The case this administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of pre-emption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism.

We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

What I try to do here is look at acts and their consequences. So when I say that Arab opinion is enraged by the war, that Arabs regard Mr Blair and Mr Bush as the leaders of an invading and occupying force, it is merely to reflect how things are. If there is a silent Arab majority - or even minority - who believes the war is a good thing, I have yet to find it. If it exists it is so minuscule as to be politically irrelevant.
.....
So in Cairo when I am assailed as a Westerner (never violently or aggressively), I tend to ask why Arabs never did anything about the regime of Saddam Hussein. "You say you don't like Saddam and want to see him gone but why have Arabs never acted against him?" I ask. I know the answer and so do they. Fear. Fear of their own governments, fear of Saddam, the overwhelming sense that removing a leader is an impossibility in a world that is so politically sclerotic.

But the invasion of Iraq may change all that, and not in a way that those optimistic warriors in the White House imagine. Paul Wolfowitz and Mr Rumsfeld imagine an Arab world remade in the image of the West. With the voices of the street still ringing in my ears, I would suggest the new Arab world may be anything but friendly to their vision. Far from it.

The US Marines have suffered an embarrassment with reports last night that one of their most prized investigators may have defected. Takoma, the Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, had been in Iraq for 48 hours when he went missing on his first operation to snoop out mines.

Well, they couldn't keep the chickens that they planned on using as canaries for chemical weapons alive...

Coalition Faked It, says UN  (sorry, I lost the link to the article)
By Louis Charbonneau,  Vienna,  Reuters

A few hours and a simple internet search was all it took for UN inspectors to realize documents backing US and British claims that Iraq had revived its nuclear program were crude fakes, a UN official said.

Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a senior official from the UN nuclear agency who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, described one as so badly forged his "jaw dropped".

Shrub and crew lying yet again.  What do you expect from a (to be redundant)  corrupt corporated exec!

"In a speech earlier today President Bush said if Iraq gets rid of Saddam Hussein, he will help the Iraqi people with food, medicine, supplies, housing, education - anything that's needed. Isn't that amazing? He finally comes up with a domestic agenda - and it's for Iraq. Maybe we could bring that here if it works out." -Jay Leno

"President Bush said this Iraq situation looks like 'the rerun of a bad movie.' Well sure, there's a Bush in the White House, the economy's going to hell, we're going to war over oil. I've seen this movie, haven't I?" -Jay Leno

"President Bush announced tonight that he believes in democracy and that democracy can exist in Iraq. They can have a strong economy, they can have a good health care plan, and they can have a free and fair voting. Iraq? We can't even get this in Florida." -Jay Leno

"President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, well, hell, he didn't need the approval of the American voters to become president, either." -David Letterman

"Democrats were quick to point out that President Bush's budget creates a 1 trillion dollar deficit. The White House quickly responded with 'Hey, look over there, it's Saddam Hussein.'" -Craig Kilborn

"We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There's just one problem - it's in North Korea." -Jon Stewart

"War continues in Iraq. They're calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realized that spells 'OIL.'" -Jay Leno

"CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts ... regular, premium and unleaded." -Jay Leno

"Iraq began destroying those missiles they don't have over the weekend. See, President Bush may be the smartest military president in history. First, he gets Iraq to destroy all of their own weapons. Then he declares war." -Jay Leno

"Many of our soldiers are stationed at Camp Coyote just south of the Iraqi border. This is how you know we have a strong army, when you can actually tell your enemy exactly where your camp is and what its name is." -Jon Stewart

"President Bush agreed today to allow more weapons inspectors in Iraq. As I understand he has 250,000 of them ready to go." -Jay Leno

"The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular." -Jay Leno

"The president boasted at the top of his press conference that we have the support now of Britain and Spain for our attack on Iraq. You know, when you want to make it perfectly clear to the world that you're not an imperialist, the people you want in your corner are Britain and Spain." -Bill Maher

"On Sunday, the president flies to the Azores islands to attend a summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, and here's my prediction: Bush gets voted off." -Craig Kilborn

"President Bush spent last night calling world leaders to support the war with Iraq and it is sad when the most powerful man on earth is yelling, 'I know you're there, pick up, pick up." -Craig Kilborn

"Experts say that if we go to war with Iraq, oil could reach as much as $80 a barrel. Of course, after the war it will be free." -Jay Leno

In contrast, the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 has become part of Blair's and Bush's vocabulary. Eleven months after this atrocity, the assistant US secretary of state James Kelly flew to Baghdad to tell Saddam Hussein:

    "You are a source for moderation in the region, and the United States wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq."

