent to Saddam by one of those American corporations back in the days when Rumsfeld went to Iraq to shake Saddam's hand. That was before Saddam got on our bad side and before the Israelis decided he had to go down. Before PNAC wrote any of its papers.

"The facility, situated about 25 miles south of Baghdad, is identified as the al Qa Qaa industrial complex. The plant was responsible for the production of phosgene, a chemical compound that has several civil and military uses."

Half the stuff under my kitchen sink probably has a military use.

"U.N. weapons inspectors visited the site more than a dozen times before the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Yeah, and they didn't find anything. Blix said the other day he was nothing more than a patsy for Dubya and his gang of neocon vampires. The Iraqis were so insistent on going along to get along (and not get invaded) that they dismantled a few old rockets before Bush sent in the Marines. Of course, nothing satisifed Powell and the Americans. Somebody found a big model airplane stuck together with duct tape and said it was a threat. Fox and CNN had fun with that one.

Operation Iraqi Freedom. I'd like to know who makes up these names. It's very Orwellian -- freedom = death and cluster bombed children.

Only the Americans believe their own propaganda. Everybody else is mortified and sickened by what's going down. The whole world is watching... and they are disgusted and outraged by what they see.

"U.S. military officials said the Iraqi capital had been effectively isolated with the capture and renaming of Saddam International Airport -- now Baghdad International Airport, U.S. officials say -- and the securing of key highways into the city center. Coalition forces have also secured the northern roads connecting Baghdad to Tikrit, the birthplace and reported stronghold of Saddam," reports ABC News.

These Americans take everything so personally. Baghdad International Airport? So when are the flights from New York and Paris going to arrive? And this symbolic obession with Tikrit. It's all about Saddam and the Americans. Why do average Iraqis have to pay for it with the lives of their kids? Because this is a racist war. Iraqis don't count for much -- its their water (for the Israelis) and their oil (for the US and the Israelis) that counts for a whole heck of a lot.

The Brits called them wogs and the Americans call them ragheads. In Vietnam they called them gooks. I don't know what the current derogatory term is for native Iraqis. It's easier to kill people if you dehumanize them.

"In their place around Baghdad are now U.S. special operation teams, which are calling in airstrikes on Iraqi convoys and troops, and in the days to come, are expected to be active in the city itself, going after Iraqi leadership and trying to organize opposition."

Organize the opposition? The only opposition I see is coming from the vast majority of Iraqis who want to get rid of the Americans and Brits who they quite rightly see as there to enslave them and turn Iraq into the West Bank and Gaza.

Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN -- it's to the point where their reports are all the same: news fabricated, spun, and dissemenated by the Bush White House and the Pentagon.

If you really want to know what's going on in Baghdad, read Robert Fisk.

2003-04-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

Above: "Brooke Rosacker, widow of Cpl. Randal Kent Rosacker, watches as Marines take away the casket carrying the body of Cpl. Randal Rosacker, during funeral services Friday, April 4, 2003 at the First United Methodist Church in Alamosa, Colo. Rosacker was killed in action in Iraq"

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan and Bush Senior speechwriter and Bush Junior cheerleader, writes in the War Street Journal:

What is happening now in Iraq is what happens when your troops and their leaders do everything possible to limit civilian casualties. They do this because it is humane and necessary to a great power, and also because each civilian death is a propaganda opportunity for the antiwar effort.

If they wanted to avoid civilian casualties, of course, they wouldn't be dropping cluster bombs on children, but never mind. According to this obviously demented woman, the dead and dying of Iraq are simply pawns to be used by cynical antiwar types. Apparently the Iraqis don't warrant any consideration as human beings. They are political hurdles for neocon sociopaths, period.

We are going to win, as everyone seems to know, but there is no longer a chance that it will be "easy." This is bad because easy is better. Easy means fewer dead and less dread. But -- a big if somewhat grim but -- there is some good to be gotten from the long haul.

Grim for Iraqi school kids, not Peggy Noonan. Grim, as well, for working class kids who join the military because they can't find decent employment in Bush's Enron economy. Of course, for the Noonans of the world, working class kids are expendable. How many neocons have kids serving in the military? Point is, they expect other people to do their dying for them. In fact, they demand it.

A resentful world is about to see that America had to fight for it. They are about to see America could fight for it--that we had and have the stomach for a struggle. Our implacable foes and sometimes doubting friends will see that America's armed forces don't just shock and awe, we stay and fight.

Since the world is outraged and terrified by the illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq, according to Noonan they are "resentful." Um, no, they are frightened and bewildered, wondering if Paul Wolfowitz and the neocons will invade them next. Moreover, since they are not sociopaths like Noonan, they are disturbed by the prospect of mass murder

The world will be reminded that America still knows how to suffer. In a county as in an individual, the ability to withstand pain--the ability to suffer--says a great deal about character. It speaks of maturity and courage, among other things. The world knew half a century ago that America will absorb pain to reach progress. It is not all bad that they are seeing it again.

No doubt about it, Noonan is truly insane. Americans know how to "suffer" -- well, at least the poor and shrinking middle class know how to suffer. It's their kids who will pay the ultimate price for the empire -- and before you know it they will be drafted and have suffering forced on them, it will not be voluntary anymore. The draft's coming back because there are not enough people in Bush's military to invade all the places on his neocon hit list -- Syria, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and maybe Lebanon.

Americans too may be heartened to see that we know how to absorb pain. Deep in the heart of many pro-invasion thinkers has been a question they do not ponder for it could only be answered in time. It was: Can we still take it? It won't be bad for us to see that the answer is yes.

We? Again, she means the poor and middle class. Rich kids never go to war. They stay home with people like Noonan and count their stock earnings from General Electric and Raytheon.

The biggest threat to America now, apart from Iraqi regulars and irregulars, is not a person but a phenomenon. It is the twisting or abusing of facts to underscore a point of view one wishes to see disseminated. I mean propaganda. The antiwar left did not pick up its marbles and go home when the war began. They just went home and waited for something bad to happen that they could exploit. They have it now: a war that is taking time and producing deaths on the field.

Yep, we faked all those photos of mutilated Iraqis on our home computers, Peg. Call it propaganda if you must. I'll call it what it is -- evidence of war crimes, which you support and encourage as a skilled propagandist. You wrote speeches for Reagan and Bush Senior, so you know something about propaganda. Oh, in case you failed to notice, the antiwar movement spans right, left, and center.

The antiwar left has shown precious little interest in or compassion for members of the U.S. armed services. And yet you can bet the farm that they are about to discover a great warm hearted concern as the bodies of American fighters come home. The left is going to use those deaths as propaganda in their attempts to stop the war.

The antiwar movement cares about the soldiers -- so much we want to BRING THEM HOME NOW AND SAVE THEIR LIVES! On the other hand, it is you who don't care about the lives of soldiers because you and the neocons want them to fight and die in invasions of conquest.

2003-04-04T12:33:00.000-08:00

I guess the editors and writers over at the Israeli paper Haaretz must be self-hating Jews (this is what Jews who criticize Israel are routinely called by Zionists). "The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history," writes Ari Shavit. "They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan."

It figures. I bet the demented neocons really like Winston Chruchill's position on dealing with the Kurdish rebellion of 1920, when Churchill was colonial secretary.

"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes."

"If the Kurds hadn't learned by our example to behave themselves in a civilized way then we had to spank their bottoms," observed British Wing-Commander Gale. "This was done by bombs and guns."

"The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage," said Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris (later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command, responsible for ordering the phosphorus fire bombing of Dresden). "Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured."

So, the next time you see a picture of a dead or mutilated Arab kid (see the photo above), remember who the neocons consider as their heroes -- mostly war criminals and philosophers who advocated theft and deceit; remember, Machiavelli believed generosity should only be shown to soldiers with goods taken from a pillaged enemy city and that virtues which we commonly praise in people might result in the downfall of a leader. "In Chapter 18, perhaps the most controversial section of The Prince," writes the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Machiavelli argues that the prince should know how to be deceitful when it suits his purpose. When the prince needs to be deceitful, though, he must not appear that way. Indeed he must always exhibit five virtues in particular: mercy, honesty, humaneness, uprightness, and religiousness."

In other words, according to the neocons, an effective leader is one who lies well, who acts compassionate but is actually a sociopath.

No wonder they had Bush appointed to the presidency.

2003-04-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

Far right wing nut jobs to rule Iraq

"A Pentagon lawyer who sought to have US citizens imprisoned indefinitely without charge as part of the war on terrorism will supervise civil administration in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is removed," reports the Guardian.

If this guy thinks Americans accused of so-called terrorism don't have any rights, imagine what he'll do to Iraqis accused of defending themselves against the illegal US invasion.

Michael Mobbs will take charge of 11 of 23 Iraqi ministries. "Other top-level appointees include James Woolsey, a former CIA director with Israeli connections who has long pursued a theory that President Hussein, rather than Islamic militants, was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. Another is Zalmay Khalilzad, who once sympathised with the Taliban but later changed tack."

"Both Woolsey and [Jay] Garner [tapped to run Iraq] have been associated with the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), which promotes military and strategic ties between the United States and Israel. Woolsey serves on the board of advisers of JINSA, as well as the Pentagon's DPB [the Defense Policy Board, until recently run by Richard Perle], and several other neoconservative groups, including Americans for Victory Over Terrorism," writes Jim Lobe.

Gee, do you think the Iraqis will think their future will be determined by far right wing nut jobs who have sworn allegiance to Israel? Considering how the Zionists in Israel treat Palestinian Arabs, is it reasonable to conclude the Iraqis believe they're in for the same?

Or, as Abdelhamid Riahi, political analyst and editorial writer for Tunisia's main Arabic language Achourouk daily, put it recently: "The war against Iraq is the implementation of a plan combining Israeli ambitions to wipe out the Iraqi leadership... and U.S. strategy to extend its world domination to Arab oil in the Gulf... [It is a] marriage between the Jewish lobby in the United States and the symbols of Christian extremism in Washington."

2003-04-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

I swear these guys make it up as they go along.

"American forces might stop short of storming Baghdad and instead isolate it while the makings of a new national government are put in place, President Bush's top military adviser said Thursday," reports ABC News.

A "new national government," but administered by who? Jay Garner, the "on leave" from defense contractor L-3 Communications JINSAite Fortune says "is about to become the most important businessman you've never heard of," that Jay Garner, the one who "wouldn't dodge bullets; he'd bite them," as retired Air Force buddy Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney so colorfully put it.

Oh, the Iraqis will love that. But then if this is going to be standard colonialism, when the natives get too restless you send out the army and kill a few dozen of them. Shuts 'em up for a while.

Or maybe the convicted bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi will get the job?

"Critics of the Bush Administration's neo-conservative wing, which dominates the Pentagon, say that its ranks are anxious to build a new Iraq in the image of the United States, using Westernised Iraqi exiles such as [CIA financed] Ahmed Chalabi, a favourite of the [Rumsfeld] Pentagon who is disliked by the State Department. The differences over how to involve Mr Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition leader, have raged for months," writes Times Online.

You know, like Indonesia was back in the good old days when the CIA's guy Suharto killed more than 100,000 "communists" for the CIA and US State Department. Not finished there, he moved on to East Timor and slaughtered thousands.

How many Iraqi "irregulars" (read: patriotic Iraqis defending their country from invasion) and Fayhadeen will die in similar circumstances? 100,00 or 500,00? As the rabid neocons keep telling us, Iraq will be "Americanized," which is to say it will look something like Iran before the Shah was kicked out and SAVAK dismantled. It will be a police state pumping some of the best light crude in the world. It will be an Indonesia where Americans have their shoes made. Iraq will be a slave labor camp like much of the third world.

"For now, Garner is essentially presiding over a government-in-waiting," reports the AP. "Other than a brief trip over the border to the Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr this week, Garner and his team have spent the last two weeks holed up in a Kuwaiti villa on the shores of the Persian Gulf hashing out plans for the work to come."

"As a former Army General who until recently was building weapons systems now being used in the Iraq war, Jay Garner is no man of peace. In fact, he's just the man to inflame Iraq and the region," warns StopJayArner.com. "A close friend of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Garner was named president of SY Technology in 1997 -- despite having almost no experience in business. Biff Baker, a former lieutenant colonel at Army Space Command, accused SY Technology of having received $100 million in contracts solely because of Garner's Pentagon connections."

If all goes to neocon plan, JINSA's Garner will be the CEO of the New Americanized Arab Middle East. His defense -- excuse me, let's call a spade a spade: death merchant -- friends can make a fortune erecting and arming bases in Iraq to attack other pesky Arab Muslims in the neighborhood.

Toss a coin... who will be invaded next, Iran or Syria?

Jason Vest:

For [the neocon] crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents -- be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers -- is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East -- a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

Jason Vest again:

JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the US government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the Palestinians. To give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one stone): According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all violence in the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely "to protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's only real financial supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence against Israel and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and paymaster."

Finally, let's hear from the good old boys over at JINSA:

JINSA's Flag & General Officers Trip to Israel has, for 20 years, taken recently retired American officers to Israel (and, more recently, Jordan) for an opportunity to learn more about a critical area of American national security interest... They have been, without a doubt, the best source of military information and strategy that JINSA could imagine... And so, on occasion, JINSA crafts a statement of policy that we believe reflects the American military way of thinking, and we ask them to sign on if they agree... Why the emphasis? Because the press has noticed that Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, USA (ret.) - soon to be military coordinator in Iraq - traveled to Israel with JINSA and signed our October 2000 statement. The insinuation, aloud or not, is that his participation in our endeavor means that JINSA influenced or changed his thinking on crucial issues of American national security policy, and furthermore that an appreciation for Israel is a detriment to the formulation of Iraq policy. Behind the insinuation is the canard that JINSA (or Jews) are running this war for purposes at odds with American national interest. JINSA has more than once been referred to as the center of a "cabal" by people who look for conspiracies hiding under the bed with their dust bunnies.

If the "cabal" shoe fits, JINSA should wear it.

2003-04-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

Remember -- the Geneva Convention was created for other people -- such as primitive Arabs -- and not the Anglo-US military. Above, detained Iraqis who should not be humiliated (as in having their pictures taken), but are not humiliated -- they are "liberated" (since some of the men pictured here are Iraqi soldiers, there's good chance they will be "liberated" in an Iraqi Gitmo torture camp).

--

In America -- where illegal and undeclared wars are sacred and the truth is hated and evokes visceral reactions -- it doesn't take much to work far right reactionary senators up into a vicious lather.

Consider the remarks of Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky, as reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"I think [Peter Arnett] should be brought back and tried as a traitor to the United States of America, for his aiding and abetting the Iraqi government during a war," Bunning said in a conference call with reporters. Later in a speech on the Senate floor, Bunning said: "Mr. Arnett can apologize all he likes for being a 'useful idiot' for Saddam and his barbaric regime. But that's not enough for me, and it's certainly not enough for our soldiers and many Americans... I think Mr. Arnett should be met at the border and arrested should he come back to America," said Bunning.

In other words, if you report the truth as you see it -- and your version of events differ from dictator and warmonger Bush and the rabid neocons and their handmaidens in the corporate bought-and-sold Senate -- there are so-called lawmakers out there who believe you should be tried for treason.

In some places of the world, treason is punishable by death. I don't know if Bunning believes Arnett deserves a lethal injection for what he has said, but it wouldn't surprise me. Almost nothing these born-again Nazis do surprises me these days. We live, after all, in fascist state.

It's beginning to feel like Nazi Germany around here. Under the Nazis and other such authoritarian regimes (like the ones the US supports in Latin America), you can be arrested (or killed outright) for what you think and say, not necessarily what you do.

Homegrown American Nazism is what people like Sen. Jim Bunning are all about. It rankles them that anybody would disagree with Bush and the demented mass murdering neocons. That's how terminal their intolerance and hatred is.

Peter Arnett did absolutely nothing to endanger Bush's troops. He did, however, disagree and call a spade a spade which, for a media person, is unforgivable to the Nazi Americans currently in control of the government.

