March 2003

March 28, 2003

War Stories

You've probably already read part of the war stories from injured soldiers Jamie Villafane, Joshua Menard, and Charles Horgan but this NPR interview (Windows Media | 3:29) is definitely worth a listen.

Speaking Of Veterans...

When he gets back from his book tour, Gulf War 1.0 veteran Joel Turnipseed will be posting here, and will begin writing something that's actually readable. Turnipseed, author of "Baghdad Express," was recently interviewed by Salon with fellow Marine authors Anthony Swofford ("Jarhead") and Gabe Hudson ("Dear Mr. President").

The Battle of Nasiriyah

March 27, 2003

Fair and Balanced

Upset by the thousands of "Say No to War With Iraq" lawn signs that began popping up in Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA) last fall, retired Army lieutenant Joe Repya created a counter-sign that reads "Liberate Iraq -- Support Our Troops." (Those who oppose war support the Iraqi troops?)

The signs were all the rage at a "Support Our Troops" rally at the state capitol last Saturday, attended by Governor Tim Pawlenty and first term U.S. Senator Bush Boy.

Mr. Repya has parlayed his 15 minutes of fame into providing objective war analysis for KMSP Channel 9, a Twin Cites affiliate of ... you guessed it ... FOX. Towards the end of each 1-hour broadcast G.I. Joe moves toy tanks across a floor map of Iraq, in what looks more like an SNL skit than informed military analysis.

By the way, Joe says "we're" moving on Baghdad within the next 48 hours.

March 26, 2003

Somebody wake the editor

The first report on Gulf War 2.0 civilian casualties appears today on foxnews.com (AP), including a link to iraqbodycount.net and a reference to the Iraqi boy with half his head blown off.

Also, the LA Times has a surprising photo gallery of destroyed Baghdad homes and Iraqis mourning their dead.

'I'm a Uniter, Not a Divider'

Latest New York Times/CBS poll shows "... President Bush's campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power is producing sharp fissures at home."

...

"While 82 percent of whites said the United States should take military action to oust Mr. Hussein, just 44 percent of blacks said they supported that approach. In addition, 71 percent of whites said they were proud of what the United States was doing in Iraq, compared with 33 percent of blacks."

Boycott Wiener Schnitzel

Boycott of American Goods Over Iraq War Gains

No more Coca-Cola or Budweiser, no Marlboro, no American whiskey or even American Express cards -- a growing number of restaurants in Germany are taking everything American off their menus to protest the war in Iraq.

Although the protests are mainly symbolic, waiters in dozens of bars and restaurants in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Bonn and other German cities are telling patrons, "Sorry, Coca-Cola is not available any more due to the current political situation."

March 25, 2003

'Operation name change'

If this is a war for the liberation of the Iraqi people, at least a few Iraqis aren't getting the message.

• A sharpshooting Iraqi farmer and a bunch of locals celebrated the downing of an Apache helicopter.
• The New York Times' Dexter Filkins, embedded with U.S. troops in Nasiriya, writes in Marines Find an Urban Fight They Didn't Want:

  By deciding to pursue their enemy into the city center, the Americans appeared to have enraged many of the Iraqi civilians who live there, including those who said they were predisposed to support the American effort.
  
  One of those, Mustafa Mohammed Ali, a medical assistant at the Saddam Hospital, said he had spent much of the day hauling dead and wounded civilians out of buildings that had been bombed by the Americans. Mr. Ali that said he had no love for the Iraqi president but that the American's failure to discriminate between enemy fighters and Iraqi civilians had turned him decisively against the American invasion.
  
  "I saw how the Americans bombed our civilians with my own eyes," Mr. Mustafa said, and he held up a bloodied sleeve to show how he had dragged them into the ambulances.
  
  "You want to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime?" Mr. Mustafa asked. "Go to Baghdad. What are you doing here? What are you doing in our cities?"

• PBS's News Hour aired an interview (Real Audio | 6:50) of a group of angry Baghdad residents after a residential area was hit by U.S. bombs. The most pissed off of them said:

  This is clearly a residential area and that's been know for 50 years. What does Mr. Bush need from us? Clearly there are no military targets here. Maybe it is his dream that we will welcome his troops but on the contrary they will get a hard time from us.

• Slate's Nate Thayer also reporting from Baghdad writes:

  This morning, hundreds of Iraqis filled the lobby of the Palestine Hotel to watch the broadcast of Saddam Hussein's speech. Their mood was defiant. They clapped and cheered as Saddam rallied them to war. "Americans have bombed civilian areas," Saddam said, according to my translator. "They are trying to weaken us, but they are stupid. They will never win."
  
  ...
  