Patrick Tyler, a perceptive writer in the New York Times, says that Bush and Blair now face a "tenacious new adversary" - the public. He says we are heading into a new bipolar world with two new superpowers: the regime in Washington on one side, and world public opinion on the other. In a poll of half a million Europeans, Time magazine asked which country was the greatest threat to peace: 5.8 per cent said North Korea, 6.8 per cent said Iraq and 87 per cent said the United States. In other words, the game is up.

People have become aware, above all, that the most dangerous appeasement today has little to do with a regional tyrant, and everything to do with "our" governments.

The UN is useful only to the extent it can enforce its resolutions. In the last so many years, so many of its resolutions have been routinely violated. Israel has ignored 64 UN resolutions in the past 30 years, a record that seems grievous compared to the 17 resolutions Iraq has ignored in the last 12 years. But America sends aid to Israel and invading armies to Iraq because it falls to America to decide which of these resolutions are urgent and who among the violators should be punished. That's the only way the UN can function, given the fact that this world body does not have a standing army of its own.

Muslim figures who sided with the U.S. after 9/11 and denounced Osama bin Laden are now urging "jihad" against Americans.
...
My intrepid Times colleagues Dexter Filkins and Michael Wilson are with U.S. marines who were in a firefight in which Iraqi fighters hid among women and children. After 10 Americans had been killed, the marines became less meticulous about avoiding civilian casualties.
"It's not pretty; it's not surgical," Chief Warrant Officer Pat Woellhof told them. "You try to limit collateral damage, but they want to fight. Now it's just smash-mouth football."

Yeah, but whose mouth and regime is ultimately gonna be smashed?

Bush Aides Discounted Downside By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder News Service

President Bush's aides did not forcefully present him with dissenting views from CIA and State and Defense Department officials who warned that U.S.-led forces could face stiff resistance in Iraq, according to three senior administration officials.
Bush embraced the predictions of some top administration hawks, beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, who predicted in the weeks before the war with Iraq that Saddam Hussein's regime was brittle and that Iraqis would joyously greet coalition troops as liberators, the officials said.

The dissenting views "were not fully or energetically communicated to the president," said one top official. "As a result, almost every assumption the plan's based on looks to be wrong."
...
But some senior U.S. officials now acknowledge that they might have underestimated the threat from Iraqi paramilitary units.
The president has been careful never to describe the war as easy or cost-free.  "A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict," Bush said in a March 19 speech to the nation, shortly after the first cruise missiles struck Baghdad.

But some of those predictions came from Bush's own White House.
In a televised interview three days before the Bush speech, Cheney said, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."

In Shrub's sick, feeble and  twisted brain, California is likely another "axis of evil"

Bush deputy gets up to $1m from firm with Iraq oil deal
The Guardian
Robert Bryce in Austin, Texas and Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday March 12, 2003
Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.
The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.
....
Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis Berger Group - invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the second world war.
....
In the five years Mr Cheney was at the helm, Halliburton nearly doubled the amount of business it did with the government to $2.3bn. The company also more than doubled its political contributions to $1.2m, overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.

It may not be time to write the PM's obituary, but he has had a truly disastrous week

The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq. Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.

The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input. The memo 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 leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York

Read the memo on the The Observer site

I especially like the " (minus US and GBR, of course)"-  even Shrub's spooks have to be on a short leash!

President's activities kept secret
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Saturday March 29, 2003
The Guardian

President George Bush has been accused of quietly extending secrecy restrictions while the country is preoccupied with Iraq. He has signed an executive order that will delay the release of millions of government documents and make it easier for presidents to keep secret the details of their activities when in power.