2003-04-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

If we are to believe reports floating around the internet, U.S. special operations forces blew up an Iraqi pipeline that delivered more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day to Syria. "The Kuwaiti report was not immediately confirmed by other sources. A Western intelligence source said on Wednesday that the Iraqi-Syrian pipeline was not blown up. The source would not elaborate."

This is what the US did to the Japanese prior to WWII. "FDR did not want to cut off oil. As he told his Cabinet on July 18, an embargo meant war, for that would force oil-starved Japan to seize the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies," writes Patrick J. Buchanan. "But a State Department lawyer named Dean Acheson drew up the sanctions in such a way as to block any Japanese purchases of U.S. oil. By the time FDR found out, in September, he could not back down... And so Japan attacked."

"Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed," Acheson once quipped.

--

"The [shock and awe] thesis needs confronting since we are likely to see a lot more shock and awe in the coming days. Ullman’s [the author of shock and awe] case is desperately short of evidence. He does not cite the ineffectiveness of the terror bombing of German or British cities in 1941-45. He does not cite Hanoi or Belgrade, where massive bombing produced no collapse in civilian morale, if anything the reverse. He is blind to the most glaring instance of a 'near incomprehensible level of massive destruction', al-Qaeda’s attack on New York on September 11, 2001. None of these cases produced surrender 'over the space of a few hours or days'. Most induced the opposite, a fierce desire for retaliation." (Simon Jenkins, Baghdad will be near impossible to conquer.)

--

Can you imagine the response if the Iraqis shelled a hotel where Fox and CNN had camp set up?

"The Basra Sheraton, whose only guests are al-Jazeera journalists, received four direct hits this morning during a heavy artillery bombardment, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster," 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."

Bush is currently holding al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj at the Gitmo torture facility. He was picked up reporting news you won't see on Fox while on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Dec. 15, 2001.

"Two Western journalists have arrived safely back in Kuwait City after being arrested, beaten up and deprived of food and water in Iraq -- by members of the US Army’s military police," writes Arab News. "Despite possessing the proper 'Unilateral Journalist' accreditation issued by the Coalition Forces Central Command, both journalists were detained."

"The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie," reports Fintan Dunne, the editor of GuluFuture.com. 'In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said: 'Who cares.. ..They've been warned.'"

Once upon a time, we Americans cherished the principle of a free press. But that was before multinational corporations and death merchants (most notable: General Electric) gobbled up all the media corporations, before they devoured all the radio stations, and syndicated all the newspapers in the nation. The far right wing nut job Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News rule the news roost and make CNN seem downright liberal by way of comparison. Murdoch also runs the neocon organ National Review (edited by Bill Kristol) where so-called neoliberals give voice to their desires to take over the Middle East.

Fox is the standard. Fox is the Bush White House.

The competition gets bombed and has its journalists sent to terror camps.

2003-04-02T17:44:00.000-08:00

Photo (Nasser Shiyoukhi) caption: "A mobile SMS message with the image of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) can be seen on the screen of a cellular phone in the West Bank town of Hebron Wednesday April 2, 2003. The writing in Arabic reads as though Hussein is saying 'God saves my soul for you, God destroys America'."

--

"Much of the videotape was too terrible to show on television and the agencies' Baghdad editors felt able to send only a few minutes of a 21-minute tape that included a father holding out pieces of his baby and screaming 'cowards, cowards' into the camera. Two lorryloads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, could be seen outside the Hilla hospital," writes Robert Fisk in Iraq.

Cowards, indeed. Fisk is writing about the 11 civilians, nine of them children, killed in Hilla in central Iraq yesterday. It's possible the US used cluster bombs on these children from Hilla. "The U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said it is investigating reports that cluster bombs killed at least 11 civilians in Hillah, a city 60 miles south of Baghdad and the scene of heavy fighting," writes Mark Fritz for the AP.

Look at this dense thicket of buildings in Baghdad, a city of 5 million people approximately the size of LA. In a few days US and Brit soldiers will be fighting snipers in any number of the windows and rooftops in the photo above. I guess that means the US will have to pull a Beirut like the Israelis did and a lot of these lovely buildings will be reduced to steaming piles of rubble. Of course, a lot of these buildings, and many more in the distance, will house Iraqi civilians.

It's going to be a bloodbath. I don't see how the US will capture Baghdad without intense bombing raids and unheard of civilian deaths. Can an army of 200,000 soldiers capture and hold a city of 5 million people, many of whom have no problem grabbing an AK47 and killing invading Americans and Brits?

No, it will be Grozny.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that every building in this once quiet Soviet industrial town of half a million people has been damaged by fighting, most of it beyond repair," Richard Beeston writes about Grozny. "The scale of destruction is staggering. Long avenues of Soviet apartment blocks stand empty, gutted by fire and pitted by remorseless artillery rounds, which in some cases ripped away whole floors and in others left neat circular holes where the shells penetrated the outside walls before exploding inside... No Russian or Chechen commander ever uttered the phrase 'bombed back to the Stone Age', but that is exactly what their war achieved."

In fact, it will be worse than Grozny. Sooner or later the US will have to saturate bomb Baghdad for two reasons: a) to shorten the invasion and break the will of the Iraqis to resist, and b) to avoid mass US and Brit causalities and in the process turn the tide of public opinion against the invasion. Global public opinion is already strongly against this neocon invasion of the Middle East, this Second Crusades for the American Christian Zionists. Bush has nothing but contempt for the rest of the world.

--

"Let's look at what we know. Hussein is an admirer of Ho Chi Minh. He has also studied the American debacles in Lebanon and Somalia. He and his staff have had 12 years to think about how to fight," writes Gary Anderson of the Washington Post. "Phase I assumes eventual defeat in a conventional war. If defeat is inevitable, he must make the most of it... The second phase would be a protracted guerrilla war against the 'occupation,' which the American-British coalition bills as liberation... Phase III would then be to amass enough semi-conventional power to overwhelm the U.N. and interim government mechanisms. In other words, the concept would be to stage a combination of 'Black Hawk Down' and the 1975 North Vietnamese offensive that crushed South Vietnam."

--

"We are planning for a very difficult fight ahead in Baghdad," Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told a Pentagon news conference. "We are not expecting to drive into Baghdad suddenly and seize it." (U.S. Forces 20 Miles Outside of Baghdad.

2003-04-02T08:04:00.000-08:00

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 price," writes Gene Schenck of Lower Windsor Township, Pennsylvanya. "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.

2003-04-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

Here's Iraq's future, the same future endured by the Palestinians -- occupation, checkpoints, searches, barbed wire, foreign soldiers barking orders. The death of civilians at checkpoints will now become a common occurrence, one reported less and less by the pro-war corporate media. Not a day now passes without an "incident," such as the Apache helicopter attack on a family near Hilla south of Baghdad. The sum total of these increasing attacks on civilians will feed the anger and resentment of the Arab world. Already, thousands of jihadist suicide warriors are streaming across the Iraq border, sworn to kill Americans.

The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq will sputter and eventually fail. This is not defeatism so much as a snapshot of reality -- foreign armies are rarely successful invading large nations and holding territory. It just can't be done. Bush, Rumsfeld, and the Arab-hating pro-Israel neo-cons are living in a violent fantasy world -- Iraq will never be a colony, at least not one where Americans and Brits don't die in uneasy numbers (as they did in Vietnam). Iraqis may hate Saddam; they want to kill Americans.

2003-03-31T17:05:00.000-08:00

In Oceania, it's forbidden to tell the truth. So Peter Arnett discovered when he was fired from NBC and National Geographic. "I am still in shock and awe at being fired," Reuters reports Arnett as writing in the Daily Mirror, who picked him up a day after being fired. "I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologize for it."

Earlier in the day Drudge ran an altered photo of Arnett; somebody at the scandal site made Arnett look like Saddam Hussein.

See, if you report the news as it happens from Baghdad, you're a chump for Saddam. I guess Americans would rather passively accept the lies pumped out by the Bushites -- lies that will get a lot of their children killed, not to mention even more Iraqis (but then most Americans don't care about dead Iraqis).

2003-03-30T23:12:00.000-08:00

Do you think these Iraqi civilians like this soldier from Britain's 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment any less than Saddam Hussein? Foreign invaders are always hated more than local dictators. Russians hated Stalin but when Hitler invaded they paid full allegiance to Uncle Joe. Same with these unfortunate Iraqis. After this Brit allows these folks on their way to a destination unknown, is it possible the man with his hands up will actively assist the militias in fighting the Anglo-American invaders? Do you think he'd do it without a Republican Guard thug threatening him? Isn't violent resistance to invasion normal behavior? If you're a US soldier in Iraq how do you deal with the possibility that every civilian you encounter may kill you? It's Vietnam in the Iraqi desert.

Of course, that's exactly what the Bush neo-cons want to do -- reorder the Middle East through war in favor of US and Israeli policies. But if the Israelis are so hard pressed to contain the Palestinians, what makes Bush think the US and Brits will control nearly 300 million Arabs -- or one billion Muslims?

--

"Journalist Peter Arnett, covering the war from Baghdad, told state-run Iraqi TV in an interview aired Sunday that the American-led coalition's first war plan had failed because of Iraq's resistance and said strategists are 'trying to write another war plan,'" writes David Bauder at the Washington Post.

"'Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces,' Arnett said during the interview broadcast by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt."

No, Peter, the war plans "misjudged the determination" of the Iraqi people to resist invasion. 20th century warfare taught us what that means -- bombing on the scale of Stalingrad or Dresden. Or starvation. Tactics used by various armies and marauders since before the Romans.

"In the interview, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing."

You bet.

"Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States," he said. "It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments."

I'm flabbergasted -- a onetime CNN journalist who says he will tell the truth to the American people.

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, said Arnett's interview demonstrates "more evidence that Peter Arnett is an agenda-driven reporter" who is "primed to believe the U.S. military is going to fail" and that "people resisting us must have a heroic aspect to them."

Actually, all people who resist invasion of their homeland "have a heroic aspect to them."

Lowry is correct, though -- it appears Arnett has an agenda, the same agenda most of us have -- and that's to get Bush to stop this invasion of the Middle East Lowry obviously supports.

It's a humane, admirable agenda.

--

Meanwhile, as probably required, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the evening session opening the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's 44th annual policy conference. "Let there be no doubt of the outcome,'' he said. "We will drive Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.''

OK, we figured that much. But what's next?

"Iran must stop its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the ability to produce them."

Hey, that's what they said about Saddam!

"Syria faces a critical choice," Powell told his supporters, "continue its direct support for terrorism in the dying days" of former client gone wrong Saddam Hussein.

"Israel's security requires peace with its neighbors."

On Israel's terms, of course. If the sort of "peace" the Palestinians are going through at the moment is any example of the requirements Israel needs in the future elsewhere in the Arab world, I'm sure more than a few surrounding Arabs will start in making contingency plans.

Just in case anybody had any funny ideas about who exactly benefits from Bush's invasion of Iraq, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was on hand to say a few words: "We will work closely with the United States to oppose terror." Translation: We will deal with the Palestinians, you deal with all the other Arabs.

"We need a true Palestinian partner, one who will stop the violence once and for all," declared Shalom. Translation: We need a new PA, one we control, one staffed by our hand-picked Palestinian lackeys, a PA that will crack down on Palestinian nationalism and armed resistance to illegal occupation.

Shalom said Mahmoud Abbas, the newly appointed Palestinian prime minister, will find Israel to be a "true partner"' for peace if he "really fights terror." In other words, he cracks down on the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Let's recap. Powell went before an influential pro-Israel group. He threatened Iran and Syria. He aligned the US closer to Sharon's version of peace in Palestine. An Israel minister said the Palestinians will never be free of Israeli occupation.

Meanwhile, a few million Arabs are informed of this cozy little arrangement via al-Jazeera.

Imagine their surprise.

2003-03-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

Ah, liberation! Here's a Basra family welcoming the altruistic Anglo-American troops who have bombed their city merciless for days. Notice the pure fear on the face of the little boy between his mother and father. I wonder, is the dog at the right of the frame barking at this family? Is it an American dog, maybe a dog from Texas? Do you think the children of this family (note the expression on the oldest girl's face) will grow up to love and appreciate Americans?

--

Just so we all understand the streets of Baghdad will be the streets of Gaza City this summer, Islamic Jihad said on Sunday it has sent a "first wave" of suicide bombers to Baghdad "to help Iraqis fight U.S. and British troops," reports Reuters. Islamic Jihad bombed a crowded pedestrian mall in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya the other day.

"Some have already arrived and others will come later," Islamic Jihad's Lebanon representative, Abu Imad al-Rifai said. "If there are means for people to go, they will... A part of the role they are carrying out and have dedicated themselves to is fighting American occupation in Iraq and defending the Iraqi people."

Imagine attempting to take over a city of 5 million people not knowing who's packing a suicide bomb. It's Vietnam all over again. No army can wage war against a civilian population -- that is short of killing all of them -- and that's of course why the US lost in Vietnam: they didn't have that certain Nazi mentality required for over the top mass murder. Some of the generals wanted to nuke North Vietnam, take out their dams, starve them into submission. It didn't happen then, will it happen now? Is it possible Bush is capable of nuking Baghdad? Or saturate bomb the city for weeks and then march in? Deny them food, water?

Stalingrad -- only in the 110 degree Iraqi summer.

The Arabs will fight back this time. Most of them have absorbed countless images of Palestinians street fighting Israelis on al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations. The US invasion is an attack on all Arabs, not just Iraqis, not simply Saddam Hussein -- and the Arab people see it that way.

Tommy Franks, you need to understand this.

It's a militarily stupid and racist invasion Bush is conducting. He thought the average Arab would see all those big bad US death machines in the desert and in the sky and give up trembling and ask if he might be able to immigrate to New Jersey.

It's not going to happen. These folks are going to fight and die for their homes. They may hate Saddam, but they hate Dubya even more.

2003-03-29T23:54:00.000-08:00

The main tool by which U.S. policy makers sought to secure their position in Iran in 1985 and 1986 was secretly providing arms and intelligence information. As a proclaimed neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States was not supposed to supply weapons to either side. Nevertheless, U.S. allies kept the combatants well-stocked. Israel transferred vast quantities of U.S.-origin weapons to Iran; to what extent U.S. permission for these shipments was obtained (as required by U.S. law) is not known, but surely the U.S. had enough leverage to prevent the transfers if it had wanted to.

Stephen R. Shalom, "The United States and the Gulf War."

In other words, the US and Israel sold stuff to both Iraq and Iran in the hope they would annihilate each other. The Iranians know this, so do the Iraqis. The Shiites in the south of Iraq remember Bush Senior's betrayal, allowing Saddam to cut down their troops. Nobody believes the US, nobody in either Iran or Iraq will trust them.

"Between April of 2003 and November 2004, the US, UK and Israel will accelerate instability operations in Iran and engage in global disinformation campaigns to belittle the political and military leadership there," writes J. Stanton (US Bombs Iran: Hawks Readying For 2004 Invasion). "Operation Liberate Iran will take place using the same strategy and tactics employed in the Massacre of Iraq... [Michael] Leeden played his God card by indicating prior to the US assault on Iraq that, 'God willing, Judgment Day is coming to the Middle East and the long-suffering people of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia will get their chance to be free'."

That's Michael "total war" Ledeen from JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) talking. Of course, his god is not the same one worshipped in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

"I suspect that during my lifetime we're going to see a change in that situation over there and that the young people and the women and the people who believe in freedom will overthrow that cleric government and it will fall in some way of its own weight," Rumsfeld, who presided over lobbing a few missiles into Iran recently, said last year.

If the Iranians want to get an idea of the sort of "freedom" awaiting them, all they have to do is take a look at what's going down in Iraq via al-Jazeera.

"In aninterview with The Times of London, Mr Sharon says he wants Iran to be top of the 'to do' list once action against Baghdad is completed."