  The atmosphere on the street gets more and more menacing every day. There are groups of people chanting anti-American slogans. The military presence has increased dramatically. Outposts and bunkers are on every corner. Roadblocks are set up on all the main streets. The oil trenches ignited over the weekend continue to burn—casting a literal black cloud over the city. Iraqis assume that American forces will encircle Baghdad, and they are preparing for a siege.

Along the same lines...

A side effect of the war in Iraq is the return of Iraqi refugees from Jordan. The only problem is they're returning to fight U.S. and British forces.

March 24, 2003

'operation arab radicalization'

Over the weekend Americans saw a fairly sanitized version of the war, and even after the ambush/POW episode were spared the more ghastly photos of dead Marines. Instead they heard breathless accounts of cruise missiles so accurate that they sometimes land in Iran and Turkey, and saw snazzy 3D images of the Patriot missile system that sometimes shoots down British airplanes.

Meanwhile, the Arab world saw what it's like to be on the receiving end of this neato technology, showing pictures of casualties from U.S. bombing in Basra, most grotesquely the pictures of an Iraqi boy with the back of his head blown off that will scar any viewer for life.

Perhaps motivated by the imagery from al-Jazeera, or perhaps just really pissed off, the past several days have seen a seething "Arab Street," with large and often violent protests in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Lebanon. Yesterday in Lahore Pakistan (they gots nukes!) 100,000 people showed up to shout "Kill America," burn flags, and generally get fired up about jihad. Heck, even the kids looked to be having a good time.

Allah only knows what new terrorist attacks are cookin' in the "Arab Basement."

Also, In Case you Missed it:

March 21, 2003

The Fog of War

There were a couple of important stories from Thursday that got washed out in the "Is that funny looking old man in glasses really Saddam Hussein?" tsunami:

1. U.S. Troops Raid Afghanistan in Hunt for Al Qaeda

Operation Valiant Strike involves 1000 troops from the Army's 82 Airborne Division scouring for Al Qaeda and Taliban east of Kandahar. It's the largest U.S. military operation since Operation Anaconda one year ago. You may remember Operation Enduring Freedom ... it was the war in Afghanistan the U.S. won 15 months ago.

2. Annan, Blix regret Iraq conflict

Yesterday Hans Blix criticized American "impatience" to go to war and suggested the U.S. wasn't interested in the peaceful disarmament of Iraq. It's the latest in a series of articles that show the U.S. wanted -- and in some cases actively helped -- the UN inspection teams to fail.

• In late February UN sources said American tips have lead to one dead end after another. One UN inspector concluded the U.S. intelligence they got was "garbage after garbage after garbage."
• Following up on this in early March, Michigan senator Carl Levin said the U.S. intelligence community is turning over only a "small fraction" of information about suspected WMD sites.
• A week later the Washington Post reported the CIA's stonewalling of Levin's investigation into the matter, and quoted an official familiar with the intelligence that, "Not all the top sites have been passed to the inspectors."
• On Tuesday the San Jose Mercury News reported -- in a hidden gem of an article -- that the UN's nuclear inspectors are angry at the Bush administration for "cutting short their work, bad-mouthing their efforts and making false claims about evidence of weapons of mass destruction."

In sum, the Bush administration's argument that the invasion of Iraq is about disarming the regime has always been -- and continues to be -- a steaming pile of bullshit. It's always been about overthrowing the Iraqi government.

March 20, 2003

North Korean Sneak Preview

Well, that sure was anticlimactic. After months of tough talk, the inspections charade, regular bombings, and finally, the surreal OK Corral-esqe ultimatum, all I can say is it's about fucking time! I've got a war-focused newslog to run here, and it works a heck of a lot better when there's war!

While listening to the President announce the attack, the penultimate paragraph struck me as a tip-off to the administration's agenda after the first election takes place in a liberated and democratic Iraq:

My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail. [emphasis added]

No, our liberation of oppressed peoples doesn't end with Iraq. But who's next? Some have handicapped Syria or Iran (after all, real men want to go to Tehran) as the next nation to feel our love, but the smart money is on North Korea.

Now, this isn't exactly a long shot since W has called Kim Jong-il a pygmy and the DPRK is a charter member of the "Axis of Evil," but a document written over a decade ago provides a hint as to why North Korea is next in line to be bombed into freedom.

In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz -- who likely spooged when news of last night's Iraq attack came -- sketched out America's mission in the post-Cold War era in a document called the Defense Planning Guidance. The draft is the blueprint for the Bush administration's foreign policy and America's current adventure in Iraq, and while it relies on seven scenarios in potential trouble spots to make its argument, the primary case studies are Iraq and North Korea.

With Wolfowitz and other neocons (Perle, Rumsfeld) now dominant, and Colin Powell reduced to a bloody stump after the diplomatic disaster at the UN, look for Kim Jung-il to replace Saddam Hussein as Public Enemy #1, and a new war of liberation to be sold by Bush & Co.