There is concern that for the first time the vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been given the power to classify information. Mr Cheney is not known for his commitment to open government and has sought to head off attempts to discover which energy corporations he has consulted with since he took office.

Mr Bush's new order postpones for three more years the declassification of documents which were due to become available to the public on April 17. The administration has given itself more discretion to keep information classified indefinitely under a broad definition of national security.

Read the EO,  Further Amendment to Executive Order 12958    A snippet:

Nevertheless, throughout our history, the national defense has required that certain information be maintained in confidence in order to protect our citizens, our democratic institutions, our homeland security, and our interactions with foreign nations. Protecting information critical to our Nations security remains a priority.

You can bet "critical to our Nations security"  includes dad's involvement in the Iran/Contra mess and god knows what else.
It's said that every cloud has a silver lining... In this case, 9/11 has greatly increased Shrub's ability to hide his and his father's secret dirty dealings.

The Pentagon had long predicted that the confrontation with Iraq would be unlike any other war in history. That claim has been proved correct, although not for the reasons the US top brass may have been thinking of.
....
Here's one of six examples cited in the article:

6 Basra tank column On Wednesday evening, news broke of one of the biggest tank battles involving British forces since the second world war. A convoy of up to 120 Iraqi armoured vehicles had been spotted breaking out of the southern city of Basra in broad daylight, heading south towards the British-held Faw peninsula in what commanders described as an "offensive posture". TV news reports on Wednesday evening and newspapers on Thursday were filled with gripping accounts of the battle between British tanks and the Iraqi armour.  "British artillery and jets launched a fierce attack last night on a convoy of up to 120 Iraqi tanks and armoured personnel carriers seen pouring out of the city of Basra," the Guardian's front page story said. The story had come from correspondents with the British forces, who had been given accounts of the battle by commanders.

It was not until yesterday's MoD press briefing that the truth emerged: rather than 120 Iraqi vehicles, there had been only three. A contrite military admitted that the error had stemmed from an "erroneous signal" from the coalition's electronic moving target indicators. US Brigadier General Vince Brooks described it as a "classic example of the fog of war".

Yet another reason to distrust breaking news reports....

"More than 35 countries are giving crucial support from the use of naval and air bases to help with intelligence and logistics to deployment of combat units. Every nation in this coalition has chosen to bear the duty and share the honour of serving in our common defence."

There never were 35 countries- maybe the stupid leaders of 35 countries

Atleast 15 of the alledged 35 were so afraid of regime change by their own citizens that they refused even to allow their country's names to be divulged!  Also, even the "willing" are not too willing- only the UK and Austrailia have provided comabt troops for Shrub's invasion.

...
"We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people."

It's not about disarming Sadam, freeing Iraq citizens or defending the world, it's about oil and the arrogance of the Shrub regime.

.....
"Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.

Given Rummy's national policy change on use of nuclear weapons, "outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder" aptly fitts the Shrub regime.

It's drive time with WABC's rightwing talkshow host, Curtis Sliwa, and Bill is on the line from the Poconos in Pennsylvania with a tale so funny he can hardly share it for giggling. He was carrying an American flag and yelling support for the troops in a delayed St Patrick's Day parade over the weekend when he saw one woman carrying a sign saying: "No blood for oil". "She was wearing black and she was an older lady," says Bill. "And then our sheriff saw her and she didn't have a permit. So they put her in the back of the truck car and hauled her away."
.....
While these popular expressions of intolerance appear sporadic, not all are spontaneous. The rally to smash the Dixie Chicks' CDs and much of the impetus for the boycott of their single came from radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications of Texas, which has close ties with Bush. The company's stations also called for the pro-war rallies that have cropped up in the past week.

And while they have not received the state's imprimatur, Bush's administration has certainly created the climate in which they can thrive.

Under Big Brother monikers like the Patriot Act and Operation Liberty Shield, the state has stepped up the scope of its surveillance and the wiretapping of American citizens and will authorise the indefinite detention of asylum seekers from certain countries. Last year, surveillance requests by the federal government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - originally intended to hunt down foreign spies - outnumbered all of those under domestic law for the first time in US history.