JINSA, Sharon, Zionist chicken hawks in the Bush administration. Gee, maybe the Arabs aren't paranoid after all. Maybe the Bush and the Israelis do have designs on Iraq's oil, it's land for military bases (to attack other pesky Middle Eastern types), and in the case of Israel to let the Arab world know who's bossman. Oh, yeah, and they have to pay back Iran for supporting Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon -- guerrillas not much different than those now taking on the US and Brits in Iraq -- because the Hezbollah kicked the IDF out of Lebanon.

It's all about old scores.

The US is pissed at Iran because they had the audacity to take down the corrupt US-sponsored Shah and decide for themselves what to do with their own oil. Good chance at least a few Iranians recall none too fondly the torture chambers of the Shah's SAVAK secret police. Maybe some of them will be thinking about it when the US marches the road to Teheran.

Question: where the hell is Bush going to get all the troops and weapons necessary to bring "freedom" to Syria and Iran while bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan (where guerrilla raids are killing US soldiers like they killed Soviet soldiers before them).

Tell me, is this a tenable situation? Is it sane? Is it not crazed to attack a central Arab country, threaten to attack other Muslim nations, actually fire missiles at them and kill people, and then allow pro-Israel Washington "influentials" such as Ledeen and Rumsfeld make comments about how the US will "deal with" them next?

Uh, hello?

Can you say holy war against the Crusaders, Dubya?

2003-03-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

The caption for the above reads: "Blood is seen on the hands of a wounded Iraqi man as he begs to be released to see his injured family members in central Iraq March 29, 2003."

Ah, yes. Hearts and minds.

--

"The suicide bombing was the first against either US or British forces since the campaign began 11 days ago," write Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy for the Guardian's Observer. "It followed public Iraqi appeals for volunteers for a Martyrs' Brigade of suicide bombers, and is a worrying portent of the kind of reception that US forces may meet as they move closer to Baghdad."

It looks like Baghdad will be the West Bank on steroids. How long have the Israelis fought Palestinians, a lot of them suicide bombers? How many people in Baghdad? It's said half of them have guns. How in the hell does the US expect to capture and control Baghdad in five weeks? It can't be done in five years.

Meanwhile, Republican Guard and government buildings were bombed again, making the rubble bounce. These now destroyed buildings were emptied of humans and computers before the first bombing of Baghdad.

High-tech cruise missiles the US has lobbed at Iraq have ended up in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Folks in those countries are complaining. So the US has suspended launches of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea.

I thought these were "precision" bombs, especially the cruise missiles? White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday that Russian companies had provided global positioning system, or GPS, jamming equipment to the Iraqis.

"The jammers overwhelm GPS signals, which are relatively weak. The Pentagon has long acknowledged that its navigation and guidance systems can be flummoxed by interference, and has sought to install weapons and vehicles with backup guidance systems -- or ensure troops could use old-fashioned maps and compasses in the case that GPS is blocked."

Use maps? Last time somebody made a mistake doing that they ended up as POWs paraded on Iraqi TV in violation of the Geneva Convention. But then that was last century stuff. We're well into a new century of war.

"Jammers are inexpensive and relatively low-tech but appear to be manufactured and sold clandestinely by companies in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, said Martin Streetly, an expert in radar and electronic warfare technology with the London-based Jane's Information Group."

Is it possible Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld even considered this kind of warfare, so reminiscent of Jenin and Mogadishu? Or did they believe their own propaganda? Arabs won't fight. They will lay down their guns and turn themselves in to the nearest US or Brit soldier. It'll be a "cakewalk."

Well, the cake got smashed and splattered with blood and guts.

The whole Arab world is watching this on al-Jazeera. Is it possible Rummy and Bush didn't think about the media part of this invasion? Do they think the Arabs are sitting out in the desert pounding stones together? No, they're watching the new Israeli invasion -- and understand that many, many Arabs believe this invasion is at the behest of the Israelis -- on television in real-time.

--

Meanwhile, lest Americans get propagandized by the wrong side, al-Jazeera suffered days of sustained distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against its English and Arabic language sites. "One enterprising hacker even used fake Al-Jazeera letterhead to fool an Internet company into letting him redirect visitors away from Al-Jazeera to other locations such as porn sites and a page that displayed an American flag with the message: 'God bless our troops!'" writes Graeme Smith in Saturday's Globe and Mail. "As I write, the Al-Jazeera Web site has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon," said Faisal Bodi, a senior editor for aljazeera.net.

No word on how the porn sites reacted to the increased and illegal traffic.

Guess what, it's now going to work. Imagery reflecting the reality "on the ground" in Iraq will be distributed all over the internet and viewed by millions of people. It's impossible to wage a war -- in this case an invasion -- and not have it electronically disseminated: raw, uncut, and unrestricted. Bush is doing something they did in the last century -- wage an invasion and control the imagery -- something impossible now in the era of instantaneous electronic communication. In 1991-- when Bush's daddy ran his war against Iraq -- the web didn't even exist.

2003-03-29T18:42:00.000-08:00

Above, another photo in violation of the Geneva Convention. It's OK to humiliate Iraqis, but don't do it to US and British guys. I mean, they're white people, after all.

--

Is it possible Rumsfeld and the Pentagon will now begin to complain about how the Iraqis are not playing fair, sending in suicide bombers and hiding behind the skirts of women?

Does Rumsfeld seriously expect the Iraqis to do what they did the last time a Bush invaded them -- send their tanks out in the desert and line them up in neat rows to be bombed? Does he expect Iraqi soldiers to surrender in droves? Did Bush and Rumsfeld actually think they'd march to Baghdad and be showered with roses and rice?

Is "clueless" an appropriate word here?

Here's the hard-bitten reality Bush faces -- the Iraqis will keep fighting against the invaders. They will engage in a wave of suicide attacks against "coalition" convoys and checkpoints stretched from Kuwait to Najaf. They will use "technicals" to harass the Anglo-Americans. They will not surrender with hands up and go quietly into the dark future Bush has in mind for them.

All Iraqis are Palestinians now.

"We can have ... a suicide martyr that can kill 5,000 in one mission," boasted Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who threatened such tactics months ago. "We have the right to use any means... These bastards will be welcomed at the level and in the way they deserve... pack your bags and leave us alone."

U.S. Central Command Director of Operations Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart Jr. said the Iraqis were "a bit desperate," that's why they attacked a US checkpoint and killed soldiers with the 3rd Infantry Division.

You bet they're desperate -- desperate to defeat and eject the Americans and Brits who have illegally invaded their country.

"I don't know what motivated this guy to kill himself," Capt. Andrew J. Valles, the First Brigade's civil and military affairs officer, told the New York Times. "To me, this is not an act of war. It is terrorism: a man in a civilian vehicle killing himself at a checkpoint."

Translation: we didn't get trained for this kind of warfare. It's not fair.

No, they simply don't get it.

2003-03-29T13:51:00.000-08:00

Geneva Convention, what Geneva Convention?

Here's a photo of two Iraqis in pre-Gitmo attire. "Under the Geneva Convention, it's illegal to do things with prisoners of war that are humiliating to those individuals. And the United States, of course, avoids showing photographs of prisoners of war. We have thousands of Iraqi prisoners that are in POW camps that we brought along and have erected in country. But we ... avoid showing photographs of them," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on NBC's Meet the Press.

You do? No doubt this photo was taken by an "embedded" Pentagon-controlled photographer.

The Third Geneva Convention requires that prisoners of war "must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity... Each party to the Convention has an obligation to search for those suspected of having committed such breaches and bring them to justice before its own courts or hand them over for trial to another party."

Rumsfeld, do the right thing -- find the nearest cop and turn yourself in.

2003-03-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

"It is not me being anti-Bush, it's me being ironic and tongue in cheek," Madonna says of her new video. In the video she apparently tosses a grenade on Bush's lap. "My kind of wish for peace and my desire to sort of turn a weapon of destruction, which is a grenade, into something that is completely innocuous."

Oh, boy. Rush Limbaugh's gonna have a field day with this one.

"Madonna uses a Bush look-alike in the final scene of [the video] AMERICAN LIFE. The 'president' picks up the lit grenade that Madonna throws -- and lights his cigar with it!" is how Matt Drudge, the National Enquirer of the soft right, describes it.

This will explore new territory in the right's hatred and paranoia of rich liberal Hollywood types. Madonna with her highly commercialized sexuality doing an S/M trick on the commander-in-chief

"The image is 'my wish to find an alternative to violence to war and destruction,' the singer says."

Do you think Ashcroft maybe noticed?

2003-03-28T19:31:00.000-08:00

It appears the Bushites are going after Syria and Iran quicker than anticipated. This afternoon Rumsfeld accused Damascus of providing Hussein with nightvision goggles. He also said the Badr Corps are operating in Iraq and noted the US would treat them as the enemy. Asked if he was threatening Damascus with military action, Rummy retorted: "I'm saying exactly what I'm saying. It was carefully phrased."

The Badr Corps "consist of thousands of former Iraqi officers and soldiers who defected from the Iraqi army, Iraqi refugees, and Iraqis who fled the country," according to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) web site. SCIRI fronts Badr. "SCIRI has secret cells all over Iraq which are involved in gathering information, media work and military activities... SCIRI has also main offices in London (headed by Dr. Hamid Al Bayati), Damascus, Geneva and Vienna. The head office of SCIRI is based in Iran among the largest Iraqi community outside Iraq temperarely estimated at one million Iraqis. SCIRI has main offices in different parts of the liberated areas of Iraqi Kurdistan."

In other words, these are not only anti-Saddam Iraqis, they are armed and financed anti-Saddam Iraqis. If Bush had these guys his job of taking over Iraq would be easier. But there's a problem.

SCIRI and the Badr Corps are supported by evil Shiite Iranians in their continuing war against the Hussein regime. Rumsfeld essentially said in Pentagon-speak that the US will attack the Badr Corps. Of course, Bush's next assignment is to march up the road to Teheran after he polishes off and corrals the vassals in Iraq and the oil fields are secured. The neo-cons make no bones about Iran being next -- Sharon told the State Department to get cracking on that one.

It's all going to start coming apart now. In the span of a week Bush has managed to do or say something hostile to big shooters in the neighborhood -- and enrage their al-Jazeera-fed Muslim populations.

Is it possible Rumsfeld's threatening Syria now is because thousands of Muslims are streaming over the border to fight the infidel as he devours the ancient lands of Iraq? Is this not a holy war in a matter of a week?

Nightvision goggles. Big deal. How about all those Syrians and Palestinians and Saudis and all those muhajideen warriors trekking to Iraq to help Iraqi Muslims defeat the Great Satan?

That's what Rumsfeld was talking about.

The Sunnis of Baghdad may be secularized to a certain degree by decades of Saddam Baathism, but everywhere else it's Shiite Muslims. It's not only territorial, it's religious. Infidels are killing the faithful and occupying sacred mosques. Jihad follows.

Syria or Iran, take your pick -- Bush will go after both of them.

Rumsfeld has essentially declared war on the Syrians, accusing them of supplying the enemy. Sharon said he wants the Iranians taken out next, so that may be where the Pentagon strikes next. Bush has already fired a few missiles into Iran and killed bus passengers he claimed were muhajadeen crossing into Iraq from Syria.

Truly, our little Caesar is losing it. He has now attacked multiple nations. He's sending 100,000 more soldiers to Iraq. It's the German blitzkrieg on internet time. It's going to result in a whole lot of lamentable trouble.

Next up, the draft.

2003-03-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

One down, the rest of the White House and Pentagon to go

Traitor and dual loyalty Zionist and Israeli spy Richard Perle has resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, according to Knight Ridder. It seems Perle drew ire from Congress for his involvement as a "lobbyist" for Hutchison Whampoa (regarded by his fellow hawks as a front for China's People's Liberation Army) in its dealings with Global Crossing, one of the corporations that helped wreck the US economy. Perle was with like-minded individuals at Global Crossing. He was to be paid $750,000 for his complicity.

As Justin Raimondo writes:

The Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle strategy was always predicated on a certain amount of support from the Iraqi people, who, you'll remember, were supposedly just waiting for their cue to rise up. The invasion, Perle crowed, would be a "cakewalk." Challenged by Chris Matthews of MSNBC as to why this would necessarily be so, Perle averred that all people have "an inherent desire for freedom," and this primordial instinct would confer success on our military mission. Unfortunately for our soldiers in the field, this desire for freedom is much broader than Perle and his co-thinkers ever imagined: it apparently includes the desire to be free of foreign invaders. Oh well, back to the drawing board….

Of course, when this war is over and Bush is ejected from the White House, and the ICC is prosecuting for war crimes related to Iraq, we will not forget Perle, who is viewed as one of the primary architects of this current mass murder. He will be in the docket with Bush, Rummy, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and all the other sociopath neocons who drafted the idea of total war (Hitler also liked the idea of total war; he ended up shooting himself in the head while the Russians closed in on Berlin -- we will be satisfied with a long prison term for Perle, no get out jail free and run and hide in Israel cards permitted, he is truly a traitor to America and needs to be prosecuted and imprisoned).

--

Another Bushite, Ann Wright, the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, has resigned, according to the BBC. Wright is the third US diplomat to resign in protest at the Bush administration's Iraq policy. In a letter to Colin Powell, Wright said Bush's demented policy of pre-emptive attack on Iraq will provide justification for individuals and groups to pre-emptively attack America and its citizens.

--

"Syria is granting free passage across its border with Iraq to volunteers who wish to join the fight against the U.S. and British forces," reports Haaretz. "The passage of volunteers with Damascus's consent has given rise to the theory that the U.S.-fired missile that struck a Syrian bus traveling in Iraq was an intentional attack on a busload of such volunteers."

--

"People say to me, you [the Iraqis] are not the Vietnamese," Tariq Aziz told Toby Dodge last year. "You have no jungles and swamps to hide in. I reply, let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles."

"The US and British commanders must be concerned about the cities they never wanted to besiege," writes Christopher Bellamy of the UK Independent. "Baghdad has a population of five million. Najaf, the main jumping-off point for an attack on the capital, has 600,000. Basra has 1.5 million. That is the same population as Northern Ireland. The British have still not brought total peace to Northern Ireland after having deployed, on average, 17,000 troops there, for nearly 34 years. If the main Iraqi cities do not come over to the Allies, and so far they have not, we face a very different strategic problem to the one we faced on the outbreak of war more than a week ago."

Obviously, the Bushites expected the Iraqis to give up immediately, hand over their country to multinational oil corporations, and be thankful for "democracy" (i.e., to be ruled by US generals and then a corrupt Hashemite king).

Don't any of these people read history? Colonialism doesn't work -- people get pissed off and actively resist. This is the (unreported) situation in Afghanistan and it will be the same in Iraq.

--

"I also believe that since Mr Blair is going ahead with his support of a US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague," writes Tam Dalyell. "This is a grave thing to say about my party leader. But it is far less serious than the results of a war that could set Western Christendom against Islam."

Only whack job Christian Zionists are for this war against Islam; many other Christians are vehemently opposed to this invasion.

--

"An exiled spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslims, who make up more than 60 percent of the population, tells Bob Simon he is ready to return to help his people -- a factor that could affect the U.S. plans for a post-war democracy in Iraq," Drudge reports. "But U.S. authorities have warned the Ayatollah and, especially, his 15,000 Iraqi troops, armed by Iran's Islamic government and trained by its Revolutionary Guard, not to enter Iraq. They're afraid the influence of an Islamic state would create a poor climate for the democracy planned for Iraqis."

I bet he really means "the vassal state planned for Iraqis." The US doesn't want the Ayatollah or "his 15,000 Iraqi troops, armed by Iran's Islamic government and trained by its Revolutionary Guard" because they would fight against the Great Satan, Bush and the US military.

"The Shiites will be wary of the U.S. as well, because of a bloodbath they suffered for which many of them still blame America. The first President Bush, toward the end of the first Gulf War, urged Iraqis to revolt against Hussein. The Shiites did and nearly toppled the dictator before he sent helicopter gun ships to suppress them and after the U.S. refused to come to their aid. The reason a U.S. official gave for the refusal, says Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a leader of the Iraqi Shiite opposition who lives in London, was fear of the unknown. "[The official] was saying that the uprising was an unknown quantity for us, while Saddam Hussein was the devil we know," he tells Simon."