Under a proposed new bill, entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement act, the government could withhold the identity of anyone detained in connection with a terror investigation and their names would be exempt from the Freedom of Information act, according to the centre for public integrity, a Washington-based advocacy group.

One rule for them
Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?
George Monbiot  - Tuesday March 25, 2003  -  The Guardian

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

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

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

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention.
...
The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful combatants". The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country.
...
<after describing US treatment of Iraq POWs...>

You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some of the other men captured by the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan.

On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Many of them have never been seen again.

As Jamie Doran's film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, of them were loaded into container lorries at Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on November 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the sun for several days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan prison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum's men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead. The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite pictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Another soldier alleged: "They took the prisoners outside and beat them up, and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned, and they disappeared." Many of the survivors were loaded back in the containers with the corpses, then driven to a place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the presence of up to 40 US special forces, the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot.

The German newspaper Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that: "No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue." The US group Physicians for Human Rights visited the places identified by Doran's witnesses and found they "all... contained human remains consistent with their designation as possible grave sites".
...
It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.

There's more on George Monbiot's site: www.monbiot.com

No wonder Shrub's regime tried to kill the newly formed International Criminal Court...

Pentagon hawk linked to UK intelligence company
Richard Perle is director of firm selling terror alert software
David Leigh  -  Friday March 21, 2003  -  The Guardian
....

The Cambridge-based Autonomy Corporation, with Mr Perle's help, is secretively selling advanced computer eavesdropping systems to intelligence agencies around the world. Its software simultaneously monitors hundreds of thousands of intercepted emails and phone conversations while they are taking place.
....

Mr Perle, long one of the most high-profile proponents of war with Iraq, is a director of Autonomy with an option on 75,000 of the company's shares - currently trading in the doldrums, far below the option price.
....

Mr Perle has roamed the world promoting war against Saddam Hussein and linking him to the al-Qaida terrorist network. Such fears have caused an unprecedented surge in international intelligence activity.

Last September, for example, despite rebuttals by the FBI, Mr Perle insisted at a gathering of European and Israeli politicians in Italy that an Iraqi agent had met Mohammed Atta, one of the World Trade Centre hijackers, in Prague, with the inference that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks.
....

At the beginning of the year, boasting of his company's profitability record, the chief executive, Mike Lynch, said in London that the threat of war in Iraq had helped sales to intelligence agencies, as "defence issues come more to mind, which frees up the mind to spend".
....

Mr Perle is engaged in a ferocious battle of words with the veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh, whom he has called a journalistic "terrorist". Mr Perle is threatening to sue Hersh in London for a recent New Yorker article in which he questioned Mr Perle's role in relation to Saudi Arabia in another venture capital company, Trireme, and quoted Saudis alleging he was misusing his business connections.

Mr Perle would find it much more difficult to sue for libel in the US, where comment in good faith about public figures is virtually unrestricted.
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,924554,00.html Bush's defence adviser quits in row over conflict of interest Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Friday March 28, 2003 The Guardian Richard Perle, a chief architect of the war on Iraq, resigned yesterday as chairman of the influential defence policy board following allegations that he faced a serious conflict of interest over his corporate connections. The US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday accepted his resignation but asked him to remain on the board.
....
Mr Perle has been involved with the bankrupt Global Crossing firm and stands to receive $725,000 for his work on their behalf in effecting a sale of the company. The sale has to be agreed by the defence department which has led to conflict of interest questions.
....
Last week, the Guardian revealed that a British company linked to Mr Perle and dealing with secret intelligence is among the few UK commercial organisations that stand to profit from the Iraq war. The Cambridge-based Autonomy Corporation, with Mr Perle's help, has been selling advanced computer eavesdropping systems to intelligence agencies around the world. Mr Perle is a director of Autonomy with an option on 75,000 of the company's shares. He advises the company on market opportunities but said he had no input into specific procurement decisions by US agencies. 

This has been a terrible week at the Pentagon: the worst since the building itself was attacked more than 18 months ago. But as his limo drew up to fetch him last night, one of the most senior figures in the building might just have permitted himself the thin smile of a vindicated man. His name in General Eric Shinseki. And at a time when generals - whether on active or pundit duty - are the hottest showbiz properties in the world, hardly anyone knows who he is.
....

But for the past two years Gen Shinseki has been in total eclipse after what appears to have been the most spectacular bust-up with his civilian bosses, in particular Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary. Hardly any of this the reached public domain until last month when Gen Shinseki told a congressional committee that he thought an occupying force in the hundreds of thousands would be required to police postwar Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld publicly repudiated him, saying he was "far off the mark".
..
Then the general said it again. "It could be as high as several hundred thousand," he told another committee. "We all hope it is something less." Most of the media were too distracted by the build-up to war to notice. Serious analysts, however, were staggered by the insubordination.

This appears to have been round two of another, more immediately relevant, dispute about how many troops are needed to win this war. In this case, the military prevailed over the original civilian notion that fewer than 100,000 could do it. As even more soldiers rush to the Gulf to bring the number closer to 300,000, the original Rumsfeld plan looks in hindsight to be what the army said at the time: a recipe for possible catastrophe.
....

The Other Superpower
by JONATHAN SCHELL  -  From the Nation   -  Posted March 27, 2003

As the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised a "campaign unlike any other in history." What he did not plan or expect, however, was that the peoples of earth--what some are calling "the other superpower"--would launch an opposing campaign destined to be even less like any other in history. Indeed, Rumsfeld's campaign, a military attack, was in all its essential elements as old as history. The other campaign--the one opposing the war--meanwhile, was authentically novel.
In the pages that follow, The Nation gives a snapshot of it in fourteen countries. If news has anything to do with what is new, then this campaign's birth and activity are the real news. What emerges is a portrait of a world in resistance.
....
But who, we may ask, are the free ones--those who knuckle under to violence or those who defy it? The new superpower possesses immense power, but it is a different kind of power: not the will of one man wielding the 21,000-pound MOAB but the hearts and wills of the majority of the world's people. Its victories have been triumphs of civil courage, like the vote of the Turkish Parliament to turn down a multibillion-dollar bribe and, in keeping with public opinion, refuse the United States the use of Turkish bases in the war, or like the refusal of the six small, nonpermanent members of the United Nations Security Council to succumb to great-power browbeating and support its resolution for war. The question everywhere was which superpower to obey--the single nation claiming that title, or the will of the people of the earth. Outside the imperial counsels, the people of the earth were prevailing.
....
Never, in fact, had this will been expressed more clearly than in the moments leading up to the US assault. On the brink of the war no public but the Israeli one supported it under the conditions in which it was being launched--that is, without UN support. Public-opinion polls showed that in most countries opposition to the war was closer to unanimity than to a mere majority. A Gallup poll showed that in "neutral" (and normally pro-American) Switzerland the figure was 90 percent, in Argentina 87 percent, in Nigeria 86 percent, in Bosnia (recently the beneficiary of NATO intervention on its behalf) 91 percent. In all of the countries whose governments supported the war except Israel's, the public opposed it. The "coalition of the willing" was a coalition of governments alone.

US plan for new nuclear arsenal
Secret talks may lead to breaking treaties
Julian Borger  - Wednesday February 19, 2003  -  The Guardian

The Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and neutron bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents, according to a leaked Pentagon document.

The meeting of senior military officials and US nuclear scientists at the Omaha headquarters of the US Strategic Command would also decide whether to restart nuclear testing and how to convince the American public that the new weapons are necessary.

The leaked preparations for the meeting are the clearest sign yet that the administration is determined to overhaul its nuclear arsenal so that it could be used as part of the new "Bush doctrine" of pre-emption, to strike the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of rogue states.

Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog organisation that obtained the Pentagon documents, said the meeting would also prepare the ground for a US breakaway from global arms control treaties, and the moratorium on conducting nuclear tests.  "It is impossible to overstate the challenge these plans pose to the comprehensive test ban treaty, the existing nuclear test moratorium, and US compliance with article six of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Mr Mello said.

"To me it indicates there are plans proceeding and well under way ... to resume the development, testing and production of new nuclear weapons. It's very serious," said Stephen Schwartz, the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who added that it opened the US to charges of hypocrisy when it is demanding the disarmament of Iraq and North Korea.   "How can we possibly go to the international community or to these countries and say 'How dare you develop these weapons', when it's exactly what we're doing?" Mr Schwartz said.