Bush screwed the Shiites, now US soldiers on the ground in Iraq may have to pay for it with their lives.

--

"A think-tank here [Malaysia] have accused the United States' war on Iraq as being motivated by its need to serve Israel's long term interest in the region as well as for Washington's appetite to secure its future oil supply," observes Mohd Haikal Isa of Bernama.com.

No, really, you think so?

"On the role of Israel in the US-led war against Baghdad, the study said: 'The role of American Zionist right-wing forces in exalting the motives of war against Baghdad and coordination between the two parties, indicate that the US war in Iraq serves the Israeli interests.'"

2003-03-26T21:40:00.000-08:00

"It's a dirt-poor neighborhood, of mostly Shia Muslims, the same people whom Messrs Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against President Saddam Hussein, a place of oil-sodden car-repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafés," is how Robert Fisk describes the neighborhood bombed by the US in Baghdad "Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words. 'Roar, flash,' he kept saying and then closed his eyes so tight that the muscles rippled between them... If this is what we are seeing in Baghdad, what is happening in Basra and Nasiriyah and Kerbala?"

Shiite Muslims consider Kerbala and Najaf as highly religious places. In AD 680 Sunni and Shiite rivals slugged it out in Kerbala. "The leader of the Shiite sect, ::I and his brother Abbas, were both killed in the battle," explains ArabNet. "As they were grandsons of the Prophet Mohammed, shrines were built to commemorate them in two mosques in Kerbala. Visiting these shrines is a significant goal for Islamic pilgrims... Najaf contains the tomb of Ali ibn Abi Talib in a mosque in the city centre. The sacred shrine commemorates a cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed, who founded the Shiite sect. Muslims regard it as a great honour to be buried at either of these sites."

The US Army's 3rd Infantry Division has Najaf surrounded. "An estimated 650 Iraqis were killed over the last 24 hours in the Najaf area," Major John Altman, intelligence officer of the Third Infantry Division’s First Brigade, told AFP.

Good way to make friends and influence people -- the kind of relationship Bush, daddy Bush, and Clinton before him said they wanted with Iraq's Shiites -- attack a couple holy cities. Imagine if Muslims attacked the Vatican with Bradley killing machines and "precision" munitions (like the "precision" bomb that hit a market in Baghdad -- maybe the CIA had intel Saddam was shopping).

The Arabs see this as another Christian crusade. Bush is giving them all the reason in the world to believe this by attacking Muslim holy places. Either stupid, or cynically calculated.

I'm convinced -- the Zionist/Christians (as is Bush) want to start a holy war, a "clash of civilizations." They want to hammer Islam -- and Islam will struggle to defend itself. As it stands now -- early on in World War III -- the Muslims are holding their ground. Imagine the going if highly mechanized and heavily armed Muslims attacked your neck of the woods.

Bush won't be able to cut this slow pace for much longer. Soon, he'll have to do something.

How long before Shock an' Awe now?

2003-03-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

The Yahoo News caption for the above photo reads:

Banned on Wall Street and wiped off the Internet, Arab news channel al-Jazeera defended its controversial coverage of the Iraq war March 26, 2003 and demanded the United States come to its aid in the name of a free press. Al-Jazeera, which angered Washington by showing footage of dead and captured American soldiers, voiced concern after two of its reporters were banned from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and its Web sites were hacked.

So, those of you who work at the NYSE don't get to see the other side's "objective" reporting of Phase II of Bush's perpetual war while you daily watch the markets go down, mostly due to the insanity of our unpresident.

Tell me this isn't like a chapter out of Kafka.

Or maybe Orwell when big screens worked up the masses with daily footage of Goldstein (Saddam) -- still alive and still serving up appropriate propaganda all across Airstrip One.

Do you believe, for instance, that the US war machine killed something like 700 Iraqi defenders in and around Najaf and did not suffer one fatality, especially after reading about US troops harried by hit-and-run or stay-and-die guerillas over the last several days?

It's going bad for Bush. Best thing to do is get out now. Best thing to do is get rid of Bush either through the thoroughly compromised election system (all the computer election machines owned by rich republicans) or mass action. Impeachment, forget about it. Those same guys voted for everything Bush has asked for -- half of them locked in fear at these new McCarthyites and the Bush War State. They will do nothing -- except vote in Patriot II the minute something fishy happens here in the heartland.

It looks like he will take out al-Jazeera. You can bet letters are in the mail from ATG Ashcroft to ISPs and hosting services all over. Don't be surprised as this attack heats up -- and Bush ain't going anywhere, he'll just dump more gullible American boys in there to kill and die for him and the Wolfie cabal, this war's going down all summer -- some of your favorite sites may come back with the dreaded "could not be found" messagebox on your screen. If this service disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised.

I can think of a few dozen off-hand that would go out like a string of Christmas tree lights yanked out of the socket.

Is it possible we will eventually send text files to each other via peer-to-peer... or will Bush get around to taking that out too (the recording industry can give him some good tips on how to mess with peer-to-peer networks).

2003-03-26T14:20:00.000-08:00

From a reader in Canada:

Just like Yellowtimes.com, it appears that Al-Jazeera.com has been the target of hackers with the aim of stopping the flow of independent arab news. Al Jazeera had planned to launch an english version of the site, but were shut down almost instantly in the US. Now it appears that even the Arab site has been shut down. I had been relying on my Lebanese co-worker Marwan to translate the page for me so I could get some untainted news reports. I can't even trust the UK websites anymore. He told me that Blair had warned the Observer and Guardian to "get with it", if you know what I mean.

Bush will fail miserably in the propaganda war -- he may be able to either directly or indirectly shut down sites such as YellowTimes.org and al-Jazeera, but in the long run the internet will defeat him. Millions of people no longer trust CNN, Fox, et al, and get their news from alternative internet sources.

Here's a sampling of such stories from today:

A US delegation arrived in Amman in its way to Baghdad for ceasefire negotiations

US may 'fabricate' WMD evidence in Iraq: Russia

Bodies of 500 US, UK soldiers lying in Jacobabad?

--

Here's another email from today:

i just got off the phone with my ISP asking them why i could not view a particular website...they told me that they do not block ANY website, that i had unfettered access to the full internet...when i told the customer service rep that the site i was trying to view was http://www.aljazeera.net - the arab world's version of CNN - he told me that particular website is indeed blocked - by the US government, in direct violation of the first amendment to our constitution...he said the reason it was blocked was due to the showing of "beheadings" and such...

i went to http://www.trosch.org to see if this site was blocked, as david trosch's website explicitly calls for the violent murder of US citizens...as you can see, it's up and in full swing...

amerikkkan censorship is a duplicitous and greasy little animal...

some of the disturbing photos that al-jazeera published are available at http://www.mabonline.net but i recommend going there now if you want to see them - before the amerikkkan censors block that site, too...

2003-03-26T13:59:00.000-08:00

Since the Iraqis didn't throw down their weapons and kiss the feet of the Americans and Brits as they invaded Iraq in the name of oil, empire, Israel, and Halliburton (who "won" a contract to rebuild Iraqi, along with Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp., Louis Berger Group, and the Parsons Corp.), they will now be required to pay a heavy price in the weeks ahead.

From the BBC:

The BBC's Andrew Gilligan, at the scene in the northern Shaab district of the city, says it appears that two missiles hit a busy parade of shops, several hundred metres from any military buildings.

An angry crowd of several hundred people gathered in the area following the strike, waving the shoes and clothes of victims.

They shouted: "Down with Bush" and "Long live Saddam".

Bush, like Hitler, has no idea what he's facing -- the Iraqi people will never be conquered and they will fight to the death to defend their land (as any self-respecting person would do).

Bush wants to go into Iran and hit North Korea?

Truly, he's demented -- and must be stopped.

2003-03-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Brad Simpson, an organizer with the War Resisters' League, says he's been overwhelmed with calls from people who want to take part in civil disobedience training. "In the last three weeks, I've been contacted by at least a dozen groups that we can't get to because we don't have enough trainers in New York," he said, and the Village Voice reported.

Activists in New York -- including many from more mainstream groups -- are calling for widespread civil disobedience in midtown Manhattan this Thursday. Their aim is to disrupt "business as usual"... "The actions include a mass die-in at 8 a.m. at Rockefeller Center to protest 'media collusion and corporate profiteering from the war.' (Rockefeller Center houses NBC and General Electric, among other companies.)

Meanwhile, according to Infowars.com (as reposted on Rense), Oregon is working on a law to make it a serious crime to engage in civil disobedience. "A person commits the crime of terrorism if the person knowingly plans, participates in or carries out any act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt... (a) The free and orderly assembly of the inhabitants of the State of Oregon... (b) Commerce or the transportation systems of the State of Oregon; or (c) The educational or governmental institutions of the State of Oregon or its inhabitants... (4)(a) A person convicted of terrorism shall be punished by imprisonment for life... (b) When a person is convicted of terrorism under this section, the court shall order that the person be confined for a minimum of 25 years without possibility of parole."

In other words, you can kill your spouse and get less time.

2003-03-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

Increasingly, if you hear it on Fox News and it comes from the Pentagon you can pretty much chalk it up to another lie.

There was no "popular uprising" in Basra, as previously reported. "We don't know anything about a Basra uprising," said a British military source in Central Command in Qatar. Another Brit in Kuwait said, well, there's no uprising but it would be peachy keen if there were. "We'll help them every which way we can," said British spokesman Chris Vernon.

For starters, the Brits could send in some water.

"Over a million people in the embattled city of Basra in southern Iraq are facing a sixth day without access to clean water," writes the NewScientist.com news service. "Aid agencies are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, with the malnourished population at risk of dehydration and disease... UNICEF warns that at least 100,000 children under the age of five are at risk of death from diarrhea and dehydration in Basra. Cholera, typhoid and the malaria-like blackwater fever are also endemic in the region, says Martin Dawes, a spokesman at UNICEF's Iraq office in Amman."

More and more, this is beginning to look like a Medieval Siege. Here's how Lise Hull describes the tactics used in the 1200s: "There were three ways to take a castle. The first is not to attack the castle at all -- just avoid the castle altogether and seize the lands around it. The second is direct assault, or laying siege to the castle. The last is besieging."

Simply replace "castle" with "Baghdad."

--

No more videos of Saddam defying the US. "A series of explosions along with the sound of low flying aircraft was heard in Baghdad, and the Pentagon said coalition aircraft had struck the Iraqi state-run television," reports the Washington Post.

No more embarrassing videos of downed US airmen and captured maintenance crews. Of course, there's always the al-Jezeera TV satellite. Maybe Bush thinks al-Jezeera's headquarters should receive a Tomahawk or two? Of course, in order to prevent us from seeing Saddam thumb his nose at the US or those photos of mangled dead kids in Basra, maybe Bush can take out the internet. A few JDAMs aimed at the backbone should do the trick.

--

Not only did they bomb an Iranian oil refinery depot in Abadan, just across from Basra, but now Bush and his co-conspirator Tony Blair have deployed Royal Marines to the Iran-Iraq border. On Monday Iranian forces fired on British troops on the Faw peninsula.

Let's see if we can start a war across the entire Middle East.

Remember, Iran's next on the Bush hit list because Sharon said so.

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi explains that Iran "is prepared for the worst scenarios. Thus, our plans have been arranged so that Iran will not face an unexpected situation or probable negative results [of the war]."

On February 9, 2003, IRNA reported Supreme Leader 'Ali Khamenei as saying "the people of Iraq are facing war threats, because the U.S. needs to be [militarily] present in Iraq... in order to dominate [all the] energy resources in the region and control all Middle East countries... Americans say they are going to overthrow Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime. They are lying. Their real intention is to control OPEC, [and] dominate oil fields in the region..."

Iran is next -- if the US military can ever escape Iraq and Afghanistan.

2003-03-25T20:10:00.000-08:00

These Iraqis are serious about protecting Baghdad from Bush and Gen. Tommy Franks. If a foreign country invaded your neighborhood, wouldn't you do the same?

Will Dick Cheney kill his own daughter?

The London-based Arabic daily Al Quds Al Arabi is reporting that Dick Cheney's daughter, Mary Cheney, will arive in Amman, Jordan, soon and travel to Baghdad where she will be a human shield against Bush's illegal and immoral invasion. According to the paper, Cheney will go to Amman and attempt to convince his daughter to not go through with the plan. "The embassy has no information that the U.S. vice president will arrive in Jordan to convince one of his daughters not to travel to Iraq to join human shields opposed to war," said a US embassy spokesman in the Jordanian capital.

Obviously, the Bushites would never admit to this embarrassment. I mean, we're talking about war hawk Cheney here, not some career diplomat.

This story was not covered in the corporate media. Far right wing NewsMax.com ran a story mentioning the Al Quds Al Arabi story -- and then used the excuse to denigrate the idea of human shields. I bet they would have made fun of abolionists working in the South during the days of slavery, too. Here's a bit from the NewsMax.com story:

Most of the pompous would-be "human shields" have already run home crying to their cushy gas-guzzling lives in Europe and North America. But some sons of Western officials have already volunteered as "human shields" in Iraq, including the son of Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham, the Web site Al Bawaba reported today.

I searched Al Bawaba using "Graham" and "Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham" but the results came back negative.

Or maybe this is greasy propaganda. Maybe the other side figured out how to play the slick media disinformation game -- you know, like the story of the Kuwaiti Nayirah who told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that bestial demons of Saddam Hussein pitched Kuwaiti babies from incubators and made off with them.

It was a lie fabricated to sell a war started by Dubya's daddy.

So, if the Al Quds Al Arabi story on Cheney's daughter turns out to be true, the question is: will Dick bomb his own kid? I mean, is that something a rational human would do -- kill his own daughter -- and move forward with the engineered mass slaughter of designed enemies in the name of empire and Halliburton and Exxon and Boeing and Mobil and Raytheon and above all the Carlyle Group?

2003-03-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

"In the process [of attacking Iraq] if they (the Iraqis) actually fight, and that's one of the assumptions, clearly it's going to be brutal, dangerous work and we could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties," Retired US Army General and Barry McCaffrey tells Reuters.

McCaffrey knows all about causalities -- he engineered the deaths of thousands of fleeing people on two Kuwaiti roadways in 1991.

"Hundreds of soldiers were murdered, men and boys who posed no threat and didn’t know the war was still on," writes Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., in response to a Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker about the gruesome event. "Many civilians, including children, were also shot. The numbers are still unclear because the corpses were buried quickly by the tank-bulldozers... Again and again, the truth about US wars has turned out to be exactly the opposite of Pentagon press releases. And yet, these credible revisionist accounts don't make interesting reading for the masses. The American public long ago lost interest in Iraq and Kosovo. Once the propaganda engines were turned off, most people stopped paying attention. Hence, the version of events that continues to survive in the popular mind is one of a heroic and spotless US laying waste to a demonic enemy."

So, when war criminal Barry McCaffrey talks about 3,000 US deaths, he's ultimately talking about the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis. That's how McCaffrey's mind works. No doubt, like another Gulf War general, Colin Powell, he's not particularly interested in the suffering of non-combatant Iraqis.

--

According to ABC News, the US military has "dropped more than 2,000 precision-guided bombs on Iraq since the war's start, a feat possible in part because the 'smart' bombs now are produced for a relatively cheap $20,000 each."

Cheap -- and deadly, especially in crowded urban areas.

"On the ground," writes David Wood, "the work of the 2,000-pound Mark-84 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bomb, the new workhorse of the U.S. military, is just beginning.

In nanoseconds it will release a crushing shock wave and shower jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction.

(...)

These and other effects, calculated and charted by Defense Department war planners in a predictive software program called "Bug Splat," are largely obscured by smoke and debris.

(...)

While the technology of the Mark-84 JDAM is proudly hailed by the Pentagon and by the manufacturer, Boeing, no one in the Defense Department nor its research labs or weapons contractors would publicly discuss the actual effects of the munition as it detonates. Privately, however, engineers and weapons designers were eager to describe the mechanism.

As the Mark-84 JDAM strikes the ground, its fuse ignites a priming charge that detonates 945 pounds of Tritonal, a silvery solid of TNT mixed with a dollop of aluminum for stability.