The starting point for the January discussion was Mr Rumsfeld's nuclear posture review (NPR), a policy paper published last year that identified Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential targets for US nuclear weapons.

Veterans question war strategy

Oliver Burkeman in Washington

Wednesday March 26, 2003

The Guardian

Doubts over the US-led military strategy in Iraq intensified yesterday as several Gulf war commanders added their voices to the charge that it was a mistake to send such a small main force to advance on Baghdad from the south.

General Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Mechanised Infantry Division in the 1991 war, is among the highest-profile of those arguing that the Pentagon erred by sending in an assault force a third the size used in Desert Storm, leaving the coalition's supply chain between Kuwait and the outskirts of Baghdad vulnerable to ambush.

The 3rd Infantry is the only heavy US division yet involved in the push on Baghdad, reflecting the Pentagon philosophy of using lighter ground forces and aerial attacks rather than overwhelming artillery.

"There should have been a minimum of two divisions and an armoured cavalry regiment," Gen McCaffrey said.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/30/1048962641642.html

Why I made that speech
                March 31 2003

                Something had to be said at the Oscars about the war. Michael Moore
                explains why he was the one to say it.

                A word of advice to future Oscar winners: don't begin Oscar day by going to
                church. That is where I found myself last Sunday morning, at the Church of the
                Good Shepherd on Santa Monica Boulevard, at Mass with my sister and my dad.
                My problem with the Catholic Mass is that sometimes I find my mind wandering
                after I hear something the priest says, and I start thinking all these crazy thoughts
                like how it is wrong to kill people and that you are not allowed to use violence upon
                another human being unless it is in true self-defence.

                The Pope even came right out and said it: this war in Iraq is not a just war and,
                thus, it is a sin.

                Those thoughts were with me the rest of the day. I had not planned on winning an
                Academy Award for Bowling for Columbine (no documentary that was a big
                box-office success had won since Woodstock), and so I had no speech prepared.
                Besides, I had already received awards in the days leading up to the Oscars and
                used the same acceptance remarks. I spoke of the need for non-fiction films when
                we live in such fictitious times. We have a fictitious US President who was elected
                with fictitious election results. He is now conducting a war for a fictitious reason
                (the claim that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
                when in fact we are there to get the world's second-largest supply of oil).

                We are continually bombarded with one fictitious story after another from the Bush
                White House. And that is why it is important that filmmakers make non-fiction, so
                that all the little lies can be exposed and the public informed. An uninformed public
                in a democracy is a sure-fire way to end up with little or no democracy at all.

                That is what I have been saying for some time. Millions of Americans seem to
                agree. My book Stupid White Men still sits at No. 1 on the US bestseller list.
                Bowling for Columbine has broken all box-office records for a documentary. My
                website is now getting up to 20 million hits a day (more than the White House's
                site).

                My opinions about the state of the United States are neither unknown nor on the
                fringe, but rather they exist with mainstream majority opinion. The majority of
                Americans, according to polls, did not want to go into this war without the backing
                of the United Nations and all of America's allies.

                That is where the US is at. It's liberal, it's for peace and it is only tacitly in support
                of its leader because that is what you are supposed to do when you are at war
                and you want your kids to come back from Iraq alive.

                In the commercial break before the best documentary Oscar was to be
                announced, I suddenly thought that maybe this community of film people was also
                part of that American majority and just might have voted for my film. I leaned over
                to my fellow nominees and told them that, should I win, I was going to say
                something about President Bush and the war and would they like to join me up on
                the stage? They all agreed.

                Moments later, Diane Lane opened the envelope and announced the winner:
                Bowling for Columbine. The entire main floor rose to its feet for a standing
                ovation. I was immeasurably moved and humbled as I motioned for the other
                nominees to join my wife (the film's producer) and me up on the stage.

                I then said what I had been saying all week at those other awards ceremonies. I
                guess a few other people had heard me say those things too because before I
                had finished my first sentence about the fictitious president, a couple of men
                (some reported it was "stagehands" just to the left of me) near a microphone
                started some loud yelling. Then a group in the upper balcony joined in. What was
                so confusing to me, as I continued my remarks, was that I could hear this noise
                but, looking out on the main floor, I didn't see a single person booing.