The ensuing chemical reaction produces an expanding nucleus of hot gas that swells the Mark-84's 14-inch-wide cast steel casing to almost twice its size before the steel shears and fractures, showering a thousand pounds of white-hot steel fragments at 6,000 feet per second and driving a shock wave of several thousand pounds per square inch.

Instantaneously, a fireball lashes out at 8,500 degrees Farenheit, and the explosion gouges a 20-foot crater and hurls off 10,000 pounds of rock and dirt debris at supersonic speed.

Trauma physicians confronting the human wreckage divide casualties into four classes. One is injury from the blast itself, mostly caused by a pressure wave a hundred times or more the injury threshold of 15 pounds per square inch (psi). By comparison, a shock wave of 12 psi will knock over a standing person.

A second class of injury is from the wind and debris that immediately follow the blast wave. A blast force of 4 psi -- far below the force of these winds -- can shatter glass and drive lethal fragments at 120 mph. Metal fragments will travel about 3,800 feet, nearly three-quarters of a mile. Bigger fragments of the bomb -- heavy pieces of the thick metal nose cone, for instance -- will sail out a mile and a half, a Defense Department engineer said.

A third set of injuries results either as bodies are picked up and thrown against something, or as part of a stationary body is ripped away. A fourth class takes in everything else, including burns from the fireball and crush injuries from falling debris.

"The key to survival with a Mark-84 is to not be behind glass and not be behind something that's going to fail, like a concrete wall," said a Defense Department official who asked not to be identified.

Almost no one survives primary blast injuries, experts say. The brutal shock wave, a force that far exceeds the pressure the atmosphere normally applies to the human body, smashes into and explodes body cavities of lesser pressure -- lungs, colon, bowels, even through the sinuses into the skull. The overpressure can burst individual cells and rupture critical blood vessels, forcing air through them and on into the heart and brain, causing instant death.

Question: Do you think the use of JDAMs in heavily populated Baghdad will make the term "collateral damage" macabrely absurd?

So when you see images of "Operation Bug Splat" children in the coming weeks, remember that Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State) was a Boeing consultant and Karl Rove (Senior Advisor to the Unpresident) is a shareholder.

Of course, if you stay with Fox and CNN, you won't see any "bug splat" pictures. Not like the photos you will see here.

2003-03-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

I feel sorry for these two guys. They did what Bush asked them to do -- attack an elite Republican Guard division southwest of Baghdad with an Apache helicopter. Now they are being paraded on Iraqi TV. Both these guys had identity papers, including a Texas driving license, and their credit cards. Credit cards? It's surrealistic. The Apache Longbow helicopter is pictured below.

Bush is losing the media war. US POWs less than a week in. Photos of blasted Iraqi kids in Basra and Baghdad all over the internet. Guys in dusty small pickup trucks with mounted 50mm machineguns holding off US high-tech tanks. Supposedly errant missiles taking out Syrian passenger buses. Talk of going after Iran. Rumors of CIA ops to undermine the Islamists there.

Terrorism and rumors of terrorism.

Email appears on the Rense site purportedly from somebody who knows

a friend who's wife is a spoiled rich girl who has never worked a day in her life. Apparently, her family is well-connected. Very well-connected. Someone in her family is a secret service agent in the president's entourage.

This agent was given notice to inform any friend or family living in or around New York City to "get out of the state". Something is going to happen Monday or Tuesday.

Bad stuff, chemical or biological bad stuff.

It will be set off underground central Manhattan, i.e., Times Square, Grand Central, Penn Station... It will get into the air and water. Where it goes from there is anybody's guess. It will be very messy.

--

Finally, an appropriate paragraph from xymphora:

The [Bush] junta is completely impervious to world or American popular opinion. There is a fixed group of about 15-25 % of the American electorate who apparently have completely lost their minds in a miasma of xenophobia, jingoism, militarism, racism, gun fetishism, hypocritical puritanism, anti-intellectualism, patriarchy (with their essential hatred of women starting to manifest itself more and more), and beliefs in 19th century dog-eat-dog 'free enterprise' and nutty apocalyptic evangelical religion. The existence of this group, which has been carefully cultivated with years of bad education and propaganda, constitutes the essential American problem. With absolutely no information except what lies they can get from Rush Limbaugh and Fox, they are prepared to vote as a bloc for any Bush-type politicians, and their aggressive stupidity drowns out any other voices. If you couple that bloc with fixed voting machines, a fixed (by which I mean castrated) opposition in the Democrats, and a useful third party to split the votes of the sane, Bush has no reason to listen to public opinion. He must just laugh at the war protests. So what will it take to restore sanity to the world? Is the 'shock and awe' that is required the simultaneous destruction of all obvious American assets outside the United States? Or will there need to be a new American Revolution?

You decide.

2003-03-24T14:59:00.000-08:00

"A small number of peasants shot down two Apaches. We have shown the images of one of them on Iraqi television and we may show images of the pilots of the two aircraft or we may not show them," Iraqi Information Minister Mohamed Said Al-Sahhaf told Reuters.

Farmers shooting down multi-million dollar aircraft with small arms? How embarrassing. The Bushites and the corporate media told us for weeks this would be a short "war" and the Iraqis would be petrified by our awesome death technology and they'd give up without much of a fight. Now Iraqi farmers are shooting down attack helicopters -- and they apparently don't even need anti-aircraft guns.

--

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

--Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

--

Former Marxist gone fascist, David Horowitz, comments upon Americans demonstrating their disagreement with Bush's murderous invasion:

It would be unwise not to take the threat posed by this organized attack on American policy and American security seriously. The misnamed "anti-war" movement is led and organized by leftist vanguards who proclaim their solidarity with terrorist states, including North Korea and Cuba, and terrorist organizations in the Middle East... In its potential to disrupt American post-war policy and to limit the options of the American military lie the greatest dangers of this leftist revival, especially because of its deep resonances in the Democratic Party, half of whose constituents (and many of whose leaders) are opposed to the war. The President has already warned that the effort to rebuilt Iraq, stabilize the region and carry on the war against terror "will require our sustained commitment." In order to sustain their security and foreign policy commitments, democracies require broad bi-partisan support from their parties and from their publics. It is this support that is threatened by the anti-American left, and it this test that our nation must meet.

Horowitz, as a hateful and paranoid former Marxist nut case, comes an inch short of calling for a Gestapo-like round-up of antiwar activists.

It would be your own fault, of course, since you support Castro and Jong-il in North Korea. You may be a Stepford commie and not even know it...

As you can see, Horowitz is so far off the right nut edge that he thinks the Democratic Party is crowded with anti-war malcontents (that's why the vast majority of them agreed with Bush and his plan to murder innocent Iraqis).

If you would like to tell Hororwitz the former Marxist (Pol Pot was a Marxist, too), send him an email: info@frontpagemag.com

--

"Between April of 2003 and November 2004, the US, UK and Israel will accelerate instability operations in Iran and engage in global disinformation campaigns to belittle the political and military leadership there," writes John Stanton. "Already, sources report that elements of the CIA are busy in and around Iran, and that US-UK-Australian special operations teams operating out of Afghanistan and Kuwait -- and the US Province of Iraq -- have been surreptitiously setting up shop in Iran for months. Iran now finds itself pinned on all sides by pro-US, UK forces. Operation Liberate Iran will take place using the same strategy and tactics employed in the Massacre of Iraq... 21st Century Crusaders George Bush II and Michael Leeden (Benador Associates, AEI, Bush advisor) believe in their Judeo-Christian quest to crush Islam as they view it as an illegitimate and insidious religion that has gotten in the way of oil extraction. The current campaign in the region is nothing less than an extension of the Crusades dating back to 1096. Leeden played his God card by indicating prior to the US assault on Iraq that, "God willing, Judgment Day is coming to the Middle East and the long-suffering people of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia will get their chance to be free."

2003-03-24T08:13:00.000-08:00

"Iraqi troops were fighting with machinegun-mounted Japanese pickup trucks against squadrons of the world's most formidable battle tank, the U.S. Abrams."

"Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out," our Christian unpresident reportedly said to Condi Rice way back in March of 2002, reports TIME's Michael Elliott and James Carney (according to Drudge). "Neoconservatives, report Elliott and Carney, also believe that the U.S. is endowed by Providence with the power to make the world better if only it will take the risks of leadership to do so."

Now if the Iraqis resisting the US invasion would only cooperate...

--

If military analysts in Russia are correct in their assessments, the US attack against Iraq is encountering stiff resistance. Less than a week into this illegal operation, and it appears the Joint Chiefs are already talking about replacing Gen. Tommy Franks:

Gen. Franks is required to do everything he can to change the current situation on the front. Analysts believe that, if during the next 3-5 days Gen. Franks fails to achieve any significant results, than it is entirely possible that he will be replaced as the commander of the coalition forces.

The Bush Ministry of Disinformation -- otherwise known as the corporate media -- may not be telling the whole story about the invasion:

Intercepted radio communications indicate that during the morning period of March 22 the US forces lost 10-15 tanks destroyed or disabled and up to 30 other armored vehicles. Medevac helicopters flew more than 30 search-and-rescue missions, which suggests heavy coalition losses.

--

No WMD, just Iraqis attempting to stave off a massive US-Brit attack.

"US and British officers had warned that the battle could be a great deal harder than their more ideological civilian colleagues were suggesting," write Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian. But even they thought the regular Iraqi army would collapse and the main threat would come from the leadership carrying out dramatic destructive gestures involving blowing up oil fields or using weapons of mass destruction... So far it has been the other way round. There has been no sign of chemical or biological weapons, while British and US marines managed to seize most of the southern oilfields with only a handful of well-heads having been set ablaze."

In other words, the Bushites are liars -- and their lies are quickly unraveling. "If Baghdad had planned a scorched-earth policy, it has evidently not worked so far. But groups of Iraqi soldiers have been prepared to do something that was not expected of them - fight to the death."

People defending their country against foreign invasion have an uncanny habit of fighting to the death.

Ask the Vietnamese.

--

It seems thousands of Arabs are joining the Iraqi counter-invasion. Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, said the following on Abu Dhabi TV:

Thousands of volunteers cross into Iraq every day to fight alongside the Iraqi people against the aggression. This is a tangible expression of the stance of the Arab street which stands by the Iraqi people.

--

"In general, allied forces skirted centers of population, keeping their focus firmly on Baghdad. The central American objective of the war is the removal of Saddam Hussein's government from power and the subsequent disarmament of the country," writes Patrick E. Tyler of the New York Times.

Is it possible these urban centers were "skirted" because that's where Iraqis soldiers -- prepared to fight to the death -- are entrenched? Sooner or later, if the US wants to accomplish its stated mission of disarming Iraq, it is will have to confront these cities and towns instead of avoiding them. Replacing Gen. Tommy Franks will not change this situation.

--

"A weekend USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds that even after the first U.S. deaths, more than a third say fewer than 100 U.S. troops will be killed or injured in the conflict," reports USA Today.

The Russians say (see above) more than a hundred US and Brit soldiers have been killed in less than a week of fighting. This report claims the US is suffering "colossal" losses.

--

For those Americans who support Bush's invasion, take a moment to look at this photograph (taken in Basra). Note: this is an extremely graphic photograph.

--

"Washington's hopes that U.S.-led forces would be welcomed into Iraq as liberators have bled into the sand, the fourth day of war, as Iraqi troops fought back with determination and guerrilla tactics," writes Douglas Hamilton of Reuters.

"There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction being used by Iraq in battle. Instead, Iraqi troops were fighting with machinegun-mounted Japanese pickup trucks against squadrons of the world's most formidable battle tank, the U.S. Abrams."

Shades of Mogadishu?

--

Finally, here's some of the questions "liberated" Iraqis had for John Donvan of ABC News:

"Why are you here in this country? Are you trying to take over? Are you going to take our country forever? Are the Israelis coming next? Are you here to steal our oil? When are you going to get out?"

--

Oh, just in case you think you live in a country with freedom of the press, consider what happened to Yellow Times for publishing photos of US POWs and Iraqis killed by US bombing -- their ISP pulled the plug on them.

"The purpose of these images is to engage the reader on a level not found, indeed suppressed, within Western corporate media. The constant sanitization of war by this same media since the conflict in Vietnam has led to an American culture that accepts war as a glorious, if not romantic endeavor, waged for flowery and moral reasons. The filth, horror, and primitiveness have been removed like it's some kind of fattening food that needs to be altered before its deemed fit for consumption and digestion.

It is this practice that has led to a violence obsessed culture which vicariously "experiences" violence whenever it can, while remaining completely unfamiliar with the "real thing." It is this trend and condition we hope to counter by the inclusion of such images."

You will only be allowed to see the Bush-approved version of the invasion. Now go back to work, pay your taxes, shut up, and support "our" troops.

2003-03-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

Ledeen's wish granted?

The Associated Press is reporting a missile hit an Oil Ministry building in the Iranian city of Abadan on Friday. "We hope this was only a stray missile," Kianoush Rad, a legislator for the southwest Iranian province of Khuzestan, said in a telephone interview.

Maybe, maybe not.

"Faster, please," writes Michael Ledeen, contributing editor of the National Review, desirous of the same kind of bloodshed in Iran that we are witnessing at this moment in Iraq. "The most important thing is our leaders' words to the Iranians. We want the fall of the regime. That is what the war on terrorism is all about. To remain silent is to be complicit in the repression of Iran. There is no diplomatic 'solution.' We want a free Iran. Don't we?" Ledeen opines in the Jewish World Review, an appropriate venue for these sort of pro-Zionist views.

"No stages," Jason Vest quotes Ledeen as saying. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. And all this talk about, well, first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq, then we will take a look around and see how things stand, that is entirely the wrong way to go about it. Because these guys are all talking to each other and are all working with one another. . . . If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Or they'll spit on your grave.

For those of you wondering who this Ledeen guy is, here's what Bill White has to say about him:

The most blatantly CIA-Zionist linked National Review intellectual is Michael Ledeen... Ledeen made his career in American and Israeli intelligence as a "counter-terrorism expert" and analyst for US forces during the 1983 invasion of Grenada... Ledeen came to prominence in 1985 for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, where he was the key contact between CIA and Mossad agents who were coordinating arms transfers to Iran. Ledeen’s known involvement in Israeli-US intelligence operations didn't end there. In 1988 he helped place convicted Israeli spy Johnathan Pollard in the US Department of the Navy, pulling strings to get Pollard his job. And though he was retired as National Security Advisor to the President in 1986, in 2001 he was reappointed by George Bush to the US-China Commission.

Isn't it about time we show these Israeli loyalists pretending to be good Americans the door? How did so many of them end up in the Bush administration?

If they love Israel more than America, maybe they should go live there

2003-03-21T18:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a brainwashed soldier, doing exactly what his leaders want him to do. Colin Powell expressed his hope France would join the US in the spoils of war but French President Jacques Chirac essentially told Powell and the US to take a hike. He said France wants no part in the US-Britian plan to lord over the defeated Iraqis and allow US companies such as Cheney's Halliburton to make a fortune in rebuild contracts. Favored corporations such as Bechtel Group, Parsons, Fluor and the Brown & Root Services (a subsidiary of Halliburton) are smacking their chops over lucrative contracts. The more Iraqi children are "shocked and awed," the more money these vampires stand to make. William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, says the rebuilding of Iraq could cost as "little" as $100 billion over the next decade, or $600 billion if a long occupation is required. No doubt Mr. Nordhaus will be consulted after the follow-up invasions of Iran, Syria, and Libya, to name but three.

--

Meanwhile, the real taskmasters of the Iraqi massacre, the Israelis, are predicting the US may be killing people in the Middle East for some time to come. "The war in Iraq is just the beginning," Zionist Shimon Peres told Israel Channel One Television. "Problems of the first magnitude can be expected thereafter, as well: Iran, North Korea, and Libya... The problem is, can you simply abandon the world to dictators, to weapons of mass destruction?"

Never mind that the UN or the US never found any WMD in Iraq prior to the current mass murder. In fact, if the UN and US were sincerely interested in cleaning up WMD in the Middle East, they would begin in Israel.

Peres made a revealing comment when asked how long he thought it would take for the Americans to redraw the Iraqi map. "I don't know how long it will take, but the problem is a global one, and it will not end in Iraq, even if a new regime is instituted -- say a regime like Jordan's, not a democracy, but orderly and responsible rule."

In other words, dictatorships -- ruled by Hashemite kings -- who violently oppress their people and make sure there's little if any significant opposition to the rabid colonialism of Zionist Israel is what Peres and the Zionists are shooting for. Nothing less will be acceptable.

"The first basic fact about populations is that they multiply," wrote Israel Galili, minister without portfolio in the Israeli Cabinet some thirty years ago. "The population of Israel is increasing, and the populations of the Arab nations are increasing. In the conflict between populations, either Arabs or Jews must someday end up being driven into arid desert wastes which will not support them, where they will find relief only in the oblivion of death. Israel means to kill the Arab populations and to occupy their lands."

--

"What we've done so far has not been sufficiently persuasive," wannabe war criminal Rumsfeld said this afternoon. "The Pentagon said more than 1,500 missiles and bombs rained down [on Baghdad today]. 'I'd like to put my name on one of them,' said a crew member on the USS Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier that launched warplanes," reported the Mercury News.

Of course, from the USS Harry S. Truman, this tool of mass murder didn't get a chance to experience the massive suffering of innocent Iraqis in Baghdad.

"I don't think it's overkill," Michael Beukers, a machinist mechanic in Florida, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "They've been warned. They had their 24 hours and anyone who fights now is a target."

Or anybody unfortunate enough to live in Baghdad.

I don't know if anybody told this American that cruise missiles can't tell the difference between pre-school kids and Republican Guards.

Bush will go down in the history books like Hulagu Khan and Tamerlane, the Mongol warlords who laid bloody waste to Baghdad in 1258 and 1401.

We can only hope for a modern version of the Mamluks to defeat him. In the meantime, untold numbers of innocent people will die.

2003-03-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo of a "liberated" Iraqi girl on the first day of Bush's "Operation Iraqi Freedom," i.e., the bombing of innocent Iraqis. You can bet she will grow up to love Americans.

More photos of thankful Iraqis can be found here.

2003-03-19T20:42:00.000-08:00

Bush gives order to kill Iraqis

From the unpresident's speech this evening:

"American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."

Iraq has little to disarm. Hans Blix found this out -- and said global warming is more of a danger to humanity than Saddam Hussein.

Free it's people? Most Iraqis are Shi'a with a religious affinity leaning toward Iran and are at odds with the Sunni minority. The Bushites (under direct orders from Ariel Sharon) have indicated Iran is next on the global mafia hit list. Seems to me Bush will have to kill most Iraqis to free them because no version of Islam is safe from the Zionist Bushites and their co-conspirators in Likudite Israel (who want to destroy Islam).

"This will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome except victory."

In other words, the US military is now in the process of deploying all of its awesome and frightening weapons against the people of Iraq. Nothing will be spared in the quest for "victory."

"We have come to Iraq with respect for its citizens. We have no ambitions in Iraq."

Funny way to show respect -- killing possibly hundreds of thousands of them. No ambitions in Iraq? Right. Those oil wells have nothing to do with it.

It would seem the only person in Washington at the moment who makes any sense is Senator Robert C. Byrd, who said, ""Today, I weep for my country. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent, peacekeeper. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned."

Well, the US has not been a "peacekeeper" since 1898, but Byrd's comments are certainly a departure from the warmongering Republicans and mostly spineless Democrats.

2003-03-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

War's on, the media can celebrate

CNN leads this evening with a photo of tank crews praying in Kuwait before moving out to kill Iraqis. No doubt they will need prayers -- and plenty of them -- because when this thing's over (or when this iteration is over; Iran's probably next because, well, because the Zionist Ariel Sharon said so) a third or more of those poor saps will end up with Gulf War Syndrome II from all the DU munitions they will use.

Meanwhile, Fox News ("We deliver Bush's propaganda, you digest it or you're anti-American"), reports the US "may use a new 'e-bomb' during the expected invasion of Iraq as part of a 21st century blitzkrieg designed to render Saddam Hussein's forces blind, deaf, dumb and incapable of retaliation." Fox says this bomb is "highly classified," which is to say the Pentagon wanted them to write a story about it. Interesting choice of words over at Murdoch's Ministry of Truth -- "blitzkrieg." Nazi Hans Guderian devised this term (it means "lightening war") and Hitler embraced it. Hey, if the shoe fits and Bush can wear it...

The New York Times reports Ari Fleischer as saying: "Americans ought to be prepared for loss of life. Americans ought to be prepared for the importance of disarming Saddam Hussein to protect the peace."

Sure, Ari, you always "protect the peace" by invading essentially defenseless countries and killing maybe a million people or more.

Finally, as if the underscore the lack of hard information and wild speculation about Bush's attack that we can expect in the weeks ahead, Robert Fox and David Taylor of the Evening Standard are reporting "British and American troops were involved in fierce fighting near Iraq's main port today as the war to topple Saddam Hussein began."

No word on CNN or Fox... but then they are "embedded" (or is it "entombed"?) in the Pentagon and the Evening Standard is not.

2003-03-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

Red alert. Kinda like a snow storm.

New Jersey state authorities have explained what it would be like to live under an Bush imposed red alert. "You literally are staying home, is what happens, unless you are required to be out. No different than if you had a state of emergency with a snowstorm," explains Sid Caspersen, New Jersey's director of the office of counter-terrorism and former FBI agent.

Except, during a snow storm, you wouldn't get shot for attempting to get some food.

"Red means all noncritical functions cease," Caspersen said. "Noncritical would be almost all businesses, except health-related."

Well, that's one better than the Palestinians, at least.

"You must adhere to the restrictions announced by authorities and prepare to evacuate, if instructed. Stay alert for emergency messages."

I don't have a functioning TV, no radio except in the car. So if I venture out to the car to find out what I'm supposed to do, will I get plugged by the National Guard? Oh, and if we "evacuate," where are we going to go? I live in southern New Mexico and it's harsh desert for hundreds of miles in all directions. I tend to think evacuating to the desert in say May or June would be deadly.

But then, I suppose, dying of heat stroke and dehydration is likely preferable to dying from exposure to anthrax or radiation sickness.

Question: how long do you think it will be before we have our first red alert?

2003-03-18T07:47:00.000-08:00

Ashcroft's "Himmler II" Bill

Remember when Ashcroft said:

To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies...

Now that war is hours away, is it possible Bush and Ashcroft will attempt to push through the Son of Patriot, otherwise known as Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003?

While I have always considered Lyndon H. LaRouche a nut case -- remembering all too well his National Caucus of Labor Committees and Trotskyist nonsense in the late 60s -- I must admit his take on Bush and Ashcroft are spot on. For instance, in regard to Patriot II and Bush's Iraq invasion:

The United States' war-machine invades Iraq. Baghdad is bombed simultaneously with thousands of cruise missiles. Violent anti-American demonstrations break out around the world. Bloody rioting threatens to topple several Middle Eastern governments. Then, a series of terrorist incidents hit U.S. facilities and personnel abroad. Television screens around the world brutalize the eyes of viewers with images of dead children in Baghdad. Around the world, the unrest and rioting builds up.

(...)

Attorney General John Ashcroft is on television to announce that the FBI has foiled a major terrorist plot inside the United States, a plot which he alleges would have killed thousands of Americans. He paints a picture of something on a scale equal to the Sept. 11, 2001 events. Ashcroft declares that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies require strengthened powers to prevent terrorist attacks under these wartime conditions. Today the President will submit new emergency anti-terrorism legislation to Congress for immediate passage.

That evening, President Bush will address the nation, to demand that Congress immediately pass the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," or members of Congress will be held accountable for the deaths of thousands of Americans, in attacks which he says terrorists are now planning on U.S. soil.

Panicked members of Congress will rush through the new anti-terrorist legislation. Only a handful of dissenting votes will resist. Most members have been too terrified to read the bill that they just passed. The new law gives sweeping new powers to the Justice Department and FBI, the same kinds of powers which Carl Schmitt's "Notverordnung" doctrine delivered to Adolf Hitler on February 28, 1933. After that, the members of the Congress will never vote against any bill which Ashcroft demands.

Stop Ashcroft's 'Himmler II' Bill - While You Still Can

Worth reading, even if LaRouche is off the deep end and believes the Queen of England is selling dope to your kids.

--

I have been unable to write anything about the barbarous murder of Rachel Corrie by Sharon's Nazi goons in Palestine. All I can say is Israel is a criminal state and its people are guilty of slaughtering thousands of innocent people -- and soon enough the American people will join them in providing material support to the terrorist regime of Bush.

Polls show an astounding 65% of Americans believe the US needs to kill possibly a hundred thousand or more innocent Iraqis. It is projected that number will climb once the bombs start to fall. Unfortunately, only 35% of Americans think Bush's unwarranted attack is wrong.

In regard to the criminal state of Israel, Americans are guilty of providing them with the instruments of terror they use against defenseless Palestinians and peace activists alike. "The instrument of [Rachel Corrie's] death was a massive D-9 bulldozer, purchased from Caterpillar Inc. with part of the $3 billion that Washington annually supplies to the Israeli state to cover its military expenses," writes Bill Vann. "The connection between the killings in Gaza and the coming bloodshed in Iraq is by no means abstract. The US Army has purchased a dozen of the Caterpillar vehicles that took the young American student’s life. It has sent them to Israel to be fitted out with armor. They will soon see action, crushing Iraqi soldiers and civilians alike and demolishing homes in Baghdad."

I urge all Americans to take a look at the photo of the dead Rachel Corrie on the page linked above. This is what Bush and Sharon have in mind for millions of people. As an average American you are guilty of supporting them, especially if you're part of that 65% who think murdering countless people in Iraq is a solution to the CIA-installed monster Saddam Hussein.

2003-03-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

Operation Liberty Shield

Now that Bush will invade Iraq, the Ministry of Homeland Security has jacked up the so-called terror alert to orange. It also gave fancy name to increased domestic militarization -- Operation Liberty Shield...

which includes stepped-up Coast Guard patrols at major ports and waterways; increased escorting of ferries and cruise ships; more agents assigned to U.S. borders and entry points; added police presence at some airports; and toughened rules for flights entering and leaving airspace near Washington and New York. (John Mintz, Washington Post)

Not that any of this will prevent terrorism. Of course, if Iraqis respond to the invasion of their country by attacking the US, this could not accurately be called terrorism. If you attack somebody, chances are they will respond in kind.

Now that Bush and Ridge have deployed the National Guard "to improve security at critical locations," is it possible we will see Code Red once the invasion gets rolling?

--

If half million Iraqi soldiers die, and 100,000 civilians are killed in collateral damage, we have to remember that there are at least (for the sake of argument) five people who intensely love each of the dead. And if we think of the grief of millions after this slaughter, and of the conversion of that grief into rage, and combine that with the organization of the internecine struggles based on historical ethnic fault lines (that the Ba'ath Party has repressed), we begin to appreciate the explosive complexity of post-invasion Iraq.

(...)

We have had our course charted now, and the military option is all the US ruling class really has to maintain its dominance. After Iraq, there will certainly be increased asymmetric warfare, "terrorism," if you will, directed at Americans, American institutions, American targets. And when the rest of the world recognizes how thinly spread the US military is, thinly spread physically, but also economically because it is not a sustainable institution in its current incarnation, rebellions will occur. They have already started. Then the response of the weakening US will be to lash out, often with totally unforeseeable consequences, just as the consequences of this impending invasion are unforeseeable.

Rolling Start: The Idiot Prince Will Have His War, by Stan Goff

In regard to the text I bolded in the quote, see my entry above. It seems to me Code Red will not be long in the making after "Shock and Awe" decimates Iraq.

Of course, considering what will happen to the economy after this invasion, the Bush regime is going to need Code Red to keep a lid on things.

Maybe Ridge can call it "Operation Bread Line' for the unemployed and "Operation Internment" for the malcontents.

2003-03-14T18:46:00.000-08:00

Lies, damn lies

Let's translate what Bush said in a Rose Garden appearance today:

"We have reached a hopeful moment for progress" Bush said about the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

We have? I suppose Bush considers the ever increasing body count of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza "progress." Certainly, Sharon does.

Bush called on both sides in the Israel-Palestinian conflict to "abandon old hatreds and to meet their responsibility for peace."

In other words, the Palestinians have to give up their dream of living on their own land without having their kids murdered. Responsibility means allowing the Israeli Afrikaner colonialists to consider the Palestinians third-class non-citizens. It means Palestinians should have their bags packed for a trip to Jordan, which the Zionists consider Palestine.

"The government of Israel, as the terror threat is removed and security improves, must take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable and credible Palestinian state and to work as quickly as possible toward a final status agreement."

He's lying. This is the same thing his daddy said the last time the US invaded Iraq. Instead of a homeland, the betrayed Palestinians ended up with a shattered Oslo agreement and a corrupt PA to do Israel's bidding. They ended up with an Israeli-sponsored Hamas to make sure there would never be peace.

"As progress is made toward peace, settlement activity in the occupied territories must end."

Again, the same thing his daddy said. Lying must be genetic in the Bush family. If Bush cared about ending settlements, he'd stop bankrolling them.

"And the Arab states must oppose terrorism, support the emergence of a peaceful and democratic Palestine and state clearly that they will live in peace with Israel."

Israel has no interest in peace. The Arabs know this. As for terrorism, Israel is the biggest terrorist in the neighborhood. It has the deadliest military on the block and is not reluctant to use it (ask the Lebanese).

The invasion is right around the corner because the Bush clan always lies about Israel and Palestine before they are about to kill a whole lot of Iraqis. It distracts the Arabs.

Only this time I don't think they're distracted.

2003-03-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

They think we're stupid, Part II

Over and over, incessantly, the Bushites have told us killing countless people in Iraq will bring "democracy" to that beleaguered country. Only a moron, of course, would believe such poppycock.

Now the Bush State Department -- in yet another "classified" document "leaked" to the corporate press -- admits democracy in post-attack Iraq is unlikely, if not impossible.

"A classified State Department report expresses deep skepticism that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document," writes Greg Miller in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Even if some version of democracy took root -- an event the report casts as unlikely -- anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that elections in the short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States."

No, really? I thought they would all become mall-shopping citizens overnight.

"Critics say even establishing a democratic government in Iraq will be extremely difficult. Iraq is made up of ethnic groups deeply hostile to one another. Ever since its inception in 1932, the country has known little but bloody coups and brutal dictators."

As Roger Morris writes in the New York Times (of all places), the US has messed with the internal politics of Iraq for decades. "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..."

In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies — chiefly France and Germany — resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee," as it was tactfully called, sent [Abdel Karim Kassem, Iraqi military leader at the time] a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Israel and Britain in cahoots with the US, the US arming Kurdish rebels... sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

The American people need to see this for what it is -- the US, Britain, and Israel are invading Iraq (and then Syria, Iran, Lebanon) for one reason and one reason only and it has nothing to do with democracy: to install submissive regimes, preferably Hashemite monarchs, who will saddle their nations with IMF loans, allow multinational corporations to penetrate their cultures, and make sure they do not challenge the Israeli desire for expansion (i.e., Greater Israel, which includes the uprooting and removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza).

History repeats itself -- and it will again in Iraq.

2003-03-13T22:15:00.000-08:00

Does Fox think we're stupid, or the Iraqis?

Defense officials told their favorite propaganda organ, Fox News, that Saddam is moving troops toward the Kuwaiti border, Scuds into western Iraq "within striking distance of Israel," and has "wired many key oil fields in the north and the south of the country with explosives for possible detonation should the coalition launch an attack."

Is this just plain stupid, or what?

First off, this would assume Saddam has complete amnesia -- his troops were annihilated in the open desert during the Gulf War. Second, this would indicate Saddam has a death wish or is on a suicide mission -- attacking Israel with bios or chems will result in a "mini-nuke" experience in Iraq.