                But then the majority in the balcony - who were in support of my remarks - started
                booing the booers. It all turned into one humungous cacophony of yells and cheers
                and jeers. And all I'm thinking is, "Hey, I put on a tux for this?"

                I tried to get out my last line ("Any time you've got both the Pope and the Dixie
                Chicks against you, you're not long for the White House") and the orchestra struck
                up its tune to end the melee. (A few orchestra members came up to me later and
                apologised, saying they had wanted to hear what I had to say.) I had gone 55
                seconds, 10 more than allowed.

                Was it appropriate? To me, the inappropriate thing would have been to say
                nothing at all or to thank my agent, my lawyer and the designer who dressed me. I
                made a movie about the American desire to use violence both at home and
                around the world. My remarks were in keeping with exactly what my film was
                about. If I had a movie about birds or insects, I would have talked about birds or
                insects. I made a movie about guns and Americans' tradition of using them
                against the world and each other.

                And, as I walked up to the stage, I was still thinking about the lessons that morning
                at Mass. About how silence, when you observe wrongs being committed, is the
                same as committing those wrongs yourself. And so I followed my conscience and
                my heart.

                On the way back home, the day after the Oscars, two flight attendants told me how
                they had been stuck overnight in my home state - and wound up earning only $30
                for the day because they are paid by the hour.

                They said they were telling me this in the hope that I would tell others. Because
                they, and the millions like them, have no voice. They don't get to be commentators
                on cable news like the bevy of retired generals we've been watching all week.
                (Can we please demand that the US military remove its troops from
                ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox?) They don't get to make movies or talk to a
                billion people on Oscar night. They are the American majority who are being
                asked to send their sons and daughters over to Iraq to possibly die so Bush's
                buddies can have the oil.

                Who will speak for them if I don't? That's what I do, or try to do, every day of my life,
                and March 23, 2003 - though it was one of the greatest days of my life and an
                honour I will long cherish - was no different.

                Except I made the mistake of beginning it in a church.

                Michael Moore won an Academy Award for Bowling for Columbine. This article
                first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
 

                March 30 2003
                By Ray Cassin

                Do you support our troops in Iraq? It seems like a straightforward question, to
                which a reply like "Yes, I believe they shouldn't have been sent there so I hope
                they're brought home soon" ought to be perfectly acceptable. But bringing the
                troops home is not the sort of support for them that people who ask the question
                typically have in mind. They want the person they're interrogating to give a
                commitment to refrain from criticising the war, lest the men and women of the ADF
                be demoralised by the knowledge that not all of their compatriots think they are
                fighting in a just cause. On this view, opposing a war in which our troops are
                involved amounts to disloyalty to Australia.

                It is a widely held view, but an extremely odd one given the aims for which the war
                is avowedly being fought. George Bush and John Howard like to tell us that this
                war is being fought to liberate the people of Iraq from a tyrant; yet supporters of
                the war are suggesting that the army of democracy can only function if democracy
                is put on hold at home and no one criticises the war. Allied to this view is the only
                slightly less odd, but equally widespread, view that bipartisan support should exist
                before Australia undertakes any foreign military adventure. Bipartisanship
                undermines democracy because it declares certain questions to be beyond the
                realm of debate.

The Iraqi resort to suicide bombing is hardly surprising. But the shocked response from US
commanders is another sign of their lack of preparedness for war in this region.

The swagger is gone from the "shock and awe" campaign. Instead of being welcomed by
flag-waving, cheering Iraqis, the allies are confronted by the lethal hazards of asymmetrical
war - brazen Iraqi units and individuals who can nip through gaps in the most technologically
superior force sent into battle.
....

It's ugly now and it promises to get uglier. The media here in Baghdad and elsewhere are
filled with images of civilian grief and damage now spreading beyond what were described as
"regime targets".

In the early hours of Saturday several Baghdad telephone exchanges were bombed, further
isolating civilian Iraqis by denying them local calls in a time of great stress.