Are we more stupid than we look?

Remember those "classified" satellite photographs purporting to show that in September 1990 -- a month after the invasion of Kuwait -- 265,000 Iraqi soldiers and 1,500 tanks were massing on the border to gear up to invade Saudi Arabia? Said General Colin Powell's at the time: "I think we could go to war if they invaded Saudi Arabia. I doubt if we would go to war over Kuwait." Well, thanks to the investigative journalism of Jean Heller, we eventually found out this was a complete cock and bull story: the Pentagon lied, there were no Iraqi troops in the desert poised to attack Saudi Arabia.

Same thing this time, no doubt.

2003-03-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

2003-03-11T21:54:00.000-08:00

COINTELPRO in the neighborhood

Antiwar protesters burned and ripped up flags, flowers and patriotic signs at a Sept. 11 memorial that residents erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard days after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and have maintained ever since.

However, although officers witnessed the vandalism Saturday afternoon, police did not arrest three people seen damaging the display because they were "exercising the same freedom of speech that the people who put up the flags were,' La Habra (California) Police Capt. John Rees said Monday.

"For this to be vandalism, there had to be an ill-will intent,' he said.

Antiwar protesters trash 9/11 memorial

Classic FBI COINTELPRO action. As J. Edgar Hoover put it in a memo, COINTELPRO was designed "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" anybody who disagrees with the state (or the FBI and the president).

"The first question that enters my mind is, what good is done for the antiwar movement when vandals trash a memorial to thousands of slaughtered civilians?" writes Jeremy Sapienza. "The answer is none, and that's why it seems like less an antiwar protest and more the act of saboteurs. This incident can be seized upon as a defining characteristic of the antiwar movement (a bunch of anti-American vandals) by the War Party and pulled out whenever a point needs to be made about our convictions."

Back in December there were rumors of anarchists going after Lockheed Martin. Same kind of agents provocateurs action designed to discredit the antiwar movement.

Thanks to Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, these tactics will likely become more common in the future.

2003-03-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

Email from a fan

Duplicity is reprehensible whether committed by liberals, conservatives, or neocons. Your article about Richard Perle has many facts but also liberal lies. Exactly: "They also know that Iraq is not a serious threat to Israel, especially after a decade of war and sanctions have reduced Iraq to one of the poorest countries in the world."

The truth is that due to Hussein's personal enrichment and glorification, including mutlitudinous "presidential palaces," he has robbed the Iraqi masses of the wealth they should be sharing. Hussein's squandering of money of the Oil for Food program has condemned his government. Blog this.

(name witheld to protect the ignorant)
Colorado Springs

Okay, I will blog this.

"The oil-for-food programme approved in April 1995 allowed Iraq to export $2 billion worth of oil every six months, of which $1.3 billion could be spent on food and medicine, $600,000 would be put into a compensation fund to pay for claims against Iraq for war damages, and $80,000 would go towards UN expenses. But the UN estimates that Iraq needs to spend $2.1 billion on food and medicine every six months just to stop conditions getting worse."

The UN's 'oil-for-food' programme has helped, but not enough

"Even if the $ 29.59 billion had been utilized in full during this period, the value of the programme would still have been only $ 277 per person per year or 76 cents per person per day. While these aggregate figures in themselves convey a desolate picture, they do not reveal that during the initial three years of the oil-for-food-programme, the amounts of oil revenue allocated by the UN Security Council were only $1.3 billion for each of the first three phases and $ 2.6 billion for each of the following phases 4-6. This means that during the initial three years of the programme the amounts available to meet essential physical needs were even lower than identified for the entire period... the revenue available for the humanitarian exemption has been woefully inadequate, particularly in the early phases of the oil-for-food-programme."

Hans von Sponeck

"UNICEF officials shared heartbreaking statistics of malnutrition, disease, and hunger with us. We are concerned by the increasing reliance of Iraqi people on the food basket provided through the "oil for food" program, a program not intended to be the primary source of nutrition or a balanced diet. We intend to advocate to our government for changes in the "oil for food" program that will allow for humanitarian, educational, and medical needs to be better met. We understand the cruelty embedded in the "oil for food program" as it affects ordinary Iraqis."

Religious leaders release statement on Iraq trip

"The main problem with Oil for Food is that it does not generate sufficient funds to even begin the process of rehabilitating Iraq's once-modern social and economic infrastructure, now at a Third World-level of impoverishment. Most children die of treatable water-borne diseases from contaminated water, untreated because of lack of medicine, or otherwise treatable cancers or other serious diseases for which chemotherapy or other life-saving drugs are unavailable, inadequate, or available only sporadically or in incorrect sequences. While few deaths are directly caused by starvation, deaths are more frequent because immune systems, especially children's, are compromised by inadequate food and years of malnutrition. The simple fact is that there is just not enough money to rebuild the water purification, sewage treatment and electricity generating facilities."

Representative John Conyers, Jr. , Michigan 14th district

"This program is not humanitarian aid, as some US and UK politicians have claimed. Some $53 billion in orders for goods have been frozen because of American and British fears that they might serve some military purpose. The $54 billion worth of oil sold under the "Oil for Food" program has translated into less than $20 billion worth of gods arriving in Iraq. This amounts to a pathetic 41 cents a day per person."

Andrea Foss

"With the limited amount of money now available through Oil for Food, Iraq is on inadequate "rations." All of the Oil for Food money (Iraq's money) is deposited in a bank in Paris - none of it is available to the Iraqi regime. To access the funds, a requisition is made to the Oil for Food committee, approval obtained, a contract submitted and approved, an order submitted and approved, the goods received, inspected, approved. At any point along the way, a HOLD can be placed on needed goods. Partial orders such as insulin may be received while syringes essential for insulin delivery are HOLD. In April, Mr. von Sponeck told our delegation that the total annual dollar amount available for all expenses in Iraq (food, medicine, roads, hospitals, schools, books, clothing, electricity, water, sewage – everything) is $178 per person."

Gerri Haynes, Middle East Task Force Chair

"A few years ago, all Oil-for-Food funds were kept at a French bank, Banque Nationale de Paris. More recently, the funds have been diversified among five or six banks, according to U.N. treasurer Suzanne Bishopric. But the U.N. does not permit her to disclose the names or locations of the banks, or details such as interest accrued."

Enron-style accounting at the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program

Note the quote on the banking arrangement. I guess the person who sent this email thinks Saddam is making those palaces out of tins of milk.

2003-03-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

Question: why didn't the US simply blow off its nukes off the coast of Japan at the end of WWII to scare the Japanese into surrendering instead of killing thousands of innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Answer: because the primary reason for the nuke attacks on Japan were to see what these horrific weapons would do to human victims. The Japanese were ready to surrender anyway when Truman nuked them. It was also intended to send a message to Uncle Joe Stalin.

Now we have the US military telling us its new "superbomb" (based on the Daisycutter, shown above) will be used the "scare" the Iraqis into surrendering. "Military planners believe just the sight of the bomb exploding could frighten Iraqi soldiers into surrendering," reports the Evening Standard.

Yeah, right.

"The giant device contains 21,000lb of high explosive and dwarfs the huge 'daisy cutter' bombs used against the Taliban in Afghanistan... The Pentagon intends to test the bomb and videotape the results as a warning to Iraq of what the US could inflict."

Here's the stats on this nightmare.

No, the US plans to drop these things on Iraq. Weapons are made to be used and tested. You don't spend millions developing these things simply to videotape them.

Seriously, they take us for morons.

2003-03-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

Rep. James P. Moran Jr., kiss your political career bye-bye

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. made a big mistake -- he told the truth. Because of this he will likely be banished from Washington.

"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this," Moran said at an antiwar forum in Reston, Virginia. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

Washington Post (March 11, 2003)

Oops. Moran forgot the cardinal law of modern US politics -- never, ever, criticize the Zionist control over Washington. It's suicide.

"I made some insensitive remarks that I deeply regret," said Moran later.

"I should not have singled out the Jewish community and regret giving any impression that its members are somehow responsible for the course of action being pursued by the Administration, or are somehow behind an impending war."

The only mistake Moran made was using the phrase "Jewish community." He should have used the appropriate term -- Zionists. It's the Israeli Zionists who are pushing this nation to invade Iraq, not individual Jews. Of course, there's a lot of individual Jews who support Israel no matter what they do. But then there's even more non-Jewish Christian-Zionists doing the same.

Here's the real problem with Moran and the Zionists:

"In recent years, Moran's relations with pro-Israel organizations and U.S. Jewish leaders have deteriorated. The groups cite his 1991 vote against foreign aid to Israel, rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause, statements on Israeli history and leadership, and acceptance of campaign cash from individuals sympathetic to the terrorist organization Hamas or under investigation for possible links to terrorists. He later sent back those contributions."

Actually, when you think about it, taking money from Hamas is about the same as taking money from Israel since they funded and supported the organization.

Anyway, it was nice to know you, Jim. Good luck in your private life (that is if you're not pestered by terrorists from the JDL for your "anit-Semitism").

And you thought we lived in a democracy?

2003-03-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Now you see him, now you don't

Bruce Kennedy in a March 11 Jihad Unspun article:

Addressing journalists from CNN, ABC and other major media at the ISI headquarters in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, in what appears to be an effort to counter growing US criticism of Pakistan's efforts to apprehend “terrorists”, events immediately got off to a bad start.

(...)

Then came the main event and what is poised to be the conflict, albeit maybe short-lived. Eight minutes of footage (in English) was shown of the arrest of Mohammed and al-Hawsawi. Broken doors, blood-stained walls and wrists in handcuffs were all shown but curiously, no face shots of these high profile individuals - not even the well publicized “arrest” photo of Mohammed that has been widely circulated and questioned. When one CNN reporter, Tom Minter asked why, the ISI said the tape had been edited but that the actual footage did record his face but had been edited out for the presentation.

(...)

If this was the highest profile Al-Qaida arrest for the Pakistani's, why the missing head shots? Further, if this arrest footage does not show the identities of those captured and it has not been released, it begs the question, who is the person in the picture that has been aired morning, noon and night in America that has raised so many questions?

(...)

To date, we have not seen a single picture of any of the so-called high profile operatives that have allegedly been arrested. We have never seen Abu Zubaydah, said to be Osama Bin Laden's Operations Chief, allegedly captured March 28, 2002, either during his arrest or in captivity. Contradictory reports at the time countered that Zubaydah died in the raid.

(...)

It has long been known that the ISI has affiliations with Muslim “fundamentalists” having supported initiatives throughout the Islamic world for decades, including acting as the paymaster on behalf of many countries, including America, during the ten-year long Afghan-Russian conflict.

Why the missing head shots? Because the ISI didn't capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's why. It's all a ruse. Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Abu Zubaydah -- these are all ISI-CIA operatives. ISI-CIA operatives are rewarded, not captured and tortured.

"The FBI issued almost daily warnings based on the testimony of Abu Zubaydah, an alleged Qaeda lieutenant captured in Pakistan and reportedly being held at Camp X-Ray in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba," writes Jack Riddler. "Zubaydah's picture as a captive has never been published, and he has never been directly quoted by the government spokespersons who report on his remarks."

Abu Zubaydah is not being held at Camp X-Ray in Guantanomo Bay. He's a boogie man created to scare the American people. He's the "source" for bogus information on terror alerts, which the Bushites use at various opportune times to distract attention from other things.

"Ninety-five percent of the work of the intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation,” Andreas von Bülow, who served on the parliamentary commission which oversees the three branches of the German secret service while a member of the Bundestag from 1969 to 1994, told Christopher Bollyn of the American Free Press.

Von Bülow told AFP that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks. These attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending.

"The BND (German secret service) is steered by the CIA and the CIA is steered by Mossad," von Bülow said.

"Osama bin Laden is a high level agent operated by the Israeli Mossad in cooperation with the CIA. OBL and his inner circle [or any of the mujahedeen groups the CIA has funded and supported since the 1980s] recruited the hijackers for 911, with the naive recruitees having little idea of what they were really getting into or about whom was pulling their strings (this was the false flag component of the operation)," writes Sean McBride. It's these "recruitees" and other hapless Afghans and Arabs the US shows us in those orange jumpers at Camp X-Ray. The big fish were allowed to swim away.

"The U.S. spends $40 billion a year on its 11 intelligence agencies," notes Gen. Hameed Gul (former head of Pakistan's ISI). "That's $400 billion in 10 years. Yet the Bush Administration says it was taken by surprise. I don't believe it. Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators. It created an instant mindset and put public opinion into a trance, which prevented even intelligent people from thinking for themselves... Osama inspires countless millions by standing up for Islam against American and Israeli imperialism. He doesn't have the means for such a sophisticated operation... Mossad and its American associates are the obvious culprits. Who benefits from the crime?"

This ISI videotape is simply the latest -- if inept and transparent -- attempt by intelligence services to fill in the holes of 9/11. We are expected to believe the CIA has Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If this is the case, the American people need more than a video minus faces. It needs irrefutable proof Osama bin Laden and al-Qeada are the culprits behind 9/11.

2003-03-10T20:57:00.000-08:00

The above sign is now posted in Santa Cruz County, California, library branches. Section 215 of the Patriot act allows FBI agents to obtain a warrant from a secret federal court (FISA) for library or bookstore records of anyone "connected to an investigation of international terrorism or spying."

Or maybe if you happen to be a gut-damned hippie protester against Bush's stupid and incredibly destructive attack on the babies and grandmothers of Iraq.

How many al-Qaeda types are checking out books at the library?

How many of you will look over your shoulder the next time you check out Thomas Paine's Common Sense?

Maybe we should all stick with Harry Potter to be on the safe side.

--

After writing about what the neocon and unabashed Zionist Richard Perle said about the journalist Seymour Hersh (published here, here, and here), my email inbox quickly filled up. Most of the email was supportive. But some of it was from Zionists or apologists for Zionism, the kind I usually get (and increasingly so) when I write about Israel or the Zionists in the Bush administration. This evening I read a piece by Joe Sobran (who I never thought I'd agree with) entitled Obsessions about Israel. Here's a quote:

Israel isn't a subject that really excites me; I don't have the energy to write a book about it. But now and then the ironies are too rich to resist. Here is a "democracy" based on the denial of human equality. Here is an "ally" that steals military secrets from the United States, while making it enemies it didn't use to have. Here is a "homeland" for Jews who have never lived there and can't trace their ancestry to it, but who can claim rights that are denied to actual natives of the land. Here is a country that complains about "terrorism" and keeps electing rulers like Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon.

(...)

When you are obsessed with a subject, you lose all sense of proportion about it. I think this is exactly what has happened with Israel, and we need frank criticism to restore proportion. Jewish Zionists have now been joined in their obsession by simplistic Christians, who also demand all-out U.S. support for Israel -- including endless wars against Israel's enemies.

An article well worth reading, even if you disagree with Sobran on other issues.

2003-03-10T20:03:00.000-08:00

Did CBS call you and ask about Iraq?

Has CBS called you and asked if Bush should invade Iraq? I didn't think so. I beginning to think these polls are either completely rigged or they are calling the people who listen to Rush Limbaugh.

CBS reports this evening that 50% of you think "Iraq poses an immediate threat to the U.S." and this imagined threat "requires military action now." Only 5% think Iraq is not a threat. Here's a break down, according to CBS:

"There are some variations in support among different demographic groups. Republicans (86%) are more likely than Democrats (51%) to support overall military action against Iraq; support for taking such action without U.N. approval drops to 42% among Democrats. Overall support for war is similar for men (69%) and women (64%), but falls to 50% among women if the U.N. does not approve. 40% of African-Americans approve of taking military action against Iraq."

For once I'd like to ask the questions:

"If you had to donate your kid for an illegal attack to kill thousands of innocent Iraqis who never did anything to you or Bush, would you still be for this insane military action?"

"Considering this unwarranted attack may destroy the economy and increase terrorist attacks in America, would you still want Bush to take military action?"