As Saturday's suicide bombing took place, Information Ministry officials in Baghdad were
handing out video cassettes of the most appalling images of death and destruction, which
they blamed on the Americans, on the road between Najaf and Baghdad.

The footage showed several buses and cars that had been incinerated and were riddled with
machine-gun fire. There were long, lingering shots of the charred remains of passengers.

When the images are telecast, particularly in the Arab world, US claims that Iraqi fighters
have been using public transport to get through American lines will count for little.

The US came here apparently in the belief that chemical or biological attacks were the only
unconventional attacks they might face. But Iraqi militiamen dressed as civilians mount
hit-and-run attacks and then melt into local crowds; they scoot around with ease on public
transport, springing ambushes; they hide their big guns in civilian quarters. But the most
remarkable aspect of it all is the shocked surprise of US commanders in the field and at the
Pentagon.

Iraqi rhetoric is threat-laden and blood-soaked at the best of times, but the timing of the
Najaf suicide bomb and Vice-President Taha Yassir Ramadan's self-congratulatory press
conference in Baghdad on Saturday night has to be taken as an unambiguous warning of
worse to come.

He said: "Our martyrdom operations are suicide to you. But if we do not have the airplanes
and bombs to respond, what do we do - capitulate?"

That's not how the war was sold to the US public.

The Iraqis tried to head off this war with a pitch for world moral support against Washington,
declaring that it was not a rogue state and did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Time will tell. But this is the regime that eulogises the suicide bombers of the West Bank
and Gaza, paying $US25,000 ($A41,600) to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

And there were echoes of all the Palestinian justification for their methods of war against the
Israelis when Mr Ramadan said: "Any method that stops or kills the enemy will be used."

Observers have been watching and waiting, confused by an apparent lack of war planning
across Iraq. But with the war now in its second week the explanation is clear - this is
shaping as a guerilla war, like we saw in Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Somalia.

Already most US casualties have been in guerilla strikes in and around Nasiriya.

At Najaf, Captain Andrew Valles, the US First Brigade's civil and military affairs officer, said:
"I don't know what motivated this guy to kill himself. To me, this is not an act of war, it is
terrorism." But in Baghdad it was just war.

Do you support our troops in Iraq? It seems like a straightforward question, to which a reply like "Yes, I believe they shouldn't have been sent there so I hope they're brought home soon" ought to be perfectly acceptable. But bringing the troops home is not the sort of support for  them that people who ask the question typically have in mind. They want the person they're interrogating to give a
commitment to refrain from criticising the war, lest the men and women of the ADF be demoralised by the knowledge that not all of their compatriots think they are fighting in a just cause. On this view, opposing a war in which our troops are involved amounts to disloyalty to Australia.

It is a widely held view, but an extremely odd one given the aims for which the war is avowedly being fought. George Bush and John Howard like to tell us that this war is being fought to liberate the people of Iraq from a tyrant; yet supporters of the war are suggesting that the army of democracy can only function if democracy is put on hold at home and no one criticises the war. Allied to this view is the only slightly less odd, but equally widespread, view that bipartisan support should exist before Australia undertakes any foreign military  adventure. Bipartisanship undermines democracy because it declares certain questions to be beyond the realm of debate.

Lieutenant-General William Wallace, the US Army commander in the Gulf, are trying to make sense of it all.  "The enemy we're fighting," he declared, "is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against."

Some supporters of the war, such as The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, have seen more clearly than General Wallace. Might the resistance perhaps be explained, Friedman conjectured, because "even Iraqis who detest Saddam love their homeland and these Iraqis are ready to resist a foreign occupier, even one that claims to be a liberator?" Now why didn't the writers of the script think of that?   What reason would ordinary Iraqis, whatever they think of the Baathist regime, have to trust the US promises about the future of their country?

Good question, but, alas, a rhetorical one.

Ford Motor Company sneaked out an announcement on Friday that around $1.7bn (£1.1bn) of exposure to off-balance sheet entities might have to be brought on to its books to comply with new US accounting rules. The move, the company said, "could result in a material impact" on earnings this year. Ford is not alone. General Motors and Merrill Lynch have already made similar statements, and more are bound to be in the pipeline.