The next time you read a "poll" about how so many Americans have turned into blood-thirsty morons, consider the following:

"Many of the major networks and newspaper corporations are owned by multinational corporations also involved in military contracting. NBC is owned by General Electric and shares board members with many other major oil companies, banks, and the New York Stock Exchange. GE is also one of the leading arms manufacturers. ABC, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., shares members of its board with the board of Boeing, a major maker and supplier of warplanes and weapons. The list goes on and on for all of the shared “interests” CBS, FOX, Knight-Ridder, Tribune Co. and The New York Times have with banks, oil companies and various other manufacturers. How can any reader or viewer expect alternative views and complete coverage of war when these news outlets have vested interests in the war?" (Christina Claassen, Mainstream Media: Shortcomings in News.)

2003-03-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

It's official: Iran's next on the Bushite hit list

Ari Fleischer told the media today Iran's nuclear program is "of great concern" and the Bushites "completely reject Iran's claim that it is doing so for peaceful purposes."

"Here, we suddenly discover that Iran is much further along -- with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program -- than anyone said it had, and now the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) has found that out," said Colin Powell on CNN.

"We've said all along that there are real problems with Iran and its so-called peaceful nuclear programs," said Condoleezza Rice.

"The Iranians are developing weapons of mass destruction. Practically every country in the region is developing weapons of mass destruction and the capability to launch them," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last week.

Of course, none of these folks mentioned Israel, the most lethally armed nuclear power in the region. Obviously, Israel is "one of us" while the Arabs and Iranians are untrustworthy scum who will sell nukes to terrorists. Fleischer, Powell, Rice, Pelosi -- none of them said this, but then they didn't have to.

The Iranians can read between the lines. They know from experience how two-faced an arrogant the Americans can be. They also remember Israel taking out Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981. Chances are they figure Israel will do the same thing to them. In fact, Iran is likely developing its own nukes as a hedge against the nuclear-armed Israelis.

In a completely tit-for-tat world, Iraq would take out Israel's Dimona nuclear facility.

Here's a unique idea -- have the US and Israel dismantle its nukes and then demand everybody else follow suit.

It will never happen. In fact, the demented Bushites are talking about fighting wars with so-called "mini-nukes" (as if the word "mini" lessens the horrific impact of these weapons of mass destruction).

Talk about sending the wrong message.

Remember, the US developed these weapons. It is the only nation to have ever used them.

Maybe when hypocrisy vanishes, so will the nukes.

2003-03-10T10:13:00.000-08:00

2003-03-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

In Arizona if you are caught looking at images of naked children you can get 200 years in prison. Not touching or fondling children, mind you, but simply looking at images.

Considering the kind of people who usually end up in prison, I wonder if the convicted man, Robert Berger, a former high school teacher, will live long enough to even serve one tenth of his sentence. Short eyes, as child molesters are called in prison, have a high mortality rate. Of course, technically speaking, Mr. Berger is not a child molester. He never touched child one. But in prison these technicalities are often lost on the violent and demented inmates in search of any reason to vent their immense hatred and resentment against humanity.

Really, when you think about it, Mr. Berger was sentenced to 200 years for a thought crime. It would seem all he did was think about sex with minors. He may have not even thought about sex. We simply don't know. Lisa Parson, the prosecutor, seemed to be really offended by the fact Berger didn't just "look at pictures, he kept them in three-ring binders."

Arizona's child pornography law has been declared unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge on grounds that it is vague on the definitions of child pornography.

Remember those naked on the bear rug photos so popular years ago? Well, in some places, probably including Arizona, if you take those kinds of photos to the one-hour lab you can end up being investigated by the local police department.

If you take cute photos of your kids naked, you may be some kind of pervert. It's probably a good idea to keep you kids clothed at all times, just in case. No sense risking a 200-year prison term.

2003-03-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

"There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it," wrote William James. So it is with terrorism. For instance, the CIA wants us to believe "terrorists" will attack "American and allied forces inside [Iraq] after any invasion," according to Thom Shanker and David Johnston of the New York Times. Once upon a time these "terrorists" would have been considered guerillas, or resistance fighters. It will serve the Bushites well to classify any resistance against US occupation of Iraq as "terrorism," of course. In this way all captured post-invasion "terrorists" can be treated not as POWs, but as non-state combatants who do not merit Geneva Convention protection (as Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters wasting away at Camp X-Ray do not "deserve" such consideration, and can thus be tortured and held indefinitely). In the New World Order future envisioned by Bush and his demented advisors, all people resisting domination and occupation in the Third World will be assigned the "terrorist" classification. Thus they will all become Palestinians and the US will be able to treat them the way the Israelis do, which is to say they will be considered sub-human and without human rights.

--

The New York Times is really going to bat for Bush the Younger these days. According to Elisabeth Bumiller, the unelected one "girds for war in solitude" and realizes "that making the decision to go to war is the loneliest moment that presidents face." Aides report the impending mass murder of innocents in Iraq "weighs on him heavily" and Bush "sees the world as a biblical struggle of good versus evil" and "has never expressed any misgivings, or personal vulnerabilities, about going to war against Saddam Hussein."

All of this is nothing short of shameless and obsequious propaganda.

It is precisely the kind of biblical perspective Bush supposedly takes that will render the invasion of Iraq utterly horrific in dimension. The implications of Bush's Christian-Zionist philosophy, according to Michael Hill Ortiz, "are grave beyond telling and yet scarcely ever noted in the public discourse. On the eve of a misguided war the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military force in human history has located American foreign policy within a Biblical narrative that leads inexorably towards the plains of Megiddo, roughly fifty five miles northwest of Jerusalem: the battle of Armageddon."

Bush, as a theologically-based non-president, shares a number of ideas put forward by fundamentalist Christians and the Likudites in Israel. As James Zogby points out, the Zionist-Christians and Likudites are "Manicheistic, i.e., they see the world in absolute black and white, good and evil." They believe "the forces of good as being led by the U.S. and Israel and see the forces of evil (once defined as the Soviet Union and now see as 'the axis of evil' states supporting terror) as including Arabs and Islam... both currents are confrontational and uncompromising. They believe that there can be no accommodation made with those representing evil. Both, therefore, seek confrontation and conflict, not a resolution of tensions through negotiations; and... both currents are absolutist, since their ideology will allow only for total victory."

Bumiller, of course, did not mention this in her fawning article in the New York Times. In fact, the immense danger inherent in the biblical philosophy of the Bushites is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.

2003-03-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

Irrelevant on a global basis

It's almost criminal the way the US corporate media refuses to mention the ongoing global demonstrations against Bush's Iraqi mass murder scheme. On Saturday there were demonstrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Seoul, South Korea, Manila, the Philippines, Taipei, Taiwan, Tokyo, Japan, Calcutta, India, Stuttgart, Germany, Ankara, Turkey, Multan, Pakistan, Sydney, Australia, Tehran, Iran, Santiago, Chile, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Manchester, England, and elsewhere. These demonstrations didn't receive mention in the New York Times or Fox News

CNN did, however, make mention of the demonstrations in an article on the arrest of author Alice Walker at the Code Pink demonstration for crossing a police line in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. CNN also mentioned a demo in Pisa, Italy, where demonstrators "forced their way through the perimeter fence of a U.S. military base... A few protesters hurled smoking flares and others pulled down a part of the fence, before being blocked by a line of Italian riot police."

As to be expected, the US corporate media will only cover these events if there is violence or civil disobedience resulting in arrests.

--

Bush's dirty tricks

If you want really significant news, however, you will have to leave the stale province of CNN, NBC, NYT, Fox, etc., and read newspapers such as the Observer (in fact, the UK has a more independent and dogged press than the US). The Observer broke the story of the US bugging of UN delegations last week. It had received a leak of "aggressive" surveillance by the National Security Agency (which intercepts communications around the world) of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York. "The memo [received by the Observer] describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq... The leak was described as 'more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers' by Daniel Ellsberg, the most celebrated whistleblower in recent American history."

"The reaction of US government officials and the American media to this exposure is itself noteworthy," writes WSWS. "White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer refused to comment, but did not deny the US was bugging the UN representatives of other countries. The New York Times did not even report the charge, while the Washington Post published a brief account quoting several UN diplomats dismissing the significance of American spying on their deliberations. 'It goes with the territory,' one was quoted as saying."

--

Finally, read what Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias has to say about the corporate US media.

"The media's failure to serve the public interest helps explain why, as the Internet audience measurement company Nielsen NetRatings revealed last month, Americans are turning more and more to news sites outside the country for a more accurate and balanced picture of the world... How else would they have learned, for example, that, as reported by the London Observer on Sunday, the U.S. government had pulled out its bag of 'dirty tricks' to spy on recalcitrant members of the United Nations Security Council? While the U.S. media ignored the story, the Star had it immediately. CBC Newsworld had one of its co-authors on the line by Monday. But, as he told Salon.com, NBC, CNN and Fox had all booked him -- and then backed out. That despite how, even when directly questioned about the surveillance, neither the White House nor the U.S. State Department denied the charges."

Amen, sister.

2003-03-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

Bush, who "portrayed himself as the protector of the country" (New York Times), said in his speech the other night "we really don't need anybody's permission" to kill a few hundred thousand additional people in Iraq. "I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons," said the unelected one in his first East Room news conference in nearly a year and a half.

Um, George? I feel more threatened by you than Saddam Hussein.

I feel more threatened by this appointed president because, like Benito Mussolini before him, he does not believe "in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace." His first choice is war. In fact, before he hijacked the presidency, his plan (or rather the plans of White House officials affiliated with neocon think tanks and past administrations) was to submerge the nation in the flames of perpetual war.

I'm more concerned about the lies of Bush -- the lies and obsessive deception -- than I am about the bio or chem weapons sold to Iraq by American companies.

"There have been thousands upon thousands of lies about Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Islam and the Middle East, lies about the intentions of France, Germany, Russia and anyone who dares raise a voice in protest," writes Firas Al-Atraqchi. "Lies about 9-11, about Osama bin Laden, about Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia. Lies in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States."

Bush's lies become truth. It's oh-so Orwellian.

"Bush's lies are broadcast as truth," writes Dennis Hans. "They originate at the White House and are transmitted to network amplification centers in New York and Washington, at which point the lie leaves the president's control. He then must rely on men named Brokaw, Jennings, Rather and Lehrer to treat the presidential lie with respect and deliver it to every nook and cranny in America via 'the people's airwaves.' The longer and farther the lie flies, the more 'frequent liar miles' the president accumulates.

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," wrote George Orwell. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

Perfect -- except the part about "long words."

2003-03-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

Out Foxing the Fascists at Fox

It's a go. Radio "shock jock" (this is too kind, he's a fascist) Michael Savage will have his say on MSNBC, according to David Bauder of the Associated Press.

"The brash, tough-talking Savage, who broadcasts out of the San Francisco area, is probably the second hottest talk-radio host in the country after Sean Hannity, said Michael Harrison, editor of the trade magazine Talkers."

Either people who listen to talk radio are extremely right wing nut cases (I concede it's possible) or the American populace at large find Savage's racist diatribes entertaining.

"He is, in many ways, the quintessential shock jock," Harrison said. "He's a very aggressive, clever, street smart everyman. He flies in the face of political correctness. He's what works on talk radio."

Everyman?

Lo, the corporate media has reached the bottom of the cesspool. Bill O'Reilly and the shrill, nasty, and mean-spirited Sean Hannity are the new standard in American political commentary. The "liberal" Phil Donahue gets fired and in rushes the fascist flotsam.

"A group Savage formed, the Paul Revere Society, advocates closing borders, deporting illegal immigrants, mandating health tests for immigrants, eliminating entitlement programs and making tax cuts permanent."

He didn't mention Savage also thinks the US should declare war on Islam and round up all the leftists. If this isn't classical fascism, I don't know what is.

Good thing I no longer watch TV.

2003-03-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

Earth Liberation Front more dangerous for Minnesota than al-Qaeda

This is the conclusion reached by a Hennepin County, Minnesota, sheriff's official with "expertise on counterterrorism efforts," reports the Star Tribune.

"We are not calling any of them terrorists. We call them domestic identified groups that may affect our communities," Capt. Bill Chandler said after giving a presentation to emergency management personnel on "Understanding Terrorism in Minnesota."

(...)

Chandler cited several left-wing groups, "mainly" of anarchists who don't like the government or anything that hurts the environment. He said the groups have used "direct action," and he listed a Twin Cities group that has national ties, the Ruckus Society.

He said the most dangerous groups, with a national base, were the Animal Liberation Front, which supports animal rights and damages property, and the Earth Liberation Front, which has a "strong violence component" and "doesn't care who they injure."

(...)

He said that a group at the University of Minnesota, Students Against War, was organizing a walkout of classes if war breaks out with Iraq, with plans to leave cars in city intersections to create gridlock.

So there you have it. folks -- civil disobedience is "more dangerous than al-Qaeda."

2003-03-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

Give peace a chance, get arrested

So you think you live in a democracy? Think again.

Lawyer Arrested for Wearing a 'Peace' T-Shirt

A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

Downs said police tried to convince him he was wrong in his actions by refusing to remove the T-shirt because the mall "was like a private house and that I was acting poorly.

"I told them the analogy was not good and I was then hauled off to night court where I was arraigned after pleading not guilty and released on my own recognizance," Downs told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Downs is the director of the Albany Office of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which investigates complaints of misconduct against judges and can admonish, censure or remove judges found to have engaged in misconduct.

Calls to the Guilderland police and district attorney, Anthony Cardona and to officials at the mall were not returned for comment.

Downs is due back in court for a hearing on March 17.

He could face up to a year in prison if convicted.

2003-03-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

"A month after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush released a list of the world's most-wanted terrorists. There were 22 names on it. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was No. 22," writes Debra Pickett of the Chicago Sun-Times. "And the list wasn't alphabetical... But, sometime between then and early Saturday morning, when Mohammed was captured in Pakistan, the U.S. government identified Mohammed as the mastermind behind the al-Qaida plot. "

So, in other words, the capture of Mohammed -- if indeed he was even captured -- is not as important as the Bushites made it seem at first. He is not the the architect of the 911 attacks or was he operations chief for al-Qaeda. He probably knows squat about bin Laden, the world's most infamous CIA asset

"Initially he said bin Laden was alive," said an official. "But he changed his statement and said bin Laden was dead because he had had no contact with him during the past six months."

Regardless, John Ashcroft told the US Senate Judiciary Committee that the capture of Mohammed could have profound implications for the war against terrorism. He called Mohammed a "mastermind" even though other officials said he's nowhere near the top of the terror totem pole.

Spin, that's the name of the game. Spin and good old fashion exaggeration and plenty of lying for people who find lying perfectly natural.

2003-03-03T22:07:00.000-08:00

Bark, no bite. The US State Department has strongly criticized the IDF raid on the Gaza Strip refugee camp of el-Buriej, in which eight Palestinians were killed, among them a pregnant woman and a 13-year-old boy, according to Ha'aretz.

"We are also deeply concerned about the increasing Israeli use ... of demolition and the civilian deaths that have resulted from this practice," said Richard Boucher.

We are? Oh, never mind. Boucher's talking through an orifice -- no, not his mouth.

Meanwhile, Israel and the US are talking turkey on an "emergency" economic package of $12 billion in aid and loan guarantees. Israel already receives close to $3 billion a year in mostly military aid. Now it wants an extra $4 billion in direct aid and $8 billion in loan guarantees to help it recover from its worst economic slump in 50 years.

Never mind that the US has economic problems of its own and homelessness in New York is at Great Depression levels, according to a report titled "State of the Homeless 2003."

Israel gets what Israel wants. As for the Palestinians -- they get shot up in ever increasing numbers by the IDF.

As Shirl McArthur reports for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the total forked out to Israel over the years is more than $91 billion. "The only condition the congressional foreign aid bill places on military aid to Israel is that about 75 percent of it has to be spent in the U.S. In contrast with other countries receiving military aid, however, who purchase through the DOD, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies, with no DOD review."

Ah, I knew those Palestinians died for something.

So the next time Richard Boucher protests think about all the money Lockheed Martin and the other death merchants make thanks to your generosity.